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As protests persist across the country in response to police brutality and the murder of George Floyd, many are pushing for cities to defund their police departments. The movement to defund police has been met with confusion, so John Legend offered his explanation as to what defunding police would really look like. No, it doesn’t mean abolishing police entirely. Rather, defunding police suggests redistributing budgets away from police and towards social programs.

Legend opened his explainer by acknowledging that many conjure up images from The Purge when envisioning American cities defunding police departments. “I know this word ‘defund’ has caused some controversy, even from some who are inclined to agree with a lot of the underlying arguments,” he began.

Legend pointed out that huge portions of a city’s budget are directly funneled into police departments. Money that could potentially benefit social service programs like health care and education, which are known to benefit low-income areas and reduce the crime rate, suffer at the expense of police surveillance.

Instead, Legend nudges his followers to envision a “healthier world” in which we use resources to uplift communities, rather than policing them. Legend explains that defunding police doesn’t mean getting rid of them entirely. It means there would be fewer police officers combined with more social workers touting expertise in areas like health care, conflict resolution, and drug treatment.

The singer explains that the operative word in the movement is “defund,” which is meant to signal a redistribution of resources away from policing forces and towards other programs. Electing to “reform” or “retrain” police would not be as effective, as many cities have been retraining officers for decades and yet police brutality still persists.

Legend ended his message by reminding his followers that increasing the minimum wage and passing gay marriage laws seemed impossible decades ago, but activists have successfully pushed legislation that has made progress a reality.

Read Legend’s full explainer on defunding the police above.

The NBA is coming back next month, with training camps set to start on July 1 before 22 teams head to Orlando for the 8-game race to the playoffs starting on July 31.

With under a month before teams are back together in their facilities, there is plenty of excitement building for the league’s return, including among players, many of whom are making clear their desire to be back on the court after three months at home.

However, this sentiment is not shared in totality around the league, as there are some that still have legitimate concerns about the unknowns regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, namely that we still do not understand the long-term effects of the disease — particularly on the lungs. There are also the ongoing protests nationwide in response to the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor in Minneapolis and Louisville, which has gripped the league as players have once again taken a leadership role in protests of police brutality and systemic racism.

A number of stars from around the league have participated in protests, like Damian Lillard, Stephen Curry, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Russell Westbrook, Jaylen Brown, and many more. According to Matt Barnes, who joined Josiah Johnson and LaJethro Jenkins on Yahoo’s Dunk Bait podcast, there are some players he is aware of — mostly on the L.A. teams where he’s most plugged in — that do not want to return right now so as not to distract from the movement.

There have been some players that have voiced this opinion on Twitter, noting they don’t want to allow the NBA to be a distraction for people to escape a systemic issue that the Black community is unable to ever get away from.

While there’s absolutely validity to this point and it’s an understandable concern, it is incumbent upon the league to allow the players to take the lead on how they want to keep Floyd and Taylor and Ahmaud Arbery’s names at the forefront even when games return. The argument in favor of players taking the floor is that when games are happening is when the league has the greatest spotlight, and them continuing protesting police brutality and racial injustice and making the message clear on those national broadcasts (when people are clamoring for sports to be back) would give them a bigger platform than most any of them have off the court.

Still, that requires a partnership with the league to be willing to let players to use that platform and not be afraid of backlash, but given ESPN and TNT’s recent coverage of the protests and allowing their most prominent figures to have open discussions of racial injustice on air, one would think the broadcast partners would be more accommodating than maybe they would have been in the recent past.

As the league comes back, there is little doubt players will still have plenty they want to say on police brutality and racism, and if there are some with concerns about the return becoming a distraction from the movement, it’s the league’s responsibility to help ensure they can present their message how they see fit when the lights are brightest.

It’s hard to be a music fan these days. Lately, it seems as though no sooner than you’ve learned all the lyrics to your favorite artist’s latest hit — and mastered the accompanying TikTok dance routine — than your fave has waded hip-deep into some murky, possibly racist corner of the internet or fired off a tweet that got a little too spicy with an unpopular opinion. In the past weeks, we’ve seen wave after wave of Stan Twitter “cancelation parties,” for everything from offensive language to poorly-framed comparisons.

