Tomorrow marks the release of King Princess’ (real name Mikaela Straus) new album, Hold On Baby. It will also mark the release of a new posthumous track from late Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins, as he performs on Hold On Baby closer “Let Us Die” (not to be confused with Foo Fighters’ “Let It Die”). In a new interview with Zane Lowe (as Billboard notes), she discusses how Hawkins came to be on the song.
Straus noted she and producer Mark Ronson both thought “Let Us Die,” the album closer, was a terrific song. She said, “He was like, ‘But we really need a drummer who’s going to bring life to this. This needs to be a living and breathing person behind a drum kit and not a programmed beat, not a sample. This is the type of song that needs humanity behind all the instruments.’”
Straus continued:
“So he called [Hawkins]. He called him and he sent him the song and he’s like, ‘Do you want to play on this?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, man! It’s a great song! Yeah!’ And I was like, ‘Are you f*ckin’ serious?’ […] We FaceTimed, so he was recording it at their studio and I was in Brooklyn and we were feeding it through the console. So pretty trippy, too, to be in my childhood home studio, listening to this guy play on my dad’s speakers. And my dad sitting there, watching… I can’t even describe it. I was so emotional. It was crazy.
But in between takes, we’d FaceTime and he was just so kind. […] He was just saying he loves playing drums. And to hear that from somebody who’s lived such a life that, at his age and playing for as long as he has in so many different bands and his own projects, for him to just love to play the f*cking drums, that to me is just what we should all strive to be: Somebody who does not lose that love of their instrument.”
She also said of Hawkins’ death, “To find out, I was just completely in shock, and then a couple weeks later I was like, ‘Guys, I think that what we need to do is reach out to his team and just let them decide whatever they want, because it’s up to them and it’s up to his legacy, but I will include that he did love this song and that’s the reason that I would want him on it is because he loved it.’ But we sent this message and it was very respectful, I think. They came back and said, ‘As long as he wanted to be on it, that sounds great.’ And they were just so kind. And I can’t even imagine getting a message like that during that time. I was just so anxious and sad and nervous to just ask of someone like that. But they felt that it was an homage. And it is an homage. It’s for Taylor.”
“Backed by the vast wealth of Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, LIV Golf has drawn accusations of ‘sportswashing’ – that is, using spectacles such as sports to distract from, or normalize, human rights violations committed by the Saudi regime,” Yahoo! Sportsreports. The course being less than 50 miles from New York City, on top of LIV Golf’s association with the Saudi government, has “drawn criticism from activist groups who decry the tournament as an insult to the victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.” The term “blood money” is being thrown around, which is never ideal.
But Trump doesn’t care about all that: he’s too preoccupied looking like Emperor Palpatine. Or maybe the Crypt Keeper. Or the fictional parched ghoul of your choice.
Jump scare! Is it generally a bad idea to make fun of someone for the way they look? Sure, yeah. But Trump once suggested that he couldn’t have sexually assaulted a woman because she wasn’t attractive enough for him, so it’s fair game in this instance.
Pensylvania pop punk group The Wonder Years, whose peers include bands like The Menzingers and Tigers Jaw, are prepping for the release of The Hum Goes On Forever, their seventh studio album. So far, they’ve released “Summer Clothes,” “Oldest Daughter,” and “Wyatt’s Song (Your Name),” and now they’re unveiling the cathartic track “Low Tide,” which deals with pandemic anxiety and is full of infectious hooks.
“It’s searching for some semblance of normalcy through small, newly formed rituals,” leader Dan Campbell said. “It’s being unsure if I’ll ever get to do the thing I love again, if live music will ever come back. It’s deciding to just give up and then deciding not to give up and then deciding to give up again in alternating intervals. It’s watching old movies and unconsciously thinking ‘Oh my god, where are your masks?’ when people are in public places because a deep anxiety now exists within me that may never fully leave. You know, all the normal stuff.”
