Month: January 2022

Proudly unvaxxed Sarah Palin caught Covid again, and since she was already in New York City and couldn’t testify in her defamation trial against the New York Times, she partially passed the time by, uh, going out to eat in public. Not great! It’s also (sadly) not entirely surprising, considering that Palin’s gone back and forth on the whole pandemic mess, including declaring that she’d be vaxxed “over my dead body” and backtracking on her briefly pro-vaccine stance.

We’re living in a world where a former VP candidate is embarrassing Meghan McCain by dining out at popular Italian restaurant Elio’s, days after testing positive for Covid, and New York City Mayor Eric Adams is now sending out a surreal alert to anyone who “crossed Palin’s infected path.” Via New York Daily News:

“We encourage any New Yorker who came into contact with Sarah Palin to get tested, just as we encourage all New Yorkers to get tested regularly, especially those who believe they may have been exposed to COVID-19,” said Adams spokesman Jonah Allon.

In other words, Sarah Palin wanted some pasta, you betcha, and there’s not much that can be done about it other than warning the general public of the resulting health hazard. As for the potential PR mess for Elio’s, the restaurant issued a statement to explain, “Tonight Sarah Palin returned to the restaurant to apologize for the fracas around her previous visit,” and “[i]n accordance with the vaccine mandate and to protect our staff, we seated her outdoors. We are a restaurant open to the public, and we treat all civilians the same.” Maybe Palin could have picked up the phone instead?

(Via New York Daily News)

We’re barely a month in and 2022 has already delivered a great amount of trends to be hashed out (Taylor Swift vs. Damon Albarn! Neil Young is off Spotify!) and music to be excited about. On this week’s episode of Indiecast, Steve and Ian tackle the latest developments in the indie world and curate their wish lists for albums they hope are finally released in 2022.

From long-delayed albums from The Wrens and Sky Ferreira to theoretical releases from The Cure and My Bloody Valentine, there’s a lot of music in the vault that they’re hoping finally sees the light of day this year.

In this week’s Recommendation Corner, Steve is urging listeners to check out Texas band Good Looks, who are set to release their new album Bummer Year in April. Ian is digging Dissolution Wave, the latest album from alternative rock outfit Cloakroom.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 74 on Spotify below, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts here. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and Twitter for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

Here’s the thing. I don’t know the last time Barack Obama talked to Joe Biden on the phone, or how often Bill Clinton and Al Gore catch up over text, or if George W. Bush ever forwards dirty emails to Dick Cheney (“he does… daily” is probably the answer). But I would guess that they didn’t go months without speaking to each other, especially shortly after leaving the White House — unlike Donald Trump and Mike Pence.

The former-vice president told Fox News host Jesse Watters on Thursday that he and the twice-impeached president haven’t talked since last summer. “You know, we talked last summer. And you know I’ve said many times, it was difficult, January 6 was difficult. It was a tragic day in the life of the nation,” he said. “I know I did my duty under the constitution of the United States, but the president and I sat down in the days that followed that, we spoke about it, talked through it, we parted amicably.”

To be fair, I wouldn’t want to chat with the guy who called it “common sense” for angry rioters to want to hang me, either.

Trump also attacked his vice president in an interview with pillow kook Mike Lindell. “It was very sad when Mike Pence gave those votes over because when you have more votes than you have voters, when you have others things that are so wrong — and that was then. And since then, many other things have happened,” he said. One thing that hasn’t happened, though: Trump asking Pence if he’s playing Wordle. He’ll never know.

(Via Raw Story)

Euphoria is one of the hottest shows on TV right now, but it’s also been a goldmine for music fans in recent weeks. Aside from Dominic Fike appearing in the show, the series has yielded some enticing original new music, like Lana Del Rey’s “Watercolor Eyes” and Tove Lo’s “How Long.” Now, James Blake and Labrinth (the show’s composer) are joining the party, too, as they’ve debuted their new Euphoria collaboration, “Pick Me Up.” The tune skews more towards Blake’s softer side, as it’s a piano- and string-driven track that sees him flexing his falsetto.

