“In many ways, Fresno is a city built on tacos,” Mike Osegueda, aka Mike Oz, tells me over tacos (what else?) late one evening.

If it had been someone else saying it, at some other time, I almost certainly would’ve dismissed it as the kind of mostly nonsensical hyperbole that frequently pollutes press releases. Only in this case I didn’t, because, for one, I had already spent half an evening with Oz, and by that point, I knew he wasn’t prone to that kind of soundbite speak. And for another, at that moment, that particular kind hyperbole actually made a sick sort of sense. Maybe it was the tacos.

I was sitting with Oz, co-creator of Fresno’s Taco Truck Throwdown, which will hold its 11th titular event on October 1st, in a major intersection in Fresno at the time. We were eating tacos at one of two unlicensed pop-up stands that had set up in the parking lot of a formerly vibrant commercial space. As a kid I used to come to a store at this corner to buy books. Two tents now occupied the parking lot, about 100 feet apart, both selling basically the same thing. (“These are the best tacos around, homemade tortillas!” exhorted one guy working a plancha, wearing sunglasses even though it was almost midnight).

This had been kind of a theme for the evening: eating incredible tacos from mobile taco stands in locations that seemingly didn’t have much going on there besides tacos. In LA, and most other cities that seem to have food trucks in general and taco trucks specifically, those trucks generally set up near popular bars and well-trafficked nightlife strips in order to capitalize on the foot traffic they bring. The curious anomaly of Fresno is that taco trucks seem to spring up pretty much any damn place with enough space to fit them.

We’d already been to three or four taco trucks that evening. One in the parking lot of an oil change shop, another just set up in a field on an empty lot, with lights shining like a taco beacon. Without exception, none of the locations had any obvious pedestrian traffic to speak of. Fresno, located in California’s Central San Joaquin Valley, almost the perfect halfway point between San Francisco in the north and LA to the south, is a sprawling city, spread out and suburban, like Houston or Jacksonville. I’d go so far as to say that a lot of these trucks had set up in some of the least foot-trafficked blocks in one of America’s least foot-trafficked cities. And yet, even after 10 pm on a Thursday, when we were there, most seemed to have plenty of customers, drawing from all walks of life.

Which helps explain why I could not only forgive, but engage in the grandiosity of Mike Oz calling Fresno “a city built on tacos.” Because in most places, taco trucks feel like a phenomenon designed to capitalize on nightlife. In Fresno, they feel like a phenomenon that generates nightlife. All over the city, in patches of derelict businesses and blighted blocks, ad-hoc taco stands sprung up, both licensed and non, sometimes with little more than a flat top grill and an extension cord. In one spot just east of the Tower District (one of Fresno’s oldest and probably its hippest neighborhoods) there was a defunct gas station that had been turned into a thrift store, which in turn became a taco stand after dark. This kind of grassroots mixed-use zoning happens all over the city, in a way that’s hard not to appreciate, even when some of the blocks surrounding it look like sets from Children of Men.

It’s this kind of charm — not to mention the abundance of really good tacos — that inspired Mike Oz to create Taco Truck Throwdown 12 years ago, along with Sam Hansen. Oz was a baseball writer at the time, and Hansen was a graphic designer for the Fresno Grizzlies, united by their love of tacos and a dream to create an event that could properly celebrate them. For the event, the Fresno Grizzlies minor league baseball team rebrands as the Fresno Tacos (complete with much sought-after merch) and the food trucks take center stage for a taco contest in what the Fresno Bee has called “one of Fresno’s signature events.” (There’s also music and other performances — this year’s event will have Bone Thugs-n-Harmony, Foos Gone Wild, and Lucha Extreme Wrestling)

Back in 2016, I got to be a judge, which required sampling almost 30 tacos (probably TMI, but I weighed myself before and after a bowel movement the next morning, and I was literally five pounds lighter). This year’s contest, scheduled for October 1st, has 25 entrants. Which sounds like a lot, until you drive around south Fresno for a night and see how many taco trucks there actually are out there. Oz estimates that on any given night, there are “at least a hundred taco trucks” operating within a 30-minute radius. From what I witnessed in the course of our Taco Ride Along, 100 seems conservative.

Our first stop was El Premio Mayor, currently a brick-and-mortar operation with two locations and two trucks, a burgeoning taco empire that began as a flat top grill hooked up to an extension cord running from Belén Ramirez’s apartment in the Yosemite Village Apartment complex 26 years ago. She’d grown into a taco truck six weeks before the first Taco Truck Throwdown in 2010, at which El Premio Mayor took home first place.

They’ve won five more times since then, and their logo, painted on the sign out front and on the inside wall at the restaurant, is a cartoon of Belén’s son, Adrian Loza, holding up two trophies from the Taco Truck Throwdown in 2015, when El Premio Mayor swept both the judges choice and the people’s choice competitions. Oz likes to say that El Premio Mayor and La Elegante (with a Chinatown location and one truck) are to Fresno taco trucks what Pat’s and Geno’s are to Philadelphia cheesesteaks.