Of course, it’s also far easier for artists in the thick of a controversial quagmire in the era of social media. All you need to do is fire up the old Notes app, record a long apology video, or vanish for an appropriate amount of time before popping back up like nothing ever happened. No artist is a better example of the latter than Kanye West, who is no stranger to the art of image rehabilitation.

Even when it seemed like he’d committed too many acts of egregious ego stroking, supported a shameful leader’s inflammatory rhetoric, and submitted a string of subpar projects, he and his fans have showed that he’s practically teflon when it comes to backtracking on his social miscues. Now, though, it might be time to recognize that he will have to do a lot more to make up for the damage he’s done in the past few years — both to his brand and to the rest of the world at large.

As protests against police brutality took place over the past two weeks, Kanye came under scrutiny for his sudden silence after being so outspoken for most of his career about, well, everything else. Some wondered whether he’d make some sort of statement addressing the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd which had sparked the protest. The urgency increased after Donald Trump — for whom Kanye had loudly stumped throughout most of 2018 and 2019 — wrote tweets threatening protestors with military force and praising law enforcement despite their obvious overreach.

Instead, Kanye’s PR loudly proclaimed his contributions to a college fund for Floyd’s daughter and legal funds for Taylor’s family as they pursued a wrongful death suit against the Louisville Metro Police Department. Later, Kanye himself turned up at a protest in his native Chicago, dressed in a nondescript, all-black sweatsuit with a mask covering the lower half of his face. West was reportedly on the scene for less than 30 minutes, mainly being swarmed by fans and criticized by the protest’s organizers for “hijacking” the march with his celebrity.

Just like that, Kanye West fans were ready to believe that he’d made up for his past half-decade of transgressions. Twitter lit up with praise for the prodigal rapper, with one tweet surmising he’d been running a “long con” going viral. Credulous commenters rushing to reiterate their longstanding belief that he’d been “playing chess, not checkers” over the past few years of running around in a “Make America Great Again” cap and buddying up to a wannabe dictator. The bar is on the floor, folks. Kanye has never been one to apologize — he never even issued a mea culpa for interrupting Taylor Swift’s 2009 VMA acceptance speech, after all. He just moves on to the next thing and hopes we’ll all forget his last one.

Think back to 2018. After struggling to bounce back from his 2016 support of Donald Trump’s election campaign, Kanye seemed to lean into his association with Trump’s cabal. He began sporting Trump’s “Make America Great Again” caps while promoting the albums from his GOOD Music label’s so-called Wyoming Sessions. When the release parties for those GOOD Music projects received more attention than the underwhelming albums themselves, Kanye became a choir leader. When he flubbed the release on his first “gospel” album, he promoted another one. When that one failed to reconcile him to the good graces of the public and the press, he pivoted to glorified Easter pageants billed as “opera.”

Now needing yet another fumble recovery, it appears Kanye is again attempting to make up for past mistakes without acknowledging how and why he messed up in the first place. Contrary to fan conspiracy theories, Kanye has never owned up to the damage his support of Trump has done and has, in fact, repeatedly doubled down on it. The aforementioned “long con” tweet took a pair of quotes from two stories nearly a year apart out-of-context to make him out to be an espionage hero, but he’s not. People have been hurt by his actions and his silence on serious issues and these charitable acts do not come close to reversing their suffering.

Kanye West’s acts of charity are all fine and good, but they are sullied by the climate in which he’s made them — a climate he helped create. Kanye’s prison reform efforts are undermined by the fact that he supported a “law-and-order” strongman, who just a week ago sought to bully protestors into silence, writing “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” to his 81.8 million followers on Twitter. To date, the only person Trump personally tried to free from incarceration was ASAP Rocky, who wasn’t even locked up in the US — mainly as a way to distract from ongoing investigations against him.

Kanye also failed to condemn Donald Trump’s inflammatory, racist rhetoric — rhetoric that led to an increase in the rate of hate crimes nationally. Those crimes included the death of Ahmad Arbery, which contributed to the powder keg that exploded into the protests of the past few weeks. When Kanye said “slavery sounds like a choice,” he unknowingly used a Republican Southern Strategy talking point that gaslights Black people. It pretends the targeting and inequitable treatment against us by police are a result of our “victim mentality” and not a coordinated, deliberate, statistically-proven pattern of abuse by police departments all across America against people of color — especially Black people.

