Category: Worldwide

Atlantic rap duo Earthgang made their full-length debut on J. Cole’s Dreamville label last year, but the group is looking to have their 2020 be just as prolific. The group shared an intricate animation for the video accompanying the track “Lala Challenge.”

Animated by McKay Felt, the visual takes fans on a journey through the fictional Mirrorland. The animation opens with the members of Earthgang positioned as the masterminds behind a giant, ominously floating head being observed by a group of mind-numbed teens. The animation stands as a commentary on our reliance on technology. As the world morphs and melts around them, the characters in the animation stay locked to an illuminated screen. But Earthgang comes to the rescue and provides solace to the fictional city, filling the desolated area with plants greenery.

Upon sharing the animation to social media, the group quipped about how they are all stuck at home in quarantine: “LOOK AT US SITTING IN OUR HOMES BEING BEAUTIFUL,” they wrote.

The “Lala Challenge” video arrives as the second visual released by the group this year. Back in January, Earthgang debuted a harrowing visual to the track “Swivel.”

Revisit Uproxx’s review of Mirrorland here.

Mirrorland is out now via Dreamville/Interscope. Get it here.

Yet another festival has fallen victim to coronavirus postponement syndrome as Rolling Loud announces new dates for its Miami iteration in February of 2021. Miami has a special place in the hearts of the festival’s organizers, as it was the location of the original Rolling Loud festival and many of the festival’s go-to artists call the city home. The May 8-10 dates originally scheduled for this year’s fest have become unfeasible due to COVID-19 coronavirus precautions, so the new dates are February 12-14, 2021 — Presidents’ Day Weekend.

Read the statement from Rolling Loud below:

Since our last update, we have been monitoring the spread of COVID-19, hopeful that it would slow and allow us to proceed with producing the festival in May. At the same time, we were working around the clock on a contingency plan in case we had to postpone. It was important for us to not make the decision too soon, without having all of the facts. We wanted nothing more than to turn up with you all at the 6th year of our sold out show. However, as the spread of COVID-19 has increased to tragic levels, it became clear that we could not proceed with the May 8-10 dates.

To make sure that fans get the same experience that they signed up for in May, we’ve worked extremely hard with all of the artists, vendors, city and county officials, and the venue to make that happen. Accordingly, Rolling Loud Miami 2020 will be postponed to President’s Day Weekend (3 days), February 12-14, 2021 at Hard Rock Stadium.

Same lineup. Same rage. Ain’t nothin’ changed but the dates.

All purchased tickets will be honored for the rescheduled dates. If you need a refund, don’t worry, we got you. Purchasers will be notified via email by April 8th on how to obtain a refund. We’ve also extended the Layaway Plan GRACE PERIOD to August 1st for those fans who missed a payment and still want to be able to attend in February. We love you all and want to make sure everyone has the opportunity to get lit with us next year.

We’ll get through this together. Stay safe and we look forward to seeing you all soon! If we all do our part to help suppress the virus, we’ll be moshing together again in no time.

Follow Uproxx’s coronavirus coverage here.

Bazzi and his girlfriend, Australian model Renee Herbert, are celebrating their two-year anniversary. Now the singer has commemorated the occasion with a new song, the appropriately titled “Renee’s Song.” Bazzi begins the brief, gentle, and guitar-led track with romantic lyrics: “There’s a song I like to sing / It says your name, I love the ring / So come here, so come here / I may be broken by my past / But I know my worst days, they won’t last.”

Sharing the song on social media, Bazzi wrote, “dear renee, i wrote a song for you – through everything weve been through, i hope this makes you feel special. happy two year baby X.” He followed that up today with another tweet, writing, “my love – you’ve stood by my side through everything for two years. i wrote this for you & i hope you feel like the only girl in the world today…” In December, Herbert celebrated the anniversary of meeting Bazzi, writing on Instagram, “2 years ago today I met you. There’s no one in the world like you, you fill my life with so much love and happiness. Love u bestfriend.”

Meanwhile, Bazzi recently offered an update on how his self-quarantine is going, writing earlier this month, “it’s going good. still adjusting to staying inside all day and the anxiety that comes with that lol but just rekindled my love for the office so i’m watching it for the 4th time.”

Listen to “Renee’s Song” above.

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

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

On “Roof,” the ninth song from her new album Before Love Came To Kill Us, Canadian singer-songwriter Jessie Reyez sums up her career evolution and her current position in one succinct line. “I could drive a Benz, but I’m still in my old-ass Honda,” she smirks. “Cocky’s in a coma, but I got my commas.”

That’s the album in a nutshell: Reyez has grown up but she’s also held her center. Her growth is as evident as her powerful sense of self-assured identity. It’s an identity she worked to establish on her developmental EPs, Kiddo and Being Human In Public, and it emerges fully formed on Before Love Came To Kill Us.

