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Tragedy struck last month during Travis Scott’s performance at his annual Astroworld festival. A massive crowd surge of 50,000 people left hundreds injured and ten people dead, including a nine-year-old boy. Seeing as families and friends of victims are still coping with the insurmountable loss, many thought Hulu’s decision to host a TV special titled Astroworld: Concert From Hell on their site was highly insensitive.

The 50-minute Astroworld: Concert From Hell program recapped the events that went down at the Houston festival. The description of the documentary special says it gives a “minute-by-minute look at what happened” that night: “Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival was supposed to be the concert of a lifetime. But it turned into a tragic nightmare. A minute-by-minute look at what happened in the crowd, the young victims who were killed, and what happens next.”

People on social media caught eventually caught wind of the documentary special and condemned Hulu, with one user saying it was in “poor taste.” Eventually, Hulu opted to remove it from their website completely. A spokesperson for Hulu told Variety: “This was an investigative local news special from ABC13/KTRK-TV in Houston that originally aired on November 20th. This was not a Hulu documentary and has since been removed to avoid confusion.”

Read Variety‘s full report of the TV special here.

When the list of 2022 Grammy nominees was unveiled last month, some were upset to see that Marilyn Manson had earned himself some nominations thanks to his work on the artist then known as Kanye West’s Donda. Now, though, Manson, who is currently facing multiple sexual assault and emotional abuse lawsuits, has had one of those nominations removed.

Manson was credited as a writer on Ye’s Best Rap Song nomination for “Jail.” The New York Times notes, though, that when it comes to “Jail,” Manson “is not listed among the writers on the most current version of the album.” Indeed, on Spotify right now, Manson is credited (under his real name, Brian Warner) on “Jail Pt. 2” but not on “Jail.”

That said, since Manson is still part of Donda‘s Album Of The Year nomination since he is credited on the album.

Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason Jr. was recently asked about Manson’s nominations and he explained, “We won’t restrict the people who can submit their material for consideration. We won’t look back at people’s history, we won’t look at their criminal record, we won’t look at anything other than the legality within our rules of, is this recording for this work eligible based on date and other criteria. If it is, they can submit for consideration. What we will control is our stages, our shows, our events, our red carpets. We’ll take a look at anyone who is asking to be a part of that, asking to be in attendance, and we’ll make our decisions at that point. But we’re not going to be in the business of restricting people from submitting their work for our voters to decide on.”

After highlighting Houston rappers like Erica Banks and KenTheMan, UPROXX Sessions once again plays host to a Space City spitter in RayFace, who stops through for a boastful performance of his 2020 single, “No Middle Man.”

An adherent of Houston’s long-held tradition of independently released music, RayFace founded his own record label, Self Made Music, while also running other businesses on the side. His self-released mixtapes include Underrated and Trapademic, from which he’s released a slew of self-funded music videos, including “Out The Trap” “Got To Have It” and “Tell Me Why,” the latter containing a feature from fellow self-made Houstonite Slim Thug.

Although he’s still a relative newcomer without the resources of a major-label artist, two of the videos he’s released this year have garnered over a million views on YouTube and his polished presentation suggests that he’s got all the tools he needs to build an even bigger buzz in the future.

Watch RayFace’s UPROXX Sessions performance of ‘No Middle Man’ above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

Coming into its fifth anniversary, Madrid’s Mad Cool Festival is already one of the biggest music festivals in Europe, bringing nearly 200,000 revelers to the sprawling Valdebebas urban open space venue. The initial 2022 lineup was announced in June and was heavy on the rock and roll acts with Metallica, Muse, The Killers, Imagine Dragons, Pixies, Faith No More, Twenty One Pilots, and Placebo leading the way.

They took it a step further in October adding a fifth day to the summer fest and artists like Haim, Florence + The Machine, and Nathy Peluso. Now they’ve beefed the lineup up one final time adding Jack White as the fifth day headliner and infusing the lineup with more big name acts like Stormzy, London Grammar, Modest Mouse, Two Door Cinema Club, Local Natives, and Mura Masa.

It brings the grand total to 144 artists playing across the festival’s five nights. Other artists playing on this comprehensive bill include St. Vincent, The War On Drugs, Beabadoobee, Arlo Parks, Phoebe Bridgers, Leon Bridges, Animal Collective, Tinashe, Glass Animals, Carly Rae Jepsen, Chvrches, Wolf Alice, and loads more.