West isn’t directly responsible for Trump’s actions, but he is culpable — as is anyone who enabled or excused Trump’s rise to power and all the tactics he used to get it. His actions normalized Trump’s, perhaps even popularized them, and to date, Kanye has never acknowledged the harm he’s done, only the backlash he’s received. His explanation for that backlash — “class warfare” — confirms that he doesn’t understand the impact he’s had or what class warfare actually means.

Let’s be real: Kanye’s charitable contributions are more to assuage his own conscience so he can go back to his farm in Wyoming and feel like he did his part. While other artists organize, march, provide reform resources, and advocate for change, Kanye’s only advocating for his own public image — just as he always has. By spending $2 million against his highly-touted billion-dollar net worth, by giving 30 minutes of his time — arguably in order to soak up some praise from celebrity-worshipping fans among the protestors — Kanye wants to project the appearance of redemption and growth without actually putting in the work. If he truly wants absolution, to negate the harm he’s caused, he’ll have to actually acknowledge it and spend the rest of his life making amends.

In 2019, The Killers released “Land Of The Free,” a standalone single that was critical of life in the US. Given the current social unrest, the song is as appropriate now as it was then, if not more so. In light of that, the band has shared an intimate new performance video of the track, which features altered lyrics to reflect what’s happening in the world today following the death of George Floyd.

During the acoustic performance, Brandon Flowers sings, “How many killings must one man watch in his home? [..] Eight measured minutes and 46 seconds, another boy in the bag / Another stain on the flag.” He sings later in the song, “Father in Heaven, help us see / how to lose our hatred and gain your favor / how to break these cycles and change our nature / that we may walk underneath your banner / in the land of the free.”

When the track was originally released, Flowers told Zane Lowe, “It started in my mind, around when Sandy Hook happened and as a father how that affected me, and then it just started stacking up. It was things like Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, things like what’s happening at the Mexico border wall. This stuff didn’t seem to be in harmony with the values that I believe my country was founded on.”

Watch The Killers perform “Land Of The Free” above.

The King of Staten Island is a hangout movie, which might not come as too big of a surprise considering it’s directed by Judd Apatow. Yeah, it’s not a short movie, a staple for Apatow. And it kind of drifts – not aimlessly; there is considerable aim – but certainly with a lack of urgency, from vignette to vignette of Scott’s (Pete Davidson) aimless (now, yes, he is aimless) life.

There’s something strangely comforting about The King of Staten Island. And I think it is that deliberate pacing. In a world right now when things change in a fraction of every second, The King of Staten Island is on its own metronome. So much that it’s difficult at first to switch from the wavelength of the real world to the wavelength of this movie, but after you do, it’s nice. Just a day hanging out with some pals. Something most of us haven’t done in months.

The King of Staten Island is loosely based on Pete Davidson’s own personal life. Loosely in that Scott’s father died in 2004 (Davidson’s father tragically died during the attacks of September 11, 2001). And also loosely that Scott isn’t a famous person who is in the cast of Saturday Night Live. Scott is an aspiring tattoo artist (kind of subbing in for Davidson’s comedy career) who doesn’t do much of anything but give his friends less than great tattoos and hang out with drug dealers.

After giving an underage kid a tattoo, Scott is confronted by that boy’s father, Ray (Bill Burr), who then begins courting Scott’s mother, Margie (Marisa Tomei), to the dismay of Scott. At its heart, The King of Staten Island is about the relationship between Scott and Ray. Scott, adrift, with no real plan to do much of anything. And Ray, a firefighter like Scott’s father, who is both tough as nails and just trying to do his best.

