If you don’t live in a major American city, you might’ve convinced yourself that the country had gone back to “normal” since protests calling for an end to police violence against Black Americans erupted across every state after the May 26 killing of George Floyd. It hasn’t. Also, we’d like to argue there is nothing “normal” about a country where police are regularly accused of using force that reaches far beyond the scope of their duties.

To the former point: People are still out protesting and they’ve made it clear they’re not going home until serious progress is made. Dismantling/ defunding massive police departments was never a short-term project and, as we enter the third week of protests, it’s worth remembering that this type of nationwide movement takes time. The Montgomery Bus Boycott lasted 381 days, the Greensboro Sit-Ins five months, and the Selma marches stretched out over 18 days.

Protests in Atlanta were punctuated by the death on Friday morning of Rayshard Brooks, 27, who was shot in the back twice by a police officer after an attempted arrest. CNN reports that within 48 hours of protestors flooding the streets calling for justice for Rayshard, the officer who shot him has been terminated and the police chief has stepped down. In Palmdale California, protestors took to the streets over the weekend calling for a renewed investigation into the death of Robert Fuller, a black man whose body was found hanging from a tree outside of City Hall just days after another black man was found hanging from a tree outside of a Victorville library, 45 miles away. According to The Cut, both deaths were initially believed to be suicides by local authorities.

The protests from this past weekend, even in Atlanta and Palmdale, were been largely peaceful (though the Wendy’s in the parking lot where Brooks was arrested was burned down) as people showed up in the thousands at peaceful protests in Hollywood, Brooklyn (where protestors wore white in support of the Brooklyn Liberation), Chicago, New York, San Francisco, and Boston. In conjunction with pride month, this past weekend’s Black Lives Matters marches had a special emphasis on black trans lives. According to the Human Rights Campaign, 91% of the reported murders of trans and gender non-conforming people in 2019 were black women.

Here are some of the scenes from this weekend’s protests across the country.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ABC7Shack/status/1272326514403491840

The CMJ Music Marathon was a New York Institution between 1975 and 2015, but the event came crumbling down following some legal issues involving the then-CEO and some lawsuits from employees. In 2016, they asked fans to “bear with” them, and toward the end of last year, it looked like good news from CMJ was on the way. Under new ownership, CMJ was set to return in 2020. Like it has to everybody else, though, life happened, and live events aren’t really going on right now.

However, Amazing Radio, which announced in April that they are the new owners of the CMJ name, has a plan. Instead of a live in-person event, CMJ will be an online-only affair that will be “set up to emulate the iconic New York City festival and its spirit of new music discovery,” as noted in a press statement. For $30, artists can sign up to be eligible to play the virtual fest.

In April, Amazing Radio chairman Bill Hein said, “This is a revolution for American emerging artists; the opportunity to be played on the radio, increase their popularity through listener engagement, have the chance to play CMJ and grow their careers, all backed up by audience support and exert advice. We’re still planning to bring CMJ back to New York in October, come hell or coronavirus. But we’re here to help musicians, now, anyway.”

It was back in 1978 when Esquire published a story called “The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy: America’s Search for True Grit.” Most of the events of the piece take place at Gilley’s, a honky-tonk in Pasadena, Texas, just outside Houston. And, frankly, that article pissed off the owner of that bar, country singer Mickey Gilley, because he thought it was making fun of country music and the whole surrounding scene. He was about to let his ire be known when he got wind that there was interest in shooting a movie based on the article, which would film at Gilley’s bar – a movie which would eventually become Urban Cowboy, starring John Travolta. Suddenly that article didn’t seem so bad anymore.

Urban Cowboy would become a phenomenon, doing for country music what Saturday Night Fever would do for disco — perhaps more, considering country’s mainstream appeal hasn’t really wavered much since. This film about Bud (Travolta) and Sissy (Debra Winger) and their on-again, off-again relationship, interlaced with mechanical bull riding, put Houston on the Hollywood map and produced the smash hit “Looking For Love” by Johnny Lee and Gilley’s own smash, his cover of Ben E. King’s “Stand By Me.” (Gilley even performed his version alongside King once.)

