BET announced the 2020 BET Awards nominations this week and as usual, a superstar artist is unhappy with their lack of nominations. Artists arguing that BET has snubbed them has become something of a tradition for the network. In 2017, Dreezy went off on BET for only nominating female rappers who didn’t even put albums out in the year before, while in 2019, Nicki Minaj was miffed at a Facebook post comparing her to Cardi B and pulled out of her appearance. This year, it looks like it’s an R&B artist’s turn to be annoyed as PartyNextDoor vented his frustration on Twitter.

“When did Black Entertainment Television get so Complex and forget Partynextdoor is the RNB artist of our generation?” he wondered. “Is it because I don’t wanna be friends? Is it because i put value in the art instead of people? Is it because it’s not the popular opinion? I am BET. I am Complex.” It seems he thinks that his recently-released album PartyMobile deserved at least a mention in the R&B category. Instead, Anderson .Paak, Chris Brown, Jacquees, Khalid, The Weeknd, and Usher were all nominated for Best Male R&B/Pop Artist, while the Album Of The Year category features strong contenders like Beyonce, Lizzo, and H.E.R.

It seems the tradition of BET making artists mad remains intact for another year, but it’s to be expected. There’s more music than ever these days and as the category field have to remain capped at some manageable number, someone is always going to end up feeling left out. As for why the BET Awards have a particular prickle factor, the answer likely lies in Black artists’ responses to their Grammy snubs. While being ignored by outsiders probably doesn’t surprise anyone, having one of the few Black-focused outlets overlook you probably stings a lot more. But no artist, including Party, should feel too hurt; he’s accomplished more than enough to feel like his spot in the game is solid. After all, he did change the modern sound of R&B forever with his self-titled debut.

Check out the Uproxx review of PartyMobile here.

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

Masks help reduce the spread of COVID-19. No one can confirm the precise percentage of reduction, but the plummeting rates in East Asian countries confirm that their take on the mask issue is working. And here in the U.S.? Well, it’s become a point of political contention with some people insisting that wearing a mask violates their personal freedom. Sadly, that mindset doesn’t take into account the health of everyone the non-mask-wearers will infect, and as a recent sentiment expressed on Twitter points out, “[M]asks aren’t exactly comfortable, but neither are bras, and a good portion of the population wears those regularly for far less important reasons.” Well, Bill Burr gets it.

During the stand-up comedian’s visit this week on The Joe Rogan Experience, Burr and host Joe Rogan dug into a number of issues, including the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests. When the pandemic part of the discussion began, the The King Of Staten Island star lamented how people are out and about in the community while maskless, acting like the novel coronavirus is not a big deal. When Rogen started to coyly prod Burr on the issue, Burr immediately pushed back:

“I don’t want to start this bullshit. I’m not gonna sit here with no medical degree, listening to you with no medical degree, with an American flag behind you smoking a cigar, acting like we know what’s up, better than the CDC. All I do, is I watch the news once every two weeks — I’m like, ‘Mask or no mask? Still mask? Alright, mask! That’s all I give a f*ck about.”

The banter between the two continued…

Burr: “I just love how wearing a mask became like this f*cking like soft thing…like being courteous…”

Rogan: “It’s for bitches.”

Burr: “Why is it for bitches?”

Rogan: (Fakes weak cough)

Burr: “Oh God you’re so tough with your f*cking open nose and throat…and your five o’clock shadow. This is a man right here!”

As this Twitter user noted, Burr basically tells Rogan to “shut the f*ck up” in the most polite way possible. You can watch the full episode here, if you have three hours to spare.

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In early 2019, Ariana Grande teamed up with Starbucks for her own drink. Lately, though, there have been rumors that the relationship between the pop star and the coffee chain has soured. Starbucks recently prohibited employees from wearing Black Lives Matter clothing (a stance they later eased up on), after which people noticed Grande doesn’t follow the brand on Instagram.

Whatever the case may be, at the very least, Grande is trying out different coffee destinations. She has been shopping around in recent days: Earlier this week, she enjoyed a drink from the wizard-themed Nimbus Coffee. She also swung by South LA Cafe for an iced drink and shared a photo from her visit on her Instagram Story (as she did during her Nimbus stop). Both of those businesses are Black-owned, and South LA Cafe reported a huge increase in business following the Grande co-sign.