Speaking of collaborations, Blake recently penned a lengthy Instagram post in which he reflects on working with Dave on his 2021 album We’re All Alone In This Together. He wrote in part, “I woke up today thinking about the craziest experience I had, when @santandave flew to LA and played me the beginnings of ‘We’re all alone in this together’. I told him I’d never heard anything like it. He asked me if I’d work on it with him and I said I didn’t know if I could make it any better, but I’d love to help him arrive at what he [envisioned]. It seemed so clear to him what he wanted that the best idea would be to get out of the way. I mean what do you even say when someone comes to you with a song like ‘three rivers’? [head exploding emoji] the level of penmanship was a shock to the system to be honest. Also I felt blessed just to hear his story, the story of his mother, and the way he was writing about immigration in the UK. It was illuminating.”

Listen to “Pick Me Up” above.

Earlier this year, Pooh Shiesty struck a plea deal in his federal firearms case, and as a result, he was able to avoid a life sentence in the case. The incident at hand occurred back in October 2020 and it found the rapper being accused of shooting a man in the buttock during a meet-up to exchange sneakers and marijuana. With Shiesty’s decision to accept the plea deal, the prosecution in the case is only recommending a sentence of 97 months — which comes out to just shy of over eight years — for the firearms case. With it remains to be seen if he will receive that, a date for his sentencing has been set in the case.

Shiesty will face Judge K. Michael Moore to hear his sentence in the federal firearms case on April 7 at 2 p.m. ET, as noted by HipHopDX. His sentence will be handed down to him at Miami’s United States Courthouse. While the prosecution is recommending the eight-year-ish sentence, Magistrate Judge Lauren Fleischer Louis previously advised Shiesty that he could end up receiving more time than that despite what was agreed on.

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

Despite saying he would conclude his feature run back in 2019, J. Cole has continued to lend his verse to multiple artists with the latest being Griselda’s Benny The Butcher. The two bring their talents to the reflective “Johnny P’s Caddy,” which is set to appear on Benny’s upcoming Tana Talk 4 project. The new song finds both rappers looking back on what they’ve done in their careers. They also take a moment to speak about their success and the impact they’ve had on hip-hop and the fans who listen to them.

Benny and Cole dropped their collaboration with a video that places Benny in the cold winter weather as he watches a man get arrested among other things. J. Cole is later seen with Benny inside in a house as he confidently delivers his verse to the song.

Tana Talk 4 will certainly be one of many offerings from the Griselda camp in 2022. The project has yet to receive a release date, but it’ll be Benny’s first full-length drop since his Burden Of Proof project back in 2020, an effort that was heralded as one of the best hip-hop releases of that year. In between then and now, Benny also dropped The Plugs I Met 2 tape, a sequel to the 2019 project.

You can listen to “Johnny P’s Caddy” in the video above.

Raveena has been having a productive last few months as an artist. Back in 2021, she released the surreal “Tweety” video, and since then, she’s signed to Warner Records and given fans a taste of her own culture with the Bollywood-inspired single “Rush.” That range is part of what earned Raveena a spot on María Zardoya of The Marías’ favorite rising pop stars playlist. Now, she’s preparing a new full-length project called Asha’s Awakening that will be out in just a few days on February 11.

To give fans a preview of that album, tonight she shared “Secret,” which features a cameo from Long Beach rapper Vince Staples. Raveena even gets a little sci-fi with her description of the song: “To me, “Secret” is a song about love that traverses through different dimensions,” she said in a press release. “People on earth are starting to have sensual dreams ignited in them by a space princess — someone they feel like their body knows, but whom they also do not know and cannot reach in this dimension. What if your lover was enticing you from space and you couldn’t reach them in this realm? What if a spirit from an outer dimension ignited your sacral chakra? This is what “Secret” explores.”

Check out all that sacral chakra goodness above, and the full tracklist for Asha’s Awakening below.

