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Atlanta rising star Yung Baby Tate joins buzzing Australian hip-hop sensation Tkay Maidza to dress up as some of their favorite pop culture icons in the irreverent video for Tkay’s new single “Kim.” The video pays homage to several famous bearers of the name, from the trendsetting rapper to the ubiquitous socialite.

While Tkay dons the crimson ensemble from Lil Kim’s 1997 “Crush On You” video and legendary asymmetrical look worn by the rapper at the 1999 VMAs, Tate instead opts for a costume inspired by the villain Shego from the 2000s animated series Kim Possible, rampaging through a miniature city as she raps a jaunty verse, boasting, “Bank account big, yeah, it’s somethin’ like my ego.”

Tate has plenty of reasons for both. Her buoyant, self-released 2019 debut album Girls was so well-received, she landed prized placements on the 2019 Dreamville compilation Revenge Of The Dreamers and the 2020 video for the song “Don’t Hit Me Right Now” with Bas, Buddy, Cozz, and Guapdad 4000, then she joined 2020 breakout star Flo Milli on her December single “I Am” after signing a label deal with Issa Rae’s Raedio and releasing her After The Rain EP.

Watch Tkay Maidza’s “Kim” video featuring Yung Baby Tate above.

Yung Baby Tate is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

While promoting his latest film Cherry, Tom Holland couldn’t help but get Marvel fans hyped for his third solo Spider-Man film that’s currently in production. Holland called himself “that lucky little sh*t” for getting to star in the epic sequel, which he promises will be one of the biggest standalone movies that the MCU has ever seen. But just like Spidey, Holland managed to dodge and weave attempts to get him to reveal the plot or confirm rumors that the film will address the Multiverse by bringing back previous Spider-Men Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield. Via Variety:

I can say that it’s the most ambitious standalone superhero movie ever made. You sit down, read the script, and see what they’re trying to do, and they’re succeeding. It’s really impressive. I’ve never seen a standalone superhero movie quite like it. And I’m just, you know, again, that lucky little shit who happens to be Spider-Man in it.

Of course, the third Homecoming film is his now Holland’s sixth outing with Marvel, and he’s become quite the expert on getting fans pumped for a full Spidey experience. The actor recently helped unveiled the new “Web-Slingers: A Spider-Man Adventure” ride coming to Disney parks in California and France. Holland praised the ride for actually putting fans in a real location, which is something he didn’t even get when he entered the Marvel universe. “When I first joined playing Spider-Man, I went to Avengers Headquarters and it was just a bunch of green screens. So the fact that there’s going to be a legit place where people can go and visit is pretty awesome,” Holland said in a first-look video. “For me, personally, it’s the most I’ve ever felt like Spider-Man.”

(Via Variety)

Fan voting for the 2021 NBA All-Star Game began this week, and fans have already tallied millions of votes for their favorite players across the league, led by Kevin Durant, LeBron James, and Steph Curry, all of whom have already garnered more than 2 million votes each.

The leaders for the starting units currently are James, Curry, Nikola Jokic, Kawhi Leonard, and Luka Doncic in the West as well as Durant, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Joel Embiid, Bradley Beal, and Kyrie Irving in the East. Each side features three frontcourt players and two guards, though specific positions don’t matter here.

The fan vote, which accounts for 50 percent of the total vote to decide who starts the All-Star Game in each conference, can be conducted on Twitter or through the NBA’s website or app, where they can submit one ballot per day. Media and player voting accounts for 25 percent each, ending with five-player lineups on each side.

Teams are then drafted by captains (the top vote-getters in each conference), at which point conferences are ignored. The two captains go back and forth selecting players from the total 28-player pool until they each have a full squad. The NBA and the players’ union this week agreed to terms on an All-Star Weekend in Atlanta that will likely include some sort of skills competition in addition to the game.

Earlier this year, a song by Hayley Williams leaked. But rather than the track randomly popping up on the internet, Williams actually leaked it herself — on purpose. Under the cover of night, Williams handed a CD containing the track “My Limb” to a fan, instructing them to post it online. Apparently, Williams’ unconventional tactic was a ploy to drum up excitement surrounding a new release, because the singer has just announced her solo sophomore project is arriving this week.

Williams shared the cover art to her upcoming album, Flowers For Vases / Descansos, on her social media, saying that it’s slated for a release Friday. In a note about the project posted to her Instagram Stories, Williams wrote:

“This isn’t really a follow-up to Petals For Armor. If anything, it’s a prequel, or some sort of detour between parts 1 and 2 of Petals. Whatever it is, it has two names: Flowers For Vases and Descansos.

