Uprising
An End-of-Year Culture Care Package You'll Love
Dec 28, 2025
[THE MAIN EVENT]
In Case You Missed It
A look back at 2025’s works of art that flew under the radar—but soared nonetheless. Here’s something to watch, hear, and read before the new year
📺 Adults
The awkwardness of Gen Z stumbling into adulthood has rarely been this funny—or this unhinged. FX’s Adults turns the slow-motion panic attack of your early 20s into a tightly written ensemble comedy where everyone is broke, self-aware, and still profoundly confused. Flanked by a cast of sharp, chaotic up-and-comers (Amita Rao, Owen Thiele), Adults mines humor from roommate politics, performative workplace activism, and a dinner party that goes horribly wrong. It’s absurd without being cartoonish, bleak without being cynical. It’s a series that laughs with a generation, all while gently dragging it at the same damn time.
🎵These Days Don’t Last Long, Spree Wilson
Spree Wilson did his big one with These Days Don’t Last Long, a four-song cross-section of his boundless artistic talents. The genre-bending EP is dedicated to his late grandmother; you can hear the grief in the wailing electric guitars of “Out of the Darkness.” The Atlanta-based singer/rapper/guitarist mulls over disheartening headlines in the Deanté Hitchcock-featured “Bad News,” and “Shadows” boasts one of the most beautiful flute solos you’ll ever hear. Every song provides a different flavor. But “Jackals” is a standout. Spree explores his vices over a mid-tempo groove before the beat progresses into a hypnotic Jamaican dub jam session that leaves you craving more.
📖 That’s How They Get You: An Unruly Anthology of Black American Humor, Damon Young (Editor)
This anthology corrals generations of Black American humor—dry, petty, profane, political—into a book that understands jokes as both survival strategy and intellectual weapon. It’s funny in the way that makes you pause mid-laugh and say, “Damn.” Which is to say writers and thinkers like Roy Woods Jr., Mahogany L. Browne, Hanif Abdurraqib, Kiese Laymon, and Wyatt Cenac keep it real about the Black American experience. There’s an imagination of a “Karen” outlawing; a hear-me-out proposal of cracking yo’ mama jokes at a funeral for the sake of connection. These essays and fictional pieces move with the rhythm of barbershop debates and Twitter threads, reminding you that humor has always been one of Black folks’ sharpest analytic tools.
— John Kennedy
• • • • •
Bonus: Tap into MACRO's Freaky Tales for a trippy-cool film experience.
________________
[IN RETROSPECT]
It’s Ayo Edebiri’s World, We’re Just Living In It
The 30-year-old actress has been steadily rising, but 2025 marked her full-on cultural takeover. UpRising looks back on her big year, on and off-screen.
January 7: Ayo Edebiri earns a Directors Guild of America nomination for directing The Bear episode “Napkins,” marking her first major directing nom.
January 11: Ayo hosts the first Saturday Night Live of the year, apologizing to musical guest Jennifer Lopez in a sketch for calling her career a “scam” in a real-life resurfaced podcast clip.
February 6: “Weird Al” Yankovic. Clairo. Ayo Edebiri. Three performers who couldn’t be any more different collided for the ’80s-inspired “Terrapin” music video, which Ayo directed.
February 7: Elon Musk retweets a fake news report about Ayo potentially replacing Johnny Depp in a Pirates of the Caribbean reboot. She addresses it weeks later, via Instagram Stories: “Just remembering when I got some of the most insane death threats and racial slurs of my life… for a fake reboot of a movie I had never even heard of because of this man,” she writes. “He’s an idiot.”
February 13: Ayo covers W magazine’s “Director’s Issue,” photographed by Luca Guadagnino, who also directed the actress in After the Hunt.
March 14: The MACRO-produced Opus makes its theatrical debut, starring Ayo alongside John Malkovich in a wild commentary on the cult of celebrity.
May 23: The final season of Big Mouth hits Netflix, with Ayo completing her voice acting role as Missy. “Thanks to everyone who’s watched,” she writes in an Instagram post. “Love you perverts!!!”
June 25: The fourth season of The Bear hits Hulu. Ayo gets a co-writing credit on “Worms” (alongside co-star Lionel Boyce). Buzzfeed called it the series’ “most Black coded episode.” Ayo explained her narrative approach in an interview with Vulture: “It's not doing something just to do it, or like, Now we have to have a Black episode... These people are Black, so let's make it as true and real and grounded as everything else is in the show."
August 19: Tyler, the Creator assembles Black Hollywood’s it-girls for his “Darling, I” music video. Included as his love interests are Nia Long, Chase Infinity, Willow Smith, Lauren London, and Ayo, who previously appeared in Tyler’s 2024 video for “Noid.”
September 14: Ayo is the first woman to be Emmy-nominated in the same year in both acting and directing for a comedy series. But she misses the ceremony due to a scheduling conflict. She’s in Japan to promote After the Hunt.
October 5: In the lead-up to designer Matthieu Blazy’s first show, Chanel names Ayo a global ambassador. “Ayo Edebiri embodies a new generation of genre-defying performers who are constantly pushing boundaries. Her distinctive style, her wit and her singular perspective on the world make her a natural ally of Chanel,” the house said in a statement.
October 8: Ayo covers Vogue!
October 10: One week after turning 30, Ayo shines opposite Julia Roberts and Andrew Garfield as the psychological thriller After the Huntmakes its theatrical debut.
October 26: Ayo adds runway model to her resumé, as she walks Vogue World 2025: Hollywood rocking the same Matthieu Blazy look from her recent Vogue cover.
November 24: Ayo decides to attend Tyler, the Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw festival. But she’s not in the audience or watching from the sidelines. Instead, she’s onstage during Doechii’s set, fanning herself as the rapper gives her a lap dance while performing her 2022 song “Crazy.”
December 12: The political dramedy Ella McCay debuts, with Ayo sharing the screen with Woody Harrelson and her The Bear co-star, Jamie Lee Curtis.
December 23: Ayo is spotted in Nigeria with India Amarteifio in Lagos ahead of Detty December celebrations.
—John Kennedy
• • • • •
Ayo’s 2026 is already looking promising! She’ll make her Broadway debut alongside Don Cheadle in Proof, and feature in the Apple TV+ romantic comedy series Prodigies, which is currently in development.
________________
[TAKEN OUT OF CONTEXT]
If you asked Puffy in jail, who’s his enemy, I would come up in conversation. But I’m not his enemy.
Take a wild guess at who said this. The answer might astound you at first, but allow them to explain…
________________
[LET'S LINK]
The WNBA Is Growing, So Where Are the Black Woman Head Coaches? [Andscape]
D’Angelo: The Last Soul Man [Vibe]
These Dominican Designers Are Using Fashion as Resistance — and They’re Not the Only Ones [Remezcla]
2025 Was the Year Hip-Hop Hit the Reset Button [Okayplayer]
Why Does Everyone Want to Argue with Kareem Rahma? [Esquire]
I Wanted to Surprise My Family on Thanksgiving. ICE Deported Me Instead. [The Cut]
