GoneTrending

Shaggy’s 2000 hit “It Wasn’t Me” is back at the forefront of pop culture after being used in Cheetos’ Super Bowl ad with Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. While opinions on the commercial itself are mixed, the ad’s debut during the Super Bowl did offer music fans a peek behind the curtain at some of the inner workings of the music industry, courtesy of The Roots’ Questlove.

In the commercial, Kutcher and Kunis sing a remixed version of the 20-year-old hit as Kunis devours Kutcher’s bag of Cheetos, denying it all the while, as Kutcher points to the rapidly piling physical evidence that proves her malfeasance. Eventually, Shaggy himself appears to rap in his trademark patois, advising Ashton, “To keep you own stash you gotta hide it betta.”

While some fans were thrown by Kutcher’s singing voice or felt the ad was a little too — well, cheesy — Questlove regarded it a bit more philosophically than most thanks to the debt he and his band owe to Shaggy. “I will never slander #ItWasntMe the success of that song singlehandedly paid for Things Fall Apart’s promotional budget,” he revealed.

Quest, who’s often a fountain of musical knowledge and loves telling behind-the-scenes stories about the sometimes mind-blowing encounters and crossovers within the recording industry, also elaborated on the story in his book, Mo’ Meta Blues: The World According to Questlove. In 1999, when The Roots released Things Fall Apart, their Grammy-nominated fourth studio album, both they and Shaggy were signed to MCA Records. At the time, “alternative hip-hop” projects like Things Fall Apart were rarely afforded the promotional efforts and budget tentpole commercial anthems like “It Wasn’t Me” were, but the surplus of revenue the pop-charting song generated could have easily contributed to the coffers of an established but less commercially viable act like The Roots.

Although Quest didn’t offer any further tweets on the subject of Shaggy’s hit, he did seem endlessly amused by the memes generated by the mirror maze sequence of The Weeknd’s halftime performance. He also had some advice for companies that got a little too cute with their ads:

Missouri Senator Josh Hawley thought he could fire off an innocuous tweet rooting for the Kansas City Chiefs, but that decision quickly blew up in Hawley’s face as the Chiefs got steamrolled by Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Super Bowl LV. The controversial senator, who’s already been under fire for his role in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, is being relentlessly dragged on Twitter for jinxing the Chiefs and clearly having a penchant for picking losing teams.

It also didn’t take long for folks to use the Chiefs tweet to roast Hawley for his infamous salute to the Capitol rioters and his ongoing participation in spreading the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump.

Ever since the January 6 insurrection, Hawley has been facing intense public condemnations from Disney, Hallmark, and even his home state newspaper. Hawley also lost a book deal following the Capitol assault, which put him on AOC‘s radar after the senator fired off a statement complaining about cancel culture. “You fist-pumped insurrectionists and baselessly attacked our elections,” AOC tweeted. “Your actions fueled a riot and you fundraised in the chaos. Five people are dead. Even your GOP colleagues have distanced from your acts. Yet here you are crying over a book deal. You should be expelled.”

But probably the best smackdown came from Pennsylvania’s badass Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman who didn’t mince words when it came to Hawley questioning the integrity of the election. “You know, he went to Stanford and Yale Law,” Fetterman told the Daily Beast podcast. “He knows better than anybody that this is all garbage. And this is the point, and that’s what makes him so reprehensible. You know, I don’t care what your political beliefs are. If you’re willing to damage and endanger over your ambition, your soul is dipped in dogsh*t. I don’t know how else to say it.”

(Via Josh Hawley on Twitter)

Among all the Super Bowl commercials you saw during the Bucs victory over the Chiefs on Sunday, there was one late in the second half you may have missed, featuring Samuel L. Jackson standing atop a pillar holding a “sparkle stick” in a realistic but cartoonish animation similar to Fortnite. Jackson uses the commercial to speak about the virtues of using Verizon 5G to not have a laggy network and also not blaming losses on your lag like a scrub, but the one who steals the show is Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster.

In the commercial, Jackson makes a comment towards Smith-Schuster that offends him enough to “bring my fish around.” Before Jackson can finish his speech to the crowd, Smith-Schuster rides in on a giant shark and eats Jackson. The commercial cuts away with Jackson threatening to turn some fish in the stomach of the shark into sashimi.