Possessed with an off-kilter voice and a wicked sense of humor, Reyez litters her lyrics with sly pop-culture references and emotional gut-punches, a legacy of her come-up alongside rappers like King Louie and multiple collaborations with Eminem. But she also knows her way around a straight-up pop bop, giving Before Love an impressive array of tools with which to work.

From singing in Spanish on “La Memoria” (Reyez is Colombian-Canadian and lived in Florida, busking on the beach before moving back to Toronto and pursuing music full-time) to referencing Goodfellas on the album’s intro “Do You Love Her,” Jessie utilizes every tool at her disposal to demonstrate her growth as an artist. While she does so, though, she doesn’t get lost in the eclecticism of the project, using the diverse styles to display different facets of her own strong personality.

The centeredness allows her to remain the focus, even when guest stars 6lack and Eminem contribute verses. Her duet with the former on “Imported” allows her to flex her hip-hop songwriting chops alongside one of the genre’s most solid dual-talent artists, while on “Coffin,” Jessie’s half of the song is miles better than Em’s out-of-place, off-key crooning. Through each track, Reyez’s voice slides between more alien pop and cool, velvet R&B, further demonstrating her versatility.

That versatility is doubly highlighted by the variety in the production. The uptempo “Dope” is a dance-pop party starter, offsetting the ballad-laden back-end of the album, which gives Reyez the chance to explore infatuation (on the pulsating “I Do”), heartbreak (the sweeping “Love In The Dark”), and a friends-with-benefits situation turned sour (the aggressive “Kill Us,” which lends the album its title). Reyez sings with charm and panache, modulating her unusual voice to suit the needs of each track, from moody and dark to carefree and tongue-in-cheek.

With that level of self-assuredness and nerve, Reyez is able to navigate seemingly disparate soundscapes and experiment to her heart’s content, secure in the knowledge that she won’t be swallowed up by an overwhelming new sound or stumble over an unfamiliar one. Before Love Came To Kill Us is a rock-solid statement of self-determination that shows flashes of promise that Reyez will be able to adapt to whatever sounds become the vogue, but also remain distinctive, with a sound all her own. The Canadian songwriter comes into her own as an artist, proving she can ride the wave and still sound like herself.

Before Love Came To Kill Us is out now via FMLY and Island. Get it here.

March Madness getting canceled due to COVID-19 had a number of really unfortunate side effects. Perhaps the most unfortunate of them all is that seniors will not get the opportunity to have one final shining moment, and the opportunity to potentially cement their place in NCAA Tournament lore is no longer on the table.

As a result, we here at Dime wanted to take a moment to shout out two of college basketball’s most outstanding senior guards and compare them to two legends of the game. Today’s Dime Breakdown spotlights Markus Howard of Marquette and Cassius Winston of Michigan State, both of whom had the potential to put their teams on their backs and lead them deep into the Tournament.

Howard’s game reminds us a bit of Jimmer Fredette — a high-scoring guard from a smaller school who is in range to rise and fire from the moment he steps over half-court. Winston, meanwhile, has just enough Kemba Walker in his game that the Spartans always seemed like they had an advantage going into any matchup, if only because there was no way the other squad would have a gamer capable of rising to the occasion like their star floor general.

There will be other NCAA Tournaments, and there will be more opportunities for players to go from really good college basketball players to all-time greats. That, sadly, won’t happen this year, but if it did, we’re confident that Howard and Winston would have made their way into that rarified air. But if there is any solace they can take, we have a hunch that by the time future NCAA hoopers join the Jimmers and the Kembas, Howard and Winston will be getting the job done at the next level.

Before the release of Revenge Of The Dreamers III, Cole wrote on Twitter of the album, “Know that this album represents community and the unheard unsung artists that fight and bleed daily to be felt.” That sentiment shines through strongly on album highlight “LamboTruck,” on which Cozz and Reason rap about being underappreciated by their labels, Dreamville and TDE, respectively. Now the narrative track has come to life in a surreal new video.

In the clip, Cozz and Reason rap about their respective situations before meeting up and plotting to rob J. Cole. Once they come to terms, the video ends on a still, panning shot (like the bar scene from The Other Guys) of the two messing with cardboard cutouts of their respective label bosses.

In the aforementioned tweets, Cole continued, “There will be someone you never heard of on this album. Look them up and support them if they resonate with you. A follow goes a long way. Same goes for the producers that go unheard and make beats all day every day hoping to cut through. To the producers and artists that came through but didn’t make the album, you are there in spirit. Thank you for your presence, the energy of those sessions was the most magical.”

Watch the “LamboTruck” video above.

