The Grammy-winning country trio that was known as Lady Antebellum until recently announced Thursday that, in light of the national conversations about racial inequality, they would be swiftly shifting their band’s name. The group said that due to “antebellum” glorifying a Civil War-era South, the band dropped part of their title and rebranded themselves as just Lady A. Now, though, the band is facing backlash from a Black singer who has already been making music under the same moniker for over two decades.

Seattle-based gospel singer Lady A, whose real name is Anita White, opened up to Rolling Stone about her frustration with the country trio’s name change. White said she wished the band would have contacted her prior to adopting the title and the irony of the situation is not lost on her:

“This is my life. Lady A is my brand, I’ve used it for over 20 years, and I’m proud of what I’ve done. This is too much right now. They’re using the name because of a Black Lives Matter incident that, for them, is just a moment in time. If it mattered, it would have mattered to them before. It shouldn’t have taken George Floyd to die for them to realize that their name had a slave reference to it. It’s an opportunity for them to pretend they’re not racist or pretend this means something to them. If it did, they would’ve done some research. And I’m not happy about that. You found me on Spotify easily — why couldn’t they?”

White has released several albums under her moniker since she first began singing in the ’80s. While singing isn’t White’s main gig, she’s been gearing up to release another record on her birthday in July, titled Lady A: Live In New Orleans. White said she holds a business trademark for Lady A LLC, but isn’t sure if it is enough to ensure a copyright lawsuit win against the band. “I don’t know if [the new Lady A] are going to give me a cease-and-desist. I don’t know how they’d react,” she said. “But I’m not about to stop using my name. For them to not even reach out is pure privilege. I’m not going to lay down and let this happen to me. But now the burden of proof is on me to prove that my name is in fact mine, and I don’t even know how much I’ll have to spend to keep it.”

Ahead of White’s criticism, the newly-named Lady A had issued an apology about their former band name on social media. “We are deeply sorry for the hurt this has caused,” they wrote, continuing: “Now, blind spots we didn’t even know existed have been revealed.”

Rico Nasty must be a favorite of Insecure‘s Issa Rae, because her music has not only featured prominently on the show, it’s also been featured pretty consistently. This season, not only did Insecure‘s music curators put Rico on the soundtrack, they reached out to get an original song, “Dirty,” which Rico shared today after it premiered a few episodes ago. The single uses a grungy, uptempo beat, over which Rico sings the praises of drink, weed, and sex.

“Dirty” arrives as the anticipation for Rico’s new album has nearly reached a fever pitch. Rico’s buzz was already strong as a result of her XXL Freshmen cover placement last year and her Cardi B co-sign in February of this year, but the coronavirus quarantine caused her to delay her release. She still dropped a pair of innovative videos, “Lightning” and “Popstar,” as she and her fans waited out the social distancing measures in place. Along with her verse on IDK’s “495,” “Dirty” provides a welcome and tantalizing taste of new Rico music as she makes final tweaks on her big debut.

Listen to Rico Nasty’s “Dirty” above. Watch the Insecure season finale Sunday at 7:20pm EST / 10:20pm PST on HBO.

Rico Nasty is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

In a surprising bit of news, Sigourney Weaver revealed that she recently received a 50-page treatment for a fifth Alien movie. However, the actress wasn’t exactly thrilled by what she saw, and she seems to be signaling that her days as badass heroine Ellen Ripley are probably over.

In an interview with Empire that looks back at the iconic alien-fighting role, Weaver shares her opinion that it might time to put Ripley to bed. This comes after reading a brand new script from Alien producer Walter Hill, which clearly didn’t light the actress’ world on fire:

Weaver revealed that she received a 50-page treatment from Alien franchise producer Walter Hill around a year and a half ago for a different take on a fifth Ripley film, which came about in the aftermath of Blomkamp’s project falling through – though she’s ultimately not sure the future of Alien rests in the revival of that legendary character. “I don’t know,” she said. “Ridley has gone in a different direction. Maybe Ripley has done her bit. She deserves a rest.”

In Weaver’s defense, she was very much invested in making District 9 director Neill Blomkamp’s fifth Alien movie happen. That film would’ve ignored the events of Alien 3 and featured Ripley and Michael Biehn’s Hicks battling the xenomorphs in a heavily populated colony. Unfortunately, Ridley Scott used his clout to delay the film so that the studio could focus on Alien: Covenant, and then Blomkamp’s vision never saw the light of day much to Weaver’s frustration.

