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Eddie Pepitone is one of those comics who is constantly referred to as “a comic’s comic.” I don’t know the exact formula that creates a comic who is more liked by other comics than by the general public, but it probably has something to do with a slightly confrontational style. People who watch live comedy one or two times a year seem to most enjoy comics who are a bit aw shucks, a bit self-effacing, who invite you into the jokes gradually, like a father holding a toddler’s hand on the steps of a pool. Comics love other comics who get a rise out of people, who risk being hated, who toss the audience off a pier and cackle while they bob in the surf.

Why does this happen? I think it’s a little bit like politics: you want to see a comic lead an audience, not follow. To give an audience something they didn’t know they wanted rather than give them exactly what they wanted. Not to mention, comedy audiences by and large are scum and piggies, and anyone who doesn’t respect them too much is to be admired.

Eddie Pepitone, beloved by comedians in New York and LA lucky enough to see him perform regularly (he’s notorious for not touring much, and as he told me “I find the proletariat off-putting,”), is a slightly different quantity than other beloved screamers like Gilbert Gottfried or Sam Kinison. Pepitone, who says his trademark operatic bellow was inspired by Jackie Gleason and his Sicilian father (reminiscent of the way Johnny Rotten claimed to be inspired by Olivier in Richard III), seems if anything overly sensitive to the world’s problems. He seems to shout because he wants you to care more. One of his signature bits, which he rehashes in his latest special, For The Masses, sees him improvising lines in an audition for Downey fabric softener, in which he’s only supposed to say, “How did the shirt get so fresh?” but instead catalogues a litany of society’s problems, finishing, “And somehow you still got the shirt so fresh!”

In a Comedy Bang-Bang appearance in 2012 or 2013, comedian Patton Oswalt joked that an agent commented that Pepitone was “past his booking age.” And that was eight or nine years ago. Pepitone is 61 now, but it kind of fits. His is not really the kind of comedy audiences would accept from a less wizened man. And yet, there’s an obvious youthfulness to Pepitone, a sort of cherubic twinkle. Which somehow comes through inescapably, even as some accurately compare him to a homeless person. Is it the slovenliness or the raving? Probably both.

Which is to say that Pepitone’s volume is transparently just bluster. He’s pretty plainly a sweet guy. Not that I still wasn’t slightly intimidated to talk to him. We did our interview over Zoom, which is a bit new for me, meaning that I had his piercing blue eyes scrutinizing my every rambling question. It was a bit like being in the front row at one of Pepitone’s shows with only you in the audience. I wouldn’t recommend it.

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I usually don’t do the video. I hope this makes it better somehow.

It’ll make it worse, but it’s okay. I mean, we’re dealing with a killer virus. I can’t take it anymore.

Has it changed your life a lot?

Well, what do you think? That’s funny. It’d be funny if I said, “No, hasn’t affected me one bit.” I don’t travel anymore. I mean, I don’t mind it, because me and my wife just hang out. We go to the park. We read. And the special came out, so I’ve been getting enough validation through that. So I don’t know. I can’t imagine starting to travel again.

Day-to-day it seems fine, but how much does it affect being able to make money from stand-up and whatnot?

Well, yeah, that’s true. I actually have offers. There’s an outdoor show in Alameda, up in Oakland area, that they asked me to do. And then Fargo, North Dakota threw me an offer as well. And I don’t know about that, I don’t know about flying. I’m in a high-risk category. I’m fucking 61. I’m not in the greatest physical shape, so I don’t know. I don’t know if I would fare well with this thing.

I was rewatching a little bit of The Bitter Buddha from a while back, and Scott Aukerman said he wished that you would become an officially recognized national treasure. How much closer do you think you’ve gotten since then?

Well, in Britain, they give you an OBE I think it is, right? So I’m waiting for the equivalent here, which is the Mark Twain Prize. Did you see the special?

Yeah, I watched it last night.

A lot of people really like it. So I’m inching toward national treasure.

They have the Congressional Medal of Freedom, but I think Trump gave one to a dog so it might be less valuable now.

I find Trump off-putting. I want to go on the record about that.

That’s good. People should know your thoughts on that. Since the last special you’ve gotten married. Was that the same relationship? How did you meet your wife?

Yes, same relationship. It was a mail-order. No. How did we meet? Well, she’s a comedy writer. And I met her at, I think it was one of my shows. She said, “Hi,” and I said, “Hi,” and that led to a 13-year relationship.

So it was 13 years before you guys officially got married?

No, I think it was seven before we got married, something like that. By the way, I can’t keep track of… I am amazed at how people keep track of dates. Like, “Oh yeah, we met this day,” and “Oh, that movie came out in 1979.” I have no clue.

Well, that leads well into my next question: when did you first start doing stand-up?

Oh, well damn. Let’s see, Kennedy got shot in… No, I started doing stand-up I would say when I was 20. So that would be 1978. And I stopped for a while because stand-up is scary. I’m a head case as it is, but I could not do it. I was so freaked out, I would throw up before shows. So I went into improv comedy, it was very difficult to do alone. So I went into improv comedy and I did a lot of straight acting classes and plays. I’ve always been a guy who approaches stand-up theatrically because I love acting too. Matter of fact, me and my wife read plays together. I always wanted to be a playwright when I was in college. I still romanticize about that. You know when I don’t romanticize being a playwright? When I sit down to write a play.