That logo is bittersweet now, part celebration and part tribute. Loza died less than a year after El Premio Mayor’s triumph in 2015, hit by a train, supposedly while out jogging, training for a Tough Mudder. He was 29. The family had to start new social media accounts for El Premio Mayor after he died. Loza had been the only one who knew the passwords. This kind of thing makes for big drama on The Bear, but there’s been no big rebrand or high-profile reinvention around here. No one says “yes, chef,” they kind of just carry on. El Premio Mayor did win a particularly emotional Throwdown again in 2016. They have about 20,000 Instagram followers, as of this writing, and the business seems to booming — in a modest, taco truck kind of way.

No matter how much you want to write a light puff piece about a local taco contest, it’s hard to avoid a story of tragedy. It’s been barely a year and a half since Oz himself got laid off from his job writing about baseball for Yahoo Sports. Three weeks later, the same month, his sister died in a hit-and-run accident while crossing the street in Oakland. Putting on food truck events, once his side gig, had just been promoted to his main gig. Setting out on your own often makes for an inspiring story; having it forced upon you while dealing with a personal tragedy is tough to imagine.

Oz, who promotes the Taco Truck Throwdown with the Fresno Grizzlies, as well as running Fresno Street Eats, his events and catering company, thankfully seems to be doing okay now (with his schedule, it’s easy to wonder whether he has a choice). Not that the gig ever seems to get any easier. Barely a week before last year’s event, a 41-year-old man died during an amateur taco-eating contest at a Grizzlies game. EMTs were on site performing the Heimlich maneuver and CPR, but couldn’t save him. The coroner later reported, not surprisingly, that the man had died choking on tacos, and his son sued the team. Oz wasn’t involved in the event, though it was intended to help promote TTT. It did perhaps did cast an unfortunate shadow on what was supposed to be a comeback during an already tough year.

“The completely weird, off-the-wall shit that happens in Fresno on a daily basis might be unparalleled in a city of its size,” said Jeff Passan, a Syracuse grad who worked with Oz at the Bee, to Stephen Nesbitt in Nesbitt’s profile of Oz on The Athletic from earlier this year. “There are great stories everywhere, great characters everywhere.”

Perhaps it was inevitable that Oz himself would become one. Back in 2016, in a lot of ways, he was my foil. We had similar jobs, him writing about baseball for YahooSports, me writing about movies for Uproxx. Yet he was a Bay Area kid, who’d grown up in Fremont and went to college at San Jose State, who took his first job at the Fresno Bee. He liked it so much that he’s been here ever since, inspiring most of his extended family to move down too. These days Mike Oz is basically Mr. Fresno. Meanwhile, I was born in raised in Fresno County (in Del Rey, a rural armpit so insignificant people that live 10 miles away will ask, in all earnestness, “where’s that?”), moved away at 18, and rarely spent much time there. In 2016 I was living in San Francisco, where I’d been for years.

In 2020 I married another local (and fellow Reedley High graduate) and moved back to Fresno. These days I’m trying to learn to love a place that I left late enough in life to take for granted, but early enough to realize now that I don’t actually know all that well. Oftentimes it takes an outsider to truly appreciate a place. Part of me probably hopes that seeing it through Mike Oz’s eyes will help open me up to all the good things Fresno has to offer.

“Fresno is a city that’s kind of desperate for an identity,” Oz tells me. He laughs at the way Fresnans seem to take outsized offense to any slights, any time we’re mentioned in a comedian’s punchline or late-night host’s joke. The way we hold onto mild throwaway insults for decades. I’m deleting an entire paragraph here where I catalog all the ones in my personal brain Rolodex, from Tupac to NOFX. Men’s Health named Fresno “America’s Drunkest City” in 2010 — based on largely arbitrary data, like DUIs — and city council people are still handwringing about it. (I actually kind of like it, being known for drunkenness is better than being known for nothing).

“The reality is that it’s just a place a lot of people drive through and see on signs without knowing well, that has kind of a funny name,” Oz says. “Of course, they’re going to use it in a punchline.”

Mike Oz, in his element.

What is pretty special about Fresno, Oz likes to point out, is the taco culture. Whereas lots of other places with great tacos tend to draw immigrants from specific parts of Mexico at specific times, bringing with them the taco traditions of where they came from, like San Diego from Tijuana and Baja California for example, the San Joaquin Valley, by virtue of being the agricultural heartland of California, is constantly drawing immigrants from all different parts of Mexico who come to work on the farms. So it is that you can find taco traditions from Baja, Sonora, Sinaloa, Jalisco, Oaxaca, etc., plus traditions imported from earlier waves of immigration that evolved here. And all these slightly different and distinct taco traditions rub tortillas in closer proximity than you can find just about anywhere else.

