Year: 2022

After going a little over a year and a half without a project, 2 Chainz is back in action with his seventh album Dope Don’t Sell Itself. It’s an effort that 2 Chainz he been teasing and promoting since last summer and it’s also supported by singles like “Million Dollars Worth Of Game” with 42 Dugg and “Pop Music” with Moneybagg Yo and Beatking. The album is finally here, presenting 12 songs for listeners to enjoy as a new video for the D4L-sampling “Neighbors Know My Name.” In it, 2 Chainz takes on the role of a dance instructor as he teaches a few ladies to lean and rock with it like true millennials.

Throughout the 12 songs on Dope Don’t Sell Itself, listeners can catch additional guest appearances from Lil Baby, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, Lil Durk, Sleepy Rose, Swae Lee, Steve God Cooks, Symba, and Jacquees. The project serves as a solid follow-up to 2 Chainz’s 2020 album, So Help Me God. More recently, Dope Don’t Sell Itself arrives after 2 Chainz brought his talents to Power 106’s LA Leakers for a stellar freestyle over Pharcyde’s 1993 classic, “Passin’ Me By.”

As for what’s next, fans can expect 2 Chainz and Lil Wayne to deliver their long-waited ColleGrove 2 project at some point this year.

You can watch the video for “Neighbors Know My Name” above.

Dope Don’t Sell Itself is out now via Def Jam. You can get it here.

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

YG appears to be gearing up to release his upcoming sixth album which would be his first solo full-length effort since 2020’s My Life 4Hunnid. So far, the Compton native has released one single, “Sign Language,” for the potential project, but his latest drop looks to make quite the splash. YG recruits J. Cole and Moneybagg Yo for their new single, “Scared Money.” The new track is a sinister release that presents the rappers’ unabashed approach towards making money and staying rich. The song is also paired with a confident video that captures the trio flexing their wealth by holding stacks of money to their ear in a safe and dancing as more cash falls from the sky.

“Scared Money” serves as the latest entry in J. Cole’s current guest feature run. In recent months, Cole has connected with Wale (“Poke It Out“), Young Thug (“Stressed Out“), “Joyner Lucas (“Your Heart“), and Benny The Butcher (“Johnny P’s Caddy“). Cole’s latest feature run comes after he initially said his 2019 song with Gang Starr would be the “last feature you’ll hear from me,” a statement he retracted after some self-reflection as revealed in his 2020 documentary, Applying Pressure: The Off-Season.

As for Moneybagg Yo, he’s been on a bit of a feature run as well with the Memphis native lacing records with Polo G, French Montana, 2 Chainz, NLE Choppa, and more. He even has a record on Kanye West’s Donda 2 on the way.

You can watch the video for “Scared Money” above.

The music internet can rejoice — new music from Mitski has officially arrived. Her latest album, Laurel Hell, follows up her 2019 project Be The Cowboy, which created so much fervor among fans that the songwriter left the internet completely for a quite a while after it came out, just to get some peace. Perhaps said overzealous fans learned their lesson, as the reception for Laurel Hell has been decidedly cooler.

Indie superstardom has definitely shifted a lot over the last decade or two, and as our own critic Steven Hyden noted in his review of Mitski’s new album, pop star level attention on someone who came up as an independent artist can be a challenging crossroads to navigate. “If she stays, does she want to be a mainstream star who performs in stadiums with other mainstream stars, or does she want to be an enigmatic cult indie hero?” he writes. “Laurel Hell suffers from not resolving these issues before now.”

Tonight’s newest single, “Stay Soft” does feel like it swings between two poles, a rollicking synth-pop melody and Mitski’s always-pristine alto vocals, but even when the song hits a crescendo on the chorus, it never really opens up to anything. The video, however, is a different story, as Mitski gives blood to a greedy Venus flytrap, gets kidnapped, and dances under the moonlight with her captors. She eventually gets free, but at a price. Check it out above.

This summer will mark four years since Nicki Minaj released her fourth album, Queen. Since then, her releases have been quite sporadic and not as frequent or fulfilling as her fans would’ve hoped. In 2019, she dropped her tropical single, “Megatron,” and the following year she returned with “Yikes” and “Trollz,” her chart-topping-yet-controversial single with Tekashi 69. In 2021, she uploaded her 2009 mixtape Beam Me Up Scotty to streaming platforms with three new songs including “Seeing Green” with Lil Wayne and Drake. Unfortunately, none of those years presented a new album, but that could finally change this year and it starts with Nicki’s new single with Lil Baby, “Do We Have A Problem?”

Their new collaboration arrives with a cinematic nine-minute video that initially begins with Nicki Minaj as a detective of sorts who is looking to capture a criminal played by Lil Baby. A stakeout is set up in order to capture Lil Baby, but things take a turn when Nicki runs off with Lil Baby as they complete a mission they had planned from the beginning. The visual also features a cameo from Joseph Sikora who plays Tommy Egan on Power and Power Book IV: Force.

The track adds to what’s been an event week for Nicki. She had an interesting Instagram Live conversation with Kevin Samuels and even settled her differences with City Girls. Nicki also listed her conditions for a potential Verzuz battle, saying, “It should feel like a celebration, that’s exactly what I would like it to feel like. Fun, happiness.”

You can check out the video for “Do We Have A Problem?” above.

At this time last year, we were including Tate McRae in our rising pop stars to watch list — 12 months later she’s officially risen. McRae became one of music’s next big things last year, with a monster 2021 that included singles like “Darkest Hour” for Amazon’s Panic, collaborations with Khalid and Troye Sivan a late night performance, and even a headlining tour. Whew, are you tired yet?

