Category: Viral

Gunna is off to a great start this year. He released his third album, DS4EVER, last month and it topped the Billboard 200, giving the rapper his second No. 1 album as a solo artist and his third altogether, thanks to YSL’s Slime Langauge 2. He’s also giving back to the community that helped him become the success he is today.

Gunna teamed up with Goodr, a sustainable food waste management and hunger relief company, to open a free grocery store in Atlanta’s Ronald E. McNair Middle School, which he attended as a teenager. Called Goodr Grocery Store, it will serve more than 900 students and allow them to pick from his favorite foods and snacks, as well as fresh produce and toiletries. There’s also a “Drip Closet” section that offers clothes and sneakers — even Nike Air Jordans.

“I have the highest regard for Gunna’s dedication to giving back to the community that raised him,” Goodr founder and CEO Jasmine Crowe said in a statement. “Goodr and Gunna have teamed for the greater good several times in the past couple years. His commitment is inspiring.”

The company plans to launch more free grocery stores in schools and community centers across the country.

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

Far right commentator and professional troll Ben Shapiro is pushing 40 but he still looks like he had his head shoved down a toilet by some high school bully. So it was only fitting that he’d find himself talking to young school children, attempting to brainwash them with conservative talking points. Luckily, some of them seemed to see right through a guy who thinks obesity and not getting vaxxed are the same thing.

In a new video co-sponsored by something called “Conservakids,” the guy who once painfully read through “WAP” line by line descended upon a public library with a stack of index cards, each with a government term printed on them. His goal, he said, was to explain these ideas “to very, very small children in a fashion that kids can understand.” Alas, they seemed to understand the terms better than he does.

On the subject of taxes, for instance, Shaprio claimed, “The government takes all your money and gives you very little in return.”

“That’s not true,” one kid shot back.

He then backed off, saying, “I mean, it’s kind of true. It depends on the kind of government.” He soon doubled down, claiming, “Taxes are theft.” Taxes, Shapiro said, are supposed to be used on services like the police. “They’re not supposed to spend it on just random projects or silly things that they have in their head.”

They didn’t seem convinced, so Shapiro assured them, “As you get older, you’ll realize how little you like taxes.”

The video then cuts to another boy saying, “Yeah, he’s way off-base about that.”

He then based California, where he lives, describing it as a place “where monsters roam the streets and garbage is strewn everywhere. It’s, it’s a horror escape.”

Eventually, he informed the kids that they “just learned more than you will in all of college,” though they probably won’t agree if they later decide to go to college and realize on day one how little Shapiro knows. Some seemed to have figured that one out already.

At the end, one of the boys who spoke up was interviewed about what he thought about Shapiro’s presentation. “I’ve seen my mom look at him on Facebook. She said he was a very smart guy,” he said. When if he agreed with his mom, he replied, “Well, now that I’ve met him, maybe.”

The whole thing can be watched here, if you can stomach listening to Shapiro’s “MicroMachines Guy on amphetamines” vocal stylings.

(Via The Wrap)

It’s been nearly three years since Nicki Minaj dropped her last album, Queen. Since then, she got married, had her first child, and found herself in a fair amount of controversy. The singer is about to release her upcoming single, “Do We Want A Problem?” with Lil Baby, which she’s currently promoting.

In addition to riding the interview circuit, Nicki also went on Instagram Live with Kevin Samuels, a former consultant who has repeatedly sparked controversy on social media for his dating advice. His comments are often condescending, especially towards women, but Samuels’ conversation with Nicki was, for the most part, smooth-sailing.

At one point, Samuels asked Nicki to rate herself on a scale of 1-10 and the rapper chose 7, but Samuels was not satisfied with her answer. “It’s the default answer for most people because they don’t want to go too high, they don’t want to go too low,” he said. Instead, he gave the singer a 9 and said she “gets additional points for eyes.”

Despite their rather calm conversation, many fans were a bit confused as to why Nicki hopped on Instagram Live with Samuels and they took to Twitter to share their reactions.

You can view a clip from the Instagram Live above and read reactions from fans below.

Much like cryptocurrency, NFTs are a rising digital trend that can’t help seeming awfully dodgy, and just because Gwyneth Paltrow and Paris Hilton are into them. The same day that some artists discovered that non-fungible tokens were being made without their consent, word broke that a collector of the fad got scammed out of their collection of JPEGs depicting apes and mutants.

