TMZ reports that Bay Area rapper G-Eazy is being investigated by the NYPD after apparently getting into a fight outside The New York City Standard Hotel’s club Boom Boom Room Friday night. The altercation reportedly happened around 1 am when witnesses told police that G-Eazy’s entourage got into a physical disagreement with another group outside the club. G-Eazy allegedly punched one of the other men while a member of his group hit another in the head with a glass bottle, sending him to the hospital for treatment. No one has been arrested as yet.
If the fight sounds out of character for the pretty laid-back seeming G-Eazy, it’s likely because he’s better known for making upbeat party rap with Jack Harlow and promoting his wellness brand, FlowerShop, about which he gave an interview to Uproxx’s own Dane Rivera. However, Complex noted in its report about the brawl that G-Eazy was arrested in 2018 for assault and cocaine possession while on tour in Sweden. He later commented on the incident when ASAP Rocky was also arrested in Stockholm on similar charges a year later but was held for nearly a month, pointing out a prime example of “white privilege” and the double standard in treatment between people, even in other countries.
Uproxx’s Behind The Video returns with LA underground bad boy OhGeesy, who breaks down his video for “Big Bad Wolf” featuring YG. The lead single from OhGeesy’s solo debut album Geezyworld Vol. 1, “Big Bad Wolf” found the former Shoreline Mafia member creating a cash storm alongside his West Coast compatriot while dancers twerked their way through the dollar bill debris.
Without going into too many details about the “secret location” of the video shoot, which was in Downtown Los Angeles, OhGeesy reveals how the video came together and takes in fan comments. The song took about 15 minutes to make after the two rappers, who share the same manager, were introduced in the studio. OhGeesy also notes how crazy the LA underground scene can get, but denies participating — with a wink and a smile, just as he does when explains the line “I like my Glock nine like my f*cking llama.” “I love my guns,” he grins. “If I had guns, I would love ’em.” He also insists the money used in the video was all real, “no prop money.”
Watch OhGeesy go Behind The Video for “Big Bad Wolf” above.
OhGeesy is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Kehlani, the Bay Area singer who helped to launch a revival of R&B with her mixtapes Cloud 19 and You Should Be Here and continued to carry the flag while breaking new ground with albums SweetSexySavage and It Was Good Until It Wasn’t, is preparing to release her new album, Blue Water Road, this winter. She announced the album with a beguiling trailer which is sure to spark curiosity for what appears to be a highly conceptual project.
The cinematic clip shows a snippet of a larger, magical narrative, opening on a closeup of a demolished statue and pulling away to the singer nursing a bloody leg injury as she traverses a barren landscape via a deserted dirt road. She encounters a buzzing insect, which she catches, but the bug bursts into flame, causing her to drop it on the ground. When it lands, a group of vines bursts from the gravel to collect its remains, then Kehlani is overshadowed by something that rises up in front of her off-camera before a smash cut to black and title cards reading “Blue Water Road. Coming This Winter.”
The trial of R. Kelly continued yesterday with more testimony being given against the beleaguered singer who is accused of child sexual exploitation, child pornography production, kidnapping, forced labor, racketeering, and obstruction of justice. In yesterday’s testimony, a former backup dancer for Kelly, who only goes by “Angela” in official proceedings, revealed that she walked in on the singer engaging in a sex act with Aaliyah in 1993 — when Aaliyah would have been only 13 or 14 years old. Kelly would have been around 26.
According to the New York Times report of Angela’s account, the dancer was with R. Kelly on tour and went to visit the singer on his tour bus. Opening the door, she says she saw him and Aaliyah “in a sexual situation.” She said, “It appeared that he had his head in between her legs and was giving her oral sex.”
The relationship between R. Kelly and Aaliyah has been well-documented over the years; one of the crimes of which Kelly is accused includes bribing government officials to falsify documents allowing him to marry the then-underaged in 1994. It was revealed during the trial that associates believed Kelly thought Aaliyah might be pregnant with his child and married her to prevent her from testifying against him.
“Angela” is the tenth accuser to testify, according to Vulture, and says that she was 14 or 15 when she met Kelly and was a minor during several sexual encounters with him. She says she met Aaliyah in 1992 when she was introduced by Kelly on Aaliyah’s 13th birthday. Angela also testified to some of Kelly’s extreme measures during that tour, telling her and the other backup dancers they had to “pay dues” to re-enter a hotel after leaving to get food — which meant having sex with him. Angela says she stopped working for Kelly in the mid-90s and never confronted him about the incidents.
Yesterday was the 15th day of the trial. Previously, a male witness also accused Kelly of grooming him and attested to the singer’s penchant for sex with underage girls.
It has been almost two years since Compton rapper Roddy Ricch made his impressive debut with Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial. Released through Atlantic in 2019, the album spawned the runaway hit “The Box,” making Roddy a household name at just 20 years old. Since then, though, it’s been relatively quiet on the “new music” front, as he made rare appearances as a featured rapper in 2020 — most notably on DaBaby’s No. 1 hit “Rockstar” — but this year, he’s shown signs that his follow-up album is on the way, releasing the Mustard-produced single “Late At Night” in June with a “Thriller”-inspired music video.
