While the death of DMX last week sparked a wave of heartfelt posts from admirers and peers on social media, some of the most touching posts came from those who were closest to the late rapper. DMX’s daughter Sasha was among them, paying a touching tribute to him with a poignant post on Twitter.
“Nothing will ever explain how i feel, how this all feels,” she wrote. ” “My twin, i love you. there’s always been so many misconceptions about who the f*ck you were but that didn’t matter because i knew who the f*ck you were. eternally greatful to have had you. i love you forever dad.”
nothing will ever explain how i feel, how this all feels. my twin, i love you. there’s always been so many misconceptions about who the fuck you were but that didn’t matter because i knew who the fuck you were. eternally greatful to have had you. i love you forever dad. pic.twitter.com/P1TUMePvJB
However, not all the tributes to X were accepted as they were intended by the artist’s fans. Def Jam, X’s label home throughout his dominant run at the end of the 90s and beginning of the aughts, received a backlash after releasing a pair of compilations on streaming before the rapper’s death was officially announced.
He was reportedly working on a new album for Def Jam at the time of his death, so we’ll see how fans react if and when it’s completed and released. Until then, you can read Uproxx’s reflection on X’s career and legacy here.
With less than a month to go until its premiere, Mythic Quest Season 2 has dropped a full trailer that shows Rob McElhenney and his team as they struggle to produce a new expansion and navigate changes at the office from more than simply the pandemic. Snoop Dogg also stops by for a cameo.
Here’s the official synopsis:
With the quarantine finally over, the new season of “Mythic Quest” finds everyone back in the office (well, almost everyone), attempting to build upon the success of Raven’s Banquet by launching an epic new expansion, but Ian (Rob McElhenney) and the newly promoted co-creative director, Poppy (Charlotte Nicdao), struggle with the game’s direction. Meanwhile, C.W. (F. Murray Abraham) reconciles some unresolved issues from his past, the testers (Ashly Burch and Imani Hakim) test the bounds of an office romance, and David (David Hornsby) loses yet another woman in his life as Jo (Jessie Ennis) leaves him to assist Brad (Danny Pudi).
The show is riding high off the success of its well-received Quarantine Episode, which required McElhenney and the crew to painstakingly orchestrate several remote shoots using only iPhones that were delivered to each of the cast, who were then responsible for filming their own scenes.
“We thought, well, if we can get everybody working and paid and focused on something for two to three weeks, that’s a win. That was really the inception of the entire thing,” McElhenney explained to Uproxx shortly after delivering the epic episode to fans.
Mythic Quest Season 2 starts streaming May 7 on Apple TV+.
Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.
This week saw Taylor Swift refresh her archives and Doja Cat and SZA team up for a hit. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
Taylor Swift — Fearless (Taylor’s Version)
Taylor Swift kicked off the journey of re-recording her old albums last week with the release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), which features faithful recreations of classic tracks. She also shared a touching note with her fans that reads in part, “This was the musical era in which so many inside jokes were created between us, so many hugs exchanged and hands touched, so many unbreakable bonds formed. So before I say anything else, let me just say that it was a real honor to get to be a teenager alongside you.”
Doja Cat and SZA — “Kiss Me More”
Here in the middle of April, summer is quickly approaching. Now the soundtrack for the season is starting to come together as Doja Cat and SZA linked up for “Kiss Me More,” a soulful and subtly funky new tune that’s not too far removed from “Say So” on the Doja Cat family tree.
Brockhampton — Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine
This may be the beginning of the end for Brockhampton, as Kevin Abstract recently declared that after releasing Roadrunner, there will be one more this year before the group calls it quits. They’re not going out alone, as Roadrunner features guest spots from folks like Danny Brown, Jpegmafia, and ASAP Rocky.
Miguel — Art Dealer Chic Vol. 4
Miguel released a new installment of his beloved Art Dealer Chic EP series last week, which is bound to please longtime followers. If that wasn’t enough, in a video for “So I Lie,” it seems like Miguel low-key shared some pretty major life news.
Polo G — “Rapstar”
Polo G has quickly earned the favor of hip-hop heads, and subsequently, he’s become a breakout star over the past couple years. He celebrates this status on “Rapstar,” an appropriately titled tune on which the young rapper flexes so hard his shirt is in danger of tearing.
CJ — Loyalty Over Royalty (Deluxe)
People can’t get enough of CJ right now thanks to his breakout hit “Whoopty,” and now he has given the people what they want by expanding his Loyalty Over Royalty EP into essentially a full-length album with a new deluxe edition. The release adds four fresh songs to the front of the tracklist, including “Whoopty NYC” which adds French Montana and Rowdy Rebel to the track.
