Category: News

Kanye West is one of hip-hop’s finest multi-hyphenates, as he is well versed in rapping, production, fashion design, and a number of other fields of endeavor. Kanye is also a visual artist, and now some artwork from his teenage years has been appraised on the long-running PBS series Antiques Roadshow.

The art was dated 1995, and the owner said he acquired a large portfolio of Kanye’s work after the rapper’s mother passed away in 2007. A select group of pieces from the portfolio were displayed for the show, and appraiser Laura Woolley said she chose the pieces she did because they “demonstrate an extraordinary facility as an artist” and because they show the different mediums in which Kanye was capable of working. The pieces included a surreal portrait of a man in chains, an unfinished and more realistic portrait of a woman, and some depictions of nature.

Part of the collection was also a flyer that promoted a showing of West’s work when he was 17 years old, and interestingly, it notes that “Kanye will begin his studies for the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree at the American Academy of Art in Chicago and continue to pursue a career as a music producer as well.”

The graphite portrait was ultimately valued at around “$6,000 to $8,000,” while the other pieces on display were given similar appraisals.

Check out the clip from the episode above.

The Office isn’t the only NBC Thursday night sitcom on Netflix, even if it seems like it sometimes. All 110 episodes of Community — yes, even the underrated Yahoo season — are now available on both Netflix and Hulu, due to a “multi-year, non-exclusive global deal.” Pop-pop the bottle of champagne. In honor of the occasion, the Independent spoke to much of the beloved show’s cast and crew, including creator Dan Harmon, who revealed that a plot originally meant for Community ended up on Rick and Morty.

“I can’t remember any ideas we always wanted to do but couldn’t crack,” he said. “There was one concept that was always floating in the air which was the idea of doing an episode about Jeff Winger being a shy pooper. I ended up grafting that over to Rick and Morty.” Harmon is referring to the season four episode “The Old Man and the Seat,” where Rick travels to another planet to use the can. It’s a character development that works better on Rick and Morty than Community, because even though Jeff could be a dick, he wouldn’t threaten the lives of 800,000 kids. Or maybe that’ll be in the movie.

Here’s what Harmon had to say about a potential film:

“Certainly ideas have been kicked around. I think we can anticipate it’s going to be most difficult to get Donald [Glover] to leap back into the role of this thing he probably associates with creative puberty – but I’m sure it’s not out of a lack of love for the show that he’d be hard to get back. I think pretty much everybody else is good to go and although we do have some concepts of how we would frame a return to that world, I thankfully believe the cast is willing to do it for the sake of doing it. They love each other and miss being together. I think time makes everyone look back and realise what a blessing that show was in everybody’s life.”

The #SixSeasons part of #SixSeasonsAndAMovie is now on Netflix.

(Via the Independent)

Since its 2003 premiere on MTV, Aston Kutcher’s prank show Punk’d has become culturally ingrained in our society. When the inexplicable happens, many wonder if Kutcher is hiding in a van somewhere waiting to appear with a camera crew. The show officially went off-air in 2007, but the new media outlet Quibi is aiming to breathe new life into the hidden-camera prank show. Chance The Rapper will host the new iteration, and a new trailer shows that the rapper has some pretty clever tricks up his sleeve.

The first Punk’d trailer re-lived an elaborate prank against Megan Thee Stallion that involved a very realistic gorilla. The most recent trailer, however, shows Chance has a major affinity for explosions, especially involving cars. His latest Punk’d preview gives a taste of the pranks that he has in store for celebrities like Adam DeVine, Lilly Singh, Megan Thee Stallion, and many more.

For the Punk’d reboot, Quibi cuts down each episode to just 10 minutes. In a statement, Chance expressed his excitement for the new series: “I grew up watching this show and it’s surreal to be in the driver’s seat this time around on Quibi,” Chance said, saying the series is “one of MTV’s most iconic franchises.”

Watch the trailer for Chance’s Punk’d above.

Punk’d premieres 4/6 exclusively on Quibi. Read more of Uproxx’s coverage on Quibi here.

