Two years since the release of Pretty Buff charted a new path for Baltimore hardcore-turned-folk-punk rockers Angel Du$t, they’re officially back with a new collection of songs that show how they are able to find the middle ground between their past and future. Yak: A Collection Of Truck Songs is twelve tracks that show Angel Du$t’s full spectrum of strengths, from introspective acoustic tracks to driving power pop numbers. While it seems on the surface that they’ve left their hardcore past behind them, there are sometimes explosions of aggression on this record that remind us just where Angel Du$t came from.
To celebrate the new album, frontman Justice Tripp sat down to talk Key & Peele, Turnstile, and Los Angeles in the latest Indie Mixtape 20 Q&A.
What are four words you would use to describe your music?
Spin kick acoustic guitar.
It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?
There used to be a popular google search of “Justice Tripp gay?” I hope people are still googling that in 2050 still.
What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?
Los Angeles. Sorry to every other city, I fuck with you too.
Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?
Lou Reed because he can’t sing either, but yes he can and you love it.
Where did you eat the best meal of your life?
🙁
What album do you know every word to?
ODB’s Return to the 36 Chambers. Except the n words. I don’t know those.
With Daniel Craig’s time as James Bond officially at an end, there’s been no shortage of potential actors tossed around as potential successors for the classic 007 role: Idris Elba, Tom Hardy, and Regé-Jean Page who rocketed to the top of bookies lists after becoming the smoldering heartthrob of the moment thanks to Bridgerton. But, now, a new contender wants to throw his hat in the ring for a very different take on Bond: Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.
While promoting his latest spy film, Red Notice, The Rock opened up to Esquire about his ambitions to take on the classic role and his surprising familial connection to the beloved British franchise. Via NME:
“Yes, my grandfather was a Bond villain in You Only Live Twice with Sean Connery. Very, very cool,” he began.
“I would like to follow in his footsteps and be the next Bond. I don’t want to be a villain. Gotta be Bond.”
Of course, The Rock is going to have compete with top talent vying to be the next Bond. It was recently revealed that Spider-Man star Tom Holland has been having big Bond dreams. Granted, he’s British, the Peter Parker actor might still be a little too young to play the distinguished spy. And then there’s Henry Cavill. The Witcher and Man of Steel recently confirmed that he is open to having a discussion with producers about taking a crack at Bond.
Interestingly, in the same Esquire video where The Rock opened up about his Bond ambitions, he also revealed that he is doing everything in his power to get Cavill back as Superman so he can pit the Man of Steel against Black Adam. Although, naturally, The Rock already knows who will win.
“Black Adam could kick the sh*t out of Superman,” The Rock proudly boasted about a showdown with his (maybe) James Bond competitor.
Donald Trump is just as good at taking jokes as he is at making them—in other words: not good at all. Though he happily accepted the opportunity to be roasted by the likes of Jersey Shore’s “The Situation” for Comedy Central in early 2011, provided no one insinuated that he wasn’t as rich as he claimed to be (yes, really), he wasn’t as game to be the butt of anyone’s joke just a few months later, when he and Melania attended the White House Correspondents Dinner.
If you don’t remember the details, here’s what happened: Then-president Barack Obama got up to deliver a speech, as sitting presidents (with the exception of Trump) usually do, and proceeded to take aim directly at Trump and the infamous “birther” conspiracy he invented. Trump sat there stone-faced, looking highly unamused.
If it looked like Trump was shooting daggers with his sullen eyes, that’s because he was absolutely pissed, according to Insider. In his new book, Republican Rescue: Saving the Party from Truth Deniers, Conspiracy Theorists, and the Dangerous Policies of Joe Biden, former New Jersey governor and meatloaf enthusiast Chris Christie, who was at the dinner that night, says that Trump was “beside himself with fury.” He goes on to describe the situation:
“It was fascinating and excruciating all at once. [Obama] never turned his eyes away from the man who’d been questioning his right to be president. He showed no mercy on Donald Trump.”
When Christie spoke with Trump later in the evening, “He was pissed off like I’d never seen him before. Just beside himself with fury.” Which might explain why Trump opted out of attending any of these dinners when he was actually president.
Once it was deemed safe for live music and touring to return once again earlier this year, musicians of all genres scrambled to reschedule their previously postponed tour dates. Pearl Jam were no exception. Their massive 2020 Gigaton tour was canceled well over a year-and-a-half ago, but the band now has some good news for fans who long to see them play live: Pearl Jam’s Gigaton tour is set to return in 2022.
The band shared the official announcement on social media, saying they are set to hit the road next spring but are waiting to unveil specific dates until next year. Pearl Jam thanked fans for their “patience and flexibility” while noting that the entire band has been itching to hit the road once again for nearly two years:
“Thank you, Pearl Jam fans, for your patience and flexibility as we have waited to reschedule the band’s postponed 2020 North American tour.