Majid Jordan — “Waves Of Blue”
Of all the artists signed to Drake’s OVO Sound, Majid Jordan has been among the most quiet of the past few years. They last dropped a full-length album four years ago, but they returned last week with “Waves Of Blue,” a synth-pop emotional outpouring of affection.
Lil Tjay — Destined 2 Win
In his review, Uproxx’s Aaron Williams writes of Lil Tjay’s new album, “Although Destined 2 Win doesn’t offer many surprises or tremendous strides in character development for the burgeoning star, it does its job as a showcase for his burnished songwriting well enough to justify its existence. […] His swagger is enough to coast on for now, with his charm as an artist and gift for imitation giving him a smooth surface to glide on while he figures himself out. Hopefully, no one scratches that surface before he does.”
Darkside — “The Limit”
Nicolas Jaar and Dave Harrington revealed months ago that they have a new Darkside album on the way, and they made it official last week with a formal announcement for Spiral. Last week’s news was accompanied by “The Limit,” a hypnotic, groove-driven new track.
Japanese Breakfast — “Posing In Bondage”
Michelle Zauner continued the rollout for her Japanese Breakfast album last week with a creepy video for “Posing In Bondage.” She explained the song and visual, “‘Posing In Bondage’ is a ballad about loneliness and longing, a song about two people who want so badly to connect but are never quite able to do so. No place felt lonelier than an empty grocery at 1 a.m..”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
A few days ago, the guitar that Phoebe Bridgers famously smashed on Saturday Night Livewent up for auction to benefit GLAAD. When Uproxx reported the story on April 9, the leading bid was up to $6,000. In the days since, that number climbed drastically, and now the auction has ended with an astonishing winning bid of $101,500.
Anthony Ramos — the supervising producer of the GLAAD Media Awards, to which the auction was connected — told Variety of the auction:
“I know she has a loyal fan base. Saturday night when I went to bed, it was around $18,000, and I was like, ‘That’s a great number!’ I was kind of hoping we would get to 25. Then I woke up and it was 40, then 50, then 80, and finally over 100. Obviously we were very pleasantly surprised. I’m so thankful someone wanted to support our work and wanted that guitar so badly. […] Obviously [the buyer is] someone who’s either a huge Phoebe Bridgers fan or someone who is really into broken guitars or someone who really wants to help us accelerate our work for the LGBTQ community, and hopefully it’s someone who checks all three of those boxes. The other side of it is that we’re so grateful to Phoebe for donating the guitar but also for being someone who’s a visible and out part of the community in rock music. She made a great album, and we love all she’s doing and love working with her.”
Bridgers also seemed pretty blown away by the money her guitar raised, as she shared a link to the auction yesterday and added simply, “uh.”
I’m ready for The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to be over. That has nothing to do with the show itself, which is a fun time and I’m forever thankful for dancing Zemo — I’m just excited for Loki. Tom Hiddleston, who plays the God of Mischief, is excited, too, and in a new interview with Empire, the actor gave a hint about what to expect from the series.
“I want to preserve the freshness of the show for when it emerges, but something to think about is the [show’s] logo, which seems to refresh and restore,” he said. “The font of how Loki is spelled out seems to keep changing shape.” Hiddleston, who last appeared in the Marvel Cinematic Universe in Avengers: Endgame, called Loki “the quintessential shapeshifter. His mercurial nature is that you don’t know whether, across the MCU, he’s a hero or a villain or an anti-hero. You don’t know whether you can trust him. He literally and physically changes shape into an Asgardian guard, or into Captain America repeatedly. Thor talks about how he could change into a snake.”
Hiddleton also said that the logo “might give you an idea that Loki, the show, is about identity, and about integrating the disparate fragments of the many selves that he can be, and perhaps the many selves that we are.” Here’s the logo:
Sometimes the best new R&B can be hard to find, but there are plenty of great rhythm and blues tunes to get into if you have the time to sift through the hundreds of newly released songs every week. So that R&B heads can focus on listening to what they really love in its true form, we’ll be offering a digest of the hottest R&B jams that fans of the genre should hear every Friday.
Doja Cat — “Kiss Me More” Feat. SZA
Doja Cat and SZA finally released their single “Kiss Me More” after previously teasing fans with it and it came with a music video. Set in a video game ran by women, Doja and SZA play along in soft pink, flowy setting that takes place somewhere not named Earth. “Kiss Me More” is a cheery vibe that is sure to be heard all summer.
