Sometimes the best new R&B can be hard to find, but there are plenty of great rhythm-and-blues tunes to get into if you have the time to sift through the hundreds of newly released songs every week. So that R&B heads can focus on listening to what they really love in its true form, we’ll be offering a digest of the best new R&B songs that fans of the genre should hear every Friday.
This week, we’ve received a new single from Muni Long. The “Hrs & Hrs” singer returns with “Another” which stands as a stern warning to her lover about reciprocation. Elsewhere, Toronto singer Dylan Sinclair gears up to release his third project with “Lifetime” while DJ Neptune teams up with Jamaican singer Konshens and fellow Nigerian singer Mr Eazi for “Walangolo.”
Muni Long — “Another”
The success that Muni Long song saw with “Hrs & Hrs” brought her a lot in 2022. After a name change from Priscilla Renae, Long has enjoyed a second career of sorts thanks to a new fan base and a fresh deal with Def Jam. In order to keep her momentum alive, she returns with “Another.” The track takes a moment to give a stern warning to her lover who fails to reciprocate the love she gives him.
Dylan Sinclair — “Lifetime”
Less than two years after he shared his JUNO-nominated second project Proverbs with the world, Tonrot native Dylan Sinclair is gearing up to share his third project. Next month, Sinclair will release No Longer In The Suburbs, a project he calls a “search for that stimulation.” After releasing “Suppress,” Sinclair returns with “Lifetime,” a coming-of-age record that watches the Sinclair transition into young adulthood.
DJ Neptune, Mr Eazi & Konshens — “Walangolo”
Five months after he released his Greatness 2.0 project, DJ Neptune is back with a new single and he arrives with a couple friends beside him. Neptune drops off “Walangalo” with Nigerian singer Mr Eazi and Jamaican singer Konshens. Mr Eazi and Konshens most recent projects came in 2021 with the former dropping his Something Else EP at the top of the year while Konshens’ last body of work came at the end of 2021 with Red Reign
Tayc — “Dodo” Feat. Adekunle Gold
At the end of last year, French singer Tayc released “Dodo” as a part of his Fleur Froide – Second État: La Cristallisation. Now the record is growing in popularity thanks to the addition of Nigerian singer Adekunle Gold for a new remix. The duo’s soft vocals blend well for a record that will surely do well in the afrobeats circuit.
Gemaine & Charlie Heat — New Jack City
After promoting the project with a trio of singles they released in 2022, singer-producer duo Gemaine and Charlie Heat arrive with their debut project New Jack City. It arrives with 11 songs and guest appearances from Guapdad 4000, Too Short, Ymtk, and City James. Altogether, the project is inspired by the pace and swagger of gangster films like 1991’s New Jack City.
Debbie — “Stay”
The British singer kicks off her 2022 campaign with her new single “Debbie.” The track is the 23-year-old’s first release since December’s “Summer In December” and “Debbie” arrives as a tender record that finds her stuck between keeping allowing a significant other to stick around or moving on from them.
Jay Isaiah & Roderick Porter — “Over U”
Ontario-based singer Jay Isaiah arrives with his brand new single “Over U” and it features fellow Ontario native Roderick Porter. Together, Isaiah and Porter express the struggles of moving on from a past relationship. Finally, they realize that the best way to move on is to find someone else to give their love to.
ChuXChu — “Weakness”
New York-born and Nigeria-raised singer ChuXChu is looking to start the next chapter of his career with his new single “Weakness.” The track is a warm and bubbly track that he uses to admit his affection for a woman in his life. Through the track, he admits she’s his weakness while striving to do everything to win her over.
Hermez — “SugaBlu” Feart. Mauimoon & Suté Iwar
After kicking off the year with two singles, “Lucid Cruise” and “Lucky Me,” Nigerian singer Hermez returns with his latest drop “SugaBlu.” It arrives with features Mauimoon and Suté Iwar for what stands as a euphoric and rhythmic record that errs on the alté side of things.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
If you spend any amount of time on certain social media sites, you might think the world has fully plunged into hell-in-a-handbasket territory. (Looking at you here, Twitter.) Viral videos of bad behavior have swept through our feeds with alarming regularity over the past few years. Even just perusing headlines may lead you to believe humanity has lost its humanity, that people are generally terrible to each other and that the partisan polarization that now dominates the political landscape has created a hopeless, toxic toilet full of division and hate.
We’re obviously not all singing around the campfire before skipping off into the sunset together, but is humanity really doomed to not care about one another?
Nope. Not even a little bit.
In fact, the perception that things have gotten worse isn’t grounded in reality at all, at least not according to the data.
Since 2012, the World Happiness Report has been compiled by the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Using data from Gallup World Poll, the report shares rankings of happiness based on how respondents rank their own life and on various quality-of-life factors in countries around the world.
You’re probably wondering what the happiest country in the world is, so let’s get that out of the way. It’s Finland, for the fifth year in a row. (And yes, the Scandanavian countries were all in the top eight. Some things are just a given at this point.)
This year’s report also included sections that specifically analyzed how life has changed during the 2020 and 2021 COVID-19 pandemic, comparing data over the last five years to see the impact the pandemic has had on people in various circumstances. One element the researchers analyzed was benevolence, as measured in “prosocial behaviour” such as donating to causes, doing volunteer work and helping strangers.
The verdict? We’re not getting worse. We’re getting better.
The conclusion of the report states:
“Although our three measures of prosocial behaviour—donations, volunteering and helping strangers—had differing levels and trends, all showed increases in 2021 in every global region, often at remarkable rates not seen for any of the variables we have tracked before and during the pandemic.
