Month: November 2022

On Tuesday morning, hip-hop fans woke to some bad news; Atlanta rapper Takeoff of rap trio Migos had been shot to death in Houston at just 28 years old. Tributes have been pouring in ever since as everyone from Drake to James Corden shares their fond memories of the self-styled spaceman and his label and closest friends and collaborators have warned fans not to share a graphic video of the shooting. Today, more details about the shooting emerged, including the identity of another victim: fellow Migos member Quavo’s assistant, 23-year-old Joshua “Wash” Washington.

According to TMZ, Washington was one of two other people hit by gunfire and was rushed to a nearby hospital. However, his injuries are described as non-life-threatening, so thank goodness for small favors. Meanwhile, police have yet to publicly identify a suspect in the shooting, although a man in one video from the incident can be seen holding a gun and authorities have identified him as a person of interest.

Sadly, Takeoff was in the middle of a promoting a new album he’d released with Quavo as the two Migos seemed to be having some sort of dispute with the trio’s third member, Offset. Offset paid homage to his late partner-in-rhyme by changing his Instagram profile photo to one of Takeoff, but so far, neither remaining Migo has made a public statement.

In 2017, Selena Gomez needed a new kidney due to lupus, so that summer, she got one from friend and actress Francia Raisa. Like all good kidneys, this one has a name, and now Gomez has revealed that she dubbed her new kidney “Fred,” after actor Fred Armisen.

In a new Rolling Stone feature, Gomez explained, “I named my new kidney ‘Fred.’ I named it after Fred Armisen because I love Portlandia. I’ve never met him, but I’m secretly hoping he finds that out just because I want him to be like, ‘That’s weird.’”

Elsewhere, she spoke about visiting a friend who was trying to get pregnant, after which Gomez cried in her car. She explained that due to medications she takes to treat her bipolar disorder, she likely wouldn’t be able to carry her own children. She described that as “a very big, big, present thing in my life” but noted, “However I’m meant to have them, I will.”

Meanwhile, Gomez just released “My Mind & Me,” a new single that shares the title of her upcoming documentary. She told Rolling Stone of the film, “My Mind & Me is a little sad, but it’s also a really nice way of putting a button on the documentary part of life, and then it’ll just be fun stories of me living my life and going on dates and having conversations with myself. I feel like it’s going be an album that’s like, ‘Oh, she’s not in that place anymore; she’s actually just living life.’”

Read the full feature here.

Joey Badass joined Chance The Rapper to perform “The Highs And The Lows” on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in August, and Joey returned to the late-night staple’s set last night (November 2) with Men I Trust to give bring the sensual 2000 track “Show Me” to life.

“Show Me” samples Men I Trust’s Emmanuelle Proulx from the band’s “Show Me How,” and she was on hand to deliver the delicate vocal alongside her bandmates Dragos Chiriac and Jessy Caron on guitar. Joey was joined at the stage’s forefront by a woman, his muse. She dances up on him, and Joey is transfixed on her and she moves around the stage.

“Transparency my love language / Can’t see the bigger picture if your vision tainted,” he raps in the second verse and into the woman’s eyes, sitting directly across from her at a table and confessing his undying commitment to her. “Don’t you forget that I would die for you any day,” he asserts at the end of the verse, leading into the pre-chorus, “Right here, right now, what you gotta say? / You ain’t gotta lie now, it’s the bed we made.”

Joey dropped 2000 in July. His third studio album also includes features from Diddy, Capella Grey, Chris Brown, JID, Larry June, and Westside Gunn.

Watch Joey and Men I Trust’s “Show Me” performance above.

In 2011, Jimmy Kimmel had an idea: Tell your kids you ate all their Halloween candy and see how they react — and be sure to capture it all on video. While not every parent thinks lying to their child and making them cry is hilarious — which, let’s face it, it is — the segment, titled “Hey Jimmy Kimmel, I Told My Kids I Ate All Their Halloween Candy,” was a massive hit. And while Kimmel decided to give kids a break over the past two years, given the stress they and their parents were already under with the COVID pandemic, this year he brought the tear-filled bit back with a vengeance.