Mad Cool Festival festival goes down from July 6 to 10, 2022. Tickets are on-sale here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After 26 books and two movies, Jack Reacher is headed to television with his own Amazon Prime series, Reacher. However, if you’re expecting to see Tom Cruise reprising the iconic action hero, you’ve got quite the 6’3″, 250 pounds-of-muscle surprise ahead of you.

In the first trailer for Reacher, none other than hulking Smallville and Titans star Alan Ritchson has taken on the role of ex-military-man turned renegade Jack Reacher — a far cry from the more slender Cruise, who starred in the 2012 and 2016 films. According to series’ author Lee Child (via Entertainment Weekly), Amazon’s reimaging of Jack Reacher — and Ritchson’s casting in particular — is significantly more in line with how he envisioned the character looking in his stories, perfectly conveying the levels of “stillness,” “menace,” and “goodwill” the Reacher we know from the books should have.

“When I picture Reacher, let’s say you’re in a bar or restaurant, the door opens, he steps in, and the temperature in the room drops by a degree, because people think, ‘What the hell is this? Even if there’s not an immediate threat, there’s an impact. That’s what I wanted,” Child said. “This guy stepped on the screen and had this stillness and blend of menace and goodwill that is always confusing about Reacher. If he’s going to be your friend, you’re very lucky. If he’s not going to be your friend, you’re very unlucky. All of that had to be transmitted just through stance, mood, look — and Ritchson had it right away.”

Despite this first look at the series’ only clocking in at about two minutes, everything Child is saying is made abundantly clear by Ritchson’s intimidating performance in it as the character slams inmates into tiled walls and breaks more than a few bones.

In addition to Ritchson, Malcolm Goodwin (American Gangster), Kristin Kreuk (Smallville), Willa Fitzgerald (Dare Me), Chris Webster (The Most Dangerous Game), Marc Bendavid (Dark Matter), Willie C Carpenter (Brawl in Cell Block 99), Currie Graham (NYPD Blue), and Harvey Guillén (What We Do in the Shadows) are all set to star in the upcoming series, which hits Amazon Prime on February 4.

After ten years and millions of records sold, UK pop band Little Mix are stepping away from music for the time being. The band announced Thursday that they plan on taking an indefinite hiatus next year after completing their 2022 Confetti arena tour. While they clarified that it’s not an officially breakup announcement, Little Mix say they hope to “recharge and work on some other projects” instead.

Sharing the statement on social media, Little Mix wrote:

“We wanted to let you all know that after the Confetti tour in April/May next year we are going to be taking a break from Little Mix.

It’s been 10 amazing years, a wonderful non-stop adventure, and we feel the time is right to take a break so we can recharge and work on some other projects.

We can’t thank you enough for your love and never-ending support since the beginning. We love you all SO much.
We are not splitting up – Little Mix are here to stay. We have plans for more music, tours and performances in the future. We’ve made so many incredible memories with you all, and we can’t wait to make so many more. We’re sisters and we’ll always have each other and you, the fans, in our lives. Little Mix is forever.”

The news comes after many changes for Little Mix. Band member Jesy Nelson left the group last year in order to start a solo career and just dropped off a debut single featuring Nicki Minaj. On top of that, members Perrie Edwards and Leigh-Anne Pinnock just became new moms.

Find Little Mix’s announcement below.

The Milwaukee Bucks have not had the services of starting center Brook Lopez this season as he’s tried to work his way back from a back injury that has limited him to 28 minutes of action this season. Unfortunately for Milwaukee, it appears that Lopez won’t be able to play any time soon, as the team announced that the big man is out indefinitely after undergoing surgery on his back.

“The surgery was performed by Dr. Robert Watkins with oversight by Bucks team physician Dr. William Raasch of the Froedtert & the Medical College of Wisconsin health network,” the team said in a statement. “Lopez will continue to be listed as out and updates on his rehabilitation progress will be provided as appropriate.”

Milwaukee attempted to add some frontcourt reinforcements when it signed DeMarcus Cousins earlier this week — so far, he has appeared in one game. The team has been able to turn to Bobby Portis and Giannis Antetokounmpo for minutes at the 5 this season, and despite dealing with a rash of injuries, the Bucks sit 14-8, good for third place in the Eastern Conference and 1.5 games behind the 1-seeded Nets.