We are confirming that the previously scheduled shows in North America will start in May 2022. We are working to finalize the details of the new tour schedule and will announce the dates early next year.
For nearly two years, the band has wanted nothing more than to play their new music live for you. The whole Pearl Jam team shares your excitement for us all to be safely on the road again together.”
See Pearl Jam’s tour announcement above and revisit Uproxx’s review of the band’s live performance here.
House of Gucci, the supremely gaudy movie of your dreams (assuming your dreams involve Jeremy Irons looking dapper, like mine do), is almost here. The Ridley Scott-directed film comes out on November 24, just in time to be able to discuss Lady Gaga and “pensive bison” Adam Driver’s sex scene with the family on Thanksgiving.
“We blocked it out as we would any fight or any scene, then we just kind of ran it maybe once or twice, and that was it,” Driver told Entertainment Weekly. “We were feeling it, so to speak! Everything I say sounds like a double entendre, but we winged it. I will say also, at that point, we had been shooting for a month, so we felt very comfortable to go where we needed to go.” That ease around each other explains the animal-life noises.
Over the weekend, Gaga and Driver appeared on The Graham Norton Show, where host Graham Norton praised them for being in “one of the best sex scenes I’ve seen in forever.” This compliment prompted a fist bump between the two Oscar nominees.
House of Gucci also stars Jared Leto, Salma Hayek, and Al Pacino, who was rudely asked to take his sunglasses off at the New York premiere on Tuesday. Gaga’s reaction: “Don’t make him take his glasses off, he’s AL PACINO.” She makes a good point.
Ozark recently teased the supersized, two-part, final season for Jason Bateman’s Marty Byrde, and his long-suffering family, including Wendy, played by Laura Linney. That went down in some teaser footage that showed what happened after the blood-spattered tarmac happenings. Viewers know that Marty and Wendy were received with opened arms (for a new life in Mexico?) while the footage recalled Navarro’s “today is a beginning” from the Season 3 finale after Helen took a gunshot to the head. In other words, Marty Byrde’s still lacking as much control of the situation as usual.
Well, we’ve got a longer teaser video (ahead of Season 4), and it mostly promises that Marty cannot outrun his money-laundering past, and he’s still up sh*t creek, and essentially, there’s no footage here. Instead, the show puts us in rewind mode to relive the past three seasons’ biggest violent fiascos, and Netflix revealed in the logline that Helen is indeed gone, and Marty’s here to “climb to the top of Navarro’s empire.” Despite getting out of the Ozarks, they’ll find that “some past sins won’t stay buried and the most dangerous threats come from blood.”
Hmm, ominous. Netflix revealed, as well, that Julia Garner is definitely back as Ruth Langmore, so expect her F-bombs to go into higher gear. I guess Ruth is still stuck at home? No clues there, but here’s Netflix’s summary of new characters:
“Javi Elizonndro” (played by ALFONSO HERRERA) – Navarro’s nephew is tired of playing the obedient lieutenant and looks to seize power for himself.
“Mel Sattem” (played by ADAM ROTHENBERG) – A disgraced ex-cop turned P.I. arrives to get Helen’s signature on her divorce papers and stumbles into the Byrdes’ dirty laundry. The more they lie, the more he digs.
“Clare Shaw” (played by KATRINA LENK) – CEO of a leading biopharmaceutical company makes a deal with the Byrdes and learns the true cost of power.
A biopharmaceutical CEO, really? Man, Marty is really screwed now. The season will contain 14 episodes, which will launch in two seven-part halves, and I’m still pretending that we’re getting five seasons.
As I interview rising rapper Kalan.FrFr, I’m struck by his humility. The 26-year-old is generous in his assessments of the burgeoning wave of new rappers from the Los Angeles area, yet he nearly always deflects praise for his own accomplishments. “It didn’t have to be me,” he says repeatedly. “It could be anybody.”
Maybe that mentality is a result of his upbringing, shuttling back and forth between his dad in Compton and his mom in neighboring Carson, or perhaps it was instilled when he avoided extended prison time on a breaking-and-entering charge from his early adulthood. At the time, he was attending San Diego State University, where he was on the football team — an endeavor he dropped as a result because he didn’t want to have to tell the team about his arrest.
However, he finished school and switched focus, picking up the threads of an interest in music stemming from his high school days throwing parties with his friends. After an initial run of buzz in Atlanta failed to pan out, he returned home to LA, released a pair of mixtapes in 2018, and saw his fortunes change for the better ever since.
Now, he signed to Roc Nation, his latest tape, TwoFr 2, is generating the sort of buzz that suggests a big breakout in the coming year, and he and his South LA cohort, which includes members like the 1Take crew, AzChike, BlueBucksClan, Blxst, Roddy Ricch, Rucci, and others, are beginning to draw more attention from both critics and fans with songs that nod to LA’s homegrown G-funk while also incorporating melodic impulses from Atlanta rap, the snickering punchline style from Detroit, and the off-kilter cadences of the nearby Bay Area.