As Oz’s TTT co-founder Sam Hansen put it in an interview a few years back, “There is a lot of evidence to prove that taco trucks were invented in the Fresno area. They were originally ‘lunchero’ trucks, which provided food for the migrant workers who were picking the produce that is produced in this area. From there, the luncheros evolved into the taco trucks you see today. Some are located in the city and some are still out in the rural migrant areas like they were 50 or 60 years ago.”

I grew up with some of those luncheroes, the diverse taco culture here all squares with my own experience, even if I never quite understood the mechanisms behind it. I spent four years searching for decent chile verde living in San Diego in the early aughts, mostly to no avail. One restaurant had it on the menu, and when it came out it was just carnitas with tomatillo salsa on top, which only made me angry. Living in San Francisco, I waited in the long lines at La Taqueria in the Mission District, which at one point won FiveThirtyEight‘s crown of “Best Burrito In America.” The food was what I would consider slightly above average by Fresno taco truck standards.

Oz doesn’t expect that having great taco trucks will eventually make Fresno a tourist destination, nor do I. For one thing, I don’t know that I could in good conscience suggest that bright-eyed out-of-towners descend upon some of the iffier parts of town late at night to eat tacos off a trailer in the parking lot of a thrift store. A friend I grew up with (of Mexican descent, like Mike) describes (admiringly) part of what Mike Oz has done as “make taco trucks safe for white people.”

I’m not sure taco truck tacos should even be a destination food. To me, they’ve always been the perfect food for people in transition — a thing you grab on the way to somewhere else. Your favorite one is invariably between two places you drive between a lot, becoming your oasis along the journey. Oz mentions Jenny’s Tacos as one of his “white whales,” a truck he loves that he’s tried but failed to get to participate in the Throwdown — which he discovered because it was on his frequent route between Sunnyside and Visalia. One of the first questions I asked when I heard about Throwdown was whether they got Tacos Morales, from Academy and 180 (who make a unique and uniquely spicy carne asada burrito that’s totally worth the heartburn if you’re ever traveling between Fresno and Reedley). Your favorite taco truck is always associated with an intersection in your mind like that.

Part of the genesis of Throwdown was trying to settle the “whose taco oasis is truly the best” arguments that inevitably characterize Central Valley life. At best, Oz hopes, Fresno and tacos could one day become as linked in people’s minds as Breaking Bad and Albuquerque.

At our first stop, El Premio Mayor, we get the QuesaTaco — aka the red taco, a variant of the currently-trendy quesabirria — and a classic asada. Premio Mayor, one of the first places in Fresno to serve a quesabirria taco, does make an excellent one, served with hearty reddish jus and meat that gets caramelized towards the edges and which has a rich, almost short rib character.

Every place seems to offer a quesabirria taco these days, and El Premio’s is easily one of the best I’ve had (this simple version I had in Guadalajara a few years back is up there). And yet there’s something slightly… un-taco about quesabirria tacos. They’re very good, don’t get me wrong, and in general, we should have more foods that riff on the French dip. But the downside of all that meat and cheese stuffed in there just so is that it doesn’t leave much room for salsa and fixins.

To me, the beauty of the taco is the combination of the charred meat with the homey tortilla and the fresh salsa and crunchy veg. Quesabirria offers nice juicy meat and jus-soaked tortilla (amazing), but partly at the expense of de-emphasizing the salsa. Oz agrees, in a good taco, the salsa is as important as the meat. For the record, El Premio Mayor offers a garlicky, dusky red salsa made from chili japones, and a bright red watery one made from pure chile de arbol — both excellent. They serve the asada with chopped onions (red) and cabbage (green), with grilled serrano pepper, caramelized onion, and lime on the side. It’s these little touches you come to appreciate. Taco trucks are like that, fundamentally the same yet infinitely varied.

From El Premio Mayor, Oz drove us down to Tacos Don Chicho, in Sunnyside in Southeast Fresno. Don Chicho’s looks about as humble as it gets, a little green trailer sitting in an empty field. This will be Don Chicho’s first year at Throwdown, and when I went they hadn’t yet decided which of their tacos to enter into the contest — asada, adobada (marinated pork, kinda like al pastor without the spit), pollo, carnitas, birria, cuerito (pork skin), buche (pork stomach), tripa (beef stomach), cabeza (beef head), or lengua (beef tongue). I’ve always been amazed at the staggering variety of options available from a truck the size of a walk-in closet, and all for $2.50 a taco (which is somehow both insanely expensive compared to the taco trucks of my youth and ridiculously cheap by 2022 standards).

We talked to Jose, who does whatever the taco truck equivalent of “front of house” is for his parents, who still do most of the food prep for Don Chicho’s. The truck is named after his father, Narciso, aka Chicho, who brought the family here from Jalisco years ago. Narciso used to work in the fields, but at some point figured cooking tacos was easier than climbing up and down a ladder all day in 100-degree heat (though it should be said: running a taco truck doesn’t seem that much easier, albeit less physically taxing). Jose and his siblings are all DREAMers, and he tells me they the family recently had their resident status approved permanently.

