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The recent surge of Covid-19 cases in America due to the Omicron variant has led to a string of cancellations and adjustments. First, Saturday Night Live canceled Charli XCX’s scheduled appearance, and then The Strokes canceled their New Year’s Eve performance, followed quickly by The Flaming Lips postponing their shows. Although those three were just precautions, another New Year’s Eve cancelation from rap legend LL Cool J is due to the artist testing positive for the virus.

Deadline reported that LL Cool J will no longer perform at Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve With Ryan Seacrest and shared a statement from the rapper, who had an optimistic outlook, despite his current status. “I know it’s disappointing to the millions of fans but my test came back positive for COVID, which means I’ll no longer be able to perform as scheduled at NYRE,” he said in a statement. “We were ready and I was really looking forward to ringing in 2022 in my hometown in a special way, but for now I wish everyone a healthy and happy New Year. The best is yet to come!”

LL was schedule for a pre-midnight set in Times Square, but that will have to wait until another year.

One of the year’s many high-profile court cases came to a conclusion on Wednesday. Ghislaine Maxwell, the British socialite accused of helping her late ex-boyfriend Jeffrey Epstein sexual assault minors, was found guilty of five of the six counts filed against her.

Maxwell had been accused of recruiting and grooming four underage girls for Epstein between 1994 and 2004. (Epstein died in prison in 2019, reportedly of suicide.) During the trial’s closing arguments, Manhattan prosecutor Allison Moe referred to her as Epstein’s “partner-in-crime.” She added, “Ghislaine Maxwell made her own choices. She committed crimes hand in hand with Jeffrey Epstein. She was a grown woman who knew exactly what she was doing,”

Maxwell’s attorneys tried to argue that their client was being used as a scapegoat for Epstein’s crimes.

Epstein and Maxwell dated for several years in the ‘90s. Shortly after Epstein’s death, Maxwell bought home in New Hampshire for $1 million in cash. She remained out of the public eye until she was arrested in July of 2020. She made much out of what she claimed were unfair and “onerous” treatment in prison.

The trial itself didn’t have the melodramatic turns of the ones for Kyle Rittenhouse (who was acquitted) and Jussie Smollett (who was not). Among the more shocking revelations were the names of people who fraternized with Epstein, including Kevin Spacey and Chris Tucker. There was also grim testimony from the four women Maxwell helped groom, two of whom said they were 14 when Epstein’s abuse began. Three of them said Maxwell had inappropriately touched them.

Maxwell could face up to 70 years in prison. It was reported over the summer that another Epstein associate, Donald Trump, once considering pardoning her before his single term ended.

(Via Reuters)

Ricky Rubio‘s latest stop in his long and winding NBA career is Cleveland, where the veteran point guard has provided a steady hand in the backcourt for the upstart Cavaliers. Unfortunately, Rubio suffered a nasty looking injury on Tuesday night during the team’s 108-104 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans in which he appeared to slip while driving to the lane and his left knee buckled, which led to him getting helped off the floor.

It was reported that Rubio would undergo an MRI on his knee to learn the extent of the injury, and on Wednesday afternoon, the unfortunate news that Rubio’s season was over after tearing his ACL was announced by the team.

Losing Rubio is a gigantic loss for the Cavaliers, as Collin Sexton is already slated to miss the remainder of the year following surgery to repair a torn meniscus. In the short-term, the team has to figure out its point guard rotation while Darius Garland is sidelined due to his insertion into the league’s health and safety protocols. The team has, over the last month, given more minutes to journeyman guard Kevin Pangos.

On the year, Rubio is putting forth averages of 13.1 points, 6.6 assists, 4.1 rebounds, and 1.4 steals in 28.5 minutes per game.

Jadakiss has been back on the forefront of the rap world recently, after The Lox had one of the most successful resurgence during their Verzuz battle with Cam’ron and Dipset this past summer. It was to the point that even LeBron James was talking about his legendary status after the battle.

Now, on his new show on Facebook Watch, The Pull Up, Jada has the chance to share some of his views on life as a veteran. The show features different guests coming through on different episodes to chop it up with Jada, and during his fifth episode, with guest rapper Lil Cease, he began to pontificate on the virtues of being healthy and taking care of yourself. He even went so far as to call the process “gangsta” and noted that he helped make working out a cool part of the rap world.

