Month: November 2020

When it comes to rappers who actually live the rough-and-tumble lives they rhyme about, Russ would be a surprising contender for the top of the list. The New Jersey-born, Atlanta-based indie artist advocate gets in a shocking number of skirmishes, both online and in real life. His latest, with which he says he wasn’t involved but which he was indirectly responsible for, took place at a celebrity basketball game over the weekend where his Diemon crew mixed it up with Jack Harlow’s Private Garden collective.

The two rappers were participants in a basketball tournament featuring fellow rappers G Herbo, Lil Keed, Swae Lee, and more. During their face-off, Harlow went to block a layup, giving a hard foul to the shooter and prompting both teams to clear their respective benches in a scrum that lasted several seconds, but thankfully didn’t escalate into anything worse than a few hard shoves. The scuffle was broken up and play presumably resumed shortly, with HipHopDX reporting Russ’ victory over Harlow’s squad, 22-9. Russ hit the game-winning shot (Swae Lee’s Firefighters defeated Team Diemon in the championship on Swae’s Curry-esque halfcourt shot).

Jack may still have the advantage in their shared day job, though. His single “What’s Poppin” turned out to be his breakthrough hit, climbing all the way to No. 2 on the Hot 100 thanks to its star-studded remix featuring DaBaby and Lil Wayne, while he scored a priority feature appearance on Saweetie’s posse cut remix of her won massive hit “Tap In.” He also secured a spot on the coveted XXL Freshman class and prime placement in BET’s 2020 Hip-Hop Awards Cypher alongside Rapsody and fellow breakouts Chika, Flawless Real Talk, and Polo G. Recently, his new single “Tyler Herro” saw him living out his hoop dreams with the burgeoning NBA star.

Meanwhile, Russ has been mostly less antagonistic of late (although his feud with Guapdad 4000 seems to be ongoing), as he gave away $20,000 on Twitter to help lift fans’ spirits, expanded his list of connections on the deluxe version of Shake The Snow Globe, and made a lovey-dovey connection with Kehlani that should soften his prickly image.

Check out the clip of the rappers’ near brawl above and see more rappers who show off their hoop skills here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Fargo Frozen Five is Uproxx’s weekly collection of thoughts, observations, and goofball screencaps from each new episode of the FX limited series’ fourth season. We do not guarantee that there will be five items every week. There could be four, or six, or a dozen. Who knows? This show doesn’t follow the rules. We shouldn’t have to either.

Episode 8 — “Nadir” (or “Mama Fadda Become-a Nada”)

5, A bloodbath has been in the air for weeks. You could sense it. You could smell it through the television screen, somehow. You knew it was coming even if this is your first go-round with Fargo, a show that always builds toward a bloodbath or two. This time it took place in the train station as Zelmare Roulette and Swanee Capps prepared to board their escape rattler to Philly, the one Loy Cannon had spilled the beans about to U.S. Marshal Mormon Raylan at the end of a really fun scene where the two traded stares and one-liners about the criminal lifestyle. The result of it all was dozens of dead bodies scattered across the floor, two of which belonged to the aforementioned Marshal and one Swanee Capps, both at the hand of Odis Weff, who pumped himself up in the car for about 20 minutes before carrying out what appeared to be the order from Loy Cannon in a classic “settle all family business” move that did not go quite as planned. One part of the problem was a furious Zelmare looking at her deceased lover on the floor and that creepy zombieghost behind Weff and then barreling through him and out the door like a Midwestern college fullback before he could finish the job. We’ll get to the other part of the problem later. For now, we focus on two primary outcomes: One, after a slower, more talky stretch of the season, things appear ready to move from simmer to boil; two, I am a little sad that the first three major characters the show killed off this season — Doctor Senator, Marshal Dick “Deafy” Wickware, and Swanee Capps — represented three of my four favorites on the show. We must protect my large ornery son Gaetano. I’m not ready.

5a. I will say this: If you’re about to kick off a firefight where you’re overmatched and prepared to die, smiling at your adversary, spitting out a lollipop, and smooching your partner in love and crime is a pretty cool way to do it.