Global benevolence, as measured by the average of the three measures of prosocial behaviour, has increased remarkably in 2021, up by almost 25% of its pre-pandemic level, led by the helping of strangers, but with strong growth also in donations and volunteering.”
Benevolence is up by almost 25% over pre-pandemic levels. Who would’ve guessed?
I shared this report with my teen and young adult daughters and both responded with surprise. We’ve talked about how social media and media in general can skew our perceptions of things, so it was nice to have some data-driven evidence to back that up.
People being less benevolent, not more, isn’t the only skewed perception many of us gotten during the pandemic. I’ve heard countless people lament the mental health crisis posed by pandemic lockdowns, citing a huge spike in suicides as supposed evidence. Except there was no spike in suicides. In fact, suicides overall went down during 2020 after the pandemic hit.
When we pay too much attention to viral negativity and outrage, we don’t get an accurate picture of what’s happening overall around the world. I’m not saying we should quit social media altogether, but I do think we need to take news and stories and videos and everyone’s thoughts about them with a grain of salt. It’s just far too easy to walk away from a scrolling session with the impression that humanity sucks, when the reality is more people are helping one another.
The World Happiness Report summed up the hope we can find in the data quite beautifully:
“The COVID-19 pandemic starting in 2020 has led to a 2021 pandemic of benevolence with equally global spread. All must hope that the pandemic of benevolence will live far beyond COVID-19. If sustainable, this outpouring of kindness provides grounds for hope and optimism in a world needing more of both.”
As trans children face bullying, violence and a potential loss to healthcare rights, the world might seem like a hostile and lonely place.
However, several trans adults, now thriving in their post-formative years, have taken to Twitter to offer solidarity and hope.
Kicked off by Axios Chief Technology Correspondent Ina Fried, the Letters 4 Trans Kids hashtag recognizes that “it’s been a rough time for trans and nonbinary youth,” and offers to show support by “posting a message of encouragement to these amazing young people.”
Hundreds did.
Fried set the tone early on with her letter, which was filled with compassion.
“I know it can be hard sometimes — really hard. It’s tough enough to figure out who you are inside. And then you have to figure out what to do with that knowledge and how to make your way in a world that isn’t always so kind.
Please know that however many angry voices are out there, there are also lots of us cheering you on. I want you to be fully you, whoever that turns out to be. And it’s okay if it takes some time to figure it out.
That’s part of what being a kid is supposed to be all about – figuring out who you are.
I just want you to know that I may not know you, but I see you and I stand proudly with you and for you every day.
Keep being you.”
From there, journalist Arthur Webber followed suit, sharing a story from his own childhood:
“My nights were spent praying that in the morning I would be a boy. I would wake up disappointed. However, I already was a boy–no divine intervention required.
On Christmas Eve aged 7, I cut off all my own hair and enthusiastically told my family that I finally was a boy. I had been watching ‘The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe’, so perhaps I took the image of children coming out of a closet too literally. However, I already was a boy–no (terrible) haircut needed.
When I met other children on holiday I would tell them I was a boy. I’d avoid giving them my name and say I was born without one. Which everybody is, really. The devastation I felt when my family would fetch me using my deadname and reveal that the outside world believed I was a girl still lingers with me. However, I already was a boy.
I was a trans kid like you. It’s a limited edition gift with no receipt. Sometimes you’d give anything to return it because it’s too hard to look after, but most of the time you’re thankful that it’s unique.”
Filmmaker Alice Wu applauded trans children for their self-awareness.
“In many ways, you are more mature than the world is (than I was at your age)….we need you,” she wrote.
“I am embracing you. Accessing the Power, the Magic, the Love of our friends, our community, our ancestors and engulfing us in it,” wrote Puerto Rican actor and drag king Vico Ortiz. “We are so proud of you…you are a light in this world. A gift…I am in awe of how fierce y’all are…and with every fiber of my being I will fight with you and for you because you are indispensable.”
He also noted having more representation than ever on “film, tv, media” starkly contrasting “thousands of bills threaten[ing] our very existence” felt “a little dystopian.” However, he regarded it as a “reminder” of the trans community’s power.
Countless tweets began to flood in from other trans artists, advocates and allies ready to open up their hearts.
I’m so sorry that there are people in this world who will try to dim your light, please don’t let them. There are so many allies who would love to help and be a support for you. You are loved. #letters4transkids
#Letters4TransKids embracing who you are can be scary, but also great! You’re on a path to finding new levels of happiness and that’s something to celebrate. It’s ok to like who you are and your experiences, and to feel pride — Andrew K Copeman (@AndrewKarlyle) April 20, 2022
Everyone had a different version of supportive words and stories. However, the general message was clear: You are valued exactly as you are, and you are not alone.
When so many obstacles seem to await these kids—all while facing the everyday challenges of simply growing up—genuine care like this can go a long way.
Save for his brief (and glorious and missed) show Klepper and that whole pandemic thing, Daily Show correspondent Jordan Klepper’s professional life has been dominated by his frequent sojourns into the MAGAverse, his microphone and the repetitive and largely incoherent musings of a strongman cosplayer turning him and other media kind into enemies of the people.
It’s all enough to understand why someone might want to get out of Dodge and see the world, exploring cultural differences while maybe establishing residency as a hedge against a trip back down the rabbit hole in the 2022 and 2024 elections. And that’s exactly what Klepper does in his latest Daily Show special, which airs tonight on Comedy Central at 11:30PM. But for Klepper, this is no vacation (trip to the Hard Rock Cafe aside). Instead, he’s gone to Hungary to better understand that country’s own conservative movement, its Trump-like leader, and why American conservatives seem to have found a scary soulmate and authoritarianism blueprint in the country.
