Louisiana Senator John Kennedy is one of those guys who opens his mouth and always seems just a simple syllable away from saying something racist or otherwise inappropriate. And just yesterday, that included applauding Elon Musk — and the size of (or lack thereof) his balls.
On Wednesday, Kennedy was chatting with Fox News when he was suddenly overcome with emotion while discussing — nay, applauding — newly christened Twitter owner Elon Musk for all that he does. Oddly, the commentary was in response to a conversation about a new climate change documentary, To The End, which features Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. But if anyone thought that being faced with the realities of the many ways in which we’re killing the Earth would affect Kennedy in any real way, it actually had quite the opposite impact. As The Independent reported, Kennedy said that the film actually made him “appreciate Elon Musk that much more” because of the “very courageous stand” the reluctant Twitter buyer has taken on the First Amendment.
“The man — they’re beating on him like he stole Christmas,” continued Kennedy, who loves to sound folksy. “But he’s tough. He’s tough as a pine knot. And the man’s got guts. He’s got oranges the size of beach balls… And thanks to Elon Musk, we’re going to have to get some new conspiracy theories because the old ones turned out all to be true.”
Maybe we can start with how Musk has oranges for testicles — and that they’re the size of beach balls. Which, at minimum, seems like a visit to the ER should be at the top of his to do list.
Season two’s “Christmas Party” (not to be confused with the movie) was the first episode of The Office to be nominated for Outstanding Writing for a Comedy Series at the Emmys, and the first episode since the pilot to reach nearly 10 million viewers (9.7 to be precise). It’s also when the show “really took off,” according to one of its stars.
“We were almost canceled two, three, four, 10, 12 times at the beginning,” Brian Baumgartner (who played Kevin Malone) told Yahoo! Entertainment. “We were struggling week to week,” Angela Kinsey (Angela Martin) added. The ratings “declined rapidly” since the pilot, “and then came back and [that episode] really served as a significant event for us,” Baumgartner said. “Christmas Party” — in which Michael Scott turns an office secret Santa exchange into a Yankee swap — was the show’s initial Christmas episode, and one of its best, along with season three’s “Benihana Christmas.”
“After that episode aired, we were the number one streaming show on iTunes and all of a sudden we were like, ‘Hold up. We found our audience,’” Kinsey remembers. “It turned a corner from there and we were set.”
It also gave us this indelible moment in The Office history.
The charmingly old school digital camera somehow makes it even funnier.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish movies available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
If you’re missing Key & Peele, we have some good news for you. Multiple seasons of the Comedy Central series will arrive on Netflix in November, so you can get your Hingle McCringleberry on, right from the comfort of your living room. In the meantime, you can enjoy Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele’s voices (along with that of Angela Bassett) as they play plotting demons who tangle with a teen who digs punk rock. Watch it on Netflix.
Sorry to Mariah Carey but Lindsay Lohan is taking her place as the rightful queen of the holiday season this year. Her throne sits atop the bones of all the Hallmark movies she had to slaughter to get here and every Netflix Christmas flick that follows in her wake will shudder when those first few bars of “Jingle Bell Rock” begin to play. This is the future every millennial raised on The Parent Trap — and the Disney Channel Original movie Life-Size starring Tyra Banks — has manifested. In all seriousness though, this thing looks cute. Lohan plays a hotel heiress who, after a skiing accident, loses her memory and must live amongst the peasants of a snowy mountain town. While there she bonds with a sheriff/single-dad played by Glee’s Chord Overstreet and, presumably, realizes her former life wasn’t as picture perfect as she thought. Watch it on Netflix.
Thank goodness Henry Cavill didn’t sign on to play Superman again before filming this sequel, or there’d be another The Witcher-esque switcheroo in the works. Cavill is back, but more importantly, Millie Bobbie Brown returns as the sassy younger sister of Sherlock Holmes. One of the bigger plot finds roots in the real-life Bryant & May match factory atrocities, but somehow, the overall mood stays light. Enola sets up her own detective shingle and goes undercover, so you can only imagine what hijinks will ensue. Watch it on Netflix.