I had written a long and poetic press release but man, after 16 years of being in the music business, 6 albums, and a lot of ‘strategies’ for how to ‘roll-out’ a project in the right way… writing more words in an attempt to describe better words I’ve written for the album at hand just seemed so boring and silly. So I deleted what I had and this is all I’ll leave you with:

-I wrote and performed this album in it’s entirely. That’s a career first for me.
-I recorded it at my home in Nashville, the home at which I’ve resided since Paramore released After Laughter.
-2020 was really hard but I’m alive and so my job is to keep living and help others to do the same.
-Yes, Paramore is still a band.

Hope you enjoy Flowers For Vases / Descansos. If you don’t better luck next time.”

It’s been less than a year since Williams released her debut solo album, Petals For Armor, but she didn’t stop there. Following its release, the singer shared a handful of acoustic tracks in the form of the EP Petals For Armor: Self-Serenades.

Flowers For Vases / Descansos is out 2/5 via Atlantic.

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

Over the years, Evan Rachel Wood has spoken out about being a victim of abuse, and a few days ago, she alleged that Marilyn Manson, with whom she used to be in a relationship, was her abuser. In the days since, the fallout has been swift: Manson’s label dropped him, he was cut from multiple TV shows, and he has been condemned by people like Trent Reznor. Now Phoebe Bridgers has spoken out, detailing an experience she had years ago.

Today, Bridgers wrote on Twitter, “I went to Marilyn Manson’s house when I was a teenager with some friends. I was a big fan. He referred to a room in his house as the ‘r*pe room,’ I thought it was just his horrible frat boy sense of humor. I stopped being a fan. I stand with everyone who came forward.” She added in another tweet, “The label knew, management knew, the band knew. Distancing themselves now, pretending to be shocked and horrified is f*cking pathetic.”

Manson addressed Wood’s allegations a few days ago, writing in a statement, “Obviously, my art and my life have long been magnets for controversy, but these recent claims about me are horrible distortions of reality… My intimate relationships have always been entirely consensual with like-minded partners. Regardless of how — and why — others are now choosing to misrepresent the past, that is the truth.”

With Trump twiddling his thumbs down in Florida (he can’t use them to Tweet anymore after all), the right-wing media needs a new conspiracy-theory-shouting horse to hitch its outrage wagon to, and there’s an obvious frontrunner in this race: the MyPillow guy.

Mike Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow, emerged as Trump’s biggest voter-fraud mouthpiece during the final weeks of his presidency, famously delivering documents suggesting the president invoke martial law in order to overturn the 2020 election. When that didn’t work, Lindell started using his platform, visiting right-wing networks like OAN and Newsmax to tout unproven allegations that Dominion, the tech company that owned machines in Georgia and other states, had somehow tampered with millions of votes. He spread those claims further on Twitter, eventually leading to his suspension (and the deactivation of his company’s account) when the social media site determined his increasingly bizarre statements were a threat to the public.

Which brings us to the current MyPillow Guy controversy: the feud he’s fueling between Fox News knockoffs OANN and Newsmax.

Both right-wing media companies are battling to secure viewership from Trump supporters disenfranchised by Fox News’ lukewarm commitment to sticking to the facts and Lindell seems to be the lynchpin in OAN’s plan for fake news-spewing domination. The network crafted a segment filled with faux outrage over a recent Lindell appearance on Newsmax that ended with one anchor walking off set after “censoring” the CEO’s unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud.

OANN tried to loop its rival network in with big tech “oligarchs halting the flow of information to benefit their own agendas,” claiming Newsmax was no better than Twitter because they demanded facts to backup Lindell’s wilder election allegations. Normally we wouldn’t complain about two right-wing news programs tearing each other apart over the MyPillow guy of all people, but watching these OANN anchors salivate over this chance to sabotage their competitors is kind of like watching the family dog beg for scraps at the dinner table. It’s just sad.

De’Aaron Fox has his eyes on an All-Star nod this season, but that does not mean he thinks the NBA should hold its annual midseason event amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Fox spoke to the media on Wednesday night following the Sacramento Kings’ 116-111 win over the Boston Celtics, and made it clear that he has major opposition to the league’s planned All-Star game this season.

“I mean, if I’m gonna be brutally honest, I think it’s stupid,” Fox said. “If we have to wear masks and do all this for a regular game, then what’s the point of bringing the All-Star Game back? Money makes the world go ’round, so, it is what it is.”

Fox was then asked about potentially participating in the game if he gets voted, and while he said yes, he made clear that his decision stems from the consequences of turning an invite down.

