The talk of DJ Khaled’s new album God Did might be the title track and its outstanding Jay-Z feature, but the Miami superproducer isn’t about to let the rest of his latest project languish. He strikes while the iron’s still white hot with the video for “Big Time” featuring Atlanta’s finest, Future and Lil Baby.

The video opens with a short interlude that might be intended to be comedic — but with DJ Khaled, who really knows — that sees Khaled soaking in a bubble bath surrounded by scantily clad beauties. One fans him with a palm frond, another feeds him grapes, and yet another pops out for the apparent sole purpose of removing a serving tray cover when he demands his butler bring him a towel.

Once the video gets started, it bears all the hallmarks of a DJ Khaled original. Future, Khaled, and Lil Baby all roam the immaculately manicured lawn of a beachside villa while being attended to by the aforementioned beauties. A helicopter buzzes overhead, and yes, products are placed; Khaled shows off his Theragun, and a bottle of Luc Belaire gets its own hero shot alongside the shapely models as they lounge by the pool (Rick Ross, oddly enough, does not cameo along with his liquor). Big time, indeed.

Watch DJ Khaled’s “Big Time” video featuring Future and Lil Baby above.

God Did is out now on We The Best / Epic Records. Get it here.

Episode-length parodies aren’t always successful, but the Property Brothers spoof on this week’s What We Do in the Shadows — the funniest show on television — was another fantastic episode in a season full of them.

It doesn’t take a super-fan of John and Jim Property, which I assume is the names of the brothers, to recognize the tropes that were being mocked. But that took a lot of work — and a lot of Property Brothers episodes. During the pandemic lockdown, What We Do in the Shadows director Yana Gorskaya told Vulture that she “spent most of my free time watching Property Brothers. I feel like I was made to do this episode.” Director of photography DJ Stipsen was less enthused about having to do an HGTV binge, but “it felt really necessary,” Gorskaya said. “Our show was already documentary style, so the parallels are there in terms of the handheld look. But it was helpful to have conversations about how to make it look and feel different from a regular Shadows episode.”

This is true, but my biggest laugh of the episode came when the format returned to its “regular” documentary look. Please enjoy the great Matt Berry saying “New York City.”

This video currently has 1.9 million views. At least 27 of them are mine.

Make it 28.

It’s not too late to let Matt Berry host Shark Week or a NYC-set travel show. I can picture it now: [Matt Berry voice] “Pizza”

Make it 29.

(Via Vulture)

The Emmy-nominated Netflix documentary series Chef’s Table returns on September 7th with what looks to be the series’ best season ever, Chef’s Table: Pizza. Nothing beats pizza, and a whole season that focuses on the art of the perfect pie is sure to rival even the biggest shows fighting for your attention right now. Seriously, ask yourself — do you really want to watch an hour of Game of Thrones dragon f*ckery or spend an hour salivating at beautifully shot pizza porn with pies that look so good you can taste them through the screen?

Our money is on the pizza. Hell, an NYC touring episode is practically written out right here.

The new season will center around the six chefs who are currently elevating the art form of the perfect pie, including legends like Chris Bianco, Gabriele Bonci, Ann Kim, Franco Pepe, Yoshihiro Imai, and Sarah Minnick as we bounce between Phoenix, Caiazzo and Rome, Minneapolis, Portland, and Kyoto. Clearly the show aims to offer a slice for every sort of pizza fan out there. Whether you’re all about those classic red sauce mozzarella pies or prefer something a little bit more decorative and inventive, Chef’s Table: Pizza looks to have it all.

Aside from the varied styles of pizza we see, it looks like the new season is going to have a lot of emotional range as well, with insanely quotable lines like, “When we make dough, there is no machine behind it, there are only the arms and the mind of the man” along with heavily emotional moments that examine the tortured souls of artists who become consumed by their medium. It’s wild stuff and this season looks right up there with series creator David Gelb’s Jiro Dreams of Sushi.

