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Odds are, if you grew up listening to hip-hop, then you also grew up listening to The Gap Band, because the funk/R&B group’s music was a staple of hip-hop’s samples and style almost since the genre’s inception. Hits like “Outstanding,” “Yearning For Your Love,” and “I Don’t Believe You Want To Get Up And Dance (Oops!)” have been the foundation of fan-favorite songs from contemporary artists like Tyler The Creator, seminal storytelling from pioneers like Nas, and the inescapable jams of superstars like Bruno Mars. So the news that Gap Band co-founder Ronnie Wilson has died at the age of 73 definitely comes as a blow to hip-hop adherents everywhere.

Wilson founded the band in 1974 with brothers Charlie and Robert (Ronnie was the oldest) in Tulsa, Oklahoma, naming it after three streets in the historic Greenwood neighborhood in honor of the Tulsa massacre. The group was one of the most prominent funk and R&B bands throughout the ’70s and ’80s, remaining favorites of Black dads and uncles who drive Cadillacs to this day. Songs like “You Dropped A Bomb On Me” and “Early In The Morning” are considered classics of the genre and inspired both early G-Funk hits and more recent funk revivals, with Charlie, in particular, becoming a go-to feature artist for rappers like Aminé, Guapdad 4000, Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Tyler The Creator, and more. Charlie is now the last remaining member.

Ronnie’s wife, Linda Boulware-Wilson, announced his death via Facebook Tuesday evening (November 3). “The love of my life was called home this morning, at 10:01am,” she wrote. “Please continue to pray for The Wilson, Boulware, and Collins family, while we mourn his passing. Ronnie Wilson was a genius with creating, producing, and playing the flugelhorn, Trumpet, keyboards, and singing music, from childhood to his early seventies. He will be truly missed!!!”

Far-right Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene made it known earlier this year that she was done with masks, and she even shredded a memo from Nancy Pelosi on the subject. That’s about the same time when she received her first fine for flouting the mask mandate, which left her paycheck $500 lighter. Since then, she’s been merrily earning $2,500 subsequent fines, and at this point, her total has nearly reached the Median Household Income of the constituents that she represents in Georgia’s 14th congressional district.

That’s nuts, but yeah, Greene has willingly parted ways for over one-fourth of her $174,000 annual salary because she’s such a COVID conspiracy theorist. The Hill was the first to report that total, which CNN confirmed via a letter from the House Sergeant at Arms. It’s a bizarre case of Greene putting her money where her mouth is, literally. Via CNN, she’s done this thing 20 times already and counting:

Greene has been fined 20 times for not wearing a mask. After receiving an initial warning in May, Greene was fined $500 for her first offense, and $2,500 for each subsequent offense, which is in line with House rules.

Greene has appealed at least one of her fines, but it was upheld. Greene was seen by CNN not wearing a mask on the floor Tuesday. The fines come from Greene’s salary.

She’s refusing to yield to the mandate and almost seems proud of losing all that money, as Greene previously boasted when she hit the $25,000 mark in fines. In response to the $48,000 news, Greene defiantly tweeted, “Why do I get fined for not wearing a mask when I’m sitting in a chair on the House floor the same as people eating unmasked at a restaurant?” She also complained about how “Democrat members don’t wear masks in the members gym when they work out” and “None of us do & no one should.” Then she fired off a tweet about how much she works out, which she believes protects her from viruses (or something like that).

(Via The Hill & CNN)

After nearly nine years as a band and three full-length studio albums, Montreal-based post-punk group Ought are calling it quits. After putting out the 2018 LP Room Inside The World as their latest piece of new music, Ought have announced they are breaking up as a band.

The band announced their split on social media, thanking fans for all their support:

“To everyone who supported us, came to a show, and cared about us: We are no longer active as a band. When we started Ought in 2012 we had no greater aspiration than to play and write music together, and the fact that we were able to tour the world to such an extent and share so many rooms with so many of you has meant the world to us. We send lots of gratitude and love to all those we met and worked with along the way.”

Though the band is no longer active, fans of Ought can rest assured that there will still be some new music on the horizon, even if it’s in the form of a different project. Ought’s Tim Darcy and Ben Stidworthy are teaming up with U.S. Girls’ drummer Evan Cartwright for the brand new project Cola, which just signed to Fire Talk Records. Cola’s debut single “Black Curtain” dropped today in tandem with Ought’s breakup and features similar lo-fi vocal treatment and discordant guitar chords.

See Ought’s full breakup announcement above and listen to Cola’s debut single “Black Curtain.”

Squid Game is Netflix’s biggest series ever (according to Netflix), but it’s also bringing attention to other shows on the streaming service.

Once subscribers finished Squid Game, they were directed to other Netflix titles that might appeal to the interests of someone who watched all nine episodes of a violent dystopian series in a weekend. Something like Alice in Borderland, a Japanese series about “an aimless gamer and his two friends [who] find themselves in a parallel Tokyo, where they’re forced to compete in a series of sadistic games to survive.”

