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Conflicted, the debut film from indie Buffalo rap label Griselda Records, is not an example of great cinema. To its credit, it isn’t really trying to be. It is a fairly standard tale of street life, following the pattern set by the label’s music from rappers Benny The Butcher, Conway The Machine, and Westside Gunn. It’s also a relatively serviceable vehicle for the group’s music via the film’s soundtrack, which plays over about half its scenes, showcasing crew’s collaborations with artists and producers from outside their usual, self-contained circle. They even sport their own merchandise in the movie, despite two of the three core members actually starring in it as pivotal drivers of the plot.

In that way, though, Conflicted is more than just a two-hour long commercial for Griselda’s latest compilation. It’s a part of a proud tradition within hip-hop of rap labels independently producing their own films, just because they can and just to say they did it. Cash Money Records, No Limit, and Roc-A-Fella Records have all bypassed the major studio system and Hollywood itself in order to put people in the producers, directors, and actors’ chairs who might never ordinarily be afforded the opportunity to say they made a movie. While the quality of these films varies wildly, in their own ways they are classics to those of us who grew up looking up to these rappers, producers, and flashy music executives who came up in the places we did and told stories that were familiar to us, if not extravagantly crafted.

When Master P and No Limit Records released I’m Bout It in 1997, no independent rap label had ever attempted anything like it before. While there had certainly been films about hip-hop and starring rappers, such as 1985’s Krush Groove and Run-DMC’s Tougher Than Leather in 1988, these films were produced by professional film studios (Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema, respectively). They starred rappers and told stories similar to those of the artists’ music, and they were made with relatively big budgets and distributed via traditional means, screening in theaters nationwide as a way to recoup what ultimately amounted to elaborate marketing campaigns for the artists featured therein. They even both feature extended performance sequences, making them more like musicals or even super-extended music videos designed more to show off the music than any of the featured players’ acting chops.

This isn’t to say that when I’m Bout It hit the streets, it was hailed as a cinematic masterpiece. The film barely has a Rotten Tomatoes page to this day as it garnered few if any professional reviews and released directly to video, preventing it from making a splash at the box office. But, as noted in a 2017 retrospective in the Houston Press, it was an achievement for other reasons. The audacity of Master P’s gamble — creating a low-budget, feature-length film, written, starring, and directed by what was effectively a bunch of amateurs — paid huge dividends when it came to brand building. Suddenly, No Limit Records wasn’t just an underground rap label from New Orleans. It was a bonafide multimedia conglomerate — at least, in the eyes of the rap media who covered the film and the fans who ate up the $20 copies of the VHS tape at record and video stores upon its release.

I’m Bout It proved that it could be done and that there were benefits behind doing it. While sales figures for the film are nonexistent, it almost certainly turned a profit; today, it can be found in the Turner Classic Movies library and streamed in the “Black films” sections of streaming services like Tubi. Licensing the rights to the film is undoubtedly lucrative when compared to its obviously minuscule budget, but more importantly, it’s fondly remembered by a generation of hip-hop fans as our own, hood Criterion Classic. Not only was No Limit able to follow up the success of I’m Bout It with a string of similarly low-budget releases throughout the late ‘90s and early 2000s, but the proof of concept was also enough to get one of those films, 1998’s I Got The Hook Up, a theatrical release through Dimension Films. It grossed over $10 million at the box office on a budget of just $3 million. It’s also important because it was the wedge that opened the door for other rap labels, while the promise of similar successes tantalized them to follow suit.

Soon, Roc-A-Fella Records, the then-burgeoning brainchild of Dame Dash, Jay-Z, and Kareem “Biggs” Burke, had its own string of cheaply-made crime dramas out in the world, beginning with 1998’s Streets Is Watching. While that film strung together Jay’s music videos into a tenuous plot, the group truly nailed narrative storytelling with a spate of movies released over the course of the early 2000s. With State Property, Paper Soldiers (the film debut of Kevin Hart), and the label’s magnum opus, Paid In Full, Roc-A-Fella proved that low-budget didn’t have to mean low-quality. That isn’t to say that all those films were “good,” per se, but they made money, added prestige to the label’s slick presentation as a big-budget, well-rounded enterprise, and continued to put independent filmmakers to work without waiting for a say-so from a Spielberg or a Bruckheimer. The stories were ones that spoke to the inner-city experience, from the perspective of people who lived it. And one of those stories became the standard against which plenty of these narratives are compared to this day.