As per Vice, the collector, who goes by larrylawliet (though their handle is “@iloveponzi,” which is all but begging con artists to scam him), appears to have been tricked into granting hackers access to his crypto wallet. A cybersecurity researcher told Vice that, after looking at larrylawliet’s blockchain transactions, “it appears larrylawliet gave access to his NFTs to what they likely thought was a dAPP or distributed app, perhaps to help them trade the images. The problem is that it wasn’t actually a dApp, but an individual’s wallet, which proceeded to drain larrylawliet’s wallet of all their NFTs.”

After getting access to the cyrpto waller, the hacker(s) proceeded to steal seven NFTs: one from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, five from the Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and one Doodle. The hackers then sold them for a total of $700,000. That, larrylawliet said, was far less than they were worth; they claimed they were worth something in the area of $2.7 million.

This has become an all-too-common scam in the cryptocurrency world, while NFT heists are on the rise. And it’s a reminder that the world of NFTs, especially when combined with cryptocurrency, is so questionable even Kanye West is steering clear.

(Via Vice)

Hailey Bieber might be leaning into her role as the wife of superstar Justin Bieber, but that hasn’t stopped her from doing plenty of things on her own, either. Most recently, she launched a mini show interviewing some of her famous friends in her own bathroom, complete with a dining table and prepared snacks of the visitor’s choice. Past guests on Who’s In My Bathroom have included fellow model Kendall Jenner, and rising pop star The Kid Laroi, and today’s guest was none other than Normani.

After Normani taught her proper technique for eating crab legs, Hailey called the rising pop star a once in a generation talent, and heard a little bit more about her experience moving to Houston after her family was displaced from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Eventually, the conversation naturally turned to Normani’s latest single, “Wild Side,” which features none other than Cardi B — who rather infamously starred in the video while she was pregnant. Normani admits she had higher expectations for the clip before learning Cardi’s movements would necessarily be limited. “Cardi, she was pregnant while we shot the music video,” Normani begins around the 5:30 mark. “I initially had the idea of us like hanging from the ceiling wrapped in chains, and like, I think really really big. I wanted there to be like, alligators swarming around us in the water, you know the scene we had together. And they’re like, ‘you know, she’s pregnant.’ And I’m like ohhhhh.”

So chains and alligators were off the menu for the moment! Obviously the “Wild Side” video still came out great though. Check out the full interview above.

Back at the start of 2019, J. Cole announced that “Family And Loyalty,” his collaboration with Gang Starr, would be the “last feature you’ll hear from me.” That claim turned out to be short-lived, as Cole, who typically isolates himself from other artists, is currently in the midst of another feature run. This Friday, YG, J. Cole, and Moneybagg Yo will team up for their new song “Scared Money,” which seems to be the latest single from YG’s upcoming album, following last spring’s “Sign Language.”

J. Cole’s decision comes after he did some self-reflecting around the release of his sixth album, The Off-Season. “Do you really want to look back and be like, ‘You didn’t work with nobody?” Cole said in a documentary that arrived shortly before the release. “You didn’t have no songs with nobody?’ You just cool with that?’ No, OK! So start saying yes to some features.” Thankfully, Cole did just that.

In the past few months, Cole has released songs with Wale (“Poke It Out“), Young Thug (“Stressed Out“), “Joyner Lucas (“Your Heart“), and Benny The Butcher (“Johnny P’s Caddy“). While “Scared Money” will be Cole and YG’s first song together, it will be Cole’s second with Moneybagg Yo, as they worked together back in 2018 on “Say Dat.”

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

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Wednesday night’s episode of The Masked Singer.

If you ever find yourself working directly for a disgraced leader who’s been accused of corruption and fascism and are worried about your future, fret not! You can always find a second life on some trash game show. Sean Spicer, who bullied and lied to journalists as Donald Trump’s first White House press secretary, improbably wound up on Dancing with the Stars. Sarah Palin, recently seen jeopardizing the health of New Yorkers by dining out after testing positive for COVID, was among the unmasked (in more ways than one) on The Masked Singer.

Speaking of, as per Deadline, on Wednesday’s episode of the singing-themed reality show, the big reveal was so shocking it reportedly prompted two of the judges to storm off in protest. Who could be that polarizing? Why, it’s Trump’s cash-strapped, legally doomed, accident-prone personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani.

When one of the masked singers was revealed to be one of the key players in Trump’s failed attempts to overturn democracy, judges Ken Jeong and Robin Thicke furiously fled the scene. The other two judges, Nicole Scherzinger and Jenny McCarthy, who was anti-vaxx before everyone else, remained and engaged in some banter with the guy responsible for such classics as “Four Seasons Total Landscaping” and “Mystery Black Goo Pouring Down Head.” Jeong and Thicke eventually returned.