Viewership for Alice has mightily increased since Squid Game premiered in September. “We were thrilled to see that many members who discovered and watched Squid Game also started discovering Alice for the first time,” Michael Smith, Netflix’s product innovation manager, said at the Tokyo International Film Festival on Tuesday (via Variety). “Our service picked up on this connection and started recommending Alice to more members who hadn’t already seen the show.”

The result was what Smith describes as a “sizable uptick in global viewing” for Alice. “It landed back in the top ten series ranking in more than fifty countries around the world, more than nine months after its initial launch,” he said.

If Squid Game could also direct people towards the 1996 Tim Burton film Mars Attacks!, that would be swell. Not enough people talking about Mars Attacks! these days.

(Via Variety)

The video for Philly soul singer Pink Sweats’ new single “Nothing Feels Better” hearkens to a simpler time when making a love connection was as simple as passing a note in class. The first single from Sweats’ upcoming follow-up to Planet Pink, “Nothing Feels Better” details the euphoric feeling of real love, with the singer promising, “Forever I’m yours / just know that I’m all in.”

The colorful visuals in the accompanying clip reflect those feelings, casting the singer as a student who makes a bid for his crush’s heart by scrawling a love letter and sending it her way. Throughout the video, the classmates also pursue their various passions, from rollerskating in the hall to dancing in an empty classroom, drawing a parallel between the romantic love of the song and the sense of fulfillment that comes from chasing any other dream.

A year removed from his shimmering debut, Sweats is preparing to release a new project, Pink Moon, in early 2022. He also intends to promote Pink Moon with a tour beginning this Friday, November 5 in San Diego, California, and running through December 16 in Dallas. You can find out more about the tour here.

Watch Pink Sweats – Nothing Feels Better video above.

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

Streaming on Twitch is not easy. It requires a severe amount of dedication, effort, and a little bit of luck to make a living wage of some kind doing it. One streamer based in the United Kingdom named SquidGame, whose real name is Lydia Ellery, has been at it for years now. She’s been slowly building up a community and has reached the status of Twitch partner. She’s also been uploading gaming content on her YouTube channel for 10 years now under the names “SquidGaming” and “SquidGame.”

Unfortunately for Ellery, many people who have never heard of her have been attacking her online as of late because of her username in light of Netflix’s hit show Squid Game. Ellery recently talked to BBC News about how the explosion in popularity for Squid Game has been leading to her being harassed, having her Instagram account banned, and losing out on job opportunities.

“I’ve received a lot of hate from the fans and I’ve been turned down for work because of it [the name],” she told the BBC.

…

“I started getting abusive messages from people. People were getting angry with me because they were mega fans… and thought I took the account from the show.

“I had to turn off notifications on my Instagram because it was just constant. My phone has been flooded.”

Ellery’s situation with her account name is getting so bad that she’s considering changing her username on all her social accounts, in part because it’s making her job more difficult. When someone uses a search engine to search “SquidGame,” they used to find her Twitch channel. Now, they’re directed to the TV show. It’s hard enough to build up a community on Twitch, but having to compete for attention from an extremely popular Netflix TV show is too much for anyone that isn’t in the class of extremely popular streamers like Ninja or TimTheTatman.

As the investigation into the shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust continues, the attorney for the film’s armorer, Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, is now suggesting that a disgruntled employee deliberately sabotaged the gun used by Alec Baldwin. Jason Bowles made the morning talk show rounds on Wednesday where he attempted to seed a theory that someone slipped live ammunition into the film’s props without Gutierrez-Reed’s knowledge. Here’s what he told TODAY via The Daily Beast:

“We know there was a live round in a box of dummy rounds that shouldn’t have been there,” Bowles added. “We have people who had left the set, who had walked out because they were disgruntled. We have a time frame between 11 and 1 approximately, that day, in which the firearms at times were unattended, so there was opportunity to tamper with this scene.”

Ammunition was kept in a prop truck on set, according to Gutierrez-Reed’s second attorney Robert Gorence, who said the vehicle was “completely unattended at all times, giving someone access and opportunity.”

According to Mediaite, Bowles repeated the claim on Good Morning America, but he also took the extra step of highlighting the fact that Assistant Director Dave Halls was the last person to touch the gun before it was handed to Baldwin, and then Bowles said this:

Somebody put that live round or live rounds in that box. When you do that, you can only have bad intentions because you’re going to confuse the rounds if you’re the armorer and they appear very similarly. The dummy rounds look like a regular live round…We’re afraid that could have been what happened here, that somebody intended to sabotage this set with a live round intentionally placed in a box of dummies.

Adding an interesting wrinkle to this new narrative is the fact that Baldwin has begun pushing back against numerous reports, and remarks by the Sheriff’s department, that the Rust set was “unsafe.” Baldwin recently retweeted a Facebook post that called the growing reports of a dangerous work environment “bullsh*t.”

(Via The Daily Beast, Mediaite)

QT is getting into the NFT business. On Tuesday, as reported by The Wrap, the two-time Oscar winner (and noted fan of women’s feet) shared that he’s partnering with Secret Network to auction off seven totally uncut scenes from Pulp Fiction as non-fungible tokens.