Check out the trailer for the new season above and catch Chef’s Table: Pizza on Netflix on September 7th.

Long ago, Blockbuster Video had the chance to buy a fledgling little company that was delivering DVDs to customers by mail. The rental giant took a pass. That company would quickly become Netflix, and within a few years it would completely revolutionize how people watch movies in the home. As Netflix became a massive entertainment powerhouse, Blockbuster began shuttering locations across the nation, and now, it’s down to its last store in Bend, Oregon, which is somehow still holding on and doing deals with Oreo?

In short, Netflix absolutely crushed Blockbuster, which makes it hilariously awkward (and, maybe, even deliciously petty) that the streaming platform is unveiling a new sitcom based on the failed rental giant. Creatively titled Blockbuster, the new series will star Randall Park (WandaVision), Melissa Fumero (Brooklyn Nine-Nine), and JB Smoove (Arrested Development) when it arrives in November.

Here’s the official logline:

Timmy Yoon (Randall Park) Is an analog dreamer living in a 5G world. And after learning he is operating the last Blockbuster Video in America, Timmy and his staff employees (including his long-time crush, Eliza (Melissa Fumero) fight to stay relevant. The only way to succeed is to remind their community that they provide something big corporations can’t: human connection.

The cast will also include Olga Merediz, Tyler Alvarez, and Madeline Arthur who will round out the employees at the last remaining and inevitably doomed Blockbuster location.

Netflix also released a set of first-look photos from Blockbuster, which you can see below:

Blockbuster starts streaming November 3 on Netflix.

A lot has been made about the budget for The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power. Too much, one could argue. But I would not make this argument. This is the most expensive show in the history of television, to the tune of $715 million for the first season alone if you include the nearly $250 million that Amazon paid for the rights.

The Wall Street Journal put The Rings of Power‘s staggering budget into perspective: the bill “comes to roughly $715 million, or about 5,143,885 annual Prime subscriptions — 0.15 percent of Amazon’s 2021 revenues and approximately one-fifth what New Zealand, where the series was filmed, allocated for its defense budget this year.”

It’s unclear how many Prime Video subscribers have an annual subscription compared to month to month, but overall, Amazon’s streaming service has 175 million subscribers. Meaning, roughly one of out every 35 patrons is footing the bill for The Rings of Power.

The sellers had expected to receive between $50 million and $75 million for the rights… The nearly $250 million offered by Amazon — split roughly 50/50 between the Tolkien estate and Warner Bros. — came after the company pledged several seasons of the show and highlighted its ability to cross-promote the author’s books on its website. (In 1999, Amazon customers named Lord of the Rings the best book of the millennium.)

If The Rings of Power is a bust, Amazon’s space-obsessed CEO Jeff Bezos will take a major financial hit: he’ll only be able to afford two mega-yachts this year, instead of three.

The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power premieres on September 1.

(Via the Wall Street Journal)

Producer-led albums are far from a novelty in music, but they exist within different lanes. Some producers opt to provide the entirety of a project’s beats for artists to perform over, while others curate a collection of music by bringing in other masterminds in addition to rappers or singers. With the new release of DJ Khaled’s God Did, a fan questioned how compensation works when someone like him and Calvin Harris are known as DJs. Let’s just say, the Funk Wav Bounces Vol. 2 artist came with the facts.

In a Friday morning (August 26) tweet, a fan asked, “I always wonder how DJs like Khaled and Calvin Harris make bread. Like all of their songs are other artists. Just production revenue?” This fan is surely not alone in this inquiry, as many do not understand the work that goes into these projects beyond what on the surface seems to not be much. The “Feel So Close” artist came across the tweet and showed why more respect should be put on his name by the unaware masses.

“Because I write, produce, mix, play every instrument and sometimes vocal. We found love, Summer, Feel so close for example 100% publishing because I did everything,” Harris said in a quote tweet. “Only reason I got Frank Ocean feature was he told me we found love was one of his favorite songs. I wrote that song.”