Judging by her reaction to the latest script, it sounds like Weaver’s days as Ripley might be officially over. But on a brighter note, Alien fans have been curious to see what would happen to the franchise now that Disney owns it after purchasing Fox, and it sounds like attempts are being made to churn out a new film. Whether or not this means Scott might actually get to make his sequel to Alien: Covenant remains to be seen.

(Via Empire)

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — Yes, of course, Jackie Daytona, but also…

What We Do in the Shadows ended its excellent second season this week. Our own Josh Kurp enjoyed it so much that it prompted him to float the idea that it could be the funniest show on television. I can’t argue with that. I mean, I guess I could. I can be a real contrarian dork sometimes. But I won’t. The show brought me more legitimate belly laughs than any other scripted comedy in these last few months, especially in the episode where Laszlo, one of the show’s vampires, fled a duel with Mark Hamill and went on the lam as bartender and volleyball aficionado named Jackie Daytona. It’s a very good show.

The strange thing is, knowing myself as well as I do, the character who went on the lam as a bartender named Jackie Daytona isn’t my favorite character on the show. My favorite character on the show, by a lot, and the one I consider to be the show’s secret weapon, is Colin Robinson.

Some background: Colin Robinson, played by Mark Proksch, is a daywalking “energy vampire,” meaning, unlike a standard vampire who feeds on blood at night, he feeds any time of day by draining people (and other vampires) of their life force by boring or depressing the hell out of them. It’s a blast. Sometimes he’ll start talking and you won’t realize what he’s doing right away and then it will suddenly hit you. He argues with people online while giggling. He tells long stories that go nowhere. He inserts himself into petty drama and calmly dumps accelerant on the flames. One time, and I’m about to post the screencaps so you’ll believe me, he summoned the ghost of his dead grandmother just so he could get her with an “updog” joke.

There was just a bonanza of good Colin Robinson moments this season. Most notably, there was the entire episode where he was promoted at his office and realized people had no choice but to listen to him in meetings and in small talk. He became a madman, a borderline supervillain, who harnessed so much power that he spontaneously grew an entire head of hair again. It was a good episode. I won’t spoil the ending if you haven’t seen it. You should see it, too. Again, it’s a good show.

The key to it all is Proksch’s performance. He’s so dry and droll and it works so well, both for his character and for the balance of the show. The other vampires in the house are big and loud and showy. Laszlo is a theatrical sex manic, Nadja loves drama as much as blood, Nandor is a legendary bloodthirsty warrior who is also a needy little boy. Adding a bald man with a monotone voice and a closet filled with beige sweaters is a perfect way to ground that. It’s a genius performance of a genius character on a profoundly dumb-fun show. Kudos to everyone who had a hand in making it happen.

I hope he starts next season as a telemarketer and he grows and grows until he’s 40-feet tall. He is my sweet energy-sucking boy.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Congratulations to the prestigious winners

The 2020 Peabody Award winners for television were announced this week. It’s always cool to see which shows crack the list each year, in part because it’s a different, more prestigious kind of award than the Emmys or Golden Globes, and in part because you get to feel very cool and smart when a show you watch sneaks in there. This year’s list covers a bunch of topics and genres: Chernobyl and When They See Us are in there representing true stories told through drama; Fleabag is in there representing smart comedies and Hot Priests; and Stranger Things is in there representing… demons, I guess? I don’t know. Congrats to the winners. None of this is the point I’m getting to.

The point I’m getting to is that Succession and Watchmen both won, too. That’s cool. Succession and Watchmen are great, for very different reasons. Succession is a show about awful rich white people attempting to ruin each other in a constant battle for status inside their own family. Watchmen is a show about a diverse group of masked heroes attempting to thwart a racist collective that has its tentacles all the way up and through the United States’ government. That is the very simplified version of both shows. They are much more than those respective sentences, in many ways. They even have a little in common when you dig past the “they were both on HBO” surface level. They are both serious examinations of subjects that affect life in America (wealth, race). They both cut through this seriousness with fits of wicked humor. And they both featured memorable farts.