The theatricality comes through. I definitely got the sense that you had done theater just from watching you your stand-up. The way you’re able to project feels trained in some way.

My biggest influence when I was a kid was Jackie Gleason. Now I know that’s an old reference, but I’m an old guy. I just loved that kind of bombastic, larger-than-life type of person. His persona just fit into mine, because my whole stand-up milieu, sorry to drop French words, but my whole stand-up thing is I’m channeling my dad’s operatic rage. He’s Sicilian. On stage, I have that persona. But I’m really very quiet, frightened of everything. I forgot the question. Have I been doing good so far on this interview?

You’re doing great. No rules. My questions are always a ramble so whatever leads you to say something interesting I’ll just pretend I asked a better question. You said you first did stand-up when you were 20. Do you remember your first open mic and what made you want to do it for the first time?

Well, getting back to my playwriting joke, I wanted to be a stand-up, and then I tried it. I was a big Richard Pryor, George Carlin fan, big time. And then SNL just started too, and I got into Steve Martin as well. But those guys, Pryor, particularly, and Carlin, made me want to do stand-up.

So you just sought out an open mic somewhere? Was there anyone in your own life that you saw do comedy, where you’re like, “Oh, that’s a thing that I could do.”

Yeah, this is wild, but I saw Dana Gould at Caroline’s. And I was like, “Who is this guy? I want to do stand-up like that.” And now I’m good buddies with Dana.

Do you have any memorably bad road gig stories?

Oh, memorably bad, hmm. You know, until recently, I’m very cautious with doing the road in front of the masses. I find the proletariat to be off-putting. Of course, I call the special “For the Masses,” but I mean, I will not go to the Chuckle Hut in Florida. I make sure I pick and choose. I think my worst road story was… Do you know this club called Rooster T Feathers?

Oh yeah. In Sunnyvale.

Sunnyvale, yeah. Kind of nice area. They put me up in a hotel in Cupertino. Fucking Apple is there and all these big places. And the hotel was really nice and I went swimming, but the gigs not so much. The gigs were… the people, it was a very mainstream crowd, and my stuff tends to be not that mainstream. But I’ll never forget, just the sparsity of those crowds. And I don’t know how to tone down my act for a smaller crowd, because I just perform one way. And I was doing these really high energy bits to like eight people who were in the middle of eating.

Was it different in the ’80s? They talk about the comedy boom or whatever. Were you performing at that time…

I wasn’t really doing a lot of stand-up in the clubs in the ’80s. I was doing acting, I was doing one-man shows, I was traveling with an improv group called Chicago City Limits. I did some stand-up, but I wasn’t part of that big ’80s boom.

Do you think that doing a lot of road gigs has a way of, I don’t know, dumbing down jokes, because you’re having to play to a less savvy audience or whatever?

Yeah, a little bit. I’ve been traveling… Before COVID, what I like to refer to as BC, I was traveling a lot with my buddy JT Habersaat, and he would pick all these cool rock venues. We went through the South. We went to Arkansas, Louisiana. We went to Oklahoma, Texas. And then we did also, we went back East, we did Philly, Connecticut. We did Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maine, New York. And they were very off-beat venues, like theaters or bars. We did this great bar in Worcester, Massachusetts. We did New Hampshire. And it was just a great experience, and people were so great. I was particularly afraid to perform in the South, but it was great. And I’ve done Georgia. It’s like when they’re specialized venues… The idea is, and hopefully this special will help with this, is you get a fanbase, they see your stuff, and then they’re coming specifically for you, as opposed to some of these mainstream comedy clubs, where people are like, “Oh, comedy.” And they wander in and they’re like, “Why is he upset?”

Is that a big shift? When you’re first starting out in comedy, you’re always performing for people who have no idea who you are, but then if they do, it seems like that would affect the kind of jokes that you can do.

Well, it’s all comfort level. If you have what I like to call a home crowd. Taping the special, everybody was there to see me. So I felt super comfortable and I could do whatever I want, that does make a difference. But I have reached a point, and I think being a regular at The Comedy Store for I think three years, I feel like I really have learned how to perform for anybody now. Even if I did have to go to the Chuckle Hut in Florida, I think I could navigate it now, though I would rather not.

Are there things that you know that you could say that would make people laugh, but you don’t because you think they’re hack?

Sure. Like staying away from blatant sex jokes, you know what I mean? I tell the audience sometimes, “Look, I’m not going to be talking about my sex life, all right? I know you all want to know about it. It’s not happening tonight. We’re going to talk about the decay of this civilization and how, on the outside, we have maybe 20 years left.”

They touched on it a little bit in The Bitter Buddha, but what were some of the regular day job type things were you doing when you were trying to support your comedy dreams?

I think the funniest one, I was living in Staten Island before I moved. I’m the real King of Staten, you know what I mean? I didn’t like the fact that that movie was called King of Staten Island. But that’s a whole ‘nother issue I’m going to take up with Apatow. But I was sanding floors and installing hardwood floors on Staten Island. And I would go from sanding floors to acting classes, and I would still have the dust on me. Like if you touched me, dust would come up. That was a crazy job. Other jobs… Like any good actor in New York, I was waiting tables then catering, and I burned through a lot of those jobs.