The album is the outfit’s first since Campbell has become a father, so themes of fatherhood appear on the LP as well, a long with reckonings with trauma and existential dread.
Listen to “Low Tide” above.
The Hum Goes On Forever is out 9/23 via Hopeless Records. Pre-order it here.
When Beyonce’s house-influenced new single “Break My Soul” first dropped, there were naturally a few fans put off by the pop-R&B queen’s shift into dance music styles. It didn’t take long for folks to jump aboard though, leading to a renaissance (sorry) of interest in Black-led dance music. Even Robin S. started to receive some belated and much-deserved accolades for her role in pioneering house music in the ’90s.
However, while Beyonce’s genre experimentation is part of a larger movement to reclaim traditionally Black music, that doesn’t mean that fans can appreciate further attempts to transform her work. Enter Ali Spagnola, a social media personality who has made kind of a name for herself with attention-grabbing stunts. Along with her band, she has reinterpreted the song as a pop-punk track in a video titled, “What if Beyonce’s ‘Break My Soul’ was by MGK?”
Obviously, it didn’t take long for the video to get negative attention from Beyonce fans for a variety of reasons, not the least of which being that it’s kind of … not good. It’s also problematic thanks to some of the reasons stated above, which makes it a bad look in the eyes of many fans who are left to wonder if Spagnola just didn’t get the cultural subtext or got it and just didn’t care (both options sap the intended humor of the situation, given the historical context here). But attention seems to have been the goal all along, and Spagnola hasn’t had any problem with retweeting the criticism as well as the sporadic praise. She even doubled down, posting a video about “How we turned Beyonce’s ‘Break My Soul’ to MGK punk pop.”
It seems like Squid Game‘s popularity isn’t dying down any time soon. The series was not only one of the most-watched (and most-pirated) shows of 2021, but Netflix is rolling out a number of projects to keep the fan momentum going, like an actual game show (don’t worry, there is no murder involved) and now there is an immersive game experience debuted in several areas across the US and the UK.
Squid Game at Immersive Gamebox is an immersive walkthrough game that brings players through a series of games like Red Light, Green Light, and Tug Of War in a thrilling and only slightly terrifying VR experience. “Using our 3D motion tracking visors and touch screens around the room, you will need to survive each challenge to advance in the game,” the website explains. “Every time you lose, you lose players’ lives. Every time you win, earn money in the piggy bank.” So the good news is that everyone will make it out of the game alive and unharmed! Unlike the actual show.
Immersive Gamebox CEO Will Dean said in a statement, “People are constantly seeking new and different ways to remain invested in their favorite content. To reimagine Netflix’s most popular show in an entirely new format offers customers more ways to stay connected to Squid Game.”
Right now, the games are available in select locations including California, Colorado, Illinois, New York, Texas, Utah, and Virginia, with more locations coming soon. Of course, if this is all a little too scary for you, the venue also offers an immersive Angry Birds experience where you can throw birds at your friends!
Over four months have passed since Vladimir Putin decided to launch his imperialistic invasion of Ukraine, and the conflict doesn’t appear to be coming to an end anytime soon. Nor does Putin’s Botox supply, although it must be noted that there are some truly wild conspiracy theories out there about how the Russian president could have recently used a body double in Iran (and it looks like he simply laid off the Botox a bit, the better to awkwardly fidget). Yet rumors persist that Putin’s health is ailing, so it stands to reason (even if he wasn’t a global semi-pariah) that people would be talking about successors.
Actually, that talk’s been going on since Putin launched his dismal war in Ukraine. His inner circle reportedly grew concerned and started maneuvering about how to install a successor with the reported understanding “that in the fairly foreseeable future he will not run the country.” Now, intelligence leaders are starting to really name names, and that includes word by ex-MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, who appeared on the One Decision podcast to do just that. Via Business Insider:
Sir Richard Dearlove, who served as head of the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service from 1999 to 2004, asserted this week that the most likely heir candidate is Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of Russia’s Security Council and a longtime Putin ally known to be one of exceedingly few officials to have the president’s trust.
