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When The Recording Academy livestreamed an announcement of all of their 2022 Grammy nominees, Japanese Breakfast‘s Michelle Zauner nearly didn’t tune in. She was scheduled to record a podcast that day and certainly wasn’t expecting to become Grammy-nominee for Best New Artist and Best Alternative music album. So when she did hear her name called alongside artists like Olivia Rodrigo and Saweetie, all she could do was scream with joy.

Zauner has been experiencing a lot of joy lately. Her 2021 album Jubilee was an ode to the feeling, detailing ecstatic romance and the nuances of identity over shimmering synths and pop-leaning chords. The album was a way to move on from the grief she carried through the better half of the past decade, and also gave her the chance to try out new things like writing string and horn arrangements.

Zauner’s joy has also comes from the fact she hit a lot of major milestones in 2021. Earlier this year, Zauner released her New York Times bestselling book Crying In H Mart. The story is set to be adapted into a film and also just landed on Barack Obama’s list of favorite books of 2021. And while her Grammys nod confirmed the stand-out nature of Jubilee, the album came in at No. 1 on the Uproxx 2021 Music Critics Poll, featuring on more than 25% of the 200+ ballots.

Sitting down to reflect on her wins and absolutely bonkers year, Zauner chats with Uproxx about some of the other albums she’s been loving this year, how she celebrated her Grammy nominations, and her hope that she runs into Ariana Grande on the red carpet. Check out an edited version of the conversation below.

Every year Uproxx asks music critics from a range of publications like Rolling Stone, Billboard, Spin, and others to rank their favorite albums and songs of the year. So, this year we had more than 200 music critics vote for their favorite album and Jubilee appeared on 53 ballots, meaning more than 25% of all these critics voted for your record. How does it feel to have these music critics’ favorite album of 2021?

It’s a rush. I think I’m just blown away. Just totally floored. I felt kind of like a crazy person these past two years sitting on this record and it’s been so surreal to receive this type of acclaim. I’m honored.

I bet that that must feel really nice too especially since you were sitting on the record for so long, to have it be released and also have people love it so much.

It’s a really, really wonderful feeling, because I think as an artist, there’s so much time that’s spent feeling like no one understands you or what you’re doing. And it’s been such a long time working on music and feeling like no one really got it. And so I felt like it was such a special record for me and it’s really wonderful to have that feeling be shared with people with such high standards and impeccable taste.

In general, you’ve had a wildly busy year. Not only did you release a book and an album, but you also went on a tour, you were nominated for Grammys, you went on TV, you soundtracked a video game, and probably the biggest achievement of the year, you sang “Be Sweet” in Simlish for Sims4.

That’s true.

Where were you when you heard the news about the Grammys and how did you hear it?

I think that my manager had an inkling that it was going to happen. I had a Studio Ghibli podcast booked for noon that day. And he was like, ‘we have to cancel this podcast. I think that you should watch the Grammys.’ And I was like, not really planning on it. I’d rather not delude myself into thinking that there’s a possibility here. And so I was like, ‘I don’t want to watch it and then feel bad about myself for watching it.’ And he was like, ‘no, no, just trust me.’ And so I was in my apartment in Brooklyn watching it and yeah, I screamed a lot and probably freaked my neighbors out pretty intensely.

Did you celebrate at all that night?

I had kind of a weird busy day where I had to do a bunch of interviews and a reading and I couldn’t really celebrate properly, but I did get very drunk at a bar in Philadelphia with my producer Craig Hendrix and the two of us celebrated with some friends. We played a fun game where we were going through the years guessing which artist won Best New Artist for every year. And I think just thinking about where we’re at in music and what that represents. Seeing people like Elton John against The Carpenters in the ’70s and even Jewel and Fiona Apple in the ’90s… It just it was really cool to look back at the Wikipedia of all of the artists that have been nominated for Best New Artist over the years and be able to consider myself in that history. It was a fun drinking game.

I assume that you’re going to the Grammys next year?

Yes.