It’s easier for me to imagine you as a guy with floor sand on your shirt in an acting class than you being a waiter for some reason.

I mean, I was a good waiter, but I really was… not a good waiter. I would lose my temper with tables, you know what I mean? They would start asking me for very specific things and I would just shake my head. They’d be like, “Oh, and can I get, instead of radicchio in my salad, is there any way they can do it with spinach leaves?” And I would just go, “Oh, God.” I would let my displeasure be known, to the point of one guy was ready to literally kill me in front of his family. He jumped up, got in my face.

I didn’t see you when you were a younger comic, maybe, but seeing you now, it feels like you do the kind of comedy that might not work for a twenty-something comedian. Do you think that you had to age into becoming the ideal messenger for your jokes?

Oh yeah. I’m always amazed to see the young comics who are so skilled. The guy who comes to mind for some reason, I work with him at The Comedy Store, is Fahim Anwar. He’s so young and he’s so funny. In The Comedy Store we do tag-team intros. And so he would intro me as his dad, and it was just hilarious to me. And I would come up and I would go, “I don’t like the young guys. What do they have to talk about, really? They have no life experience. They haven’t suffered.” Shit like that.

So are we ever going to find out how she got the shirt so fresh?

Well, I do say Downy at the end, I say, “Oh, Downy. Oh, thank you, thank you.” Now with COVID, that taping was done before this catastrophe. And COVID, this pandemic, has accelerated the depravity and the collapse I was talking about. I mean, economically, this country is in ruins and ecologically we’re even in worse shape. So the shirt so fresh bit, I think there’s a lot more material.

Sure, but are you going to have to change the ad? That feels like it comes from a slightly earlier age of corporate advertising. Now, maybe it’d be about Downy making a Black Lives Matter statement or something.

Yeah, yeah. I think that’s a hilarious take. I want to write some material on that, about how Chase Manhattan is into Black Lives Matter, you know what I mean? “Hi, we’re Chase Manhattan, and we don’t really pay taxes and we redline districts for black people who can’t get loans, but we do care. We do care about… You know what? At Chase, we care about whatever is trending.”

There you go, I like that.

Right? Not bad.

So you said your father was Sicilian. Was your mother also?

Jewish, my mother was Jewish. Yeah, so Sicilian-Jewish, intellectual and then just very viscerally angry.

[A long digression ensues in which Pepitone inquires about me and my family life, and how I’m coping with COVID, etc.]

Right, right, right. Gotcha. All right, well this isn’t me interviewing you, but I just had to know how you’re coping.

Well, it’s nice to know that. Good to know your interview subject cares about you too. Is there anything that I didn’t ask you that you really wanted to touch on before we?

I don’t think so. I mean, the question I ask myself every day is, how do you keep your looks?

‘For The Masses’ is currently free on Amazon Prime, and available on Tunes, Google Play, Xbox Video, Vudu, Pandora, SIRIUS XM, Apple Music, Spotify, Amazon Music, and Tidal. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

While the NBA is gearing up for its upcoming return to play in its bubble league in Orlando, an unusual story emerged thanks to an email sent by the Worldwide Leader in Sports’ top hoops insider. Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN found himself in hot water on Friday morning when an email he sent to Josh Hawley, a Republican senator from Missouri, was posted onto Twitter.

Hawley, who has made being a China hawk one of his signature political issues, wrote a letter to Adam Silver in his quest to investigate the ties between the league and the country that made headlines last fall due to Rockets general manager Daryl Morey. You can read the letter here if you’d like, but the release made its way to Wojnarowski’s inbox. In response, here is what Woj had to say:

Seeing as how you have been alive at any point in the last several years, this was promptly turned into quite the thing among more right-leaning media outlets. Several hours after Hawley posted his tweet, Wojnarowski issued an apology, and ESPN then reprimanded him for his “completely unacceptable behavior.”

Hawley — who it stands to reason is more well-suited to do something about foreign policy than Adrian Wojnarowski by nature of him being a United States senator — did not accept the apology, as his laser-focus is on ESPN calling out the NBA about its relationship with China.

Missouri does not have an NBA team. More than 120,000 Americans have died due to a pandemic over the last 4-5 months, with expanded unemployment insurance for those who have lost their jobs in recent months as a result of the economic struggles that exist due to the pandemic set to expire in 15 days.

A lot of headlines have emerged from Kanye West’s recent Forbes interview, in which, among other things, the rapper distanced himself from Donald Trump and was critical of the president. Those quotes came from what Forbes called “four rambling hours of interviews,” and now the publication has shared a few choice snippets of the audio they recorded. More specifically, they have posted three freestyles that Kanye spontaneously broke into during the conversation.

In one of them, he calls out Trump, referencing a late-May incident in which the POTUS was taken, along with Melania and Barron Trump, to the White House’s underground bunker while protests took place outside of the building. Kanye rapped, “How about we get a real plan? / How about we change up the meal plan? / How about we stop hiding in the bunkers and be a real man?”

Kanye mentioned the bunker elsewhere in the interview as well, saying of Trump, “It looks like one big mess to me. I don’t like that I caught wind that he hid in the bunker.”

Elsewhere in the freestyles, Kanye talks about his family’s experience with the OJ Simpson trial, religion, drugs, and other topics, so listen to the audio here.