South LA wrote on Instagram, “Did y’all know that @arianagrande stands with the Movement for Black Lives and Black-Owned businesses like @southlacafe? We’ve been fortunate to win her over from Starbucks this past week, as well as her incredible #arianators. (Click the first pic) They showed up in full force for today’s live of the South LA Grocery Giveaway, sending big love for our mission. This is an example of people with influence and privilege using it to forward the movement. We welcome the support and are grateful to be recognized for our impact and community leadership.”

The post also notes that they served 150 people in 29 minutes following Grande bringing increased attention to their establishment, which they say is “one for the record books.”

Grande hasn’t made a public comment about her relationship with Starbucks, but as they say, money talks.

Matthew and Eleanor Friedberger formed The Fiery Furnaces during a golden era of indie music: The year 2000, in New York City. The band went on to release eight records over the course of the next seven years following their 2003 debut. After a lengthy hiatus in 2010 in which both halves of the duo pivoted towards a solo career, The Fiery Furnaces are making a triumphant return.

“Down At The So And So On Somewhere” marks The Fiery Furnaces’ first release in ten years. Along with releasing the single digitally, the track will be pressed into a 7-inch vinyl with the bonus single “The Fortune Teller’s Revenge.”

The duo was slated to make their on-stage return at Pitchfork Music Festival this summer, which has since been canceled due to the pandemic. While the band can’t make an on-stage return for the foreseeable future, they still wanted to make an impact. Consequently, The Fiery Furnaces will donate a portion of proceeds from their 7-inch and accompanying merch to Black Lives Matter and AACM Chicago, an organization composed of Black artists who aim to preserve their craft and showcase their unique talents.

In a statement alongside the single’s release, The Fiery Furnaces said they penned the track back in February as a reflection on regret, but it has since morphed in meaning in light of recent events:

“This is the first new music from The Fiery Furnaces in ten years. The songs were recorded in New York City and a few hours north of New York City on February 3 and February 10 – 12, 2020. ‘Down at the So and So on Somewhere’ is a regretful song about having regrets. Now it seems even more sad than we thought it was back then: ‘Will you meet me,’ etc. Matthew was happy to use a Soviet drum machine. Eleanor was happy to play real drums. ‘The Fortune Teller’s Revenge’ is another sad song. We cut out the lines from the first and third verse: ‘with me; just kidding’ and ‘leave everything to me.’ Matthew likes hearing Eleanor sing ‘I’m sorry to say I’ve never made a mistake.’ Eleanor likes that you can’t quite tell who’s singing what, when.”

Listen to “Down At The So And So On Somewhere” above. Get the 7-inch release via Third Man Records here.

10 years ago, Eminem released Recovery, a musical return to form for the once-masterful chief mischief maker of hip-hop. In 2010, Em was in an odd place with both critics and fans. His previous albums, Encore and Relapse, had received criticism for leaning too heavily into his comedic personas and he was “still finding his feet” after getting sober as he told Rolling Stone in 2013. Recovery saw him find that balance and while it’s far from his best album — that honor still goes to The Eminem Show — it was a major turning point in Eminem’s career, bridging the gap between his drugged-out Slim Shady era and the hyper-focused technician he was to become.

There’s one major difference between this album and those both before and after it. Unlike his more recent output, he still sounds like he’s having fun, while still taking his job seriously enough that it doesn’t feel like he was making an endless, recurring fart joke. By finding the balance between those warring impulses, Eminem made an album that sounds like he was making music, not trying to make a point. For sure, he targets critics and celebrities, but he doesn’t fixate on them — Recovery is about Eminem. Some songs have aged better than others, but this is the first flash of the “mature” Em that the world has had a decade to become accustomed to.

That balance between earnest and playful is most evident in the album’s anthemic singles. “Not Afraid” is defiant without indulging Eminem’s grudges, while “Love The Way You Lie” features some of his most emotive language. Collaborations with Rihanna on “Love The Way You Lie” and Pink on “Won’t Back Down” were Em’s first and most successful experiments with bringing a feminine touch to his song construction. While they may have been as focus-grouped and algorithmically calculated as more recent attempts like the lackluster “Walk On Water” with Beyonce and the head-scratching “Nowhere Fast” with Kehlani from Revival, the chemistry he has with his first female collaborators made the plug-and-play tracks sound organic.

