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Toronto rapper Smiley is just weeks removed from landing a huge guest feature from Drake on their “Over The Top” collaboration. Drake’s sharp bars are surrounded by Smiley’s own laid-back raps that steer through the song’s hard-hitting production. The track with Drake has brought attention to the rest of Smiley’s catalog which includes “In My Zone,” a track that also stands tall in his discography. The song, which he released back in April, is also one the Toronto rapper decided to perform for his first UPROXX Sessions appearance. In his performance, Smiley details his tunnel vision approach to life on the cautious banger.

While Smiley may be a new name to many, the Toronto rapper has been on the grind for the past three years. His 2018 debut project Buy. Or. Bye grabbed the attention of many as it unveiled raps that detailed a dark past. Additional attention would be brought his way when Drake quoted a line from his Smiley’s “Free Baby” (“Nobody really know what I been through”) during the height of his rap beef with Pusha-T. Since then, Smiley inked a deal with Warner Records and dropped his 2020 mixtape, YYZ-LAX. Now, he’s hard at work on his next project, Buy. Or. Bye 2 and with “Over The Top” and “In My Zone” leading the way, things are looking good for the Toronto upstart.

Press play on Smiley’s focused performance of “In My Zone” for UPROXX Sessions in the video 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.

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

We love a good Japanese Breakfast cover, and goodness knows Michelle Zauner has churned out her share of them. Recently, Zauner offered a take on Dolly Parton’s “Here You Come Again,” and before that, we’ve heard JBrekkie renditions of Tears For Fears’ “Head Over Heels,” The Cardigans’ “Lovefool,” Wilco’s “Jesus, Etc,” and The Mamas & The Papas’ “California Dreamin,’” among others. Now, Zauner has reimagined Sufjan Stevens‘ 2003 song “Romulus,” which memorably showed up on Michigan.

Appearing on SiriusXMU, Zauner did a beautiful job reinterpreting Stevens’ classic track, adding in soothing strings. In the past, Zauner has spoken about how Stevens’ landmark 2015 album Carrie & Lowell comforted her as she mourned the passing of her mother. “I’d always loved Sufjan Stevens’ albums but that one slipped by me. I actually started listening to it a few months ago and it really hit home for me,” she told The Line Of Best Fit in 2016. “Not only because it was about losing his mother but also because it was largely set in a very small town in the Pacific Northwest where I grew up. So it seems very serendipitous, I guess, to come across that record at this time in my life.”

Listen to Japanese Breakfast cover “Romulus” above.

This fall, Mansfield, Ohio will play host to a festival that has a great lineup if you’re a fan of alternative rock and metal, as it features Slipknot, Rob Zombie, Mudvayne, A Day To Remember, Mastodon, Halestorm, Chevelle, Killswitch Engage, and others. The festival is also focused on tattoos, so if you’re looking to get a some ink, more than 75 tattoo artists will be on hand.

All in all, if you’re into those sorts of things, this seems like a great time. There’s one significant issue, though: The event is called the Inkcarceration Music & Tattoo Festival, the name of which plays off the fact that it takes place on the grounds of the Ohio State Reformatory, which is perhaps best known as a primary filming location for The Shawshank Redemption. As the festival is getting ready for its 2021 installment (on the weekend of September 10 to 12), some folks are talking notice of its allegedly problematic nature.

For example, Kim Kelly, a journalist and author of the upcoming book Fight Like Hell: The Untold History Of American Labor, shared her thoughts, tweeting today, “I get a lot of press releases for a lot of bad music festivals I will never attend, but the emails about this one in particular always make my skin crawl. Prison isn’t an edgy ‘theme,’ it’s torture and enslavement and horror. It’s repulsive to see an event promoted this way.” Other people chimed in and echoed the sentiment.

The festival previously hosted editions in 2018 and 2019 before making its return this year. Aside from music and tattoos, this year’s event will also feature tours of the prison, as well as a “special engagement” of “Escape From Blood Prison Haunted House,” which is a yearly Halloween event held at the Ohio State Reformatory.