“After two long years, our Halloween YouTube challenge is back,” Kimmel announced on Wednesday night. Though he admitted that “people love this so much, the last two years we didn’t even ask anyone to do it, but hundreds of families did it anyway. So we gave up and we did it again.”

“This is like our Top Gun,” Kimmel explained. “We have to have a sequel. The first time we did it was 10 years ago. And we’ve been doing it so long, some of the kids we tricked grew up to have their own kids to steal candy from.” While the late-night host acknowledged that there are several critics of the segment, they put it to a vote and let the viewers decide whether to bring it back. And it turns out, as you can see above, watching small children cry and threaten their parents may be the new American pastime.

Come for all the spontaneous wailing; stay for the adorable little girl who slams her plastic pumpkin down in a blind rage while yelling, “Dammit!” Or the one who assumed, rightly, “I bet you guys had to poop.”

Powerball fever is breaking out again after Wednesday’s night drawing came and went without a winner. The jackpot is now at an estimated $1.5 billion for Saturday’s drawing. That’s a whole lot of cheddar, and it’s got people on social media losing it over missing out on Wednesday’s $1.2 billion haul. Even Former White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer is trying to get in on the action.

According to CNN, the jackpot total has been ballooning since August, but surprisingly, the $1.5 billion is not the highest total. Although, it’s pretty darn close:

There have been 39 consecutive Powerball drawings since August with no winner, ballooning the jackpot to one of the largest in US history. The record is a $1.586 billion Powerball grand prize shared by winners in California, Florida and Tennessee in January 2016, according to Powerball. In July, a $1.337 billion Mega Millions jackpot was won by a ticket in Illinois. A $1.537 billion Mega Millions prize was claimed in South Carolina in 2019.

If Saturday does produce a winner, that ticket would be eligible for a one-time payment of $745.9 million, according to a statement from Powerball. Or the winner could go with the annuity option, which would spread 30 payments over the next 29 years. Either way, it’s a buttload of cash, and social media is starting to go nuts over the whole thing.

While most of the reactions are bummed at missing Wednesday’s numbers, there’s a palpable feeling of hope (and lotto frenzy) going into Saturday’s drawing.

You can see what Powerball nuts are saying below:

(Via CNN)

Earlier this year, Kurt Vile unveiled his new album Watch My Moves. Last night, he brought the song “Hey Like A Child” to Late Night With Seth Meyers in a relaxed performance.

“Hey Like A Child” is a nice dose of Vile’s twangy, cinematic sound, and his live rendition of it is even more colorful and calming as he sings nonchalantly: “Hey like a child you waltzed into my life / Hey like a mild high, I’m feelin’ fine.” It’s a great end-of-the-year reminder of the record that was released in the spring.

In April, Vile reviewed every one of his albums for Uproxx. About his most recent LP, he said, “I think my records are always enough of something new in my evolution. I’ve always got new things to say. I just think I’m emitting my personality and being comfortable where I’m at in my life. It’s a little bit cocky, and sometimes funny. But it’s also confidently played with dreamy chords, and it just puts you in the zone. All those things that I’ve become a master of, it’s what I’m doing and I’m cranking it out from my own house at this point. It’s just the way it is.”

Watch Vile’s performance of “Hey Like A Child” on Late Night above.

Selena Gomez said My Mind & Me, her Apple TV+ documentary, is “a bit on the serious side” on The Kelly Clarkson Show yesterday, and its titular single released this morning (November 3) backs up that descriptor in spades. The piano ballad arrived alongside an animated lyric video, and each line is more brutally honest than the last.

“Wanna hear a part to my story / I tried to hide in the glory / And sweep it under the table / So you would never know,” Gomez melodically sings in the first verse, which goes on to depict Gomez as “an accident people look when they’re passing” but “never check on the passenger” because “they just want a free show.” The acoustic chorus finds Gomez admitting to a constant fight with her mind but reclaiming her power and proclaiming, “I wouldn’t change my life / And all of the crashing and burning and breaking, I know now / If somebody sees me like this, then they won’t feel alone now.”

The 30-year-old singer and Only Murders In The Building actress wrote the powerful song with frequent collaborator Justin Tranter, Julia Michaels, and Ian Kirkpatrick.