Elhae — Aura 3
Elhae‘s Aura 3 is here. The 10-song project features guest appearances from Rick Ross and Xavier Omar. It also includes his single “My City” with Masego and the previously released cut “Fun Fact.” After one listen, Elhae proves why this is one train you should hop.
Sonder & Jorja Smith — “Nobody But You”
Sonder and Jorja Smith on “Nobody But You” is the R&B link up we all deserve. Sonder, consisting of Brent Faiyaz as well as producers Atu and Dpat, and Jorja crafted a hollow acoustic number filled with an emotional tale. Brent Faiyaz has been creating a lot of noise lately and “Nobody But You” is just one of many singles the singer has released as of late.
Miguel — Art Dealer Chic 4
This week, Miguel placed the entire Art Dealer Chic series on digital service providers and on top of that, he released it’s fourth installment: Art Dealer Chic 4. “I’ve been doing a lot of work to consider and refine my beliefs in the last few years,” he said in a statement. “Inevitably, this brought me back to Art Dealer Chic as ADC is more or less a moniker for active mindset curation; choosing the thoughts, emotions, and actions that reflect my truest self instead of letting what I’ve experienced or what is expected of me dictate my choices.”
Otis Kane — “Sweet Sensation”
As Otis Kane gears up to release his forthcoming debut album, he drops off his new single titled “Sweet Sensation.” “In this song, I’m describing that feeling you get when you meet someone so special that you just have to be around them,” he said in a statement. “We’ve all experienced that. When someone is just so bright and vibrant—being in their presence makes you feel good. That’s the ‘Sweet Sensation.’”
Majid Jordan — “Waves Of Blue”
It’s been a minute since we last heard from R&B duo Majid Jordan. This week the OVO Sound singers released their new track “Waves Of Blue” and it’s a serene vibe that takes you away. “Waves of Blue is like staring at the ocean,” they said in a statement. “You’re not in the water, but you’re still getting carried away by its currents. It’s the story of someone’s desire to love and be lost in that love. Waves of Blue was made at the very beginning of this album, and it only makes sense that we begin our next chapter with this song.”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Will Smith and director Antoine Fuqua are the newest big names to announce they’ll be taking their business out of Georgia following the passing of the highly controversial Election Integrity Act of 2021, which has drawn the ire of voting rights groups that are accusing lawmakers of voter suppression. What’s notable about Smith and Fuqua’s protest is that Emancipation, their upcoming film for Apple TV about a runaway slave, was scheduled to begin shooting in June. Rearranging a production’s location mere months before it begins will cost the team time and money, but in a joint statement, they make it clear that filming in Georgia is no longer an option. Via Variety:
“At this moment in time, the Nation is coming to terms with its history and is attempting to eliminate vestiges of institutional racism to achieve true racial justice,” Fuqua and Smith said in a joint statement. “We cannot in good conscience provide economic support to a government that enacts regressive voting laws that are designed to restrict voter access. The new Georgia voting laws are reminiscent of voting impediments that were passed at the end of Reconstruction to prevent many Americans from voting. Regrettably, we feel compelled to move our film production work from Georgia to another state.”
Smith and Fuqua are not alone. Major League Baseball recently pulled the All Star Game out of Atlanta in protest of the voting laws, which has rankled Republicans like Mitch McConnell, who thinks corporations should “stay out of politics.” Except, of course, when it comes to political donations. Mitch has gladly accepted those.
Getting a tattoo could be considered an important life decision, as the ink injected into your skin stays there for the rest of your life. This decision is especially important when the tattoo covers your whole back, so Grimes just made a major move: She took to Instagram last night to share a photo of a gigantic new back tattoo she just got.
The ink looks something like a warped, wire frame version of the bones in a human torso. It was done in white ink, but since the tattoo was still fresh at the time of the photo, the lines look more red than white at the moment. Grimes captioned her post, “Full back in white ink by [Trayer Tryon of Hundred Waters] w sum help from the alien computer brain of [Nusi Quero]. Don’t have a good pic cuz it hurts too much and I need to sleep haha, and it’ll be red for a few wks , but gna be beautiful alien scars. Hope everyone’s having a good day.”
Tryon and Quero also shared some images of Grimes’ tattoo. Quero explained how they collaborated on the design with Tryon, writing, “[Tryon] drew the base shapes on an iPad and then emailed me the image file. I turned it into 3D geometry, selected vertices on the shape, and guided and grew the embellishments along and around the shapes that he laid down first with a series of procedural operators (math rules) in a way that I felt spoke to his shapes, and [Grimes]. I then sent it back to him as a png overlay and etc etc and they went in on it immediately full on 1 take 1 session!”