ESPN’s quest to fill broadcast times typically reserved for live sports has led them down a few different paths. One is playing to nostalgia in the form of past sporting events and even WrestleManias, as well as playing classic Disney sports movies. Another is pushing up the highly anticipated The Last Dance documentary, which features 10 hours of interviews and never before seen footage of the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls.

Finally, they’re diving into the world of eSports a bit more, most notably with an NBA 2K20 tournament featuring 16 NBA players playing 1-on-1 games against each other. That tournament tips off on Friday night (April 3), with Kevin Durant and Trae Young as the top seeds on opposite sides of the bracket.

Offshore bookmakers have released odds on the tournament, and while Durant and Young are the top seeds, they are not at the top of the odds sheet right no. Sportsbetting.ag and Bookmaker.eu both have released odds and, as of writing at 3 p.m. ET, their odds vary wildly. At Bookmaker, Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton are co-favorites at +450, followed by Donovan Mitchell (+847) and Durant (+850). At Sportsbetting, Booker is a +350 favorite followed by Durant at +400, Ayton at +650, and Young at +800.

All of this is to say, if you’re planning on betting on this 2K tournament, shop your odds because they vary wildly from book to book. The one point I will make is that, given how The Action Network’s 1-on-1 tournament has played out on 2K, the big men have an advantage if they use their size correctly. Full odds from both sites can be found below.

Devin Booker +350 (SB)/+450 (BM)
Kevin Durant +400 (SB)/+850 (BM)
Deandre Ayton +650 (SB)/+450 (BM)
Trae Young +800 (SB)/+1500 (BM)
Donovan Mitchell +900 (SB)/+847 (BM)
Hassan Whiteside +1000 (SB)/+1300 (BM)
Rui Hachimura +1200 (SB)/+1100 (BM)
Andre Drummond +1600 (SB)/+1548 (BM)
Pat Beverley +1600 (SB)/+1337 (BM)
DeMarcus Cousins +1800 (SB)/+1023 (BM)
Zach LaVine +1800 (SB)/+1100 (BM)
Harrison Barnes +2000 (SB)/+1200 (BM)
Michael Porter Jr. +2000 (SB)/+1548 (BM)
Montrezl Harrell +2000 (SB)/+1337 (BM)
Derrick Jones Jr. +2200 (SB)/+1200 (BM)
Domantas Sabonis +2250 (SB)/+2084 (BM)

“We’re just in pure survival mode,” says longtime friend of UPROXX, Jason Quinn — chef and founder of Playground DTSA in Santa Ana, CA. “We don’t want to fire or furlough people so we’re just… we’re making it happen however we can.”

Those words embody the painful truth facing our nation. No one is having an easy go of it right now. We’re all just muddling through. Especially people in the service industry. Grocery store employees, gig economy workers, food servers, chefs — they’re risking their health every day to keep a sliver of our society functioning while doctors on the frontline grapple with COVID-19.

In many cases, economic survival depends on staying operational. For Quinn and many small business owners like him, remaining open in some form is the only way to keep employees afloat.

“We were a day from shuttering,” Quinn continues. “But my staff has to eat and our guests have to eat. In the end, closing felt like the easy way out; trying to unlock how to stay open, that felt like the impossible challenge.”

On March 13th, Playground DTSA was assessing the severity of the outbreak in real-time and upping their sanitization practices, as well as relaxing their hours. By March 16th, faced with a state-wide stay-at-home directive, Quinn started going live on Instagram daily — asking his customer-base for feedback about how best to serve them. A few days later, he was floating to-go and delivery models, and selling wagyu beef and fresh fish to home cooks.

Almost immediately, Playground had to temporarily suspend protein sales because the response was so rabid. That facet is back up and running now — with steak, pork, and fish available through a new webstore. The restaurant has also launched take home ramen kits.

Quinn isn’t the only chef throwing ideas at the wall to see what sticks. Head chef and founder of Los Angeles’ Guerrilla Tacos, Wesley Avila, has put together what he’s calling an Emergency Taco Kit — which includes five pounds of roasted chicken and carne asada, a quart of red and green salsa, tortillas, onion, cilantro, rice, beans, 30 eggs, and probably the most coveted of all goods: four rolls of toilet paper.

But for every ripple of success, there’s a tsunami of restaurants collapsing altogether or having to furlough their whole teams. According to the Los Angeles Times, Bon Temps, a popular LA Art’s District restaurant headed by Chef Lincoln Carson, closed its doors indefinitely on the evening of March 16th — just a few days into trying to make it as a take-out only establishment. Los Feliz eatery Kismet also closed after its take-out service and take-home broth and labneh didn’t pull in enough funds to cover expenses. Another Kind Cafe in Laguna Beach, which was featured in a previous UPROXX piece as an example of a restaurant succeeding with takeout business during the quarantine, has since halted operations indefinitely. And famed chef Danny Myer’s hospitality group laid off 2,000 employees just a few days into the shutdown.