While on a Zoom call with Kalan (his real name), we swapped stories of growing up in Compton, participating in separate “New West” waves a decade apart, and how his prior experiences prepared him for the nearly inevitable fame coming his way.
First of all, I want to say thank you for coming through Uproxx and doing the UPROXX Sessions with us. How did you like doing that man?
Man, that was dope. Seeing all the other artists that have done it and when they do it, it’s like different stepping stones. So when I was able to do that I probably was happier to be there than you all was happy for me to have done it, bro. I ain’t going to lie, that was big to me, man. So I really appreciate it.
I don’t know about that man because I’ll tell you, I get excited for two kinds of artists. I get excited for artists who I’m a really big fan of and I get excited for artists from Compton. Usually, I like to ask this question at the end of all my interviews, but I know that as a newer artist, a lot of journalists have to ask the who, what, where, why, when questions. Know that gets boring. So the question I like to close out all my interviews with I’m going to start this one with this one is, do you have any topics or subjects that you want to talk about that nobody ever asks you about?
Nobody ever breaks down my songs. Nobody ever really breaks down my lyrics. They get the outer layer of it, but like, it’d be, sometimes it’d be so much deeper than what I just be saying. It might mean something totally different than what people be getting. I’ll just be wondering if people be catching on or see how I see.
Do you have like a specific example of a song where you know you got off and people don’t really see it?
Ain’t going to lie, gang, I be making so much music. I’ll be lying if I try to just pull one up out of nowhere right now. [laughs]
So are you from Compton or Carson? Because I’ve seen both and I love a definitive answer.
So my daddy from Compton and my mom from Carson. I lived in between both houses. I went to school in Carson. I went to school in Compton. Half the time I was at my momma’s house. The other half, the time I was at my daddy house, and it ain’t nothing but five minutes away from each other. It’s literally separated by a freeway bridge.
It’s definitely within walking distance if you have enough time.
You feel me? If you walk across the freeway bridge you right there in Compton so it ain’t no separation. So that’s why I say I’m from Compton and Carson.
If you had to compare, which is the one that you would really stick to?
I love both, man. I love both.
Did you have a specific goal in mind when you were recording TwoFr 2 What were your expectations for it?
I try to do everything with no expectations. Because I’m real emotional and if some shit don’t go how I wanted it to go, my feelings going to be hurt. I’m going to hate it. I try to do everything just being thankful that I got the opportunity to do it. I know if I put some music out, somebody going to listen to it. Somebody that’s doing the same thing, working just as hard as me, might be better than me at doing music. And ain’t nobody listening to their music right now. So I’m just happy to be here. I’m blessed.
So I ain’t really had no expectations really. I wanted it to be better than my last project. That’s it. I don’t never want nobody to go back and say that “That wasn’t it.” I always try to make sure you don’t have to skip a song. You can walk all the way through every song. Just make sure it’s undeniable.
It definitely rides straight through. So something about that last response hit a chord with me: When people ask you why you are special, you always come back to I’m blessed. Where does that come from?
This could be over tomorrow, bro. It ain’t no telling. And at the end of the day, I just wanted to be able to take care of myself. I like to do music. Even if I wasn’t getting paid for making music, I would still be making music. I probably just wouldn’t be able to make as much music because I would have a job or something. Now that I’ve learned how to take care of myself forever, making music in the long run, I know I can make some money doing this and I’m going to be able to be okay, I’m going to have residual income for a long time.
That’s why I don’t complain about shit because it’s what I asked for. So you got to be able to take everything that come with it, the ups and the downs. I remember sleeping on the couch in Atlanta and dropping a song, dropping “Fine Ass” and coming back to LA and then just start getting booked for shows.
It just started happening so fast I’m not really noticing, but just looking back I was like, “Damn I was like damn near homeless like last month.” It’s a blessing, man, because it didn’t have to be me. It could be anybody.
What was the biggest difference, internally and externally, between before and after, and where would you put the line?
I think it was literally July 1st, 2018. I dropped the first TwoFr. And then I think maybe the same day I got booked to perform in Arizona. I got booked 4th of July to go perform. It cost me more money to get to the show than what I made. Got this Airbnb because nine homies want to come. We got to drive out of here. It looked like I’m just going to walk away with $200, $300. It’s going to be a rough day, a rough little weekend. But it was all a blessing because it didn’t have to be me.
I’m forever grateful for every experience. Because every day I can see it. I’m going back and performing at the places I used to go open up for people. Listening to older music that I made, hearing it and how hearing how different I sound now. The different shit I would never do again. So everything just started coming full circle, man.