4. Quite a week for the Fadda brothers, now reunited and on the same page after a brief sibling spat that involved Gaetano getting tortured by the Cannons with Josto’s blessing and Josto getting heaved through a table and socked in the peeper by Gaetano for that first thing. But that’s in the past. They’re back now, together, leading as two kings, as Gaetano was so impressed with Josto’s willingness to sell him out to acquire power that he started and could not stop making wildlife analogies. (Animals he compared to Josto: Various snakes, chameleon. Animals he compared to himself: Lion, bull.) It was nice. It’s good to see a family come together. Even if that bond is built upon a foundation of subterfuge and violence and telling your enemy you killed his youngest son even though the kid is actually on the run with his Irish mentor and your top hitman is hunting them down. I guess. Strange family, the Faddas.

4a. Not all good news for them, though, as Mama Fadda took a stray bullet in an attempted ambush and joined the Flatulent Papa Fadda in the Great Beyond, much to the dismay of her two now-orphaned boys, especially Gaetano, who appeared on the verge of either screaming into the heavens with enough force to bring on loud claps of thunder or tearing apart the family home with his giant meaty paws. Possibly both. One imagines this will become an issue going forward.

3. Not a great week for Oraetta Mayflower either, on a couple of fronts. The first problem, the less pressing one given the development of the second one, is that Josto dropped both an “I think I love you” and a “by the by, I’m getting married” on her in the span of about 90 seconds, followed by a “slow your roll, toots” when she expressed frustration about it.

None it was particularly ideal, but it was all moved down her list of problems very quickly when she found out that Doctor Harvard survived his dance with the Strychnine Macaroons — extremely plausible character name in a future season — and was moved to a distant hospital that specializes in poisons, which, if he continues to improve, will allow him to reveal both her role in his illness and the existence of the letter that outlined a pattern of similar behavior. The only silver lining in it all, for her, was that she finally put two and two together to realize Ethelrida was behind the letter, which put a brief pause in her plans to flee. It would be fun to look at a flow chart of everyone who wants to kill each other and why this season. Just arrows zigging and zagging in a zillion directions.

3a. I’m no psychology expert but Oraetta’s talk of being a sickly child and her mom doting on her and making her a “special juice” sure did sound like a Munchausen by Proxy situation, which would certainly explain a lot of things, if not everything.

3b. Tricky week for Ethelrida too, as she now has a murderous nurse on her tail and a burgeoning forbidden romance with the horn-tooting son of her family’s tormentors. Real Romeo and Juliet situation cooking here. One assumes these will come up again, too.

2. Big sitdown between the Cannon and Smutny matriarchs this week. The chat was ostensibly centered upon the quote-unquote dead Cannon child and the family’s wishes that the Smutny family funeral home handle the service, which, yes, fine. Let’s do all that, especially if it provides a way for the Smutnys to settle some or all of their debt. But the main takeaway of their conversation, for me, was that the “we’re not so different, you and I” vibes were through the roof. Two women with husbands who appear to be the breadwinners, who are strong like iron behind the scenes, pulling literal and figurative shotguns on anyone who threatens their cubs. You get the feeling the two of them could run all of Kansas City if they so desired. It was a good scene. My only small complaint is that neither of them actually said “we’re not so different.” I would have hooted and hollered a little.

1. Luckily, this happened at another point in the episode.

Once I got past the “HE SAID THE THING, THE TITLE OF THE… HE SAID THE THING” of it all (30-40 minutes, tops), I was able to put it all together again. It goes like this:

• The guns he stole from the Faddas in the flaming truck heist got sold to Mort Zuckerman in Fargo in exchange for a favor and/or loyalty
• That favor appears to have been “ambush the Faddas and kill them without it getting tied back to me”
• The first part failed and the second part doesn’t look too great, as no one else had a super great reason to come in guns blazing on the family in that moment
• Mort Zuckerman, as we know from Season 2, gets assassinated in a movie theater by the Gerhardt family in 1951, which is not long after the events we saw depicted here
• It’s worth noting that the ties to the universe of Season Two are undeniable in a few ways now, which, given the ending of the events depicted there, leaves open the possibility that this all ends with an alien attack, too

I desperately want to see how Gaetano would react to aliens. I bet his eyes would bug right out of his face like a cartoon character would just saw a pretty lady.