Paid In Full, the 1980s crack-era period film Roc-A-Fella released in 2002, is the very definition of a cult classic. It was also the moment the Roc put it all together and made a movie that could stand the test of time. Directed by Drumline’s Charles Stone III, the film displays a polish that critical favorite hood classics before it had while maintaining the grit and realism of its indie rap label-produced forebears. It also smartly put established actors in the lead roles, with Mekhi Phifer and Wood Harris depicting Mitch and Ace, the twin cores of the film, and relegating its sole rapper, Cam’ron, to a supporting role that made the best use of his talents. Rather than demanding drama or stoicism, Cam is allowed to be funny, to show off the personality that made him such a charismatic figure of aughties rap.

The laughs here were intentional, unlike in many other hood movies, making them a modern-day fixture of social media meme-ology. With endless quotables now seemingly on the tips of hip-hop fans’ tongues at a moment’s notice (my personal favorite: “N****s get shot every day, b”), Paid In Full occupies a unique position in the continuum of hip-hop’s everlasting flirtation with the silver screen. It was a lesson Roc-A-Fella took into its State Property sequel a few years later, allowing Beanie Sigel to play up the funny and N.O.R.E. to portray a character named — I shit you not — El Pollo Loco. It’s a lesson more of these films could stand to learn. A little levity lightens up the grim fare and allows rappers to be entertaining, bringing the charm that makes us fall in love with them on records to the screen.

So, where does Conflicted land within this continuum? Look, it’s no Goodfellas. More of the movie is given over to the characters delivering wooden, on-the-nose dialogue about their emotional states and the film’s themes than actually showing us these things. The music, while meeting the usual Griselda standards, isn’t very well utilized, either blaring over montage sequences just randomly blasting in the backgrounds of scenes where no dialogue needs to be heard (and it’s pretty on-the-nose too). And there’s a truly ill-advised rape scene that could have been left on the cutting room floor along with a lot of filler shots. But the point isn’t to make great art, despite the protestations of Westside Gunn (if you’re reading this, please, no smoke is required) and the rest of the Buffalo cohort. The point is that they made a movie that showed the world Buffalo in all its glory and downfall, right down to their consonant-mangling accents (hearing one character refer to her business card, then the library discombobulated my brain for a full thirty seconds). It’s a story that couldn’t and wouldn’t be told any other way. It’s the story, for better or worse, of Griselda Records, and in that, it’s a triumph.

After 2020 was rather tumultuous year for video games, with situations in the world forcing studios everywhere to figure out how to remotely create something fantastic, there was some hope that 2021 would lead to a more normal year. Early signs, unfortunately, point to no, serving as a stark reminder that the waves of 2020 are going to be felt well beyond last year in the gaming industry.

We’re already starting to see some of it from what was supposed to be a major 2021 release. Hogwarts Legacy, the highly-anticipated Harry Potter RPG, is now going to come out in 2022. This is presumably to make up for all the time they lost in 2020 adjusting to changing landscapes.

Video games are incredibly difficult to make, especially in the modern age. It’s in many ways a miracle that any video game comes out at all with the constant moving parts, changes in scope, absurd work hours, bugs, quality analysis for those bugs, internal reviews, polishing, and everything else that goes into the process. It’s all held together with duct tape and staples, which was enough until the last decade or so. Yes, video games have never been perfect, but generally, a video game would come out and work. How much you enjoyed it was generally more due to artistic vision than if the game itself worked.

As video games have grown, the industry itself has struggled to adapt to the new technology. Simply getting by on hopes and prayers doesn’t work the way it used to, and the results have been mixed. Masterpieces still come out every year, but they’re frequently the result of endless crunching with absurdly high budgets. Over the last 10 years, the new video game norm is to crunch as much as possible, hope the game works, and even if it doesn’t, you’ll just send out patches until it does work while hoping it was rated high enough in critic review scores that you can get a bonus for the endless crunching. If you’re lucky, you got overtime pay for your work.