With Clarkson, Gomez shared how difficult it was to chronicle in the documentary her 2019 stay at Boston’s McLean Hospital and her subsequent coming to terms with a bipolar diagnosis, but she tried to incorporate just as many positive or uplifting moments.

“It’s a very honest take on somebody who has to live with all of these things,” she said. “But I mean, the whole point, hopefully, is at the end, you’re like, ‘Well, cool, she’s gonna go live her life and do her thing. ‘Cause I am never gonna make one of these again.”

Vulture published an interview yesterday with Gomez and My Mind & Me director Alek Keshishian, and she similarly opened up about the challenges of filming such an unflinching documentary. When asked why they chose to hold off on making the doc around her 2016 Revival Tour, which bled into a career hiatus citing mental health complications stemming from lupus, Gomez said, “I wasn’t well. That’s actually the only answer. I wasn’t well, and I couldn’t continue. I had to cancel what I needed to cancel in order to live.”

All indications are that, on the other side of My Mind & Me, Gomez has arrived in a place where she knows how to better protect herself from the unrelenting pressures of celebrity. As for the single, Gomez told Variety at the doc’s premiere that she hopes to release more new music in 2023.

Watch the lyric video above.

Selena Gomez: My Mind & Me hits Apple TV+ on 11/4.

Earlier this week, horror maestro (and Manifest superfan) Stephen King expressed what a lot of people were thinking about Elon Musk’s Twitter plans. King thinks that it’s a ridiculous idea for Musk to start charging for “verified” status, and the SpaceX CEO actually attempted to haggle over a price which he insists will exist. So, a mass exodus could happen, but in the meantime, King has revealed himself as a Tesla driver who still isn’t having this nonsense over blue-checkmarks.

King swung again at Elon, but first, he took a moment to praise the ingenuity of Tesla.

“Kudos to Elon Musk, who has begun a revolution in how the world drives and who has incredible visionary talents,” the Cell author tweeted. “I got an early Tesla and traded for another one. Wonderful cars (no autopilot for me, thanks). That said, when it comes to Twitter…”

Here comes a literary comparison for the ages. “Musk makes me think of Tom Sawyer, who is given the job of whitewashing a fence as punishment,” King continued. “Tom cons his friends into doing the chore for him, and getting them to pay for the privilege. That’s what Musk wants to do with Twitter. No, no, no.”

The whitewashing reference might actually be a double-edged sword. Although I’m definitely not attributing any hidden meaning to King’s words, Musk sure doesn’t mind whitewashing harmful and incendiary Twitter behavior under the guise of “free speech,” so we’ll see what comes of his intended Twitter revolution. In the meantime, King is wondering when Manifest will return.

The answer (and he probably knows this) would be November 4. When will the show return again with its final batch of episodes, though? I’m hoping for Netflix and Jeff Rake to time the finale to the show’s oft-mentioned “death date,” although June 2024 is an awfully long time to wait.

Rina Sawayama is having a big year, after unveiling her new album Hold The Girl and bringing those songs on the road on one of the most anticipated tours of this fall. Though she’s been unstoppable, something came in the way of her New York show at the Great Hall at Avant Gardner last night.

“Brooklyn, I’m so sorry to have to cancel the show tonight,” the singer wrote on Twitter. “I’ve been on vocal rest where possible for 5 days and have had steroid injections but during the last hour I gradually started to lose my voice. This has never happened before and I’m so sorry if u have travelled far.”

She added, “plz hold on to ur tickets if u can, my team r working hard in trying to reschedule this date. as u know performing live is my favourite part of what I do so this is absolutely heartbreaking and I can only apologise if I let u down. We will update as soon as possible @avantgbk.”

Most fans are understanding, insisting that she rest and take care of herself. Hopefully she’s able to reschedule it soon without missing any forthcoming tour dates. So far, she’s still set to play in Boston tonight.

Here’s a fact that might make you question the space-time continuum: The French indie-pop band Phoenix has been putting out albums for more than 20 years.