What I find really special is that when I was about your age, the last big wave of West Coast artists, when it was, Pac Div and U-N-I and Kendrick and everybody was coming up, we were all coming up together.
Overdoz and all them. I used to go watch that shit. I was like one of them kids. My cousins was older, so they was like really up on it. I was in like sixth grade and fifth grade and I used to really be in to like Pac Div and Overdoz, they got a lot to do with like my musical influence. I would never take that away from them because I really with music bro. I really with Casey Veggies a long time ago.
I hear that in your music. And now you are part of the new wave with Blxst and Roddy Ricch, who I hear you getting compared to a lot. Is that more of an advantage or a detriment, getting comparisons to those guys are also blowing?
I just look at it like, if they think that these guys are the best guys and you want to put me around whoever you feel are the best guys, I appreciate it. I’m not in competition with none of these n****s. At the end of the day, God got a plan for me. It’s already written. So whatever going to happen, going to happen. I got too much shit to be worried about for me to be worried about what’s going on with somebody else. I got to do what I got to do. I got people depending on me. I got people that took chances on me. I take all this serious.
I find that interesting because the things that I was originally initially pursuing, wound up informing my current job so much that it gives me certain insights I don’t think anybody else has. So I look at your story, playing football and going to school, and I wonder how it informs your current grind.
I can’t find the excuse for nothing. If it’s an excuse, it’s a goddamn good one. It don’t make no sense because I do whatever. I done waited for my homies to be done with they studio session so I could get an hour or try to squeeze the song out the last hour. Wait until they was falling asleep so I can record some. I had to learn how to mix my own shit so I could put music out. Because I couldn’t afford to pay for no engineer. So it’s not no excuses at all.
Whatever I needed to do, I’ll make sure it got done. So, with football, either you going to swim or you going to drown. If you not doing what you supposed to do, they going to get rid of your ass. You going to get the same results you put in. You might not never play in the game. They might call you and if you’re not ready, you ain’t never get called up again.
Where do you see Kalan.FrFr in 2022?
My album LP Two. I want to have had that out and be working on just the EP. I just want to be bigger than what I am now, man. I just want results, that’s it. I would never say like, I want to have a million followers and this. Because maybe I’m not supposed to have it right then. If I get it that fast, how long is it going to last? I just want to get better every time really. I just want it to be better than the last one. I wanted to be better than the last one I would like to be performing at night at Rolling Loud.
It’s no secret that Louisville rapper Jack Harlow credits his success to the hip-hop greats that came before him. One of the musicians that he looks up to the most is Drake, who he previously named his favorite rapper. While he’s also noted that Andre 3000, Lil Wayne, Eminem, and Jay-Z have also influenced his music, Drake is definitely at the top of his list. That’s why he stopped a recent concert when he looked up to realize that among the crowd was none other than the Certified Lover Boy rapper.
Harlow made a tour stop in Toronto this week in support of his 2020 album, Thats What They All Say. After performing a few songs from his set, Harlow stopped the show once he saw Drake leaning over the balcony. “Tonight was a dream come true to me for more than one reason. First off, you sold this b*tch out,” he said into the microphone. “Second, I was halfway through my performance and I seen my idol looking at me, man. Toronto, make some noise for the G.O.A.T. one time!”
Watch Harlow show love to Drake at his Toronto show above.
Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Now that Silk Sonic has released its debut album, An Evening With Silk Sonic, Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak are ready to give something else a try. In fact, they just announced their next endeavor: The duo is hosting a new limited Apple Music radio series, which shares its name with the new album. They also shared a trailer for the show today.
The series premieres today at 10 p.m. ET on Apple Music 1 and press materials note of the first episode, “On the debut episode, Bruno and Anderson, with the help of Bootsy Collins, invite listeners to join them on an after-hours journey with music from The Jackson 5, Con Funk Shun, Thundercat, The Isley Brothers, Partynextdoor, and much more.” Of the series as a whole, press materials also say, “Over the course of four one-hour episodes, the pair feature Silk Sonic-inspired sets of all of their favorite records, ranging from old-school hits to R&B jams, hip-hop, funk, disco, and everything in between. From surprise guests to even more surprising conversation, it’s your turn to be a fly on the wall and spend some time with the kings of smooth.”
Mars says of the show, “Apple Music asked us to host a radio show to talk about the album. We had so much fun that we’ve decided to retire from music and become full time radio personalities. We want to thank Apple Music for helping us find our new calling. Goodbye cruel world of music. Hello radio. See you at the top.”
.Paak added, “When we come together on those rare instances when the clouds open and the stars unite, we go as Silk Sonic. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s never too late to turn it around, and speaking of never too late, I think we right on time.”
Watch the teaser clip above.
An Evening With Silk Sonic is out now via Atlantic Records. Get it here.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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