Now, any doubts can, or should, be put to bed as to what Calvin Harris is capable of. If the tweet isn’t enough, there is also his first two albums I Created Disco and Ready For The Weekend, from 2007 and 2009 respectively, where he shows his vocal chops with minimal features.

Check out the exchange between Calvin Harris and the fan above.

In 2019, while still relatively early in her come-up to being the nationally recognized star she is today, Megan Thee Stallion noted that online stan wars appeared to be the source of much of the friction between female rappers. “A lot of beef between women gets started because of their fanbases,” she told Joe Budden on his podcast. She also provided her idea for a solution: “Let’s all get to know each other. Let’s be cool because when the fans see that girls are being nice to each other that makes them lessen that drama.”

Her perspective makes a lot of sense, considering she’s one of only a handful of newer rappers to have collaborated with both Cardi B and Nicki Minaj, who are usually the focal point of most of the toxic fan bickering on Twitter. This week, Megan appeared on another show — Yung Miami’s Caresha Please — and reiterated this viewpoint with her previous experience in mind. “Do you feel like y’all ever be in those type of predicaments, like you can’t work with somebody because you worked with somebody else?” she asked.

“I feel like, just friends in general when you know your friend might not feel so good about somebody, do you like, go out your way to be like, ‘Okay, bitch, I’m not f*cking with you. Period.’” While she acknowledged that loyalty is important, outside observers seem more interested in seeing artists throw away business opportunities in music. I feel like it be the fans more so than anybody,” she said. “They keep it up more than the actual artists and they got the world thinking something that’s not happening.”

Her words are especially poignant today after Cardi B was once again confronted with trolling from one of Nicki’s stans who accused her husband Offset of cheating on her with Saweetie. As Cardi pointed out, there was no evidence to support the claim, just attention-seeking behavior from a fan who hasn’t quite figured out that stars are people too. In 2020, Cardi also shared her view that fans try to instigate beef, saying, “When female artists are rising, you don’t have to put one down because the others are rising. Every single time a female rapper comes out, people wanna start fake beef.”

You can watch the full episode of Caresha Please above.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Over the course of 2022, Anitta has quickly become Brazil’s biggest global pop music star. Singing in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, she presents unique accessibility to different types of audiences from around the world. It’s also helped Anitta — who will be performing at the 2022 MTV VMAs — to attract a diverse set of collaborators, which is on full display on the newly-released Deluxe edition of her breakout album, Versions of Me.

The Versions Of Me deluxe album features 20 tracks in total including five new tracks. Among them are “Lobby,” her springy collaboration with Missy Elliott, “El Que Espera,” with Colombian singer Maluma, and “Dançarina [Remix],” a Latin American cross-cultural explosion with reggaeton star Nicky Jam, Brazilian artists MC Pedrinho and Pedro Sampaio, and French singer Dadju. Even ASAP Ferg hops on alongside Harv on “Practice.”

Check out the full tracklist for Versions Of Me below along with the album artwork.

1. “Lobby” (featuring Missy Elliott)
2. “El Que Espera” (featuring Maluma)
3. “Yo No Se” (featuring L7NNON & Maffio)
4. “Practice” (featuring A$AP Ferg & HARV)
5. “DANÇARINA [remix]” (featuring Nicky Jam, MC Pedrinho, Pedro Sampaio, & Dadju
6. “Envolver”
7. “Gata” (featuring Chencho Corleone)
8. “I’d Rather Have Sex”
9. “Gimme Your Number”(featuring x Ty Dolla Sign)
10. “Maria Elegante” (featuring Afro B)
11. “Love You”
12. “Boys Don’t Cry”
13. “Versions of Me”
14. “Turn It Up”
15. “Ur Baby” (featuring Khalid)
16. “Girl From Rio”
17. “Faking Love” (featuring Saweetie)”
18. “Que Rabão” (featuring Mr. Catra, YG, Papatinho, MC Kevin o Chris)
19. “Me Gusta” (with Cardi B & Myke Towers)
20. “Love Me, Love Me”

Versions Of Me deluxe is out now via Warner Records. Listen to it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The best new hip-hop this week includes albums, videos, and songs from DJ Khaled, JID, Nicki Minaj, and more.

