Category: Viral

Earlier this week, rapper Big Sean made a rare appearance on Twitter. Though he’s dialed back his social media presence in recent years, he took to the social media channel on Thursday (May 18) to share a special message, timely for Mental Health Awareness Month.

“To everybody stressed the f*ck out or overwhelmed cause y’all busy… just remember, It’s much more stressful when things ARENT happening versus stress bc they are,” he said. He continued, seemingly hinting that he was hard at work on new music. “Ok, back to work… but take care of you too.”

Though it’s not clear that he specifically shared this sentiment in honor of Mental Health Awareness Month, he and his longtime girlfriend Jhené Aiko are both advocates of mental health.

While Sean is of the mentality that keeping busy is indicative of having a lot going for oneself, he’s also a proponent of maintaining balance.

A month prior to the aforementioned tweet, he reminded his fans, “No matter how busy you are, you gotta live your life.”

It’s been almost three years since Sean released a proper album, however, he’s recently been keeping fans satisfied with guest appearances. He is featured on Kaytranada and Aminé’s song, “Master P,” from their collaborative album Kaytraminé. He also collaborated with Larry June & The Alchemist on a song called “Palisades, CA.”

Quentin Tarantino seems dedicated to fulfilling a pretty sad pledge: that he will only direct 10 movies before retiring from filmmaking. If he sticks to his guns, he may go out on top. The Movie Critic, his alleged swan song, sounds pretty batty. Even his potential penultimate film was one of his best. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood was a rare non-franchise box office bonanza, leaving such a mark that, four years after its release, Tarantino can do things like announce the death of one of its (of course fictional) protagonists.

On Friday, the Twitter account for Video Archives, the podcast Tarantino runs with his Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary, had an announcement: Rick Dalton had died. He was 90 years old.

“We are saddened by the news of the passing of actor Rick Dalton, best known for his roles in the hit TV series Bounty Law and The Fireman trilogy,” the message read. “Rick passed away peacefully in his home in Hawaii and is survived by his wife Francesca. RIP Rick Dalton 1933-2023.” They also promised a memorial episode was en route.

Rick Dalton, of course, does not exist. He’s the fallen movie star Leonardo DiCaprio played in Hollywood. He was a hard drinker and chain-smoker, but Tarantino has speculated that, despite peaking in his late 20s/early 30s, he eked out a living in the entertainment industry well into middle age. Apparently he even made it to 90. Also perhaps surprising is that he and his Italian starlet wife Francesca stayed together for some 54 years. Perhaps he got his stuff together and lived a long and happy life. If so, good for him!

Tarantino expanded upon Hollywood in his novelization, which was really more of a novel and which even had a different story arc than the movie. The climax wasn’t even the thwarted Manson murders. The book never talks about The Fireman trilogy referenced in the tweet, so it appears Tarantino and Avary will soon be talking about Dalton’s entire (fictional) career, which may have some peaks on top of valleys.

In the meantime, pour one out for Rick Dalton. One wonders if Cliff Booth is still knocking about.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

The AI arms race seems to be in full swing and everyone wants a piece of the action. Since Chat GPT launched on the scene six months ago, dozens of applications and extensions have claimed to harness GPT 3.5’s incredible language processing capacities. Google has responded by releasing its own AI software, BARD, to compete in the arena. (Try Bard out here and see if you prefer it to Chat GPT. The main difference is that Bard has access to real-time internet data.)

While dozens of extensions, bells, and dubious whistles have been available in the App Store for months professing to be powered by Open AI, the developer itself has never offered an official IOS App. That is, until now. On May 18th, Open AI launched a free Chat GPT App available in The US on the Apple Store. Just like the web model, the free-to-use version operates on the standard GPT 3.5 model, whereas GPT Plus users have access to the improved GPT-4 technology (available for $20 a month).

So what does the App do?

Open AI’s statement reads: “Since the release of ChatGPT, we’ve heard from users that they love using ChatGPT on the go.” For this reason, the App has hopped on to the IOS scene. To serve this “On-the-go” demand, the app integrates Whisper, Open AI’s speech recognition system that enables voice input. Think a really evolved Siri, like HAL from Space Odyssey. Not only is the app free to use, but it also syncs your history across devices, according to Open AI.

