Category: Viral

When Lil Yachty dropped his Let’s Start Here album last month, Uproxx’s review contextualized that Lil Boat “is not the first rapper to release an alternative project,” but the album “isn’t just a departure from his own oeuvre; it also differentiates itself from its peers.”

And Let’s Start Here is a first for Lil Yachty in an even more unexpected way.

Yachty was revealed as Billboard‘s new cover star on Wednesday, March 8, and within the cover story written by Lyndsey Havens, Motown Records VP of A&R Gelareh Rouzbehani detailed how Yachty was able to posthumously feature famed painter Bob Ross on “We Saw The Sun!” (Ross died from cancer on July 4, 1995.)

Per Rouzbehani, Ross’ estate initially declined. “I think a big concern of theirs was that Yachty is known as a rapper, and Bob Ross and his brand are very clean,” she told Billboard. “They didn’t want to associate with anything explicit.”

She added, “With a lot of back-and-forth, we got the call. Yachty is the first artist that has gotten a Bob Ross clearance in history.”

Elsewhere in the Billboard cover story, Yachty discussed the difficulties of planning his subsequent tour and the desire to collaborate with Tyler The Creator.

“I would love to do a project with Tyler,” Yachty said. “He’s the reason I made this album. He’s the one who told me to do it, just go for it. He’s so confident, and I have so much respect for him because he takes me seriously, and he always has.”

Tyler was correct in pushing Yachty to put Let’s Start Here out in the world, as it debuted at No. 1 on Billboard‘s Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums, and Top Alternative Albums charts. Most recently, it served as the perfect palette from which to paint an impressive Rolling Loud California set last weekend.

Hard-right lawmaker Lauren Boebert periodically reminds people that she was a teenage mother who dropped out of high school, and she eventually gave birth to four sons. Her family photos tend to involve firearms, given her love of the Fourth Amendment and most extreme-conservative talking points. And her narrow reelection victory (in a red-leaning district) and an abundance of “hometown” criticism hasn’t encouraged her to take a few steps back. Rather, she’s arguably become even more brash with her talking points.

During the most recent Conservative Political Action Conference, Boebert spoke out about her wish to ban sex education in schools. While also downvoting any mention of “gender ideology” in such classes, she claimed (in this video clip posted by the Patriot Takes account on Twitter), “I mean they have comprehensive sex-ed. They’re teaching kids how to have and enjoy sex, and even same-sex sex.”

Now, Boebert also has some news, which she shared at a Moms for America event. Via Newsweek (and also Patriot Takes), Boebert made the announcement of her impending grandmotherhood at age 36. This status is due to her 17-year-old son’s also-impending fatherhood, and in this video, she expressed accolades for teen pregnancy because these young mothers “understand the preciousness of a life that it’s about to be born.”

Here’s what she said on a fuller note:

“There’s something special about rural conservative communities. They value life. If you look at teen pregnancy rates throughout the nation, well, they’re the same, [in] rural and urban areas. However, abortion rates are higher in urban areas. Teen moms’ rates are higher in rural conservative areas, because they understand the preciousness of a life that it’s about to be born.”

Also in the video, Boebert revealed that her son called teen pregnancy “hereditary” in the family because Boebert made her mother into a young grandmother, too. On a related note (and as mentioned above) Boebert has also been forthright about dropping out of high school (due to her first pregnancy) and securing her GED less than a year (as she reportedly told the Durango Herald) prior to being elected to the House of Representatives.

(Via Newsweek)

The Toronto Raptors fell to the Los Angeles Clippers on Wednesday night, 108-100. After the game, Raptors guard Fred VanVleet expressed frustration about the officiating, and made it a point to call out one referee, Ben Taylor, for being “f*cking terrible tonight.”

After saying that he did not care about receiving a potential fine, VanVleet excoriated the officiating performance.