Weird: The Al Yankovic Story stars Harry Potter actor Daniel Radcliffe as “Weird Al” Yankovic, obviously. The fake biopic depicts the world’s premier polka-loving pop song parodist as a hard-drinking sex maniac, obviously. It also stars Evan Rachel Wood as Madonna, Quinta Brunson as Oprah Winfrey, and Rainn Wilson as Dr. Demento, obviously. Should you watch Weird: The Al Yankovic Story this weekend on the Roku Channel? Obviously.
Well, guess what: Scrooge is back. In animated form. In a trippy new animated story that features the voices of people like Luke Evans and Olivia Colman. Which is… fine. It’s fine! There’s a reason this story has been told 800 times. People love it! Now, you could just watch The Muppet Christmas Carol instead, if you want. That’s an option. But this is here now, too. So there’s that. Watch it on Netflix.
Netflix dives into another extremely British tale of class-crossing love affairs, this one based on a novel from the 1920s that was banned in many countries for obscenity but is now just a movie you can watch by clicking the button next to, like, The Crown. It’s kind of wild if you think about it, so… let’s not! Watch it on Netflix.
Amy Adams returns in her breakout role, but she’s a princess who actually isn’t having as much fun as she imagined would be the case. Giselle is still married to Robert (Patrick Dempsey), and they’re still searching for their fairy tale. Maya Rudolph climbs onboard for a semi-evil role as a villain of suburbia, and this is all very G-rated material again because c’mon, Disney. The story will be as charming as always, but the real attraction is James Marsden’s returning Idiot Prince. Basically, I just want the Idiot Prince to get plowed down at every opportunity again. Watch it on Disney Plus.
Bullet Train is chaos. Bloody, funny, frivolous, superficial chaos. Nothing and everything happens in this film about a group of assassins all vying for a briefcase that may just offer the biggest payload of their respective careers thus far. It’s jam-packed with action — the fast-paced, tightly-choreographed kind that gives you whiplash if you stare too long – and with a cast of A-listers, the best of which being Aaron-Taylor Johnson and Brian Tyree Henry, who play a pair of Brit brothers constantly bickering on the job. It’s got enough twists and surprises to keep you entertained plus Brad Pitt unironically sporting a bucket hat for its two hour runtime. It’s just plain fun. We wish there were more movies like it out there. Watch it on Netflix.
Apple TV+ is getting into the Christmas movie game with this musically inclined re-telling of that classic Dickens tales. Ryan Reynolds plays the modern-day Scrooge here, a guy named Clint Briggs who doesn’t take his holiday haunting lying down. Will Ferrell plays the Ghost of Christmas Present who’s determined to inject a bit of cheer into the proceedings no matter how many musical numbers and tap-dancing solos it takes. As far as Charles Dickens adaptations go, you could do a lot worse. Watch it on Apple TV Plus.
In the mood for some space-related superhero business this holiday season? Great! Why not?! Here we have the Guardians of the Galaxy — Chris Pratt, Pom Klementieff, Kevin Bacon a little bit — doing a bunch of Christmas things, for you, all month long. Is it kind of cute and sweet? Sure. Would we pay decent money to have our own lil Groot decorated like a Christmas tree? Of course. Would it be fun if they made a movie next year where Hulk had to take over for Santa due to an emergency? It’s worth considering. But for now, there’s this. Watch it on Disney Plus.
The Reno 911! gang is back, ringing in the holidays with a nod to It’s A Wonderful Life, decaying shopping malls, and American weirdness. Not to oversell, but this laugh-until-your-face-hurts special once again proves that Tom Lennon, Niecy Nash, Wendi McLendon-Covey, Kerri Kenney-Silver, Cedric Yarbrough, and company are operating at the top of their game as a collective. Watch it on Comedy Central.
Guillermo del Toro made a stop-action version of the classic “liar puppet becomes a real boy” story and guess what: it’s great! Smart people are saying it’s the best Pinocchio since the first one, which is both high praise and a decently sick burn on the other version that just came out a few months ago. Either way! Feels like a fun one to watch with the family over the holidays. It’s definitely better than, like, talking. No one wants to do that. Let the adorable wooden puppet fill the air with his sweet journey toward being a human. Watch it on Netflix.