None of this is to sound like an old man and say video games were better in the old days. Crunch always existed, releases have always been imperfect, and some bugs would get fixed in follow-up prints of games depending on when you bought the disc. The industry has never been perfect, but it has felt like it has been reaching a critical mass as of late, one that a year like 2020 put on full display in all the wrong ways.

No better example of that was Cyberpunk 2077, a game that was originally teased all the way back in 2012, promised developers and fans they wouldn’t crunch to make it, did that anyway, and the result was a broken mess that PlayStation removed from its shop because developer CD Projekt issued refunds since the game was so broken. None of this is to say that the only reason Cyberpunk was bad was because of 2020 — a game that broken has deep systemic issues from the start of development — but it is a great example of how a modern game can fail when it follows modern development standards.

Now take that kind of production cycle and apply it to any other studio in 2020. If video games are that hard to make in general, when you add a worldwide pandemic on top of that, it’s pretty surprising that they’re still coming out at all. This is why it shouldn’t be surprising to anyone when games are being delayed in 2021. Hogwarts Legacy is the first major release to be delayed, and I strongly suspect it will not be the last. Developers essentially lost an entire year of normal development time for their games, and 2021 is going to be a mulligan year that gives them their time back.

We’re still going to have games this year, don’t worry. However, let’s cut the devs a little slack when the inevitable delays start. They didn’t want to delay it. They just want to make you the video game possible.

With a new album on the way, Foo Fighters are in the full promotional swing. So far this year, they’ve released two singles, “No Son Of Mine” and “Waiting On A War,” the latter of which just dropped yesterday. The band was the musical guest on Jimmy Kimmel Live! last night, and they performed their two newest songs.

“Waiting On A War,” getting its live debut on Kimmel, is the kind of building song that sounded like it would take off live, and it turns out it totally does, especially during its big ending. “No Son Of Mine,” meanwhile, is more of a constant rock onslaught, and it too comes alive on stage.

When releasing “Waiting On A War,” Grohl wrote of it, “Last fall, as I was driving my 11 year old daughter to school, she turned to me and asked, ‘Daddy, is there going to be a war?’ My heart sank in my chest as I looked into her innocent eyes, because I realized that she was now living under that same dark cloud of a hopeless future that I had felt 40 years ago. I wrote ‘Waiting On a War’ that day. Everyday waiting for the sky to fall. Is there more to this than that? Is there more to this than just waiting on a war? Because I need more. We all do. This song was written for my daughter, Harper, who deserves a future, just as every child does.”

Watch Foo Fighters perform “Waiting On A War” and “No Son Of Mine” on Kimmel above.

Earlier this week, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) went on Instagram Live to discuss the “close encounter” she had with the MAGA rioters during the failed coup at the Capitol building. “It was not an exaggeration to say that many members of the House were nearly assassinated. I didn’t even feel safe going to that extraction point because there were QAnon and white supremacist members of Congress who I felt would disclose my location and create opportunities to allow me to be hurt,” she said. It was a scary moment for Ocasio-Cortez — and, y’know, for democracy — but for Tucker Carlson, it was a pathetic excuse to mock the congresswoman for fearing for her life.

“Here’s the dumbest and narcissist of all of them, the Kim Kardashian of the Congress,” Carlson spewed, referring to AOC. He criticized Ocasio-Cortez for her “revised position” after praising the “heroic” police officers at the Capitol — including the “black and brown officers that were confronting white supremacists and putting [themselves] in harm’s way,” as she said on Instagram — while supporting the defund the police movement. The Fox News host also mocked her “narrowly escaped death” remark:

“Narrowly escaped death,” Carlson sarcastically declared, mimicking AOC’s description of the terrifying scenes at the Capitol. “When the most harrowing thing in life is pass freshman sociology at Boston University, every day is a brand new drama. Sandy’s heart is still beating fast. But she likes the cops now, despite the fact they’re white supremacists. What a difference a day makes.”

Someone needs to give Tucker Carlson — the same Tucker Carlson who once whined about a “chilling” and “upsetting” protest outside his home; the same Tucker Carlson who mocks AOC for attending Boston University when he graduated from Trinity College, a private liberal arts college; the same Tucker Carlson who takes pride in his ignorance of the things he limply mocks — a wedgie. At least Twitter gave him a figurative wedgie.

