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The 2020 Presidential Election is this week, which will bring to an end the strangest and most stressful campaign season I hope any of us ever see. It’s been a lot. It’s been too much, some of us have been saying, out loud, to the empty rooms we’ve been confined to since March. You are perfectly within your rights to be fried crispy right now. And this is where I think I can help. You see, I realized something this weekend: it helps to think of the 2020 Presidential election through the lens of the straight-to-VOD 2019 Nicolas Cage film Primal, because once you start doing that, a lot of scattered puzzle pieces in your brain start locking together and a clearer picture emerges. Look at Donald Tr-…

Hmm. It’s dawning on me that you might not have seen the movie Primal. Okay. Okay. We can salvage this. I’ll just show you a quick summary from a Google search, which should tell you just about everything you need to know.

Hunter and collector Frank Walsh expects a big payday after bagging a priceless white jaguar for a zoo. But the ship bearing Frank’s precious cargo has another predator — a political assassin facing extradition to America. When the prisoner manages to break free, Walsh must utilize his expert skills to capture the dangerous killer — not dead, but alive.

I mean, hell yeah, right? Look how many things are going on there. You’ve got Nicolas Cage on a boat with a rogue assassin and a priceless white jaguar. How did it take us until 2019 to make this movie? It’s incredible. At one point Nicolas Cage finds himself trapped in a pit with the priceless white jaguar, and he has only a knife and his guile to protect him, and that point is less than four minutes into the movie. I am not lying about any of this. And that’s what brings us back to the point I was going to make: this particular election, this entire year, when you think about the Democrats and the Republicans, especially, has…

You probably want to know how the assassin escaped. Okay. Real quick. See, he has this brain condition, right? Changes in altitude can throw him into a deadly seizure and the government needs him alive. That’s why they had to travel by boat instead of by plane, and why they had to bring along a Navy doctor played by Famke Janssen, who is also in this movie. The assassin throws himself into a fake seizure and kills the guards who come in to assist him and he takes their weapons and releases all of Nicolas Cage’s animals — Nicolas Cage is also transporting poisonous snakes and birds and monkeys; it’s quite literally a zoo in there — and gets to the business of creating chaos. It’s great. The boat’s chef gets murdered by the monkeys because he tried to harm one of their babies while they were all locked in the kitchen together. At some point, it all basically becomes Die Hard on a barge with wild beasts of the jungle running amok, too, walkie talkies and all. Again, just incredible.

Anyway, when you look at what the Biden campaign has done, or tried to do, you…

Okay. There’s one other thing you need to know about Primal before I tie this all together and there’s no way around it: Michael Imperioli is in the movie. Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos himself. He is all the way in the movie, as a gray-haired U.S. Attorney who is later revealed to be a crooked NSA agent during a standoff in which he is holding a gun on Nicolas Cage, who is holding a bow and arrow on the rogue assassin, who is holding a gun on Famke Janssen, who is also an animal lover who does not approve of Nicolas Cage’s plan to sell the priceless white jaguar to the highest bidder. He is killed moments later. Rest in peace, crooked NSA agent played by Michael Imperioli.

A few additional things you should know about Nicolas Cage’s character:

• He flamed out of 8 zoos in 10 years because he has what Famke Janssen’s Navy doctor correctly diagnosed as “a problem with authority”
• The rogue assassin captures him around the midpoint of the movie and locks him up in the cage that was holding the priceless white jaguar, at which point I said, out loud, with a little too much excitement, “Cage in a cage!”
• He makes his own tranquilizer darts, which is how he survived the pit with the priceless white jaguar earlier in the movie

Also, right before he runs off to track down the rogue assassin for the final battle, he and Famke Janssen have this conversation, which is maybe the greatest piece of dialogue I’ve ever seen.