I should explain. Actually… wait. No. Maybe I shouldn’t explain. It will be way funnier if I just post the screencaps and move right along. Let’s do that. Succession first.

Beautiful. Just perfect. A Peabody Award-winning fake fart. I would go so far as to say the caption-writing deserves part of the honor, too, only because “mimics in childish babble” is so tremendously specific.

Speaking of excellent and tremendously specific work in the field of caption-writing, here are a couple of screencaps from the Peabody-winning series Watchmen.

To be clear, this is Jeremy Irons, in character as Adrian Veidt, farting so prodigiously that it required two separate, different captions.

Congratulations to the winners.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — “Oi’m a peaky bloinda, ain’t I

Peaky Blinders is a good show. We’ve been over this many times. One of the best parts of this very good show is Cillian Murphy as the head of the Peaky Blinders criminal organization. He’s all stoic and calm with a bubbling rage hiding in his eyes behind his tiny round spectacles. He’s very cool and very calculated and occasionally he flies way off the handle and ends up covered in someone else’s blood. It’s a blast. But as we learned from a new interview with series creator Steven Knight, it was almost very different.

Jason Statham almost played Tommy Shelby.

I met them both in LA to talk about the role and opted for Jason. One of the reasons was because physically in the room Jason is Jason. Cillian, when you meet him, isn’t Tommy, obviously, but I was stupid enough not to understand that. . . . He sent me a text saying, ‘Remember, I’m an actor,’ which is absolutely the thing, because he can transform himself. If you meet him in the street he is a totally different human being.

I like this story a lot. I like it because it contains a very cool move by Cillian Murphy to land the part, and I like it because it’s a very Tommy Shelby thing to do (to whatever degree Tommy Shelby would send texts if he were alive today instead of the 1920s), and I like that I’m now picturing Jason Statham in Peaky Blinders, just kicking people in the sternum and scowling at them. It’s a totally different show. It might not be a better one. It’s definitely different, though, which I say as someone who loves Jason Statham. Like, picture Tommy Shelby doing this.

Yeah, different show. I kind of want them to make a whole second series, completely parallel to the one on now, shot for shot and line for line, but starring Jason Statham. Please consider this. I don’t ask for very much.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Woody Harrelson rules

Some things we know about Woody Harrelson:

• Has had a long and successful career in Hollywood
• Loves to smoke pot
• Lives in Hawaii most of the year
• Plays poker with Willie Nelson a lot in Hawaii
• Son of an actual hitman
• Seems to have things pretty well figured out

We also learned, this week, that he is almost definitely not a racist. We learned this because a racist who looked kind of like him popped up in a viral video, which caused his name to begin trending on Twitter, which led to dozens of people filling the trending topic with cool stories about how Woody rules and is, again, almost definitely not a racist. Do yourself a favor. Click on this tweet and scroll through the replies. Read a whole bunch of them. So many people have “Woody Harrelson is cool” stories. He’s like if Bill Murray was way, way more chill. It’s fascinating.

It also reminded me of this very fun Woody profile from Esquire a little while back. Bookmark this and come back to it this weekend if you want to read about Woody and a reporter scaling walls and wandering around New York on the hunt for a vegan restaurant (you do), but here’s a taste.

He’s still in his T-shirt and shorts, though he’s added sandals, which appear to be made out of some all-natural, cruelty-free fabric and which shouldn’t work on anybody yet do on him, and a baseball hat with the words drugs and wine stitched above the brim. No one has ever looked less like the son of a gunned-up, mobbed-up, bad-hombre jailbird. Halfway out the door, he smacks his forehead and says, “Wallet, keys!” then trots back inside.

The greatest. I would give anything to hang out at one of those poker games in Hawaii. I bet they’re fun.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Sheeeeeeeesh, Nicole

There’s a nice profile of Reese Witherspoon in the Los Angeles Times this week. It’s about how she rose from struggling and typecast movie actress to dominant television force with multiple big fancy dramas on multiple big fancy premium services, from Big Little Lies on HBO to Little Fires Everywhere on Hulu to The Morning Show on Apple+. The woman is a force, an absolute dynamo, a mover and shaker in a big way, and none of that is what I want to talk about. Look at the opening of the profile. Look at the second paragraph.

