Month: March 2022

Kanye West’s past nine solo studio albums (all of them except The College Dropout) have topped the Billboard 200 chart. He released his latest LP, Donda 2, last month, and unless something changes, it will break Ye’s No. 1 streak. Not only that, but it’s currently not allowed to appear on the chart at all.

Billboard notes that as of right now, Donda 2 is not eligible to appear on any of their charts. They explain:

“[T]he album is being sold with a device that can be used for other means besides the playing of the album. As such, the Stem [Player]/Donda package would fall within Billboard’s latest merch bundle policy, where albums sold with merchandise are not chart-eligible.

Since the Stem Player is a fairly new concept, however, people familiar with the matter from both Billboard and MRC say they plan to continue to monitor its evolution as it relates to chart eligibility.”

Currently, Donda 2 is only officially available via the Stem Player and has not yet appeared on a streaming platform or for sale in any other way. While the first Donda album was released on the Stem Player, it was also made available on streaming services, making it eligible for Billboard chart inclusion.

A video shared on social media over the weekend seems to show a captured Russian military commander admitting that soldiers have been lied to about the true reason for invading Ukraine.

Lieutenant Colonel Astakhov Dmitry Mikhailovich, along with two other soldiers, was taken captive by Ukrainian forces as Putin’s ongoing invasion of the country has begun to stall. Mikhailovich gave a statement to reporters, essentially apologizing for his country’s actions and revealing that his fellow soldiers have been “brainwashed” into believing they are liberating Ukraine from a non-existent fascist regime.

“This is genocide,” Mikhailovich said in a televised address (via The Daily Mail), explaining he only realized that Putin’s explanation for the all-out assault on the country was a lie when he saw his two favorite professional boxers take up arms for the resistance. Mikhailovich said Russian leaders told soldiers that “nationalists and Nazis had seized power” in the top levels of Ukraine’s government, a story he realized wasn’t true when he witnessed regular civilians fighting back against Russian military units and bombs being dropped on heavily-populated civilian cities.

“Obviously, this information was unilateral information,” the colonel said, admitting he was ready to “go to jail” for his part in the invasion. “I feel shame that we came to this country. I don’t know why we were doing it. We knew very little. We brought sorrow to this land.”

Though it’s likely that the captured commander issued these statements under some type of duress, they match previous sentiments expressed by other captured Russian soldiers. Mikhailovich ended his address by begging for mercy for his fellow soldiers in captivity and urged Russians currently fighting in the country to take a hard look at what Putin’s been telling them.

“You are in a tense situation, going against your own commander. But this is genocide,” he said. “Russia cannot win here anyway. Even if we go until the very end. We can invade the territory but we cannot invade the people.”

(Via The Daily Mail)

With their new video for “Roll The Dice,” Sunflower Bean put a bow on a two-part money heist story arc that they built on the previously released clip for “Who Put You Up To This?.” Both songs are from their upcoming album, Headful Of Sugar, which comes out on May 6th and has the band taking a cynical, no-holds-barred look at the world and operating on their own terms.

“Nothing in this life is really free,” Julia Cumming and Nick Kivlen sing in unison on “Roll The Dice.” Money flies amid debauchery, bar brawls ensue, and the band conclude the two-part visual motif.

The message is clear: “Almost everyone we know struggles with money,” the band said in a statement. “The traditional routes towards success and stability in America have severely narrowed. The only way to get ahead is to take big risks and roll the dice.”

Watch the video for “Roll The Dice” above and check out Sunflower Bean’s expanded tour dates below.