We spoke with Klepper about all of that, the challenge of practicing his particular brand of comedy on foreign soil, being shockingly popular at CPAC (and what that might say about the convictions of some of its attendees), and why his and John Kasich’s shared music tastes might be the indirect bridge back to national sanity if we can only stop trying to get even with each other.
This is our regular wellness check.
I know. Yeah. How are you holding up?
How are you holding up? I’m here. You actually go talk to Trump supporters. I just see them on Twitter.
I wouldn’t recommend it. You’ve got yourself a good situation there. You just stay put, hang out, relax. You’ve got some books [in your office]. You’ve got shoes that look beautiful and like they’ve never been worn. Keep it that way.
They’ve all been accumulated during the pandemic. I’ve been able to talk myself into thinking that they’re investments. I didn’t go crypto, I went Air Jordan.
I will tell you, I think I understand Air Force Ones more than I understand crypto, so I get where you’re coming from.
How’s your reservoir of hope right now for the country and the world?
Oh boy. You know what? I think the water stays the same, but the evaporation level… It’s getting hot. No, I don’t want to be too pessimistic, but I will say it’s tough. I think there are a lot of forces. There seems to be a real groundswell that’s moving away from things that I think are for the betterment of folks, but the betterment of the few seem to be winning over.
I was thinking about what I was going to ask and one thing I wrote down was “why haven’t we eaten the rich yet?” And I thought that was maybe a little dark for a question. I don’t know that I’m officially posing that question.
Well, you know what? I mean, foodie culture is definitely at least on the rise.
There are two things careening towards each other, foodie culture and the dissatisfaction with the wealthy.
That’s all you need is a rebellious spirit and the ability to understand how to make your own sriracha and we’re close. And hopefully when those things come together, then the rich, look out. You’re starting to look more and more delicious.
With the podcast with former Ohio Governor John Kasich, is that a life preserver for you? “Let me find someone I can talk to on the other side who isn’t going to make me want to tear my hair out.”
You know what? That is 100% true. I think that thing came about, and it was I think, surprising to me and to Governor Kasich as well, but it was a little bit of a balm where I’m like, you know what? We actually are talking about things that are outside of the political spectrum, which has been a relief to find common ground on things that aren’t politics but are just life. And you realize that that’s another person as well. And I can relate to him as somebody of a different generation, but who loves music in the way that I like music and we share a lot of that perspective. And I will say, it’s funny in doing a podcast like that… it’s not the most popular thing with the people who tend to follow some of my stuff. I get some hardcore comments here and there.
I think something that I really respect about the governor is that he is a guy who, again, I don’t agree with all his policies, but what I do like is this past election, he put country over party and actually changed his mind, which I think is to be lauded and to be understood. And so this podcast has been a nice way to just talk to somebody who is able to go through that, who comes from a different perspective, and also provides a conservative point of view that is more palatable to me to listen to the arguments behind. I think we have to, we’ve got to be engaging with people who aren’t exactly like us. If we don’t do that, we are shit out of luck.
There’s such a fixation on everything being about politics. And I get that it’s a privileged state to think that you don’t always need to be there, but I don’t know. And it’s such a punitive thing where it’s like, “we need to punish the left or punish the right before we even get back to one and actually negotiate with each other,” and it feels like that’s part of the problem too.
I think it totally is. I mean, in many ways the medium is the message. And so these conversations are taking place on Twitter or Facebook or places that reward you for having that hot take, to be punitive, to be aggro. But it’s harmful. I think, as you said, for some people, it is a privilege sometimes to talk outside of that realm of the things that are affecting people in the political sphere. But it’s also politics is becoming a game and a game only that people are using as a cudgel to beat people down and that’s the only win. But it’s not a win. It’s an empty win that you have online to try to say that somebody’s just stupid. I think, I mean, I think trying to find some amount of understanding and common ground with folks is still the ultimate goal with any kind of discourse is what conversation actually is.
It’s not like that’s always happening in the videos when I go out to talk to Trump folks. And I understand that. Hopefully, there’s a little bit of insight into what that other perspective is and a little bit of comedy for mine. But I think the podcast has been a blast from my perspective to sit down and talk with somebody who’s unlike me and actually get along for the majority of the time. And I think that’s a good reminder that these other human beings that we might be fighting about, some of that stuff is a ploy by people in power to have you fight about that stuff and not talk about the 80% of stuff you actually get along with.
Joel Sadler/Comedy Central
I feel like you might struggle to find that kind of conversational part at a MAGA rally. Do you ever actually encounter that at these sites?
I mean, common ground is few and far between when you go to a lot of these rallies. It didn’t use to always be that way. I would say the Trump rallies were the beginning of… you’re the enemy of the people. Right from the get-go, Trump pointed to the media. If you have a camera and you have a microphone, you are an enemy. So let’s get into it. I mean, I’d like to think there are at least political rallies and political events where people are a little bit sympathetic to some ideas. And I will get people out and about who are maybe more moderate and are interlopers at some of these events who are curious.
I went to CPAC recently expecting people to hate me, not talk to me… that I would be public enemy number one. And I took a remarkable amount of selfies there. And I think that spoke to a lot of things. One, it spoke to how, for some people, this is just a game. And there were some higher-up assistants to important people in the Republican party who came up and were quoting Daily Show pieces back at me in a way that I was like, “but you are supporting somebody who we are making fun of and it was a detriment to our democracy.” And yet they’re still like, “but I still love what all these pieces are.” So maybe you don’t get the joke, or maybe you just don’t care about the messages and the things that you are supporting along with other people who just were excited by the show. The fact that I was somebody on television, a part of this media ecosystem, was more exciting than what perspective I might bring or the pieces that I created. Because you had a lot of thirsty, young conservative potential politicians.