Oz admits he isn’t that adventurous when it comes to taco fillings, sticking mostly to the non-offal/organ meats. I’ll go for lengua from time to time (I find it’s generally moister than carne asada), and I’ve had buche and tripa once or twice, but never cabeza. I draw the line somewhere before sesos (brains). Jose offers a quesabirria, which I accept, and ask for a lengua. And, since I figure “What better time to break my cabeza cherry than now?” I also opt for a cabeza taco. While we wait, a guy from a different taco truck (a seafood-focused one) comes in to pick up some tacos from Don Chicho’s, which does feel like a high endorsement.

Don Chicho’s quesabirria is crunchier than El Premio’s, though with less caramelized meat. It’s slightly less rich and flavorful, though it also has raw onions inside, which is nice. They serve their tacos with thick slices of radish and fancy cucumbers (“It’s the little differences,” -Jules, Pulp Fiction). As for the cabeza, I think in my head I was associating it with head cheese, some kind of terrine-like thing full of weirdly chewy textures. The reality isn’t like that at all. It’s something closer to pork jowl (aka guanciale), a juice, intensely flavorful braised meat filling that you wouldn’t know came off a skull if you didn’t ask, and once you’ve tasted probably won’t care. It was the kind of taco so good you beg your friend to take a bite. Jose said they were leaning birria for their competition taco, but if I were them I’d go cabeza. I don’t know if all cabeza tacos are as good as Don Chicho’s, but I know I’ll be chasing that one for the next few years.

Mike Oz won’t handicap Don Chicho’s chances at their first Throwdown. He says he has a (slight) favorite between El Premio Mayor and La Elegante, if you really pinned him down, but that he’ll kill me if I print it. Other heavy hitters include Taco Pinto, a two-time winner who make a big shrimp taco with red cabbage, and last year’s winners, Tacos Ama and Tacos La Vaporera.

Our next stop takes us to Taqueria Corona, another green trailer with stickers on the window, nearly identical to Don Chicho’s. This one has an extra axle and sits in the parking lot of a Lube Plus, whose sign implores “LIKE US ON FACEBOOK,” in church-style plastic lettering. Corona serves up some of the best al pastor I’ve ever tasted, charred and juicy, on pleasantly chewy tortillas with fiery dark read arbol salsa. (My take on al pastor: average al pastor isn’t that good, probably takes a backseat to average asada or certainly birria, but good al pastor has a higher ceiling than just about any of them).

A group of well-dressed, younger Hispanic folks shows up to put in an order, looking like they’re fueling up during a night on the town, even though, once again, there isn’t a bar or night spot within sight. They seem to be on foot which, again, makes no logical sense. We’re at a lube joint next to an airport. But in Fresno, if you grill it, they will come.

“This place isn’t even in the Throwdown,” Mike says, only half jarring me out of my pork-fueled fugue state, as al pastor juice trickles down my chin. “I just like it.”

Taqueria Corona

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Taco Truck Throwdown 11 takes place at Chuckchansi Park, October 1st. Vince Mancini is on Twitter.

The best new hip-hop this week includes albums, videos, and songs from Freddie Gibbs, Kid Cudi, YG, and more.

Guess who’s back? That’s right, I’ll be once again taking over the Best New Hip-Hop This Week column, for the time being, so pardon my rust as I get back into the groove. This week’s bursting at the seams with new releases including Quavo and Takeoff’s “Nothing Changed,” Bree Runway’s “That Girl,” Smino and J. Cole’s “90 Proof,” along with the slew of new albums and songs below.

Here is the best of hip-hop this week ending September 30, 2022.

Albums/EPs/Mixtapes

Baby Tate — Mani/Pedi

Baby Tate made a name for herself with her 2019 debut Girls and built on that impressive foundation with the equally impressive 2020 EP After The Rain. Now, she’s got a shiny new record deal and her latest mixtape, Mani/Pedi, is set to launch her into the stratosphere.

Drakeo The Ruler — Keep The Truth Alive

Before he passed, Drakeo earned a well-deserved reputation for being incredibly prolific. With so much music already recorded, we can likely expect to see much more posthumous output from the South Central native.

Freddie Gibbs — Soul Sold Separately

Gangsta Gibbs’ first release on Warner Records culminates nearly 20 years of experience combining the hitmaking sensibilities he learned from Jeezy with the DIY mentality he cultivated alongside underground stalwarts like The Alchemist and Madlib.

Kid Cudi — Entergalactic

Releasing his latest album alongside a full-on feature film on Netflix (although he insists on calling it a “special”), Cudi offers more of his signature melodic musings on anxiety, heartbreak, and love. I highly recommend watching the movie, which helps put the album in the proper perspective.