Sitting next to Nicole Kidman in makeup on the set of “Big Little Lies,” Reese Witherspoon had questions. Loads of questions. What was it like to work with Stanley Kubrick? How did you do the musical numbers in “Moulin Rouge!”? Witherspoon loves movies. At age 44, she has been working on sets for three decades and enjoys nothing more than digging into film lore.

Kidman, though, had more existential musings she wanted to explore. “Do you ever think about dying, Reese?” Kidman would ask her costar. “Because I think about it all the time.”

It’s fun to picture Nicole Kidman with like jet-black hair and taking a deep drag off a clove cigarette while she says this. Goth Nicole Kidman. It’s also fun to picture her saying that in other situations.

KIDMAN: Do you ever think about dying? I think about it all the time.

CASHIER: Ma’am, this is a Panera Bread.

Just delightful. Play around with it yourself this weekend. You’ve earned it.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

Mark:

In your column about Mythic Quest’s quarantine episode, you wrote that after watching it, you found yourself “lying in bed afterward for about 45 minutes, just blown away, staring at my ceiling.” Me too. I can recall two other episodes of television that knocked me for a loop like that: the season 3 finale of Lost (“We have to go back!”) and the train robbery episode of Breaking Bad (Todd shoots the little scorpion boy). Can you recall other episodes of TV shows that left you lying in bed staring at the ceiling?

A few things are true here, most notably that this is a very good question. Also true: I am a bit of a crier. A good happysad show or movie will really get me going. So I am not unfamiliar with this kind of reaction. It’s happened after the final season episode of Halt & Catch Fire when a main character died, it happened after multiple episode of Bojack Horseman, it happened at the end of Fleabag’s second season, and it definitely happened at the end of The Wire’s season about the Baltimore public schools. There are more examples but there’s a thread that runs through them all: they are great shows.

That’s the sign of a great show, isn’t it? That it makes you feel things? Even a mostly silly show like Parks & Rec or The Simpsons would sometimes drop that emotional hammer. It’s even more effective there, in a way, because you don’t see it coming. I think that’s why the Mythic Quest quarantine episode got me. I wasn’t expecting that deep level of feeling and then blammo, the ending was sweet and powerful and the first thing I’ve seen that accurately depicted the fried and confused stress of the quarantine. It was good. I’m thinking about it again. Might stare at the ceiling for a bit.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Sweden!

Swedish prosecutors have named the man who they say killed former Swedish prime minister Olof Palme in 1986, ending years of mystery.

They said it was Stig Engstrom, a graphic designer known as “Skandia Man” who killed himself in 2000.

It brings me great pleasure to announce that Swedish authorities believe they have solved a 34-year-old assassination cold case that I knew nothing about until this week and then immediately read everything I could find about it.

Palme was shot in the back as he walked home from the cinema with his wife in Stockholm.

He had already dismissed his security team for the day. The assassination took place on Sweden’s busiest road, Sveavagen, and more than a dozen witnesses saw a man fire the shots before fleeing the scene.

Palme’s son Marten told Swedish radio that he believed prosecutors had reached the right conclusion and were right to close the case.

It has to be a real mixed bag for the family. On one hand, there’s some semblance of closure. On the other hand, the suspected perpetrator is gone and there are still a lot of questions. And this emotional quandary is something I might have examined at greater length had I not stumbled across this passage about the suspected killer’s wife from a piece about the case from last year.

His wife, who he divorced the previous year, believes he was too much of a coward to assassinate Palme.

What a great moment this must have been for her. It’s not every day you get to call your ex of 20+ years a coward in print, on the record. Bad situation all around, but I am kind of happy for her.

After it was revealed BIPOC staff aren’t paid for video appearances.

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Atlanta trap music pioneer Gucci Mane appears to be upset at Atlantic Records and says he’s leaving his deal in a new tweet that called Atlantic “polite racist” in their dealings with him. “Leaving #AtlanticRecords July 3rd these crackers polite racist #SoIcySummer,” he wrote before deleting the tweet. HotNewHipHop was able to grab a screenshot, however, which you can see below.

