Category: Worldwide

No team has generated more buzz through the first few weeks of the college football season than the Colorado Buffaloes. Led by recently-hired head coach Deion Sanders, the Buffs went through a gigantic roster overhaul this offseason and have seen that pay off right away, as the team knocked off TCU on the road in their opener before beating Nebraska by 22 points in their first game in Boulder.

Now, the team is about to take on Colorado State before the two most high-profile games on the schedule: a road trip to Oregon and a home tilt against USC. But before that happens, Rams coach Jay Norvell decided to go after Coach Prime for something a little strange: wearing a hat and sunglasses while talking to people.

A lot of things about Sanders rub opposing coaches the wrong way — he carries himself with the confidence that made him one of the greatest and most captivating athletes of all-time, the way he put this roster together came under tons of scrutiny — but getting this riled up about how he wears a hat and glasses is a new one. It’s worth mentioning that this led to Norvell getting applauded in the room he was in, so it accomplished whatever he set out to do.

Anyway, Colorado enters Saturday’s game (which kicks off as 10 p.m. ET on ESPN) as 23.5-point favorites, and if they do end up winning, I fully expect Coach Prime to show up in the largest hat and the largest pair of sunglasses he is able to find between now and then.

We do not need to overthink what happened at Tuesday’s (September 12) 2023 MTV Video Music Awards: Saweetie is great, and teleprompters are not.

Saweetie hosted the VMAs pre-show and was a presenter during MTV’s broadcast. Saweetie stuttered while tossing the pre-show to a commercial break, as posted by a fan account on X (formerly known as Twitter). In the time between that understandable mishap and Saweetie’s reappearance during the 2023 MTV VMAs to introduce a performance from Stray Kids, some people roasted her online.

“Hey, what’s up, y’all? It’s me again,” Saweetie said (as shown in a clip posted to X by BET). “And y’all better stop making my little stutter video go viral. I see what you’re doin’. Anyways, let’s try it again!”

Saweetie has been teasing her debut album, Pretty B*tch Music, for at least two years. In March, she explained the album’s ongoing delay to E! News.

“I feel like a debut album is not something you just put out,” Saweetie said. “It’s not something you play with. I’m a Cancer, so I like to overthink sometimes, but I think you have to be really careful with that, and I take my art really serious.”

Selena Gomez can relate. Gomez, sitting next to her “Calm Down” collaborator Rema, did not appear pleased when Chris Brown was announced as a nominee for Best R&B. Video of her reaction circulated (and is still circulating) online, and she later wrote on her since-expired Instagram Story, “I will never be a meme again. I’d rather sit still than be dragged for being myself. Much love.”

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

Last year, Wilco celebrated 20 years of their classic indie-rock gem Yankee Hotel Foxtrot with an extensive box set to honor the songs. They returned last month with the announcement of their new album Cousin and the release of the lead single “Evicted.”

The Chicago band is back with the title track. It explores intense family dynamics, depicting a fight between cousins. “When your red lines / Get crossed with mine / I object to you / Our deal’s un-struck,” Jeff Tweedy sings.

Welsh singer Cate Le Bon produced the record. “The amazing thing about Wilco is they can be anything,” she said in a statement. “They’re so mercurial, and there’s this thread of authenticity that flows through everything they do, whatever the genre, whatever the feel of the record. There aren’t many bands who are able to, this deep into a successful career, successfully change things up.”

“I’m cousin to the world,” Tweedy said about the LP in a statement. “I don’t feel like I’m a blood relation, but maybe I’m a cousin by marriage. It’s this feeling of being in it and out of it at the same time.”

Listen to “Evicted” above.

Cousin is out 9/29 via dBpm Records. Find more information here.

Kanye West’s recent legal troubles continue this week as NBC News reports the producer has been sued by his former property manager after being fired for refusing to work in allegedly unsafe conditions. According to the report, the property manager, Tony Saxon, refused a request from Kanye to remove all the windows and electricity from his Malibu home.

After Saxon refused, Kanye said he would be “considered an enemy if he did not comply,” and told him to “get the hell out.” The 32-year-old Saxon had worked for Kanye for around two months on a promised salary of $20,000 per week — although Saxon says Kanye only paid him twice, and one of those payments was alleged to have been allotted for the requested renovations. Saxon said Kanye’s goal for the house was to turn it into “a bomb shelter from the 1910s.”

To that end, some of the changes he requested included disconnecting the home from city plumbing and electric and replacing the stairs with slides. At first, Saxon said he thought it was meant to be an art project, but that “As we progress, it’s becoming clear that, no, he wants to live in here… He only wanted plants. He only wanted candles. He only wanted battery lights. And he just wanted to have everything open and dark… He wants to be on a privatized Wi-Fi network. He wants to have an alternate source of energy. He wants to have no doors, no windows, no fixtures, just concrete.” As he put it, “We were going to be gutting all of that out and sort of building him a Bat Cave” where he could “hide from the Clintons in and the Kardashians in.”