The proof is in the pudding; “Love The Way You Lie” became Eminem’s best-selling single ever. It showed that he could update his sound while remaining thematically true to his core content — the soul-baring, confessional raps that people related too, not the Triumph The Comic Insult Dog jokes that only appealed to a certain brand of frat humor aficionados. However, Em also showed that he was unafraid to get busy, busting out his old battle-rapper persona on songs like “On Fire,” then trading bars with the rapper who would become one of hip-hop’s most influential figures in the coming decade, Lil Wayne, on “No Love.”

There’s even a precursor to Music To Be Murdered By‘s “Those Kinda Nights” in “WTP,” on which Em coins his storytelling club-rap conceit and executes it much better than he would a decade later. Recovery‘s efficacy in comparison with latter-day efforts comes from the comfort he displays on this track, on which he sounds less invested in whether anyone thinks he’s a good rapper. He’s just rapping. In fact, he just raps on the rest of the album as well, poking just enough fun at himself throughout — admitting to the overuse of accents on his previous albums — that the focus remains on the world-class wordplay, not trying to mystify listeners into missing the genericness of his lightspeed fast flow.

While, yes, many of the issues that plague his newer albums crop up here as well, Recovery was still early enough in his career that those nitpicks hadn’t yet become nagging complaints. Some of the beat choices are a bit anachronistic and jarring — particularly “Cinderella Man” and the album closer, “Untitled” — and Em’s frequent and flagrant use of homophobic slurs firmly freezes Recovery as a product of pre-Twitter media society. In today’s world of crowd-sourced accountability, wherein Em deletes the “F-word” from a rap about Tyler The Creator and still gets dragged online, many of Recovery‘s tracks would see the chopping block or the editing room before the album saw store shelves.

But there’s a lot to admire about Eminem’s first middle-aged effort. He definitely shows his age, but he’s still in fighting shape. He hadn’t yet evolved into the crotchety commentator, grousing about how things were better “back in my day.” The stultified affect of albums like Kamikaze and Music To Be Murdered By hadn’t settled in and he was still close enough to the trauma of his past that him rapping about it felt therapeutic rather than wearying. It’d be a trap to hope that Eminem would go back to the version of himself he was on Recovery — a trap he himself couldn’t seem to avoid on his more recent offerings — but it’d be nice to hear him recover some sparks of the sense of fun and maturity he displays on it.

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For his directorial debut, Dave Franco gathered an impressive cast for a horror movie about distrust and always being watched.

The Rental follows two couples, Charlie and Michelle (The Guest‘s Dan Stevens and Community‘s Alison Brie, Franco’s real-life wife) and Mina and Josh (A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night‘s Sheila Vand and Shameless‘ Jeremy Allen White), who rent an ocean-side house for some rest and relaxation. But before they can even browse through the house’s DVD library, which is the first thing I do at every rental property, the owner (icon Toby Huss) makes an odd comment about being a peeping tom, and things only get weirder from there. Brb, I’m adding “camera in the shower head” to my list of nightmares.

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

Two couples on an oceanside getaway grow suspicious that the host of their seemingly perfect rental house may be spying on them. Before long, what should have been a celebratory weekend trip turns into something far more sinister, as well-kept secrets are exposed and the four old friends come to see each other in a whole new light. Alison Brie, Dan Stevens, Jeremy Allen White, and Sheila Vand star in this unnerving and sophisticated debut thriller from Dave Franco.

IFC’s The Rental premieres on On Demand and in select theaters on July 24.

Our Longest Summer series will look at the eight teams whose seasons are now officially over, and will have to wait until mid-October to make decisions on what’s next and how to proceed after falling short of the cut-off for a continued 2019-20 campaign.

It may seem like a lifetime ago, but the 2019-20 Detroit Pistons were supposed to compete for a postseason berth in the Eastern Conference. The Pistons landed in the playoffs last season and, with Blake Griffin and Andre Drummond anchoring a team with a respectable roster, there was optimism, at least in some circles, for a repeat performance. Fast-forward to the end, however, and Griffin appeared in only 18 games, with Drummond seeing only 49 games of action before being dealt to Cleveland before the deadline.

In some ways, Detroit’s demise was foreseeable, especially with regard to Griffin’s injury issues. The All-Star forward was banged up considerably by the end of the 2018-19 campaign and, while unfortunate, it wasn’t totally shocking that he wasn’t able to play at full strength this season. Still, the Pistons heavily relied on his brilliance in 2018-19 and, without that centerpiece available, the lack of talent on the roster became glaring on the way to a 20-win performance in the aggregate. Now, the Pistons shift fully to rebuilding mode and the 2020 offseason provides a number of questions for the team to attempt to answer.