Last night, he gave the first major indication of what’s to come, posting a cryptic photo to his Instagram Story that appeared to reveal the title of the upcoming project. A screenshot of what looks like a streaming upload reads “RR LIVE LIFE FA$T,” which some have interpreted as the album’s title: Live Life Fast.
Roddy Ricch is teasing a new album on his Instagram..
In addition to promoting this mysterious new project, Roddy has busied himself making guest appearances throughout the year. So far, he’s appeared on 42 Dugg’s “4 Da Gang,” DJ Khaled’s “Body In Motion” with Lil Baby and Bryson Tiller, “Stunnaman” with Birdman and Lil Wayne, and on Kanye West’s “Pure Souls” from Donda.
Roddy Ricch is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
It has been almost two years since Compton rapper Roddy Ricch made his impressive debut with Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial. Released through Atlantic in 2019, the album spawned the runaway hit “The Box,” making Roddy a household name at just 20 years old. Since then, though, it’s been relatively quiet on the “new music” front, as he made rare appearances as a featured rapper in 2020 — most notably on DaBaby’s No. 1 hit “Rockstar” — but this year, he’s shown signs that his follow-up album is on the way, releasing the Mustard-produced single “Late At Night” in June with a “Thriller”-inspired music video.
Last night, he gave the first major indication of what’s to come, posting a cryptic photo to his Instagram Story that appeared to reveal the title of the upcoming project. A screenshot of what looks like a streaming upload reads “RR LIVE LIFE FA$T,” which some have interpreted as the album’s title: Live Life Fast.
Roddy Ricch is teasing a new album on his Instagram..
In addition to promoting this mysterious new project, Roddy has busied himself making guest appearances throughout the year. So far, he’s appeared on 42 Dugg’s “4 Da Gang,” DJ Khaled’s “Body In Motion” with Lil Baby and Bryson Tiller, “Stunnaman” with Birdman and Lil Wayne, and on Kanye West’s “Pure Souls” from Donda.
Roddy Ricch is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Tucker Carlson is suddenly Nicki Minaj’s biggest fan—and all, appropriately, because of a pair of swollen testicles. On Monday, the “Bang Bang” singer posted a rather personal, and somewhat revolting, detail about her cousin’s friend who, if he exists at all, presumably was not consulted about having the status of his inflated and inoperable junk tweeted to nearly 23 million people:
“My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied.”
My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine cuz his friend got it & became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it & make sure you’re comfortable with ur decision, not bullied
Before reading that tweet aloud (which, trust us, is worth losing a piece of your soul to watch a Fox News clip), Carlson—who is definitely the kind of guy who has used the words “my Black friend” on occasion—had to explain who Minaj was to his audience, which is sort of like a twenty-something trying to explain TikTok to their grandparents.
“So Nicki Minaj is a huge rap artist. Not sure there’s much overlap between her audience and this one, but our producers assure us she’s one of the biggest in the world,” Carlson said, in what might be the understatement of the century.
Here’s Tucker Carlson reading Nicki Minaj’s “testicles became swollen” tweet out loud pic.twitter.com/CvkY4vxMB4
While there’s nothing funny about COVID, the hilarity of the words “impotent” and “testicles became swollen” coming out of Carlson’s mouth was not lost on anyone, particularly given the graveness with which he read them. And the chyron certainly didn’t make it any less funny.
“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate,” William Shakespeare once wrote in Sonnet 18. While he was expressing his desire for a woman, the poetry makes me think of a cannabis drink I recently tried and had big feelings for. Hear me out.
Generally speaking, I have conflicted feelings about cannabis drinks. That’s not a knock on the product category on its face — in the last year, in particular, cannabis drinks have become a force of their own in the legal cannabis market, growing into a popular way for people to imbibe, especially those who are not keen on smoking. In that time, cannabis-infused beverages have also significantly increased in quality, thanks to advancements in emulsion technology. No longer are they stratified cocktails with a layer of oil sitting on the top. These days, the science has been narrowed down, the molecules shrunken. When drinking one of the many cannabis drinks on the market today, one could be forgiven for not even noticing there was cannabis in it at all, flavor-wise.
Where my skepticism comes in is the actual popularity of these drinks. I have written elsewhere, particularly on this website, that I’m a flower gal — smoking actual weed is far and away my favorite way to consume cannabis. That said, I’m a regular partaker of almost every ingestion method under the sun, which includes cannabis-infused drinks from time to time. But even though I enjoy them, I will admit that I struggle to find out where the drinks fit in my routine.