Deborah VanTrece, the executive chef of Atlanta Georgia’s Twisted Soul, broke down some of the real-world struggles restaurants are facing to Bon Appétit, “Our insurance is doing nothing. Our landlords have offered no rent abatement, even though most of the retailers in this complex have been forced to close completely. And that stimulus package sounds cute on paper, but in real-time it don’t mean shit.”

The restaurant industry is used to adapting to the changing tastes of the dining public, but there isn’t a single independent restaurant on earth equipped to survive a global pandemic without sustaining major losses. The business model just isn’t built for it. The margins are far too thin and the costs never really stop.

Right now, living to fight another day is the name of the game. For some chefs that means crowdfunding for their teams. For others, it means “pay what you can” menus. For Quinn, it means going back on his famous policy of making absolutely no tweaks or adjustments to his dishes.

“We spent eight years only doing things our way,” he says. “If you had asked me what it would take to have me change that, I would have said ‘the end of the world.’ Well, here you go. Now someone calls and our staff says, ‘No peanuts? Steak well done? We got you!’ For us, that’s a huge change in operations, but we have to monetize any phone call that comes our way. My staff needs to eat. So whether you want dry-aged beef or rolls of paper towels, it’s all about ‘what can we do for you?’!”

A few weeks ago, we shared a doctor’s description of his hospital in Italy after the coronavirus had hit them hard. His words were sobering and his account harrowing—but at that point such dire circumstances were still half a world away.

We knew it was only a matter of time before a surge in cases and hospitalizations started hitting the U.S., and now we’re getting a taste of what that looks like from the people on the front line.

Healthcare workers have sounded the alarm on what COVID-19 looks like in the ICU, on their woeful lack of PPE (personal protective equipment), and on the fear and frustration they feel when they see people not adhering to social distancing rules. If you need an incentive to stay at home as much as possible and to avoid interacting in person with others, these nurses’ pleas ought to do it.

A nurse in Southeast Michigan shared her thoughts on video after coming off a 13-hour shift at the hospital where she treated COVID-19 patients on ventilators in the ICU.

“I don’t know what the f*ck just happened the past 13 hours,” she began. “Honestly, you guys, I felt like I was working in a war zone.”

After describing what it’s like to deal with a medical crisis with limited supplies and overwhelmed team members, she said, “I’m already breaking, so for f*ck’s sake, please take this seriously.”

Another nurse wrote a post on Facebook about her night at work last week, where her boss was crying, nurses were breaking down, and they all went to the hospital chapel together to pray. “I ask myself how are we going to survive this?” she wrote. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Another Michigan ER nurse shared a video on Instagram describing one night in her hospital when they were running out of everything—even Tylenol.

Mary MacDonald took a shift at the Southfield campus of Ascension Providence Hospital and was blown away by what she experienced. “If you would have asked me ten-plus days ago if I thought that this was going to get as bad as it was, I would have told you no. I mean, you heard the rumors and you saw the trends, but until you see it first hand you just have no idea…it’s truly frightening.”

The bottom-line message from all of these front line workers is “STAY HOME.” This virus is highly contagious, and It’s not worth the risk to make an extra trip to the store or let your kid see a friend because they’re bored or lonely. Stay at home, even if your area hasn’t been hit hard yet. Stay at home, even if you think it’s safe because your hospitals are still in the calm before the storm.

For the sake of our healthcare workers’ health and well-being, as well as everyone else’s, we all need to do our part to slow the spread, flatten the curve, and keep our hospitals from getting overrun with patients. People’s lives literally depend on it, and we owe it to these medical workers to heed their warnings.

In 2011, Adam Mansbach created perhaps the first children’s book written specifically for parents, called “Go the F*ck to Sleep.” The hilarious story, which chronicles a parent’s desperate desire to get a child to sleep, was made even greater when it was read aloud by world-class f-bomb dropper Samuel L. Jackson.

Now Mansbach and Jackson have collaborated on a new take on the book for the coronavirus pandemic. It’s a poem called “Stay the F*ck at Home,” and it’s perfect. It begins:

The ‘rona is spreading. This sh*t is no joke. It’s no time to work or roam.

The way you can fight it is simple my friends—just stay the f*ck at home.

Now technically, I’m not a doctor. But motherf*ckers listen when I read a poem.

So here I am, Sam F*ckin’ Jackson, imploring you—keep your ass at home.

This is exactly the entertaining admonition we all need right now. Enjoy:

Samuel L. Jackson Says Stay the F**k at Home

youtu.be