03/08 — Columbus, OH @ A&R Music Bar^
03/10 — Bloomington, IN @ The Bishop^
03/11 — Louisville, KY @ Zanzabar^
03/12 — St. Louis, MO @ Off Broadway Nightclub^
03/14 — Austin, TX @ SXSW
03/15 — Austin, TX @ SXSW
03/16 — Austin, TX @ SXSW
03/17 — Austin, TX @ SXSW
03/19 — Nashville, TN @ Exit/In
03/20 — Asheville, NC @ The Grey Eagle
03/21 — Durham, NC @ Motorco Music Hall
03/30 — Cambridge, UK @ Junction 2
03/31 — Leeds, UK @ Brudenell Social Club
04/01 — Manchester, UK @ Strange Waves Festival
04/02 — Glasgow, UK @ Stereo
04/04 — Newcastle upon Tyne, UK @ Newcastle University
04/05 — Nottingham, UK @ Rescue Rooms
04/06 — Birmingham, UK @ Mama Roux’s
04/07 — London, UK @ Electric Ballroom
04/09 — Bristol, UK @ Thekla
04/10 — Portsmouth, UK @ The Wedgewood Rooms
04/11 — Brighton, UK @ Concorde 2
04/29 — Albany, NY @ Empire Underground
04/30 — Boston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
05/05 — Washington, DC @ Union Stage
05/06 — Asbury Park, NJ @ Asbury Lanes
05/12 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall
05/14 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry
05/19 — Ferndale, MI @ The Loving Touch
05/20 — Chicago, IL @ Bottom Lounge
05/21 — Minneapolis, MN @ Fine Line
05/22 — Madison, WI @ High Noon Saloon
05/24 — Grand Rapids, MI @The Pyramid Scheme
05/25 — Cleveland, OH @ Grog Shop
05/26 — Toronto, ON @ Lee’s Palace
06/01 — San Diego, CA @ Music Box SD+
06/02 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Fonda Theatre+
06/04 — San Francisco, CA @ The Independent+
06/07 — Portland, OR @ Mississippi Studios+
06/08 — Vancouver, BC @ Rickshaw Theatre+
06/09 — Seattle, WA @ The Crocodile+
06/11 — Denver, CO @ Bluebird Theatre

* with Empath
^ with Barrie
+ with Palehound

Headful Of Sugar is out 5/6 via Mom + Pop. Pre-order it here.

Snoop Dogg is officially joining FaZe Clan. He will be a member of their board of directors, and also talent. This means that we may get to see Snoop Dogg do some really fun collaborations with other members of FaZe Clan as well as be a part of the rising esports brand. FaZe is one of the most popular names out there and Snoop joining them only makes sense when you consider that he’s always had at least some involvement in the world of video games.

Snoop has his own Twitch channel, has appeared in multiple games over the years, and is someone that is always trying to be on the cutting edge of what’s cool and new.

“It only makes sense to partner with FaZe Clan as both a team member and on the Board of Directors,” Snoop Dogg said in a release. “The youth identifies with their brand and that’s something my son Cordell knew, which is why he brought us together.”

“As I’ve been watching what FaZe Clan has been building in the gaming space, I knew there was a natural connection with what my dad has been doing,” Cordell Broadus said. “When I look at the two brands, I was inspired by the synergy they could create so I brought them together in this partnership. I can’t wait for the world to see what we are about to do.”

This is a partnership that is going to not only allow Snoop Dogg and FaZe Clan to do some really cool things in the world of video games but use their combined platforms to help out their communities. Beyond becoming a talent
member of FaZe Clan, Snoop Dogg will also launch a community outreach program centered around charitable activities that support youth. An example of the two working together actually occurred during Super Bowl weekend when FaZe members played in a co-branded FaZe Clan x NFL flag football game and for each team’s participation, and $25,000 per team was donated to youth sports. FaZe Clan’s donation went to Snoop Dogg’s Youth Football League.

After 2018’s And Nothing Hurt, Spiritualized announced their ninth studio album, the aptly-titled Everything Was Beautiful, which was set to come out on February 25 of this year. The lead single was an epic, nearly seven-minute song “Always Together With You” that stayed true to their ethereal, out-of-body-experience type of sound. There was also the folky “Crazy.” The album, though, was pushed back; it’s now set to arrive on April 22. The newest single, “The Mainline Song,” is out today.

The track is lengthy as well, approaching six minutes, and J Spaceman’s vocals don’t enter until the second half. There are layers upon layers of sound and clamor; there are noises like simmering and echoing, and it all makes up a kind of boisterous celebration. It’s hard to tell what instruments are involved, especially because the whole album has 16 different instruments throughout the songs. Spaceman also employed more than 30 musicians and singers, making this album less of a piece of music by one band but more of a collaborative effort by an orchestra. Everything Was Beautiful was made during the pandemic, when Spaceman was experiencing what he calls “beautiful solitude.” The album so far, though, sounds far from lonely or isolated; it feels intact with humanity and extremely connected.