Still, Lopez has been a steady hand on both ends of the floor during the franchise’s recent run of success, providing floor spacing on offense and establishing himself as one of the best defensive bigs in the league.

Comedian Kathy Griffin stopped by The View on Thursday morning and had a whole lot to say about her former employer, CNN. In 2017, Griffin was fired by the cable news network after she posed with a fake, bloody, and decapitated head of Donald Trump. Just 24 hours after the photo was debuted, Griffin was removed from the New Year’s Eve special that she annually hosted with Anderson Cooper, and she continued to experience fallout from the incident for months, if not years. (Although, she did get revenge at a Writer’s Guild Event.)

However, while talking to the ladies at The View, Griffin couldn’t help but notice that Jeffrey Toobin was allowed to return to the network despite being caught masturbating during a Zoom call with his colleagues at The New Yorker. According to Griffin, Toobin being allowed to say represented an ongoing problem with misogyny. Via The Daily Beast:

Griffin went on to say that when she got “canned” from co-hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve special, it hurt her “personally” because she loved that gig. “But then for me to watch Jeffrey Toobin talking about women’s choice after he masturbated on a Zoom call, which I know sounds funny, but maybe wasn’t so funny for the other ladies … that had to see that.”

Co-host Joy Behar attempted to push back a little by saying that Toobin admitted what he did was accidental, but Griffin wasn’t buying it. “Well, OK, good for him,” Griffin said. “I just think it’s easy when a guy does something, we joke about it, and I do believe there’s a double standard.”

(Via The Daily Beast)

To put it lightly, 2021 was an up-and-down year for Morgan Wallen. The story starts towards the end of 2020, though, when he was filmed maskless at a party and was consequently relieved of his duties as Saturday Night Live musical guest. That December, though, he did end up on SNL and even acted in a sketch about that party. Things got worse from there, when he was caught using a racial slur in early 2021. He later received criticism for reportedly not making good on promises to donate to Black-led groups.

Despite the controversies, country music fans stuck with Wallen, so much so that Dangerous: The Double Album was one of the year’s biggest musical releases, thanks largely to the success it enjoyed post-controversy. Actually, Dangerous wasn’t one of 2021’s biggest albums: It was the biggest album.

Billboard shared some year-end charts today, and Dangerous is No. 1 on the Billboard 200 Albums list, ahead of Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour, Pop Smoke’s Shoot For The Stars Aim For The Moon, Taylor Swift’s Evermore, and Drake’s Certified Lover Boy. Furthermore, Wallen was the year’s top country artist and the No. 5 artist overall, after Drake, Rodrigo, The Weeknd, and Swift.

Overall, Dangerous spent ten weeks at No. 1, the most weeks at No. 1 since Drake’s Views had 13 in 2016. Even on the current Billboard 200 dated December 4, Dangerous sits at No. 5.

Billboard notes of the methodology used to create the year-end charts, “Billboard‘s year-end music recaps represent aggregated metrics for each artist, title, label, and music contributor on the weekly charts dated Nov. 21, 2020, through Nov. 13, 2021. The rankings for MRC Data-based recaps reflect equivalent album units, airplay, sales, or streaming during the weeks that the titles appeared on a respective chart during the tracking year. Any activity registered before or after a title’s chart run isn’t considered in these rankings.”

Check out all of the year-end charts here.

In the wake of the death of Pivot Gang producer/DJ Squeak, the Chicago-based collective is preparing to release the deluxe edition of his and MFnMelo‘s June joint album, En Route. To mark the new release, Melo shared a new single, “Mood Swing,” which features fellow Pivot Gang members Saba, Joseph Chiliams, and Frsh Waters. It also features production by Squeak, Big Goose, and Daedae of Pivot Gang.

En Route‘s deluxe edition will mark the first release from Squeak since he was shot and killed in June this year. It’s set for release on December 9.

Melo remarked on the “weirdness” of promoting a new project while still mourning his late friend — especially a project produced by that friend. “Lately I’ve been having even less things to say,” he wrote on Instagram. “Not too many people get it but shorty did. Which makes this way harder. So understanding. So influential. So missed. This sh*t weird to promote anything right now honestly but I’d be damn if I didn’t follow thru with our plan! Finishing this was some of the hardest sh*t I had to do. But because of your love and belief, I stayed #ForeverEnRoute! You know what time it is bro and they soon will too!”

Listen to MFnMelo and Squeak’s “Mood Swing” featuring Saba above.