Check out the posts about Grimes’ new ink above and below.
(SPOILERS for the Midseason Premiere of Fear the Walking Dead will be found below.)
This week’s midseason premiere of Fear the Walking Dead was originally meant to be the midseason finale before it was so rudely interrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and wow! What a midseason finale it would have been. It works as effectively, however, as a midseason premiere, and it’s that kind of episode that would have been infuriating had it not been so beautifully executed. Instead, the episode, “The Door,” will go down as one of the most devastating episodes in the history of The Walking Dead universe, and one of the best in years.
It’s been a long time since a beloved character has died on Fear the Walking Dead (Madison in the fourth midseason finale). In fact, in the first half of the episode, I was ruminating about how much Fear had improved without sacrificing any characters, which proved to be an unfortunately ominous thought. By the end of the episode, the series had killed off its (arguably) best character.
The episode begins with John Dorie (Garrett Dillahunt) back in his old cabin, having separated from June. Unable to cope with the weight of his past, John had decided to return to the cabin where he met June to take his own life, but each time he brings his gun up to his mouth to pull the trigger, he’s interrupted by another walker ambling onto his property.
John eventually decides to put aside his suicide for a moment and head back to the general store. There, he finds Morgan and Dakota hiding from the rangers that Virginia had sent to track down her sister. One of those rangers makes his way into the store, but John can’t bring himself to kill him. He’s killed too many, he reasons. They hide long enough for the ranger to wander away. Morgan and Dakota, meanwhile, try to convince John to join in Morgan’s new outpost and help them fight off Virginia. John, however, has lost his will to live, and when the ranger John refused to kill returns and nearly kills Morgan, John feels even more convinced that he’s snakebitten. Morgan won’t hear of it, and tries to convince John of his value, but he still feels guilty about Janis’s death, and the fact that he could never figure out who murdered Cameron. The only clue he has is a broken piece of a knife handle, although he was never able to track down the owner of the knife.
After some convincing, John agrees to at least help Dakota and Morgan cross a zombie-infested bridge, which proves to be one of the more harrowing and intense sequences in the show’s history. The car stalls out in the middle of a zombie horde, and John — who doesn’t seem to care if he lives or dies — fights off the zombies as he gets the car restarted. There are so many close calls, it feels almost impossible that he escaped without being bitten.
After they clear the zombies, Dakota and Morgan make one more plea for John to join them, but he again begs off. However, after Morgan leaves the scene for a moment, a zombie stirs and Dakota has to quickly stab it in the head. That’s when John notices her knife. It’s the one with the broken handle. Dorie realized that Dakota killed Cameron, and when he confronts her about it, Dakota admits it, saying that she had no choice because Cameron had prevented her from running away from her sister Virginia.
John tries to calm Dakota down and reason with her, but Dakota doesn’t want to be reasoned with. Afraid that John will rat her out, Dakota eventually shoots him in the chest. John, bleeding, falls into the water below. That’s when it becomes clear that John actually doesn’t want to die. He doesn’t want to repeat the mistakes of his father. He wants to live. He wants to return to his wife, June. John manages to swim back to the surface and grab a door, where he floats downstream. It appears as though John will live.
In the meantime, Morgan returns and sees what’s happened. He confronts Dakota about it, and she admits to shooting John, and then makes another confession. It was Dakota who saved Morgan’s life and patched him back up after Virginia left him for dead at the end of Season Six. Dakota wants badly to escape from her sister and live in Morgan’s community, and despite shooting John, she reasons that Morgan owes her that much after he saved her life.
Morgan goes along, but also calls on his walkie into Virginia — who is in John’s cabin, where she’s supposed to meet with him — to let her know that John is floating downstream on a door and to keep an eye out. June is with Virginia and frantically waits for John to float downstream. When John finally floats to shore, it appears that there will be another one of those sweet, heartfelt reunions Fear often does so well. When John looks up at June, however, she sees that he’s no longer alive. He’s a zombie. It appears momentarily that she’s going to let him bite her, but June reluctantly puts a knife through the head of the love of her life. Viewers, meanwhile, are left crestfallen.