Gus Fring isn’t popping up in the Far Cry universe, but Giancarlo Esposito certainly is, according to a teaser trailer revealed by Ubisoft after a listing for Far Cry 6 was leaked online. Ubisoft’s weekend event got a bit more interesting on Friday when a listing for Far Cry 6 popped up online featuring the unmistakable likeness of Breaking Bad alum Giancarlo Esposito.

https://twitter.com/anjohn0422/status/1281540632754876417l

Shortly after the screenshots leaked, Ubisoft playfully acknowledged that Esposito will, indeed, be part of a new game by sharing a tweet with his digitized self lighting a cigar and exhaling.

“Anton would not be pleased,” the tweet from Ubisoft UK read. “See you on Sunday at #UbiForward.”

The tweet advertised Ubisoft Forward, its July 12 event that will shed new light on the next Far Cry and, presumably, some other titles coming in the next few months. Esposito is certainly an exciting addition to the game, likely as a villain. As pointed out in the screenshots, he’s apparently a dictator of Yara, “a tropical paradise frozen in time.” The character, Anton Castillo, will have to deal with a player-controlled guerilla fighter named Dani Rojas, according to Engadget.

The leak also suggested a February 18, 2021 release date, but we’ll see on Sunday if that’s what we should expect on this side of the pond as well.

New Zealand indie rockers The Beths broke out with their 2018 debut record Future Me Hates Me. Follow its release, the band toured extensively with the likes of Death Cab For Cutie and The Pixies. Traveling the world, The Beths learned a lot about themselves, but vocalist Elizabeth Stokes found she still faced the same self-doubt. The Beths tackle those themes in Jump Rope Gazers, their sophomore album that was released Friday.

To commemorate the record’s release, The Beths graced fans with a video accompanying their sophomore effort’s title track. Directed by Annabel Kean, Stokes explores the picturesque New Zealand landscape with guitarist Jonathan Pearce.

“All the different landscapes were fifteen minutes walk from each other,” Stokes said about the visual. “I’d never seen sand dunes that big before, they were a beautiful dream. Walking up one was kind of like a nightmare though, they are so steep.” Kean added, “‘Jump Rope Gazers’ is a total heart-breaker, huge feelings track, and it was clear from the first listen that Sports Team had to go bigger than ever to match the calibre. So, we shot a 5-minute sci-fi alien adventure romance.”

About the track in general, Stokes said described her inspiration behind the expressive lyrics: “I’ve always dabbled in extreme sincerity, but always self consciously. I think there’s nothing scarier than just using the words ‘I love you’ in a song. In a love song. I didn’t manage it on our first album, but I guess I was ready for this one. The bass drum Tristan used for this one was a huge old modified marching bass drum. It’s the slowest tempo we have played, which gives us space to do things we wouldn’t normally be able to.”

Watch “Jump Rope Gazers” above.

Jump Rope Gazers is out now via Carpark. Get it here.

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

After a successful run as an esteemed experimental indie group in the 2000s and 2010s, Yeasayer called in quits in 2019. Despite that, the Brooklyn band has been in the news lately thanks to a lawsuit they filed against The Weeknd and Kendrick Lamar. They sued the artists over their Black Panther song “Pray For Me,” which they attested sampled and altered a “distinctive choral performance” from their 2007 song “Sunrise,” claiming the sample was “immediately recognizable.”

However, it appears they have decided to not push the issue any further: Pitchfork reports that documents filed in a New York federal court say the band “confirmed to their satisfaction that no copyright infringement occurred.”

The lawsuit was initially filed this past February by the band and their We Are Free, LLC, against The Weeknd, Kendrick Lamar, producers Doc McKinney and Frank Dukes, and the labels UMG, Interscope, Aftermath, and Top Dawg Entertainment.

The Weeknd previously denied the copyright claims in court documents, saying his song “does not capture any actual sounds” from Yeasayer’s track, adding, “Each and every allegation contained in the complaint not specifically admitted herein is denied. The sound recording of ‘Pray For Me’ does not capture any actual sounds from the sound record, ‘Sunrise.’”

In what’s surely an official contest that Jake Gyllenhaal is fully aware of (disclaimer: it’s not.), Tom Holland is offering one lucky winner a weekend away with his Spider-Man: Far From Home co-star.

While sharing a photo of the two actors at a 2019 comic book convention, Holland solicited his 35 million Instagram followers for a caption to to the humorous pic and promised the winner a getaway with Gyllenhaal, who has yet to respond to Holland’s generous offer. Then again, he hasn’t said “no” either, so you never know.

You can see Holland’s full Instagram post below:

As of this writing, Holland’s post has 2.8 million Likes and over 51,000 comments, so that’s a whole lot of captions to sift through. But if some lucky fan does get a chance to spend the weekend with Gyllenhaal, they might want to think twice about sharing any personal details with the Velvet Buzzsaw actor. Gyllenhaal recently made headlines after it was revealed that he shared a very personal piece of information about his childhood friend Chris Fischer during his wedding to comedian Amy Schumer. Via ET Canada:

Gyllenhaal’s speech was shown in part during “Expecting Amy” and it is not what you would expect.

“We’re going to start this off with Chris is the only uncircumcised one amongst the four of us, which was a mystery to us as young boys because we only knew the penis to be one way,” Gyllenhaal said.