Do you have any musicians or celebrities that you really hope that you run into when you’re there?

Yeah. I am a secret Ariana Grande stan, and so I would love to meet Ariana Grande. I’d love to talk to Megan Thee Stallion about anime. I’d love to meet Olivia Rodrigo. I’m very excited to meet a bunch of people, but I think I would particularly like to meet Ariana Grande. I think it would be sick to meet BTS, too.

Just before our chat today, Barack Obama listed Crying In H Mart on his favorite books of the year. What is it like knowing not only that one of our former presidents read your writing, but also loved your book?

I was just saying he’s the first president I ever voted for and it’s really surreal to be on the most coveted year-end list. But yeah, I don’t know at this point, there’s just so much good news that has happened at the end of the year. It just feels momentous. And I’m trying to just be in this moment, because it feels like such a big, special moment and I want to feel it to its full extent.

Jubilee was a music critics’ favorite album of the year, but I was wondering what you would say your favorite album of the year was, or just some albums that you’ve been listening to a lot.

I really loved Chai’s Wink. I probably listened to that album the most, this year. I also really liked Hand Habits, Fun House, and Clairo’s Sling.

Did you get to try anything new for the first time this year like food or any experiences that really stand out to you?

I went to Mexico City this week for the first time, which was so much fun and so wild, because it was the first time we left the country in almost two years. I had the most incredible snapper, whole roasted snapper with these Mexican sauces on it. It was so delicious. I think I’ve eaten a lot of bugs in my life, but I don’t think I’ve had crickets before and that’s like a big thing over there. So we had a lot of fried crickets that were pretty good.

Is it true that they taste like chicken?

I think that they taste kind of like dead leaves. They’re salty. They kind of taste like salty fall foliage.

When you released your book, did you have a lot of people reaching out to you that were just talking about how they had really similar experiences to you? Did that make you feel a sense of connection with people?

Yeah, totally. Because the book came out in the middle of the pandemic, I didn’t really get to do that many readings up until closer to the end of this year. And I think that especially growing up in a very white town with very little diversity, I felt so alone in my experiences. And I felt so confused by… in particular my relationship with my mom and being raised by an immigrant parent and my identity and all of that, that I think for the first time I feel like I’m not a crazy person, because so many people reached out to me having this same type of relationship with their parent or their culture. I just I feel so much less alone and less crazy, because for the first time I feel like I’ve written down what so many people haven’t said out loud. That’s a really wonderful feeling.

I have a really specific question that I’m really curious about. Can you tell me what it was like working with Michael Imperioli for your “Savage Good Boy” video? Cause I just started watching the Sopranos this past year and I’m totally hooked, very obsessed with him now.

Yeah. I’m a huge Sopranos fan. And so it is my cinematographer and he was our top pick and that was like the beginning of a really crazy year of getting to meet some of my heroes. It was really hard for me not to call him Christopher. I felt like I just really knew him as Christopher, but he was like such a nice guy. And he knows a lot about art and music and was really down and took it very seriously and gave me so much respect as a director, even though I’m so new to it and pretty young. It was a really wonderful experience. He’s such a gracious, wonderful guy.

Jubilee is all about joy, which definitely contrasts with your previous releases and your book as well, which are often revolving around the feeling of grief. I was wondering while you were writing Jubilee, were there any lessons that you took away from writing the music and what are some things that are bringing joy for you right now?

Oh, I studied, I took some guitar lessons and piano lessons and that was like a big learning lesson for me was just push myself to write with other instruments. And that was really helpful. I wrote “Slide Tackle” on bass and I largely wrote “Paprika” and “Tactics” on piano. And this is also the first time that I started writing string and horn arrangements. I just learned so much about what I’m capable of as a composer and that was really exciting for me.

And what it’s bringing me joy is this massive relief that my work has finally found a home in so many people’s hearts. I feel just so grateful to have this type of understanding and connection with so much of the world that I’ve never had before. It feels like a very peak moment in my career. And I’m just trying to remind myself to revel and not feel overwhelmed or scared and to feel like hard work has finally paid off.