CPAC is jam-packed full of Republican primary candidates who are trying to get their foot in the door. And I talked to a lot of them and they were moderate and they wanted to talk about ideas and they weren’t as extreme as Donald Trump. But what I saw in their eyes and what they started to notice is that’s not getting them any attention. That’s not getting them any money. And they’re there at CPAC and they’re watching other folks who are more extreme get that attention, get that money. And I fear for those folks. They don’t see or have a path in moderation and they will start to cling to these things where they don’t want to talk to you anymore because they just want to play it to their more extreme base.
Did you do anything else in Orlando? I hear they’ve got a good Medieval Times there. Did you go to Disney World?
[Laughs] I think I got enough fantasy land at CPAC. Enough people living in an alternate reality. Yeah, I got my fix.
So the international focus of this special is really great. Does this scratch an itch for you to expand the idea of what these specials are and take these more international going forward?
For sure. I get folks reaching out from all sorts of countries, like, “Ooh, do us please.” So I think there’s a curiosity. I love getting out there talking to people. It’s so eye-opening, so fun, so interesting. And following this movement, there is a global movement. There’s a global conservative movement happening right now. And I think there was a real curiosity about Hungary. It started to become part of the cultural conversation. It was at CPAC. There’s going to be a CPAC in Budapest. And I think for us at The Daily Show, we’ve talked about doing these specials where I think Fingers The Pulse can live doing a handful of pieces out and about talking to people in America. But we’d like to have more expanded specials that we get to do a few times a year where we travel.
We go to big places, take bigger swings, talk to people that you wouldn’t normally get to see in a regular Daily Show piece. And hopefully, bring to the forefront a story that our audience doesn’t know much about. And again, Hungary was definitely that for us. I knew so little other than Tucker Carlson couldn’t get off of Viktor Orban’s nuts. His overly tanned nuts, as we know now, Tucker Carlson’s into. But that was the goal for us of, well, let’s see what this is. Why is this a conservative wonderland?
How much does the language barrier pose a challenge to you? Specifically with your style, when you’re talking to people you’re trying to let them indict themselves to a certain extent.
It’s a challenge. I think it was interesting. That was one of the experiments we had over here. I was traveling with a translator and we talked to people who spoke English. It turns out, most Americans like myself, speak barely one language. And you go to other countries and they usually have got a couple in their back pocket. So I was able to talk to a fair amount of people in English. And that was very similar to the conversations we could have back home talking to people and hearing them talk through it. When it came to people who were speaking Hungarian, it was difficult. I’m working through a translator who’s real-time translating. Harder to improvise and play off of some of the things that people are dropping in that moment.
How do you modulate your tone when you’re in a room with Orban’s spokesperson in a country that isn’t known for its friendliness with journalists?
Well, you leave your phones in the car. So you don’t bring any electronic equipment into the rooms just to make sure any of the tapping they did of other journalists’ phones doesn’t happen to you. You’re respectful. I think with any of these things, especially they were kind enough to invite us in and sit down with it. I will give him credit for that. We were not expecting to talk to essentially the Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Viktor Orban. But he sat down with us. We were respectful of that office and the invite there. But I don’t think we wanted to pull any punches. We wanted to push him and bring these questions that we had. This seemingly hypocritical take on the way they treated Syrians compared to the way they’re treating Ukrainian refugees. The way they talk about the LGBTQ community.
I’d spent a week in Budapest talking to people who were affected by the policies of Viktor Orban. I talked to members of the LGBTQ community who are harassed daily. A man who was trying to adopt a child and that all got stopped. And now he’s going to move away because of that. They’re affected by this person. So I walk in there respectfully, but also with the responsibility to the people that I’ve talked to, who don’t get to chat to people like that who are in positions of power.
I have a conspiracy theory that I worked up last night that I’d like to share. Tucker has the Swanson connection. And Swanson did the Hungry Man TV dinner. Hungary man. Tucker is the Hungary Man. It all connects. Now we know.
Let me tell you, get yourself to a rally, put it on a t-shirt and you could be hanging out with JFK Jr. before you know it.
The t-shirt merch is really where the money is. And now we might see Trump-branded ball tanning machines coming to a rally near you real soon.
God bless. I was going to say, “Hey, you know what? Go ahead guys, fry your balls. If that makes you feel more like a man.”
‘Jordan Klepper Fingers the Globe – Hungary for Democracy’ airs Thursday, April 21 at 11:30PM EST on Comedy Central
Living abroad is something that many folks dream of, even if only for a brief period of time. There are college programs specifically for people who want to study abroad to gain worldly experience, but some people want to live in other countries for reasons other than studying and actually make the leap. In America we’re taught from a fairly young age that America is the best country in the world, and everyone wants to live here, but some people who have lived in other countries are challenging that notion. Aly is a mom who emigrated to Germany nearly three years ago after giving up her job as a professor only months away from making tenure, and she has no regrets.
Aly runs the TikTok account USA Mom in Germany where she educates her followers on some of the major differences between living in the U.S. and living in Germany. She explains in one video how in America she experienced homelessness and food insecurity as a single mother, and makes TikToks to “combat U.S. propaganda.” She goes on to say in the video that “the only way that things are going to change in the U.S. is if people understand that there are different countries, governments, and social systems that work better.”