Listen to “The Mainline Song” above.

Kanye West is one of the more outspoken artists in music today, but he’s far from the only one. One of his peers who has developed a bit of a reputation for picking fights with other musicians is Slipknot’s Corey Taylor, who has never been known to hold his tongue. He’s never been a fan of some of Kanye’s more outrageous stunts, either, vehemently refusing Kanye’s claim of being the world’s “greatest living rock star” in 2015. More recently, it seems Kanye has once again got Taylor’s goat, prompting him to thrash the recently-divorced rapper in an interview with Metro UK.

This time, he’s taking issue with Kanye’s Donda 2 release tactic of selling the album exclusively through his $200 stem player, which Taylor characterized as “pompous and ridiculous,” going so far as calling Kanye a “f*cking moron” over it. The stem player, which separates the music into four separate tracks or “stems,” allows fans to transform the music as it plays, controlling the volume on each track and allowing some degree of speed and sound reversing. To Taylor, this is akin to “releasing all the parts for a car and sending them to people’s houses and going there, you got a free car, now you’ve got to figure out how to build the goddamn thing.”

Contrary to Taylor’s comments, the album is pre-downloaded in full and the touch controls merely allow fans to play around with how each song plays — i.e., lowering drums or vocals (my personal favorite use for it so far). Although his words suggest a slight misunderstanding of how the stem player works, Taylor’s got another point as well. “You’re assuming that the audience has the access and same technology that you have but you’re a f**king moron for doing that. Are you serious? It doesn’t work that way. The thinking that that’s a smart thing to do just shows you how convoluted and off the f**king property Kanye West really is.”

“When you’ve got that much money and that much people around you telling you exactly what you want to hear, your concept of reality just goes right out the f*cking window,” he continued. “People can’t afford their f*cking apartments for f*ck’s sake. It’s not right. It’s just so pompous and ridiculous.” He’s kind of got a point there; as fans have already programmed emulators to get around having to buy the players. Even Nipsey Hussle still kept his $100 mixtape, Crenshaw, free to stream while also running his “proud to pay” campaign, and he offered value besides periodic patches of an unfinished project. And while Kanye claims that the stem player returns profits and control back to artists, he has yet to demonstrate how the $200 devices really benefit anyone other than himself.

With the second Florence And The Machine song release in as many weeks, Florence Welch is taking a forceful look at femininity. Whereas “King” looked lyrically at shattering traditional female roles, the newly-release “Heaven Is Here” doubles down with a furiously choreographed video featuring a cast of talented women that was filmed in the Ukrainian capital city of Kyiv.

“‘Heaven Is Here’ was the first song I wrote in lockdown after an extended period of not being able to get to the studio,” Welch explained in a statement. “I wanted to make something monstrous. And this clamour of joy, fury and grief was the first thing that came out. With dance studios also shut it was my dream to one day create choreography with it. So it’s one of the first pieces of music I have made specifically with contemporary dance in mind.”

Recorded in Kyiv in November of 2021, the video sees Welch flanked by a group of dancers in a studio in the currently war-torn city. The way they enact the impassioned dance (choreographed by Ryan Heffington) is equally as affecting as Welch’s lyrics: “More catholic taste than the Devil, all gilded and golden. Yes, I’m your girl. Hell, if it glitters, I’m going.” It’s the second Florence And The Machine video in a row directed by Autumn de Wilde.

Welch explained in an Instagram post that two of the dancers are actually sheltering in Kyiv right now. “To my brave and beautiful sisters Maryne and Anastasiia. I love you. I wish I could put my arms around you. Strength,” she said in the caption. She also shared a link to support Ukraine via Rescue.org.

Watch the video for “Heaven Is Here” above.

Although Kanye West’s macabre, stop-motion animation video for his and the Game’s new song “Eazy” has ruffled a lot of feathers on the internet, even prompting a response from the artist himself arguing for his right to express himself artistically, at least person — arguably, the person who should be most offended by it — reportedly found it pretty darn amusing.

Pete Davidson, whom Kanye targeted in the video with a claymation effigy that gets kidnapped, buried, and turned into a planter, found Kanye’s video “hysterical,” according to Entertainment Tonight Online. A source told ET that not is Pete “not threatened by Kanye in any way, shape or form,” but that he also “finds the fact that Kanye included a cartoon version of him in his music video hysterical. He is almost flattered by it all because it is so ridiculous to him.”