DatPiff was also able to grab a screenshot of another tweet referencing “the most polite racist ever,” so it’s possible that Gucci is referring to a specific person, but without any further comments from the man himself, there’s little info to go on. However, his ire doesn’t seem limited to just Atlantic, as another since-deleted tweet screen-capped by No Jumper podcast implored “all artists let’s go on strike. F*ck these racist ass labels. Burn them down too.” He included the hashtag #BlackExecsMatter, which may provide a hint to his beef as Black executive-level employees are few and far between in all corners of corporate America.

Gucci’s discontent may also offer some insight into Asian Doll’s previous posts wishing she wasn’t signed to Gucci’s 1017 Eskimo Records, as 1017 is also distributed by Atlantic. Gucci has released six studio albums and four commercial mixtapes under Atlantic, including Delusions Of Grandeur and East Atlanta Santa 3.

Gucci Mane is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

A flurry of loose ends were tied up on Friday morning around the NBA, as teams now have a firmer idea of when players have to be in their home markets, as well as when they will begin on-court work in Orlando.

The most pertinent information is that training camps, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, are due to start on July 9 in Orlando, and teams will participate in three contests that amount to preseason games between July 9-29. Players have gotten their way when it comes to the runway back to playing again, as the NBA’s desire to hit the court after two to three weeks has turned into nearly two months from when facilities were allowed to reopen and when official preseason games will begin.

In addition, the NBA is upping what is allowed on the court in practices. Now, per The Athletic’s Shams Charania, up to two assistant coaches can work with a player at one time, with head coaches allowed to “supervise” workouts beginning June 23. That late-June date is the same day that the league will begin orchestrating its league-wide coronavirus testing plans.

In the interim, players who’ve traveled internationally since the NBA pressed pause on March 11, such as Nikola Jokic and Luka Doncic, must be back in the United States by June 15.

All other players have until June 22 to get to their home markets.

The same urgency likely applies to all members of the Toronto Raptors as well, with travel restrictions still in place around the world and, until at least July, between the United States and Canada. An even playing field is the priority when it comes to the schedule over the next few weeks, and it seems the NBA will be able to keep that intact.

Previously on Total Bellas: Brie got pregnant straight out of a spiritual marriage-healing vacation and Nikki got a wedding proposal straight out of a Hallmark movie.

Before the true recap of the season 5 finale begins, I just want to say thanks to everybody for reading these because your reading of these blogs enabled them to continue for the whole season. I pitched recapping this season because started when just about all wrestling news (and regular news) was depressing and I didn’t know when I would get my regular review column back and it seemed like a good way to write some more fun stuff for With Spandex without being irresponsible about the serious and real issues of the world. I enjoyed writing these so I hope you enjoyed reading them, even though they’re on a wrestling website and they contain almost nothing about wrestling.

Was There Anything About Wrestling In This Week’s Episode Of Total Bellas?

Nope!

The Finale Countdown

The Total Bellas season finale finally gets to the double pregnancy shenanigans and uses the pregnancy and engagement storylines to revisit the other kinds of drama from earlier this season. It presents an aspirational version of real life not just because of the protagonists being rich, good looking, and in love, but because as they deal with a new challenge in life, we see them get closure on the other issues we know they’ve been going through. After a season of conflict sometimes too cartoony or weirdly edited to pass as “real,” the Bella-Garcia-Danielson-Chigvintsev family sends the audience off with assurances that while they aren’t on the same page about everything, they love and support each other more than they disagree with or annoy each other.

Cold Feet Strike Again

One of the biggest recurring problems that resurface is Nikki Bella’s fear of commitment. She’s always wanted to be a wife and mother, but her parents’ relationship and her own history with men cause her to freak out when it seems like these things could actually happen – and now they’re actually happening! She delays picking up her ring out of commitment-phobia, but a conversation with her mom about how she can’t let her childhood define her helps a lot.

There’s some iffy acting in this storyline and the best is Nikki’s Valley Girl-esque reaction to her mom revealing that she has Bell’s Palsy with, “That’s so scary.” It’s so clear she knew about the condition beforehand and the show realized they had to mention it because it’s visible in the scene, and the way the reveal, which has nothing to do anything else in the scene or episode, plays out is reminiscent of the breast cancer scene in The Room.