Of course, there were drawbacks. As Saxon noted, “You can’t keep food in that house, because you had no refrigerator left. You had no windows. I had sea gulls flying in.” According to Saxon’s attorney Ron Zambrano (who is also representing Lizzo’s former dancers in their own workplace dispute), “Ye has shown a reckless disregard toward his employees and has flouted the law in unbelievably dangerous ways throughout this entire project at the Malibu house.He continues his pattern of not paying his bills while treating workers terribly. No employee should have to suffer through the sort of working conditions Mr. Saxon was forced to endure, yet Ye showed no concern and merely wanted the work done, despite the hazardous and unsafe, not to mention illegal, actions he was trying to force the plaintiff to undertake.”

Last week, Kanye was asked to leave Venice and investigated by police after exposing his backside in public during a boat ride on the city’s famous canals. Meanwhile, former teachers from his now-defunct Donda Academy are also suing for workplace conditions and wrongful termination.

As a signature member of Donald Trump‘s Elite Legal Strike Force team, Sidney “The Kraken” Powell got swept in the Georgia RICO charges filed against the former president and 18 codefendants for their election-meddling scheme.

Alongside Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis, Powell was one of the more prominent faces of Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, and those efforts allegedly involved Powell’s attempt to breach voting machines in Georgia. However, she argues in a new motion that she was actually against the imaging that was done by a law firm she hired to analyze the voting machines.

Via The Messenger:

“Ms. Powell’s counsel also believes there are text messages and other documents, including grand jury testimony by Paul Maggio of SullivanStricklerLLC, that not only show authority was given, but also demonstrate that Ms. Powell did not agree with anyone to access the Coffee County machines,” the footnote reads.

Powell’s non-profit group Defending the Republic paid SullivanStrickler, a computer forensics firm retained to collect and analyze equipment from Dominion Voting Systems, a frequent target of her election-related conspiracy theories. But Powell has tried to distance herself from her organization’s dealings.

“She was simply not involved in arranging that transaction,” the footnote reads.

As for the chances of Powell’s charges being dropped? Not likely considering a grand jury already examined the evidence.

“There’s no motion to dismiss for not enough evidence,” Atlanta-based defense attorney Andrew Fleischman told The Messenger. “Once a grand jury has found probable cause, that determination is the determination.”

(Via Raw Story)

Big Ears Festival is back after being canceled in the wake of the initial COVID-19 lockdown in March 2020 and was forced to skip 2021 as well. Such artists as Andy Shauf, Animal Collective, and Sudan Archives (and over 100 more) bolstered its 2022 return to Knoxville, Tennessee.

This spring, the festival celebrated “Ten Years Of Big Ears,” and it already has eyes toward making the next decade even better. Earlier this week, Big Ears unveiled its 2024 lineup — topped by Herbie Hancock, Rhiannon Giddens, Adrianne Lenker, Laurie Anderson, and Led Zeppelin’s John Paul Jones. The event will run from March 21 to March 24, 2024.

Big Ears announced a partnership with Professor King Britt, also a music producer, who created the University Of California course “Blacktronika: Afrofuturism In Electronic Music,” which has evolved into a festival of its own. Britt and Big Ears founder Ashley Capps worked together “to curate workshops and events for the festival,” as Britt explained in an Instagram post about Blacktronika X Big Ears Festival.

According to Knoxville News Sentinel, “between 75 percent and 80 percent of artists on the lineup have never performed at Big Ears,” which is aiming to match or beat its 8,000 attendees-per-day mark from the 2023 edition.

As for ticketing, the general on-sale began Thursday morning, September 14, at 9 a.m. EST. The festival’s official website lists various four-day pass options, ranging from $350 to $950 (before fees), and single-day pass options.

See the full lineup below.

In 1993, a brand-new Lexus GS 300 was the height of luxury — at least, it was in the mind of Jay-Z, who was still about three years away from his big break. It figured so prominently into his dreams of wealth that he rapped about it multiple times early in his career — notably on songs like “Can I Live” and “Dead Presidents II,” and later nostalgically on “Empire State Of Mind.”

Now, that car has been added to the Brooklyn Public Library’s The Book of HOV exhibit, bringing his early fascination with the vehicle somewhat full circle (I mean, it’s a thirty-year-old luxury car from when “luxury” meant “it has power windows.” You never thought Toyota would take it this far).