Each week our staff of film and TV experts surveys the entertainment landscape to select the ten best new/newish shows available for you to stream at home. We put a lot of thought into our selections, and our debates on what to include and what not to include can sometimes get a little heated and feelings may get hurt, but so be it, this is an important service for you, our readers. With that said, here are our selections for this week.
Yes, Rob Zombie and Tim Burton are all up in the goth-nostalgia resurrection this fall, but while Zombie veers into wild kitsch, Burton decided to reinvent his character’s mission a bit while creating a “eight-hour Tim Burton movie.” Call it a passion project, of course, while Catherine Zeta-Jones and Luis Guzmán step in as Morticia and Gomez, respectively, and Jenna Ortega slides into view as the title character. Don’t expect a typical reboot feel. Rather, Wednesday is on some missions here, and the show justifies its existence as a separate entity.
How do you end a show the “right” way? Do you try to say something profound, pay off longtime viewers with fan service, or end with a shocking twist? For Dead To Me‘s just-released final season, the answer is an emphatic yes to all of the above as creator Liz Feldman delivers a triumphant close, leaning on the otherworldly onscreen chemistry of stars Christina Applegate and Linda Cardellini as they lead us through the twisty chaos of the show’s central story while dealing with heavy matters of life, family. love, and death before ending on high with a tear and a tease.
The first season of this spy drama was a trip. There were twists and turns and Emma Corrin from House of the Dragon and at one point Gary Oldman’s character farted himself awake. It was a pretty good time, even if it got dark at times. If you worked your way through season one, it’s time to dive in again. If not, it’s a great time for a binge. You have lots of options, is the point.
Surprisingly enough, reboot fatigue didn’t happen here. This series sparked enough interest to generate another season of a show that doesn’t have Penn Badgley, Blake Lively, Chace Crawford, or Sebastian Stan, but it’s still got scandal. Gossip Girl’s pulling plenty of strings, of course, while soaring through Manhattan’s most elite circles. As well, the show manages to stand apart from the original with plenty of rightful drama revolving around the new gang. Even if this series doesn’t seem like your type of show, you might not be able to resist getting caught up in the glossy-trash vibe.
The Royal family can’t be thrilled about this docuseries that follows not too long after The Crown (fictionally) made Prince Charles look like the pettiest of future kings. This Netflix project follows up on Meghan Markle’s allegations of not-so-great treatment from the Windsors and Prince Harry’s decision to essentially put half a world between all of them. So get ready for all of the controversy to spill forth and for Piers Morgan to probably blow a few fuses in the aftermath.
The downside of ambition is explored as sleights move from fuel to an acid rotting the man behind Chippendales to his core even as his creation — clubs featuring all-male strip shows — approaches the apex of its popularity. Starring Kumail Nanjiani in arguably his best work, this 8-episode event series leans into the debauchery of the ’80s as it tells a (true) story about an awkward, hard-working immigrant who dreamt of becoming the next Hugh Hefner before self-destructing.
Brendan Fraser’s back as the eternally frustrated disembodied brain inside of a robotic body. It is his finest performance (yes yes, we know there’s Oscar chatter elsewhere), and he’s backed up by Diane Guerrero as many iterations of Crazy Jane, along with Matt Bomer as Negative Man, April Bowlby as Elasi-Girl, and Jovian Wade as Cyborg. DC’s misfit superheroes are facing what might be certain doom, but at least some of them other than Fraser’s Cliff got to have a collective orgasm already.
Okay, here’s what we have going on: FX and Hulu have made a live-action series based on Olivia Butler’s 1979 science fiction novel, and it follows a woman who has dreams of writing and uproots her entire life to move to Los Angeles to follow that dream, and then things happen and she ends up getting ripped back and forth through time for various terrifying adventures. It’s a lot, and it’s definitely an ambitious undertaking, which is always to be applauded. Fans of Butler’s writing and science fiction and the general concept of time travel could do way worse than to give this one a shot.