The big final showdown features an armed-to-the-teeth rogue assassin and a blowgun-spitting Nicolas Cage engaged in guerilla warfare on a rusty barge in international waters. Cage pops him twice with the tranq darts and then strings him up by his feet with some sort of heavy machinery and chain combination and leaves him there to be dinner for the very hungry priceless white jaguar. When the doctors on the shore report back at the end of the movie, they say they had to identify the rogue assassin using dental records because the priceless white jaguar had stripped the rest of him clean. This happens just before Famke Janssen lies for him to keep him out of hot water for the animal smuggling and he reveals that he’s donating the priceless white jaguar to a wildlife sanctuary. It’s sweet. Everyone seems to have forgotten that a little boy’s father got bit by one of the escaped illegal snakes and was — at this very moment — barely clinging to life because Nicolas Cage had neglected to bring any anti-venom.

And really, when you think about how the political climate we’re dealing with these days, you c-…

Wait! I forgot to tell you about the parrot! There’s a wisecracking parrot on the boat! He’s been following Nicolas Cage because Nicolas Cage fed him at a bar once, and Nicolas Cage hates him, and he likes to pipe himself into the action every now and then with one of the four things he knows how to say: “Meow,” “uh oh,” “time to go,” and “take him out,” the last of which he says whenever he sees a gun, which plays an important part in keeping Nicolas Cage alive during an ambush. When the movie ends they are best friends and Nicolas Cage has named him Einstein. The two of them are thinking about giving up the animal smuggling game and going back to work at a zoo near where Famke Janssen lives, which gives us a nice little happy ending that, again, takes place maybe five minutes after the terrified little boy’s father got rushed off the rusty barge because a maniac animal smuggler packed two of the world’s most dangerous snakes but not the antidote to save anyone. Really, truly, just a remarkable movie. I might watch it again on Tuesday night.

And this is where I confess, as you’ve probably figured out, that I am not ever going to get around to discussing what any of this has to do with the election. If I’m being completely honest here, I watched just Primal on Saturday night in an effort to unplug from the world for 96 minutes, and it was so nutso and beautiful that I felt compelled to write about it, but I figured “A Breathless Explanation of the Plot of the Straight-to-VOD 2019 Nicolas Cage Film ‘Primal’” would be a much harder sell to both you and my editors the day before the election than “How The Straight-To-VOD Nicolas Cage Movie ‘Primal’ Explains The 2020 Election,” so here we are, I guess. I’m sorry for tricking you. Kind of. I am kind of sorry for tricking you.

I think you understand why I did it, though.

Last year for Halloween, Tomi Lahren dressed as “the thing that scares me most,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. The Fox pundit was trying to troll the congresswoman, I guess (?), but it ended up spectacularly backfiring on her. Instead of taking the L and going low-key for Halloween 2020, Lahren gathered her squad for a confusing costume.

“A Mostly Peaceful Halloween #teamTomi #Halloween #peaceful #happyhalloween,” Lahren wrote on Instagram, along with two photos and one video of herself and two fellow liberal-tear drinkers dressed up as… Antifa? Basic-cable Billie Eilish? The cybergoths from the viral dance party? It’s unclear who Lahren thinks she’s making fun of, although my favorite guess came from the Blast: “Fox Nation Host Tomi Lahren Goes As Group Of Sexy Rioters For Halloween?!” It’s always good when the explanation for your Halloween costume involves a question mark.

In other Tomi news, writer and comedian Ali-Asghar Abedi described pranking Lahren into calling Trump an “ullu” (or “dumbass”) for the Daily Beast. “Maybe if she’d ever had a poppadom in her life, Tomi would know this too,” he wrote. “But because she hasn’t, ‘ullu’ became a trending topic in India and millions of Indians watching cable TV news got to know Tomi as the dope who was tricked into insulting her political hero because checking facts seemed like too much hard work.”

She was too busy trying (and failing) to emasculate people wearing masks.

The main story in the Taylor Swift universe this year has been the release of her new album, Folklore. One of the prevailing story lines of 2019, though, was her falling out with former label Big Machine. Through all the nastiness, the situation did give fans something to look forward to: It was revealed that starting in November 2020 (aka now), Swift would be allowed to re-record the albums she released on the label. While she wouldn’t have ownership over her previous master recordings, she would own the new ones, which would be the point of re-recording the songs.

