Month: April 2021

Raleigh, North Carolina rapper Toosii has seen the heights of success since his entrance to the music world a few years ago. His 2020 album Poetic Pain debuted within the Billboard 200’s top 20, his single “Love Cycle” recently went gold, and he received glowing co-signs from his South Coast Music label DaBaby and others as he becomes a prominent hitmaker in his own right. On his new song, “What It Cost,” however, he spends some time contemplating the downsides of his rise to stardom and the work it takes to remain at the top.

“I came from rags to riches, I ain’t tryna go back to the rags,” he reflects on the chorus. “I never knew tears was what it cost.” The video opens with a side profile shot of Toosii in the studio, explaining his worries to an unseen listener before launching into a split-screen narrative that contrasts his prior conditions with his current ones, making “rags to riches” about as literal as it gets.

“What It Cost” is the second single from Toosii’s upcoming mixtape Thank You For Believing, due May 7 via South Coast Music and Capitol Records, following “Back Together” released earlier this month. You can pre-order the tape here.

Watch Toosii’s “What It Cost” video above.

Around this time last month, Lord Huron announced a new album, Long Lost, and so far, the group has shared a pair of songs from it: the driving single “Not Dead Yet” and the breezy “Mine Forever.” Now they’re back with another preview of the album (which is set for release on May 21), the title track.

The new song is a cowboy-style ballad, complete with a spaghetti Western rhythm and prominent string arrangements. There’s also some ’50s-style piano playing to liven up the verses for good measure. The aesthetic of the album so far has been particularly cowboy-indebted, so this stylistic direction is a pleasant non-surprise.

On the track, Ben Schneider seems content to be “long lost” in the expanses of nature, singing on the chorus, “Send me to the mountains / Let me go free forever / I’ll be running through the forest / Dancing in the fields like this.” He later adds that if he’s going to die anywhere, he’d prefer if it was away from an urban center, “Leave me where the moonbeams carve through the leaves like blades / Lay me in the tall-grown grass in a shallow grave / Let it have me.”

Listen to “Long Lost” above.

Long Lost is out 5/21 via Whispering Pine Studios Inc./Republic Records. Pre-order it here.

Is Mike Lindell a 2006 romantic-comedy starring Matthew McConaughey and Sarah Jessica Parker? Because he had a failure to lunch.

Frank, the “free speech” social media site from the sweaty pillow tycoon who fancies himself the next Jeff Bezos, was supposed to launch on Thursday at midnight for VIP subscribers. But it turns out Lindell is maybe not the most reliable and trustworthy fellow. “As the hours passed and Thursday turned to Friday morning, some Telegram followers of Lindell’s verified Telegram channel were left puzzled,” Newsweek reported, with users leaving comments like, “It seems the site did not go live the way it was supposed to. Not sure what the issue is but it is a huge letdown that’s for sure. After all the hype.” Another wrote, “No communication, no text….no one knows what is going on. Doesn’t feel good.”

The reason for the apparent delay was not immediately clear… In recent weeks, Lindell had promoted the platform as a free speech hybrid of Twitter and YouTube, claiming that it may eventually boast hundreds of thousands of users. He claimed dedicated servers meant it would be resistant to takedown attempts.

It appears the launch has been pushed back to Sunday. Unless this counts as “live.”

Lindell revealed earlier this week that Frank users can say whatever they want on the platform, as long as it’s not “the four swear words. The c-word, the n-word, the f-word, or God’s name in vain.” He’s also “not worried about Amazon taking it down.” Now we know why: there’s nothing to take down if there’s nothing up.

Lindell has gone full galaxy brain on us.

(Via Newsweek)

Kyra Sedgwick stopped by The Drew Barrymore Show on Wednesday where she shared a story about the first and last time she was invited to Tom Cruise‘s house. According to Sedgwick, it all went down while she was very pregnant in the early ’90s, and she and her husband Kevin Bacon were at Cruise’s house for a screening of A Few Good Men, which also starred Bacon. The whole thing was a pretty big deal. Along with Cruise and Nicole Kidman, there were other famous celebs like Demi Moore, who was in the film, and Bruce Willis. “It was a flow,” as Sedgwick described the festivities, which she says she’s not often invited to, and possibly, for what happened next.