Again, yes, it’s long. Judd Apatow makes long movies. It’s almost weird to complain about it at this point because it’s just literally a thing he always does. And I like that his movies are long. I think Apatow creates characters that need time to marinate so we get the full desired emotional impact. But it’s a specific wavelength, and if you don’t think you’ll have the patience for what I’m describing, then, no, you probably won’t. (Though, there is one sequence I can’t really go into the details of for spoiler reasons, that I could have maybe done without. Just because it’s so unlike the rest of the movie and I truly feel the film doesn’t need it.) And with Pete Davidson’s Scott, what’s interesting is over the course of this film, we see a full arc in his life, yet it hasn’t changed all that much. I see some people kind of guessing the plot of this movie is Scott eventually wants to be a fireman like his father. And from the marketing and the trailer, I can see where that misconception comes from. But that is not at all the plot of The King of Staten Island. And Davidson gives a surprisingly nuanced performance as Scott. This isn’t the “self-deprecating, yet cool” persona he, mostly, does on “Weekend Update.” Davidson lets his guard down for this role and, in turn, delivers something pretty great.

But the big standout here is Bill Burr. Burr has always been lurking in the shadows of mainstream success … just on that cusp. It was kind of a “cool thing” if you knew who Bill Burr was or was familiar with his comedy. Last fall his stock exploded after one episode of The Mandalorian (and he’s coming back for more in the upcoming season). Now here’s Burr as almost the co-lead, trading verbal barbs (and later, physical ones) with Pete Davidson and it’s an absolute pleasure to watch. I hope The King of Staten Island leads to even more Bill Burr in our lives.

Look, this is a pretty tumultuous time in the United States right now. When I first watched The King of Staten Island, the biggest story in the news was Covid-19 and, yes, I found it comforting just watching a movie about living life and trying to be a better person. Obviously a lot has changed since then and, no, there’s no claim here that The King of Staten Island is in any way relevant to current events. (Well, other than the continued threat of Covid-19 and the firefighters who still go out there every day to save lives.) And it’s weird to even be writing a movie review right now, but that’s literally a part of my job, so this was it. But, regardless, I still enjoyed it. And I hesitate to call it a “distraction” from what’s going on because, in a time like this, people need to stay focused, not distracted. But if you do need a, let’s say, mental break, The King of Staten Island is pretty good for that.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

FTR is set to make their in-ring Dynamite debut this week, but that doesn’t mean they’ve said yeah to long-term All Elite Wrestling contracts.

After finally being released from their WWE contracts, The Revival pulled up to AEW on May 27, calling themselves FTR, to confront their old rivals The Young Bucks. It was a career move many fans anticipated even before Cash Wheeler (fka Dash Wilder) and Dax Harwood (fka Scott Dawson) officially left WWE, but, according to the tag team, their current storyline on Dynamite doesn’t mean they’re locked down with AEW in the long term.

On the podcast The Jim Cornette Experience, Wheeler explained that “we’re negotiating still” with AEW. Despite these ongoing negotiations, AEW signed them to a “short-term, almost handshake deal because they want to get this thing done finally because it’s been talked about for so many years.” FTR is currently “not under any long-term obligation with anybody.”

Hardwood said he believes Tony Khan is “allowing us to appear on these handshake deals” because he has “full trust” in FTR – and he’s a fan of the tag team. Hardwood went on to explain (transcript from Wrestling, Inc.):

I think he really believes that with myself and Cash, he really believes that we are the guys who can get over. During this pandemic, he wants us to give this match with the Bucks that everyone’s been dreaming about for years, and years, and years, and he wants to be the first guy to get that match.

As cities around the nation continued to host protests of the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd this weekend, Compton, California natives Kendrick Lamar and DeMar DeRozan put in an appearance at their city’s Peace Walk alongside Russell Westbrook, the Compton Cowboys, and thousands of citizens. According to Complex, Compton Mayor Aja Brown spoke to the attendees of the march, calling it an inspiring example of local unity.

“Thousands came together—men, women,and children—to peacefully march for unity, justice, and peace for all,” she wrote on Instagram. “Today, we demonstrated that the LOVE we have for one another is powerful. Thank you to everyone that came out and to those that wanted to, but couldn’t … As I said today, this moment is not the ending, but the beginning of a new era—a movement to engage, educate and empower Compton to mobilize, organize and take action, especially when it counts.”

Kendrick didn’t make an official statement, but his words have become the de facto soundtrack of the protest, as his 2015 To Pimp A Butterfly single “Alright” re-entered the Billboard charts thanks to an increase in streams. Meanwhile, J. Cole, Jhene Aiko, Kehlani, and more have been spotted at protests as well, lending their voices and support to the movement.