According to the official press release: “Each NFT at auction contains ‘secret’ content viewable only by the owner of the NFT, a groundbreaking and unique feature enabled by Secret NFTs. The secret content itself is one-of-a-kind, has never been seen or heard before, and will include: the uncut first handwritten scripts of Pulp Fiction and exclusive custom commentary from Tarantino, revealing secrets about the film and its creator. The public metadata of the NFT—the ‘front cover’ of this exclusive content—is rare in its own right: a unique, never-before-seen, public-facing work of art.”

The owners of these NFTs will be the only people able to access the content.

While 1992’s Reservoir Dogs brought Tarantino to Hollywood’s attention as a director, it was 1994’s Pulp Fiction that was his breakout film. The indie movie redefined the rules of cinema, and ended up grossing more than $210 million against a $10 million budget. It also earned a slew of Oscar nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. Ultimately, Tarantino and co-writer Roger Avary ended up taking home the statuette for Best Original Screenplay.

Now, more than a half-dozen lucky film fans will get the chance to not just experience, but own, Tarantino’s original, uncut vision for the film. “I’m excited to be presenting these exclusive scenes from Pulp Fiction to fans,” Tarantino said in a press release. “Secret Network and Secret NFTs provide a whole new world of connecting fans and artists and I’m thrilled to be a part of that.” You can learn more here.

(Via The Wrap)

We regret to inform you that JFK Jr. did not show up in Dallas on Tuesday—nor did his father, mother, or any other long-deceased member of the Kennedy clan (not Joseph, not Kick, nope on Bobby or Michael, and most certainly not Ted). This miraculous event, in which John F. Kennedy Jr. was reportedly not only going to reveal that he was indeed still alive, but was also planning to “declare” Donald Trump president again. (On who’s authority? That part didn’t seem to be worked out yet.)

According to the Daily Beast, this blessed even was expected to occur around 12:30 p.m.—approximately the same time JFK was assassinated while riding in his open-top car in Dallas. (These folks are aware that didn’t happen until November 22nd, right? Never mind—don’t answer that.) The entire event was livestreamed, and as the magic hour approached, hundreds had gathered to chant “God Bless America!” and “JFK!”

They were undoubtedly disappointed when this Q declaration turned out to be false, and some began to express skepticism, which the livestream host said would not help the situation and that they needed more faith. But most of the group didn’t let a little thing like reality keep them down for too long. Instead, they quickly shifted gears—and locales—to a Rolling Stones concert being held in Dallas for later the same day, with the idea that that’s where the Kennedys would be. Because if there’s any place one might expect the always-impeccable Jackie to reemerge, it’s definitely a Stones concert.

Then the rumors began to grow beyond the Kennedys; word was that a whole slew of dead celebrities would be coming back to show themselves, including Robin Williams, Richard Pryor, Kobe Bryant, and Debbie Reynolds. How did such a random assemblage of names come to be? Who knows! It’s QAnon!

Alas, none of them showed either. According to the Daily Beast:

The crowd in Dallas represented a splinter faction of a splinter faction within the larger QAnon movement, and one that’s been denounced by some of QAnon’s leading figures as a scheme meant to embarrass QAnon believers. But the willingness of hundreds of people to travel to Dallas from as far away as New York and California demonstrates QAnon’s persistent popularity nearly a year after “Q”—the mysterious figure behind QAnon—last posted.

John F. Kennedy Jr. has long been an obsession for a faction of QAnon supporters, even as their beliefs that JFK Jr. faked his 1999 plane-crash death and will return to run as Donald Trump’s vice president have faced ridicule from other QAnon believers. On Tuesday, the conspiracy theorists were drawn to the site of the Kennedy assassination by claims made by obscure channels on the social media app Telegram with names like “Negative48” and “Whiplash347.”

Unfortunately, in addition to being an obsession, JFK is also sort of their Great Pumpkin.

(Via Daily Beast)

It’s been nearly half a year since Lucy Dacus released her reflective third studio album, Home Video. So far, the singer has brought her music to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series, and several festivals across the US. Now gracing her fans with yet another late-night TV performance, Dacus takes The Tonight Show stage for a soaring performance of her fan-favorite track “VBS.”

For her set, Dacus turned the Fallon stage into a cathedral with faux-stained glass windows and church pews. The stage design mirrors the theme of “VBS,” which chronicles the singer’s experience attending vacation bible school when she was young. Dacus’ rendition of the track itself showcases her playful humor and moving vocals.

Ahead of Dacus’ showstopping performance on late-night TV, the singer recently decided to use her North American tour to give back. Ahead of her Texas shows in September, Dacus announced that all the proceeds earned from her performances would be donated to abortion funds following the state’s ban on abortion after only six weeks. “all the money I make at our upcoming shows in Texas will be going towards abortion funds [just so you know], if you’re not cool with that don’t come.” She wrote, following up with: “if you are cool with that (and are vaccinated) Austin and Dallas are sold out, but Houston and San Antonio are not, come thru and bring extra $ cause I’m gonna figure out a donation situation.”

Watch Dacus perform “VBS” on The Tonight Show above.

Home Video is out now via Matador. Get it here.