(Via the Huffington Post)

There are albums in the indie rock and alternative rock realm that were influential and beloved at the time of their release, but have since been lost to the test of time and sadly — some might say shamefully — left out of the widely accepted canon of the genre. On the latest episode of Indiecast, Steven Hyden and Ian Cohen are looking to right these wrongs with the creation the Indiecast Hall Of Fame. This week, Hyden and Cohen are using the episode as a way to give proper recognition to albums they love, and to make the case for why they remain important in the lore of indie rock history to this day. Included on the list are records from Counting Crows, The Promise Ring, Afghan Whigs, and more.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Cohen has been revisiting Tokyo Police Club’s Champ in honor of its upcoming tenth anniversary. Looking ahead, Hyden is excited about Drunk Tank Pink, the forthcoming effort from UK post-punk outfit Shame.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 22 on Apple Podcasts and Spotify below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. Stay up to date and follow us on Instagram and Twitter.

Anthony Mackie might be playing coy about taking the mantle of Captain America from Chris Evans, but he’s not shy about claiming another title: “America’s Ass.” While stopping by KFC Radio to promote his new Netflix movie, Outside the Wire, Mackie was asked about the title bestowed on Evans’ Cap during Avengers: Endgame. Without admitting that he’ll be the new Captain America, Mackie joked that he has a better butt than Evans and will gladly put it to a test even if the competition will be tight:

“Chris and I laugh and joke about it all the time. I have a much better ass than Chris Evans. So one day we’re gonna do the biking shorts test, or the compression shorts test, and we’re gonna have everybody choose, which is America’s ass. I think it’s gonna be 50/50 split. Some people like their pizza lightly toasted, some people like a little bit of char on their pizza, you know what I’m saying? So it’s all about how you like your buns cooked.”

You can watch Mackie talk about becoming America’s Ass below:

Despite admitting last year that he’s honored to be taking on the “monumental” task of being the Marvel Cinematic Universe’s first Black Captain America, Mackie has been tempering fans expectations of what to expect when The Falcon and the Winter Soldier arrives on Disney+ in March. “The show, the idea of the show is basically, you know, and at the end of Endgame, Cap decided he was going into retirement and he asked me if I would take up the shield, but at no point in time did I agree to or say that I would be Captain America,” Mackie told Collider. “So, the show walks the line of who is going to take up the shield and who’s going to be Captain America if Steve isn’t coming back.”

In an interesting wrinkle, a few days after Mackie made those remarks, Deadline reported that Chris Evans is in talks to return as Captain America. Granted, Evans quickly downplayed the news, but he didn’t deny it either, which means maybe, just maybe, there’s a Captain America Ass-Off in Marvel fans’ future.

(Via KFC Radio)

If you listen to enough podcasts, you start to see what a small world the entertainment industry can be. Lisa Kudrow offers one such example. To wit: I learned from Conan O’Brien’s podcast that Lisa Kudrow broke into the business thanks to her brother’s best friend, former SNL star Jon Lovitz, who helped Kudrow get into the Groundlings. In the Groundlings, Kudrow met and briefly dated Conan O’Brien, and in fact helped him land Late Night back in 1993, a detail I learned from Dax Shepard’s podcast. Meanwhile, I learned from Rob Lowe’s podcast that Lovitz’s friendship with Kudrow also made him friends with Courteney Cox, which led to a great story about Brad Pitt botching a housesitting gig and letting go of a dog that killed Lovitz’s cat.

Fittingly, it was Lisa Kudrow’s turn this time to appear on Literally! with Rob Lowe, where Kudrow again talked very fondly of Jon Lovitz (who was the originally envisioned along with Dana Carvey as the leads in Michael Bay’s Bad Boys). Kudrow also talked about the eventual Friends reunion on HBO Max, saying that they had already pre-taped one segment. “I pre-shot something already so we’re definitely doing it because I already shot a little something,” she told Lowe, adding that “it’ll be great.”

Interestingly, she seemed less interested in talking about Friends than she was in discussing a Rob Lowe sitcom that ran for only one season back in 2015, but that became something of a cult-hit on this very site before it was so unfairly canceled.