So, over the weekend, Swift fans got excited when the calendar flipped over to November, and ET notes that #TaylorIsFree was trending online. There was much jubilation:

Swift re-recording her albums isn’t just some sort of lofty, unrealistic hope, as she has previously expressed a desire to do it. In August of 2019, she talked about it with Robin Roberts on Good Morning America, saying, “It’s something that I’m very excited about doing, because my contract says that starting November 2020, so next year, I can record albums 1 through 5 all over again. I’m very excited about it. Because I think that artists deserve to own their work. I just feel very passionately about that. […] It’s next year. It’s right around the corner. I’m gonna be busy. I’m really excited.”

With Election Day less than 24 hours away, the Republican Party has been ramping up its favorite attack on Democrats like clockwork. That attack? They’re socialists! Viewers got a taste of this approach during the first presidential debate when Donald Trump tried to label his opponent, Joe Biden, as a “radical leftist.” However, this tangent backfired as Trump seemingly forgot he was debating Biden and not Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary largely because voters preferred Biden’s more moderate policies. But that didn’t stop the president from attempting the same smear during the final debate.

On Sunday, Senator Marco Rubio picked up the torch and fired off a tweet that read, “Not every democrat is a socialist. But every socialist is a democrat.” Unfortunately for Rubio, this put him in the crosshairs of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who has been roasting everyone from Trump to the entire GOP with incredible ease. Ocasio-Cortez quickly dismantled Rubio’s argument by pointing out the hypocrisy of the Republican Party for relying heavily on government services when it suits them, but crying foul when those same services help other Americans. She also included a reference to President Trump’s taxpayer-funded stay at Walter Reed Medical Center where he received an experimental drug cocktail on the government’s dime after testing positive for COVID-19.

“Curious what you call GOP giving away billions in public funds to Wall St & fossil fuel companies?” AOC fired back. “Or what you call YOUR ability to go to Walter Reed hospital & receive socialized healthcare for free? Funny how it’s only ‘socialism’ when others get what y’all give yourselves.”

You can see AOC’s full exchange with Marco Rubio below:

(Via Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Twitter)

It looks like winning his own in-house basketball tournament may have cost Drake a little more than the price of a trophy. The Toronto rapper looks to have re-injured his bad knee, posting a photo to Instagram of his leg in a brace and propped up on pillows as he watched Netflix over the weekend. The caption reads: “I actually want to use this post to send love and motivation to anybody else that 2020 let loose… start writing the best bounce back story NOW.”

Drake had surgery on his ACL in 2009 after aggravating an old injury during a performance in Camden, New Jersey. During the show, a trotting Drake suddenly collapsed and had to be carried off the stage, prompting one of the first spates of social media jokes at his expense. Even Lil Wayne kidded that Drake bore a resemblance to his Degrassi: The Next Generation character Jimmy. “Word of advice…don’t tear your ACL,” Drake tweeted at the time.

Now, it looks like he won’t be doing the “Toosie Slide” around the crib again anytime soon, but that may just give him enough time to perfect his upcoming album Certified Lover Boy, which he announced would arrive sometime in 2021. In the meantime, Drake’s been celebrating his birthday (complete with meme-worthy menu typos), setting up playdates for his and Nicki Minaj’s sons, and getting back on his feature game alongside Bryson Tiller, 21 Savage, and DJ Khaled.

Damian Lillard’s love of professional wrestling is not a secret. He dressed as Stone Cold Steve Austin for Halloween a couple years ago, wearing a rubber Stone Cold mask, jeans, and an Austin 3:16 shirt with a championship belt, swaggering in as only the Texas Rattlesnake can.

He also released a Stone Cold Steve Austin colorway of his signature sneaker, the adidas Dame 6, back in January with “Dame 3:16” written along the midsole. With his newest sneaker the Dame 7 out now, he and adidas are going back to the wrestling well for a colorway inspiration, but this time taking the details just a bit further with their Ric Flair inspired blue colorway. The sneakers feature a silhouette of Flair’s face on the left tongue (with Lillard’s logo on the right) and are a sharp, royal blue paying tribute to one of Flair’s iconic ring entrance robes that come complete with faux gator skin, because you’re gonna have a hard time holding these gators down.