Check out the results of Uproxx’s 2021 Critic’s Poll here.

Jubilee is out now via Dead Oceans. Get it here.

Twenty-year-old Sabrina Lassegue started a production company two years ago and is already well versed in the obstacles she faces as a young woman in media. She spends a lot of her time working with mentors who teach her how to handle older people in the industry, especially men, who refuse to listen to her.

“I knew as a young woman I wasn’t going to be taken seriously,” she said on TikTok. “So I practice all the time and I’m lucky to have wonderful mentors in the industry who have helped me find ways to respectfully get my point across and turn the table back around, to me, in a meeting.”

Lassegue was recently hired by a brand to make a commercial for a feminine product. While presenting her idea to the company the brand uses for marketing, a man was very disrespectful to her.

“He claimed I didn’t understand the audience and attempted to tell me what women wanted to hear,” she told BuzzFeed. “He had his own agenda and wanted a chance to pitch himself to create a commercial for the brand. He began to shut down every idea I had without hearing them out or would take everything I had said previously and repeat it back as he stumbled his way through my original phrases.”

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Lassegue repeatedly asked the man to stop interrupting her so another female teammate joined in and asked him to respect her wishes. After that, the man said, “The problem with you women is…” and Lassegue had enough.

To document the disrespect, she pulled out her phone and recorded herself telling the man off.

“No. No…please keep yourself on mute. No, I’m actually not done speaking, so while I respect your ability to talk on and on, my ears actually do have a limit,” Lassegue said. “I find it extremely disrespectful and degrading that you felt a need to not only interrupt my entire presentation but also repeat back to me what I had just offered to the table.”

She posted the video on TikTok to show the world what young women have to deal with in media and the video has been played more than 12 million times. It has also received an incredible amount of positive feedback from women who’ve had to deal with the same thing.

“Ah yes, I’ve been in video production for over 20 years now. This happens daily! I have my own company now and work only with women,” Melissa said.

“Men do this so much. They stop you in the middle of a sentence, and then proceed to explain what you were just explaining,” another TikTok user said.

“This is the most concise professional DESTRUCTION and I am in awe,” Meredith wrote.

After the video went viral, the company and the man who was rude to her both apologized to Lassegue. The company is setting up another meeting so that Lassegue can present her ideas without disruption.

The disruptive man has been taken off the project.

This video is wonderful for two reasons. First, it presents a great example of how women can clearly and professionally tell a man to stop being disrespectful in meetings. Second, it’s an example for companies to learn how not to treat women in meetings.

Klay Thompson is steadily working his way back into game shape, regularly joining the Warriors’ G League affiliate in Santa Cruz for practices in order to get scrimmage time at full speed — something NBA teams rarely do during in-season practices.

Thompson has said he is healthy enough to play right now, but won’t return to the court until he can play a full minutes load, saying two weeks ago he felt he could go 25-30 minutes tops. While there was some optimism that Thompson would be back in action for the Warriors in time for their Christmas Day tilt with the Suns, it appears that is no longer the case. Word emerged from Shams Charania on Thursday that Golden State’s games on Dec. 20 and 23 were no longer in the mix for Klay’s return, with Connor Letourneau and Kendra Andrews confirming, noting that Dec. 28 at home against Denver is possible, but it seems more likely Thompson will not return until after the new year.

The Warriors are in a good enough position at the moment, 23-5 and atop the West standings, that there is no need to try and rush Thompson back if there is any concern that he isn’t ready to be a full go. His return is definitely going to be at the Chase Center in front of the home crowd, which means that Dec. 28 game against the Nuggets, Jan. 3 against the Heat, or Jan. 9 against the Cavs feel like the three most likely dates for his return to action.