“I loved The Grinder,” Kudrow exclaimed during the podcast. “What happened?! What happened?! I loved it. You were hilarious. Fred Savage, fantastic. Every human on that show was great. I loved it. I don’t know what happened,” Kudrow continued.

Lowe agreed, saying that after The Grinder was canceled, he’d given up on comedy. “I’m not going to have a better fit. I’m never going to have a better show,” Lowe thought. “Every moment of it was perfect.”

“It was so good,” Kudrow added. “It’s so funny. It’s ridiculous and funny. That’s what made me go, ‘Yeah, yeah. I’m done with the networks.’ I can’t do it anymore, because they won’t use their eyes and ears. All they’re looking at is a spreadsheet.” Kudrow mused, upset that networks seemed to have lost their ability to wait for audiences to find good shows.

“I’m out,” she said, punctuating her disinterested in the network television landscape while also adding, “And they canceled Last Man on Earth. That was such a great show, too!”

It’s true, too. Aside from an appearance on an episode of The Good Place, Kudrow has stayed completely away from network television since the demise of The Grinder. I don’t blame her. Grinder was fantastic, and maybe instead of rebooting so many shows, networks should start bringing back great series that they never gave a chance to catch on in the first place. They can start with Grinder and Enlisted.

Source: Literally with Rob Lowe!

In December, Cardi B launched a new show on Facebook’s Messenger Watch Together feature, Cardi Tries. The show is easy to figure out based on the title, as it sees Cardi trying out things that are new to her and out of her usual wheelhouse.

She has expert guests on the program to help guide her through these experiences, and given Cardi’s casual, joke-heavy personality, these guests should know what they’re getting into. The focus of the program is on Cardi being a fish out of water and having fun in unfamiliar environments, so it would be fair to assume that she might not follow (or even know) all the rules of whatever she’s doing or take every aspect of it super seriously. That said, a chef got pretty annoyed with her on this week’s new episode.

Cardi shared a clip from the new installment, in which she tries cooking. In the brief clip, Cardi puts the finishing touches on some sushi she made, and she eats some of it while expressing how proud she is of herself and how tasty her creation is. Chef Vallerie Castillo, who was guiding Cardi through the process, didn’t take that well: Seemingly annoyed, Castillo said in a talking head shot, “I caught her sneaking something. I don’t let staff do it and I can’t believe she did that.”

Cardi doesn’t seem to be too bothered by the chef’s disgust with her kitchen etiquette, though, as Cardi captioned her post, “Chef Val was so mad that I kept eating the food. But what can I say the food taste good.”

There are similar incidents elsewhere in the full episode. At one point, Cardi messes up a sushi roll she made, and when told that the restaurant wouldn’t be able to serve it to their customers, she quickly popped it in her mouth and ate it. Castillo didn’t care for that, as she told the camera, “Cardi’s eating as she’s cooking. I told her not to, but she’s Cardi B, so what am I gonna do, right?” That said, Castillo was impressed by a sushi boat Cardi put together, noting, “Actually, that wasn’t too bad for a beginner.”

Watch the clip above and check out the full Cardi Tries episode here.

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

Anthony Mackie is clear: he is not at all saying he’s the new Captain America. We will all have to watch The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to find out if Mackie’s Sam Wilson decided to accept that title. But, after Captain America creator Jack Kirby’s son, Neal, put out a blistering statement after seeing Captain America paraphernalia at the attack on the Capitol, Mackie isn’t shy about what Captain America represents and what it means to even be associated with that role in terms of being a role model, which is a pretty heavy thing for an actor.

Captain America is the jumping-off point in the conversation, but the truth is, what happened two Wednesdays ago affected Mackie as a Black man living in America. To see the hate on full display, for Mackie, he hopes it’s finally the eye-opener people need to understand what’s going on out there. And an emotional Mackie has a lot to say about that.

The reason I’m talking to Mackie is because he has a new movie out on Friday called Outside the Wire on Netflix, which, by the time you’re reading this, you can watch. Mackie basically gets to play the Terminator. He’s a U.S. military-created robot named Leo who has some pretty wonderful ’90s action movies-esque one-liners. And his mission is stop eastern European terrorists from destroying the world. Or, maybe, Leo has some ideas of his own. In fact, Mackie calls this his tribute to Wesley Snipes’s movie of the ’90s. Which, of course, led us into a discussion about the plot of Passenger 57.