They are really well done in that they hit a lot of details to make clear who the colorway is inspired by without getting cluttered or heavy-handed with too many things going on. The faux gator skin is a great touch and the silhouette of a young Flair is spectacular and I kind of wish that was on both shoes. The little nods like the “Wooooo” by the back of the heel and “Nature Boy” by the front on the inside aren’t too obtrusive and are well done as well. The Flair edition Dame 7s are available now for $110.

Jay-Z had climbed to the top of the commercial mountain by 2000. The Brooklyn rhymer had long been respected in the streets, but his Vol. 2… Hard Knock Life and Vol. 3… Life and Times Of S. Carter projects sold five and three million copies respectively. He was one of the biggest reasons for Def Jam’s commercial resurgence, and the label’s legendary 1999 tour was named after his “Hard Knock Life” hit. He was undeniably on the top-tier of mainstream rap.

But being the biggest rapper in the world wasn’t Jay’s only goal. He and his Roc cofounders Dame Dash and Kareem “Biggs” Burke were out to be moguls. The next thing for the Brooklynite to do was to use his hard-earned star power to entrench his Roc-A-Fella signees. Enter The Dynasty Album: Roc La Familia, an album that turned 20 years old on Saturday.

In true rap form, the title of the project was a bit of embellishment that became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Jay’s longtime protege Memphis Bleek hadn’t yet ascended as the heir to the throne he was marketed as. Beanie Sigel’s February 2000 The Truth album had made an impact in the streets, but neither he nor the State Property crew was household names yet. The project was more equivalent to the first playoff run than a dynastic victory lap. But thanks to the efforts of Beans, Bleek, Freeway, and then unheralded producers Bink, Rick Rock, The Neptunes, and Just Blaze, the Roc-A-Fella crew set a strong precedent for their historical run over the next several years.

The Roc-A-Fella roster that appeared on The Dynasty: Roc La Familia was an overhaul of the crew that was around for Jay’s Reasonable Doubt debut. Jay’s close collaborator Sauce Money chose to sign with Priority. Jay’s mentor Jaz-O didn’t sign with the label and eventually fell out with them. Da Ranjahz also left the label before they made much of a mark. In 1999 they signed Beanie Sigel, who had been making waves in Philly rhyming with The Roots and dropping memorable freestyles. The team made him the helm of a State Property collective that also contained Philly artists Freeway, Oschino, and Omlio Sparks (the Young Gunz Neef Bucks and Young Chris came a bit later).

Roc-A-Fella co-founder Dame Dash has recalled that the project was initially set to be a compilation to showcase the team’s roster. But they put Jay-Z’s name on it to attract more fans.

His work on The Dynasty “Intro ” immerses listeners into the project like few album starters have ever done. Jay was on top of the world, but he was also in legal hot water after a stabbing incident in December 1999 which had him facing 15 years. The media coverage around the incident served to show him that no matter how far he had come economically, a segment of white America still viewed him as a mere drug dealer from Marcy. Jay gave a glimpse of his mindset back then, reflecting on his “keen senses ever since I was a teen on the benches / Every time somebody like Ennis (Cosby) was mentioned.” Then upstart-New Jersey producer Just Blaze’s towering sample of Kleeer’s “She Said She Loves Me” sets an immediate intrigue for the project. Blaze soon became legendary for anthemic, larger-than-life production, and “Intro” was the setoff. The track is a freestyle essential to this day, and is regarded by many as the best intro ever.

The album is like a sequential glimpse of rap’s turn-of-the-millennium transition. Rick Rock provided the tinny, synth-driven production like “Change The Game” and would-be lead single “Parking Lot Pimpin.” The bouncy tracks were tailor-made to fit in any club or radio rotation at the moment. But Just Blaze’s contributions to the project showed where the game was going. He knew how to manipulate samples to do whatever he wanted them to do. There was the searing “Streets Is Talking,” the invigorating “You, Me, Him, And Her” with the whole crew trading bars, and the soaring horns on “1-900-Hustler.”