“I’m almost certain it would Patrushev,” Dearlove said on a Thursday episode of the podcast “One Decision,” which he co-hosts, during a discussion about the ongoing impacts of Putin’s war in Ukraine, more than five months after Russian forces invaded.
It’s worth noting that Putin’s inner circle hasn’t articulated as much. In fact, they’re outwardly saying that Putin’s health is great, and maybe they’ll even trot him out on horseback one of these days to prove that he’s still got it. What “it” might be, only time will tell.
LeBron James made his first appearance on a basketball court since April when he suited up and played in a Drew League game earlier this month. James teamed up with DeMar DeRozan, a fixture in the annual Los Angeles-based pro-am league, to put on a show in a packed gym at King/Drew Magnet High School in his first Drew League appearance in more than a decade.
The game generated a ton of interest from basketball fans, and in the aftermath, DeRozan appeared on Draymond Green’s podcast to discuss what happened. DeRozan told Green that James got in touch a week before about potentially playing in a game. The news of James heading to the Drew hit the internet the day before things tipped off, and DeRozan recalled showing up to the gym and being greeted by thousands of fans.
“Just to see the kids out there being able to see @KingJames come play in Compton, you cannot beat that”
“It was one of those moments that you can’t duplicate,” DeRozan said. “Like, I remember when Kob came and played at the Drew, that was one of the most epic moments, how he did that. But there wasn’t even supposed to be a game played that day. So, this time around, with Bron coming, it was a game that was supposed to be played. I’d been playing in it, and to wake up that morning and see the line around the Drew League stretch around the corner, it just took it back to that old school, early-2000s feel.”
DeRozan went on to talk about how special it was for children to see James play basketball in that building, which helped make the environment “special.”
“[There were] a couple moments where I just looked around, you see kids, just … the smile and the excitement on their face, like, that’s something that they’re gonna remember forever,” DeRozan said. “And that’s what it’s all about.”
Even before they landed the lead roles on Issa Rae’s new HBO Max series, Aida Osman and KaMillion have been living and breathing this rap sh*t. The new show, appropriately titled Rap Sh!t, tells the story of two estranged high school friends – the poetic, lyric-focused Shawna Clark (Osman) and the confident, sexually liberated Mia Knight (KaMillion) – reuniting to form a rap duo. While this is both actors’ first times starring in a lead role, their TV counterparts are entities the two have been manifesting for years.
Before Rap Sh!t, KaMillion had been putting out independent mixtapes and singles for eight years. Osman had worked as a writer and producer on shows like Big Mouth and Betty, and was initially hired to be a writer for Rap Sh!t. With Rap Sh!t, the two are at the forefront of their own sharp pen game after years of putting in work behind the scenes.
“It’s so complicated and scary and weird to actualize,” Osman says of being a lead on television. “Every time I see the photo of me and Milly in the car that they’re using for the Rap Sh!t art, I’m like, ‘Oh, that’s somebody else. That’s not me and her’ But like, that is me and her. That’s me and my friend. When I drive by the billboard now, it’s so weird to see that that’s us. It’s surreal.”
Alicia Vera/HBO Max
Aida Osman plays the lyric-focused Shawna Clark. She is also a writer on the show.
Osman’s affinity for hip-hop began as a secret love affair. Having grown up in a Muslim household in Lincoln, Nebraska, she was not allowed to watch TV or listen to hip-hop, which the TV writer and actress on a hip-hop-centered show admits is “crazy… because look at me now.” As a teenager, she would often take her computer and sit in her room, watching Nicki Minaj videos in secret. She played drums and performed in her school’s choir throughout high school, and by college, she was quietly writing her own rhymes and exploring beatmaking.
Today, Osman’s mother is more than supportive of her work, even if she doesn’t quite get it.