Edibles, particularly gummies, are easy for me — I pop one, chew a few times, and I’m on my way, usually to my bed or couch to watch a movie. Smoking precedes just about everything for me, including social activities, while dabbing is something I reserve for particularly taxing days when I just want to shut off completely. The drinks are harder to place in my mind because they are marketed as a social product, often as an alcohol replacement. While that is certainly true for some people, the fact is that, for many, ingesting weed is not the most social activity. Edibles and drinkables heighten all my senses, yes, but they also help me turn inward and focus more on my own thoughts and feelings in my body, rather than engaging with anyone else. I prefer the quick pop-in-my-mouth, sit back, and relax fix that a gummy offers rather than the slow sipping of a drink. In my mind, there are other, better ways to enjoy a beverage, especially drinks with more socially-minded intoxicants in them.
I know I’m not alone in that conundrum, but out in the wider world, the numbers tell a different story. Cannabis consumer data company Headset claims that current 2021 sales for cannabis-infused beverages total $123.9 million, compared with the sales in the same category in 2020, which clocked in at $79.3 million. That’s a year-over-year sales increase of 56.2%. Clearly, the appeal of these drinks is catching on.
Courtesy of Cann
Tove Lo x Cann
Which is all context to write this: Last week, I finally found a cannabis beverage that made me truly, genuinely get it. Cann, which is the largest purveyor of cannabis drinks in California, recently debuted a new drink in partnership with pop star Tove Lo, who is also an investor in Cann. The drink is exclusive to dispensaries Sweet Flower and Airfield Supply Co. Called “Passion Peach Mate,” which leaves little to the imagination, it’s exactly that: a carbonated, naturally caffeinated, cannabis-infused peach-flavored drink.
It’s absolutely perfect. It’s also the first to market for caffeinated cannabis beverages.
Infused with five milligrams of THC, the 12-ounce canned drink offers a lower dose option that is perfect for nighttime socializing, owing to the caffeine, or daytime drinking, also owing to the caffeine. That, in my mind, makes Cann & Tove Lo’s Passion Peach Mate” the tour de force that it is.
My first thought when holding the marquee-bright yellow and pink can in my hands was, “Wait, how did they legally combine THC and caffeine?” As an older millennial, I am a veteran of the unregulated Four Loko days. I asked a friend, who tipped me off to the fact that it was because the caffeine came from mate, a caffeine-rich drink made with dried holly leaves from South America. In California, it’s okay to combine THC with naturally-derived caffeine, it turns out.
The result is, basically, a fully enmeshed version of the hallowed stoner tradition, “wake and bake,” which involves someone smoking weed first thing in the morning, often while drinking coffee. The body high and head change from smoking weed balances the jolts and jitters from caffeine. For many, it is a really comfortable and fun state to be in. Four Loko capitalized on those good vibes and turned them up to 11, which proved to be too high-octane in the end, especially for regulators, who eventually put strict alcohol and caffeine limits on drinks that contained both.
The Passion Peach Mate high and buzz never approaches anything resembling the intensity of a Four Loko bender. It’s much more mellow on both fronts and gives the drinker a euphoric altered state. It’s this gorgeous mind-and-body feeling that reminds me of Shakespeare’s sonnet — drinking the Passion Peach Mate is like tasting a summer day in a can. It also goes down much smoother and is more delicious than other options, on top of it.
Taste-wise, it’s lightly carbonated, and the bitterness that usually accompanies mate, which I generally enjoy, is instead replaced by a not-too-sweet peach flavor. It’s delicious and, unlike many alcoholic beverages or other cannabis-infused drinks, easy to drink to the very end. The flavor isn’t too overpowering, tastes nothing of weed, and is not something the drinker will get sick of.
Case in point: I had three in one sitting!
Crucially, it is also infused using nanoemulsion technology which makes smaller THC molecules so they are absorbed into the bloodstream faster and with more of its bioavailability intact. This means it hits faster but it also fades faster, in some ways mimicking the onset times for alcohol. It costs $20 for a pack of four, which is priced similarly craft beers or canned cocktails.
The bad news is that, at present, it’s a limited release through just Sweet Flower and Airfield Supply Co. I can’t even order it from my home in San Diego, which upsets me. If you’re reading this, anyone at Cann, consider this my plea for your company to make the Passion Peach Mate a regular in your cannabis-infused drinks line-up. You have a winner on your hands.
If there’s one thing people love to see on the internet, it’s the mashup between high and low culture that usually results from the glimpses we get behind-the-scenes of events like MTV’s VMAs and the Met Gala. This year, thanks to a pair of the show’s performers and their respective significant others, people on the internet got more than enough of both all in one photograph.
The photo in question captures Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker — who teamed up to perform their emo-rock revival anthem “Papercuts” at the VMAs — and their girlfriends, Kourtney Kardashian and Megan Fox, all holed up in what looks to be a public bathroom before the Met Gala. Barker and Kardashian are making out, as are MGK and Fox, and Twitter is having something of a meltdown. Maybe it’s the combination of the glamorous gals — Kardashian is, of course, a member of a family of models and moguls, while Fox is a veteran actress — carousing with the decidedly grungey-looking guys — Barker and Kelly are both tatted-up rockers with roots in the hip-hop world — that has folks so fascinated with the pairings.
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: Instagram) 