Ahead, we probably have a bit too much fun talking about Passenger 57 before things get serious when talking about what happened at the Capitol. And the New Orleans, Louisiana native doesn’t take it lightly at all that he knows kids are going to be looking up to him and what he represents. (Well, other than his own kids, who don’t think he’s cool at all.)

I was doing some research before talking to you and came across a headline from 2013, “Anthony Mackie Calls Chris Evans a Stud.” I laughed out loud because I haven’t seen fun headlines like that in what seems like a very long time.

He is my stud muffin. I miss him.

That would never be a headline today.

Right, when we were able to laugh?

There was one day in 2013 where you calling Chris Evans “a stud” was news.

That’s funny.

In Outside the Wire, you basically play the Terminator.

Oh yeah! When I first read the script, that was something that stuck out to me as something I was excited about. Because, growing up, being a movie fan, I loved those movies. As a young actor, you always say who you want to be when you grow up as an actor. And my answer was always Wesley Snipes. I feel like this movie was the quintessential Wesley Snipes movie. This is my Mr. Holland’s Opus to Wesley Snipes.

So this is your Passenger 57.

Passenger 57, exactly. Which I watched last week and it’s still great.

Yeah, I watched it, too. It’s on cable all the time recently.

Yeah!

I forgot about the beginning when he’s teaching a hijacking simulation and the flight attendant tries to be a hero and they are at odds. Then he just happens to be on a real flight with her that gets hijacked.

[Laughs] Right, right!

Oh, it’s great.

It really is. My favorite part, which I forgot, so the airplane that they’re on lands in Louisiana.

Oh yeah.

The police officers are the most country, hick, Louisiana police officers in the history of film.

Very true.

But then all of a sudden, they become friends. I’m like, it’s an amazing movie. It’s an amazing movie.

They think Wesley Snipes is the terrorist at first. They’re blaming him for everything.

Right, and they try to arrest him.

Then they become friends.

Exactly.

I miss the casually rated R movie. When an action movie today gets rated R, that’s the marketing, “we are R,” and have to overdo it.

So they can justify. No question. Yeah, that’s 100%. And that’s what’s so funny about it: now everything is so safe, that the idea of what was raunchy and out there 20 years ago, now that’s like “X.”

Speaking of ’90s movies, and I like the title of this movie, but it doesn’t have the ’90s title feel. Why isn’t this called Robot Warrior or something?

The great thing about the title and where the movie comes from, it kind of explains it perfectly. I feel like we don’t make movies anymore that are called Death Trip. Four guys in the car and they’re like, “Let’s take a road trip.” “Where are we going?” “To Death Town.”

Yeah, we don’t see Death Town too often anymore.

You don’t have those punchlines anymore.

That’s true.

With this movie, what keeps it so great and authentic is it has that quality, and that feeling of just a feel-good popcorn movie.

You get some great lines. I laughed out loud at “I’m special enough for both of us.”

That’s what I’m saying, man! It goes along the lines of, “Always bet on black.”

Yeah, that line has that feel.

Literally, when we were shooting this, I had so many of those one-liners and I would put one in every scene. And I would tell (director) Mikael Håfström, you have to use one of these, dude. You can’t just not use them. This is gold!

Wait a second, so why wouldn’t he want to use every single one of them? I’m serious. This seems like a no-brainer.

Believe me, we had that argument every day.

You’re a producer, couldn’t you just say, look, these are staying in, buddy.

Nah, he was our fearless leader, so he stuck to his guns. He made the best movie we could possibly make, so I’m happy with it.

My one disappointment when I was watching this, because I’ve been watching a lot of ’90s movies, is the scene where there’s going to be truth serum. But then it was a fake out. But I was just thinking, there are not enough truth serum movies today.

You’re the only person sitting around waiting for truth serum!

We don’t see enough truth serum and we don’t see enough cyanide. Those used to be things we saw all the time.

Yeah, what’s the shit they used to put on the towel and then put over your nose? It was in every movie. They would put it on your nose and you would pass out and they would lay you down. What was that called? That’s what we need in more movies.