2020 Free Agents

Christian Wood (UFA), Tony Snell (player option), Brandon Knight (UFA), John Henson (UFA), Langston Galloway (UFA), Thon Maker (RFA), Jordan McRae (UFA)

2020 Projected salary cap space (assuming $115 million salary cap)

$33.9 million, per Early Bird Rights

Areas of Strength

This is a tough one. There are some intriguing young pieces on the roster with Luke Kennard and Sekou Doumbouya, though neither is established enough to specifically build around. From there, Christian Wood emerged in a big way this season, but the young center now hits the free agent market with unrestricted status. The Pistons certainly can afford to bring Wood back at a considerable number but, if they don’t, things become even more adventurous. Detroit did benefit from a strong season from Derrick Rose, who remains under contract at a reasonable cap figure, and flexibility is the order of the day for this franchise.

Areas of Need

Aside from a magic potion to make Griffin 100 percent healthy again, the Pistons need a focal point. Though Wood’s emergence is encouraging, Detroit still lacks star power and, though they could get lucky in the draft lottery with a path to select a prospect like LaMelo Ball, every rebuild begins (and sometimes ends) with the quest for a franchise player that the Pistons don’t have for the future. Beyond that, Detroit’s roster is (very) thin when accounting for only players that are firmly under contract, and Griffin’s highly lucrative contract is tough to navigate.

Biggest Decisions

Wood is the team’s only free agent that should command a large sum on the market, and Detroit’s willingness to pay up is perhaps the franchise’s most interesting decision of the offseason. If the Pistons believe Wood is an average starter (or better), bringing him back would plug a hole and give the team more of an identity. If the bidding gets out of control and Detroit sees the need to move on, the canvas is even more bleak. From there, the team’s lottery pick will be key to everything and, in advance of that, the Pistons are a team that could really use some lottery luck and a path to selecting a prospect with legitimate star equity.

Overall Offseason Focus

Though there may have been chatter that the Pistons could avoid the full-scale rebuild, that evaporated this season. Barring some sort of miraculous effort to send Griffin’s large contract elsewhere, the parameters appear to be set in Detroit and the franchise simply needs to patient in accumulating assets and doing anything they can to find a young star. That is easier said than done, but the Pistons are in a vastly different place than they were even nine months ago, and that is the reality.

On Friday, Tulsa’s historic Greenwood district — the area where the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre occurred with a white mob burning Black Wall street to the ground — will hold a Juneteenth gathering to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S. in 1865. Festivities and peaceful protests are expected to continue throughout the weekend (although Trump’s indoor rally of 19,000+ attendees in downtown Tulsa on Saturday will complicate matters, even though Gov. Stitt has asked Trump not to visit Greenwood). Given that the Tulsa Race Massacre was depicted in the opening moments of showrunner Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen series, and in light of ongoing Black Lives Matters protests around the globe, the premium cable channel has decided to offer up the entire 9-episode season on HBO.com and Free On Demand.

The season will not only stream for free all weekend but as a marathon at 1:00pm EST on Friday with HBO and HBO Latino. In a statement, HBO declared that they are “proud to offer all nine episodes for free of this timely, poignant series that explores the legacy of systemic racism in America.” If you haven’t watched yet, you should. Watchmen is a phenomenal show that was risky and ambitious in adapting the “unadaptable” graphic novel from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s iconic graphic novel. And it also reimagined and recontextualized the story against the backdrop of the Tulsa Race Massacre and explored a world where masked vigilantes are treated as outlaws

Lindelof was inspired to bring knowledge of the Tulsa Race Massacre to the viewing public at large after he read Ta’Nehisi Coates’ The Atlantic piece, The Case For Reparations. And the showrunner recently marked the anniversary of the massacre by urging people to get educated (he provided a recommended list of reading, listening, and viewing material) in light of police brutality protests following the killing of George Floyd.

Last week, the Peabody Awards recognized Watchmen, and Lindelof and Regina King accepted the award in a video that was reportedly taped prior to Floyd’s death. Watch below, as the pair discusses the (sadly now-always) timely subjects of systemic racism, police brutality and the continued killing of unarmed Black citizens.