The exhibit has been such a resounding success that its run has been extended per Roc Nation CEO Desiree Perez, who said, “The response to The Book Of HOV has been overwhelming, so we’re excited to extend the exhibit to December to ensure new and returning attendees can have enough opportunities to fully immerse themselves into the experience.”

According to Lexus Advertising & Media Senior Manager Mia Phillips, “The vehicle display is recognition of the mutual respect and admiration between Lexus and Jay-Z, whose brilliance and contributions to culture extend far beyond hip-hop.”

In other news, Jay’s hitting Atlantic City for a 007-themed blackjack tournament later this month, and is producing a new Netflix movie, The Book Of Clarence for 2024.

For more information check out the official site.

Drake‘s new album For All The Dogs was rumored to come out last month and then it didn’t. It’s now slated for release September 22, and the anticipation is only building.

Fans want to know who’s on the album. Wednesday (September 13), the rapper teased a new single with SZA with an Instagram post. Lil Yachty spoke about working on the record. Thursday (September 14), Drake began teasing the track “IDGAF,” with features Yeat. Nicki Minaj has confirmed that she’ll be on the album, as well as Bad Bunny.

About the album, Lil Yachty explained, “It sounds current, you know? It sounds very current,” he said. “It’s interesting, it’s coming together a lot better than I thought when I — I just had a talk with him a couple days ago in Vancouver and I was like, ‘Man…’ I was a little worried, ’cause I have a lot of the songs, I don’t have all of ’em, I have a lot of ’em though. And I was just like, ‘Man, I just don’t know if it’s — how are you gon’ put this together? Because it’s a lot of great songs but they don’t really — in my brain, I was like, they didn’t really sound together. And then we had a talk about it and he explained to me his thought process about it. And we drove somewhere, we drove to that video shoot which was like an hour away, and we listened to it, and it makes sense now.”

Apple TV+ is doing its part to corner the market on coveted adaptations these days, and the streamer managed to pull off a swift adaptation of Bonnie Garmus’ bestselling novel, Lessons In Chemistry, for a limited series starring Brie Larson. Garmus became an overnight “a literary rock star” at age 66 and has been hailed as not only penning an impressive debut novel but also the biggest debut novel of 2022, so there’s certainly a built-in audience waiting to stream the subversive story when it arrives in October.

Larson portrays Elizabeth Zott, a brilliant chemist who’s on the verge of a major breakthrough when she ends up being fired for a double standard. She makes an unexpected career change and finds herself with a high-profile new platform, where she can not only host a cooking show but sandwich in other nuggets of wisdom as well. From the synopsis:

Set in the early 1950s, “Lessons in Chemistry” follows Elizabeth Zott (played by Brie Larson), whose dream of being a scientist is put on hold in a patriarchal society. When Elizabeth finds herself fired from her lab, she accepts a job as a host on a TV cooking show, and sets out to teach a nation of overlooked housewives — and the men who are suddenly listening — a lot more than recipes.

Apple TV+’s Lessons In Chemistry co-stars Lewis Pullman, Aja Naomi King, Kevin Sussman, Stephanie Koenig, Thomas Mann, and Patrick Walker. The limited series debuts with two episodes on October 13 and weekly Friday episodes to follow.

This January, Coco Jones expressed gratitude about the twists and turns of her career in an interview with Uproxx.

“I think what helped me to overall just take a breath and let things be is understanding that my journey has never worked out in the specific ways that I wanted it to — always better,” the What I Didn’t Tell You artist said. “Better in ways that I would have never known to pray for.”

And now, her fans can say the same thing about her headlining North American What I Didn’t Tell You Tour.

“I heard y’all requests & made it happen!” Jones wrote to X (formerly known as Twitter) and Instagram Stories on Wednesday, September 13. “Leg 2 of the What I Didn’t Tell You Tour is official with new dates & new cities.”

The second US leg is scheduled to start on October 23 at Theatre Of The Living Arts in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and stretch across 11 cities before the November 12 finale in Houston, Texas. Ticketing information can be found here.

Prepare for Jones’ What I Didn’t Tell You Tour Part II by studying the setlist from her first leg, and check out all of her new dates below.

10/23 — Philadelphia, PA @ Theatre Of The Living Arts
10/24 — Raleigh, NC @ Lincoln Theatre
10/26 — Washington, DC @ The Fillmore Silver Spring
10/29 — Atlanta, GA @ One Music Fest
10/31 — Baltimore, MD @ Rams Head Live!
11/01 — Richmond, VA @ The National
11/03 — Charlotte, NC @ The Underground
11/04 — Greensboro, NC @ AT&T State University
11/06 – Indianapolis, IN @ Deluxe At Old National Centre
11/07 — Cleveland, OH @ House Of Blues
11/09 — St. Louis, MO @ Delmar Hall
11/12 — Houston, TX @ Honeyland Festival