It’s on the tip of my tongue. I’m actually Googling, “liquid that knocks you out.”

Right, “Liquid on towel that you put over the person’s nose and mouth and knocks them out.“

Chloroform.

That’s it. Every movie from now on, I want to put a chloroform scene in it.

So chloroform, cyanide and truth serum. If you put three of those things in a movie, we’re off to the races.

I’m in. I’m in. Sign me up.

So, I read your comment when you were asked about The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, about if you’re going to be Captain America or not. And I saw you said, “He gave it to me but I have not accepted this,” which is a great line for you to tell people.

Well, it’s the truth.

“He gave me the shield, but I have not said yes.” But that’s a good way to put it. Now we don’t know because Sam has to figure that out.

Exactly.

So, having said that I am making no assumptions about what happens to Sam. But a pretty serious thing, I don’t know if you saw this, Jack Kirby’s son Neal put out a statement yesterday because he saw people storming the Capitol wearing Captain America gear and he was, rightfully, very offended.

Well, nothing that happened last Wednesday was patriotic or American. Even being a black man, if you look at the history of this country and being a proud American, nothing about that was patriotic or American. And definitely not in any vein, shape, way or form in the life of Captain America would that ever happen.

It just baffles my mind they could take what’s pretty obvious about what that character stands for and twist it into what we saw. There’s a lot to be outraged about and I don’t know how far down this is on the list, but how could anyone think that that’s what that character stands for, even for a second?

Yeah, it’s definitely way down the list with all the other shit that has happened. People don’t know how ugly things are until you see them. And it was like during the Civil Rights March. People didn’t know how bad the racism in this country was until they had the cameras on. Until you saw fire hoses and dogs eating people. You don’t know how devastating and tragic day-to-day life is as a person of color or a woman until you see it. And now that we’ve seen it, you can see that the reaction from people has been very different. Even Mitch McConnell, of all people. If you can get Turtle Mitch to turn his head, it’s a whole different conversation. It’s a whole different ballgame because nobody signed up for that. Everybody signed up for hate, but nobody signed up for that.

We saw how Chris Evans, his persona really kind of formed into realizing how a lot of people look up to him because he played that character. Have you thought about that? Already people look up to Sam. But now, carrying around that shield or having that shield with him, do you think about how all these young people are going to look up to you personally? That seems like a heavy thing for an actor.

Of course. You have to think about that. It’s one of those things, especially being a father of sons, it’s one of those things that’s constantly on your mind. That’s always in the back of your brain. So, of course, you have to think about it and everything: how it will change your life; How it’ll change their lives. I mean, I just wish it would make me cooler to my sons. But they could care less.

Really? How could they care less?

Yeah, they’re just like, let’s play some baseball, we don’t care. My whole goal is to be cool to my sons, and they won’t give it to me at all.

If my father had been doing what you’re doing, I would’ve been pretty impressed. He worked for the telephone company and I was impressed by that.

That’s what I thought!

You need to have a chat. “People think I’m pretty cool for doing this.”

Right. And they’re like, “Nah, you’re just Dad.” Damn, but Dad’s a superhero, no? Dammit. They keep me humble, put it that way.

‘Outside the Wire’ is streaming now on Netflix. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

When Ariana Grande teased two mystery guests who would join her on a remix of “34+35,” fans came up with plenty of theories and were partially right. While the guess of Nicki Minaj turned out to be inaccurate, they were correct about Doja Cat, who appears on the track alongside Grande and Megan Thee Stallion. Those weren’t the only three names on the song, though, as Doja managed to sneak a Tekashi 69 diss into her verse.

Doja kicks off her contribution to the track, “Can we stay up all night? F*ck a jet lag / You bring your fine ass and overnight bag / Add up the numbers or get behind that / Play and rewind that, listen, you’ll find that / I want that six-nine without Tekashi / And I want your body and I make it obvious.”

Doja and Tekashi have had a bit of beef in the past. After some controversial old Doja lyrics generated controversy towards the start of 2020, Tekashi called for her to be cancelled. In the comments of an Instagram post, Tekashi wrote, “She started with the wrong one… give me till tomorrow #canceldoja.” He wrote elsewhere, “Someone called her Doja Dog.” Doja didn’t respond at the time, but now she got her dig in.

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