As the United States attempts to contain the coronavirus outbreak, professional sports leagues are not only planning for this season, but the 2020-21 campaign. The NBA, should it come back to complete the regular season and/or the playoffs, will likely have to push back the start of the next season, an idea that Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said he has been “asking for for more than 10 years” during an interview Wednesday morning on Get Up.

The league is considering plans such as a “quarantine league” to finish out the 2019-20 season, but that would likely not be possible until mid-summer at the earliest. Most agree NBA players would need a month or so to get back into playing shape, and on the back end, even a reduced version of the postseason would likely last a couple months. There is basically no way the 2020-21 season will start as planned in mid-October.

It’s easy to follow the line of thinking here that says the NBA (and a number of other leagues) could see their schedules permanently altered by this outbreak. Some will make hard decisions to get back on track with their typical seasonality, but many, including Cuban, have long called for the NBA dominating the holiday season with its premiere.

The league’s partners, Cuban said, have been the main barrier to a change in the calendar.

“The response has always been that our television partners don’t want that because there are fewer households using televisions during the summer months,” Cuban told Mike Greenberg of ESPN, “but everything’s different right now. If we continue to be quarantined, then people are at home, willing to watch the games. Nothing else is on, effectively.”

The NBA isn’t sure how to proceed for the next couple months, let alone the next year, but this crisis has shown nothing if not the value of being proactive.

After celebrating the success of his debut album Pony, Orville Peck is back with new music. The famously-masked country singer signals the beginning of a new era with the nostalgic track “Summertime” along with a bright video.

Directed by Drew Kirsch, who has worked with the likes of Taylor Swift and John Legend, the video is a reimagining of Peck as a lonesome cowboy. Sporting his usual mask, Peck is alone in a vast, open landscape and hopes to travel the distance in the sun only to be held back by those same daydreams.

The topography of the visual’s picturesque landscape falls in line with Peck’s interest in geography. In a recent interview with Uproxx, Peck said he regularly visits a website that quizzes him about geography: “I really love geography so I go on this website a lot where it quizzes you on countries or cities etc,” he said. “It’s actually become this mostly useless talent to be able to name every country on the planet.”

The track marks the first single since the release of Peck’s acclaimed debut record Pony. Ahead of the release of “Summertime,” Peck, like many other musicians, hosted a livestream from the comfort of his own home while in quarantine. During the livestream, the singer performed a tribute to the late Kenny Rogers with a rendition of his duet “Islands In The Stream.”

Watch “Summertime” above.

Tekashi 69 will reportedly be granted early release from prison as a result of the coronavirus outbreak, according to freelance reporter Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press. Lee reports that Judge Paul Engelmayer granted Tekashi’s previously-filed relief request after denying that request last week.

According to Lee, the release request was denied because Tekashi hadn’t appealed to the Bureau Of Prisons yet. Once the appeal was properly filed and turned down, Tekashi was allowed to request release from the court directly. Lee tweeted “Judge Engelmayer says 69 has ‘exhausted his administrative remedies with BOP,’” allowing Engelmayer to take action. “Because Mr. Hernandez is not in BOP custody, BOP cannot evaluate him for compassionate release,” the judge’s order reads.

Lee also fielded questions from followers concerned that, due to the date of the announcement, news of Tekashi’s release might be an April Fool’s joke. Lee emphatically denied those claims, providing some context in a later series of tweets explaining that “It’s definitely complicated. It’s that Judge Engelmayer first turned 69 down because his lawyer hadn’t asked BOP to be released & been rejected. Now that has happened and Judge says he is inclined to release 69, pending the US Attorney’s 5 pm filing opposing it.”

Tekashi’s attorney, Lance Lazzaro, requested the release two weeks ago, saying that a case of COVID-19 could be serious to the rapper due to his asthma. The letter also notes that Tekashi was diagnosed with bronchitis and sinusitis late last year and was hospitalized for treatment, which would make him more vulnerable to a potential outbreak in prison.

Follow more of Uproxx’s coronavirus coverage here.

With the sports world at a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there are no live action sporting events on TV that are not simulations, whether it be virtual NASCAR races or a televised NBA 2K tournament featuring actual NBA players. Luckily, there is one outlet for those seeking to watch some form of athletic competition between actual humans and it premieres tonight at 8 p.m. ET on MTV, as The Challenge: Total Madness gets started.