“On most nights, out of the three, there’s one or two that just f*ck the game up,” VanVleet said. “It’s been like that a couple games in a row — Denver was tough, obviously. You come out tonight, competing pretty hard, the third quarter, I get a bullsh*t tech, changes the whole dynamic of the game, changes the whole flow of the game. Most of the refs are trying hard, I like a lot of the refs, they’re trying hard, they’re pretty fair, they try to communicate well.

“And then you got the other ones who just wanna be dicks, and it just kinda f*cks the game up,” VanVleet continued. “Nobody’s coming to see that sh*t, they come to see the players.”

VanVleet expressed his belief that this is a widespread problem and not just something that happened on Wednesday night. He then expressed that games officiated by Taylor are the ones where “most of my techs this year” come from.

“At a certain point as a player, you feel it’s personal, and it’s never a good place to be,” VanVleet said. “That’s not why we lost tonight. We got outplayed. But it definitely makes it tougher to overcome.”

The NBA has not announced a fine for VanVleet after his remarks.

Rap music is constantly undergoing a sonic evolution as each generation of talent pulls inspiration for what’s happening around them musically. For this edition of React Like You Know, we sat down with Gen Z rappers to quiz them on Panic! At The Disco’s hit single, “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.”

The emo pop-punk song, originally released in 2005, propelled the band into the mainstream and is now five times platinum in the United States alone. Although the song is continuing to pick up stream with the new generation of music lovers, the band’s frontman Brendon Urie announced that Panic! At The Disco was coming to an end after 19 years of creating together.

On a panel of reactors, Day Sulan immediately exclaims, “This was my sh*t when I was going through my emo phase!” When Uproxx’s Cherise Johnson follows up, Sulan admits, “Nah, I was really emo at one point, I even had pink hair.”

Similarly, Tia Corine gushes about her love of the track stating, “I used to get dressed in the morning to this [song] with my little white TV. What!”

Despite his hardened exterior, rapper King Most Wanted proudly proclaims, “N****s don’t know I f*ck with this sh*t.”

Other the other hand, rappers like Kalan.FrFr confessed that they weren’t familiar with the band but certainly heard the song in passing. “Madden [the video game]! I know this song, but I’ve never seen the video ever before in my life,” he says. Rapper Lil Zay Osama, on the other hand, has a different story: “I started listening to music like this in jail, though.”

4L Javi chimes in to add, “I don’t know the lyrics, but I know how the [instrumental] starts.”

Others like Rich Homie Quan and NLE Choppa join to share that although the video threw them off in the beginning, the same was actually cool.

You can watch our panel react to the “I Write Sins Not Tragedies” video above.

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

Happy news for sad people: The Cure just announced their first North American tour since 2016. Though eccentric frontman Robert Smith said a new album called Songs Of A Lost World would arrive last year and it never came, the “Friday I’m In Love” band’s upcoming run represents an exciting time and hopefully means new material will finally be released soon.

The tour kicks off in New Orleans in May and ends in the beginning of July in Miami. It includes a few nights at LA’s Hollywood Bowl and NYC’s Madison Square Garden. They’ll be bringing along The Twilight Sad to open up.

Check out the full dates below.

5/10 – New Orleans, LA @ Smootie King Center *
5/12 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center *
5/13 – Dallas, TX @ Dos Equis Pavilion *
5/14 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center *
5/16 – Albuquerque, NM @ Isleta Amphitheater *
5/18 – Phoenix, AZ @ Desert Diamond Arena *
5/20 – San Diego, CA @ NICU Amphitheatre *
5/23-25 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl *
5/27 – San Francisco, CA @ Shoreline Amphitheatre *
6/01 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena *
6/02 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena *
6/04 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Vivint Smart Home Arena *
6/06 – Denver, CO @ Fiddler’s Green Amphitheatre *
6/08 – Minneapolis, MN @ XCel Energy Center *
6/10 – Chicago, IL @ United Center *
6/11 – Cleveland, OH @ Blossom Music Center *
6/13 – Detroit, MI @ Pine Knob Music Center *
6/14 – Toronto, ON @ Budweiser Stage *
6/16 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre *
6/18 – Boston, MA @ Xfinity Center *
6/20-22 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden *
6/24 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Arena *
6/25 – Columbia, MD @ Merriweather Post Pavilion *
6/27 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena *
6/29 – Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena *
7/01 – Miami, FL @ Miami-Dade Arena *

* with The Twilight Sad

Find ticket information here.