“There was this, like, fireplace mantle, and I was looking around and there was this little button underneath the mantel,” Sedgwick told Barrymore. Thinking that something “interesting” might happen, like a hidden room, Sedgwick pressed it. Nothing happened. At that point, Sedgwick became concerned and decided to tap Tom Cruise on the shoulder and confess to pressing the button just to give him a heads up. Unfortunately, he did not have good news: Sedgwick had pressed the “panic button,” which turned into a huge ordeal.

“And so the cops came, they had to stop the screening. They had to see Tom I think there were more than like five cop cars, it was something,” Sedgwick explained to a laughing Barrymore. “I didn’t get invited back.”

(Via The Drew Barrymore Show)

Beach Bunny dropped their debut album, Honeymoon, in early 2020, and one of the highlights was the single “Cloud 9.” Now that song has gotten a facelift thanks to new contributions from Tegan & Sara. Aside from the feature, some of the lyrics have also been updated to make the song more inclusive for a variety of listeners.

On the original chorus, the first lines go, “But when he loves me, I feel like I’m floating / When he calls me pretty, I feel like somebody.” That remains true of the first chorus on the new version, but the pronouns are updated to “she” on the second chorus and then “they” on the third and final chorus.

Tegan & Sara said of remaking the song, “We’re massive fans of Beach Bunny, and when we heard ‘Cloud 9’ for the first time, [we] fell in love with the brilliant lyrics and addictive melody. We love that Lili [Trifilio] was up to let us experiment with changing the pronoun in the chorus to she. The efforts made to make the song relatable to everyone isn’t just about inclusivity: we think it’s a great indication of the flexibility and creative spirit of the band at its core!”

Listen to the new version of “Cloud 9” above.

Tegan & Sara is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

My Chemical Romance kicked off 2020 with some great news: They were planning a reunion tour, their first shows in 9 years. Of course, not long after that announcement, the world delivered some bad news of historically significant proportions: the coronavirus pandemic. The band pushed their touring plans back to 2021, but now it turns out, with the pandemic still raging on, that this wasn’t enough of a delay: Today, MCR announced that they have once again delayed their tour, which is now set for 2022.

The band said in a statement, “My Chemical Romance is postponing our 2021 touring plans until 2022. We are deeply sad, but those emotions are only a fraction of the depth of feeling we have all experienced watching the suffering and loss of the past year. We just want to be as sure as we can be that everyone is safe. Refunds will be offered to anyone who wants them. We are sorry if this is disappointing, and we REALLY can’t wait to see you in 2022.”

The upcoming shows will be the first time the band has gone on tour since they performed in support of their 2010 album Danger Days: The True Lives Of The Fabulous Killjoys.

Check out the revised tour dates on the band’s website.

The currency that started out as a bit is officially making people worried there’s a cryptocurrency bubble. But if you’re in on the fun, well, you may have just made a lot of money this week. Dogecoin, the dog meme-based cryptocurrency, has had its own meteoric rise along with retail stocks like AMC Theaters and GameStop in 2021. And on Thursday, that rise went from a pipe dream to the crypto being worth some serious money. Especially for investors who got in when it was largely worth nothing.

As CNBC detailed, Thursday saw a nearly 400 percent rise in the crypto, adding $20 billion to its market value in a 24-hour period:

Dogecoin has been climbing again in the past week, hitting 10 cents a coin for the first time on Wednesday. It’s risen by a whopping 400% in the last seven days.

On Friday, a Reddit user posted a picture of their dogecoin holdings on the Robinhood investing app.

“Hey guys I just became a Dogecoin millionaire,” the user said, showing a balance of $1,081,441.29 in their account.