You may not have believed you’d make it to the end of this week, but God did! As we close off August, it appears hip-hop wanted to barrel into September with a bang. Bars, bops, and baddies have us eating well this Friday. So, as always, enjoy this week’s slate.

Here is the best of hip-hop this week ending August 26, 2022.

Albums/EPs/Mixtapes

DJ Khaled — God Did

Nobody promotes quite like DJ Khaled. His 13th studio album God Did centers around the fact that there is a conglomerate of people who do not believe in him, but it doesn’t matter because God did. With appearances from Drake, Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Future, Latto, Sza, Lil Durk, Lil Baby, and many more, Khaled assembled yet another star-studded cast and the album runs much better than everything he has dropped since 2016’s Major Key.

JID — The Forever Story

Since 2018’s DiCaprio 2 and all of the talk about JID being J. Cole’s successor, there has been much anticipation for him to claim that throne. After teasing his three separate projects for years and contributing to compilation albums such as Revenge Of The Dreamers III and Spillage Village, JID has finally delivered his latest solo album The Forever Story. With a desire to flex both his rapping ability and melodic prowess, he enlists the help of Lil Durk, Ari Lennox, Lil Wayne, and Johnta Austin over 15 tracks.

Nicki Minaj — Queen Radio: Volume 1

Nicki Minaj has no shortage of praise from her fanbase and the hip-hop community at large; just check social media. Still, she has no problem celebrating herself and reminding people of what she has delivered over the course of her successful career. Queen Radio: Volume 1 doubles as a greatest hits album and victory lap, including records like “Beez In The Trap,” “Moment 4 Life,” “Itty Bitty Piggy,” “Super Bass,” and more.

Rapper Big Pooh — To Dream In Color

If you’re going to dream, dream big. Dream vibrantly. Dream in color. Rapper Big Pooh’s latest album, To Dream In Color, displays that phenomenon over 10 moving records featuring Jared Evan, Blakk Soul, BeMyFiasco, and Tre’mar.

Roc Marciano & The Alchemist — The Elephant Man’s Bones

In an era where the state of rap is regularly questioned, Roc Marciano and The Alchemist are names regularly thrown around for their lyrical and production work, respectively. The Elephant Man’s Bones is more evidence of “the feeling being restored” with appearances by Action Bronson, Boldy James, Ice-T, and Knowledge The Pirate.

Mach-Hommy — Dollar Menu 4

Mach-Hommy encouraged listeners to Pray For Haiti last year, but now it appears he wants them to pray for the rest of the rap game. Dollar Menu 4 is a short, but firm offering at nine feature-less records. Hommy is another person who people feel is keeping rap afloat, and this project certainly adds some credence to that notion.

Real Boston Richey — Public Housing

Real Boston Richey is a newer face in the rap game, but he has already made a big splash. Public Housing shows the potential to be a major star, backed by collaborations with Future, Moneybagg Yo, and Lil Durk. It’s just a matter of time.

Meechy Darko — Gothic Luxury

Meechy Darko’s Gothic Luxury brands a unique album title and an enjoyable slate of records. The rapper trades bars with Black Thought, A-Trak, Freddie Gibbs, and Busta Rhymes with ease.

Singles/Videos

Joey Badass — “Let It Breathe”

A soul sample, a request to “turn the vocals up,” and a downtempo rap beat are a rap fan’s paradise. Joey Badass floats with ease on “Let It Breathe,” a welcome breath of fresh air in a high-energy, trap rap era.