While it’s currently only available stateside, Open AI plans to release the App to additional countries in the coming weeks. With this new accessibility, the company will continue to gather feedback and take further steps in improving this powerful tool. “But wait, what if I have an Android?”Fear not, Open AI plans to offer it there as well.

If you haven’t tried Chat GPT, give it a go here. If faster responses, improved capabilities, and access to early features are something that seems desirable, consider subscribing to Open AI for the new GPT-4 technology. Regardless of whether it’s the subscription or the free version, this app looks to be handy and the next step in the ever-evolving AI scene.

It’s been two years since Ted Cruz abandoned his freezing constituents for a sunny trip to Cancún. It might be the most notable thing he’s has ever done. Any time the Texas senator does anything that might even faintly prompt a Cancún joke, social media takes the bait. Every now and then he makes a joke about it, in an attempt to show he has a sense of humor. It rarely goes well, as witness his latest attempt.

On Friday, Cruz took to Twitter to post a picture of him in Midland, Texas. There he happened upon a restaurant called Cancun Grill. Har har. So he had a picture taken of him standing next to the neon sign, a big smile on his face, once again trying to prove he’s a good sport about that time he fled his state during a freak winter storm, raced back after massive backlash, then blamed it all on his daughters.

Cruz is not known for his sense of humor and this latest volley at joke-making did not go over well.

Just as a reminder, the event that Cruz is joking about happened in mid-to-late February of 2021, when a severe winter storm led to the worst energy infrastructure collapse in Texas history. There were statewide power outages. Nearly 250 people died, though some estimates go as high as 700. While his constituents froze and/or lacked drinking water, Cruz was spotted at an airport bound for the Mexican vacation spot. The backlash was severe, but it didn’t stop him from continuing to behave like Ted Cruz.

On her fifth studio album, Gag Order, Kesha isn’t holding back. Having gone through the wringer by way of public lawsuits and various forms of scrutiny, she puts her anger and her hurt in full view by way of her most vulnerable body of work yet.

On one of the album’s standout tracks, “Hate Me Harder,” Kesha makes it known that she is unfazed by any of the words her alleged abusers, and pushes them to say their worst.

“If hating me helps you love yourself / Do your worst, baby, gimme hell / Hate me harder / Hate me harder / There’s nothing left that I haven’t heard / And I can take it, so make it hurt / Hate me harder / Hate me harder,” she sings on the song’s chorus.

In the song’s accompanying visualizer, she is seen singing, as a hand grasps her throat, symbolizing that she won’t keep silent, no matter what kind of hate she receives.

“I have put every ounce of my truth into this album,” said Kesha in an Instagram post upon the album’s release. “The stakes have never felt higher. When creating it with Rick Rubin, I wanted it to sound like life or death, because that’s how it has felt. I wanted to give a sound to the feelings.”

Gag Order is out now via Kemosabe Records. Find more information here.

One fun element of Inside the NBA is that they’re pretty good at incorporating tweets from people who are watching the show. As they explained to us earlier this year, they’re constantly on the search for stuff that makes their broadcast a little better, as they’ll find a good and relevant tweet, put it up on the screen, and get the guys to react to it without knowing what’s coming.

The best stuff in this segment is, as always, the stuff that makes the dudes on set laugh the most. We got a pretty good example of that on Friday night after Game 2 of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Miami Heat and the Boston Celtics, as a conversation about the Denver Nuggets led to someone with the username “Jenna Tuhls” tweeting at the gang with a gif of someone dipping a chicken nugget into some sauce.

Charles Barkley was sidetracked by the choice in sauce, which got him to say the user’s name. Shaquille O’Neal, meanwhile, picked up on the name right after Chuck said it, and made it a point to get him to say it again while he laughed hysterically on his side of the desk.

“Oh my god,” Barkley said as Shaq laughed. “You’re such an idiot.” Anyway, they did, indeed, also talk about basketball on Friday’s show.

Much has been made out of Jimmy Butler and Grant Williams going face-to-face in the fourth quarter of Game 2 between the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat. At the time, Boston was ahead and riding high after a three by Williams to give them a six-point lead. Butler came down the floor on the ensuing possession, scored against Williams, got fouled, and the pair got into each other’s faces, which beget a monster run by Miami en route to a 111-105 win.