The commercial is funny and creative, but it’s hard to not enjoy the art style. Is it exactly like Fortnite? No, but the inspiration feels like that’s what it’s supposed to be. Especially with the small fish at the end which looks very similar to the fish you can eat in-game. Of course, even with the Fortnite inspired art, there are plenty of references to video game lore as a whole. You can see an orc from Warcraft standing behind Smith-Schuster for example.

Traditionally when companies try to make video game references in their commercials they fall flat because the people involved don’t play video games, but this one was well done.

Chris Pratt got famously jacked when he joined the Marvel Cinematic Universe for Guardians of the Galaxy, but even he looks tiny compared to Chris Hemsworth. The Thor: Love and Thunder star, seen here pushing a goddamn tire, recently told Men’s Health Australia that if he stops working out, his body “shuts down… I just don’t feel good. I like it for a couple of days, then everything just starts to hurt. I get achy and there’s inflammation, my back’s stiff. I’m just well aware that in order for me to live healthier and happier, I’ve got to keep moving.” Now imagine how his stunt double feels.

Actually, you don’t have to. Bobby Holland Hanton will tell you himself.

“Everyone is like, ‘Wow look at the size and him’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, that’s brilliant, I’m that guy’s double,’ so I text him, I’m like, ‘Thanks very much dude, you’ve just made this even harder,’” Holland, who’s worked with Hemsworth since 2013, said on Australian morning radio show Fitzy and Wippa. “I train with him a lot, we train all the time, we’re on the same diet regime and training. He’s the biggest though he’s ever been, so I have to be the biggest I’ve ever been, which is a challenge but I’m up for it”:

The death-defying stunts mean Holland Hanton can’t get health or life insurance cover.

Hemsworth eats seven meals a day and they need to be at the right time, which means his stunt double has to do the same. “Every two hours we are eating, it’s become a chore, I don’t enjoy eating at all, every two hours it’s like get calories in, training twice a day, it’s full on,” he told the show. “We’re training so much, we are packing on so much size, it’s difficult on the body. I find carrying the extra weight is difficult and hard to maintain on the ligaments.”

This is Holland:

Extremely ripped! Here’s Hemsworth:

Good lord. He must miss the fat suit.

Thor: Love and Thunder comes out on February 11, 2022.

(Via the New Zealand Herald)

Just a month and some change into 2021 and already, things in the world of pop culture have gotten pretty wild. That’s why it’s such a good thing that our resident pop culture gurus AJ Lodge and Naz Perez are here to navigate this terrain. (Hey, those Lady Gaga Hunger Games brooches are sharp!)

The hosts broke down the biggest news in the world of entertainment for a brand new edition of Culture Quick Bites where they marveled over Bernie Sanders’ mittens meme-age, tried to figure out TikTok’s Sea Shanty craze, and cried over their Dunkin Donuts iced coffees at the news of Ben Affleck and Ana De Armas’ break-up …

Okay fine, only AJ took the Ben-Ana split hard.

The duo hyped up Disney+’s WandaVision and its many confusing Easter eggs, debated who could possibly fill Alex Trebek’s shoes on Jeopardy, and made it painfully clear that the whole show was filmed before the Super Bowl matchup between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — though we’re sure the Weeknd’s halftime show will be fire either way. Oh, and if you were thinking about applying to be Cardi B’s chauffeur after she showed love to Olivia Rodrigo’s break-up track, “Driver’s License,” just know you’ll have some stiff competition from one of them.

Watch all of the biggest pop culture moments in the video above.

Smashing a guitar on stage is a time-honored tradition among artists who are financially steady enough to be able to easily replace their axe. During the second-biggest musical moment of the weekend (there was some sports-related concert yesterday), Phoebe Bridgers made her Saturday Night Live debut and made it in a big way by destroying her six-string live on the air. It turns out that it wasn’t exactly how it looked, though.

Bridgers smashed her guitar on a monitor on stage, which prompted one follower to tweet, “It’s the monitor I was upset about. So nice.” Bridgers responded, “they made me a fake one to break lol.”

Elsewhere, Jason Isbell responded some of the backlash Bridgers received (a minority opinion, for sure) after the destruction, tweeting, “That was like an 85 dollar guitar she smashed come on guys.” Bridgers added, “I told [guitar maker] danelectro I was going to do it and they wished me luck and told me they’re hard to break.”

Meanwhile, Bridgers retweeted some of her favorite tweets about her SNL performance and a lot of them are pretty funny. A personal favorite is a reply to a tweet that reads, “Why did this woman, Phoebe Bridgers, destroy her guitar on SNL? I mean, I didn’t care much for the song either, but that seemed extra.” The response: “did phoebe’s guitar write this.”