Kanye’s anger at the comedian stems from the fact that Davidson has been dating Kim Kardashian, Kanye’s ex-wife, for the past several months as the couple takes opposing views on their ongoing divorce. While West wants to reconcile, Kardashian has expressed repeatedly she has no desire to do so, even going so far as to request the court expedite the legal status of their split — which was granted last week, on the same day Kanye shared the “Eazy” video on Instagram.

Kanye’s since taken down the video, replacing it with his post denying that it was a legitimate threat to Davidson. Meanwhile, ETOnline reports that Pete and Kim have decided that the video is an obvious bid to cause friction between them but say it’s done just the opposite, bringing them closer together as Kanye keeps attacking both via social media.

Retired Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman has been aggressively calling out Republican politicians for their tacit, and not so tacit, support for Vladimir Putin as Russia continues its invasion of Ukraine. On Sunday, Vindman, who testified against Donald Trump during his impeachment trial for withholding military aid from Ukraine unless President Volodymyr Zelensky announced an investigation into Joe Biden, got into it with Marjorie Taylor Greene, who tried to blame the situation in Ukraine on the current administration.

“Tragically, people are dying because of Biden’s poor decision making leading up to Putin declaring war on Ukraine,” Greene tweeted. “Biden’s weakness and failure as a leader not only has put America last but is a danger to the entire world.”

Vindman was not having it and blasted Greene for damaging U.S. efforts to help Ukraine. “Nope. It’s because you and your pro-Putin party encouraged Putin to invade, by cheerleading him,” Vindman tweeted. “Worse yet, you undermined @POTUS efforts to signal punishing costs… you undermined U.S. efforts deter the war. You have blood in your hands. The American people will not forget.”

On Monday morning, Greene fired back at Vindman, but in her response, she notably did not deny being pro-Putin. “This clown wants to drag Americans into war with Russia with his big tough tweets and his zoom interviews on CNN. Go ahead and go fight yourself since you’re from Ukraine,” Greene tweeted. “You are clueless about Americans being fed up with sending our sons and daughters to die in foreign lands.”

In what’s becoming a recurring theme, Greene’s rhetoric has not been going over well with her Republican colleagues. Before the dust-up with Vindman, she was already facing intense scrutiny after speaking at a white nationalist event, which even her biggest supporters in Congress called unacceptable. However, there seems to be little traction on removing her from the party. Via ABC News:

“This may be a chance to burn out the cancer of the Republican Party — those that are, you know, Putin sympathetic,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., a former military pilot who broke with his party over the Trump presidency.

But he worries that McCarthy and other GOP leaders will stop short of kicking Greene out of the party. “He won’t because she has power, let’s be honest, but I’m embarrassed by it.”

To emphasize Kinzinger’s point, following her spat with Vindman, Greene retweeted Lou Dobbs, who accused Vindman and his twin brother, who’s also a lieutenant colonel, of weakening the Army. Don’t expect any lessons to be learned here.

(Via Raw Story, ABC News)

2020 was major year for The Weeknd’s foray into animation. First he got to appear in an episode of one of his favorite shows, American Dad, and just months later, he voiced some characters on Robot Chicken. Here in 2022, he’s getting back into the saddle, as he is set to make an appearance on the cartoon: The Simpsons.

According to The Futon Critic, The Weeknd is set to voice a couple characters, Orion Hughes and Darius Hughes, on the March 20 episode, titled “Bart The Cool Kid.” An episode synopsis reads, “When Bart befriends a famous kid influencer who owns an ultra-cool skate wear brand, Homer leads a rebellion of loser dads against them.” Michael Rapaport is also set to guest star as as Mike Wegman.

The Weeknd himself confirmed the news by shared a report from a fan account on Twitter and writing, “proud of this one.”

Shortly before the premiere of his American Dad episode, The Weeknd indicated that getting to appear on The Simpsons would be a dream come true, saying in a Variety interview, “American Dad was everything I wanted. It’s going to be hard to beat this in the TV cartoon world, but an obvious bucket list would be to work on The Simpsons. That would be a dream — and if they’re reading this, I actually have a pretty cool idea if they’re down.”