That’s a whole lot of TMI, Mysterio. Although, it was probably right at home in Schumer’s docuseries that premiered Thursday July 9 on HBO. The three part behind-the-scenes special is an unflinching and intimate look at Schumer’s life as she navigated an extremely difficult pregnancy while still working on a comedy tour that eventually left her hospitalized. Fortunately, everything worked out in the end, and mom and baby had a safe and healthy delivery.

(Via Tom Holland on Instagram)

The international food conglomerate Goya is dead to a lot of people on social media right now — #BoycottGoya has been trending since yesterday afternoon. Important voices in food are speaking up. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is cracking jokes about prepping her own adobo seasoning (have at it, it’s easy!). And, in the final stage of the cycle, the counterprotesters have started a hashtag of their own.

What’s all the drama about, you ask?

At the signing of the White House Hispanic Prosperity Initiative, the head of Goya, Bob Unanue, praised Donald Trump in a press conference on the White House lawn, saying, “We’re all truly blessed to have a leader like President Trump.” People began calling for the boycott shortly after the words escaped his mouth — naturally connecting Trump’s aggressive actions toward Mexican and Central American immigrants and his continued disdain for Puerto Rico with the fact that Goya sells food marketed directly to those communities.

Prominent figures in the food world spoke up.

As did former presidential hopeful Julian Castro.

Naturally, that was counterbalanced by calls to buy Goya products from the right. And there were plenty of “well, actually” tweets pointing to Goya’s thousands of employees and its charitable history. (It should also be noted that the brand had a similarly positive relationship with the Obama administration.) A more productive branch of the conversation noted that you can buy these types of products from small-time and local operators instead of huge multi-national corps.

From that inciting incident and subsequent spin-out sprung plenty of questions. Should we all be boycotting Goya? Is there a company less aligned with aggressive actions against immigrants to buy these products from? Do Twitter boycotts actually work?

These are all valid angles to explore and we’ll get to them, but first a more pressing question: Does this surprise you? Because it probably shouldn’t. Not if you understand how colonization has shaped the North/ Central/ South American and Caribbean foodways. Not if you’re willing to look at the situation within a broader context of how mainstream food is produced and who profits from it.

Goya is a Spanish-American company. (You know Spain, right? The conquistadors?) And in that same spirit, the brand highjacked Indigenous American foods for colonial profits. It’s literally a tale as old as time. Prudencio Unanue Ortiz immigrated from Spain to Puerto Rico then New York and founded Goya in New Jersy in 1936. In the beginning, it was focused on importing Spanish olives and olive oil to the New York City marketplace. Eventually, the company turned to Indigenous ingredients like beans, corn, chiles, and spice mixes that were popular across the Caribbean, Mexican, and Central American diasporas. Three generations later, the Unanue family operates a billion-dollar enterprise peddling beans, masa, and sauces, among other products. They still import Spanish products but they’re far better known in the U.S. for their beans and spice mixes.

This makes Goya the epitome of colonial erasure of Indigenous food culture by colonialists hailing from Spain — one of history’s most vicious colonial perpetrators. While it’s easy to understand the brand’s importance to the Latin-descended people of the Americas (and their frustrations with the company’s praise of Trump), the deeply colonial attributes of the whole situation should also be noted.

Though they tend to align with whoever is in power, the Unanue family is known for it’s GOP allegiance. Andy Unanue, who also works in the conglomerate food world and is Bob’s brother, toyed with running for Congress as a Republican back in 2008. And neither Unanue has ever hidden their support for Trump or the Republican party — both of which have continually fought to suck wealth from Indigenous communities via various pipeline projects.

For what it’s worth, #Boycott (insert brand name here) initiatives have been shown to have little effect. Studies of these online actions have indicated that when it comes to revenues, social media brouhaha rarely has any impact on the bottom line of a company this big. In part, that’s due to the fact that most of the people tweeting about this today won’t be tweeting about it tomorrow. And while it’s easy to make your own adobo mix, it’s even easier just to buy it when no one’s looking. Controversies die and consumer memory is short.

What this story does speak to is the blindspot people seem to have around these foods, their histories, and who is profiting off them. Companies like Goya are colonial, capitalist multi-national brands that commodify Indigenous products from the Americas and give nothing back to the Indigenous people who often grow and harvest those same products (or even pay respect to the food cultures that birthed them). Even companies like La Costeña, a Spanish-Mexican company, trade in colonial ideals by selling off Indigenous foods to the wider market. In La Costeña’s case, they control 69 percent of the world’s chili market. Chili is an Indigenous American staple, shared with the world. There’s no evidence online of La Costeña offering targeted support of Indigenous communities. Their charity programs pretty much stick to earthquake relief and children rehabilitation centers in Mexico City (both very valid in the broader scheme of things, of course).

This matters because the Indigenous peoples of what is now Mexico live in some of the worst poverty in the Americas and still deal with serious discrimination from the near majority European-descended populace. Spain and Portugal were and still are European colonial powers. Their descendants still rule in places from Argentina to Brazil to Cuba to Mexico to the United States. And colonizers — like the Goya/Unanue family — are still actively funneling money away from Indigenous communities and leaving them in abject poverty while they become billionaires off of traditional foods.