So, check those out below.

There’s nothing like a common enemy to unite two former foes, and that appears to be what’s happening with Stormy Daniels and ex-Trump attorney and fixer Michael Cohen. These are strange times indeed, given that (less than two years ago) Stormy was suing Cohen for defamation related to her claims about an alleged sexual encounter with Donald Trump. Cohen is now spending his post-prison days doing the podcast thing while serving out the remainder of his three sentence. His joint is called Mea Culpa With Michael Cohen, and surprise, surprise, he’s expressed regret for the “needless pain” he caused to the former exotic dancer.

Throughout their discussion, it’s apparent that both Cohen and Daniels regret their time in Trump’s orbit. Where Cohen is concerned, that regret is quite tangible, since Trump bypassed him for a pardon, yet Stormy is haunted by memories that shall never go away. One can only imagine what’s seared into her brain, even though (as highlighted by the Associated Press) the graphic part of it lasted less than two minutes. Oh boy:

She calls the encounter “the worst 90 seconds of my life, for sure, because it just made me hate myself.” While she did not feel “physically threatened,” she said she had not expected to have sex with Trump and, at one point, thought about how to escape the room, thinking “I could definitely outrun him.”

She repressed details of the rendezvous for years, she said, adding the dynamics only came into focus after she saw the movie “Bombshell” about the sexual harassment women underwent in meetings with former Fox News executive Roger Ailes. “I didn’t say anything for years because I didn’t remember,” she said.

Daniels added that her current taste for ghost hunting doesn’t scare her nearly as much as what her Trump encounter ended up costing her. “I’ve been face to face with evil in the most intimate way,” Daniels added. “Demons don’t scare me anymore.” Of the publicity that turned into a monetary nightmare for her, Daniels added, “Overall, if I could just wave a magic wand and make everything go back to the way it was before, I would absolutely do that.”

Judges have, at various points, ordered Trump and Daniels to pay legal fees racked up by the other, and her battle isn’t over yet. As noted during the podcast, there still might be more to come from the U.S. Supreme Court. “I’ve already lost everything,” she told Cohen. “so I’m taking it all the way.” (Damn, those 90 seconds of hell can stick.)

(Via Associated Press, Business Insider & Mea Culpa With Michael Cohen)

The Weeknd’s After Hours is an ongoing event in a way that few albums have ever been. Yes, he started releasing singles from it in 2019 and dropped the album itself in 2020, which is all pretty standard stuff. All the while, though, he has been building a narrative that extends beyond the actual 56 minutes of audio on the record.

Through his songs, videos, and public appearances, The Weeknd has been telling a story, a long-running bit to which he has shown unwavering commitment. His antics have generated a lot of brow-raising attention in recent days due to The Weeknd’s appearance, specifically the plastic surgery-altered look he first presented in his “Save Your Tears” video. This look didn’t pop up out of nowhere, but was instead a wild progression from start to now.

Now that The Weeknd is fresh off performing at halftime of the Super Bowl, it seems like an appropriate time to run through how he went from first putting on his red suit to where he stands today.

November 2019 — The Weeknd introduces his red-suit look with “Heartless” and “Blinding Lights”

The Weeknd kicked off the After Hours era with the album’s lead single, “Heartless,” which he released on November 27, 2019. Two days later, he released “Blinding Lights,” which is improbably but understandably still near the top of the charts all this time later. The promotional images for those singles were the public’s introduction to The Weeknd’s new aesthetic: short afro, big glasses, and red suit.

In early December, The Weeknd shared his video for “Heartless,” which launched the de facto After Hours cinematic universe. In the clip, he has a wild night in a casino and starts to lose control after licking a psychedelic toad. Soon after, he put on the first in a series of innovative late-night TV performances with a fourth-wall-breaking rendition of “Heartless,” in which he performed the song while working his way to the Colbert stage, eventually making it there just in time for the song to be over.

January 2020 to August 2020 — Rough shape

As was the case for much of the rest of the world, 2020 was when things started going wrong for The Weeknd… or rather, just for his character and not real-life Abel Tesfaye, who had as prosperous a year as anybody. On January 21, he released his “Blinding Lights” video, in which he emerges from a night out with a face covered in cuts and bruises. A couple of days later, he performed the song on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and was seemingly still recovering from his wounds, as he had a streak of fresh blood on the side of his face and a bandage on the bridge of his nose.