In her videos she answers questions asked by followers, but also addresses other comparisons, such as the difference in the cost of daycare. In a video that has more than 180,000 likes, she shares the bill she received from her daughter’s daycare, which shows the breakdown for the year. Aly doesn’t talk in the video, but her comment section is filled with shocked reactions at the realization that she only pays $1,856 a year for childcare. One commenter said “not me thinking this was monthly and it sounding right,” complete with an uncomfortably smiling sweat bead emoji. People were in disbelief that her childcare broke down to less than $160 a month, with another person who lives in Germany stating they still felt like the cost Aly pays is too high.
Even baby formula costs a vastly different amount between the two countries. The mom shows a box of formula that in the United States would generally cost about $25, but in Germany the same amount of formula of the best brand you can buy costs the equivalent of $6. Aly doesn’t stop at baby stuff and cost comparisons, she even combats the difference in history being taught in both countries, and shares that German students in grades 11 through 13 learn about current U.S. propaganda that includes U.S. exceptionalism and the American dream, according to excerpts shared by the former professor. The book “The American Dream in the 21st Century: Continuity and Change” by Peter Bruck is the textbook used to teach these high schoolers about the U.S. and, according to Aly, if you search the name of the book with the word “arbitur” behind it, worksheets and study guides will pop up.
USA 🇺🇸 propaganda in Germany 🇩🇪 #livingingermany #germanyvsusa #teachersoftiktok #americandream
Learning how the U.S. is viewed from the outside is an interesting journey, and Aly makes it her mission to not only dispel the narrative that she believed when moving to Germany, but the beliefs of her followers. The mom of three is currently studying German, and has no plans to return to the United States due to many of the reasons she outlines in her videos, including not having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to send her children to college and feelings of safety while her children are in school. Aly doesn’t paint the U.S. as all bad, but for her, the benefits of living abroad outweigh those of her experience of living in America.
His latest attack is aimed at Georgia Governor Brian Kemp who he’s accusing of working with “Leftist Democrats” to unseat Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Recently, political activists in the state have challenged Greene’s ability to run in the upcoming midterms, citing her involvement in the Jan. 6th insurrection as cause for her to be barred from running for office again. Greene is set to testify under oath on Friday about her role in the violent uprising but, before she does, Trump wants everyone to know that she’s really having a hard time of it. Okay?!
“The Governor of Georgia, Brian Kemp, and Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger, perhaps in collusion with the Radical Left Democrats, have allowed a horrible thing to happen to a very popular Republican, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene,” Trump wrote. in a statement (via Raw Story) released today. “She is going through hell in their attempt to unseat her, just more of an election mess in Georgia.”
Trump also predicted that Kemp would lose his governorship to Stacey Abrams, should she challenge him again, because Republicans will refuse to vote for him after he bungled the recount in 2020.
“Unlike other Republicans, this Governor does everything possible to hurt the voting process in Georgia, including his approval of a disastrous Consent Decree, and not calling a Special Session that was requested by Georgia’s Republican Senators,” Trump said. “He absolutely refused. Both of those failures were a disaster for the Republican Party, and for our Country. REMEMBER, Brian Kemp will never be able to win the General Election against Stacey ‘The Hoax’ Abrams because a large number of Republicans just will not vote for him.”
Watching a political wing implode on itself in real time is truly something, huh.
Snoop Dogg just did a very revealing interview on the Full Send Podcast. Heck, the “Gin & Juice” rapper has a lot to promote right now. The list of current Snoop Dogg endeavors includes but is not limited to: Acquiring the rights to the Death Row Records catalog, the Mount Westmore supergroup, his recent appearance on the Super Bowl Halftime show, and his American Song Contest with Kelly Clarkson. At this rate, the Snoop Dogg promotion tour might never end, and in between revealing the alarmingly high amount of money he charges for a guest verse, he also reeled off a list of his favorite rappers in the game right now.
“What’s like three people, or one or two people you like?” host Kyle Forgeard asks. Snoop thinks for a second and gives a far more thorough response than Forgeard was likely anticipating: “Uhh… who do I f****** really like? I like NBA YoungBoy. I like DaBaby, Lil Baby, 42 Dugg. I like Future. I like Gunna. Young Thug, Jack Harlow, Benny The Butcher… there’s a lot of motherf*ckers I like.”
He’s eclectic, we’ll give him that. Watch the full episode of Snoop Dogg’s appearance on the Full Send Podcasthere.
Some of the artists mentioned here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Piers Morgan (who was the inaugural Celebrity Apprentice winner, back in the day) is now giving blow-by-blows of ex-President Trump’s raging responses after he huffily stormed out of their combative interview. Do you love to see it? It’s certainly something.
Let’s catch up a bit because the last 24 hours on this subject have been a blur. Piers revealed a promotional clip for his new interview with Trump, and let’s just say that things grew contentious. Trump reportedly grew belligerent and stormed out when Piers dared to remind him that he lost the 2020 election. The New York Post detailed how Trump threw a tantrum, in which he addressed Piers as a “fool” at least half a dozen times. And then Team Trump claimed that the promo was edited to make Trump look more tantrum-y than he actually appeared to be in real time.
Morgan, who knows a thing or two about storming off set himself, stuck to his story while cheekily borrowing one of Trump’s favorite terms to insist that Trump was the one who was dropping “fake news.”
End of story? No freaking way. Trump then released another statement (via Daily Mail), in which he strangely declared that “I don’t believe Piers is a complete slimeball, but he lost a lot of credibility.” Trump went on to accuse Piers’ of being “potentially fraudulent,” and then Trump added, “Piers is off to a bad start, but thanks to me, he may get a final burst of big ratings before it all comes crashing down!”
With all of that back patting out of the way, Piers is clearly thrilled with this turn of events for his new Talk TV program. He tweeted about Trump’s new statement and declared that being un-slimeballed “is relationship progress.”
