Month: November 2021

Whether it was Aaron Rodgers growing out his hair to look like John Wick, or Lizzo as The Mandalorian cutie Baby Yoda, or SO much Ted Lasso and Squid Game, pop culture costumes dominated Halloween in 2021. Ariana Grade going as “Miss Creature from the Black Lagoon” was pretty great, as was Harry Styles as Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, but the year’s best pop culture-inspired costume belonged to Steve Buscemi.

The actor recreated the “how do you do, fellow kids?” scene from 30 Rock.

Buscemi “handed out candy from a Park Slope stoop to trick-or-treaters Sunday night,” according to the New York Post, while dressed as private investigator Lenny Wosniak, the 30 Rock character who goes undercover at a high school in the season six episode, “The Tuxedo Begins.” He wears a backwards red hat, red hoodie, and a “MUSIC BAND” shirt (with a lightning bolt between the two words), and carries a skateboard over his shoulder. A great scene in a great show. Buscemi pretending to be a teenager has become a popular meme, although apparently not popular enough among actual teens:

One lucky fan, 13-year-old Stella Wexler Rush, recognized the actor from his show Miracle Workers.

“I was trick-or-treating with my friends. We weren’t sure if it was him at first,” Stella told the New York Post on Sunday. She said they told him they recognized him, but he cheekily responded, “Oh, wild. That’s crazy!” and gave them some treats. Still unsure, the group walked away before deciding to run back for a photograph with the actor. “He told us that we couldn’t take a photo with him unless we guessed who he was supposed to be,” Stella said, “so we guessed… and then three of my friends got a picture.”

Stella might know Buscemi from Miracle Workers, but everyone else got the reference.

(Via the New York Post)

Ye’s Donda seemingly took forever to come out. The project arrived more than a year after it was originally announced and after three album listening sessions held in major stadiums in Atlanta and Chicago. Thankfully, the wait came to an end at the end of August when the rapper released the project complete with 27 songs and guest appearances from Jay-Z, Lil Durk, Young Thug, Roddy Ricch, The LOX, Lil Baby, The Weeknd, Playboi Carti, Kid Cudi, Don Toliver, Ty Dolla Sign, and more. Two months after Donda was released, Ye is seemingly gearing up to release a deluxe version of the album.

A Twitter user shared two screenshots of teasers for a deluxe reissue for Donda on Twitter. The first appear on the platform’s Italy page and was captioned, “A deluxe version of Yeezus’ tenth recording miracle,” while the second appeared on Apple Music’s Germany page. Ye or anyone in his camp has to confirm when the deluxe would arrive or whether or not one is in the works in the first place.

This comes after the rapper’s Donda stem players were finally delivered to fans who purchased it. The device allows “customize any song” and control vocals, drums, bass, and samples, isolate certain parts of a song, as well as add effects. The stem players were also delivered three unreleased songs — “Life Of The Party,” “Up From The Ashes,” and “Never Abandon Your Family” — in addition to Ye’s complete tenth album.

You can view the screenshots of the Apple Music teasers for Donda deluxe above.

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

While he spent more than a decade under Rick Ross’ Maybach Music Group, Wale, who just released his Folarin II album, has called a few other labels home throughout his career. This includes Interscope, Atlantic, and Warner Records, where he resides today. Another place he called home at one point was Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, which served as his management team since 2009. However, during his 2013 What Dreams May Come Tour with fellow rapper and good friend J. Cole, Wale was pushed to leave Roc Nation after he came to a shocking realization during the string of shows, something he revealed during an appearance on the Drink Champs podcast.

“What happened was, I was in the Hov cycle for a long time,” he said on the podcast. “There was a time that I was on tour with J. Cole. At the time, I was opening for him. They said it was a co-headlining tour, but whatever, I was opening for him, and it was an elaborate stage and this that and the third.”

He continued, “And somebody in my circle told me, ‘You’re losing 5 grand every time you get on stage. Not only are you’re not breaking even, you’re losing money.’ Me, at that point in my life, I forget what city we was in but I was on the bus and I got an offer to do a tour with two other artists. And I wanted to go with Cole because that’s my brother and we just did the Hov tour.”

At this point, Wale knew a decision had to be made between staying or exiting the tour. “I could literally be hosting clubs and making this a night,” he noted. “I just had a meltdown for real and I remember whatever city I was in, there were three days left and I just quit the tour. I just quit.” Wale added, “If I was touring by myself, I could be bussin’ it crazy every night. So I kinda just had a meltdown and I didn’t know who to call, my lawyer or my accountant. The next day, called somebody there and they gave me this option or that option.”

Despite his frustrations, Wale maintains that it’s been nothing but love between him and Jay-Z since the touring incident. “It’s been all love ever since but I wasn’t privy to this f*ckin’ music industry sh*t,” Wale admitted. ” I just knew, this many people in the room, we can make something happen. Jay’s still my idol, still my favorite rapper. I still got all the love for all of them. I was just a little bit early in this sh*t though.”