The Challenge has always been tangentially sports in that it forces its participants to compete in various athletic ventures and, sometimes, straight up one-on-one combat. There is also the reality TV element of people getting drunk and yelling at each other, but, even so, this qualifies as sports right now. As such, we’ll be coming to you each week with a look back at what happened in the previous episode, taking a look at which player’s stocks are going up and who is struggling each week.

To start, we’ll see what we can glean from the previews that MTV has put on YouTube to get fans excited and give them an idea of some of what’s changing in this year’s format, including the first five minutes of the first episode.

STOCK UP

T.J. Lavin’s Prop Budget

The Challenge is the reality TV show equivalent of the Fast & Furious movie franchise, as it’s grown from humble beginnings to having a preposterous budget with which to create stunts. The biggest beneficiary of this is T.J. Lavin, whose prop budget continues to grow exponentially. In the first five minutes of this week’s episode, T.J. signals in a cargo helicopter carrying the entire cast with flares, loads them on a bus, and then meets them at the first daily challenge driving an honest to god tank. So, for those wondering, we’re at the same place as the sixth Fast & Furious movie, which means if we follow the same growth curve, we are only a few seasons away from T.J. showing up to a challenge on a nuclear submarine.

Cabin Fever

Rather than their typical mansion, this year’s cast is staying in a doomsday bunker with no windows. It does have a CrossFit gym with the above-ground pool your stepdad built to try and win you over when you were 14, so apparently it’s all cool. Through our flash forward montage, we can see that the lack of windows and ability to go outside leads people to descend into madness (get it, cause it’s called Total Madness). Anyway, get excited for people being extra tense this season!

STOCK DOWN

Long-Term Relationships

Surprise! No one on this show can keep themselves from screwing up a long-term relationship from back home. I know, this is shocking news. In the preview, we see Jenna and Zach managing to have a fight via Skype despite Zach not being on this season and Kailah in tears realizing she screwed things up with her longtime boyfriend because she decided to make out with Bear. Per usual, decision making on The Challenge remains at an all-time high.

Avoiding Eliminations As A Strategy

This year’s big twist (at least that we learn early on) is that the only way to reach the Final is to win an elimination, which means the general strategy of “avoid eliminations” is not going to work. This could be exciting in terms of changing up how elimination nominations and deliberations go down, but also will surely lead to every viewer being extremely tired of the phrase “skating by,” because every person will parrot that phrase in their confessionals all season.

Full Cast

Johnny Bananas (20th season)
CT Tamburello (17th season)
Aneesa Ferreira (13th season)
Wes Bergmann (13th season)
Nany Gonzalez (9th season)
Jenna Compono (8th season)
Ashley Mitchell (7th season)
Cory Wharton (7th season)
Jordan Wisely (6th season)
Nelson Thomas (6th season)
Kyle Christie (5th season)
Kailah Casillas (5th season)
Tori Deal (4th season)
Dee Nguyen (3rd season)
Josh Martinez (3rd season)
Rogan O’Connor (3rd season)
Melissa Reeves (3rd season)
Stephen Bear (3rd season)
Jennifer West (2nd season)
Mattie Breaux (2nd season)
Tula Fazakerley (2nd season)
Asaf Goren (Rookie, Big Brother Israel)
Bayleigh Dayton (Rookie, Big Brother)
Swaggy C Williams (Rookie, Big Brother)
Kaycee Clark (Rookie, Big Brother)
Fessy Shafaat (Rookie, Big Brother/American Ninja Warrior)
Jay Starrett (Rookie, Survivor)
Jennifer Lee (Rookie, The Amazing Race)

Sports across the globe have been impacted due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Whether it’s been major leagues being on an indefinite hiatus or big events getting moved or canceled altogether, leagues and sporting organizations have opted to be pragmatic in the face of the pandemic that has caused tens of thousands of deaths worldwide.

The latest annual event to get outright canceled is Wimbledon. In a statement released by the All England Lawn Tennis Club on Wednesday morning, the 134th Championships will not occur from June 29 until July 12 of 2020. Instead, the latest version of the event will occur in 2021.