YG — I Got Issues

YG’s sixth — and final — album under Def Jam features some of his most confessional songwriting. He sounds older and wiser here, without sounding jaded. That’s an impressive feat for the Compton rapper, who brings in some surprising collaborators on his new album as well.

Singles/Videos

Big30 — “Celine Frames”

The Memphis rapper dropped a new tape, Last Man Standing, this week, and the single “Celine Frames” is an excellent summation of the sound and themes: Getting money, ducking opps, and being a boss.

Fredo Bang — “Free Thug”

Baton Rouge trapsoul spitter Fredo Bang returns this week with a sentiment we can all get behind on his new tape, Free Thug. Its lead single loops a marching band for a more upbeat offering than his usual.

Kenny Mason — “Nosedive” Feat. Jean Dawson

Atlanta native Kenny Mason has been breaking boundaries with his formidable combination of hardcore grunge riffs and acidic observation. His new project Ruffs offers up more of the same, and Jean Dawson is a perfect match for his energy on “Nosedive.”

Psalm One — “Shadow Work”

Fans of Freddie Gibb’s gruff, double-time Midwestern flow should appreciate underground veteran Psalm One’s own application of the form from her new project Big Perm (a clever callback to a classic film).

Rome Streetz — “Non Factor”

Fans of Griselda Records’ focus on gritty, lyrics-forward boom-bap rap were delighted when the underground staple signed to that label last year. A highlight from his new project Kiss The Ring features Griselda general Westside Gunn, a fitting compliment to the song’s lo-fi aesthetic.

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

Taylor Swift is one of the biggest musicians in the world, but her chart-topping success has not exactly carried over to the big screen. Cats (19 percent on Rotten Tomatoes); Valentine’s Day (18 percent); and now, Amsterdam, director David O. Russell’s star-studded new film with a 39 percent on the review aggregation website. Haters gonna hate hate hate, except, yeah, the haters might be on to something here.

At least Swift’s co-stars seemed to enjoy working with her.

Margot Robbie got a bundle of Folklore merch that she handed over to her excited guy pals, while Christian Bale was excited to tell his daughter that he sang with Swift. “That was a real nice surprise, and I actually didn’t tell anybody about that until afterwards,” he told the Hollywood Reporter. “I went to my daughter and said, ‘You know who I sang with today? Taylor Swift.’ And she was like, Wait, what? Why would you be doing that?’”

Bale continued:

It was a very funny scene, actually, because J.D. [John David Washington] and myself had been practicing that song a little bit. David had us sing it all day long, but then there were moments where I would forget the lyrics. So I’d look at J.D., he’d look at me, and then he’d forget, too… And then we were going flat. Our pitch was all over the place, but we were like, ‘Yeah, but the feeling is right!’ And then all of a sudden, David just goes, ‘How about Christian and J.D. just shut up for this one and let Taylor do it?’ And it was like we had been drowning out an angel’s voice all day long with our cacophony and our rough, terrible voices.

Don’t be so hard on yourself, Christian. I’ve seen Newsies.

Voice of an angel.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

The Miami Dolphins have come under a considerable amount of fire in the last day after Tua Tagovailoa left Thursday’s game against the Cincinnati Bengals with head and neck injuries. Much of this stems from the fact that the team’s signal caller played in the first place — Tagovailoa went down during the Dolphins’ win over the Buffalo Bills this past Sunday and collapsed, but got the green light to return with what was described as a back injury.

Even before Thursday night, the NFLPA announced an investigation into how he was able to go back into that game, which is taking on a new urgency following Thursday night. On Friday, Miami head coach Mike McDaniel met with the media to discuss how things are going for his starting quarterback, which included a defense of the process that led to him returning to the game.

“The timing of all of it, how things played out, I get the optics, I get exactly what it looks like, I understand all of this, and I understand people’s concern,” McDaniel said. “But the one thing that I can exude with 100 percent conviction is that every person in this building had 100 percent the correct process, diligence, and that’s why there’s not a player or person that you’d be able to talk to in the building that would think otherwise, because it is clear, contrite, and not something that is negotiable in any way, shape, or form.”

McDaniel also got emotional discussing Tagovailoa getting carted off, saying “I’m just really, really, really glad that I can hear normal Tua in his voice.”

While McDaniel addressed the media, NFLPA president J.C. Tretter put out a statement explaining the investigation, writing that Tagovailoa exhibited “no-go” symptoms and that “we need to figure out how and why the decisions were made last Sunday to allow a player with a ‘no-go’ symptom back on the field.”

Earlier in the day, Dr. Allen Sills, the Chief Medical Officer for the NFL, appeared on television and said Tagovailoa was checked for concussion symptoms every day since the game against Buffalo.

Long ago, Community was the lesser-loved child of the NBC sitcom lineup. The Office, Parks and Rec, and 30 Rock all had their glory days with various NBC tie-ins and one-off reunions, but Community was often left out of the conversation. Which, to be fair, is a very Community thing to happen, so it kind of works! NBC effectively canceled the series in 2014, before a sixth and final season was ordered by Yahoo! Screen (remember that? Probably not.)