As wild as it feels to say “there’s now a cowboy show that stars Harrison Ford and Helen Mirren that serves as a prequel to a massively popular Kevin Costner show where he runs a ranch and sometimes murders happen there,” that is really what is happening here. We swear. It’s going to be on television and on the internet and everything. The future is a lot weirder than any of us expected, less so in a “flying cars and robots” way than, like… this. It’s not a bad thing. Just really wild
It’s easy to think of Mythic Quest, now in its third season, as Rob McElhenney’s “other” show, but that would be a mistake. Yes, sure, he’s best known for the incredibly long-running Always Sunny, which is fair because that show rules. But this one is great, too. It’s sweet and mean and funny and everything a workplace comedy — this time in a video game studio — should be. No television show did a better job of grasping the pandemic while it was still new and really scary, too. Do not miss this because you relegate it to second-tier Mac status. This is the good stuff, too.
I hear what you’re thinking here. The title of this show doesn’t sound particularly fascinating. Maybe it even sounds a little bit pretentious. Yet this show’s actually a satiric little jaunt that turns marriage-divorce drama on its head. Jesse Eisenberg plays the dude whose wife, played by Claire Danes, leaves him and then quite literally leaves the building. He’s suddenly in the midst of parenting and awful dating experiences, and all of this wouldn’t be as fascinating if Eisenberg wasn’t so good at being awkward. He’s flanked by Lizzy Caplan and Adam Brody (there are worse companions out there) while trying to find his way.
The first season of Abbott Elementary was a feel-good network sitcom that caught a massive wave of popularity and won a bunch of Emmys in a time when feel-good network sitcoms are kind of not supposed to do that. Credit for this goes to creator and star Quinta Brunson, who realized that an underfunded inner-city public school was exactly the right place to show us people with good hearts working inside a system that can be cold. Kind of like Parks and Recreation but in Philadelphia. The second season is underway and does not appear to be missing a beat. This is basically a miracle, all around.
The last couple months of 2022 have not been easy for Offset: On November 1, cousin fellow Migos member Takeoff was fatally shot. Understandably, it appears that Offset has had a hard time coping with the loss. A few weeks after Takeoff’s passing, Cardi B wrote of Offset, “We living our life normally, but deep down inside, our hearts have been so heavy. […] I have been feeling so hopeless trying to make my husband happy.”
Offset did have some reason to celebrate yesterday (December 14), though, as it was his birthday. To mark the occasion, Cardi came though with a touching message for her husband. Sharing a gallery of photos on Instagram, Cardi wrote, “Happy birthday my love.I pray silently and I pray loudly on this post that God bless you & protect you.Thank you for your love to me.I love your 4ever & beyond [heart emoji].”
To celebrate, the two decided to get away and take a trip to Jamaica. As TMZ notes, the pair and others enjoyed a lobster dinner, took shots, and did a lot of dancing. Cardi also responded to a Jamaican fan’s video detailing an interaction they had with Cardi, writing, “Awwww I did ask her where the after party at …she was so pretty.”
The college football world suffered a gigantic loss earlier this week when Mike Leach, the ultra-innovative head coach of the Mississippi State Bulldogs, passed away at 61 after a heart attack. There have been numerous tributes to Leach since his death, one of which came from Gardner Minshew, the backup quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles who blossomed into a star signal caller in Leach’s pass-happy air raid system at Washington State.
An emotional Gardner Minshew talks about the impact Coach Mike Leach had on his career and his life. pic.twitter.com/r8RSLtIVrZ
“And he always made me believe that, and made me feel that I was special, and that I could succeed,” Minshew said. “And man, that means so much to me and I’ll always be grateful for him for that.”
Minshew went on to say that transferring to Wazzu to play under Leach is the reason he is in his current position.
“I’d be coaching right now, getting my ass ripped by Nick Saban probably twice a day,” Minshew said. “So I’ll tell ya, couldn’t be more in debt to him and the impact he’s had on my life, my family’s life. Really just can’t put into words just how grateful I am for him.”