Chicago artist King Von died last Friday at just 26 years old. The rising rapper, born Dayvon Bennett, was involved in a deadly altercation outside an Atlanta hookah lounge where he and his two friends, Oblock Louie and Slutty OTF, were shot and killed. A 22-year-old Timothy Leeks was arrested and charged for Von’s murder, while there’s rampant speculation that Atlanta police shot Von’s friends.

Von grew up around the Parkway Gardens apartment complex that Chief Keef (and later Von himself) memorialized as “O-Block” in honor of the late Odee Perry, who was murdered in 2011. Von was gaining visibility as one of hip-hop’s best storytellers with songs like “Took Her To The O” and the “Crazy Story” series. A natural narrator, he rhymed with a bouncy flow that swayed like a hypnotist’s stopwatch, entrancing listeners in his stories. But now, he’s yet another seismic crater for a subgenre that loses so many of its biggest stars to jail or death.

Along with Polo G, Von was a leading figure of a long-delayed second generation of Chicago drill. But Von actually grew up with Keef, his close friend (and OTF label boss) Lil Durk, and other drill rap pioneers. He didn’t get to pursue rap until 2017, when he came home after fighting a murder charge as well as two attempted murder charges stemming from a May 2014 shooting. The charges were dropped, giving Von a second chance, and he took advantage. At the time of his death, he and Durk were fighting a case after an alleged July 2019 shooting and robbery incident, but he was still going full steam ahead musically, recently releasing his Welcome To O-Block album.

For Von, art reflected reality to a higher degree than with most rappers. After his death, a clip re-emerged of Durk telling him to stop mentioning dead rivals in his songs because “that sh*t be hurtin ‘em, for real.” There’s real pain, and real loss, behind the decades-long Chicago gang conflict. While kids are dying, fans on Reddit and YouTube have the privilege to spectate the violence as mere entertainment on pages tabulating “bodies, attempted bodies, and people clapped at” stats.

Von and Durk had a longstanding rivalry with late Chicago rapper FBG Duck, who was killed in August. Duck was from 63rd street and St. Lawrence in Chicago, an area that Von frequently dissed in songs. Von’s fans often made “not from 63rd” jokes on social media unaware, or apathetic, to the gravity of the fracture. Von had two children. Duck had four. All of them will be growing up without their fathers. But what part does each of us play in creating a better world for their children? Perhaps Duck and Von’s deaths, and the speculation that Von’s was derived from petty rap beef, will be an eye-opener for rap fans and “media personalities” all complicit in toxic flame-fanning.

Von had recalled that he and his peers went to high school with Duck and his peers. In a better-resourced community, they could have seen the benefits of unity and become the crux of a rap scene rivaling Atlanta’s. But because Chicago, like so many other areas, suffers from civic negligence that breeds poverty and hypermasculinity, they grew up on opposite “sides” and became rivals. This circumstance is a national tragedy that should register the same disdain at the American status quo as police brutality and other injustices — because they’re all branches of the same tree of systemic racism.

Before full details of Von’s death were revealed, early social media murmurs speculated that Von was fatally shot by the same cops who killed his friends. People immediately took to social media to call out the police system for once again killing an unarmed Black person. But once it was alleged that Von was killed during a fight by a young Black male instead of cops, the indictment of the establishment shifted to platitudes like, “watch how you move,” mind the “power of the tongue,” and “stay out the way.” But is America’s devaluation of Black life not what is in “the way” of our survival? There’s no hiding from anti-Blackness.

Black America rightfully centers systemic accountability in the police brutality discussion, but so often our rhetoric about intra-communal gun violence scrutinizes individual or communal accountability. Imagine someone saying that a victim of police brutality should have “moved better.” That doesn’t strike at the root of the issue. Black activists who catch snide “I thought Black lives mattered” ire after gun violence are already working for change via challenging white supremacy. But there are a notable amount of Black people who view gang violence as less deserving of advocacy than brutality victims even though it’s all state-sanctioned violence.