In celebration of Urban Cowboy‘s 40th anniversary, Paramount has released a new Blu-ray. When I was a little kid and we lived at Lake of the Ozark – yes, the one from the Netflix show – Gilley often used to perform at the bar my father’s best friend owned. So, when Paramount asked if I wanted to talk to Gilley, I couldn’t resist. And now, at 84, he’s still out there “performing for the folks.”

Well, at least he was before everything shut down, now he’s just keeping safe and reminiscing about the time he got to fly a plane with John Travolta.

How are you doing? Have you been staying safe? Been keeping busy?

Oh, yeah. I’m doing fine. We’ve been out of work now for quite some time, but the time is not bad.

Where in the world are you right now?

I’m in Branson, Missouri.

I’m in New York City right now. I went to junior high in Springfield, which isn’t that far from Branson.

I go to Springfield to go shopping and to do some things that they don’t do here in Branson. It’s about 35 miles, so it’s no problem.

The Battlefield Mall.

Battlefield Mall! You’re right.

Speaking of Missouri, I was a very little kid when Urban Cowboy came out, but I do remember all of a sudden my parents were going to honky-tonks and learning country dancing.

It was so awesome. It changed my life. I tell people I think John Travolta is keeping my career alive, at 84 years old and still singing the music from the soundtrack of Urban Cowboy. And it has been one heck of a ride.

I rewatched it the other night. It’s not at all what I remember. There’s a lot going on. So how did you get involved with it in the first place?

The article had come out in Esquire magazine, “The Ballad of the Urban Cowboy.” And my business partner, he knew that I didn’t appreciate what the guy had written in Esquire magazine, because I thought he was poking fun at country music. And that was my life. I was was going out to do the Mike Douglas or the Merv Griffin show, one of those shows out there. And he said, “Look, don’t say anything bad about that article in Esquire magazine, because we may get a film on this particular article.” And I looked at him and I said, “What side of the bed did you roll off on?” And he says, “No, I’m serious.” He said, “They’re looking at John Travolta to play the part.” And when he said John Travolta, I said, wait a minute. Saturday Night Fever was the first thing I thought about. And I said, “Saturday Night Fever? Country Night Fever!” And I did not mention that that article at all in Esquire magazine. I kept my mouth shut about it.

Do you still dislike that article?

Oh, I love the article now.

I bet.

The bottom line was, if you read the article, it said, “Boy meets girl. Twang, twang. Boy falls in love with girl. Twang, twang.” They were using the “twang, twang” on it. And that kind of irritated me a little bit. But we got to film Urban Cowboy with John Travolta playing the part, and it has become such a big thing in my life because of the music. I had “Stand By Me”, the old Ben E. King song. It wasn’t really a country song. It was a blues type song. And then Johnny Lee, of course, had the “Looking For Love,” which was a major hit in the film.

It is like the soundtrack of 1980.

And when I found out, now they’re going to put it out on Blu-ray, which is going to enhance the whole thing. And it’s been 40 years ago since that film came out, I’m very excited about it. It’s wonderful.

Do you think the influence of Urban Cowboy making country music mainstream led to even the ’90s explosion with people like Garth Brooks?

I think that the film changed a lot of people’s lives, as far as the music scene was concerned. Because a lot of people didn’t listen to country music until that film came out. And when it came out, and they heard all these other acts in this film doing some of this music that they could listen to, and they could relate to, and all of a sudden country music, well, it boomed all of a sudden.

Again, I was very young, but your version of “Stand By Me” was the first version I heard because my parents had the record. How did that become a thing?

Actually, the guy who picked it was a guy by the name of Jim Ed Norman. And he bought the song and he says, “I want you to record this song, and we’re going to use it for the dance in the film. Well, I thought we were going to do it like Ben E. King. And he changed the complete arrangement of it. And we started doing that differently, and it turned out to be a one heck of a song for me, because it was so different. It’s been a dynamite song. When I play it, people say, “What are you doing? You trying to milk the crowd?” And people get on their feet and stand up. I said, “Hey, it’s just a song.”

What’s wrong with milking the crowd? Why is that a bad thing? Milking the crowd is a good thing.

Well, I tell you what, I’m very fortunate to be 84 and still been able to go out there and sing the music for the folks. And people say, “Why don’t you retire?” And I say, “Because I enjoy the music. I love the music.”

I’m curious, did you ever hear from Ben E. King?

I got to perform with him in Los Angeles.

Oh, that’s great.