“[My mom] hates Big Mouth so much,” Osman says. “She’s always like, ‘What is this? They’re ugly.’ She thinks it’s all ugly, and she thinks the concept is so stupid. But she always pauses at the credits like, ‘That’s my baby.’ And I’m like, ‘Which is it? Which is it?’ I don’t even know if my mom understands the concept of Rap Sh!t, but we’ll see.”
KaMillion, on the other hand, has always been immersed in the world of hip-hop, having grown up in Jacksonville, Florida, and hearing music constantly playing outside. “I started writing poetry at first,” says KaMillion, “just looking at the community that I was raised in, and everything I was going through. Everything started out as poetry, and then I just put a beat to it. When I felt like I could do it, I started rapping and getting with different producers. Hip-hop has just always been in me just because of how I was raised in the neighborhoods where I came from.”
When we first meet Osman’s Shawna on the show, she is working the front desk at a Miami hotel. She is recognized for one of her viral freestyles, however, it is revealed that she now wears a mask when she records her rap videos, that way people can focus on her lyrics instead of her appearance. She is critical of the hypersexual nature of women rappers and is fed up with being slept on and wants very badly for industry professionals to take her seriously.
KaMillion’s Mia, on the other hand, strives to be a woman’s fantasy in regards to sexual liberation – a la Lil Kim in the ’90s. As an aspiring rapper single mother, a make-up artist, and an OnlyFans model, Mia wears many hats throughout the series.
Sex work is a big component of the Rap Sh!t universe. In the first episode, we see Mia live streaming on OnlyFans, taking requests and tips from men. In real life, KaMillion briefly dipped her toes in the OnlyFans waters during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, though not for what she considers sex work, but rather to share intimate pictures that wouldn’t make it past the Instagram censors. “We’ve all done odd jobs to come up,” KaMillion says. “I danced briefly to make ends meet, so I understood that aspect when it came to my character, because I’ve experienced it.”
While she became well-versed on the platform of her own accord, bringing the OnlyFans action to the screen was an entirely new challenge for KaMillion.
Alicia Vera/HBO Max
KaMillion plays the ambitious, sexually-liberated Mia Knight.
“When you’re recording kinky little videos on your phone, no one’s in there watching you,” KaMillion says, “but now, you’ve got to perform in front of the camera guy and the director. Like they’re up in your coochie, and I’m like ‘Did I shave good enough?’ ‘How’s every angle looking?’”
Although Shawna hasn’t done any sex work in the series, Osman, similarly to KaMillion, said one of her most challenging scenes to shoot was a virtual sex scene in the first episode, in which she is having FaceTime sex with her long-distance boyfriend, Cliff (Devon Terrell).
“There will be a closed set for things like this, so it’s just you, the cameraman, the producer, the main writer, and the showrunner,” Osman says. “But every time that we film a scene, we do a practice round before, where the necessary crew comes in and maps out what the scene is going to look like. So to lay in a bed while Issa Rae is just watching me masturbate is the goofiest thing. I felt funny and stupid, and I couldn’t take that scene seriously. I kept cackling mid-orgasm.”
Throughout the series, the promising rappers navigate the treacherous music industry as their single, “Seduce And Scheme,” continues to go viral. They face challenges like handling personal relationships as artists, remaining couth at industry functions, and the pressures of viral fame. All the while, the two channel the spirit of women in rap to help them get through the titular rap sh*t, both on-and-off screen.
Viewers with a keen ear will catch the characters referencing iconic quotes by female rappers in casual conversation. In the second episode, when Mia and Shawna are brainstorming ideas for songs, Mia says she wants to make “something fun, something for the summertime, something for the girls to get ready and party to,” referring to Saweetie’s 2019 interview for Amazon Music’s Rap Rotation. In a later episode, where the ladies head to New York City, Mia recreates Nicki Minaj’s 2017 viral “you b*tches can’t even spell Prague” video, recording a clip in front of a black Cadillac Escalade, saying, “Attention, this is how a bad b*tch leaves Miami and arrives in Queens. You b*tches can’t even spell Queens.”