BREAKING: I’m told President Trump has just issued another statement about me confirming I am NOT a slime-ball. I feel this is relationship progress.
Then Piers hopped back over to the New York Post, where he whipped out a new letter to Trump, and yes, he tore into the reality star:
Until or if you do [stop denying election results], I politely suggest you stop perpetuating such an absurd delusion, which just makes you look like the world’s sorest loser and slightly bonkers. Like a guy pointing at a blue sky and saying it’s red.
You insist that our encounter ended acrimoniously, but as the footage clearly shows, your final actions were to tersely snap “Turn the camera off!” at my crew, then walk away through a side door, loudly muttering “So dishonest” about me.
This came after I courteously shook your hand and thanked you for the interview.
I was shocked. It was an angry and frankly rude way to end a volatile interview, where your mood swung wildly between friendly and hostile — particularly toward the end.
And through all of this, Trump’s team has been denying Piers’ account while saying that Trump didn’t ask for the camera to be turned off until much later in the interview. And since the interview doesn’t air until April 25 (on Fox Nation in the U.S.), there may yet be more versions of this story until the whole thing airs.
Those Snoop Dogg guest verses make the rounds and turns out they ain’t cheap either. Snoop Dogg, who most recently teased a collaboration with BTS, appeared on the Full Send Podcast this week and in a more than hour-long conversation. He talked about everything from Jackass and lacing blunts, to favorite rappers and Will Smith slapping Chris Rock. But when he revealed what his standard rate is for a guest verse on a track, listeners’ jaws were surely dropping.
“How much would it cost to get on a song?,” co-host Bob Menery asks the rapper. To which he answers point blank, “$250,000.” He then adds that for that rate, “You’ll get about 16 bars.” He also elaborated that the fee gets doubled if and when he appears in the music video for the song, “And when it’s time to do the video, I need to get another $250,000 up out of you. And you only got an hour so get to filming.”
The man is all business. And let’s face it, you don’t get to a point in your career where you’ve acquired the rights to the legendary Death Row Records catalog by not capitalizing on every appearance. It makes you wonder whether he’ll charge BTS $250,000 to appear on what will surely be a mutually beneficial collaboration?
Watch the full episode of Snoop Dogg’s appearance on the Full Send Podcasthere.
Riley Stearns writes a particular style of dialogue that, once you’ve seen one of his movies, is hard to mistake for anyone else. There’s an emotional remove to it, but it’s not quite minimalist, like the pioneer of flatness, Robert Bresson. It’s arch, somehow, but not quite openly zany or sardonic, like Wes Anderson or Jared Hess.
Stearns’ characters speak matter-of-factly, articulating their often mundane fears and desires out loud like running pros-and-cons lists. Which can be funny, spooky, or both, depending on the situation. His characters are cogs in a confusing machine, chatbots attempting to talk through the essence of the human condition. Familiar, yet foreign.
In The Art Of Self-Defense, about a depressed loner (played by Jesse Eisenberg) who discovers martial arts (very loosely inspired by Stearns’ jiu-jitsu practice), it felt like Stearns was groping towards a take on the modern condition. In his latest movie, Dual, starring Karen Gillan as a millennial who has to fight her own clone, it feels like that take has crystallized.
Disconnection and loneliness are the dominant features of our age, and Stearns’ characters evoke that feeling of reaching out into the ether and finding only the voice of some company representative somewhere, addressing you in a faux-cheery corporate patois that’s meant to sound friendly but accomplishes the opposite. It’s not a lockdown movie, per se, but it does feel perfect for the Zoom age.
The beauty of movies is that they’re always a mix of artist intention and spontaneous forced improvisations, combinations of the planned and the unplanned. Dual, which opened in a few markets last week and expands to a few more this week, especially feels like one of those movies in which creativity thrived through a set of unique limitations.
Stearns was forced to move Dual‘ production to Finland during COVID, which was itself locked down. Meaning Dual‘s secondary characters are almost all Finnish, which in a different movie might be a drawback, but in Dual seems to perfectly evoke that sense of disconnected geography, where everyone seems to exist in every place and no place at the same time, struggling to connect through screens and to relate through an ineffable language barrier. The sixties famously had the Spaghetti Westerns, American westerns shot in Italy using Italian crews and casts, and the 2020s has given us Dual, a sort of salmiakki sci-fi (that’s mine now, if you steal it you have to pay me), whose Scandinavian actors and vaguely wintry locales only seem to accent Stearns’ natural oddness.
Even the realities of the current indie movie landscape into which Dual has been birthed seem to highlight the theme. With a theater system still recovering from lockdowns, the old benchmarks for “success” in the indie movie world now seem up in the air. Is it still box office numbers? Is it streaming access? Is it online buzz, positive word-of-mouth?
Stearns sparked an extremely insular controversy earlier this year when he tweeted then deleted a tweet at an outlet he was upset at for letting a writer who’d made light of his divorce (to the actress Mary Elizabeth Winstead) review Dual (which was playing Sundance at the time). Which sparked a typically polarized social media fight, between the “never snitch tag” and “don’t critique the art by attacking the artist’s personal life” factions (a possible extremely niche harbinger for the Chris Rock vs. Will Smith proxy war).
I’m anti-trying to get critics fired for reviewing movies (for obvious reasons) but I also liked Dual, and I understand the natural human need for some kind of feedback. And the inevitability of getting angry when some of that feedback comes from people you think are dipshits. The old Mad Men gif, “that’s what the money is for!” doesn’t seem to apply in the world of indie movies, where huge box office returns are no longer a realistic expectation. Where else to look for validation than in general esteem?