To quote Keanu in The Matrix: “Whoa.” In your mind, it’s possible that Phoenix only dates back to their 2009 commercial breakthrough Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. Or maybe you got on board when the earworms from 2006’s It’s Never Been Like That started sneaking into commercials. You certainly wouldn’t peg Phoenix as a middle-aged indie band by looking at lead singer Thomas Mars, who has scarcely aged a day since the band dropped their 2000 debut United. Back then, he was a boyishly handsome French dude crooning frisky electro-rock tunes in a convincing American accent. And here he is, on the forthcoming Alpha Zulu (due Friday), still sounding like a boyishly handsome French dude, even with his 46th birthday looming later this month.

While Spoon is normally pegged as indie’s requisite “mind-numbingly consistent rock band,” Phoenix is another strong contender for that distinction. Over the course of seven albums, they have perfected a breezy sonic template that is one part sleek Strokes-ian guitar rock and one-part mathematically precise synth-pop, and infused with a thoroughly stylish sensibility that derives from their country of origin.

It’s a sound that seems effortless upon first listen, but clearly is not. As Mars and bandmate Laurent Brancowitz explained during a recent interview, Phoenix albums tend to be as difficult to make as they are easy to enjoy. When asked to do an overview of their discography, the word “pain” came up several times. But as we’ll see, the journey has been worth it.

United (2000)

Thomas Mars: We were struggling to find our place a little bit. It was a tense time because we had so many ideas of how it should sound like, and it’s impossible in reality to make it exactly the way you imagine it. It would be sad if you could exactly imagine how it should be. It never works this way. So it was tense. It was sleepless nights trying to understand how we could keep this under our control. And it was pressure because studios were really expensive. We didn’t have that much money. We were on a budget. Ultimately it was resolved because Philippe Zdar came to the rescue and mixed this album with us.

Laurent Brancowitz: We were swimming upstream at that time. We were fighting the whole universe just to achieve this thing we had in mind. I think nowadays we would know who we could turn to to make it sound the way we wanted to sound. But back then it felt that nobody was doing it and that the whole world would be a kind of conspirator to prohibit us from realizing this dream.

TM: We all watched the same documentary about the making of Sgt. Pepper. That documentary was sort of the ideal version of what a studio life is like. It was not their first record, obviously, but there were at a moment where experimentation turned out to make new classics. So we set the bar a little too high, I think. We didn’t have George Martin.

Alphabetical (2004)

LB: This one was the hardest to make.

TM: Pure pain.

LB: For a year we were stuck. It became almost crazy working on one or two songs for ages. We were kind of lost in the difficulty of a second album. For a long time we were in a dark cave and at some point it was becoming dangerous. The turning point was when we finished a song that we had recorded in a big studio in Paris, and we realized it was really bad. We threw it away and suddenly things became so much easier. There was this long process of creation and destruction.

TM: The way we work, there’s a lot of entropy. It’s a testament to having something that’s a little bit timeless. You listen to it for a few years to see if it will pass the test of time. I think we figured this out more than ever on Alphabetical because we spent so much time with the songs. It took a long time to just be able to turn this into a record that you can listen to.

Usually we go in the studio and have demos that are the first ideas. The songs are almost there and if you don’t complete them right away, the rest of the task is the tallest mountain to climb. Also, reproducing the charm of the demo is really hard to do, and it took us many years to know what decision to make. Sometimes you keep the first take on certain things.

It’s Never Been Like That (2006)

LB: The Berlin record.

TM: It felt like shooting a movie. We were on location for two or three months, and living in an apartment that was very strange. It was a set for a reality TV show — a cooking show — that didn’t happen. The kitchen was huge and the bedrooms were tiny. We never ate one meal in that kitchen because we were eating at the studio.

LB: We try to record in a space — a physical space but also a mental space. It’s connected in our memories to a specific collection of images. I’m very sad for the Beatles who recorded everything in Abbey Road because I’m sure everything is melted together.

We did it in an old abandoned radio station. The place was very beautiful and very eerie. It was like ghosts walking in there. Also, it was a moment of change in our lives. Thomas was very much in love, I remember. So there was this energy, I think you can hear it in the record. We did it in the smallest amount of time. When we went to Berlin we had zero written and zero music. A few months later, I think it was, the album was finished.

TM: We couldn’t go back home and not think of the record. We were all with each other all the time. I think that’s why the record was done so quickly. We had to figure out the puzzle day and night and we never took a break from it.

