For the late night set, Gunna showed up in an all cream, double-breasted suit — which he, of course, paired with some signature sneakers — and sat perched on a trunk for the rendition while fog swirled around him and a live band, who got a chance to flex on a musical interlude toward the end of the appearance. Showcasing his softer side on national television side was a smooth move from Gunna, who is fighting against the same stereotypes that plenty of hip-hop artists face. This performance proved that he’s more than just trap bars, although he did bring those in later on. Check out his performance of “Banking On You” up top.
Last night on Saturday Night Live, Gunna brought out Future to show the world exactly what “Pushin P” means. The song is so popular it’s spawned the usage of the specific “Pushing P” emoji, a blue capital P, but Gunna has given his best description of the infamously phrase in an Instagram story following up the song’s release and right before his January 2022 album DS4EVER, was released. “P don’t just mean Playa, P also mean paper too,” he said. “You could be pushing this P with paper too.”
First released right around the top of 2022, the “Pushin P” video has been, ahem, pushing, the Atlanta rapper’s new slang for the last few months, and its raunchy music video certainly helped get eyes on the song in the beginning. For their TV performance of the track, though, Future and Gunna kept it fairly PG, decked out in their usual designer swag, and slowly swaying while they rapped through swirling fog and a tumultuous laser light show.
Perhaps what’s most impressive about the performance, though, is the way Gunna and Future seamlessly trade bars, exhibiting the kind of on stage chemistry that few rappers can manage — especially two who are both such stars in their own right. Check out the performance up top.
You don’t have to stretch your imagination very far to think about what Lizzo might be like acting in a Saturday Night Live sketch. The multi-talented “Truth Hurts” singer is not just a multi-Platinum, Grammy Award-winning artist, but she’s a viral TikTok star who has shown time and time again that she’s both hilarious and not afraid to speak her mind. So, SNL is ready to put all of Lizzo’s talents on display when she does double-duty as both the host and musical guest of NBC’s hit show on April 16th.
The entire April slate of hosts and musical performers was announced today. In addition to the “Lizzo-palooza” on April 16th, Gunna and Camila Cabello were also confirmed as musical guests in April. Gunna, whose DS4Evertopped the Billboard 200 chart earlier this year, will appear on the April 2nd episode, hosted by comedian Jerrod Carmichael. Meanwhile, Camila Cabello, who just announced that her new album Familia will be out on April 8th, will be the musical guest for an episode hosted by Jake Gyllenhaall on April 9th. It’s a perfectly timed appearance for Cabello with her album coming out the day before the episode, and it’s also a boost that it will mark Gylenhaal’s first time hosting the show in 15 years.
Lizzo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
What else should he be proud of achieving? Enlisting LCD Soundsystem as his guardian angels! Well, it was just for a sketch on the show, but the “Subway Churro” episode, which is, of course, also somehow a musical, casts Mulaney as a newsstand worker in a subway station. At one point, he adopts the stylings of Fiddler On The Roof to wax poetic on the joy of going off the grid, and as more characters emerge, LCD shows up as “Guardian Angels” a group who emerged in reaction to the lawless atmosphere in the New York subway during the ’80s. It’s a perfect casting choice for the rockers, and puts them at the center of one of the funniest sketches of the night. Check it out above.
Last week, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine reached a fever pitch when the former launched a “full-scale invasion” into the neighboring country. President Vladimir Putin might have believed that invading the nation would be an easy feat, but that has not been the case, as Russian soldiers have been met with strong resistance. Ukraine has made it clear that they won’t go out without a fight and the country’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy is leading the charge on that front, having chosen to fight with his people instead of escaping.
The support for Ukraine has been strong. One example was on full display during last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live. Rather than their usual comedic cold open, the cast and crew of SNL welcomed the Ukrainian Chorus Dumka Of New York to begin the show. Following an introduction by SNL cast members Kate McKinnon and Cecily Strong, the choir sang “Prayer for Ukraine.” The chorus also performed in front of a table with candles that spelled out “Kyiv,” Ukraine’s capital.