You can watch the full Drink Champs video

Drake’s sixth album Certified Lover Boy has spent the second-most weeks at No. 1 in 2021. It trails Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album, as that project held on to the top spot for ten consecutive weeks. While Drake’s reign isn’t that impressive, it’s still noteworthy in its own right. The rapper has already collected four non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 which began with 631,000 units sold in its first week on the chart, the largest amount for any album released in 2021. Now, more than a month later, Certified Lover Boy is still holding on to the throne on the Billboard 200.

A week after Young Thug earned the second No. 1 album of his career with Punk, an album Drake appears on, Certified Lover Boy reclaimed the top spot on the Billboard 200 dated November 6. It took the No. 1 spot thanks to 74,000 units sold, a number comprised of 73,000 streaming equivalent album units while pure album sales accounted for less than 1,000 units. With its fifth week at No. 1, Certified Lover Boy ties Drake’s 2018 album Scorpion for the second-most weeks spent atop the charts. Both albums fall behind his 2016 effort Views, which posted 13 weeks at No. 1.

Other highlights on the chart this week include Moneybagg Yo’s A Gangsta’s Pain at No. 6, thanks to its newly-released deluxe reissue, and Lana Del Rey’s Blue Bannisters, which checks in at No. 8 to give Del Rey the eighth top-10 album of her career.

Revisit our review of Certified Lover Boy here.

The last time the world received a Sunday Service concert from Ye, who legally changed his name from Kanye West a few weeks ago, the rapper was just a few months removed from his 2019 album Jesus Is King. Fast-forward 18 months, Ye returned with a new Sunday Service concert on Halloween. The event was held on the rooftop of an unknown location and it featured appearances from Marilyn Manson, Justin Bieber, and Roddy Ricch according to viewers who tuned into the livestream which was broadcast on Triller and Fite TV.

Manson, who was controversially invited onstage by Ye for Chicago’s Donda listening session, and Bieber both lead individual prayers of their own during the service while Roddy Ricch was spotted with the trio in the surrounding crowd. While this was the first official Sunday Service event in 18 months, it marks the first time the group delivered a live performance since DMX’s funeral earlier this year where they performed tracks that included Soul II Soul’s “Keep On Movin’” and Ye’s “Ultralight Beam.”

The performance comes after Ye’s Yeezy brand was hit with a lawsuit. Recently elected LA County District Attorney George Gascón filed the suit on October 22 for the brand for their failure to “ship items within thirty days and failing to provide adequate delay notices” to customers.

You can few images from the Halloween Sunday Service above.

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

One can imagine that John Oliver keeps hoping for high more Jeopardy! drama, but fortunately, he had a backup drama to cover this week: GOP Senator Mitt Romney’s bizarre decision to dress up as terminal good-guy Ted Lasso (and hand cookies biscuits to Villain Senator Kyrsten Sinema) for Halloween. This decision didn’t sit well with Seth Meyers or (apparently) Ted Lasso star Jason Sudeikis, so it’s no surprise that Oliver felt the need to slam Romney’s stunt, too. It wasn’t lost on Oliver that Romney also dropped a caption — “If you believe in yourself, and have clear eyes and full hearts — you can’t lose” — that only proved that he was “quoting Friday Night Lights for no clear reason.” In addition, the Last Week Tonight host felt that Romney and Sinema performed “a move that felt very ‘homeroom teachers dressed as the most popular kids in school.’”

Yet ultimately, Oliver tied “Mitt Lasso” to Romney’s accompanying stunt last week, which was to pop onto Fox News to talk about what an undoable idea it is to raise billionaire taxes. Romney’s rationale is that, if this would happen, billionaires would choose to buy ranches and art and stop creating jobs for people or investing in the stock market, which led Oliver to make an excellent quip about Mitch’s boot-licking skills:

“Not to sound too much like Mitt’s hero, Ted Lasso, but Mitt must be made of wood and yapping on the hour because that man is cuckoo like a clock. Is he Dora the Explorer on an acid trip because just can’t stop licking Boots. And at the risk of stating the obvious here, billionaires already buy ranches and paintings and dinosaur bones they have no use for. Why? Because they have too much f*cking money. There literally aren’t enough things on this planet for them to buy. That is why they’re all racing to space.”

And that’s when Oliver called out Romney for hypocritically cosplaying as a nice guy while totally acting like a not-so-nice guy:

“And it does seem many politicians would rather prioritize the hypothetical threat to a billionaire’s bank account above all else because that’s basically how our world works. Politicians tweet about cosplaying as TV’s nicest guy while opposing problems that could fundamentally change people’s lives… the scariest trick this Halloween might be that some people keep f*cking falling for it.”

Yup, Romney as Lasso doesn’t jibe. And poor Boots.

LeBron James is in his 19th season in the NBA, something you will surely hear a lot on Lakers broadcasts as it remains astonishing that he can continue to be one of the best players in the league as he creeps up on 37 years old this December.

On Sunday night, James dazzled once again as he and the Lakers took on the poor Rockets in a matchup that was ripe for the picking for L.A, who were looking for a get right spot and got served one of the NBA’s youngest teams on a platter. LeBron and company picked apart the Rockets early, carrying a 20-point lead into the third quarter and it was a very happy Halloween in Staples Center. So happy, in fact, that James took a seat courtside to watch the action. Or, at least, it looked that way when the camera caught a LeBron doppelgänger seated behind James running down the floor that drew the attention of fans.