In any case, it’s probably a bit too early to be normalizing alleged crooks who have yet to have been punished. But then, Rudy probably needs the dough.

(Via Deadline)

You may never know what it’s like to enrage a growing number of living legends, but then you’re probably not Joe Rogan. Over the last week, the former host of a show in which people ate bugs has been called out for his lack of medical expertise, particularly when it comes to all the COVID misinformation he’s spread on his absurdly popular podcast. It started with Neil Young, who had untold hours of music yanked from Spotify, home to Rogan’s show. Joni Mitchell followed suit, as did Young’s old bandmates, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash.

Sharon Stone isn’t on Spotify, nor is she a musician, but that doesn’t mean that the Oscar-nominated actress is not enraged that Rogan has a very large platform on which he spews dangerous nonsense concerning a once-in-a-century public health crisis. So instead of yanking music from a streamer, she settled for canceling her subscription. And telling him where to go.

“I just want to say COVID is not an opinion-based situation and Mr. Rogan thinking that his opinion or a disclaimer for the lives that he personally has affected and caused losses of, it’s not an opinion,” the star, whose humanitarian work includes helping people with HIV/AIDS, told TMZ. “Mr. Rogan is risking people’s lives with his idiocy and his professing that his thoughts about COVID are opinions, they aren’t opinions.”

Amidst mounting pressure in the wake of an escalating exodus from their coffers, Spotify announced they were putting disclaimers on podcast episodes concerning COVID. But that wasn’t enough for Stone.

“He should put a disclaimer that he’s an asshole and that his behavior is dangerous,” she said.

Though Rogan could have played hardball, he did release a kind of apology on Sunday, promising to do better to balance misinformation with actual information. (He then proceeded to share a debunked article.) While his mea culpa was good enough for Dwayne Johnson, clearly the iconic star of Basic Instinct thought otherwise.

(Via TMZ)

Jim Harbaugh is staying in Ann Arbor where he will continue to coach the Michigan Wolverines in 2022. After leading Michigan to a Big Ten championship, a berth in the College Football Playoff, and the program’s first win over Ohio State since 2011, reports indicated that Harbaugh was actively interested in a return to the NFL, interviewing with the Minnesota Vikings on National Signing Day.

While it had been reported for several weeks that Harbaugh was speaking to NFL teams about their job vacancies, Chris Balas of The Wolverine reported on Tuesday night that the expectation was Harbaugh would ink a deal with Minnesota. However, as Wednesday wore on, there was nothing indicating a deal was imminent, and in a rather stunning turn of events, Adam Schefter reported that Harbaugh was sticking with Michigan for the 2022 season and beyond, so long as the Wolverines want him.

Prior to becoming the head coach of his alma mater’s football program in Dec. 2014, Harbaugh spent four seasons as the head coach of the San Francisco 49ers. He accrued a 44-19-1 record in that time and made the postseason during his first three seasons with the franchise, including a Super Bowl berth during the 2012 campaign where the Niners lost to the Baltimore Ravens, 34-31.

The general tone around Harbaugh’s future seemed to be the expectation that he was headed back to the NFL, but for whatever reason, he couldn’t part with Michigan and the Vikings coaching search will continue to other candidates. Whether Harbaugh’s long-term commitment to Michigan is genuine or just getting caught up in the moment will be something we’ll have to wait and find out about because his name has been in NFL rumors ever since he arrived in Ann Arbor.

Nicki Minaj is gearing up to release her fifth album at some point this year. While her fas will have to wait for a title and a release date, they’ll be able to listen to the album’s first single, “Do We Have A Problem?” with Lil Baby, on February 4. It remains to be seen what other collaborations will appear on it, but one possibility is City Girls, now that the rap stars seem to have resolved their differences.

In a tweet on Wednesday, Nicki Minaj wrote, “Just had a great convo with @ThegirlJT & @YungMiami305. Let’s move on & make new memories y’all [unicorn emoji].” The hope is that the “new memories” will be new music between Nicki and City Girls, who have yet to ever collaborate. Nicki’s comments come shortly after she initially shut down the idea of working with the rap duo. “It’s let go,” she said during an interview on The Morning Hustle, “But why would I work with someone who doesn’t like me?”

On top of this, there’s also the chance that Nicki and City Girls’ first song together could appear on the latter’s upcoming fourth album. That project, which may feature the duo’s viral 2021 track, “Twerkulator,” would be the City Girls’ first full-length release since their 2020 effort, City On Lock.