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

There’s a lot to love about The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It’s a gigantic open world with tons to do, plenty of interesting quests, and endless replayability. It’s a beloved game just because of the number of hours people can’t help but sink into it. It’s also one of the most memeable games ever, with phrases like “I took an arrow to the knee” becoming a part of internet lore. Unfortunately, it also became well known for its glitches. While funny, glitches can be frustrating when they get in the way of progress.

While it’s easy to get frustrated with glitches, it’s always important to remember that game development is hard and that developers clean up way more than we realize before it launches. One former developer of Skyrim said as much when he told a story on Twitter about how the most iconic scene in Skyrim, the opening cart ride, was a development nightmare for the team. It also required watching the opening scene close to hundreds of times when testing it out.

Obviously, the developers of Skyrim didn’t want the opening scene of the game to be bugged. While bugs can be funny sometimes, seeing one as soon as you load it up would be a bit off-putting and might sour the experience, especially if the cart you’re supposed to be a prisoner on sends you flying off the road or into the sky.

As fun as it would be to watch the cart suddenly launch like a rocket ship, it’s understandable why a game dev wouldn’t want that to happen. Perhaps the trickiest part is how this bug wasn’t happening consistently, which is the absolute worst kind, because that makes it harder to figure out why it’s going on. It’s also what leads to someone watching the opening scene hundreds of times over and over again.

So, what was the cause of this rocket launch cart? It was something so small that nobody noticed it initially: a tiny little bee had become the most powerful force in all of Skyrim.

The story is very funny and it’s also a reminder for everyone how difficult game development can be. While bugs can be frustrating, it’s important to remember there are people who spend hours of their day if not weeks trying to make it presentable before launch. While Skyrim still had some other famous bugs and problems in it, we can at least all be happy that our cart never launched us into the sky because a tiny little bee told us to buzz off.

It’s one thing to decide that you, personally, do not want to wear a face mask. It’s another thing for the governor of a state to decide that no one should have to wear one. But to be the governor of the state with the second-highest number of COVID infections in the country who is actively working to ban both mask and vaccine mandates—all while you actually have COVID—is like something out of a damn horror movie.

Yet that’s exactly what Texas Governor Greg Abbott is doing right now, much to the distress of many Texans, including the students and educators being impacted by Abbott’s executive order to ban masks in schools. And right at the exact moment we’ve hit a record high in terms of the number of kids hospitalized with COVID. Fortunately, as NBC News reports, there are educators in the state who care more about the health and wellbeing of their colleagues, students, and those students’ parents who have cleverly found a way to circumvent Abbott’s tyranny. On Tuesday, the Paris Independent School District issued a statement that it was updating its official dress code to include face masks:

The Board of Trustees is concerned about the health and safety of its students and employees. The Board believes the dress code can be used to mitigate communicable health issues, and therefore has amended the PISD dress code to protect our students and employees. The Texas Governor does not have the authority to usurp the Board of Trustees’ exclusive power and duty to govern and oversee the management of the public schools of the district. Nothing in the Governor’s Executive Order 38 states he has suspended Chapter 11 of the Texas Education Code, and therefore the Board has elected to amend its dress code consistent with its statutory authority.

It’s a big step for a small school district, which is home to approximately 4000 students—and hopefully one that will catch on. Especially since Abbott’s mask ban directly contradicts the advice of the CDC, which is recommending that all students, from kindergarten through 12th grade, wear a face mask when they return to school—even if they’ve been vaccinated. It’s a lesson Abbott could learn a little something from.

(Via NBC News)

John Mayer found success with his recent LP Sob Rock (and on TikTok, too). The album, which embraced his full “tuneful cheeseball” self, impressively landed at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart after its release. To celebrate, Mayer has graced his fans with a trippy video to his track “Wild Blue.”

The new visual takes viewers on a psychedelic fever dream. It was directed by Mathew Miguel Cullen, who co-founded of Mirada Studios with acclaimed director Guillermo del Toro. The clip opens with Mayer and his trusty electric guitar in front of a green screen. Vibrant and disparate images float around his figure, taking him on a ride across scenic landscapes.