“I think healthy is gangsta,” Kiss said around the 2:20 mark during the show. “Everybody want to be tough guys and this and that, and rich. If you not healthy, you can’t be alive to spend your money. If you not healthy, you can’t enjoy the party, you can’t enjoy the perks of life, you won’t be here to see your kids graduate, to see ’em score they first touchdown, to see things like that. So health is more important than anything.”

Check out the full episode below.

It might be a slow week for the rest of the music industry, but Nicki Minaj is apparently keeping her focus on business. Despite being a relatively new mother, Minaj has something major in the works for 2022 — and it’s not just a follow-up to her latest album Queen. In a new Instagram post, director Deon Taylor of Meet The Blacks, Fatale, and the soon-to-be-released, Fear, made it clear that his next project is going to involve the Pinkprint rapper.

“Wait, everything just got different !!” Taylor captioned a group selfie on his Instagram grid, which features Nicki, philanthropist Robert F. Smith, producer Roxanne Avent, Quality Control president Brian Sher (who branched out into Quality Control film and television earlier this year), and himself. “Wait till I tell you….. I’m gone,” he continued, tagging each of the celebrities and using a bevy of flame emojis to indicate his… excitement?

Sher also posted the selfie with similar sentiments, but focused his attention on Nicki in the caption: “Here goes…” he wrote, tagging Nicki in the post.

Fans are assuming that the project will be a new documentary/HBO docuseries focused on Nicki and her career, as the project was announced back in 2020. Nothing official from Onika yet, but keep your eyes peeled for an announcement hopefully coming soon.

CRSSD Festival, which took a year off in light of… well… you know, is returning to San Diego’s Waterfront Park in spring 2022, announcing its lineup and event dates, March 5 and 6. While the festival was originally held semi-annually showcasing the latest and greatest in electronic and house music, the coming year’s lineup has expanded to include acts like Glass Animals, a rock band, and R&B singer Cautious Clay. However, it’ll also stick close to its roots with the addition of electronic duo Sofi Tukker, among others.

With three stages and dozens of artists, the festival will offer a wide selection of experiences, from London house stapes Four Tet and Ben UFO b2b Joy Orbison to global techno favorites. Pre-sale for past ticket buyers begins Tuesday, January 4 at 11 am PT, while general sale opens on January 5. You can find more information here. Check out the flyer and full lineup below.

CRSSD Spring 2022 Lineup (ABC):
070 Shake
Absolute.
Adam Beyer
Ben UFO b2b Joy Orbison
Blu DeTiger
Cautious Clay
Chet Faker
Dan Shake
Eli Brown
Felix Da Housecat
Four Tet
Franc Moody
Get Real
Glass Animals
Gorgon City
Ilario Alicante
Jeff Mills
Joris Voorn
Kyle Watson
Lastlings
Maxinne
Danilo Plessow (MCDE)
Miane
Nina Kraviz b2b Helena Hauff
Parcels
PAX
Sam Paganini
SG Lewis
SOFI TUKKER live
+ More To Be Announced

Crime Scene: The Times Square Killer (Netflix series) — The first installment (The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel) in this series arrived through the game changing ways of director Joe Berlinger, who’s navigating from within the true crime genre. In this new installment, the Times Square Killer gets the spotlight, along with the the social and systemic forces that facilitated this serial murderer. In the process, all the danger and depravity of 1970s and early 1980s midtown Manhattan will make those few blocks a spectacle of their own. Here, the location is as much of a character as those who perpetrate the crimes, and the central focus is on an elusive killer who takes advantage of the virtually lawless nature of the venue’s perfect storm of a sexual playground. The first responders are shocked by what they find here, and you will feel that way, too.

Anxious People (Netflix limited series series) — This dramedy revolved around a failed bank robber who tries to heist a bank, except the catch here is that it’s a cashless institution. In the process, he takes a group of people hostage, and the whole joint ends up falling to pieces because a pair of dysfunctional cops can’t get it together. In the aftermath, the hostages tell the tale, and everyone’s got a different version. It’s a trippy puzzle, overall, especially when it comes to the hostages’ secret.