AMC
It’s a loss that is almost as surprising as it is devastating. Garret Dillahunt is probably the biggest star on the show, which I assumed gave him a certain amount of plot armor. My guess, however, is that Dillahunt could’ve stayed on Fear as long as he’d have liked, but I know he had a hard pandemic during which he lost his father. Dillahunt is also never at a loss for roles — he’s in Zack Snyder’s upcoming zombie film Army of the Dead, James Franco’s The Long Home, Andrew Dominik’s adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates’ fictionalized account of Marilyn Monroe, Blonde, and Michael Bay’s Ambulance with Jake Gyllenhaal. To be honest, Dillahunt lasted longer than I expected he would, but it was nice to see him go out on such a wonderfully, brilliantly heartbreaking episode of television.
In the meantime, there will obviously be ramifications. June is going to be inconsolable, as will Morgan, who called John his “best friend” in the episode. He is going to have to figure out what to do with Dakota. She’s the only leverage they’ve got to get Grace and the others back from Virginia. On the other hand, it turns out that Dakota is just as bad as her sister, and Zoe Colleti — who plays Dakota — did an outstanding job in the episode (in fact, this entire season). I never considered for a moment that she was behind Cal’s death or that she was the mystery character who saved Morgan. Bravo!
RIP John Dorie. He may have been the least flawed, most well-liked character in the entire The Walking Dead universe since Glenn. The series, which has never been as good as it is now, will nevertheless never be the same again without him. AMC, however, has smartly centered next week’s episode around Colman Domingo’s Strand to remind us that Garret Dillahunt is not the only celebrated actor on the series.
AMC’s ‘Fear The Walking Dead’ airs on Sundays at 9:00pm EST.
It’s been a year of NBA players embracing creating and owning their own media. The Orlando Bubble saw a proliferation of podcasts and YouTube channels and the pandemic had bored players looking to live videos on their social platforms, hosting anything from talent contests to wine tastings. And as the summer of 2020 erupted in necessary protest and set a spotlight on social justice, player media echoed and supported the same sentiment being shouted in the streets.
Beyond28, a podcast created by the Warriors, sponsored by JPMorgan Chase and Goodby Silverstein & Partners (GS&P), and produced by Audio Up Media, is a new and necessary example of a team following in the footsteps of its players.
The Warriors launched their Beyond28 initiative in February 2020 to celebrate Black History Month, but largely to look beyond it. The premise of the platform is to stress that the recognition and celebration of Black culture should not be limited to one month per yer, and features player-led vignettes, interviews, and panel discussions, as well as spotlights on Black artists, culture drivers, and creators.
“We launched the Beyond28 platform last year, before the world set on fire,” Amanda Chin, Warriors VP of Brand Marketing, recalls over the phone with the levity needed to look back on the last 12 months. “When we came back to the table to talk about the importance of what we’re doing and how to approach it moving forward, to create the maximum amount of impact, the idea of a podcast really stuck because it gave us this vehicle to continue the dialogue recognizing the joy and the adversity the Black community faces, day in and day out.”
With the growing prevalence of audio as a preferred medium to tell intimate and inspiring stories, the podcast was in some ways the next logical step for the Warriors, Chin says.
Bay Area natives will recognize the voice anchoring the podcast, ESPN’s The Undefeated writer Marc J. Spears, who worked with Beyond28 last June, hosting a Father’s Day panel about growing up Black in America. Chin says when they started thinking about a host for the podcast, Spears’ name naturally came up.
Starting on Wednesday, April 21, the podcast will premiere across all audio streaming platforms, and a new episode will be released every month over a 12-month period. Episodes will have a wide range of topics, but each one-hour show aims to celebrate Black culture and community through the lens of a specific theme, featuring an array of artists, activists, community members and of course, Warriors players.
“The players have been very embracing of the initiative,” Chin says, “A lot of Beyond28 was really inspired by the players. Back when Andre Iguodala was on our team he was quoted saying that he doesn’t celebrate Black History Month, he celebrates Black History year round. In a lot of ways, that was the impetus for this actually coming to life.”
Already, the Beyond28 podcast has inspired other teams, including the 76ers, to reach out to the Warriors for best practices in lunching similar initiatives of their own. As a franchise-driven program, the podcast is already unique, and with fans hungry for new and meaningful ways to connect with their teams and favorite players, more NBA teams testing out podcasts as a platform to deliver seems the next natural trend.
“It’s great to see it catching traction across the league, and hopefully across sports and in other businesses as well,” Chin agrees.
As for longterm goals for the podcast, the focus is on spending “the next year delivering interesting content on the topic and hopefully reaching out to as many people as possible”.
“If all goes well we’ll continue the podcast,” Chin says, “but really, the goal is to keep our foot on the gas regarding celebrating and honoring the Black experience year round, as a whole.”
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