Ahead of the release of Sob Rock, Mayer sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to talk about the LP’s themes. The singer said his intention with the album was for it to essentially be one giant sh*tpost:

“And I made a record that, to me at the time, only in a way to coax something out of me that I wouldn’t have normally done, sh*tpost a record. It’s called Sob Rock because it’s a sh*tpost. But more importantly, it’s what I thought was a sh*tpost, and this gets down to where artists sit in front of you and play you what they think is their garbage, and you go, ‘That’s the best thing I ever heard you play.’ It makes a mockery of their interpretation of the experience, which is just enough to break out of the mold and make something unique.”

Watch Mayer’s “Wild Blue” video above.

Sob Rock is out now via Columbia. Get it here.

With the latest release in 2K Sports’ basketball franchise set to drop in a little less than a month, NBA 2K22 announced its first round of player ratings. This includes the top-10 players in the NBA, the top-5 players in the WNBA, and the five-best dunkers and three-point shooters that the NBA has to offer.

The game did not name one clear-cut best player in the NBA, instead deciding to hand out its top rating to four players. All of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, and LeBron James eared 96 overall ratings, with a handful of other dudes receiving 95 and 94s, with cover athlete Luka Doncic being included among that latter group.

For the W, Breanna Stewart got a 95 overall, making her the top player in the game. The remainder of the top-5 includes A’ja Wilson and Jonquel Jones getting 94s, cover athlete Candace Parker receiving a 93, and Brittney Griner being named a 92 overall.

The pair of skills the game decided to highlight, dunking and three-point shooting, are pretty difficult to argue. Curry is the best shooter in the game, receiving a rare 99 three-point rating, with teammate Klay Thompson getting a 95. The top dunker in NBA 2K22 is Zion Williamson with a 97 rating.

NBA 2K22, which includes three separate covers this year, is slated to hit consoles on Sept. 10, 2021.

We’re just over a year out from the big return of several key members of 2017’s Justice League in the upcoming The Flash movie and while all that’s pretty damn exciting, personally I can’t stop thinking about the film’s most shocking reprisal: Michael Keaton as Batman. For the first time since 1992, Keaton is busting out the ol’ Batarang and readying up to fight some crime in an adaptation of the famous, multi-dimensional DC story Flashpoint and it’s the kind of unexpected casting that honestly feels too good to be true.

While this role might seem a far stretch from a lot of Keaton’s more dramatic undertakings in recent years, such as Birdman and Spotlight, in an exclusive interview with The Hollywood Reporter the actor revealed a pretty compelling reason as for why he decided to rejoin the DC Cinematic Universe: he wanted another bat at, well, the Bat. According to Keaton, reprising his role as Batman has long been something he’s wanted to do — so he couldn’t pass it up when he got the option to return 30 years later:

Frankly, in the back of my head, I always thought, ‘I bet I could go back and nail that motherfucker,’ And so I thought, ‘well, now that they’re asking me, let me see if I can pull that off.’

While taking on the role of arguably one of the most iconic and beloved superheroes of all time at the age of 69 (he’ll be 70 in early September) might seem like quite the undertaking, we’re pretty convinced that it’s one only the likes of Keaton is capable of. Funnily enough, the actor went on to say the most challenging part of the ordeal has merely been keeping up with the lore, which is extremely valid. While Keaton said he was impressed by Birds of Prey writer Christina Hodson’s script as well as director Andy Muschietti’s vision, he was still pretty intimidated by just how much ground has been covered by DC throughout their movies and the heights Batman has soared since 1992.