And he did his version. If I recall it correctly, he did the song, part of it, and I did part of it my way. I got to work with him on that one particular thing. It was Rhythm and Blues and Country, I think, or something, what they called it. I don’t remember exactly now, because it’s been awhile back. But it was quite a few acts on the show.

Tell me about Gilley’s, the bar. It’s such a huge part of Urban Cowboy.

We opened the club in 1971. And in 1973 or 1974, I had my first number one song in the country charts. And then in 1978, I’m on the road traveling. And my business partner, Sherwood Cryer, installed this mechanical bull in Gilley’s. And when he did, I thought it was a big mistake. And I told him, “We’re going to get people hurt on this thing. We’re going to start getting sued.” It had my name on it and I was a little scared about the thing. And he says, “We’re going to attract all these cowboys, who want to be a cowboy.” And it did. People coming out to Gilley’s, riding the mechanical bull, chasing the girls and drinking beer and that type of thing. And lo and behold, I didn’t believe they were going to do the film until the Paramount truck started pulling into the parking lot. Jim Bridges was the director at the time. He says, “When that film comes out, this club will never be the same.” And boy was he ever right. It changed completely after that film came out. I mean you could not get into it.

Maybe it’s movie magic, but it does look like Travolta is riding the bull.

Oh, he did ride the bull. That was him. It was actually him riding it. I don’t think he used a stuntman.

Did Debra Winger ride it, too?

Oh yeah. If you look, if you watch the film, she stands up on it and she’s dancing on top of the bull. It was awesome.

That scene when Travolta is dancing is pretty amazing. It really is a country version of Saturday Night Fever. He’s magic.

I got a private showing in Hollywood. I said, “Johnny Lee will have a hit, ‘Looking For Love.’” And they said, “Really?” And I said, “Yeah. And you know why? Because John Travolta said, ‘Turn that up. That’s my favorite song,’ in the film.”

What was he like to hang around then?

He was a very nice young man. And when I met him, the one thing we had in common was we both liked to fly. I had my multi-engine rating, my instrument rating. And he was working on his, getting his pilot’s license. And I got to fly with him. So, that’s my exciting thing that I can say that I did with John Travolta.

That actually is pretty exciting.

And I’ll carry that for the rest of my life.

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

While not nearly as well-traveled as much of the Uproxx Life staff, one place I actually have been is Spain (ah, travel, remember that?). The first dish I had in Barcelona was something called pan con tomate, a vaguely familiar dish that seemed to consist entirely of tomato pulp on top of some bread.

I’d had all these ingredients before a million times, just not in this exact configuration.

A traditional Catalán dish (pa amb tomaquet) dating back to the 16th century, pan con tomate was initially a way to reinvigorate stale bread. The reason I like it is that, well, for one thing, it’s incredibly easy. For another, I’m also one of the many people who used this quarantine to dabble in bread baking, and the tomatoes in my garden are just starting to ripen.

Got bread? Got tomatoes? Then you should know pan con tomate.

Ingredients

• Tomatoes
• Bread
• Garlic
• Olive oil
• Salt

Yep, that’s it. Now, the purists will say to use a rustic loaf of bread and the special hanged tomatoes they have in Spain (that lose moisture and concentrate flavor as they sit), but honestly, as long as you have decent bread, ripe tomatoes, and good olive oil it will work just fine. I’m growing early girl tomatoes in my garden and they work wonderfully.

It’s not required, and stale or untoasted bread works fine, but I like to cut mine into slices, lightly butter it (with more apologies to the purists), and stick it under the broiler until it’s lightly browned. That helps with the next step:

This is my favorite part. Take your peeled garlic clove, cut the top off, and sort of rub the cut part all over your toasted bread. Imagine the garlic is cheese and the toast is the cheese grater. Ideally, you’ll see the bread take on a slight sheen from the garlic oil and you’ll be able to smell garlic in the air. Incidentally, I use this exact technique for avocado toast.

Now, it’s true, the traditional Catalán way of doing this is to rub the tomatoes directly onto the bread. But hey, my garden is small, and fuck wasting all that tomato. I prefer grating the tomato over a bowl, which does add a bowl to clean but wastes less tomato and allows for cleaner hands. I use my microplane over a bowl and rub carefully until all that’s left ungrated is the skin.