Williams battled against Butler down the stretch, but the Heat star kept taking him 1-on-1, and despite his best efforts, Williams couldn’t consistently prevent him from scoring. It’s a thing that just happens when you’re playing against Butler, especially when he’s cooking in a playoff game, but regardless, Butler seemed to get a whole lot of joy out of it. After the game, cameras caught him screaming about the Celtics thought Williams was “the answer to the Jimmy Butler problem.”

After doing a postgame hit with TNT, Butler was once again caught screaming about Williams as he started to make his way into the locker room.

Butler had 27 points on 12-for-25 shooting on the night. With the win, the Heat managed to win both games in Boston to start the series to go up, 2-0, as things shift to Miami for Game 3 on Sunday.

When the new Disney+ show, The Muppets Mayhem, hit the streaming service with the first season this month, fans were sure to have some celebrity cameos alongside their favorite puppets. And, as the series centers around Dr. Teeth And The Electric Mayhem‘s band working with a record label to make an album, a lot of the surprise guests are famous in the music world.

Chris Stapleton is the first to appear in the opening episode, as one of the first talking heads to share how the fictional band influenced his music. Others in this segment include Lil Nas X and Tommy Lee — who jokingly flashes his “Mayhem” tattoo as a fake nod to the band.

Later in the show’s sequence, the Muppet music crew attends a party where Steve Aoki is the DJ and Billy Corgan from Smashing Pumpkins performs.

Another DJ, Zedd, and Sofia Carson (Disney’s Descendants) play a larger role in the series. Nora, played by Lilly Singh, wants Zedd to produce the band’s album. Carson arrives in the picture as a singer, when the group ultimately decides to give their song to her — and it becomes a massive hit.

Kesha also stops by to help the Muppets along their journey, while she’s trying to collab with them. Ziggy Marley also tries to help the Electric Mayhem find the right direction for their song, putting his own spin on something Kesha originally performed slower. Other collaborators as potential ideas in this part include Desiigner and Deadmau5.

Other mentions for musicians in the rest of the series are The Bangles’ Susanna Hoffs and Paula Abdul.

Last, but absolutely not least, “Weird Al” Yankovic appears in the show as the band is presumably having a drug hallucination. But, of course since it’s Disney+, they just ate some expired marshmallows. What a silly band!

Things get heated when the Boston Celtics and the Miami Heat play high-stakes basketball games against one another, which has become a common occurrence in recent years with their frequent postseason matchups. In the fourth quarter of a tense Game 2 in the Eastern Conference Finals, we saw a pair of players go face-to-face and have to be separated.

Grant Williams found himself checking Jimmy Butler, which has been a pretty difficult assignment this postseason for, well, everyone. Despite Williams’ best effort, Butler was able to bulldoze his way into the paint, navigate his way around, and get a bucket while drawing a foul. The two immediately got in one another’s faces and started jawing, and even after they were pulled apart, the two continued to exchange pleasantries.

Because this is Jimmy Butler we’re talking about here, not long after, he decided to go at Williams again by burrowing into the paint, rising up, and finishing through contact. After he got the bucket, there was only one thing Butler could do: bust out a too small gesture.

Our hunch is that, as long as this series goes on, members of the Celtics and Butler are going to have moments like this with one another.

DDG has put a new spin on his “I’m Geekin” song by dropping an added remix with Luh Tyler.

“Pull up in Maybach, yeah, we finna swerve (Skrrt) / Like my bitch stick with a whole lot of curve / They payin’ the kid just to say all these words / Gotta go drop them bands, tryna get you a verse,” Tyler raps through the second verse.

“I’m countin’ pape’ while you sleep, countin’ sheep / Tell your b*tch pour me up, I ain’t sippin’ no tea / Tell that boy tie his lace, ain’t no trippin’ on me / In a Wraith, slidin’ round, b*tch, I’m with DDG,” he adds.

DDG also adds his new third verse after, even tossing a namedrop in for his collaborator. “I heard Luh Tyler wanna f*ck with one of my exes,” he said, before taking some time to comment on his haters. “I be in the blogs, topic of discussion / They say I’m a dog, always gon’ be somethin’ / I do somethin’ positive, they don’t discuss it / But when it be negative, them people love it, huh?”

Meanwhile, the original song continues to rack up streams on various platforms, with this likely giving it another added boost of popularity.

Check out DDG’s “I’m Geekin” remix with Luh Tyler above.

Luh Tyler is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.