The currency has trended a number of times in recent months, but the huge rise in its value is attributed to a number of things. Elon Musk, frequent supporter of both memes and also cryptocurrency, tweeted once again about the joke crypto that’s somehow gotten some significant legs after a long stretch of essentially being worthless. Some have speculated that helped the rise considerably.

But the recent initial public offering (IPO) of CoinBase, a crypto exchange platform, has played a part along with Robinhood, the stock app that also saw users flood to it during the retail stock craze from earlier in 2021.

The excitement around Coinbase’s debut led to a surge in the prices of bitcoin and ether. Bitcoin hit a record high of more than $64,000 on Thursday, while ether briefly topped $2,500 for the first time Friday morning. Dogecoin has been no exception to the frenzied interest in these digital assets.

Dogecoin has attracted a following among users of Robinhood. On Thursday, the U.S. online brokerage said there was a “major outage” in its crypto trading feature after facing “unprecedented demand.” The feature is now back online, Robinhood said.

While you had to have gotten in on the Bitcoin craze years ago to truly strike it rich with entire coins, a number of people have made an absurd amount of money on Doge because they had a lot of the joke currency simply lying around in huge amounts. Its first jump in value in December of 2003, for example, made the price of a single Dogecoin jump from $0.00026 to $0.00095. The idea that it’s worth more than an actual quarter or so now, essentially, is what all the fuss is about for some very meme-centric crypto traders. A lot of which are currently freaking out on Twitter.

All of this, of course, has more traditional investors worried about a potential cryptocurrency bubble. It’s important to note, of course, that non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that were all the rage a few weeks ago have already seen pretty precipitous drops in value. But it’s all fun and games until the global economy crashes (or we cook the planet mining crypto), right?

Back in 1996, Chris Swanson, Ben Swanson, Eric Weddle, Jonathan Cargill founded the Bloomington, Indiana-based label Secretly Canadian. Indie music fans know the label well, of course, as it has been home to many era-defining artists, like The War On Drugs, Whitney, Jason Molina, and plenty of others. Now that the label has been around for 25 years, they are celebrating in a number of ways.

All of these ways are part of the year-long SC25 initiative to help fight homelessness in Bloomington, which aims to raise a quarter of a million dollars for Bloomington organization New Hope For Families. The label shared a statement about the initiative, which also addresses the recent fatal FedEx shooting in Indianapolis, writing:

“Like all of our neighbors here in Indiana, the Secretly family are devastated by the news that developed overnight. Our hearts are with all of those affected by the tragedy in Indianapolis.

Secretly was founded in 1996, just down the road in Bloomington, and today we are sharing plans — long in the works — to mark our 25th anniversary with a mission to aid families experiencing homelessness in our hometown. Though our hearts are heavy, we feel more connected to our local community than ever, and it is with grief and gratitude that we go forward with these plans today.”

The celebration will include the SC25 Editions series of rereleases, a collection of 12 albums re-issued in limited editions. Releases will arrive in groups of four throughout the year, and the first set includes Jens Lekman’s When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog, The War On Drugs’ Wagonwheel Blues, Tig Notaro’s Live, and Whitney’s Light Upon The Lake.

On top of that, there’s also the SC25 Singles series, which will feature “25 new, rare and unreleased songs, covers and collaborations from artists both within and outside the Secretly Canadian family.” The first two of these singles have been released today: Stella Donnelly’s cover of Jens Lekman’s “If I Could Cry (It Would Feel Like This)” and Porridge Radio’s rendition of Scout Niblett’s “Wet Road.” Proceeds from all the aforementioned releases will go to New Hope For Families.

Learn more about the SC25 Editions series here and listen to the new Donnelly and Porridge Radio tracks below.

It’s a moment we (or maybe only me) were waiting for: Ray Romano singing “Crazy in Love” by Beyoncé on Made for Love, as heard in the trailer. But sadly, it never appeared in the series. I don’t hold it against the HBO Max tech-comedy too strongly because it was still a good show and Cristin Milioti rules, but at the same time, I’m furious. If you promise me the star of Everybody Loves Raymond covering Beyoncé, you better deliver.