In the past three years alone artists like Von, Duck, Nipsey Hussle, XXXTentacion, Pop Smoke, Jimmy Wopo, Lil Marlo, and Huey, among too many others, were fatally shot. They were from different areas, living different lives, but all fell prey to the machinations of a country that often exploits and benefits from Black death. America depends on systemic inequality, and violence is a manifestation of poverty. Every billionaire’s material excess has to be juxtaposed against the excess toll of Black lives lost to the brutal conditioning of survival mode. Even when artists like Von “make it” they can’t easily shake such a traumatized mentality. Judging from ominous Von lines like “if I should die, I’m boostin’ the murder rate” from the recently released “I Am What I Am,” he, like so many artists, saw premature death as an inevitability. That brand of fatalism represents a purposeful failing by the system.

Victim blamers can say what they want about his diss records, and at-times antagonistic social media presence, but the inarguable reality is that no matter his individual conduct, he would still be living in a dangerous world. Solving this problem isn’t about “moving right,” it’s about the social movement against systemic oppression. In so many cities and towns, the communal chasm may be too deep to heal this generation’s ill-will toward each other. But if people are given opportunities, they will by and large prioritize their personal growth over risking their freedom and lives for violence. And from there, the hope is that things will only improve over the next generations. That starts with a push for radical change. Economic deprivation, school-to-prison pipelines, predatory police, and for-profit prisons all have to go. Everyone deserves access to public resources that will offer them a productive life. As things are now, too many people start out in disadvantaged areas and have to navigate life on a wayward journey.

So many music consumers are comfortable experiencing the Black struggle as mere entertainment. That’s a reflection of America’s overall disregard for Black lives. It was hip-hop’s expansion into white suburbia that inspired the genre’s commercial boom; vicarious curiosity sparked the industrialization and mass consumption of our trauma. But Von wasn’t just creating a product to fetishize, he offered a portrait of a society that needs examining. It would be a fitting tribute to his gift, like that of many other artists, that listeners hear their stories and ponder how they can play a part in dismantling the social factors that force so many talented young people to live and create in survival mode.

If you want a taste of what to expect in the weeks to come, look no further than Kenneth Copeland‘s reaction to the presidential election, which is righteously freaking people out on Twitter. In a now-viral video posted by Right Wing Watch, the televangelist addresses his flock and offers his thoughts on the media announcing Joe Biden as the winner on Saturday. Although, they weren’t so much thoughts as much as a terrifying descent into madness.

“The media said what? The media said Joe Biden’s president?” Copeland said before launching into a maniacal, 40 second laugh with seemingly no end in sight.

You can watch the full clip below, if you dare:

It didn’t take long for Copeland’s insane laughter to trend as social media reacted to the TV evangelist losing his mind at the thought of Donald Trump’s defeat. Even Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn got into the act by noting that Copeland’s bizarro laugh is reminiscent of the Bradley Cooper-voiced Rocket Raccoon. The classic Dr. Evil laughing scene from Austin Powers also made an appearance.

Others pointed out that, for a holy man, Kenneth Copeland sure does look like a demon and cackling on stage for almost a full minute didn’t help.

The laughing video also dredged up the last time Copeland went viral back in 2019 when he defended owning a fleet of private jets by claiming that it protected him from flying commercial, which is basically “a long tube with a bunch of demons.”

(Via Right Wing Watch on Twitter)

FIFA 21 is, by all accounts, a very good sports video game. It features some gameplay updates to make things smoother and tweaks to its main game modes that most see as solid upgrades — you can read our review of the game here.

That said, this is a sports video game and, as such, somewhere deep in the code are bugs and glitches that will very occasionally surface to create disastrous and hilarious results that will make you want to launch a controller through your TV. These have not been nearly as prevalent as we’ve seen in, say, Madden 21, but they happen nonetheless and so far the leader in the clubhouse for the most WTF moment in FIFA 21 goes to this sequence that sees a goalie stop a breakaway and then not only stop a follow-up shot but score all the way on the other goal with his block of the follow-up shot.

The best part is the game’s slow-mo replay that shows the ball rocket off the goalie’s foot and travel like 100 yards in the air to go top shelf above the outstretched arms of the player’s goalie who was, understandably, not prepared for a perfect shot on goal to be coming his way.

Glitches are unavoidable in sports games, as there’s too many different possibilities to make every part of the game perfectly clean and operate under normal, real world physics. The goal is to minimize them as best as possible, but as we approach the next-generation of consoles and the realism of these games continues to improve, they stand out even more and become more frustrating (and, for those of us that get to watch them and not deal with them, hilarious).