Minshew had quite the path to playing under Leach, starting his collegiate career at Troy before going to Northwest Mississippi Community College and, eventually, East Carolina. He headed to Pullman as a graduate transfer in 2018 and earned the Pac-12 Offensive Player of the Year award during his one year with the team, completing 70.7 percent of his passes for 4,776 yards, 38 touchdowns, and nine interceptions. The Cougars finished the season 11-2 and ranked No. 10 in the country before Minshew became a sixth-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft.
Like Don’t Worry Darling before it, Emancipation was one of those films where the pre-release drama over its promotion vastly overshadowed the movie it was meant to promote. The early talk was all about Will Smith’s Oscars slap, whether the Academy would accept him again (after barring him from the ceremony for 10 years) and whether his “apology tour,” with stops at The Daily Show for an intense sit down with Trevor Noah, would work on awards voters. All those questions seem irrelevant in light of the actual movie, which feels more like a cheapo February streamer than a $120 million awards contender.
My personal take on “The Slap” is that it wasn’t some isolated moment when a beloved star did something so beyond the pale that we’re all now struggling with what contrition should look like (as some truly deranged editorials, comparing the incident to gun violence, would have you believe). It was just the moment when the general public realized Will Smith’s whole act was getting kind of stale. Stardom is a bit like a magic spell, and you never know what’s going to break it. The Slap itself is hard to separate from Smith coming back an hour later to call himself “a river to my people” while collecting an award for his hammy, goofily accented performance in King Richard. Him going on talk shows to apologize for it now feels like more of same; he’d been performing introspection for so long that it had begun to look more like image management.
So now that Smith is back, playing another heroic patriarch with another conspicuous(ly bad) accent (his character, Peter, grew up in Haiti), it’s once again hard to separate character choices from career choices. When Peter makes a big speech and Will Smith’s lip quivers portentously, you mostly just think Boy, Will Smith sure is trying hard to win that second Oscar, isn’t he?
I’m not saying actors can’t be careerist or want to be recognized for their work (they obviously are and do, just like most of the rest of us), it’s just that the bond between performer and audience is fickle. The audience wants to buy into the illusion, but if the performer doesn’t change up the shtick every so often all we’ll see is the levers and pulleys. Peter’s quavery lips and resolute speeches seem… familiar? A lot like Dr. Bennett Omalu saying “Tell the truth!” in the Concussion trailer. What do we make of this guy who refuses to play anything but courageous fathers, anyway?
Directed by Antoine Fuqua and written by Bill Collage, Emancipation is an origin story for “Whipped Peter,” aka Gordon, aka The Scourged Back, a famous photo of a slave with a scarred back that Fuqua described as “the first viral image of the brutality of slavery that the world saw.” (Producer Joey McFarland brought his original print of the photo to the red carpet premiere, which people thought was a little weird, him carrying around that thing like it was a Honus Wagner baseball card).
One look at the resumes of the respective principals might’ve told McFarland that this would be a weird fit. The writer of Assassin’s Creed, The Transporter Refueled, and Exodus: Gods And Kings writing a triumphant, escaped slave story (weirdly compared to George Floyd in multiple stories of its acquisition) for the Oscar-winning star of King Richard sounds a little off, and it is. Fuqua, director of Training Day and Infinite, last year’s reincarnated samurai Mark Wahlberg movie (which I actually loved), seems to do great with heels and unabashed genre movies — things that Will Smith, the ultimate babyface, never makes.
Fuqua’s confusion comes through even in Emancipation‘s color scheme, which is shot in black and white for some reason, or at least a highly desaturated brown filter that might as well be black and white. These days, black and white signifies to the viewer that the content is meant to be artistic, historical, or both, or maybe just that it’s awards season.
In any case, Emancipation ends up being what movie people used to call “a feathered fish,” a project that doesn’t quite know what it is or who it’s for. In this case, about two-thirds semi-successful chase movie, one-third failed Oscar bait, and a dash of Jesus. Peter starts out as a slave on a Confederate captain’s plantation. After running afoul of the overseers, he seizes the moment to try to escape through the swamp to find Lincoln’s Army at Baton Rouge (“Leeng con,” Peter sometimes mutters to himself like a mantra). Hot on Peter’s heels is the menacing slave catcher, Jim, played by Ben Foster in a straw hat and beard with no mustache that make him look like an Amish Bond villain. In order to find leeng con, Peter must dodge dogs, bugs, mud, bogs, traitors, and gators, fleeing for his life and scrounging for food, chewing up wild onions to try to keep the dogs off his scent.