Since 2015, Jennifer Lawrence has played a mop magnate, Mystique twice, cinema’s most stressed out mom since The Babadook, a Russian spy, an astronomer who discovers a comet that will obliterate Earth, and a solider suffering from trauma. There’s also Passengers, but I don’t even want to step into that icky mess again. It’s been a very serious near-decade from a self-deprecating actress who got her start on a TBS sitcom. Thankfully, Hollywood will let Lawrence be funny again in No Hard Feelings.

Directed by Gene Stupnitsky (Good Boys), No Hard Feelings is about two helicopter parents, played by Matthew Broderick and Laura Benanti, who hire Jennifer Lawrence’s stumbling-through-life Maddie to “date” (wink) their “unf*ckable” son. It’s a premise straight out of an ’80s comedy. Also a throwback: it’s coming during the summer, something that rarely happens for studio comedies anymore. Here’s to “weiner” double entendres!

Here’s the official logline:

“On the brink of losing her childhood home, Maddie (Lawrence) discovers an intriguing job listing: wealthy helicopter parents looking for someone to ‘date’ their introverted 19-year-old son, Percy, before he leaves for college. To her surprise, Maddie soon discovers the awkward Percy is no sure thing.”

No Hard Feelings, which also stars Andrew Feldman, Natalie Morales, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, comes out on June 23rd.

Tame Impala announced a 10-year anniversary Lonerism box set in February, months after headlining Desert Daze and performing the seminal album in its entirety to commemorate the occasion. Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker recently set out to accomplish a personal milestone, but it turned into something he almost certainly will not be remembering fondly in 10 years.

“Fractured my hip,” Parker captioned an Instagram carousel early Thursday morning, March 9. The photos show him in a hospital bed, his X-rays, and first (literal) steps toward recovery. “Tried to run a half marathon on what turned out to be an existing stress fracture. Whoops. Made it to within 1km of the finish line [smiling with a tear emoji]. That’s life I guess. All shows in Mexico and South America going ahead as planned I’m not quitting on your guys [red heart emoji].”

The previous post on Tame Impala’s Instagram feed came back on December 14, announcing a second show being added at Palacio De Los Deportes in Mexico City, Mexico on Friday, March 10, and Saturday, March 11.

Tame Impala is also among the headliners slated for Lollapalooza’s three South American festivals in Argentina (March 17-19), Brazil (March 24-26), and Chile (March 17-19). The other headliners are Drake, Billie Eilish, Blink-182, Lil Nas X, and Rosalía.

See Tame Impala’s upcoming dates and all three Lollapalooza posters below.

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

Jenna Ellis just pounded another nail into the tightly-sealed coffin housing Donald Trump’s election fraud claims. On Wednesday, the Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel censured Ellis for misrepresenting evidence at least 10 times. Ellis, who no longer represents Trump, agreed with the court’s findings via an attorney.

“The parties agree that two aggravators apply — Respondent had a selfish motive and she engaged in a pattern of misconduct — while one factor, her lack of prior discipline, mitigates her misconduct,” Disciplinary Judge Bryon Large wrote.

Ellis was a prominent member of Trump’s legal “Strike Force,” which also included Rudy Giuliani and Sidney “The Kraken” Powell. While they made zero progress in proving the 2020 election was stolen, all three of them are facing lawsuits for their wild claims of fraud, which were spouted everywhere from Twitter to Fox News to, somehow, the parking lot of a landscaping company.