In the wake of the disaster at his Astroworld Festival earlier this year, Travis Scott isn’t avoiding the spotlight. Instead, he’s taking the lead — or, at least trying to control the narrative — by joining a committee dedicated to improving concert safety in the future, according to TMZ. Meeting with The United States Conference of Mayors (USCM), which represents more than 1,400 cities, the committee will be made up of public safety officials, health care managers, emergency response professionals, and various folks from within the music industry to “aggressively focus on new technologies and innovations that offer ways to address these challenges.”

Travis embraced (or invited) more scrutiny last week when he sat down for an interview with controversial radio and television host Charlamagne the God, saying he’d been on an “emotional rollercoaster” since the Astroworld crowd control disaster that killed 10 concertgoers and injured hundreds more. The incident led to Travis and Live Nation getting hit with dozens of lawsuits totaling close to $3 billion asked in damages. The suits are likely to be combined into a single court case. The lawyer for the family of one of the 10 people killed criticized the interview, saying, “Travis Scott, his entourage, handlers, promoters, managers, hangers-on, and everyone else who enable him are the problem. Everything that Travis Scott has done or said since ten people died and hundreds of others were injured at his concert has been lawyer-driven and calculated to shift blame from him to someone else.”

Meghan McCain is blasting Project Veritas following a New York Times report that James O’Keefe’s far-right organization allegedly threatened to publish Ashley Biden’s diary if her father didn’t grant them an on-camera interview in the lead up to the 2020 presidential election. In an attempt to land an October surprise, Project Veritas reportedly reached out to the Biden campaign with barely two weeks to go until Election Day. McCain was disgusted by what she read in the New York Times.

“No one deserves to have their diary stolen and sold but it’s particularly cruel that this happened while Ashley Biden was freshly in recovery for addiction,” the former The View host tweeted. “Just because her dad was running for president doesn’t justify this one bit.”

According to the NYT, Project Veritas gave Biden four days to respond or it would start printing sensitive excerpts from his daughter’s diary that reportedly mentioned him by name. Via Raw Story:

“On October 16, 2020, Project Veritas wrote to Mr. Biden and his campaign that it had obtained a diary Ms. Biden had ‘abandoned’ and wanted to question Mr. Biden on camera about its contents that referred specifically to him,” writes the Times.

The report also quotes Project Veritas chief legal officer Jered Ede, who told the campaign that “should we not hear from you by Tuesday, October 20, 2020, we will have no choice but to act unilaterally and reserve the right to disclose that you refused our offer to provide answers to the questions raised by your daughter.”

Project Veritas and O’Keefe are currently facing federal charges following a FBI raid on several employees’ homes in early November. The raid stems from an investigation into how the organization obtained the stolen diary.

(Via Meghan McCain on Twitter & Raw Story)

The Los Angeles Lakers are heading to the G League to get some backcourt reinforcements, only they’re not signing a young up-and-comer to their roster of players with championship aspirations. According to Shams Charania of The Athletic and Marc Stein, L.A. will bring Isaiah Thomas back to the Lakers on the heels of a monster game in the developmental league on Wednesday.

Charania went on to report that the Lakers will sign Thomas on a 10-day contract.

A former All-NBA guard with the Boston Celtics, Thomas has bounced around the league in recent years, having stints with Cleveland, Los Angeles, Denver, Washington, and New Orleans. That stint in Cleveland coincided with LeBron James’ final year with the team, and was defined in part by the two players struggling mightily to get on the same page with one another.

Since his breakout 2016-17 campaign in Boston, Thomas has struggled to stay healthy — his trade to the Cavs famously nearly fell apart due to lingering hip issues — and make a sustained positive impact with his teams. But after a 42-point outing on Wednesday and considering the Lakers’ issues with finding a spark on offense as they sit 16-13 on the year, the team is prepared to give Thomas another opportunity to suit up in the purple and gold.

Kim Kardashian is the guest on the latest episode of the Honestly With Bari Weiss podcast (as Billboard points out), and towards the end of the conversation, she spoke about two of the most prominent folks with whom she’s been associated in one way or another: Ye (aka Kanye West) and Taylor Swift.