The project was executive produced by Jay, Dame, and Biggs, and Kyambo “Hip Hop” Joshua was an associate producer. Like any great leaders, the men made sure everyone on the project was put in an ideal position to shine. Hit-Boy recently mentioned that Jay-Z helped him sequence Benny The Butcher and Freddie Gibbs’ “One Way Flight.” That sequential mastery is on display throughout “1-900-Hustler,” especially Freeway’s uproarious verse, where he tears through a comedic lull with his dire, suspenseful presence. The moment was an ideal introduction to Free even before 2003’s “What We Do.” Memphis Bleek unleashed his energetic presence on tracks like “You, Me, Him, and Her” and “Change The Game.”

The album’s gun-toting, champagne spilling, and brick-flipping didn’t represent the full breadth of these men’s experience. They had a lot of fun on Dynasty, but they also got real. Beanie Sigel is as gutter as it gets (in hindsight, to a cringeworthy degree on “Stick To The Script”), and did his thing on the club tracks, but he’s at his best when he’s delving deep. On “Streets Is Talking” he explores the downside of the game with Jay-Z, lamenting, “The streets is not only watchin’ but they talkin’ now? / Sh*t, they got me circlin’ the block before I’m parkin’ now.” On “Where Have You Been,” he brilliantly takes listeners through the volley of emotions while imagining a painful conversation with his absentee father.

He also shines on “This Can’t Be Life,” where Jay-Z and Scarface also got vulnerable. Younger fans may perceive the drug epidemic’s presence in rap as a new thing, but back in 2000 Beans was admitting, ”I’m tired of trying to hide my pain behind the syrups and pills / Dead to the world, stretched out like a corpse for real.” Jay-Z is the epitome of confidence, but he admitted a time when he thought, “’Damn, I’ma be a failure’ / Surrounded by thugs, drugs, and drug paraphernalia.” And Scarface got tragically meta, rewriting his original verse and recalling that he was just informed that a friend’s baby had died in a fire. Jay-Z recalled in Decoded that Scarface was in fact about to get in the booth when he got the call. Instead of recording on another day, he explored his pain and delivered an unforgettable verse.

The track’s production was one of Kanye West’s breakout moments. When Kanye references, “the old Kanye,” he mentions the “chop up the soul Kanye.” His work on “This Can’t Be Life’s” doleful, evocative production is a quintessential example. A writer had no choice but to dig deep on a beat like that. That’s surprisingly Kanye’s only placement on the project.

Another one-off placement was The Neptunes’ production for “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me),” a classic track that marries the Virginia production crew’s funky, upbeat wheelhouse with chimey synths that accentuated one of Jay-Z’s most memorable singles. The track is a quintessential early ‘00s club track, with Jay-Z telling a story of a wild night out and getting flirty, crude, braggadocious, and materialistic as ever without sacrificing his penmanship. Britney Spears has said that “Give It 2 Me” beat inspired her to reach out to The Neptunes, which helped them break into the pop market. Even though The Neptunes weren’t officially under the Roc umbrella, they, like so many other artists, had their upward trajectory expedited by The Dynasty.

The project was a highlight reel of the 2000s’ most gifted artists, who were all, unbelievably, under one roof. Everyone knows how The Dynasty ended, with “the team having beef between the post and the point” as Jay-Z rhymed on “Black Republican.” The reason that people ask Roc members about the label’s fallout to this day is because of how amazing the output was when everything was clicking. From artists to executives, the industry is run by former (and current) Roc employees. Almost all fans wanted the team to push into the 2010s and beyond. But at this point, it’s best to just be appreciative of what we did get, like The Dynasty.

In September, it was reported that Cardi B had filed for divorce from Offset. In recent weeks, though, Cardi and Offset have been seen spending a lot of time together and generally not acting like their marriage was coming to an end. It has certainly seemed like they decided to not split up, and now that has apparently been made official: TMZ reports Cardi has filed documents in Georgia to officially dismiss the divorce.

Not long after news about the divorce broke, Cardi revealed why she put that process in motion, saying, “I just got tired of f*cking arguing. I got tired of not seeing things eye to eye. When you feel like it’s just not the same anymore, before you actually get cheated on, I’d rather just leave […] Nothing crazy out of this world happened, sometimes people really do grow apart.I been with this man for four years. I have a kid with this man, I have a household with this man…sometimes you’re just tired of the arguments and the build-up. You get tired sometimes and before something happens, you leave.”