I had to read it more than three times to go, ‘Wait, how does this work?’ They had to explain that to me several times. By the way, I’m not being arrogant, I hope, about this. I don’t say it like, ‘I’m too groovy.’ I’m stupid. There’s a lot of things I don’t know about. And so, I don’t know, I just kind of figured it out, but this was different. What’s really interesting is how much more I got [Batman] when I went back and did him. I get this on a whole other level now. I totally respect it. I respect what people are trying to make. I never looked at it like, ‘Oh, this is just a silly thing.’ It was not a silly thing when I did Batman. But it has become a giant thing, culturally. It’s iconic. So I have even more respect for it because what do I know? This is a big deal in the world to people. You’ve got to honor that and be respectful of that. Even I go, ‘Jesus, this is huge.’

While the upcoming film is surely no “dance with the devil in the pale moonlight” for Keaton, we are incredibly excited to see what the “Golden Age” actor brings to a contemporary superhero film. Seeing how much of a punch he packed as Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming (another role he will be reprising in 2022’s Morbius) we have extremely high hopes. As of right now, The Flash is scheduled to hit theaters on November 4, 2022.

The best way to describe James Wan’s career is to look at his 2015-2018. He went from one fun movie that made over $1 billion at the box office (Furious 7), to a spooky low-budget (comparatively speaking) horror movie (The Conjuring 2), to another fun movie that made over $1 billion at the box office (Aquaman). He’s able to exist in two worlds, like Arthur Curry reconciling his human and Atlantean sides, and he’ll combine his horror roots with his blockbuster expertise in Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.

Wan told Total Film that the Aquaman sequel owes a debt to a 1965 Italian science-fiction horror film. “Aquaman 2 is very heavily inspired by Planet of the Vampires,” he said. “You can take the boy out of horror but you can never take the horror out the boy.” In the trailer for Planet of the Vampires, a spaceship crew land on a planet where “the living dead try to escape into life.” Jason Momoa would’ve decked the life out of them.

Wan continued:

“Well, the first movie took a lot of people by surprise, right? And that’s partially because they were not familiar with the comic book, which deals in this very lurid, strange world. People were taken aback that I didn’t throw all that stuff away and make a dark, heavy film. But I didn’t feel that would have been right for it. So with the second film, I feel it will be easier for people to accept where we go because I’ve already laid the foundation.”

As long as the octopus drummer is back, I’m in.

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom opens on December 16.

(Via Total Film)

It’s been a full week since Mike Lindell’s failed Cyber Symposium, and the “Big Lie” event is still continuing to plague the bonkers MyPillow CEO who bet a little too big on his “proof” that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. This time around, Lindell is scrambling after cyber security expert Bill Alderson has come forward demanding the $5 million reward offered to anyone who can prove that Lindell was not sitting on data that shows the election was stolen. For the record, Alderson is a completely different cyber security expert than Josh Merritt, who was hired by Lindell to prove his terabyte of data was real, but Merritt refused to play along, which caused the Cyber Symposium to go down in flames.

Here’s what Alderson told Dakota News Now about Lindell’s data:

He says he’s followed the specific rules that were agreed to when he registered for the challenge. His proof that Lindell is wrong, is arriving at Lindell’s attorney’s office today.

He kept a copy of the documents for himself, which he shared on a zoom call with our I-team.

“With all of my exhibits, proving what my belief was about the packets and why they were not packets and why they did not contain IP headers, why they did not contain Ethernet addresses, why they did not contain congruent, you know, request-response packets, while they were not in P-PCAP format, and they didn’t contain any dating or anything of that nature,” said Alderson.

During a Wednesday morning appearance on Steve Bannon’s Real America’s Voice podcast, Lindell was asked about Alderson’s claim that he bested the Cyber Symposium challenge by disproving Lindell’s data, which caused the MyPillow Guy to scramble and accuse Alderson of looking at the wrong data.

“The whole rumor going around the symposium was that this data is not from the 2020 election,” Lindell said. “Well, the whole challenge was [to] validate data from the 2020 November election. It had nothing to do with my data.”

Lindell then said his attorneys are looking at Alderson’s claim that he’s entitled to the $5 million reward, which was withdrawn during the symposium when Lindell’s own expert wouldn’t go on record saying his alleged election data was legit.

(Via Dakota News Now, Raw Story)