The best scene in this subplot is when Bryan and Artem go to Whole Foods and Bryan 1) shares that during Brie’s first pregnancy she had cravings for bagels, which meant that he also ate bagels, and over nine months he went from 185 to 213 pounds, and 2) gives sage advice about being a Bella husband. It seems like good advice in general; he reminds Artem of where Nikki’s fears are coming from and tells him to “reinforce the positive.” In his own marriage to someone who grew up in the same household, he’s accepted that “I can’t control what Brie does,” but he can be there for her.

Those childhood issues also manifest in the return of Bella dad Jon Garcia. The twins kind of just didn’t talk to him about their autobiography earlier in the season when they really needed to do that, and they finally have that discussion with him at a dinner this episode. They’ve accepted that they can’t include their mom or brother in the re-connection with their dad, and their dad accepts this. Jon reveals more about his own abuse and addiction-filled childhood and says he’s an open book as far as material for their book because “You know what healed me? Being honest with myself.”

The scene deals with these relationships better than past dad-centric episodes have, but it’s still clear that Total Bellas and maybe the reality TV format aren’t really equipped to deal with or portray complicated family issues. In the real world, though, the Bellas’ book is out and from the excerpts I’ve read online, it looks like they got a quality ghostwriter who handled the family stuff and other more serious parts better than this show has.

Twinterest Moms

The A story of this episode also works as a preview for season 6. Once the Bellas are both pregnant, their twin connection goes into overdrive. Nikki wants to have a very Pinterest/momstagram gender reveal party and Brie is immediately sold on it for like half the episode even though she and Bryan had agreed they wanted to be surprised. (“One of my big problems in life is that Nicole has more influence on Brie than I do,” Bryan tells the camera.) They get excited because if Brie is late and Nikki’s early, their kids could be born on the same day. The Bellas also start having the same cravings, which is evidence of the type of psychic coordination that allowed Twin Magic to be so devastating, and that twins are creepy as hell.

Eventually Brie agrees with the person she’s actually having a baby with not to do a gender reveal and just helps plan the party. I think big gender reveals are stupid on a few levels, but it looks like these people had fun at this expensive-looking event and the Mexican theme to honor that part of their heritage despite not being able to include their dad also resolves a conflict from earlier in the season. Nikki and Artem are having a boy and Total Bellas will be back in the fall, E! claims, a reminder that the real world is less than an IG-friendly part right now because it makes you wonder, “Wait, can they do that?”

Bella Line Of The Week

• Nikki is guessing the sex of her baby from the ultrasound and thinks it’s a boy for reasons that Bryan points out doing makes sense. Then she says, “But that way it looks like a boner,” and Bryan replies, “That’s for sure a boner.”
• Brie calls Nikki from the OBGYN and Nikki tells her “I wanna be a MILF.” Brie responds, “You’ll be a MILF,” but after she hangs up says, “You won’t be a MILF. You’ll be tired as f*ck,” which Bryan thinks is hilarious.

MVP Of The Season

After careful analysis of all eleven hours of Total Bellas season 5, I had to conclude that the MVP of the season was Birdie Danielson for her performance as a cherubic toddler who doesn’t really know she’s on a reality show. The runner up was Artem’s dad Vladimir for being an old man who also doesn’t really get reality shows.

YG has been outspoken about political issues through his music. The rapper has made clear his disdain for the sitting president with the 2016 Nipsey Hussle collaboration “FDT,” short for “F*ck Donald Trump.” In light of recent protests over the police’s murder of George Floyd, YG has shared a similar sentiment through the song “FTP.” Now, YG follows the release of the track with an affecting visual.

Directed by Denied Approval, the “FTP” visual opens with the MLK quote, “Riot is the language of the unheard.” The remainder of the black-and-white video is compiled from clips of recent demonstrations in LA. Images of burning cop cars and violence incited by the police appear across the screen. The rapper also stars in the video, with several snippets of him backed by hundreds of protestors chanting “f*ck the police” alongside him.

