Photo: Sara Mally/Peacock Ariana Madix is heading to the villa— no, not the Vanderpump Villa and not for a vacation from her busy schedule. And we’ve got a Barbie-themed first look as proof! She’ll be replacing Sarah Hyland as the new host of Love Island USA, as Hyland has a project that “conflicts directly with the shooting dates.” After making a cameo last season, Madix is fully diving into all of the mess from the islanders and taking a break from Tom Sandoval’s housing tantrums. She has probably had the busiest year of any Lisa Vanderpump alum, even after the boom in the popularity of Vand ..read more

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Ricardo Rubio/Europa Press via Getty Images, Prince Williams/Wireimage Rap beefs aren’t won by the numbers, but if they were, Kendrick Lamar would be running away with this one. The rapper’s “euphoria” debuted at No. 11 on this week’s “Hot 100” — six spots above the Drake diss track “Push Ups” at No. 17. That’s an especially big achievement considering “euphoria” was working off a shortened week of streams after being dropped on a Tuesday, April 30. Sure, these tracks are old news in beef time, but Lamar may be in for an even bigger win when his latest, “No ..read more

Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images All those TikTok lawyers will have something to post about for the next nine months. TikTok is taking its fight to exist in the United States to the courts. TikTok filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government for a violation of the First Amendment on May 7, according to NBC News. TikTok owner ByteDance is suing over a bill known as the Protecting Americans From Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which was signed into law by Biden on April 24, forcing ByteDance to either sell the app in nine months or have it banned. “Any such divestiture would ..read more

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photos: Prince Williams/Wireimage, Christopher Polk/Billboard via Getty Images The long-standing cold war between Drake and Kendrick Lamar came to a head over the weekend in a gauntlet of diss tracks and rapid responses that challenged both rap heavyweights’ character in music and outside of it. The tone of the feud to this point had consisted mostly of jokes about shoe sizes and tier rankings of popular rappers. But Drake’s “Family Matters” and “The Heart Part 6” — and Lamar’s “Meet the Grahams” and “Not Like Us” — were each calculated acts of reputational damage ..read more

Photo-Illustration: Vulture; Photo: Newsshooter via YouTube I’ve been watching a ton of playoff basketball lately, and amid the relentless torrent of Caitlin Clark State Farm ads and WingStop spots (no flex, zone!), there’s a Google Pixel 8 phone commercial in particular that never fails to bum me out. The spot emphasizes the phone’s AI-powered editing tool that lets users manipulate pictures in all sorts of convincing ways. You can adjust still shots to make it look like you jumped higher, like you didn’t actually blink when the picture was taken, or like the sky was actually beauti ..read more

Photo: Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Can’t sleep? Blame espresso. No, not the coffee, Sabrina Carpenter’s breezy new single. Since the pop singer dropped “Espresso” last month, its grammatically incorrect hook — “That’s that me, espresso” — has taken over pop fans’ brains. Is Carpenter simply saying she’s the espresso or that she gives a specific type of espresso to men she’s into? Or maybe the guy she’s singing about is so hot that she temporarily forgot how grammar worked? On Twitter and TikTok, the song has been memed to death; outside, it’s quickly heralding the beginning of summer with its ..read more

Photo: Sinna Nasseri Halfway through 2023, the experimental-pop label PC Music announced it would stop releasing new music by the end of the year. The news came as a surprise, after a busy 2022 and as the glossy, mischievous hyperpop sound it helped develop was becoming as mainstream as ever (even Beyoncé dabbled with it on Renaissance). Moving forward, the label planned to focus on “archival projects and special reissues.” Then, on January 1, 2024, PC founder A.G. Cook released the sprawling, ten-minute “Silver Thread Golden Needle,” the first offering from his upcoming project Britpop. Timin ..read more

Photo: Eric Laciste/Universal Pictures The Fall Guy is a love letter to the stunt community, an opportunity to bask in Ryan Gosling’s sky-high levels of charm, and possibly, in the form of one of its villains, a blind item about a narcissist Hollywood actor. Tom Ryder, an action star played by rumored new Bond actor Aaron Taylor-Johnson, is the star of The Fall Guy’s film-within-the-film, the sci-fi epic Metalstorm. He’s also a smug, showboating asshole who lies about doing all his own stunts; kills his new stunt double, Henry (Justin Eaton, Taylor-Johnson’s actual stunt double in the film), w ..read more

Photo: John P. Johnson/Netflix The most fun part of Unfrosted, the Netflix movie that allows first-time director Jerry Seinfeld to explore several of his personal passions (breakfast food, boomer nostalgia, references to the Zapruder film), is waiting to see which of your favorite comedic actors will show up next. At least 50 percent of the most talented funny people in Hollywood co-star in this thing. Melissa McCarthy? She’s in it. Hugh Grant? Why wouldn’t Hugh Grant agree to play a Tony the Tiger impersonator in a film about the development of the Pop-Tart? Jim Gaffigan, Amy Schumer, James M ..read more

The rumours are true: The cast of Stereophonic made their late-night debut outside the constraints of the Golden Theatre, performing their barn-burning rock track, “Masquerade,” on The Tonight Show. (Translation: No $250 rear-mezzanine ticket purchase is required to click.) The song, a sort of medieval journey stomper, is performed by the Stereophonic characters every night as their band relentlessly workshops what it should sound like in the studio. This, however, is the completed version with a longer runtime. “I wanted ‘Masquerade’ to feel transcendent. Other pieces of music do that in the ..read more