That’s a look he maintained for a while with some tweaks here and there, as he appeared to be in similar condition in his “After Hours” short film, while performing on Saturday Night Live in March, in the “Until I Bleed Out” video, in his animated “Snowchild” visual, and while performing at the VMAs in August 2020,

March 2020 and October 2020 — The Weeknd loses his head

This is where it starts to seem that maybe the story The Weeknd is trying to tell isn’t told in an entirely linear way or at least isn’t presented in strict chronological order. On March 23, he released a video for “In Your Eyes,” and that visual ends The Weeknd being decapitated by an axe (which, glass half full, was at least an efficient way to get beheaded). Then, on October 22, that head turns up on a neighborhood street in the “Too Late” video, in which it is eventually attached to a new body. Between those two points, The Weeknd made plenty of public appearances and released videos with his head intact.

So who knows: Maybe the After Hours story isn’t entirely linear, maybe the decapitation arc is a side story that’s not completely canon, or maybe I should stop being so nitpicky and just enjoy things.

November 2020 — Under the knife

On November 22, The Weeknd performed at the American Music Awards, and some major progression (or regression, depending on your point of view) began, as pretty much all of The Weeknd’s face was covered in bandages. He explained the look in a recent interview, saying, “The significance of the entire head bandages is reflecting on the absurd culture of Hollywood celebrity and people manipulating themselves for superficial reasons to please and be validated.”

After the beating his face had been through, it was understandable that his visage could use a little TLC. “A little” is a gross understatement for what we saw next, though.

January 2021 — The Weeknd’s new face

The situation came to a head with the “Save Your Tears” video on January 5 — and what a head it was. In the clip, The Weeknd introduced his transformation, which looked like the end result of configuring the most extreme face possible while making a custom NBA 2K player. All of his features were wildly exaggerated, but the look was convincing enough to make some people believe it was real. He has since made public appearances where he looks like the Abel Tesfaye we all know and love, though, and the person behind the “plastic surgery” explained how the prosthetics came together.

February 2021 — The Super Bowl halftime show

Ahead of his big performance, The Weeknd noted that his halftime show was part of the After Hours narrative universe, saying, “I will still incorporate some of the storyline. It’s a very cohesive story I’ve been telling throughout this era and throughout this year. So the story will continue.” So, if what happened during halftime was “canon,” as it were, then it appears The Weeknd’s journey of facial transformation is over, at least for now.

Throughout his performance, The Weeknd was back to his old self, his face free of alterations, bandages, and the like. He made a nod to his under-the-knife work, though, as he was joined by many dozens of bandaged backup dancers at various points during the show.

Saying that something positive was the perfect analogy for 2020 is a tired trope at this point (especially since that year is gone), but in a way, The Weeknd’s After Hours look really did mirror the pandemic: It had a lot of twists that nobody saw coming and gradually became a trainwreck from which we couldn’t look away. The big difference, though, is that this odyssey is something we actually enjoyed and want to see continue into 2021.

Elon Musk just sent the price of another cryptocurrency soaring, but this time, he’s not joking around. Tesla announced on Monday morning that it has invested $1.5 billion into Bitcoin, causing the price to reach a record high of $43,725.51. It was a bold move by the electric car company as it lays down future plans to accept the crypto coin as payment. Via Bloomberg:

The electric-car market leader said in a filing Monday that it made the bet on Bitcoin after updating its investment policy last month to allow the company to invest in digital assets as well as gold bullion and gold exchange-traded funds. “We expect to begin accepting Bitcoin as a form of payment for our products in the near future, subject to applicable laws and initially on a limited basis,” Tesla said in the securities filing.

Last week, Musk caused waves in the crypto world by pumping up DogeCoin, which was a joke currency created to mock Bitcoin. However, it’s popularity and price rose significantly during the GameStop stock surge thanks to Musk repeatedly posting memes about the coin. That said, Musk has since clarified that his non-stop Doge posting is just for laughs, and he knows the real money is in Bitcoin.

“Speaking on social audio app Clubhouse on Feb. 1, Musk said he’s a supporter of Bitcoin and thinks it’s ‘a good thing.’ He added that his comments on Dogecoin were meant as jokes,” Bloomberg reports.

Doge saw another spike in price thanks to Snoop Dogg and Gene Simmons tweeting about the coin, and of course, Musk couldn’t resist jumping in. Despite Tesla’s massive investment in Bitcoin, Musk is still going hard on the Doge memes on Twitter.