Like the hidden Drake-lyrics in the dialogue of the first season of Rae’s breakout series, Insecure, and the Frank Ocean-lyrics in the second, this was something the writers did on purpose.
“It’s definitely about paying homage, and we love that,” Osman says. “It always feels amazing to catch a little easter egg like that. So with our show, it only made sense for the writers to be like, ‘Let’s put in our favorite moments from Black women in rap.’”
As Mia and Shawna become stars on Rap Sh!t, both Osman and KaMillion are becoming stars in real life, alongside their breakout characters. According to Osman, Rae first commissioned her to write “a month’s worth of television” when she was hired onto the show’s staff. She was comfortable working as a writer “for the rest of [her] life,” and even assumed that someone else had landed the role of Shawna before she was asked to do a chemistry read with KaMillion.
KaMillion had been working toward her breakthrough moment in music for nearly a decade, and now, with Rap Sh!t, she feels like the stars are all aligning.
“I think it’s a blessing for me to be able to make a living in hip-hop,” KaMillion says. “And, ultimately, to be on a show like this – that I feel is about to be culture.”
Bad Bunny has rapidly risen from relative obscurity to become one of the biggest artists in the world, accumulating multiple No. 1s, selling millions of records, and making history in the short amount of time he’s been in the spotlight. His latest impressive accomplishment comes courtesy of Billboard, which reports that BB’s new album Un Verano Sin Ti has become the most popular album of 2022 — even surpassing the inescapable Encanto soundtrack.
Un Verano Sin Ti, which was also the second all-Spanish-language album to reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 (the first being its immediate predecessor, El Último Tour del Mundo, in 2020), has earned 1.606 million equivalent album units in the US. Encanto, which featured the immensely popular “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” had 1.565 million units. For those who don’t know, equivalent album units are a combination of straight album sales, 10 individual tracks sold from an album (track equivalent units), or 1,250 streams via a subscription — or 3,750 ad-supported streams (streaming equivalent units). While Billboard’s data doesn’t break down how BB reached his impressive 1.6 million EAUs, previous reports noted his totals were being driven mostly by streams, which kept the album at No. 1 for five consecutive weeks, then reclaimed its spot earlier this month, breaking a record previously set by Adele in the process.
Jon Stewart has been relentlessly championing the Honoring Our Promise to Address Comprehensive Toxics Act that would provide necessary care to veterans who were exposed to toxic burn pits during their service. The comedian even dedicated an episode of his Apple TV series to the issue in addition to making several trips to Capitol Hill to urge Congress to keep its promise to veterans.
To Stewart’s horror, the bill died in the senate on Wednesday thanks to Senator Pat Toomey urging his fellow Republicans to vote against it. Once the bill’s fate became clear, the former Daily Show host unloaded on Toomey and the Republican caucus in a fiery and profane Twitter thread:
Congratulations @SenToomey You successfully used the Byzantine Senate rules to keep sick veterans suffering!!!! Kudos! I’m sure you’ll celebrate by kicking a dog or punching a baby…or whatever terrible people do for fun!!!!! 6 trillion for war- No guidelines or oversight…but for Veterans Healthcare?? Let’s play budget gimmick games. We live in the upside down. For the veterans, and their families and caregivers who will bear the brunt of this nonsense… this isn’t over… we will never stop the fight until this country honors its promise to you.
PS F*ck the R caucus and their empty promise to our veterans.
6 trillion for war- No guidelines or oversight…but for Veterans Healthcare?? Let’s play budget gimmick games. We live in the upside down.
Stewart continued to blast Toomey in a series of follow-up tweets where he wrote, “I call bullsh*t,” above a video of Toomey attacking the “budget gimmick.” Stewart also demanded that the senate not leave for summer recess until it does right by the veterans.
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