Now I just spoon that mixture onto my toasted, garlic-rubbed bread. It’s okay that it’s making the bread soft, that’s kind of the point. To complete the dish, you simply drizzle on some olive oil (call it a teaspoon), and sprinkle on a little salt. I’ve heard there’s some argument about whether you should salt before drizzling olive oil or drizzle olive oil before salt. You could make a case for either — salt dissolves better in tomato than in oil, so you could say salt first seasons it better, though oiling last might also wash away some of the salt. I tend to go salt last, but I doubt it matters. I use more or less the same amount of salt you’d use to season an egg.

Ta-da! No really, that’s it. It’s like the laziest gourmet snack ever, which is why I love it. Once you’ve had it, you’ll almost feel guilty cooking your nice fresh tomatoes. And it’s basically the same flavors as bruschetta, pico de gallo, gazpacho, panzanella… There’s a reason we have so many different dishes based on basically the same three or four ingredients.

Avocado Toast Variation

We don’t get beautiful ripe tomatoes all year round (though you can get medium-shitty imported ones grown in a greenhouse somewhere) but you can usually find avocados. Start by toasting the bread and rubbing on the garlic in the same way, but then instead of tomato, use half of an at least semi-soft avocado. Cut it in half and add lengthwise slices, or cut it in half, score it into small cubes and then spread like butter.

To the avocado add a sprinkle of salt and a sprinkle of pepper. For extra credit, you can add a few drops of lime in place of the olive oil, and sprinkle on some chopped chives or chive blossoms.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. Read more of his cooking commentary in UPROXX’s Cooking Battles and Viral Cooking. For past Top Chef Power Rankings, go here.

As you no doubt remember, after last fall’s WWE Crown Jewel Event in Saudi Arabia, the chartered plane that was supposed to bring most of the roster back in time for Friday Night Smackdown was delayed. The NXT roster had to fill in on Smackdown, but thankfully the disgruntled roster members all got home by Saturday. Rumors swirled that the Saudi Government had held the roster there as payback because Vince McMahon had messed with the local broadcast as part of a dispute about late payments for the previous shows. WWE, however, blamed the delay on mechanical issues and aggressively stuck to that story as they renewed their commitment to Saudi Arabia.

In the months sense, WWE shareholders have filed multiple lawsuits against WWE, claiming that the company has made misleading statements and withheld facts about their business, and making specific mention of the Saudi Arabia deal and Crown Jewel. Because WWE can be insincere to us, and that’s just The Business, but if they’re lying to shareholders too, that’s a whole other thing.

As of this weekend, thanks to Wrestlenomics, we’ve seen the official court documents from one of these lawsuits, and it backs up all those rumors we heard back in the fall. It turns out the plaintiffs have an unnamed witness who’s able to testify firsthand about the experience on the ground (and trying to get into the air) after Crown Jewel.

The witness is referred to in the document as CW-2 (short for Confidential Witness Two), a former WWE Superstar who performed at Crown Jewel and was on the ill-fated flight. Here’s the relevant text from the court document, which you can read in its entirety in PDF form at CourtListener.com:

CW-2 recalled that he was initially told the charter flight he was scheduled to leave on was delayed because the plane needed to be pulled around, and once they boarded, they were removed from the airplane after 20-30 minutes. CW-2 explained that he spoke with a stewardess on the flight about the delay, who told him that “it seems someone doesn’t want us to leave the country.” CW-2 further explained that the pilot sounded “distressed” when he informed the passengers that the flight was unable to take off. CW-2 recalled that then they were told that it was because of mechanical issues, but he recalled seeing a “ton” of guards wearing black “militia” attire and wearing guns that were blocking their exit and “staring at the wrestlers.”

CW-2 became aware that something was wrong and explained that a number of the other personnel were referring to the event as a “hostage” situation.” CW-2 explained that he asked the Senior Director of Talent Relations, Mark Carrano, about what was going on and that Carrano told him that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and McMahon had gotten into an argument over late payments in connection with the June 7, 2019 Super ShowDown event. Carrano also informed CW-2 that McMahon had cut the live feed for the Crown Jewel event and that this had made the Crown Prince “very mad.

CW-2 advised the he and other WWE personnel looked into the prospect of booking flights on their own at a different airport for early the next morning. After a few hours, CW-2 explained, he and about 10-12 other wrestlers, cameramen, and agents were put on another flight to Buffalo. CW-2 further noted that at this point he wondered why if other planes were available that they did not get everyone out of Saudi Arabia.