Ahead of the visual’s release, Alabama rapper Chika called YG out and condemned him for using a vigil for Breonna Taylor to film a music video. Reacting to the backlash and addressing his now-released “FTP” video, YG said that rather than question each other’s activism, we should be working together to combat police brutality:

“For anyone out there talking I don’t question your advocacy and don’t think you should question mine. See you gotta understand that a lot of people out there they see me as a N***a. They don’t see the black proud man. They see a kid from Bompton and they expect violence. They hear FTP and they think I’m gonna come and burn my city. So we showed up and did it right. We proved them wrong. The real story here is me and Black Lives Matter brought out 50,000 people today to peacefully protest and unite for change. I wanted to document that so when they hear this song and think we are reckless and violent they see a peaceful protest of all different people coming together for a common cause. That is history. That is breaking down these stereotypes on our people and our neighborhoods. All of us protesting are on the same side here..instead of questioning each other’s activism we should be directing that energy at the cops and the government and helping to create the change we want to see. Stay focused and stop that social media judgement without knowing facts and hurting a cause we all a part of. We got a real enemy and it ain’t eachother. On my momma!”

Watch YG’s “FTP” video above.

Chika is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Three facts:

1. Streetwear has become emblematic of the global style industry as a whole.
2. As goes streetwear, so goes high fashion.
3. The industry wouldn’t be what it is today without the work, creativity, and culture of Black America.

To put a finer point on it, everything cool and “American” is filtered, at least in part, through the lens of the African American experience. Especially streetwear. Our modern style slang owes a debt to the queer black femmes and drag queens who popularized it, the beauty trends of the day originated with black women (pay homage, Kim K and Ariana), and hip-hop has defined how people dress for decades.

But while Black America is vital to defining American style, the fashion houses of Europe and the fast-fashion brands responding to trends are overwhelmingly white-owned (whether public or privately held). It’s time to change that. And while subsidiary brands like Jordan, Yeezy, Off-White, and Golf Wang are important, it’s time to give the independent creators some love.

Below, we’ve collected our fifteen favorite black-owned streetwear brands. Get these companies and designers on your radar and your wardrobe will be that much cooler as things start to open up again.

A-Cold-Wall

A-Cold-Wall comes from the mind of Samuel Ross, a young British designer who first started the label in 2015. In just five short years, Samuel Ross has been named a GQ Hype cover star, won the Emerging Talent Menswear prize at the 2018 Fashion Awards, and brought his brand to over 100 global stockists.

Speaking to GQ, Ross mentions that it was Virgil Abloh’s work that inspired him to create the first A-Cold-Wall pieces, which started as “an art project” based on exploring the cultural melting pot of the UK. Ross’ interest in art is readily apparent in the photo shoots of A-Cold-Wall’s lookbooks, which have an almost fine-art quality to them.

ALLCAPS Studio

If graphic t-shirts with varied fonts are your thing, All Caps Studio is your label. All Caps Studio’s designs come from Philadelphia’s Saeed Ferguson, who is a master of typography, letting the kerning do all the work by keeping his prints simple and cleanly printed on a single color base.

The looks out of All Caps are strong and get their message across, you know, like WHEN A PERSON TYPES IN ALL CAPS.

Art Comes First

Art Comes First’s particular brand of streetwear combines punk rock fashion and bespoke tailoring for an edgy and elegant aesthetic that exudes cool. The British label is headed by the team of Sam Lambert and Shaka Maidoh, who, according to MotMag, met outside of a nightclub and joined forces to create a label that reflects their shared passion for music, photography, and fashion.

Bricks & Wood

Founded in South Central Los Angeles in 2014, Bricks & Wood’s brand of streetwear is as functional as it is high quality. Throughout the label’s six-year history, Bricks & Wood has shown an unwavering commitment to carefully cut and sewn pieces that are entirely unisex.

With streetwear staples like hoodies, crewneck sweaters, graphic t-shirts, and hats, Bricks & Wood has an almost endless supply of comfort-focused pieces that’ll keep your wardrobe cozy.

The Brooklyn Circus

To say that The Brooklyn Circus is merely prep-meets-streetwear is an oversimplification of the brand. What the Brooklyn Circus does well — aside from making preppy letterman jackets and college sweaters actually look cool — is mine the iconic silhouettes and design ideas used throughout American history and retranslate them for a new era.

That makes every look out of The Brooklyn Circus instantly classic without feeling overly outdated.