And I think I like Riley Stearns too. I try not to make the classic journalist mistake of thinking interview subjects are my friends, but Stearns has an unmistakably familiar vibe — thoughtful but self-effacing, and intelligent, without the neediness of constantly trying to convince you of it (which is frankly epidemic among movie folks; mostly the stupider ones).
Anyway, Dual is a good movie and my conversation with Stearns was, hopefully, a good talk.
—
So when a movie opens now, do you feel like you have the same kind of benchmarks of what it means to be successful as in the past?
I have no fucking clue anymore. With Self Defense, I think I was spoiled. I mean, indies definitely do better than that movie did, but it did fairly well for itself, and I think when I was writing Dual, and then when XYZ came on board, there was a certain sense of well, I guess this one will probably be bigger than that one, because everything just gets bigger every time, right? I think that your brain just tells you that. Once COVID hit, I knew that we were in a different world, obviously. I think this release has been very fast. And it kind of had to be, because of a window that we were trying to hit. I’m not entirely sure what the benchmark for success is anymore.
I think all I can know is that everybody who has been involved in the film or is releasing it, RLJE, XYZ, is happy, and I know that this is more of a long road. Hopefully, people continue to find it.
On that note, I vaguely remember you getting into a mini-feud with a critic over this one.
It was less about the critic. It was more about the website being aware of the conflict of interest. I blocked that critic a long time ago. It wasn’t about that. It was more about just obviously, poking at somebody. And then it blew up in a way that I wasn’t expecting, but also, a lot of people had my back on that, too. It’s so silly now in retrospect. To say, “Huh, maybe that wasn’t a cool thing to do,” and then me being seen as the bad guy for it. But it is what it is.
The way the indie movies work now, does it sort of put you in a situation where to know what a successful one is, you maybe end up reading more reviews than you might have in years past? That feel likes a form of the feedback that you used to get maybe in different ways.
Maybe. Yeah. I mean, I’m one of those people who actually does get something out of reviews. I like seeing what people say. I don’t mind getting a bad review. It’s not a big deal for me. It’s the overall image of how people have perceived your work. It’s not necessarily going to go into how I write the next thing, but it does tell you that this is sort of the path you’re going down. And I think it almost just reinforces that path, it doesn’t change who I am as a filmmaker. I mean, Letterboxd has been around since I made Faults, I want to say, and I’ve always looked at it from time to time. Especially once the movie has been around for a while, you go back after months of not looking at it and you go, “Huh, I wonder what people have been saying?”
There’s some really great ones. I got one last night, where they just put “Bore-gos Lame-thimos.” And I thought that was pretty good, so I saved that. But I mean, if you read the good stuff, I think you have to read the bad, and if you don’t want to read the bad, then don’t read at all.
So I know you shot this in Finland during COVID. What was that experience like? Did the setting make you rethink any story elements? Were there things that you were worried that you were missing by shooting there?
I loved that we shot there. I feel like it was a happy sort of accident and ended up lending itself to the look and the feel like of the movie. I think the one thing that we had to change was — and it’s not even change, we had to be aware of and it’s why I ended up in the movie, unfortunately — we had all of these Finnish people around us and the country was locked down, so they’re not bringing people in, other than our leads. So if we needed somebody to come in and do a day player sort of thing, trying to find somebody who didn’t always have a Finnish accent was very hard. I had to actively say, “Can we get somebody who’s not white? Can we get somebody who doesn’t speak with a Finnish accent?”
It was just making sure that the film didn’t look like Finland in terms of the people that we cast at all times. So there was a day where an American actor who lived in Finland was supposed to do the gas station attendant role. But he had a sore throat. And obviously, during COVID especially, we’re like, “Don’t come in.” Then I immediately rolled my eyes and was like, “Well I guess I’m in the movie now.”
So even though we have some Finnish accents in the movie, it made it challenging to not have it feel like it was shot in Finland at all times. It was more about it looking like it was shot in this unnamed sort of space in the United States that also feels like it could be in Europe. But overall, I loved shooting there, I would shoot there again in a heartbeat.
RLJE Films
I think Scandinavia in general and Finland specifically has an odd kind of a matter-of-factness and detachedness to it that really seems to fit your style of dialogue.
It’s funny, it’s almost like the people who are working on the film could just be characters in the movie. Here, we all are pretty good at, I don’t know, bending the truth to shield people’s feelings a little bit, whether it’s you’re at work, and I know that this is a pointed statement, but it’s like your coworker, you tell them something that wasn’t working in a certain way, because you’re worried about how they’re going to take that criticism. In Finland, they just tell you. They just are super direct. And I really appreciated that. Even down to us showing the film there at a film festival, they did a special presentation of Dual that I went out for, and the audience was fairly subdued. There were little laughs here and there, but pretty stoic. And then afterwards, the Finnish people were like, “That was a very funny movie.”
And they didn’t laugh at all! One of my crew members, who is Finnish, she said, “That was a really good reaction. That crowd went crazy for it.” I was like, “Nobody did anything. Everyone was quiet.”
You have a very particular style of dialogue writing. I know it as your style, but I always struggle a little bit to try and describe it for people who haven’t seen your movies. How do you describe it, or do you have references for it?
I mean, as an overall of what I’m trying to achieve, emotionality is kind of removed from the character. I know that they’re humans, and you don’t want them to feel fully robotic, they still have thoughts and fears just like any of us do in the real world. But in this context, in a world where people have made the law that you have to dual your double to the death if they don’t want to be decommissioned, I feel like the people who would make that law are also people who would talk like this. I feel like their way of speaking informs the world and the world informs the way that they speak. I like that there’s that cohesiveness there.