CW-2 also heard that while on the plane, other wrestlers communicated back home that the military police were holding the wrestlers, and that McMahon didn’t air the first 30 minutes of the pay-per-view, and that as retaliation the Prince was holding them.

In addition, CW-2 recalled a number of wives being very concerned on social media and then when wrestlers returned home there were a lot of messages expressing how grateful they were to be home. CW-2 stated that after he returned, the WWE put out a letter that attempted to remove all blame from the company and that, in his opinion, many wrestlers were scared of speaking out due to the limited job opportunities in the industry and the WWE’s comparatively high salaries. CW-2 explained that many spoke on the condition of anonymity to journalists and the WWE denounced these stories as “conspiracies” and “laughable.” Nevertheless, after the event, CW-2 said that he and a co-worker went straight to Talent Relations and said they would not go back to Saudi Arabia. CW-2 noted that other wrestlers tried to do the same but the WWE “abused” their “power” and threatened the future trajectory of their careers if they did not go.

After the first season of The Witcher became a knockout hit for Netflix when it stormed onto the streaming service in December 2019, fans of the Henry Cavill monster-hunting series were already eager for a second season, which is on its way. Eventually.

However, even the most die-hard enthusiasts of the fantasy epic struggled with the choice to slowly reveal that the show was operating on three separate timelines while introducing the characters of Geralt (Cavill), Yennefer (Anya Chalotra), and Ciri (Freya Allan). While showrunner Lauren S. Hissrich stands by the story-making decision and is surprised by how controversial it became, she recently told The Wrap that the timeline will be more linear in the second season with everyone on the same timeline:

“We get to do flashbacks, we get to do flash-forwards, we get to actually integrate time in a completely different way that we weren’t able to do in Season 1. Because, if you can imagine, if we were in three different timelines (in Season 1) and then flashed forward or flashed back, we would have been in four or five or six timelines — even I know that’s too much. So I think it will be a lot easier for the audience follow and understand, especially a new audience coming in. But there are still going to be some fun challenges with time.”

Due to its filming location in the UK, The Witcher was one of the first shows to shut down production as the global pandemic began to spread. To complicate matters even further, new cast member Kristofer Hijvu (Game of Thrones) tested positive for COVID-19. Fortunately, Hijvu made a full recovery, although we don’t know if any other cast or crew members were infected. According to Hissrich, the show is hoping to resume filming on season two this summer, but it will all come down to making the safest possible decisions for the cast, crew, and local residents.

(Via The Wrap)

When the Philadelphia 76ers gave Joel Embiid a max extension after his rookie deal, they included some protections and outs in case his injury history caused him to miss significant time and derailed his career.

Happily for Embiid and the Sixers, the All-Star center has blossomed into one of the league’s most dominant forces and, while he’s had some minor injuries here and there, he has not seen a reoccurrence of the foot injury that caused him to miss his first two years in the league and has played in 63 and 64 games the past two years, prior to 44 appearances in this shortened season. To guarantee the final three years of his deal, with $95 million at stake, Embiid needed to play 1,650 minutes to hit the final threshold in his contract.

When the league shut down, Embiid had played just over 1,300 minutes, well on his way to meeting that goal, but with the hiatus he would’ve fallen short — even with the eight-game restart. However, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the league and players union have agreed to prorate bonuses and incentives based on the number of games played prior to the March 11 shut down, allowing Embiid to fully guarantee his deal, and others to grab bonuses they were on pace to hit.

One agreement finalized in recent days includes the NBA prorating performance bonuses and incentives using March 11 as the end date of the regular season — eliminating the eight additional seeding games in Orlando as part of the formula, sources said.

For Philadelphia 76ers All-Star Joel Embiid, it means meeting the minutes-played criteria needed to fully guarantee the final three years and nearly $95 million on his $148 million maximum contract, sources said.

It’s a big deal for players to get those incentives prorated and locked in based on a 60-some odd game schedule, because there’s real money on the line for a lot of players. Embiid’s contract is the biggest number, but there were other players tracking towards hundreds of thousands of dollars of bonuses that would’ve fallen just short had the league not come to this agreement. It’s a wise business move on the part of owners as well, who can use that as a concession they were willing to make when dealing with financial strains that could come in the near future due to a shuffling of revenue from the lack of fans to close the season and, possibly, some loss in TV revenue.