So yes, you can/ should be pissed off at Goya and La Costeña and any colonial company hoarding the wealth of chilis (a billion dollar a year industry), vegetables, or spices grown on Indigenous land. It’s a legitimate frustration, even on the days Goya’s CEO doesn’t praise the president.

Lost in the Twitterness of all this is the White House Hispanic Prosperity Initiative itself. Jovita Carranza, an administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration, broke it down in the Miami Herald as “a coalition designed to help Hispanic Americans reach their dreams through innovative educational and career pathways.” In short, that means the SBA is setting aside money to ensure people in the Hispanic community in the U.S. have access to small business loans to start-up companies.

It’s an entrepreneur booster for low-income families who live marginalized lives in the U.S. a narrative that was almost entirely obscured by the din of the #BoycottGoya talk. (Thankfully, while many pieces of the conversation were lost, people did urge boycotters not to throw food away, but rather donate it to food banks.)

So with the social media fury already burning out, where to next?

Well, if you want to be part of broader systemic change, make the extra effort to buy these food products from Indigenous producers directly instead of huge multi-national colonial corporations. We don’t need European colonial companies like Goya sifting those profits away from some of the most vulnerable people on Earth while shipping worldwide and making an outsized carbon footprint. You can always buy Puerto Rican spices from non-conglomerate owned Puerto Rican producers. Or buy your beans from the Indigenous folks who are actually growing them. And if you just can’t bear the weight of that inconvenience, pressure Goya and other brands profiting off of Indigenous ingredients and techniques to include Indigenous communities in their charitable initiatives.

Conversations about food have both deepened and broadened over the past few years, particularly in recent months. The time is ripe to ask ourselves tough questions about what we eat, who profits from it, what that means, and how our purchasing affects the planet and the people (particularly the most vulnerable people) living on it. None of it is quite as easy to wrestle with as a Twitter boycott, but it’s far more significant in the long run.

Dallas-born singer Tayla Parx made a name for herself last year with her debut album We Need To Talk. Now, the singer is gearing up for another big release. Teasing her upcoming sophomore record Coping Mechanisms, Parx shared the groove-driven track “Dance Alone” in May as a reflection on human connection. On Friday, the singer followed up her single’s release with a vibrant new video.

Directed by Qwely, Parx’s “Dance Alone” video makes the most of her quarantine. Opening in her mood-lit room, Parx exudes joy as she gets up on her feet, gracefully shimmies down her stairwell, and showcases her best dance moves around her colorful home.

In a statement alongside the video’s release, Parx said she hopes the video makes her fans feel more connected: “We’re all stuck inside, while coping with being away from loved ones more than usual. We need human connection, but at least when you’re home dancing in your pajamas while blasting your favorite song, you feel a little less alone. You have the music to keep you company. Show me you’re dancing alone if you can relate.”

Watch Parx’s “Dance Alone” video above.

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

While whiskey gets a lot of attention from mainstream media at the moment, rum has quietly become the fastest-growing spirit category in the world. Rum was the spirit of choice, even in North America, for centuries before whiskey came along. Now it’s back, bigger and better than ever.

One of the biggest reasons rum is gaining so much popularity is due to the tireless work of the world’s only Rum Ambassador, Ian Burrell. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Burrell on the road a few times at cocktail competitions like Bacardi Legacy and big industry conventions like Bar Convent Berlin. So believe me when I personally attest: there’s no one who loves rum more than Burrell. His energy and knowledge about the spirit are second to none.

When I heard Burrell was working with legendary rum maker Richard Seale to marry African and Caribbean rums for the first time, I knew the collaboration would be something special. The fruit of their labors was Equiano Rum, which became available in the U.S. just last month ($60 per bottle). To celebrate this new endeavor and the new rum, I called up Burrell so we could chat about rum in general, Equiano, and the importance of telling stories via the spirits we drink.

How does one become the official rum ambassador of an entire spirits category?

Well, first of all, nobody actually hired me or made my job official. I actually created my own job. What it was is I looked around to see if there was a go-to person that could teach me about the rum category and there wasn’t. So I decided, “Well, why not me?” So it’s self-taught. I’m still learning about the category of rum. It’s just fortunate that over the years many rum brands I’ve worked with have actually then bought into what I do and the story and believed in what I’ve said. They’ve basically honored me by saying, “You’re helping the category grow to the status where it is now.” So they’ve acknowledged me as that ambassador that I awarded myself for the category of rum.

I’m very lucky to be in a position where a lot of companies are paying me to actually travel around the world to talk about the category itself.

It’s an interesting thing because it feels like rum is really making a big comeback right now. What do you attribute that to? Is it people getting sort of burned out on bourbon or is it just that there are so many good rums right now so it’s impossible to deny?

I would say it’s a combination. I mean, you’re right, when it comes to things like bourbon and other whiskeys, a lot of people are looking for that next new thing that they could tantalize their taste buds with or introduce to their friends to. A lot more people are becoming more discerning as well, and a lot of that’s to do with the internet. Social media is bringing the world and knowledge together. People seek to find out what it is they’re drinking. There are the social aspects of it as well. Rum has basically grown because of all of these factors. Then there’s the fact that there are more and more rum brands being creative in a category that, as we know, was one of the biggest spirit categories in the world 200 to 250-odd years ago. Now, it’s starting to gain more traction. So all of these factors have all come into place to get rum to where it is now. Where it is seen as a fast-growing category.