More recently, though, she talked about their “dysfunctional” relationship, saying, “We’re some really typical two young motherf*ckers [who] got married early, that’s what we are. We’re not no different than y’all f*ckin’ dysfunctional-ass relationships. We’re the same way. We’re just more public.”

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

In a new video released on Halloween, Netflix’s The Witcher gives fans a brief glimpse of a few new monsters who will rear their (multiple) heads in Season 2. At first glance, the feature titled “Geralt’s Monster Mash” seems to be just a montage of creatures that Henry Cavill‘s white-haired Witcher dispensed with in the first season, but the video’s Instagram caption promises there’s more to it than that. “This is not a trick,” it reads, “there are two treats to be found here.”

Tucked into the video is a shot of Geralt saying, “I’ll take what I’m owed,” which is quickly followed by what looks like some sort of clawed spider monstrosity with a human eyeball. After that, three skeleton banshees pop up in the short clip, and they’re going to look very familiar to anyone’s who played The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt video game. Naturally, Geralt will find some clever way to take these creatures out, but not before getting his ass handed to him a few times, which is all part of the monster-hunting fun of the hit Netflix series.

While The Witcher doesn’t have a specific release date yet, production is still on track for a 2021 release date despite experiencing setbacks from the pandemic. But what we do have is an official synopsis of where the story will find Geralt, Ciri, and Yennefer as their paths begin to collide:

Convinced Yennefer’s life was lost at the Battle of Sodden, Geralt of Rivia brings Princess Cirilla to the safest place he knows, his childhood home of Kaer Morhen. While the Continent’s kings, elves, humans and demons strive for supremacy outside its walls, he must protect the girl from something far more dangerous: the mysterious power she possesses inside.

For you bookworms out there, Season 2 will draw heavily from “Blood of Elves,” the first The Witcher novel that kicks off the epic saga that will unfold across the Netflix series.

Even though Lil Nas X had one of the biggest singles ever in the history of pop music and/or hip-hop on his introduction to the world, not everyone enjoyed the success of “Old Town Road” or Nas’ eventual embrace of his identity. Nas previously explained he kept both his sexual orientation and his love for Nicki Minaj under wraps because of latent homophobia in the rap world and over the weekend, almost like clockwork, older rappers leaped to prove his worry correct after he dressed up as his hero Nicki for Halloween.

Fortunately, Nas is incredibly good at social media and a master of the clap back, so he was able to reverse those comments on the grumpy old men who felt the need to interject their unasked opinions on his costume. Nas has had previous run-ins with Dave East, who made his thoughts known at the height of “Old Town Road”-mania. Referencing the initial backlash against him for grousing about Nas’ music, East posted a screenshot of Nas’ Nicki costume on Instagram, writing, “And y’all was mad at me about this n****.” On the next slide, he went a step further, with the truly bigoted message, “Bati mon, bun up!”

“Batty man” (or “batty boy”) is a derogatory slur for gay men in the Caribbean and Jamaica. The admonishment Dave East delivered is popular in reggae and dancehall, stemming from a religious belief that homosexuality is a sin and that gay men will “burn up.” It’s not just an idle threat; in the early 2000s The Guardian wrote about a rise in hate crimes in Jamaica — a trend that continues to this day.

Lil Nas X seemed unfazed, though, calling out the homophobia and needling East by correcting his patois spelling. “It’s ‘batty man,’” he tweeted over a screenshot of East’s posts. “N****s can’t even be homophobic the proper way smh butchering the hell out of the patois.” He followed up by pointing out how East was the one starting all the drama, as Lil Nas X “Don’t bother a soul in this industry. All I do is tweet and make bangers. Leave me alone damn.”

Nas also had to call out professional troll 50 Cent, who also posted photos of Nas’ costume, captioning them, “What the f*ck? Nikki, come get him!” Barring the fact that 50 also misspelled Nicki Minaj’s name, Nas wasn’t too happy about 50’s tweet, questioning, “Why u in Barb business?”

Lil Nas X’s acceptance in the mainstream meant huge strides for hip-hop but unfortunately, it looks like hip-hop still has a long way to go.