“You know you get fined,” Fox said while laughing. “If you’re supposed to be in it and you’re not hurt and you decide not to play, that’s a hefty fine, so hell yeah, I would play in it.”

This season, Fox is averaging a career-best 22.3 points per game with 6.6 assists, 3.3 rebounds, and 1.3 steals in 32.6 minutes a night for the Kings, which sit 10-11 and are firmly in the race for a spot in the Western Conference play-in tournament. On Thursday morning, a report by Shams Charania of The Athletic indicated that the NBA and its players association have an agreement in place to hold an All-Star event on March 7 in Atlanta.

It’s a problem every high school-set show faces if it airs long enough: what happens when the characters graduate? Buffy the Vampire Slayer sent Buffy to UC-Sunnydale (and Doublemeat Palace); Gilmore Girls separated Lorelai and Rory, and was worse off for it; and Riverdale, well, Riverdale is playing by its own weirdo rules.

In the most recent episode of The CW series, Archie, Jughead, Betty, and Veronica graduated high school, and the couples, Archie/Veronica and Jughead/Betty, decided to split up. But the next episode, the show’s 80th, won’t deal with the fallout from the breakups; we also won’t see the gang in college. That’s because Riverdale is jumping seven years into the future. “A lot can happen in seven years,” Jughead says in the teaser for next week’s episode. “Archie had been in a war. I was a published writer. Veronica was married. And Betty was an FBI agent.” My favorite thing about that voiceover — besides all of it — is that Veronica being married is treated with the same dramatic weight as Betty being an FBI agent. But that’s not even the nuttiest thing about the promo.

“Although we are still in Riverdale and we are still tied into the school in certain ways, in the time jump I feel like we had to refresh our audience with a new theme, which is the fact that we’re all a lot older,” KJ Apa (Archie) told Entertainment Weekly about the time jump. “And I feel like that in itself, the fact that we’re all older and a lot of time has passed, no one’s really kept in touch, it adds a lot more things to play with.” Including the fallout from fighting a war (in World War II uniforms???) on a high school football field.

Never change, Riverdale. Please run for five more seasons.

(Via EW)

Chicago rapper Cupcakke recently caused a stir due to her back-and-forth battle with fellow rising rapper Sukihana but it looks like she would prefer to get more attention for giving back. In December, she announced her plans to open a homeless shelter in her hometown and today, she tried to help fans who needed day-to-day assistance with a CashApp giveaway. “Tag one person that actually needs $1,000 right now,” she tweeted. “I’ll be sending it from this CashApp. Within the next 10 mins !!! Screenshot will be posted.”

https://twitter.com/CupcakKe_rapper/status/1357341472404643840

Within minutes, her mentions were flooded and her name was trending on Twitter, but she was still able to pick out a few names to help with the desired assistance. One commenter said that they needed $500 for auto repairs, prompting a hasty response from Cupcakke. Unfortunately, her CashApp account limited the transaction so she sent the money via PayPal instead.

https://twitter.com/CupcakKe_rapper/status/1357341847211757573
https://twitter.com/CupcakKe_rapper/status/1357344198748344336

Cupcakke shared a few more screenshots, this time in $100 increments, before taking a break. That hasn’t stopped fans from continuing to share their stories with the rapper, with many joking that she’s done more for COVID relief than the US government.

https://twitter.com/CupcakKe_rapper/status/1357353155441422339
https://twitter.com/CupcakKe_rapper/status/1357356754879840256

While it’s clear that there is far more need than one rapper could ever support, it’s still nice to see someone trying to help people in troubled times like these. Despite mourning her friend Sophie, who passed away late last month, Cupcakke still found a way to brighten at least a few fans’ days.

Skillz, one of the biggest mobile games platforms in the world, will partner with the NFL on a new deal that will work to develop new football fans through mobile devices and the growing popularity of eSports.

The two companies will partner to put on a global game developer challenge that will launch this spring and be open to “all genres except for 11 v 11 simulated games,” a la Madden. The NFL’s longtime collaboration with EA Sports on the console game has generated extreme popularity among gamers and sports fans alike, but fans, especially those who play games on mobile devices, will get a new way to interact with football through Skillz.

“The NFL is an iconic brand that is synonymous with American sports, and Skillz is thrilled to help power their esports competitions on mobile,” said Andrew Paradise, CEO and founder of Skillz, in a statement.

The announcement comes just more than a month after Skillz’s IPO on the New York Stock Exchange, at which point the company received nearly $1 billion in funding. From the NFL side, striking a deal with such a large gaming company allows the league to find younger fans and those who may not come to the game from a traditional perspective, plus it allows gamers the opportunity to play a football game that is outside of the Madden universe.