So what happened? Basically, it was very effective marketing.

“When thoughtfully considering the best first beat in this marketing campaign, we wanted to lean into this absurdity and leave our potential audience with piqued interest but more questions than answers,” Pia Chaozon Barlow, HBO Max’s senior VP of original marketing, told the A.V. Club. “The idea for the ‘Rayonce’ teaser was born out of the desire to lean into the notoriety and popularity of a smash hit and recognizable song lyrics while also leveraging the iconic voice of Ray Romano.” She added that Romano’s spoken-word cover, which I’m guessing his character has sung to “synthetic partner” Diane at least once, “provided an unexpected twist and allowed us to kick the door open on this marketing campaign in a surprising way.” The big takeaway there is: “Rayonce.”

If Made for Love returns for season two, Brad Garrett should sing “Halo.”

(Via the AV Club)

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Exactly a year and two days ago, Kenny Mason arrived on the music scene as part fiery lyricist, part rock star, and part rookie of the year contender. This all came with the release of his debut project, Angelic Hoodrat, which arrived in the midst of worldwide chaos and confusion as the coronavirus pandemic began its second month of existence in the United States. Despite this and a slight moment of reconsideration, the Atlanta native dropped the album in what proved to be a well-executed move.

The title that is Angelic Hoodrat carries a duality that is hard to miss in Mason’s music. His ability to move effortlessly between songs that are influenced by today’s hip-hop to that of which carry a heavy rock influence are just half of the recipe. This duality is also formed from Mason making the best of both worlds, one that represents the struggle that once was and another that is the current success he indulges in. For the rapper himself, this was all intentional and he’s happy to see that fans have continued to receive the project

“I think it translated almost exactly like how I wanted it to,” he said during a call with Uproxx. “People that like my stuff, they get it, they understand the duality of the title and within the music too and I’m really happy about that.” That duality gets to live again through a new edition of his debut project, Angelic Hoodrat: Supercut. The 12-track effort sees appearances from the likes of Freddie Gibbs, Denzel Curry, and more. Along with its arrival, Mason sat down with Uproxx for a conversation surrounding the project, standing out on the Atlanta rap scene, and what success means to him.

You just hit the one-year anniversary mark of Angelic Hoodrat. How has the last year been like for you?

Overall it’s been exciting. I know it’s a pandemic and that messed up a lot of plans that we had, but it also was cool, because I got to make more music. I may have not even had a Supercut if I didn’t just have time to sit down and make it. I be trying to find the good in everything and I feel like it was still some good that came out of having to be home. I’m blessed too, it was people that ain’t have jobs or lost their jobs and all type of crazy sh*t. I’m blessed, I ain’t got nothing to complain about and I’m really happy that we made some cool stuff during that time.

I love the Angelic Hoodrat title and how it’s an oxymoron that you relate to yourself. Why’d you pick that specific title and what meaning does it hold for you in your life?

Well, the title came from a bar I had in a song that’s not coming out. I thought it was just something cool to say, because I always liked stuff with a general religious tone, not heavenly or not specific, but just an aura of feeling angelic or ethereal, stuff like that. I’m also Zone 3, it just goes hand-in-hand, but it really did grow because that was like 3-4 years ago when I say that line and then my homeboy was like, “That should be the title of a song or a project.” So I always kept in mind and then the meaning just grew like “Yo, I’m really got a duality to myself.” I’m discovering that more and I’m discovering it more sonically too in my music and conceptually, so it grew into his own thing.

What is the key music-related moment or moments that took place in your life that’s also foundational towards the artist you are today?