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“Which country has the best food in the world?”

Woah. Is there a more loaded question in all of food writing? It’s pretty much impossible to fairly rank one country’s food over another. Even in seemingly small countries like Italy or Greece or Thailand, there’s enough internal variation across regional cuisines to keep you arguing for days. Remember, no country is a monolith. And that’s before you even start trying to compare other nations to each other and crossing meridians and parallels.

Our ethos: enjoy it all, folks. Savor it. Try new things. Make bold declarations, fine, but expect to be proven wrong again and again throughout your lifetime. Never call anything exotic, just bask in how it is new to you.

Though we just spent two paragraphs explaining how this subject isn’t really rankable, we are curious about which cuisines around the world people dig the most. To find an answer to that, we turned to the masses over at Ranker. The question was simple, “Which countries have the best food?” 450,000 votes later and a very clear top ten emerged. It is right? That’s impossible to say. It does give way to an interesting discussion, though — giving us a chance to travel vicariously through a culture’s food during a time when international travel’s future is a big question mark.

10. ARGENTINA

Argentine street food leans very heavily into the nation’s colonial European roots. After an almost total genocide in the late 1800s against the Indigenous nations, Spanish and Italian food cultures pretty much became the only food that formed “Argentine” foodways. Granted, those colonizers adopted a few Indigenous food practices like open-flame pit barbecue (la parrilla or asado in Spanish) alongside the use of a few Indigenous products, but a huge amount of the original culture is gone.

What’s left are Iberian and Italian cuisines that are jacked up on massive doses of beef, cheese, and wine. If you love Spanish cuisines, then Argentina is going to be your jam. We’d also argue that Argentina — Buenos Aires especially — has some of the best Neapolitan pizza outside of Naples thanks to two million Italians landing there around 1900 (the same number as New York).

Iconic Street Food: Empanadas

Spanish empanadas are the backbone of Argentine street food. The classic package of shredded or ground beef, chili, onion, garlic, cumin, oregano, and paprika wrapped in a puff pastry shell and then fried is hard to argue with. If you’ve been out drinking red wine and pretending to Tango all night, this is the perfect after-midnight one-hander snack. From there, there’s pretty much every Ibero/Italiano variation you can imagine.

9. HONG KONG

Hong Kong has one of the most iconic street food scenes in any city in the world. Their soy-marinated squid and octopus sticks are the stuff of foodie’s dreams. The ubiquity of great food for amazingly inexpensive prices pretty much 24/7 is the epitome of what a great street food city should be. Let’s put it this way, Hong Kong is the sort of city where you can spend a month eating every meal on the streets and still only scratch the surface. It rules.

And all of that is just the streets. The city also has one of the widest arrays of international restaurants of any place on the planet.

Iconic Street Food: Curry Fish Balls

Fish balls on a stick are a staple of the HK street food scene. They are seemingly available on every other street corner. The conceit is simple, a fish ball (a smooth fish meatball) is cooked in a satay-like curry sauce with a coconut base. It’s spicy, velvety, fishy, and loaded with umami. Pretty much every spot is going to have its own “secret” curry recipe and the dopest spots will make sure there’s a curried piece of radish nearby to counterpoint all that briny, spice, and umami.

8. BRAZIL

Brazil is another nation where the Indigenous cuisines have been pushed to the edge of existence thanks to continued genocides. The remaining Brazilian food identities vary from the Caribbean beaches to the mountains to the Amazon to the cities with Afro-European foodways blending with Indigenous ingredients that are very similar to the American South’s cuisine.

All of that said, there’s not really a “single” food to call “Brazilian” (besides maybe the African-influenced feijoada — a roasted pork and stewed black bean dish). It really just depends where you are and who’s cooking for you. The throughline in Brazil is that it’ll almost always be a spectacular eating experience.

Iconic Street Food: Mortadella Sandwich

Leaning into Brazil’s Italian colonial background, the stacked mortadella sandwiches you get at local food markets (especially in Sao Paolo) is one of the world’s great sandwich experiences. The sandwich is about a half-pound of plancha fried mortadella often but not always layered with melty cheese, mayo, mustard, and sometimes a chili reduction on a white sourdough roll.