What a week this is already turning out to be. President Trump and President-Elect Biden greeted the nation with wildly different responses to news that Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine results point toward a pair of injections that’s not only “robustly effective” but “more than 90%” so. For his part, Joe Biden congratulated the scientists who are making this happen for giving the world “cause for hope.” Biden continued with a lengthy plea to Americans to remain masked while staying patient during this ongoing battle, and Trump, uh, dropped an all-caps mini-tweet (for him) about the stock market.

Certainly, news of vaccine progress is cause for celebration, but guess who isn’t happy? Donald Trump Jr. appears to believe that Pfizer timed their news to damage his father’s election prospects. He tweeted, “The timing of this is pretty amazing. Nothing nefarious about the timing of this at all right?

Trump Jr. is, of course, wanting everyone to congratulate his dad and probably re-do the election because his dad shouted “Operation Warp Speed!” a few times. In response, people were quick to tell the eldest Trump son that Pfizer head of vaccine development Dr. Kathrin Jansen preemptively declared, “We were never part of the Warp Speed … We have never taken any money from the U.S. government, or from anyone.”

The roasting of Junior began with fact-checks aplenty (especially regarding Pfizer’s avoidance of Trump influence) while ridiculing him for politicizing a vaccine’s calendar.

Oh, and people slammed Junior for his narcissistic response, given that he (of course) made everything about his family: “[Y]ou depraved egomaniacal simpleton. You’re not that important. Sit down.”

Some people just aren’t here for good news, right?

In the summer of 2019, Taylor Swift popped up in a Capital One commercial, in which she played a pretty bad waitress. That was the start of a multi-year promotional partnership between Swift and the credit card company, and now, another Swift-starring ad has debuted.

In the 30-second spot, a Capital One spokesman addresses the camera, boasting about how banking with Capital One is “like the easiest decision in the history of decisions, kind of like…” At this point, he trails off, and the scene shifts to Swift thoughtfully looking out a window, with her doing an internal monologue voiceover in which she says, “It’s looking kind of chilly out today. What am I going to wear?”

She then opens the barn-style doors of a large closet as her thoughts continue, “I think I’ll go with…” Looking at the rack of clothes, Swift finishes the thought out loud, “cardigan,” which is of course also the title of her latest No. 1 single. The angle changes to reveal the closet is full of a bunch of the same sweater, and Swift grabs one and winks at the camera. “Yup, even easier than that,” the spokesman concludes before talking about the Capital One app.

Watch the ad above.

It didn’t take Drakeo The Ruler very long to find his footing after his lengthy stint in jail. If anything, he’s hit the ground running, announcing he’d drop a new mixtape just a couple of hours after his release and offering a teaser with his first post-incarceration song, “Fights Don’t Matter.” The song even arrived with a low-fi music video that finds Drakeo back on the streets enjoying his freedom alongside some friends and family draped in bejeweled necklaces and throwing stacks of money at the camera.

Drakeo spent nearly four years in Los Angeles’ Men’s Central Jail after a pair of arrests that saw much of his early rise to stardom eaten up by trying to wrangle his freedom. In 2018, he was charged with first-degree murder, attempted murder, and conspiracy to commit murder stemming from a 2016 shooting in Carson, California at a party he was alleged to have attended with his crew, Stinc Team. Although he was acquitted, the District Attorney refiled new charges of criminal gang conspiracy and shooting from a motor vehicle in late 2019, accusing Stinc Team of being a gang and using LA’s antiquated (and racist) gang injunction laws to further pursue Drakeo’s continued incarceration.

Drakeo was freed this past week after Los Angeles voted to replace Jackie Lacey as District Attorney with George Gascón. The DA issued a plea deal for time served, which Drakeo accepted. It’s a sure bet that he’ll follow through on his plan to release a new mixtape because even when he was locked up, he was productive, releasing the acclaimed Thank You For Using GTL earlier this year, recording on jail phones. Drakeo’s new mixtape, We Know The Truth, is coming soon.

Watch the “Fights Don’t Matter” video above.

In August, Cardi B sat down with Joe Biden for a Zoom interview, which drew ire from conservative figures like Candace Owens. Cardi and Owens beefed about it back then, but now that Biden will be in the White House come 2021, Cardi has again taken a moment to respond to the backlash.