Easily Emancipation‘s strongest bit is this The Revenant chunk, which aims at schlocky watchability and hits the mark. Inevitably though, Will Smith has to talk again and you remember that too-conspicuous accent; his stock acting faces. Fuqua is notably great at shooting Peter’s feats of survival. There’s a moment when Peter steals water from a nice southern mansion, where an adorable freckle-faced little girl is on the porch having a nice birthday party. She catches a glimpse of Peter skulking around the edges of the grounds and immediately turns Body Snatchers on him, shrieking “RUNNER!”
You can imagine a white director maybe softening that bit. It’s better that Fuqua doesn’t. Yet for as good as he is in those lean, genre moments, he’s equally bad at expansive Civil War battle scenes, which lack any spatial awareness let alone coherent tactics, and are so poorly staged that they just end up looking sort of cheap. And you can’t just “yadda yadda” what’s meant to be a climactic battle scene.
Throughout, Peter urges his fellows to have faith, prays over the dying, and generally reminds his family that the God he knows is good; his source of strength and not his tormentor. So… is this a genre movie, an arthouse release, or a faith-based allegory? I don’t think the team behind Emancipation quite figured that out.
‘Emancipation’ is available now, only on AppleTV. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can read more of his reviews here.
The role’s responsibilities include managing Glo’s calendar and scheduling meetings (personal and professional), handling travel logistics, running “various errands during the week and some weekends, attending GloRilla’s business and personal events, and attending weekly meetings.” GloRilla noted in the comments that she prefers “somebody with no kids” and thinks this is “literally da most easiest job in da world.” The on-fire Memphis rapper then posted two videos from her couch.
“Let me tell you motherf*ckers something, talkin’ about $550 too low. B*tch, it really needs to be $500! Nah, I’m just playin’,” GloRilla said. “But for real, first of all, your flights get paid for. Your flights and your travel. If you want a higher pay, then pay for your own flights and your own travel and see how much them $500-ass flight tickets be. B*tch, you think I’m finna pay $1,200 a week and pay — I take flights every day. You think I’m finna pay $500 for you a flight every day, plus pay? No. It don’t work like that.”
GloRilla responds to backlash after she posted a personal assistant job for $550 weekly! pic.twitter.com/fBmZYoIBbG
“Half the sh*t on that list, you don’t gotta do for real,” the “Tomorrow 2” hitmaker continued. “If it comes down to it, you might have to do it, but it’s literally the easiest sh*t in the world. You really don’t gotta do sh*t but be with me every day and go pick up my clothes for me, and all my outfits I gotta wear, you gotta have all my sh*t with you.”
The second video featured GloRilla continuing to outline what the job actually demands.
“You’re really my errand-runner,” she said. “If I need you to go to the store, go to the store. Pick up with I need. Because I can’t go in the store, b*tch, you know. Run all my errands for me, and I really don’t have much of them to run. I be hungry all the time. You really gotta know all my sizes and sh*t. […] What I eat, what I drink and sh*t, so you can have my little sh*t ready. … Remind me of sh*t I gotta do. It’s not that hard. Super simple. Literally.”
Comedian Lil Duval agreed with GloRilla, tweeting that people shouldn’t be expecting a “CEO salary for an entry level position.”
Folks really saying $550 a week to be glorilla assistant ain’t enough. Y’all poasses want ceo salary for an entry level position
Whoever gets the job will likely accompany GloRilla on her first-ever headlining tour to start 2023. Announced in November, her 16-date Anyways, Life’s Great Tour in support of her major-label debut EP of the same name will kick off on January 27 in Charlotte, North Carolina and finish in her hometown Memphis on a to-be-determined date. See all dates and ticket information here.