(Via Bloomberg)

R&B musician and actress Chloe Bailey, half of the Grammy-nominated duo Chloe x Halle, recently opened up about her attention-grabbing, grown-ish social media posts via Instagram Live. The 22-year-old says she’s received comments ranging from support regarding her “new image” to full-on slut-shaming for her confident dance videos.

“[Dance and music] is where I find my confidence,” she says in the video. “It really means a lot to me when I can finally get to a place where I [can] share who I really am.” Many detractors of her uploads have collectively failed to recognize that — despite coming into the public eye as a teenager — Bailey is now a woman in control, noticeable not just through her posts, but in her work. Chloe x Halle’s latest album Ungodly Hour was praised for exploring more adult themes, and in an interview with Billboard, Chloe notes that the project’s title represents “loving every layer of ourselves” — such as the “good side” and the “naughty side.”

Unfortunately, Black women are often seen as “doing too much” when the world is not comfortable bearing witness to their autonomous thoughts and presentation. Destructive stereotypes regarding Black feminine sexuality, demeanor, and agency have been propagated for centuries, and these harmful ideas continue to spread through inaccurate, narrow-minded thinking. But with Chloe x Halle’s music serving as a reflection of their growth, they join a long line of Black female musicians whose work captures their journey of self-acceptance.

Black female artists have expertly risen above pain with music about emotional and physical self-love — a radical act in and of itself. As new ways to consume popular music spread during the early 20th century, these musicians have used their careers to reclaim the attributes society has been conditioned to fear about them, such as inner pride, unapologetic sexual freedom, and awareness of uneven power structures. Black women in music being comfortable with the skin they’re in provides not only a therapeutic platform for them but also an enlightening, edifying one for fans who may feel similarly.

In the 1920s and ‘30s, “Mother of the Blues” Ma Rainey’s illustrious ownership of her Blackness, femininity, and queerness was as acclaimed as her catalog. During the Civil Rights era, Nina Simone’s 1965 album I Put A Spell On You introduced a lighthearted side to the radical artist, especially through the song “Feeling Good.” Her emotionally-emancipated performance amplifies the necessity of joy amidst adversity, which resonates strongly within the Black community.

Black female artists across genres in the ‘70s and ‘80s continued to release art pertaining to unapologetic self-love, such as Diana Ross’ “I’m Coming Out,” Patti LaBelle’s “New Attitude” and Whitney Houston’s “Greatest Love Of All.” Then, in the late ‘80s and ‘90s with hip-hop and rap’s ascension, Black women’s overt reclamation of their sexual power brought self-love to new heights.

Queen Latifah, Salt N’ Pepa, and TLC widened the cultural lens of the genre’s notoriously misogynistic purview with “Ladies First,” “None Of Your Business,” and “Ain’t 2 Proud 2 Beg”; all songs kept it real about independence, strength, and desire. The late ‘90s also provided a balanced look at the nuanced layers of Black female sexuality. Where Lauryn Hill and Missy Elliott created work regarding love, power, and sex without showing skin, Lil Kim and Foxy Brown released similar content while dressing provocatively. Both approaches show that Black women have the agency to decide how they want to portray self-love and confidence, with neither negating the way she views herself as a whole.

Black female self-acceptance in the 21st century is a combination of mental fortitude, emotional assurance, and physical pride. In the 2000s, India.Arie let us know she loves herself — flaws and all — with “Video,” and Alicia Keys and Jill Scott similarly released content with straightforward honesty, like “Superwoman” and “Golden.” When “Black Girl Magic” was brought into the lexicon during the 2010s, Janelle Monáe, Solange and Lizzo purveyed these ideas with fearless tracks such as “Q.U.E.E.N,” “Don’t Touch My Hair,” and “Good As Hell.” Beyoncé continues to release work regarding Black beauty and confidence with culture-shifting songs and projects like “***Flawless,” Lemonade, and Black Is King. As with women rappers, some of these musicians wear revealing outfits or perform in a sexual manner — and still make their points.

Through the examples of Black female musicians — in addition to those of strong women in their own lives — one can hope that more Black women will find the confidence to be themselves unapologetically. Regardless of society’s damaging generalizations, it’s integral for Black women to relish in their power on all fronts, not only to prove something to themselves but to inspire others and shift the way the world views Black women in general.

“For every woman out there, don’t change who you are to make society feel comfortable,” Chloe Bailey tearfully, joyfully, resiliently concludes in her Instagram Live session. “I really love who I am. I’m not going to change who I am.”

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