In an Instagram post, Cardi shared a snippet of her conversation with Biden and wrote about the situation, summarizing the moral of the post, “Don’t let nobody down play you for what you doing that’s how they try to take away your power .YOUR POWER IS YOUR VOICE!.”

Cardi wrote, “Couple of weeks ago I was getting chewed up by Trump supporters over this interview especially by miss Candace who has been degrading my name for 2 years straight. I was so nervous for this interview especially because it was on zoom and not in person but it was important for my followers to get to know our running candidate and future president. Republicans like Candace, Shapiro, Fox news made fun of me ,talk so much sh*t about me and my song WAP. They said Biden use me as a pawn then weeks later we seen a list of rappers and artists that Trump was trying to reach out to and to pay for support a list that included my name. I never got payed a dollar from Biden I just wanted to get to know him and open my fans up to the importance of voting.Im so proud of all these celebs who uses their platform and for the people who went out and voted WE DID IT! Don’t let nobody down play you for what you doing that’s how they try to take away your power .YOUR POWER IS YOUR VOICE!Congrats Biden! Your family here, and in Heaven are very proud of you! Also congratulations to Kamala you made history!”

Aside from the election results, things are looking up for Cardi, as she recently called off her divorce from Offset.

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

Welcome to another installment of Ask A Music Critic! And thanks to everyone who has sent me questions. Please keep them coming at [email protected].

It’s fall, which means I’d typically be in peak Ryan Adams listening season. Unfortunately, given the recent allegations, I’ve forced myself to move away from listening to Adams at all. What are your rules for listening to musicians who’ve been accused of bad things? Is there a line you’ve drawn, and if so, what is it? — P.J. from Simsbury, Conn.

Before I answer this question, let me state several things for the record: First, I believe Adams’ accusers. I believe the women (including Phoebe Bridgers) who say they felt pressured into entering sexual relationships at the risk of professional punishment, and who were generally treated in an abusive, exploitive manner. And I believe the woman who said that Adams knowingly solicited explicit photos from her when she was underage.

Second, I don’t really have hard and fast “rules” in these situations. (Does anybody?) I’m hardly the sort of moral authority who would determine a “line” that should be universally followed by all fans of artists accused of despicable acts. This is real life, not bowling. I’m only going to describe my own feelings. You are free to feel however you want.

Third, I really don’t want to have some abstract “separate the artists from the art” conversation right now. I would rather talk about this in practical, everyday terms, which are less absolute and perfect but, in my mind, more human and relatable.

Now, here’s my answer regarding Ryan Adams: I haven’t wanted to listen to him. It’s not really a matter of should I listen to him — the idea of putting on a Ryan Adams album hasn’t seemed at all appealing to me. And I say that as a person who owns all of his records and has written about him often in the past. (More on that in a moment.) Perhaps it helps that Adams is, at heart, a pastiche artist, and therefore can be easily supplanted by the many people he has ripped off: Gram Parsons, The Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Tom Petty, The Smiths, U2, the Rolling Stones. While I count myself as a fan of Adams’ music, taking him out of my rotation has been relatively painless.

If you still want to listen to Ryan Adams, that’s your choice. I’m not here to judge anyone’s listening habits. (Especially if you own physical copies of his music — it’s not like each post-scandal spin is going to earn him any additional money.) But for me, I can’t listen to Ryan Adams now without thinking about him and the people that he hurt. And that wasn’t true before. Songs, at their best, don’t cause us to dwell on the people who made them. Songs are supposed to make us think about ourselves — our own lives, feelings, and memories.

Cold Roses used to be an album that evoked some of the best periods of my life — back in the spring of 2006, when I met my wife and we fell in love. When we got married two years later, we listened to Cold Roses a lot in the summer months leading up to the wedding. That music was magical to me, and it was woven into the fabric of my life. But now when I put on Cold Roses, I just think about the dumb jerk who wrote the songs, and how he was messing around with a young girl who looked up to him as a mentor, when he simply regarded her as a plaything. And I would rather not think about that. I don’t like having “40something rock star exploiting a teenager” thoughts in my head. So, I’m fine not playing Cold Roses. It’s not really a moral stand. It’s just no longer pleasurable for me.