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix (2009)

TM: We changed management, record companies, everything. We started this record with no one holding our hand. There were these four songs that we had — “1901,” “Lisztomania,” “Lasso,” and “Armistice,” I think — and we would play them for managers. We saw that these four songs had something special right away. If they didn’t want to sign us on their label, we knew they had no taste.

It was exciting but it was also painful, because the brothers were losing their dad at the time. It was the beginning of adult life in a way, with responsibilities and losses coming into our lives.

LB: It was both painful and joyful. When you are a musician, every song is like a puzzle. Those songs, I think, we served them in an elegant way.

TM: We were really confident. I was convinced that “Lisztomania” would be the way bigger song than “1901.” But it was really “1901” that caught people’s attention, especially in the U.S. And “Lisztomania” became a hit after.

LB: It was a moment where the world was changing and with the internet and blogs. The power came back to the people and all those gatekeepers, the big radio stations that rule the world, they were kind the disappearing. It felt good.

Bankrupt! (2013)

TM: As soon as there’s a recipe, we get rid of it. At some point we talked about Bankrupt! being “Ludwig Von Phoenix” — that was the thing that we should not do, “Ludwig Von Phoenix.” So we were going as far as possible from that.

LB: It’s a bit cynical. There’s more acid. We knew people would listen to it, so we felt a responsibility to be as demanding as possible. I don’t know why. It’s a strange psychological move. But those songs are really dense and with lots of layers.

TM: Yeah, there’s many, many layers.

LB: Deck was always arguing, “It’s too complicated guys.” And we were resisting but I think in the end he was right. Even we have trouble remembering every song.

TM: I was in the U.S. and I missed the first three days of mixing. When I came I was like, “I should have never missed the beginning of this.” It seemed clear that Phillippe was going one way and Deck was going one other way and that it was hard to reconcile both their opinions. So yeah, it’s an album we didn’t enjoy making as much.

Ti Amo (2017)

TM: Our first concept album. It had a theme and it had a very strong visual cue. It’s one of our most playful records. I have good memories of being at the center of Paris and the museum making this album.

LB: It’s a very sweet record and very nostalgic.

TM: It was also tainted because when we were there, the terrorist attack happened in Paris. There was a slight pause where we thought about whether making music was worth it. We’re not essential workers so it felt like it wasn’t the time for music. Then we realized it’s the only thing we know how to contribute. If you are not an essential worker, you either become one or you might as well be an epicurean.

Alpha Zulu (2022)

TM: Every album we make is a reaction to previous one. As we were digging into this one, we realized that we were putting the songs that had the least in common together. We tried to open the spectrum as much as possible and make a little bit of a Frankenstein. It’s similar to United because we played with all musical styles and genres on the record. It has this playfulness and this idea that you stretch the fabric as much as you can. Also, the pandemic gave us time to be inspired again because we didn’t see each other for a long time. It just hit the reset button a little bit more than with the previous albums.

LB: I resisted bringing in Ezra Koenig. I resisted a lot. It’s not because I don’t love this guy. Tell me one classic song that is a duet.

TM: The idea that two people coming together will make a song better is not necessarily true.

LB: Thomas always wants to invite someone to just change the timbre. And we are always resisting.

TM: He is a friend that’s intimate enough that he can say no. That was the key thing. That’s the reason why we didn’t involve anyone before. I know him enough so that he doesn’t have to say yes.

LB: We try to avoid studios because they are very vanilla. We are always looking for something a bit special. I look at buildings and I always think, That would be a nice studio. But some old insurance company owns it. I always feel that it’s very unfair that all those great buildings are just filled with the boring institutions. But the Louvre, in the center of Paris, it’s amazing. So that was the ultimate spot in Paris. When I looked for an apartment to rent, I wanted to be in working distance of the Louvre. So when this opportunity appeared to record, it was too good to be true almost.

TM: If you’d open a window, there would be someone coming in the studio five seconds later to make sure that no one was coming to steal anything. But they let us build a studio inside the museum. And not only we were living a dream that we pictured as teenagers, but then the pandemic hits. So all of a sudden we were on our own in this place. It was very surreal.