See images from Compton’s Peace Walk above.

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

Grammy Award winner Leon Bridges teamed up with LA jazz musician and hip-hop artist Terrace Martin on a track from the perspective of a Black man taking his final breath. They originally wrote the song for a future album, but in light of the movement surrounding George Floyd’s murder, Bridges and Martin elected to share the single early.

Over a rolling beat inflected with brass percussion provided by Martin, Bridges croons his poignant lyrics. “Hoping for a life more sweeter / Instead I’m just a story repeating / Why do I fear with skin dark as night? / Can’t feel peace with those judging eyes,” Bridges sings.

In a statement about the track, Bridges discussed drawing influences from his own experience growing up in Texas and facing prejudice:

“Growing up in Texas I have personally experienced racism, my friends have experienced racism. From adolescence we are taught how to conduct ourselves when we encounter police to avoid the consequences of being racially profiled. I have been numb for too long, calloused when it came to the issues of police brutality. The death of George Floyd was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me. It was the first time I wept for a man I never met. I am George Floyd, my brothers are George Floyd, and my sisters are George Floyd. I cannot and will not be silent any longer. Just as Abel’s blood was crying out to God, George Floyd is crying out to me. So, I present to you Sweeter.”

Echoing Bridges’ statement, Martin said the song was written for the heart: “It is always an honor to share a platform with my dear brother Leon Bridges. This is meditation music; it is not music for the ears but rather music for the heart. I truly believe that eyes have been deceiving us for so long but the heart always tells the truth. The heart needs to be repaired. Black folk have been deceived so many years, the only thing that can turn it around is a heart full of love.”

Listen to “Sweeter” above.

“All we are is dust in the wind, dude” never fails to prompt a chuckle, which means that any time is a welcome time for an update on Bill & Ted Face The Music. The long-anticipated threequel — the grand reteaming of Alex Winter as Bill S. Preston, Esq. and Keanu Reeves as Ted “Theodore” Logan — is still due in theaters on August 21. That’s not too far away, really! Orion Pictures could drop a trailer at any moment. And that day might be Tuesday, June 9, from the looks of a guitar-emoji-filled tweet from Winter, who is teasing that “Tuesday is Bill & Ted day, just sayin.”

We could definitely use a little sunshine, in the form of awesome music that transforms Earth and encourages peace and prosperity, right about now. Not only do we want some Bill & Ted to make 2020 better, but tomorrow actually sounds like the perfect day — 6/9 — for this to go down. Nice. People definitely noticed.

It’s truly excellent news. Not only will Reeves and Winter be back for Face The Music, but William Sadler will return as Death. Brigette Lundy Paine and Samara Weaving will be portraying the daughters of Bill and Ted, respectively, and we’ll also see Anthony Carrigan, Kid Cudi (as himself), and some archival footage of George Carlin as Rufus.

Bill & Ted Face The Music will arrive on August 21.

Lady Gaga has spent some time at the top of the charts in her day, so the news she received this weekend isn’t uncharted territory for her: Her latest album, Chromatica, has debuted at No. 1 on the June 13-dated Billboard 200 chart, making it her sixth No. 1 album overall.

The album claimed the top spot thanks to 274,000 equivalent album units earned in the US during the week ending June 4. That’s a significant total, as it represents the biggest week for an album by a woman in 2020, and the fifth-biggest week overall this year. Gaga’s six No. 1 albums have come during a nine-year-and-two-day stretch, which is the fastest a woman has claimed a half-dozen chart-toppers. The second-fastest is Taylor Swift, who did it in ten years and nine months.

Gaga is also now one of only eight women with at least six No. 1 albums, joining Beyonce, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears, Swift (six each), Janet Jackson (seven), Madonna (nine), and Barbra Streisand (eleven). The only other woman to have a No. 1 album this year is Selena Gomez, whose Rare topped the charts.

Elsewhere on the chart, Jimmy Buffett debuts at No. 2 with Life On The Flip Side, his highest-charting album in 15 years. Run The Jewels also managed a No. 10 debut for RTJ4, their highest chart placement yet. This is despite the fact the album’s early Wednesday release meant only two days of listening activity were tracked for this week’s chart. Per usual, the duo also gave digital downloads of the album away for free.