It’s that simple. In a way, the decision was made for me. Ryan Adams, and Ryan Adams alone, ripped this music out of my life. Now, I’m not saying that should be your reaction. This is just my personal preference, and it’s an honest and, I think, natural response.

(There’s a side issue here about whether there are still enough Ryan Adams fans to make a comeback viable. Nearly two years after the allegations broke, this remains unclear. The fact that one of his accusers is a beloved singer-songwriter in her own right no doubt complicates his future. Lots of people who love Phoebe Bridgers are probably always going to despise Ryan Adams, with justification. I suspect that Adams will likely never regain the stature he once had, though he will surely be back in some capacity in the near-ish future.)

I can already anticipate the counter-argument to my personal preference. It will come from a guy on Twitter with 17 followers and a bio that simply reads, “Free Thinker.” This person will point out that musicians in the past — including icons that you and I love — also did terrible things, and that it is inconsistent to not listen to one artist because of past transgressions and give those other people a pass. While I am not forcing this person to feel as I do, he will be offended that anyone is supposedly “canceling” Ryan Adams, even on a personal, one-to-one level.

This is my reply: Of course I’m being inconsistent! Human beings are inherently inconsistent. You can’t program yourself to have feelings that always correspond precisely to your ideology, especially when it comes to art. Also, I am aware of all the bad things my heroes have done. And I don’t excuse them, even if I still listen to their music. But a lot of that stuff happened years or even decades before I was even born, which strikes me as quite different than news that breaks in the present, when we’re all adults who now have to respond to awful newspaper articles in real time.

As a critic, I’ve written nice things about Ryan Adams’ music, and while I think he has talent, I now regret the role I played in giving him a platform that he abused time and again. That’s why this is different for me than debating about what Led Zeppelin did or didn’t do on the road in 1973. Yes, it’s important that all unseemly details are included in the histories of our favorite bygone bands, so that the totality of how they impacted culture — positively and negatively — is accounted for. But I wasn’t around for that. I am, however, around for this. Therefore, it is more personal to me, and I’m still learning from it, as a fan and as a critic. Ultimately, I don’t want to enable this guy any longer. I love a lot of albums. I can afford to set Ryan Adams aside.

I recently irritated a punk-loving friend by describing the Talking Heads as “proggy.” He argued they come out of punk which is diametrically opposed to prog and that being clever/inventive isn’t the same thing. To my mind, they worked with Eno who is at least prog-adjacent, and I feel like they appeal to lots of people who find straight-ahead punk rock boring (i.e. classic rock fans, prog fans, even jam band fans). So I guess my question is, is there a line at which something becomes “prog”? Are there any other bands like Talking Heads who sort of blur that line? — Tina from South Bend, Ind.

Before I answer this question, Tina, I just want to thank you for annoying your punk-loving friend. Annoying punk-loving friends is a special pastime that I have enjoyed for many years, especially when it involves the implication that prog is kinda better and more interesting than punk.

It would probably be more accurate to describe Talking Heads as “post-punk,” which describes the wave of bands that arrived shortly after the advent of punk that took that movement’s spirit and applied it to a wider range of sounds and musical influences beyond just three-chord rock. But I think you’re on to something when you contextualize Talking Heads as prog, as post-punk is basically a more progressive version of punk rock. This is certainly true of Talking Heads, who moved well beyond their bedrock CBGB sound once they hooked up with Brian Eno. But it also applies to many of their contemporaries, who have their own proggy attributes, like Television (long guitar solos), Wire (odd time signatures and plenty of synths), and The Damned (lots of colorful on-stage costumes and an album produced by Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason).

I would even venture to say that nearly every great punk band has some prog in them. What is The Clash’s Sandinista! if not a proggy-punk statement on par with Tales From Topographic Oceans? You could say the same about Husker Du’s sprawling concept double-album Zen Arcade or The Minutemen’s endlessly innovative and musically complex Double Nickels On The Dime. Or even Green Day’s American Idiot, which is at least as dense as The Wall. If you love Black Flag, note that Henry Rollins loves King Crimson. Or that Greg Ginn is a notorious Deadhead.

I could go on but tell me: Has your friend’s head exploded yet?

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.