Making fun of Charles Barkley for never winning a championship ring during his NBA career is nothing new. Despite that, Kelsey Plum of the Las Vegas Aces certainly had one of the more effective trolls of Barkley that we’ve seen during a recent appearance on “The Steam Room” podcast, as Barkley asked if Plum would guarantee a repeat for the 2023 campaign and the reigning WNBA All-Star Game MVP got off a very good joke at his expense.
“You know, for someone that’s never won a championship, I’ll give you some advice: That’s really not what you do,” Plum said with a laugh.
Barkley and Ernie Johnson both thought this one was pretty funny, while Barkley went along with the bit and expressed that he couldn’t believe this happened in December, of all months.
“Oh my goodness, it’s the Christmas season!” Barkley said. “Everybody’s nice around Christmas, oh my goodness. The bad thing about it, we can’t even cut that out of the damn interview.”
Plum and the Aces won the first WNBA title in franchise history this past year. After finishing the regular season tied for the best record in the W, the Aces only lost twice during their run to the title and knocked off the Connecticut Sun in four games in the WNBA Finals.
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.
Whenever British rapper Little Simz felt like dropping the follow-up to her critical and commercial breakthrough, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, she would have had the world’s attention with every pre-album single and Instagram snippet teasing new music. Instead, she went the surprise release route, sneaking up on the music world with the thrilling NO THANK YOU, which sounds vital and fresh on the heels of Simz’s big breakthrough – a real-time reflection of an artist coming to terms with just how popular they are.
Sometimes I Might Be Introvert, which took home the Mercury Prize on October 18, introduced the wider rap world to the MC born Simbiatu Ajikawo in 1994. That the album exists at all is a bit of a miracle in Simz’s mind. During her acceptance speech, she said, “There was times in the studio I didn’t know if I was gonna finish this record, I was going through all the emotions.” Alongside producer Inflo – celebrated for his work in Sault, among other efforts – Simz pushed that record over the finish line and into the arms of an adoring audience obsessed with her vulnerable, honest examinations of life in the spotlight, and the unending quest to line up ones desires with a life of authenticity. On NO THANK YOU, it’s unclear if she’s squared the image of who she wants to be with the one she presents on record, but she’s more comfortable than ever expressing her discomfort and joys – the highs, lows, and crushing mids of life in the public eye.
A lot of what you need to know about NO THANK YOU goes down in the mesmerizing, down-tempo leaning minimalist headbanger of an opener, “Angel.” Inflo once again handles production, crafting crisp drums and hollowed-out synths that do their best to stay out of Simz’s way. She raps, “I can see how an artist can get tainted, frustrated / They don’t care if your mental is on the brink of somethin’ dark / As long as you’re cuttin’ somebody’s payslip / And sendin’ their kids to private school in a spaceship.” On a purely technical level, Simz is at her sharpest on the project. The quick internal rhyme of “tainted” and “frustrated” emphasizes the claustrophobia she feels as fans, label heads, and everyone in between pesters her to keep churning out music. She then expands the bar outwards, cleverly juxtaposing her career with those that profit off her. It’s worth remembering that it was only earlier this year that Simz postponed a North American tour because it didn’t make sense financially.
But what makes Simz one of the most exciting and daring artists in the rap game is that empathy is one of the chief motivating factors in her songwriting. Take the way she talks about label bosses on “Angel” and juxtapose it with her thoughts on “Broken.” Over a looped melodic sample and hi-hats that hint at chaos but never introduce it, Simz raps, “There’s a reason why the doves will never fly with the crows / Chapters eventually close, your friends will turn into foes / Everybody’s so obsessed with the CEO / She probably got the most troubles that she’ll never disclose.” Simz’ ability to not only show differing perspectives but imbue them with equal urgency is a talent that makes her stand apart from virtually anyone else in the game.
On both Sometimes I Might Be Introvert and NO THANK YOU, Little Simz surfs between joy and pain, trauma and triumph, isolation and community. On the former, she posited these feelings we perceive as negative as a bad thing to qualify. On NO THANK YOU, she owns each moment she encounters, finding positivity when she can, and refusing to apologize when she’s left needing more.
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This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