1. “Rush”
2. “Secret” (Feat. Vince Staples)
3. “Magic”
4. “Kismet”
5. “Kathy Left 4 Kathmandu”
6. “Mystery”
7. “Circuit Board”
8. “The Internet Is Like Eating Plastic”
9. “Arrival To The Garden Of Cosmic Speculation”
10. “Asha’s Kiss” (feat. Asha Puthli)
11. “Time Flies”
12. “Love Overgrown”
13. “Endless Summer”
14. “New Drugs” (feat. TWEAKS)
15. “Let Your Breath Become A Flower” (Guided Meditation)

Coi Leray had a breakout year in 2021. She landed her first successful record with “No More Parties,” a song that entered the top-40 section of the Billboard Hot 100. It was also remixed by Lil Durk after gaining viral attention on TikTok. She later released “Big Purr (Prrdd)” with Pooh Shiesty, which also made its way onto the Billboard singles chart, in addition to making an appearance in the 2021 XXL Freshman class. All of that points to signs that Coi could be in for a big year in 2022 as she’s due for another project.

The New Jersey makes her return with “Anxiety,” her first song of 2022. The track is a bright record that takes a step into the pop lane as Coi speaks about the nature of anxiety and how it affects her from day-to-day. “I still got anxiety, that’s why I keep it on me / Sometimes I feel like, can’t trust no one around me,” she sings on the new track. “There’s another side of me but I don’t even show it / ‘Cause I got way too many people eating off me.”

Coi’s new song arrives after she concluded 2021 with “Medicine,” another record that touched on the topic of anxiety. She spoke about her struggles in a statement that she shared with the song. “Kind of been a rough year, even though I made millions, it came with a lot of depression,” she wrote before hinting at her plans for 2022 with a confident end to the statement. “This new year is going to be one of the biggest years of my life,” she wrote. “My album is going to be one of the biggest female artist albums in the world, I can promise you that.”

You can listen to “Anxiety” in the video above.

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

At the top of the year, The Chainsmokers let everyone know they’d be taking 2022 by storm with a parody clip that detailed just how hard it is to be them. After that uh, “illegal and reckless” concert in New York, maybe they’re not wrong? ) Anyway, not to say their exceptional 2021 decision to support the Emo Nite film wasn’t a great thing, too, just that they’ve made it clear they’d have more new music this year.

Right at the end of the short video they shared a few days ago teasing their return, we got a tiny preview of what their new single was going to sound like, and now the brand new track is here. Dubbed “High,” the song details an up and down relationship that seems to have more highs when the person involved is, well, high. It’s slightly more pop-punk than some of their previous EDM-heavy material, but still pretty signature Chainsmokers.

In the cinematic new video, one half of the duo is falling through the sky and landing on an airplane, while the other is inside the plane freaking out about a person landing on the wing! More sky high airplane drama ensues, but in the end, The Chainsmokers come out on top. Check out the new song and video up top, and look for more information on a new album from the DJ/producer duo coming later this year.

At the end of last year, fashion designer and producer Nigo revealed that his first album in nearly two decades was on the way. The upcoming project, titled I Know Nigo, is set to drop at some point this year and it’ll feature Tyler The Creator, Kid Cudi, Pusha T, Lil Uzi Vert, the Teriyaki Boyz, and more. I Know Nigo is handled by Steven Victor who is Pusha T and the late Pop Smoke’s manager. The album also includes an appearance from ASAP Rocky who appear on “Arya,” the newest single from I Know Nigo.

The track is a laid-back braggadocios release that sees Rocky flexing his riches and how it places him above the completion. It’s a satisfying offering from Harlem rapper who hasn’t delivered an album, and much music at that, since his 2018 project Testing. The new song gives big promise for what the rapper has to offer as many wait for his fourth album, which is tentatively titled All Smiles.

He previously revealed that the project will come with contributions from The Smiths’ lead vocalist Morrissey. “Anything you need him to do, he show up and do,” Rocky said about the singer during a GQ interview last year. He added that the two spent some time remotely working on the album, which Rocky described as a “ghetto love tale” and “way more mature” than his previous projects.

You can listen to “Arya” in the video above.