“This is a decision that we have not taken lightly, and we have done so with the highest regard for public health and the wellbeing of all those who come together to make Wimbledon happen,” ALETC chairman Ian Hewitt said. “It has weighed heavily on our minds that the staging of The Championships has only been interrupted previously by World Wars but, following thorough and extensive consideration of all scenarios, we believe that it is a measure of this global crisis that it is ultimately the right decision to cancel this year’s Championships, and instead concentrate on how we can use the breadth of Wimbledon’s resources to help those in our local communities and beyond. Our thoughts are with all those who have been and continue to be affected by these unprecedented times.”

Wimbledon will begin on June 28 next year and will conclude on July 11. Like the Summer Olympics, this marks the first time that the event has not gone on as scheduled since World War II, which prevented Wimbledon from occurring from 1940 through 1945. With this being the case, the AELTC and its charity, the Wimbledon Foundation, will now assist with support efforts throughout the United Kingdom to fight the spread of COVID-19.

Dua Lipa attended this year’s Grammys ceremony after winning Best New Artist in 2019. The singer celebrated the success of her friends Lil Nas X, Lizzo, and Rosalía by attending an after-party at a strip club. The four artists were recorded having a good time and tipping the sex workers. But, the next day, Lipa woke up to the hashtag #DuaLipaIsOverParty trending on Twitter. Fans were trying to “cancel” her for attending the establishment altogether. Lipa has finally spoken out about the incident, citing sexism in the music industry.

In a recent interview with The Times, Lipa addressed her new record Future Nostalgia and the situation following the Grammys: “You know, artists are people, and we learn from mistakes and apologize when it’s due. But, also, if I stand by my actions, I just won’t comment,” Lipa said. “I never do anything to be mean or degrading. Everything has a good intention, and if things get taken a wrong way, I’ll apologize. But I can’t live my life being scared in case someone tries to cancel me for something silly.”

Lipa continued that she often feels like an “object” in the eyes of the paparazzi: “There is a lot less scrutiny of male pop stars. Maybe we’re more fun to write about?” Lipa said. “I don’t know, but the way women are described compared to men, it’s, like, she is wearing shorts? ‘She puts on a leggy display!’ I just feel I’m here because I do music, but when people write articles like that about me, it takes it away from my talent and makes me a thing. An object. People like to just objectify women.”

The singer also addressed her Future Nostalgia track “Boys Will Be Boys” where she croons the lyrics “It’s second nature to walk home before the sun goes down / And put your keys between your knuckles when there’s boys around.” Lipa said she hopes the track will start “a conversation.” “Because these are real things I have gone through,” Lipa said. “Getting home from school, scared of boys, I put keys between my knuckles. We constantly change the way we are so we don’t get harassed. Cover our bodies so boys don’t say things. From when we are kids we are told the way boys act towards us is completely normal.”

Revisit Uproxx’s review of Future Nostalgia here.

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

For much of the new year, DaBaby has teased new music during the second leg of the tour for his 2019 album, Kirk. So far after three months, DaBaby has kept that promise. In addition to sharing his “Shut Up” record a little over a month into the year, DaBaby has also been consistent in the feature department, working with A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, Future, Blueface, Stunna 4 Vegas, and Lil Yachty so far. Returning to the solo route, DaBaby returns with a new song and video that may kick off the campaign to his next album.

Playing an armed robbery suspect on the run, DaBaby shares a new song and video for “Find My Way.” The Charlotte rapper has teased the song on Instagram a couple of times in the past week, first by showing its unorthodox flow — at least in his book — during a studio session and secondly in another post with producer Einer Bankz. With actress B. Simone playing his ride or die love interest, the two go on the run to freedom while continuing their criminal ways.

DaBaby and B. Simone caused a stir on social media after Simone posted a rather romantic picture of the two, leading fans to believe that they were entertainment’s latest celebrity couple. DaBaby quickly refuted the idea saying it was all in good marketing.

The video also arrives just a few days after DaBaby revealed that his first two albums, Baby On Baby and Kirk have both obtained platinum certifications.

Watch the video for “Find My Way” above.