Wynne — “Look At You”

Wynne is showing no signs of falling off. “Look At You” shows off her charming rap voice, endless confidence, and willingness to tell the harsh truth to other rappers and men. “Look at me, look at you, then look back at me / That’s embarrassing.” The fact she can warn you not to have her send you back to therapy while eating Taco Bell in the car is equally endearing and horrifying. The Obi Toppin bar is hard too.

Radamiz — “Someguydez Freestyle”

Radamiz has bars that span from the East coast to the West. The New York rapper traveled to Los Angeles for the “Someguydez Freestyle” to spit fire in a different time zone simply because he can.

Fabolous — “Rich Hustle” ft. Jim Jones

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=fabolous+rich+hustle

It goes without saying that Fabolous and Jim Jones represent New York to the fullest. “Rich Hustle” finds the two veterans traveling up to Dyckman Park to pop bottles and celebrate success with the summer basketball league’s attendees.

Young Crazy — “Suburban Kid”

Though the way certain men ride their ATVs in this video is a bit concerning, Young Crazy’s “Suburban Kid” is a very fun video. The Virginia artist gets money, gets bars off, and loves fans. Not sure if the “ugly hoes” he mentions will enjoy that bar in particular, but there are plenty of others here to latch on to.

Kool G Rap — “Fly Till I Die” ft. Big Daddy Kane

I say this a lot in this column, but it is always enjoyable to hear from our legends. Kool G Rap and Big Daddy Kane are clear elder statesmen in the rap game. “Fly Till I Die” shows that the two have not missed a step. They might even be better.

Fredo Bang — “Addy”

Fredo Bang skates over the video game-sounding beat backing “Addy.” He asserts that he’d probably cut his finger off before kissing a woman, which may need some deeper examination, but overall it is a solid record. It is intriguing that a lady wants him to f*ck her on his “finsta” being that those are private, but whatever works for them.

Lakeyah — “Real B*tch” ft. Gloss Up

Lakeyah and Gloss Up are empowered as ever on “Real B*tch.” They exchange bars with ferocity, affirming their status as both rappers and femme fatales.

BlueBucksClan — “I Guess”

BlueBucksClan is a dynamic duo, and there isn’t any room to doubt it. “I Guess” combines their smooth, downtoned vocals over an upbeat canvas. “Your baby mama trash, she was in the mood I guess.”

Headie One — “Illegal”

The tongue is powerful, and Headie One’s rapping ability may just be a lethal weapon. Thus, the title of his new record, “Illegal,” is accurate. He weaves in and out of the drill beat with ease like shoelaces on your favorite kicks.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Lil Wayne’s hometown festival in New Orleans, Lil Weezyana, was set to go down this Saturday, August 27th. It would have marked the one-day festival’s first edition since 2019. Lil Weezyana serves as not only a celebration of hip-hop and New Orleans, but also a benefit that supports educational initiatives for young people in the city. Unfortunately, it’s going to have to wait, as Lil Wayne himself made the announcement on Instagram yesterday that the festival — featuring performances from Moneybagg Yo, Coi Leray, Babyface Ray, and Rob 49 — is being postponed until later this year due to “unforeseen circumstances.”

“It is with my sincerest apologies that I must announce…due to unforeseen circumstances, Lil Weezyana Fest will be postponed until Oct 29,” Wayne wrote. “To my fans, you know I always want to deliver the best show possible and we hope this has not inconvenienced you in anyway. The festival was sold out thanks to you. Please hold on you to your tickets and I will see you in October. I promise to make it up to you and to my city. Love.”

For Wayne, who just appeared on DJ Khaled’s track “God Did,” alongside Jay-Z, Rick Ross, John Legend, and Fridayy, it’s not entirely bad news, since there’s a light at the end of the tunnel for Lil Weezyana in 2022. The new date is set for October 29th at the same venue, Champions Square.