Darryl Brown

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This brand new label still has a fairly small following, but expect them to blow up this year. Darryl Brown comes from the designer of the same name who, before becoming Kanye’s personal stylist, cut his teeth as a steelworker for General Motors. That 9-to-5 lifestyle informed Brown’s workwear-inspired label, which the designer told Gear Patrol was directly inspired by Dickies and Carhartt.

Most of the pieces out of Darryl Brown used the simple and boxy silhouettes of our favorite workwear, but add a sort of luxury sheen to the whole thing, which makes them feel all the fresher.

Denim Tears

A former consultant for Kanye West, Denim Tears’ Tremaine Emory is using his label to highlight cotton as a symbol intertwined with the history of slavery in America. The brand’s logo, a bushy wreathe of cotton, is meant to provoke a conversation about slavery as it exists in the modern age, telling The Face in an interview “I’m using this story to also tell about the human condition and how we treat each other. I can’t just relegate [the blame for slavery] to Western Europeans and white Americans. It’s still happening today. There’s indentured servitude in America and in Europe.”

The brand recently did a notable collaboration with Levi’s, affixing their logo to Levi’s classic trucker jacket and 501 jeans, and creating a special t-shirt and hat that Emory has dubbed the “Plantation Hat.”

Fear of God

We thought about passing on Jerry Lorenzo’s massively popular Los Angeles based label for this list, but on the off-chance you’re not a big sneakerhead, Fear of God might’ve fallen under your radar. In recent years, Lorenzo’s beloved brand has dipped further and further into the realm of luxury goods but the label regularly drops new streetwear staples, like graphic t-shirts, sneakers, caps, and hoodies.

Heron Preston

Straight from the Parsons School of Design alumnus of the same name, Heron Preston combines workwear staples with luxury brand presentation for a label that serves looks from graphic and slogan heavy streetwear, to high fashion conceptual pieces and everything in between.

Nicholas Daley

If acid jazz was a clothing style rather then a genre of music, it would look something like Nicholas Daley. The British designer has a knack for mining the psychedelic styles of musicians like Jimi Hendrix and artists like Frank Bowler, offering a variety of tie-dye and color-saturated streetwear pieces that’ll have you looking like you walked straight out of the type of art collective that would’ve inspired Andre 3000 or Erykah Badu in their primes.

RenownedLA

First founded in 2011, Los Angeles-based Renowned, from designer John Dean, has quickly gained success both domestically and overseas, where the brand is a favorite amongst K-Pop’s most famous faces and the go-to brand for stylists throughout Europe. Renowned was first created in the halls of Dean’s Akron, Ohio highschool when the budding designer started making clay pendants bearing the future label’s logo and handed them out for his friends to wear. From there Dean transitioned to T-shirts and other streetwear staples, eventually capturing the eye of artists like Nicki Minaj and Tyga.

Telfar

If you’re looking for one of the most fly unisex brands in the streetwear space right now, look no further than Telfar. Founding in 2005 by Telfar Clemens, the label has always prided itself in its inclusive aesthetic, positioning itself as one of the first (and best) labels to focus on entirely unisex collections. There is a certain level of elegance to the pieces out of Telfar thanks to a reimagining of athleisure that brings the divisive aesthetic straight into the world of fine art.

Telfar tries to push the envelope with each collection and manages to look cool and contemporary while they do it.

Union Los Angeles

Union has a long and storied history that begins in the streets of New York City in 1989. How the store and label came to be associated with the city of Los Angeles — where its thriving — could be an article all its own. The thing about Union that so many Angelenos and streetwear aficionados around the world have come to appreciate is the store’s commitment to expert curation by owners Chris Gibbs and Beth Birkett — which always shifts with the current trends, while also fostering an identity that is undeniably their own.

The Marathon Clothing

Founded by the late Nipsey Hussle, The Marathon’s threads are directly inspired by Nispey’s own distinct style and grew organically out of the artist’s own merch line, which began with a Crenshaw t-shirt company that quickly became a must-own amongst streetwear heads. The brand is still going strong, recently selling out a collection of face masks and dipping their toes into the weed game with their own custom strain through their sub-label The Marathon Cultivation.

Western Elders

Western Elders combines the colors and designs of West African culture with traditional New York streetwear for a collection that’ll make your outfit look straight out of a Spike Lee joint that was never made. It’s stylish and culturally resonant at the same time.