One of the long-running jokes from the series was that it would never fully be complete until there were “six seasons and a movie.” When the final episodes aired in 2015 on the abandoned Yahoo! Screen, it seemed like the prospect of a movie was long gone. While the cast and crew would often mention the show’s mantra and tease the potential movie, it seemed like nothing was really going to move forward. UNTIL NOW!

This morning, Peacock announced they would be reviving the series once more for a movie to finally fulfill the prophecy. Most of the original cast seems to be on board, including Joel McHale, Danny Pudi, Alison Brie, Gillian Jacobs, Jim Rash, and Ken Jeong. The very dedicated fan base finally came out of hibernation to express not only their excitement but also say that they knew the movie would happen all along and they never once doubted it!

The Community movie currently has no release date, but maybe there is time to bring back Yahoo! Screen for another quick runaround!

In complete defiance of hundreds of sci-fi movies and books, Elon Musk will unveil an actual freaking cyborg during Tesla’s AI Day event on Friday. The Terminator jokes started flying on social media after reports revealed Musk’s plans to debut the robot named Optimus, which he swears will be “friendly.” And if it’s not, don’t worry, you can probably run away from it or knock it over. Maybe.

Via The Washington Post:

Last year at the same event, Musk announced the robot. He said the cyborg would be uncombative, standing roughly 5-foot-8: “It’s intended to be friendly, of course.” It would be designed to help with repetitive, menial tasks — and usher in a future where physical work would be a choice.

Critically, Musk said, a person could “run away from it and most likely overpower it.”

Nothing more comforting than knowing when the killing starts, you have a running chance. Good stuff. As for why Musk is dipping into the dangerous waters of combining artificial intelligence and robotics, he basically said some other idiot probably would’ve done it, so why not be the first? Oh great.

“We’re just obviously making the pieces that are needed for a useful humanoid robot, so I guess we probably should make it,” Musk said during last year’s AI Day. “And if we don’t, someone else would. … I guess we should make it and make sure it’s safe.”

Following The Washington Post‘s report, people were understandably freaked out by the prospect of Musk building a robot and already feeling the need to say it won’t “overpower” humanity. Why would you open with that?

You can see some of the reactions to Musk’s robot below:

(Via The Washington Post)

On September 23, Post Malone took to Boston’s TD Garden, where the NBA’s Celtics play their home games, for a concert. He also paid tribute to the city by wearing a jersey of Celtics guard Marcus Smart, the reigning NBA Defensive Player Of The Year. It turns out the two Dallas natives got to enjoy some time together backstage and Smart spoke about a fun moment they shared.

During an interview with NBC Sports Boston at the Celtics’ media day on September 26, Smart was asked if he got to play Malone at beer pong and he said, “Yeah, I played him. I won one game, but I went five in a row the last game! […] He’s really good. He kept telling me to call [Celtics President Of Basketball Operations] Brad [Stevens] for him, though. Every shot he made, he was like, ‘Call Brad, sign me up, give me the 10-day [contract]!’”

After the concert, Smart shared photos of himself and Malone backstage and wrote on Instagram, “That was a [fire] show @postmalone thanks for the love Friday night. Fans were crazy live. Felt their love as well. Place was crazy. Boston fans never fail.”

Malone’s second Boston concert of the tour, set for September 24, was postponed as Malone noted, “I’m having a very difficult time breathing, and there’s like a stabbing pain whenever I breathe or move.” This came not long after he fell in an on-stage hole and injured his ribs.

DDG is celebrating the arrival of It’s Not Me It’s You on Friday (September 30) by recounting his struggle to get here. The Michigan-bred rapper simultaneously dropped the music video for “9 Lives,” the project’s opening track, featuring NLE Choppa And Polo G.

Directed by Michael Daniel, the four-minute visual finds DDG revisiting his old neighborhood, with a young boy presumably serving as a younger DDG — filling up a pot with water in the kitchen, boiling it on the stove to use for a bath. “But for my family, that’s alright, I’m doing anything,” present-day DDG raps, watching the boy boxing outside while his parents argue about bills inside.

NLE performs his verse from a church pew, mentioning a Percocet problem in 2019, and Polo G provides his insight from the block at night.

It’s Not Me It’s You follows the footsteps of DDG’s Epic Records debut album Valedictorian from November 2019. In between, DDG was named to the 2021 XXL Freshman Class last June and dropped his Die 4 Respect mixtape.

DDG has previously shared It’s Not Me It’s You singles “If I Want You” with real-life girlfriend Halle Bailey including a steamy music video, “Stay In My Circle,” “Storyteller,” and “Elon Musk” featuring Gunna. The project’s full tracklist was revealed last week. Check it below.