The somber cold open was reminiscent of the first SNL episode, which also featured little in the way of humor, following the September 11 terrorist attacks back in 2001.
Doja Cat is one of the most entertaining personalities in music, so naturally, fans and friends would love to see more of her outside of singles and albums. She’s a hoot on social media, but some have wondered how she’d fare on the Saturday Night Live stage as a host. It turns out that’s something Doja has given some thought to, and the prospect both excited and intimidates her.
In a new Billboard interview, Doja was asked if she’d want an SNL hosting gig and she replied, “I like the idea of doing that because I love, obviously, to tell jokes. But it’s a little nerve-racking because it’s something friends have suggested to me, [doing] stand-up or comedy. That would kind of be my first gig. Just the thought of that terrifies me a little bit.”
Speaking of SNL, one of the show’s icons is somebody Doja would like to meet, as she said, “I really want to meet Tracee Ellis Ross — and at the same time, I’m terrified because, to me, she’s the boss at the end of the game of life that I’m living. Her and Maya Rudolph.”
She also discussed her relationship with social media, saying, “People are always like, ‘What’s your Finsta,’ and I don’t want one. I don’t like the idea of having to juggle social media, which already sucks as it is. Not to say it hasn’t helped me so f*cking much, but the way I feel about Instagram is: I go on, look at pictures of makeup and fashion and cats, and that’s pretty much it. I’ve unfollowed everyone who is a person that I know.”
Hip-hop fans got a pleasant surprise over the weekend when Freddie Gibbs popped up in a Saturday Night Live sketch, one that didn’t make the broadcast but was still shared on the SNL YouTube page.
The skit is a music video for a song called “All On Me” by an up-and-coming rapper named Lil T (played by Chris Redd), who just got signed to a record deal and is celebrating by spending loads of money in the club alongside his entourage, played by Kenan Thompson and host Ariana DeBose. Lil T is taken aback when he sees the massive tab he’s run up, though, so he starts being more frugal. Partway into the song, Gibbs pops up, rapping, “OK, Lil T, you up in the big leagues / See you spending big G’s like your boy Freddie G / Young’uns making money is something I like to see / Send him one big bottle of Ace, it’s on me.” Then, in accordance with the “club code,” Redd sends Gibbs something back: a bottle of Diet Coke. After chastising Redd for that move, Gibbs continues, “Old dude’s just being cheap / Shots for everybody and they all on T.”
Gibbs shared a clip of the skit and wrote on Twitter, “Man shout out my dog Chris Redd for putting me on this SNL sh*t. Live from New York!!!”
Man shout out my dog Chris Redd for putting me on this SNL shit. Live from New York!!! pic.twitter.com/eJoLQxyMQQ
Roddy Ricch is fresh off the release of his second album, Live Life Fast, which debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. So, it’s only right that he is also Saturday Night Live‘s first musical guest of 2022, helping to kick off the remainder of the season when the show returns on January 15. The show will be hosted by Ariana DeBose, who was recently nominated for a Golden Globe for her portrayal of Anita in Steven Spielberg’s adaptation of West Side Story.
While Roddy is only weeks removed from the release of his latest album, it doesn’t look like he wants to rest on his laurels at all. He’s already begun promising that a new mixtape, Feed The Streets 3, will be released sometime this year as well. However, that may not come soon; he’s still promoting Live Life Fast, for which he’s released only a handful of singles, including “Late At Night,” which dropped last summer, and “25 Million,” which followed up the release of the album. Roddy’s known for slow-playing his rollouts — the video for “The Box” didn’t come out until weeks after it had dominated the charts — so fans will have plenty of opportunities to revisit the new album before the mixtape drops… including, of course, his performance on next week’s SNL.
(Editor’s note: This piece was originally published in 2018 but we’re republishing it today because it’s, well, that time of year. Enjoy.)
“You grow up Jewish and you can’t help it, it’s a big part of your life being the person who’s not celebrating Christmas,” TV Funhouse creator and former Saturday Night Live writer Robert Smigel told us recently. (Smigel, by the way, is also the mad genius behind Triumph the Insult Comic Dog.)