In a series of rapid-fire questions to close out the interview, Kardashian was asked what her favorite Ye album is. She responded, “Ooh… I really like Yeezus just because it’s like… you know, when you’re there and you’re in it and you’re… you know what I mean? You see it from start to finish. I really love My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy also.”

Weiss’ next question was asking what Kardashian’s favorite Taylor Swift album is and Kardashian responded, “I mean, I really like a lot of her songs. They’re all super cute and catchy. I’d have to look in my phone to get a name.”

Elsewhere in that lightning round, she was asked who her favorite Saturday Night Live cast member is, a question that Weiss presumably included to hint at Kardashian’s reported relationship with Pete Davidson. She answered, “What a setup! What a setup, Bari. You know who it is.”

Beyond that, she was quick to reveal who her favorite celebrity is, saying, “Oh my god, Sara Jessica Parker is the nicest celebrity on the planet.” She also noted of whether she aspires to be a politician, “As of right now, no. It’s nothing that I would think of or want to get into. I understand the responsibility and it’s an extremely hard job, and I don’t know if I’d ever want that.”

Listen to the episode above, with the aforementioned questions starting at about 50:40 into the podcast.

Donald Trump has been out of the White House for long enough that it’s easy to forget just how Grampa Simpson-like his ramblings can be. Except instead of telling a story about how nickels used to have pictures of bumblebees on them, he’s talking to Mike Huckabee about how he popularized people saying “merry Christmas” to each other.

“America had gone through a long period where people quit saying ‘merry Christmas.’ It was all ‘happy holidays.’ You deliberately changed that,” Huckabee said during his interview with the former-president on Newsmax. “It was part of my campaign,” Trump responded to the sausage comedian. “The country had started with this woke, I guess, a little bit before that, and it was embarrassing for stores to say ‘merry Christmas.’ You’d see these big chains, they want your money, but they don’t want you to say ‘merry Christmas.’ And they’d use reds and whites and snow, but they wouldn’t say Christmas.”

But now the chains (the real victims) are saying it again, and it’s all thanks to Trump.

“And now people are saying it — of course, they’re not saying a lot of other things, like George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson, you know those names are being obliterated because of craziness. But they are saying ‘merry Christmas’ again. We got that. That was a big part of what I was doing. I would say it all the time during that period that we want them to say ‘merry Christmas.’ Don’t stop at stores that don’t say ‘merry Christmas.’ And I’ll tell you, we brought it back very quickly.”

Trump also used to tie an onion to his belt, which was the style at the time.

The rest of the interview was equally full of half-truths and straight-up lies.

They must have bonded over their bizarre Cinco de Mayo tweets off screen.

Surely, we’ve all gone down the NPR Tiny Desk Concert rabbit hole. There’s something about seeing favorite artists (and new discoveries) in a highly intimate setting that feels special, even if we’re not there and just watching from our screens at home. The series has become a ubiquitous part of pop culture and lately, NPR has been asking celebrities to list out their favorite performances. Today, Insecure star, writer, and creator Issa Rae checked in to share her picks.

She led off her list with Raphael Saadiq, who is not only the composer for the musical score of Insecure, he’s also certifiably one of the best live acts in hip-hop and R&B. “When he linked up with Lucky Daye for “You Should Be Here” was just phenomenal,” Rae said as one of her highlight moments of the performance. She also counts Thundercat as one of her favorite Tiny Desks and in goofy Issa Dee fashion (her character in Insecure) she explains that “The lyrics [to his song FriendZone’] are lowkey kind of dumb. But to hear it sound so melodic was just like a treat for me.”

She goes on to talk about Sampha and how his music was featured in Insecure season 2, and that she “was introduced to Sampha by Solange when she was doing the music for season one, so he has a special place in my heart.” She tips the cap to SiR (“because, you know, Inglewood”), and rounds out her six with Baby Rose and Nick Hakim, who’ve both had songs featured on Insecure.

Read Issa Rae’s full comments on her favorite Tiny Desk Concerts here.