At issue in Colorado are several statements that Ellis made either on Twitter or during interviews. Here’s just a sample of the items she’s agreed were “misrepresentations.” Via Mediaite:

On November 20, 2020, Respondent appeared on Mornings with Maria on Fox Business and stated: “We have affidavits from witnesses, we have voter intimidation, we have the ballots that were manipulated, we have all kinds of statistics that show that this was a coordinated effort in all of these states to transfer votes either from Trump to Biden, to manipulate the ballots, to count them in secret . . .”

On November 20, 2020, Respondent appeared on Spicer & Co. and stated, “with all those states [Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia] combined we know that the election was stolen from President Trump and we can prove that.”

On November 21, 2020, Respondent stated on Twitter under her handle @JennaEllisEsq., “ . . . SECOND, we will present testimonial and other evidence IN COURT to show how this election was STOLEN!”

On November 23, 2020, Respondent appeared on The Ari Melber Show on MSNBC and stated, “The election was stolen and Trump won by a landslide.”

You get the picture. As for the fact that Ellis was engaged in political speech, the Colorado Supreme Court made it a point to note that isn’t a free pass.

“The public censure in this matter reinforces that even if engaged in political speech, there is a line attorneys cannot cross,” the ruling stated. “Particularly when they are speaking in a representative capacity.”

(Via Mediaite)

Concert proposals are becoming more and more popular. Whether it’s at an Adele show or at a Snoop Dogg meet-and-greet, popping the big question happens more often than you’d expect in a live music setting. Last night (March 8), a Lizzo gig in Glasgow at the OVO Hydro arena was the site of another proposal.

In the crowd, an audience member held their phone up to their forehead with text that read, “Ask my brother’s boyfriend to marry him.” It caught the “Special” singer’s attention. Over FaceTime, the fan asked his boyfriend: “Will you marry me?” and then added, “For the love of god, just say yes.” Lizzo, holding up the phone, chimed in: “What do you say?” Luckily, the answer was yes, which prompted a lot of cheering and made the concert even more of a celebration.

Lizzo has been having a lot of fun on stage. In Germany, she unexpectedly performed an a cappella rendition of heavy metal band Rammstein’s 1997 song, “Du Hast.” She knew how to hype the crowd up: “You better sing that sh*t,” Lizzo announced. “Y’all ready to go f*cking crazy?”

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

The Last of Us isn’t the only prestige drama with cannibalism. Showtime has released the trailer for season two of Yellowjackets, the surprise hit about a 1990s high school girls’ soccer surviving in the woods following a plane crash, and their contemporary adult counterparts.

“Once upon a time, there was a place called the wilderness. It was beautiful, but it was also violent and misunderstood. And it waited and waited to befriend whoever arrived,” Van (played by Liv Hewson) says in the trailer. From there, we see the soccer squad enduring the chilly elements, and each other.

There’s also a haunting cover of No Doubt’s “Just a Girl” by Florence + the Machine, Elijah Wood flirting (?) with Christina Ricci, and a mystery character tied up on a log held by the other girls, like Bugs Bunny on the way to a boiling pot. “I feel like sh*t’s gonna get a lot worse out there” are the final words spoken in the trailer. That’s bad news for the Yellowjackets, but it’s great news for us, the Yellowjackets viewers.

Here’s more:

Two months have passed since Shauna gave Jackie the cold shoulder— to disastrous results. In the face of their deepening hunger and fear, the tension among our Yellowjackets has only grown worse. The harsh conditions of winter are intensifying by the day, and the psyches of our survivors are deteriorating just as fast. Threatened by the darkness of the wilderness — and the haunting memories of it in the present — our former state champs will be forced to make impossible decisions. As they confront the horrible truth of what survival entails, the real nightmare for each of them will be to figure out who they are — and what they are willing to sacrifice in order to stay alive.

Yellowjackets returns on March 24th, the same night as Succession.