1. “9 Lives” Feat. Polo G and NLE Choppa
2. “Elon Musk” Feat. Gunna
3. “Stay In My Circle”
4. “Relationship Issues”
5. “If I Want You”
6. “Not The Only One”
7. “Loyal Slut”
8. “Love Myself” Feat. Kevin Gates
9. “Storyteller”
10. “Remember Me”
11. “The Clinic” Feat. Babyface Ray
12. “Big Knots”

It’s Not Me It’s You is out 9/30 via DDG Entertainment and Epic.

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

Last week on People’s Party with Talib Kweli, Kweli and cohost Jasmin Leigh sat with the iconic producer, Just Blaze. The “Megatron Don” is the craftsman behind some of the biggest records in the history of hip-hop and in one segment Jasmin inquired about the song “Girls, Girls, Girls’,” and the origin story behind it. Blaze’s answer blew her and Kweli away.

In the video above, Just Blaze reveals that the song was one of the first tracks they made for the iconic album The Blueprint. The beat was originally intended for Ghostface Killah, of the Wu-Tang Clan.

“About a year and a half before The Blueprint was even a thought that record was already done,” Just says. The smooth soulful bounce on the track was rooted in a sample from Soul singer Tom Brock and caught the planet by storm.

He goes on to say that one day Hov came into the studio ready to record and had a beat from an emerging producer named Kanye West. Just Blaze said the soundscape Jigga envisioned was to sample rich soul classics throughout the album.

“I just got this CD from Ye,” Just recalls Jay-Z saying. “Let’s go.”

Blaze asked him, “So what we doin’?”

Jay Z responded, “We’re back to the soul music.”

“So the first thing I think of is that Ghost beat,” Just says. ” Ghost is my brother now. But at the time I didn’t know Ghost like that. I did not have a link to him. I can hold out and pray that I meet Ghost one day. Or, this is the chamber that Jay is in right now, boom!”

Remarkably he reveals the majority of that groundbreaking album was recorded over a span of three days. “We started on a Friday, by Sunday all the core songs were done. Most of my stuff and most of Jay’s stuff was done.”

As for the album’s breakout hit, the chorus features with Slick Rick, Biz Markie and Q-Tip were strategically chosen, Just explains.

“Because of the feel of the record we wanted voices that everybody knew but were considered old school voices. They were still making records but they were voices that had been on records for years. We wanted it to have familiarity and we wanted to feel like hip-hop. It was a conscious ode to a different time, and a different sound.”

The end result was a song and a video by Jay Z that the world will never forget.

To learn more about Just Blaze and the making of some of the best records in the history of Hip-hop watch Peoples Party with Talib Kweli and Jasmin Leigh. Also, be sure to watch Just Blaze in episode 1 of his new Uproxx show, Fresh Pair, below.

Saquon Barkley already has more than half of his rushing production from the 2021 campaign through his first three games this season. Barkley’s 317 yards and two touchdowns on 53 carries (along with 13 catches for 91 yards) has him looking like the player who won Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2018 again, a far cry from last year’s struggles with just 593 yards and two touchdowns on 163 carries over 13 games.

Health is playing a big role, as Barkley is now two years removed from an ACL tear and is completely healed from the nagging ankle sprain that cost him time a year ago. He also took a look inward and realized he wasn’t making the same plays he was accustomed to, and had to get his mind and body back on the same page in order to break big plays again.

We got a chance to talk with Barkley — coming off a Monday night loss to the Cowboys in which he had 81 rushing yards on 14 carries including a long touchdown run — on behalf of his partnership with Courtyard by Marriott for a Fansgiving dinner at MetLife Stadium. We talked about how the Giants bounce back, his confidence returning this season, the improved vibes in the Giants locker room under Brian Daboll, and how the least they can do as a team is complete as hard as possible every Sunday.

What do you take away from a game like last night [against the Cowboys]? And as a team, what are the things that you try and pull from that moving forward?

Yeah, I mean, it was a hard fought loss. You gotta give credit to Dallas, they came out, they played amazing. They were able to get the win. It came down to the last drive. We gotta just be better as a team before that and also in that drive. We gotta execute. We gotta make make more plays, especially the offensive side of the ball, but you know, you go, you watch film, you learn, and you make your adjustments and you get ready for Chicago.

For you personally, what do you feel is the biggest difference in your play so far this season compared to last year that’s been able to get you off to such a strong start?

Being able to make that guy miss. I feel like I wasn’t breaking those tackles last year. Just had a little disconnect between my mind and my body. But having that back, having that confidence, and also want to give credit to the guys up front. They’re doing a tremendous job of making me look good.

Having a full offseason again, what did that do for you and being able to go into an offseason and a training camp knowing that that you’re healthy and able to put in the work that you’re accustomed to putting in? Do you feel like that’s showing up now at the start of the season?