In case you missed these streaming picks from last Wednesday:

The Matrix Resurrections (HBO Max film) — Keanu Reeves can still do kung fu as Neo, and Carrie-Anne Moss can still kick ass, and much mystery still swirls about the actual plot of this franchise revival. Lana Wachowski wrote and directed, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II channels Morpheus, and Neo (for whatever reason) has a rubber duck in his head during a bath. Here’s who is joining these forces of cinematic nature: Jessica Henwick, Neil Patrick Harris, Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Christina Ricci, and Jada Pinkett Smith. Oh, and Jonathan Groff portrays an apparent upgrade on Agent Smith, all while things stay as trippy and action packed as always. Whoa to the max.

During the holidays, some movie theaters don’t only show the latest blockbusters. Some will show older Christmas movies; this year, Regal charged $5 for Elf and National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. But a new viral TikTok video shows one audience receiving a cinematic lump of coal: Those who went to see the Benedict Cumberbatch version of The Grinch, from 2018, instead watched as the projectionist tried to stream it over Amazon Prime — and ran into a technical glitch.

The video shows an audience loudly groaning as the silver screen shows not the CGI animated take on the Dr. Seuss classic but someone navigating through Amazon’s streaming video service. When whoever’s in charge tries to play the movie, they’re greeted with a message saying the account had reached the maximum number of videos streaming at once, implying that other theaters at the location were also playing movies off Amazon.

It’s not clear where the theater is located, if it’s a massive chain or a locally-owned business, or what the audience was charged, if anything.

In the TikTok video, @rachel.m00re wrote “actual footage from our local movie theatre.” The crowd can be heard mocking the attempts to stream off a streamer, launching into derisive laughter when they’re blocked from showing the movie. The caption on the video reads, “Apparently our movie theatre runs off fire tv & renting Amazon prime movies.”

As of this writing, the video has been viewed over two million times. The comments were savage. “Movie theatres splitting one subscription like the rest of us,” one person wrote. “This is extremely illegal and against Amazon ToS and copyright in general,” another pointed out, adding, “This is hilarious.”

(Via Newsweek)

Not only has Lizzo mastered the art of creating the perfect pop banger, but she’s also mastered the art of creating the perfect TikTok. The singer has been on the social media app for a few years now and has already racked up 20 million followers. While she definitely posts raunchy content, like when she used her booty as a paintbrush, the singer also gets real about her mental health struggles. She also definitely has one thing down — the TikTok challenge.

Earlier this week, Lizzo hopped on the seemingly unappetizing yellow mustard and Oreo trend that’s been circulating the app. The trend is fairly simple for those who can stomach it. As the name of the challenge suggests, it’s just putting yellow mustard on an Oreo and eating it. Some people on the app say the taste isn’t too bad, so Lizzo tried it out herself.

“Tiktok made me try mustard & oreos,” she wrote in the TikTok’s caption. The video shows the singer opening up a brand new pack of Oreos and slathering the top of one with a healthy serving of yellow mustard. Once Lizzo eats the unsavory food combo, she looks a little confused. Lizzo never actually says whether or not it tastes good, but she does go in for a second Oreo.

Watch Lizzo attempt the mustard and Oreo TikTok challenge above.

Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Vinyl is back in a big way after a decade of streaming’s dominance, with Billboard reporting that vinyl sales have actually hit a 30-year high this past week. Americans purchased 2.11 million vinyl records in the week ending on December 23rd (perhaps in the pursuit of a last-minute Christmas gift?), which is the biggest sales week since 1991 when SoundScan first began tracking such things — long after vinyl had begun to lose popularity compared to other physical media like cassette tapes and CDs.

As part of that dominance, one of hip-hop’s most popular artists saw his own resurgence. Last week, Kid Cudi’s Man On The Moon III: The Chosen broke the record for the biggest rap album in Nielsen history. He’s also the male artist with the biggest sales week, with 41,500 sales of the vinyl. “This is HUGE,” he wrote in celebration on Instagram. I wanna thank everyone who went out and copped the vinyl! This is all because of YOU! I LOVE YOU ALL.”

https://www.instagram.com

Man On The Moon III, which was initially released December 11, 2020, featured appearances from Pop Smoke, Skepta, and Trippie Redd. Cudi recently said he plans to follow that album with two more in 2022, meaning more opportunities for him to defend his new record. Meanwhile, the best-selling vinyl overall was Adele’s 30, which sold 59,000 copies and capped Billboard’s vinyl chart for the fifth week in a row along with the overall albums chart — a testament to her decision to turn it in several months early to allow time to prepare the vinyl.