And yeah, influences, I mean, you can look at a lot of filmmakers and say that they’ve got quirks or whatever. People always reference Napoleon Dynamite and Jared Hess and then Yorgos Lanthimos and Wes Anderson. And I mean, to a certain extent, you can look at some Paul Thomas Anderson stuff that’s got this drollness to it. I feel like at this point, it is just me. Again, going back to “Bore-gos Lamethimos,” it’s going to stick with me probably forever.
But yeah, I think that I’ve been doing this long enough now that — I mean, my short, The Cub, I made that in 2012 — that if you’re still saying I’m trying to copy other people you don’t know me as a person. I feel like it’s pretty obvious if you’re my friend, you know that this is my sense of humor, and this is the sort of path that I’ve dedicated myself to.
The closest analog that I could think of was it kind of reminded me of Don DeLillo or someone, where there’s a blurring of people’s outward and inner selves in a way, a blurring between inner monologue and outer monologue. Does that make sense?
No, totally. I mean, it’s, I don’t know. It’s definitely a choice. I could very easily say, “You don’t have to do this. Do it more naturally.” But, yeah, I just feel like it’s the way that these characters have to relate to each other in these specific worlds. It’s funny — just to show how my brain works a little differently, as we were making this, I kept telling Karen, “It’s nice, because this one’s a little bit more grounded than The Art of Self Defense.” And then everyone’s like, “Oh, my God, it’s even worse than the Art of Self Defense. God, what the fuck is he doing?”
So I have no delusions that maybe I’m out of touch with how other people relate to these characters. But I think the people who get it, really get it, which has been fun.
I basically suspected that you were a martial arts guy when I was watching The Art of Self-Defense, and then I think I read in an interview where you talked about it. Do you think that martial arts informs this one? It feels like it’s still there, but maybe in a more abstract way.
Yeah. I mean, it would be very abstract. Obviously, Self-Defense is very, very loosely inspired by my appreciation for jiu-jitsu. I haven’t done any of the other martial arts. When I was six I did karate, but that doesn’t count. As an adult doing jiu-jitsu, it’s been a thing that is a huge part of my life. I’ve been doing it for nine years. It’s like how other directors may like poker, so they make a poker movie. Or… oh God, any other bad example like that. I just happened to have this martial arts thing. But I also knew that making just a martial arts movie wasn’t interesting to me. So Self-Defense was this heightened reality sort of thing, a sports narrative taken down a different path. Whereas, Dual, there are elements of self-improvement, which I see maybe as the closest tie-in to martial arts. It’s just like when you go and you do something like this, you get better. I feel like Self-Defense and this both have that self-improvement quality, the whole learn-to-fight sort of thing. I feel like Dual, for all its darkness, has an optimistic sort of quality to it, which I think suits my personality maybe a little bit more than the darker path of Self-Defense.
I’m a jiu-jitsu guy, too. I’ve been doing it for about 15 years now.
Oh, shit!
Is it too personal to ask where you train?
Not at all. No, because I coach there and I let people know, too. I’m at Renzo Gracie Los Angeles. We’re an affiliate of the Renzo School, but I should also state that we, our school, is pretty much the exact opposite in terms of inclusivity as the actual Renzo Gracie School. I’m probably going to get in trouble for saying that, but there are some things politically that I really disagree with in terms of the way that that man talks. I feel like the family that I’ve got at this school is the antithesis of that. But yeah, I’m a brown belt. I coach every Friday. I cover classes here and there. I’m going to compete in a month and a half, a gi tournament, which I haven’t done in, God, five years, since I was a blue belt. I mainly do No-Gi. But yeah, so 15 years. Black belt, I’m assuming, then?
No. I got my brown belt in 2016, but I’ve moved twice since then, so I’ve been at like three different schools. Then the pandemic screwed everything up even worse. But I also started at a Renzo affiliate, originally.
Oh, cool. Which one was that?
Columbia Jiu-Jitsu. Our instructor was a black belt from Renzo’s, Jason Yang.
It’s always good to meet somebody who does it, because then they “get it,” a little bit more than the other person who’s like, “Oh, that’s that karate thing you do, right?”
Right, yeah. And in the movie world it doesn’t seem there are a ton of people.
There’s not a ton of us. Unfortunately, it seems like a lot of them are under the Renzo tutelage, too, which is just like, “Ew. Okay.”
Yeah, it can go one of two ways. Like you said about Art of Self-Defense, you can use it for good or evil.
We’re trying to get some Renzo Los Angeles shirts printed up with rainbow logos. And I feel like that’s at least something.
Do you think the theme of disconnection, of just… modern capitalist society, I guess — would you call that a theme of the movie?
I would say more so the disconnect that we have with other people via technology. There’s a pretty big distance between our lead character and her boyfriend in the film and the way that they connect. I mean, even just down to a call breaking up and literally, the text popping up, “Poor connection.” That kind of thing is funny to me.
But, yeah — I mean, look, I’m not the smartest guy in the world. Sometimes you do things and you say something and you’re like, “Oh, that works for this thing,” and then other people analyze it and find more meaning in it than your brain ever thought. I think that’s part of the fun of watching movies. I know that I’ve done that probably with directors, where I watch something and I take something from it that is a specific thing that means so much and I’m so sure that that’s what they thought. And then you listen to a director’s commentary or an interview they do, and it’s the exact opposite of what they say they were intending. So, yeah, there are definitely things in the movie that I think about when I think about where I was coming at it from. But to say that there’s a bunch of intent at all times is probably going to be a bit of a falsity too, so.
‘Dual’ is currently playing in select US theaters.
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