Yeah, I mean, the year I hurt my knee, I did a lot of work on my knee, on my body to put myself in position [to bounce back], and it was unfortunate — stepped on someone’s foot and hurt my ankle. And that kind of set me back, but all the work that I put in is all coming in now. Obviously I trained hard this offseason, too, but all the stuff that felt like it was pointless, just the littlest step ups, this and that and the third, and I’m just like dang, like, I don’t know. You don’t really see the growth, but that was just all creating a strong base for me to go out and trust myself, and like I said, last year with the injury really kind of set me back.

But now I’m able to go out there and just perform with confidence, and that’s all credit to the work that I put in during rehab from my knee and I had a lot of great people helping. And then being able to have a healthy offseason this last offseason that we just had, to take time off, to be able to say, you know what, give my body a break. And then we know when it’s time to get after it, we get after it and prepare myself and put myself in a situation where I can go out there and perform for the season.

You mentioned feeling like you can make guys miss again. I noticed a few plays before you broke that touchdown run, you got pulled down and you kind of looked at your line and tapped your chest like, “That was on me, I missed one.” Is that feeling back of being able to see it and then saying like, okay, that’s one I got to make, and then executing the next time because you made a couple of guys miss in the hole when you busted it outside for that touchdown?

Yeah, for sure. It was actually the same play. The first one we ran the same play. The first one I let the safety tackle me — it’s the NFL, you’re gonna get got. They’re gonna make their plays, but I have the confidence and my line had confidence that the majority of times that I get up to that safety or get to that second level, I’m gonna make that guy miss, and I just knew that when the next opportunity comes, I gotta make it pay for it. And we were able to do that. But at the end of the day, we got to make more plays like that. Whether it’s myself or any of the other guys on offense, because 13 points ain’t gonna cut. It ain’t gonna get it done, especially in that game. So we should, collectively, be better and find a way to help our team win games.

Y’all have gotten off to a solid start even with the loss to Dallas. What have you been impressed with the most about Brian Daboll and this new coaching staff and what they’ve been able to bring to the team as a whole? Because it seems like there’s a raised level of confidence in what you guys are doing.

Just the energy that they bring. The personalities that they bring and letting us let our personality show. I would say that’s the biggest thing, just the differences in energy and just the vibes — having a DJ at practice, having DJs at the game, listening to music in the locker before the game. All the things that we do when there’s little competition stuff, just for all of us, especially in offseason, to build, to get to know each other, to build that trust and build that brotherhood.

And I think you’ve seen that kind of show in the first couple games, but it’s a long season and only a couple games into the season, so we’ve got to continue to fall in love with the process, continue to trust each other, and especially, I’m excited to see how we respond after this week, after a loss. It’s easier to come into a game week where you just had a win or two wins in a row. But you know, it’s different with a loss. So just got to continue to have that same mindset, continue to have that same energy and get ready for Chicago.

As a running back, what’s the process of learning a new offense when they come in and they’re changing some stuff? Because it’s not just the run game, it’s you’ve got to learn new pass protection and routes and things like that. What’s been that process like for you going through another another coordinator change here?

It’s been easy. It’s been easy because they make it easy. They do a really good job, our coaches are great, great teachers. The thing that’s hard about it … because everybody runs the same stuff in NFL, but it’s just different terminology. Just different ways how we want to set this block up, or what’s the landmark here. That’s the difference and you get to knock that out in camp and OTAs. That was a big, big thing, having OTAs and being able to get in with the coaches early and learn the offense and learn the system and just carry over to camp and now the regular season.

How did this partnership with Courtyard by Marriott come about for you with this Fansgiving event and everything you’re working on with them?

Yeah, I’m partnered with Courtyard by Marriott, the official hotel of the NFL. Just, for me, I love just getting the opportunity to give back and engage with fans and this is what Courtyard is doing. Giving fans a real, cool, unique experience to tap into fandom and having the Fansgiving on the 50 yard line at MetLife Stadium and be able to have dinner with me at MetLife and get to show them the ins and outs of MetLife behind the scenes. And the way fans can do this is by posting videos on TikTok, Twitter, and Instagram and make sure they use #CourtyardFanContest. Like I said, it’s fun to engage with fans and I look forward to seeing the videos, and when we’re able to do this and have Fansgiving, interact with the fans and have a great time.

You played college ball at a place where there’s a rabid fan base at Penn State, and then you come to New York where obviously it’s a passionate fan base. Knowing that group behind you is so passionate and they’re going to let you know about it when it’s going well, and they’re going to let you know about when it maybe isn’t going so well, what does that do to kind of keep that that fuel going for you guys as players?

It definitely helps when you play for a major fan base. Not everyone can say that and I was blessed enough to have that at Penn State, and then coming to the NFL and having that with New York and New Jersey and all the great fans here. At the end of the day, you just want to go out there and give them something to be proud about. And you know, I feel like that’s something that is controllable. You would love to win every single game, but you know, sometimes they don’t work that way. But something that you can control is how you go out there, how you compete, your effort, and the way you go out there as a team and play and fight with grit. And I feel like that’s been shown the past couple of games and we got to keep that going.