I think like the area I grew up in, my sort of love-hate, ultimately love, relationship with my environments, the environments that I was in. I understand certain things that happened to me that seemed bad or just moments of adversity helped me grow and prepare me for life in general because life ain’t easy for nobody. I don’t think life gets easier, I think you just learn how to deal with it better. I have to be grateful for things that I’ve learned, but I also know why these areas are the way they are, historically too, and I know, psychologically, why people do things they do, or act the way they act, or make the decisions they make. I struggle with my sort of resentment with being a product of that and feeling like I didn’t have a choice, but also I feel extremely liberated because I know my destiny is up to me. Depending on my attitude or how I look at certain situations, I can grow from it and that’s real liberating, too.

You come from a city that thrives in the realm of trap rap (Young Thug, Future, Young Nudy, Gunna, etc.) and more traditional rappers (Deante Hitchcock, JID, etc.), but you stick out in this scene and your album is proof of that. How have you been able to find comfort in this space?

I think it might be, as far as what I’m into, it may be a generational thing of kids that grew up on the internet or having the access to explore stuff that I like outside of what’s going on in my neighborhood. I grew up in Westside Atlanta and in my teenage years, I came up in Zone 3, folks like [Young] Thug, they’re from Zone 3, but also, I was on YouTube listening to Foo Fighters, Smashing Pumpkins, and My Chemical Romance. I was listening to stuff that I can’t go outside and hear, but I’m on the internet and I can explore it as deep as I want to know. I’ve always been that way when I like something, I indulge in it all the way. I try to find every bit of it and anything close to it, I try to explore all that. It’s the most like that when it comes to music and different types of sounds and sonics. I’ll find an artist and then I’ll find every artist that had anything to do with that artist. That’s combined with me just being in the city and stuff that’s already right there.

So you really just found the best of both worlds.

Yeah, and it happened naturally. Even now, I’m not trying to make grunge music or whatever, I like the way that this sounds, the beat is going this way, and I got these words to say over it and then it comes out that way. I’m blessed enough to have the patience to make it cohesive. I gotta know myself to be able to make it make sense.

What are some attributes and messages for yourself that you require to be present in the music you create?

That sh*t just gotta hit bro, that sh*t just gotta hit me. It gotta be very honest and it is a little bit of premeditation as far as the overall outline conceptually, but I don’t put too much pressure on trying to make it a storyline per se or a narrative. I don’t want to force the listener into a narrative, I want everybody to have their own narrative to it cause that’s what great art is to me, or so I’ve been told. That’ll get better too, I’ll have more of an understanding on that as I go too. It just gotta connect bro, the connection comes in different forms, it may come in really intricate lyricist rapping and it may come in like me screaming over some metal sh*t. It may come with me singing over acoustic guitars, like whatever way it comes, as long as it connects and it’s honest, I’m gonna rock with it.

How do you define success and does failure or the possibility of it worry you?

I don’t really believe in failure. I just think that people just stop, that’s all. You know? I guess you only fail when you die without doing what you wanted to do. Even that, you gon’ want to do a lot of things and you probably won’t do everything. I think it’s knowing that you tried, knowing that you gave your all, that’s success. Personally, I want to make a real connection with my art to as many people as possible. When I say I want to be like the number one artist in the world, that’s what I mean. I want to connect to as many people as possible with my art and the true intention of my art and make things that last here beyond me. When I’m gone, the things that I created are still inspiring people way after. I would like to make some stuff that in 1000 years, kids are still interested in — in the most humble way possible. That’s something to keep in mind when I hit this mic, I want to live forever through it.

Who do you credit to helping you stay on the path you’re on now?

It’s a community of people, everybody in their own way keeps me motivated. Even people that get mad at me and sh*t, that keeps me motivated too like, okay, I gotta prove them wrong timesheet. My homeboy Detail, who’s also my manager, he always gives me really good advice. He always refers me to sources that he gets advice from or things that keep him in a good mindset. My mama, telling me she’s proud of me, that means a whole lot, probably more than she knows, that’ll light up my day. My partners, cause a lot of stuff I talk about my music, they went through it with me and imma always know my perspective, but it’s interesting hearing their perspective on stuff that we went through, but also their perspective or revisiting through my music. It’s a cycle of life, it’s like a hyper experience. We become more self-aware the more that we do that and that’s inspiring. I get to have a shared experience and it’ll deepen what I learned from it.