There are so many different styles of rums out there. I always like to say there is a rum for everybody just because of the fact that if you’re into your spirits that you want to sip neat, at cask strength, add a little bit of water, or be a connoisseur of the spirit, there are rums out there for you. If you want something easy drinking that you want to mix with your favorite mixer, or maybe a couple of cubes of ice, there are rums out there for you. If you just want a rum in a cocktail and have a smile on your face and have fun, and create that party vibe, there is a rum out there for you.

So it’s one of those categories that ticks lots of boxes and appeals to a wide breadth of people. And all of that is all coming together at the same time. It’s like all these stars are aligning, and that’s why I see real growth in the rum category.

Right on. I was looking through your Instagram and you’ve got lots of very good informational posts. For instance, you just posted about Appleton 21 and 23. And then you point out that if your rum doesn’t say, “Years old,” on the label, it’s probably bullshit. What do age statements generally mean on rum?

Because rums are made in so many different countries around the world, you’re going to have different interpretations of what rum is. And what is surprising to a lot of people, because they just look at rum as one category — the Wild Wild West — is that they fail to understand that there are lots of rum regions that have strict guidelines and rules to how they make their particular product. Now, because there are different regions, everyone’s going to have their own interpretation. A lot of them have been influenced by a colonial connection to the particular region, so their interpretation of rums are going to be self-defining. For example, Jamaica, when they make rum, their mindset is been connected to the old English colonies, the English way of thinking of spirits or how it’s made, how it’s defined.

When you put an age claim on your product, that would normally mean the minimum that particular product has spent in a barrel, which is the norm in, say, Scotland. It’s a norm that’s observed in Ireland. It’s a norm that’s in England. So naturally, if you have England colonizing parts of the Caribbean — Jamaica, Barbados, Trinidad, Guyana, etc. — then they’re going to have that mentality. But then you have other white countries that colonized parts of the world, like Spain. And they’re used to doing things in a slightly different way when it comes to age and product. So when we look at rums, we see things like solera age. That’s an “average” style of aging where they’re using blends of younger products with older products, and they quite happily talk about the oldest product used in that blend or how long it may have been used in that system.

That’s the part that’s that can be confusing to consumers. You will have some brands that would use 23 on their label, and it’s not an homage to Michael Jordan. It’s the fact that they have some rums inside their blend that have been aged for 23 years but are no longer 23 years old. So to put 23 on the label and say in their marketing that they have some old rums inside it at that age, but they are using younger rums. Then the consumer is confused because they don’t really understand the rules and regulations of that particular country. They might adopt or think that the benchmark is the Jamaica way of defining stuff or the Barbados way of defining stuff, where they only put the minimum age on their label.

So you see 23 on a rum from, say, Central America, and you don’t really understand about the rules and regulations of that particular country, you may think it’s 23 years old, when in reality it may be only six years old with some 23 inside it. That’s the confusing part of rum. So if it does say, “Years old,” on there, or it says, “Minimum Aged,” and then it has that number on there, then by trading standard laws, that would be the correct way of labeling that particular product from an English colonial ideology. But if you’re into your rums from, say, Guatemala, or even Nicaragua, or Panama — again, Central American countries that were ex-colonies from the Spanish empire — they use average aging. They use solera aging. So you have to understand that what you’re paying for is not a product that’s been in the barrel for a minimum amount of years. It’s a blend of rums. Now it may taste great, but you have to understand and know what you’re paying for.

I always like to say to people, “Enjoy what you like, but know what you’re paying for.”

That’s really good to know. Another technical question, you see “rums” like Tuzemsky in the Czech Republic, which is made from sugar beet and not sugar cane. Is there a standardization of rum like bourbon has to have 51 percent corn or scotch single malt has to be 100 percent barley?

Well, you have to break it down and look exactly. In fact, exactly what you just said there. You were talking about a product coming out of Czech Republic, which used to be defined as rum by their own exporting standards, but can no longer be called rum once they joined the EU, because it wasn’t by definition rum. It was a local spirit that used rum as a way to promote or market its product and has done quite well. So Tuzemsky is not rum, and we know that because they’ve taken rum off their label. So to be defined as a rum internationally, you have to be made from sugar cane or variants of.

But also of interest to me when you were making that analogy, you mentioned scotch. There is no global definition of what whisky is, but there are regional and geographical definitions of what whisky is. So a Scotch whisky will be completely different from an American whisky. And when we go to America, we look at regions in Kentucky or look at Tennessee. Although they’re very, very similar, they have certain guidelines of where they have to be made and what they are made of. Even India has different definitions of whisky. They even use a sugar cane as a distillate. It has to have a certain amount of sugar cane and then it has to have a certain amount of grain inside the barrel for some of their whiskies.

So there are regional definitions or geographical definitions of whisky, just the same as there are with rums. It’s just that with rums — because it’s widely accepted around the world — that there will be different interpretations of what rum is to those vast majority of different countries.

And then some countries don’t even call their product rum. A prime example is Brazil. Cachaça. If I made a cachaça in Jamaica, I could sell that as rum. But I couldn’t make a Jamaican rum in Brazil and call it cachaça. I’d have to call it rum or aguardiente. So it’s all about regional reputations.

Let’s talk about the launch of Equiano, which is a marrying of African rum and Caribbean rum. Can you walk us through what the bottle is and how it came to be?