The accuracy of this remark is not lost on me as someone who was raised half-Jewish and half-Catholic and kept on the outside looking in at Christmas revelry during part of my childhood (before my parents eventually relented and started celebrating both — which is its own weird thing). That’s why Smigel’s “Christmastime For The Jews” means so much. Born on the December 17, 2005 episode of Saturday Night Live and inspired by a love of claymation Christmas specials, Wall of Sound music, and the desire to merge them with Jewish and pop culture references that swing from clever to delightfully absurd, this lovingly crafted sketch/song exists as something Jews (and half-Jews) can call our very own.
The weight of what “Christmastime For The Jews” means to people who share an annual laugh, let the song dance around in their head for a few days, and feel utterly seen by its timeless jokes about the Jewish experience is not lost on the people who created it. Partly because they feel it too and partly because, as you’ll see, an immense amount of time, effort, and heart went into making it and getting it as close to perfect as possible. And since you’re reading this, you likely love the sketch and feel like they got pretty close. In the off chance you’ve not seen it, or just want to relive it again, here it is below.
To better appreciate the story of “Christmastime For The Jews,” you have to go back to Smigel’s past tinkerings with the themes that came to life in the sketch. Here’s the short(ish) version: In 1987, Smigel wrote a sketch called “The Assimilated Jew’s Christmas” that was, by his account, a much earlier (and direct) attempt at speaking to the dearth of Jewish holiday standards, at least in contrast to those orbiting Christmas. Smigel acknowledges that the sketch didn’t quite “hit” in the same way that others like “Hanukkah Harry,” Adam Sandler’s “Hanukkah Song,” and “Christmastime For The Jews” did among SNL‘s best-remembered contributions to Jewish holiday pop culture (which are basically the only contributions to Jewish holiday pop culture over the last 30 years). It features Al Franken as Henry Kissinger selling an album of Jewish Christmas songs that were “acceptable for Jewish people to hear, because all Jews love Christmas carols,” says Smigel. “Christmas carols are so much better than Hanukkah songs,” he (accurately) adds before offering a reminder that many great Christmas carols were actually written by Jews.
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“The Assimilated Jew’s Christmas” and “Christmastime For The Jews” were far from Smigel’s only attempts at holiday parody. “I did two that involved a Charlie Brown Christmas, which is my favorite half-hour of television ever, probably,” he says. “I did a big one after 9/11 that was a Rudolph The Red-Nosed Reindeer parody.”
Smigel also has an affinity for crafting what he calls “silly musical stuff” that goes back to the late ’80s, as well. He authored a jingle for the first “Mister Short-Term Memory” sketch in 1988. More jingles followed before they became so common on the show that Smigel says they were mocked by The Simpsons.
Smigel left SNL in the early ’90s to work as head writer for Conan O’Brien during his foray into late-night before joining TheDana Carvey Show, where he debuted “The Ambiguously Gay Duo.” Cartoons had also been an interest of Smigel’s going back to his time on SNL with “Cluckin Chicken” (where he worked, for the first time, with animator and eventual TV Funhouse cohort J.J. Sedelmaier). He was eager to continue playing in that space, conjuring up ideas for “Fun With Real Audio” and “The X-Presidents” before pitching SNL producer Lorne Michaels on an idea for a unique path back to the show after The Dana Carvey Show got canceled. That idea eventually became the TV Funhouse so many of us came to know and love.
“I was aware of how much fun I was having reaching back into what made me laugh as a child,” says Smigel. “It felt very pure and very exciting.”
Which brings us back around to “Christmastime for the Jews.” The stories we collected about its creation, from Smigel and the creative team involved — contributing writers Julie Klausner (Difficult People), Eric Drysdale (Full Frontal With Samantha Bee), Scott Jacobson (Bob’s Burgers), musical director Steven Gold, director David Brooks, producer Samantha Scharff, and legendary singer Darlene Love — shed some light on the mixture of insanity, brilliance, stubbornness, and catharsis that ran through the entire three-week production in addition to the irony of launching the same night that internet-culture game changer “Lazy Sunday” launched.
April shows!!!