You’ll dream about this sandwich for years after you leave Brazil.

7. PERU

Peru, like most of its American counterparts, has carried out genocide after genocide against its Indigenous population over the centuries. Yet, the Indigenous peoples of Peru are still a crucial part of Peruvian society and its cuisine — albeit sidelined for European and Japanese colonial foods in the mainstream for the most part.

Still, Peru is where the world gets potatoes, quinoa, various beans, chilis, and the tomato. Food runs deep in the culture and has ancient roots still being utilized to this day. Case in point, freeze-drying food was invented by the Incas. Indigenous Peruvians (the Moche) also gave the world ceviche, for which we should all be very thankful.

Iconic Street Food: Anticuchos

Anticuchos is a classic meat-on-a-stick cooked over a fire. It’s in no way unique to Peru in the grand scheme of cooking meat over a fire. What makes Anticuchos unique is the use of llama and the spices used to marinate the meat before it hits the open flame, namely: chili. The dish is now more popularly made with beef heart (which grew ubiquitous when the Spaniards refused African slaves any other meat to cook with). If you can find it with llama, it’s like a time machine to another era, though don’t skip the beef heart versions you find all over the cities.

6. INDIA

India is a massive country with varied and deeply rooted food cultures spread over a billion-plus people. You can bet your ass that what’s being cooked on the streets and in the kitchens of Mumbai and Delhi and Amritsar deserves to be recognized as some of the best food in the world.

Really though, the food cultures in India are crazy varied. The heavy meat stews in the Islamic north are wholly different than the veggie Tamal plates you find in the Hindu southeast. And that’s before you even start digging into the different major cities and their phenomenal street food scenes.

You won’t have a bad meal in India, is what we’re saying.

Iconic Street Food: Pav Bhaji

Mumbai is one of the best cities for street food in the world. The dish you have to try: Pav Bhaji. The dish is everywhere and it’s goddamn delicious. Two sweet rolls are buttered and grilled on a flattop grill while a slightly spicy veg stew is mashed and warmed up. That’s all served together with a little lime, onion, and pickle. It’s divine, filling, and costs less than a dollar.

5. TURKEY

There’s so much great food in Turkey that it’s hard to know where to start. As a crossroads along the spice and food trail for millennia, Turkish cuisine is amazingly varied, always vibrant, and tons of fun. There’s a communal aspect to the barbecue culture with meat and veg on a stick. The seafood leans heavily into Mediterranean themes with a lot of olive oil, bright herbs, and lemon. If you’re in Istanbul, don’t skip a Balık ekmek. That’s a grilled fish sandwich that’ll become your favorite lunch while you’re in the ancient city.

Iconic Street Food: Lahmacun

While we love a good Balık ekmek, it’s really more of a coastal thing. Then there’s the classic kebap that you can get pretty much everywhere in the country. It’d be easy to say, eat a kebab, and be on our way. But we’re going with the brilliant, light, and wholly unique flatbread Lahmacun.

A lahmacun is a thin flatbread topped with minced lamb (or sometimes beef) in a paste of garlic, chili, onion, tomato, paprika, cumin, and cinnamon that’s then baked. You can eat it on its own, but it’s best with a few sprigs of fresh parsley and slices of tomato and onion with a squirt of fresh lemon juice. It’s light, inexpensive, and very addictive.

4. GREECE

Greece has the advantage of being a sea-faring culture at a crossroads (yet again) between Asia and Europe. And, look, cultural crossroads are usually where you find the best foods, so this entry definitely makes sense. It’s a place that offers locals the chance to pick up techniques, spices, and ingredients from far off lands. The best of all worlds, literally.

Greek food is a sharing food culture. That’s kinda awesome if you ask us. Also, call it cliche all you want, but a gyro in the Plaka in Athens is one of the best 10 meals on earth.

Iconic Street Food: Gyro

Soft bread, grilled meat, tangy sauce, crunchy veg topping, and a few thick-cut fries just can’t be beaten. Really though, there’s something uniquely special about the soft gyro bread, fatty grilled lamb, and yogurt and garlic-forward sauce that makes a gyro a must-have every time you set foot in Greece.