Yes, so Equiano is the world’s first African and Caribbean rum. What we mean is we have rum from the African continent blended with rums from the Caribbean. It’s like going full circle. As we know, Africans were enslaved and then brought over to the Caribbean to actually build, not only the rum industry but the agriculture industry. It has all been built on their sweat and tears. So rum is always connected with that because sugar cane is one of those symbols that we will always connect with some form of enslavement. Rum has that connection. That dark history. So I wanted to be involved with something unique, especially as a person who believes in the category as a whole. And I said, if I’m going to get involved with a brand, it has to really be promoting a category. Also, it has to be telling a story.

So the opportunity came where I worked with my partners, where they said, “Where would you ideally like to work with? We’ll create a blend?” And I said, “Well, I’d love to have a rum from the African continent. The best rums I’m tasting at the moment from Africa are coming out of Mauritius.” So it has to be a blend of Mauritian rums, and I said, “it has to be a blend of either Barbados or Jamaica rum because I have a connection to Barbados and Jamaica.” So I put it to a friend of mine named Richard Seale, who is an award-winning master distiller and blender. He’s making some of the best liquid in the world at the moment, not just rum. And he loved the idea of creating a little bit of history, of blending and importing rums from the African continent into his distillery and blending it with some of his rum. So that’s how that came about.

It’s more than just the bottle too. There’s a lot of story around the name.

The name is important as well because, again, it tells part of the story. Olaudah Equiano was a freedom fighter, revolutionary, an abolitionist, an entrepreneur, and also a person that really showed how the world should be looking at each other back in the 18th century. And we’re seeing a lot of that today. He was enslaved when he was 11 years old and brought to Barbados. He was sold there and sent from Barbados to America. He was sold again there and came to England. He knew that slavery was wrong because he lived it. Peddling flesh is wrong. So he wrote a book of his memoirs, and it opened the eyes for a lot of people of what enslavement of Africans was about.

And because of his campaigning, because of his storytelling, he basically started the ball rolling for the abolition of slavery worldwide. He’s an important part of that movement. And again, that’s very topical today for where we are when we’re looking at human beings as equals. We felt that it’s important for the rum to pay homage and tell a story. It was important for the rum to make that same journey as well. Travel from Africa, going to the Caribbean and then going to the U.S. and to Europe.

Then the other thing I said we have to do is we have to give back. So a percentage of our profits will be going to ground level charities and foundations that are fighting against enslavement around the world and equality projects.

It’s just a great story. So let’s get a little more insular to the rum. What flavor profiles were you looking to highlight when you put these blends together?

Oh, great question. Well, first of all, Mauritius originally was a Dutch colony which became a French colony and then an English colony. There was a lot of changing hands. When you go there, the rum distilleries have been influenced by that French colonial ideology, which is making rums from fresh sugar cane juice. But they also retain some of the influence from England as well. So they’re making rums from molasses. Some are using pot stills, some are using column stills. So I wanted to try to get that influence there. I also wanted to take advantage of the French oak — the Cognac casks — that they have in abundance out there because of the connection to France.

So we had to have a rum that was still complex with a lot of flavor, especially for people that want to sip and savor the spirit neat. But, we also wanted a rum for bartenders to enhance in cocktails. It had to, most importantly, work with rums from Barbados, which was the second place we chose. Richard Seale, the rums that he creates, I like to call them sweet rums. And when I say sweet, in the Barbados terminology, it’s a naturally sweet, not sweetened. Another important thing, we couldn’t add any sugar to the actual rum. It had to be all-natural. No spices, no sugar. It had to be all coming from the types of barrels and casks that we’re using. So that Cognac cask has been tropically aged for a minimum of 10 years in Mauritius, and they’re now sent by boat to Barbados, where once Richard Seale gets hold of it, he then blends it with rums that are aged from a minimum eight years in Barbados. They’re vatted and sat down together for a little while and then bottled.

I’ve heard you call this a “drinking rum.” What’s the mean exactly?

Yeah, that was my ideal, a drinking rum. Some people say to me, “What do you mean by drinking rum?” I’m like, well, a lot of people categorize rums and they say, “Oh, is it a sipping rum? Is it a mixing rum?” I’m like, well, any rum could be sipped. Any rum can be mixed. It all depends on the person who’s drinking it, but more importantly, how you want to drink it. So this rum needs to be drunk. Drink it neat, on the rocks, with your favorite mixer, in a cocktail, anyway that you see fit.

It has to be versatile enough to do that. But it also has to appeal to a wide breadth of rum drinkers that are on different journeys. I want the person that’s into their single casks or their cask strength rums to be able to sip it and say, “Yeah, man, that tastes good. Good flavor, 43 percent alcohol. This is a session rum for me.” I can do the whole bottle of Equinao with friends in a session. And I want the rum novice to also come on board and say, “You know what, I can drink this with ginger ale or a ginger beer, and I still taste the flavor’s rum, but it’s not offensive to me because it’s not challenging for me.” I wanted to rum that wasn’t challenging for the new drinker but was complex and flavorsome enough for the experts. It seems quite hard to do, but in theory, when you have an artist like a Richard Seale actually doing the final blending of the product, it becomes quite easy in that respect. That’s what we were looking to create with the flavor profile of that rum.