For the past few years now, there’s been an increased rock presence in the hip-hop scene, whether it be on the light side or the heavy metal end. How do you feel about some of your influences and others having a spot in hip-hop?

I think that sh*t hard. It inspires me too cause I think I’ve focused more so on the sonics of stuff like the actual sounds and tones. Some people like more so the look or the vibe or the swag. I wouldn’t say I got like a rock star swag, that aint’ really my swag, but I love the sounds and textures of that music and I think that the sonics is what I’m most interested in. But rap music has always been the most diverse genre and it never really got its credit because of whatever. I think that it’s always been influenced by other genres, I always think it’s been a culmination of the other genres. It’s the youngest genre so it’s the little brother to everything. I think that it being recognized is something that is gonna progress rap to be whatever it want to be. These artists that are running rap, they’re gonna be whatever they want to be and I think that’s great.

So with Angelic Hoodrat: Supercut, I see you have a feature from Freddie Gibbs. How did that come about?

Well the thing about it is, I put the song out, it was on YouTube, it wasn’t on other streaming services. I just put it out because I thought it was a cool freestyle, just a vibe type sh*t. Then, my folks was like “Freddie Gibbs hopped on that sh*t,” and I was like oh what the f*ck?. He’s one of my favorite rappers of this time and just period, like buddy’s fire as f*ck lyrically and mood-wise, you already know I love that sh*t. So it was like, damn, this man got on this sh*t and he didn’t have to. I’m a new artist bro, he didn’t have to do that, but he did, so I got unlimited respect for him and I’m dumb excited about it. But yeah, he just hopped on one of mine sh*ts and I was just like, bro, we gon’ but this sh*t on the project.

You’re someone that comes off as very grounded, not too extra or one that will wild out. What excites Kenny Mason? What gets him out of that shell even if it’s for 5 or 10 minutes?

I be rowdy bro, like not rowdy, but I be turning up. It’s just that if I’m talking to somebody or trying to answer the questions, I really want to just think about what I say because a lot of people gon’ hear this and I want to make sure that whatever I intend to say, I say. I be walking around the house talking sh*t. Probably at the shows, I think people really see I be turning up for real. Like on Instagram, I’ve watched people take selfies or be on Live or just be in their phone and it’s real natural and just easy as cake to them, but I be thinking too much about that sh*t, I don’t be knowing if the sh*t look right. I think it’s cool because everybody that follows me, pretty much just follows me for music, which I like. I like that don’t nobody follow me for no extra sh*t because then I would have to keep doing extra sh*t.

What do you look forward to the most next? What’s the biggest lesson you’ve learned with your debut that you’ll apply to chapter 2 of your artistry?

Number one is shows, I’m really just trying to be really optimistic about when we’ll be able to do it and for how long I’ll be able to do them. I really would like to be on some kind of tour for a long time and letting people experience the project live because going into Angelic, that’s how I envisioned it. I figured people would like it but I think people will have a deeper level of love for it if they experience it live. I’m looking and I’m also looking forward to dropping more music. After Supercut, I’m still gonna be dropping music, imma just keep dropping, but it’ll be a minute before the next project. I want to just still put out music to build up for them. I think, as far as learning, I definitely learned the run of being an artist and putting out a project, I wasn’t familiar with that. Even these interview parts, these are all still new. I know going into the next one how to premeditated more on everything because with Angelic Hoodrat, I’m really glad people love it and connect with it. People tell me every day that it’s changing their life and I love that, that’s my true intention, but it really was an experiment for me. It really was me trying stuff and I know my next project will be way more intentional, premeditated, and planned. I look forward to that being shown.

Angelic Hoodrat: Supercut is out now via RCA Records. Get it here.