3. SPAIN

Spain near the top makes sense if you consider the acorn butteriness of Jamon Iberico alone. Then there’s the food culture that lives on the streets across Spain of Pintxos, Tapas, Cañas, and Copas. Little bites of food from the land and sea to go with little glasses of beer or wine in a perfect pairing of thrift and expediency.

Spain is also where chefs like Ferran Adria are straight-up changing the food game down to its DNA and giving it to the world to toy with and further evolve. So, yeah, the nation makes a strong case for this spot.

Iconic Street Food: Churro with Hot Chocolate

It’s okay if you associate churros with something fast and easy to get as you leave Costco. The Spanish street food found in “Chocolaterías” across the country (but especially in Madrid) is comfort food that’ll make you instantly feel like you’re home. The spears of yeasty dough are fried and then covered in cinnamon and sugar. Then as a final coup de grâce, you’re given a deeply bitter and slightly sweet cup of viscous-y hot chocolate to dip them in and … we’re going to need a minute to collect ourselves.

2. MEXICO

Mexico is another massive country where deserts give way to jungles which become mountains — and it’s all hugged by two impossibly long coastlines on two different oceans. It’s an enormous country where you’ll be hard-pressed to find a bad meal.

Like the South American entries on this list, European foodways have heavily influenced what most people consider to be “Mexican” food these days. Yet, millennia-old Indigenous foodways still run deep in the culture. Corn, avocados, and cacao (to name only a few cornerstone products) were cultivated for thousands and thousands of years after all. That backbone is what the Spanish, French, German, and Lebanese built regional Mexican cuisines on the back of.

Iconic Street Food: Taco

We mean, can this be anything else? From Baja to the streets of Mexico City, the taco reigns supreme. It’s the perfect delivery system. The tortilla can hold an almost endless array of proteins, sauces, and garnishes, making this one of the most versatile foods there is.

1. ITALY

In the end, Italy feels like the right food culture to sit at number one. They care as much about food as Spain, they’re as varied as India, and their food is as exciting as Mexico’s. It’s the best of all worlds where you can eat a two hour, multi-course lunch with a bottle of wine and nice grappa at the end, then stroll to a gelateria for ice cream afterward and never feel bad about a single decision you made.

Who wants to argue that?

Iconic Street Food: Pizza

Yes, pizza and Italy and almost synonymous. Yet, if you’re expecting a plain NY Slice, you’re going to be a little disappointed and, dare we say, challenged. Pizza in Italy can be anything and varies greatly region to region.

Pizza al taglio in Rome are huge squares of pie with everything but the kitchen sink on them and are sold by weight. Pizza in Naples is the classic Neapolitan style that informed the heritage of New York, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, and New Haven pies. Sicilian pizza is often thick-crusted with only a little tomato, cheese, and garlic and sold from bakeries, not pizzerias. Then again, you can 100 percent find pizzas with hot dogs and fries on them in Sicily. So even on that island, pizza is not just one thingh.

We’re only scratching the surface here. The point is, eat pizza when you go to Italy and expand your pizza horizons in each corner of the country.

Cole Bennett‘s Lyrical Lemonade delivers a haunting visual companion to Chicago rapper Polo G‘s “21,” a sober celebration of a making it to adulthood from the 21-year-old rising star’s new album, The GOAT. The video opens with a hooded assailant taking shots at Polo as he wakes up in his room and follows the young rapper as he walks through a labyrinth of video sets being pursued by his unseen enemy. As Polo passes through a trap house, a jail, and the backstage hallways of a movie lot, the attacker periodically pops up to make further attempts on him as paintings come alive and objects levitate around the rapper.

The video concludes with a closeup of Polo’s adversary, who removes his hood and mask to reveal that he’s been his greatest enemy all along. The “evil” Polo then grows devilish horns from beneath his locks, embodying the dark, self-destructive impulses that permeate the young rapper’s emotive discography. The lyrics throw hints to this self-destructive nature as well, as he ponders the recent death of one of his late peers: “Can’t relapse off these drugs, man R.I.P. to Juice / We was tweakin’ off them Percs, I popped my last one with you.” Between street life and drug use, Polo feels grateful to have reached this milestone, but as he’s hinted in the titles of his projects — including his debut, Die A Legend — he’s got a lot more plans to accomplish before he’s ready to accept his fate.

Watch the “21” video above.

The GOAT is out now on Columbia Records. Get it here.