It helps that the man in the background is out of focus, but he really does eerily look like LeBron is watching himself, just wearing a hat. Immediately, NBA Twitter brought the jokes, with plenty of movie references, but also others who felt this was a bit too spooky of a coincidence for Halloween.

The Brooklyn Nets haven’t gotten off to the start to their 2021-22 season as they had hoped, even considering the absence of Kyrie Irving. At 3-3 entering Sunday night’s game against Detroit, it has been a stop and start affair for the Nets in the first two weeks of the season, but at the least, Kevin Durant has looked like, well, Kevin Durant so far.

KD came into Sunday averaging 28.5 points, 10.2 rebounds, and 5.3 assists per game, carrying a significant burden while James Harden works his way back into game shape and makes adjustments to the league’s new rules that have cut into shooting fouls. However, Durant’s outing against Detroit was cut short after 27 minutes when some frustration with Kelly Olynyk led to him throwing a hard elbow up high at the Pistons big man’s head on a screen, which was deemed a Flagrant 2 after review and earned Durant an ejection.

The second replay shows why Durant was tossed, as you can see him load up and put Olynyk on the business end of a forearm shiver to the neck/jaw. This surely came after something aggravated him, but no matter what it was, this was a step too far and he earned his early trip to the locker room. As for the Nets, they were already on cruise control up big on Detroit, so Durant’s absence for the rest of the fourth wasn’t a big deal overall, it just will require KD to dip into his checkbook for a fine from the league on Monday.

Advocate, influencer, and entrepreneur Jordyn Pollack knows the power of representation. At just 30 years old, he co-owns a CBD company called Ziggy’s Naturals. The wellness brand, which launched only three years ago, focuses most of its efforts on uplifting the LGBTQ+ community.

“We feel there needs to be more representation within the communities that I’m proudly a part of,” says Pollack. “Being a transgender male myself, it was important for me to show LGBTQ+ representation through our company.”

Before shifting to CBD, Pollack first found success working in cannabis. And considering that Colorado was one of the first states to legalize recreational marijuana, moving to one of the state’s most happening cities, Denver, made natural sense. Fortunately for Pollack, the move gave him more than just new opportunities for work — he fell in love with the city’s access to nature, elevated food scene, and inclusive community.

While living in Denver, Pollack spent his free time finding the must-try restaurants, exploring the surrounding hiking trails, and rocking out at Red Rocks Amphitheatre. Making him an excellent host to guide us through a trip to the “Mile High City.”

Check out Pollack’s top picks for where to stay, play, party, and eat in Denver, Colorado, below.

WHY DENVER?

Pollack truly fell in love with Denver from the moment he landed and saw those mountain views. Denver is a place he says he’d love to call a permanent home someday, particularly for its abundance of beautiful hikes, hot springs, and fun things to do right outside the city.

Best time of the year to visit Denver?

Early Fall

My favorite time of the year is early fall. If you travel to Denver between August and October, you get to see all the beautiful leaves change colors and experience perfect weather — high 70s and low 40s!

If you’re lucky, you might even catch snow out in the mountains in October.

Where can adventurers find a great hike in Denver?

St. Mary’s Glacier

Any time I would have a friend visit Denver for the first time, I would take them to St. Mary’s Glacier. It’s a pretty short hike to St. Mary’s Lake, and the views are incredible with snow on the mountains year-round. It’s also only about 30 to 45 minutes outside the city.

If you have a full day to spend hiking, then I would suggest checking out Rocky Mountain National Park in Estes Park. It’s an unforgettable experience!

Best LGBTQ+ friendly bar in Denver?

X Bar

There are a few gay bars in Denver, but my favorite is X Bar. I rarely go to clubs and bars, but the outdoor patio is super cool with a lot of spots for interesting photo opportunities. If you are in the LGBTQ+ community, just know that Denver holds a special place in its heart for you. The city has always made me feel safe and welcomed.

Where to get the best cheeseburger?

Sam’s No. 3 Diner

If you are in Denver, I highly suggest checking out Sam’s Diner! They have a huge menu with so much to offer. The burgers on the menu are amazing, and you have to try the pancakes! The sweet cream flavor is so tasty, you don’t even need syrup!

Favorite hotel in Denver?

Sheraton Downtown Denver

My favorite hotel in Denver is the Sheraton Downtown Denver! Views from its rooms look out over the whole city. It’s in a great location, within walking distance of the 16th Street Mall.

What’s one thing that everyone visiting Denver should experience?

Red Rocks Amphitheatre

If this is your first time visiting Denver, I suggest checking out Red Rocks Amphitheatre. My first visit to Denver was to see a Griz concert at Red Rocks, and it was an unforgettable experience. If you ever end up in Denver, I highly suggest planning to see a show at Red Rocks or at least going there for the views!

Also, check out Garden of the Gods and the views from Lookout Mountain. And do at least one hike while you’re out there!