Closing out 2021 with a dramatic break-up single, “Feel Like Sh*t,” she’s already back in early 2022 with more new music. And “She’s All I Wanna Be” fits in with the lamenting nature of plenty of McRae’s oeuvre, this time with her attention focused on another woman that she’s jealous her man might like more. “You want the girl with the small waist / and the perfect smile,” she begins. “She’s got everything that I don’t have / And she’s all I wanna be so bad,” McRae finishes on the racing chorus.

Even though the song is just ostensibly just as sad as plenty of Tate’s other hits, it gets a pop-punk guitar, some glittering synths, and heavy percussion to elevate it from sad girl anthem into actual anthem. Check out the new single above, this one has all the earmarks of a hit.

Earlier this week the NFL world’s attention shifted away from the upcoming Super Bowl or Pro Bowl to a bombshell lawsuit brought against the league by former Miami Dolphins head coach Brian Flores.

The lawsuit featured a number of accusations against various prominent NFL people, from alleging Dolphins owner Stephen Ross offered Flores $100,000 per loss to tank in 2019 to highlighting the sham interviews he’s been on as teams simply bring him in as a Black candidate to fill the league’s Rooney Rule requirement without giving him serious consideration. The smoking gun in the lawsuit was text messages from Bill Belichick to Flores that congratulated him on the job before he even interviewed for it, with Belichick eventually saying he “f**ked it up” and got his Brian’s wrong, as it was Bills OC Brian Daboll, not Flores, who was getting the job.

This has been the talk of just about every sports show all week since it dropped on Tuesday, and unsurprisingly the Inside the NBA crew had some thoughts on it as well, with Charles Barkley leading the way with some cutting humor about the state of the NFL (and the country at large), noting it’s more likely right now that a Black woman will end up on the Supreme Court than a Black man ending up an NFL head coach.

Barkley also had some advice for Bill Belichick so he’d avoid another text mishap, saying the Pats head coach needs to label his contacts “Black Brian” and “White Brian” so he can avoid such embarrassment in the future — to Shaq’s delight.

The best part of this segment was Ernie Johnson desperately trying to keep the train on the tracks while Shaq just wanted to egg Chuck on into more jokes about Black Brian and White Brian.

The Jacksonville Jaguars were among the nine teams to have a head coaching vacancy this offseason after they fired Urban Meyer after less than a full season at the helm in Jacksonville.

Meyer’s tenure was an abject disaster, filled with poor play on the field and constant controversy off of it. The candidate pool was expected to be headlined by Byron Leftwich, the former Jags quarterback who is now the offensive coordinator in Tampa Bay, but on Thursday, he pulled himself out of the race. Late Thursday night, Jacksonville made a decision on the remaining candidates and hired former Eagles head coach Doug Pederson, who won a Super Bowl in Philly in 2018.

The Jaguars will hope that Pederson can bring some creativity and life to an offense desperately in need of that as Trevor Lawrence enters his second season. Pederson spent a year away from the NFL in 2021 after being fired after the 2020 season by the Eagles, compiling a 42-37-1 record during his time in Philadelphia that included that Super Bowl run.

With Pederson filling the Jaguars vacancy, there are three jobs still available — Houston, New Orleans, and Miami — and despite six coaches being hired so far, not one has been Black only further illustrating the issues the league has in its hiring practices that are being challenged by the Brian Flores lawsuit.

John Cena’s hit superhero show Peacemaker is currently airing its first season on HBO Max, after being introduced as a character in last year’s Suicide Squad film. The show’s unexpected momentum has been praised by fans, as many are pleasantly surprised by Cena’s lovable character and the story arch. This begs the question: will the show return for a second season?

The series follows Cena’s Suicide Squad character as he joins a black ops squad to eradicate extra-terrestrial beings. The season finale of the show will air later this month, but fans are already wondering if Cena will reprise his role as the weirdly lovable antihero for a second season.

“There’s a really good chance of that,” creator James Gunn said. “The show is doing extraordinarily well, and we’re excited, we all like doing it, we just need to cross some Ts and dot some Is, which is basically me,” the director added. “[Peacemaker] got more subscribers for HBO, billions of people saw it on HBO; for Peacemaker it worked out really well.”

So, a second season hasn’t officially been ordered, but due to the success of the first season, it’s very likely the show will return to HBO Max. The streaming site has already asked Gunn to make a second Suicide Squad series, so they are clearly impressed by his work. Hey, if anyone can get John Cena bravely dancing in his underwear, they must be good at their job.

Sarah Palin is single and ready to mingle! When the one-time candidate for vice president isn’t busy spreading her unvaccinated, COVID-positive germs around the New York City dining scene or trying to bury footage of her rapping Sir Mix-a-Lot while decked out in her furry best, she’s reportedly being wooed by legendary hockey player Ron Duguay.

According to Page Six, Palin has been making the most of her time in Manhattan, where she’s preparing to square off against The New York Times in a defamation suit over a 2017 editorial that she says falsely linked her to the 2011 mass shooting in Arizona that wounded Rep. Gabby Giffords. The politician and the athlete were first spotted together last week, when they dined outdoors at Elio’s on the Upper East Side. It was Palin’s second time at the restaurant in just as many days; she has previously dined there—indoors—just before testing positive for COVID. She returned to the restaurant a couple days later to apologize for the media frenzy surrounding her night out, then ate there again (this time outdoors) with Duguay in tow.

While sources told Page Six that the couple has became romantically involved since late 2021, a source close to Palin told People that the two are “just friends” and that they “met through hockey,” whatever that means.

Friends or otherwise, Page Six couldn’t help but notice that when Palin showed up for court on Thursday, she was carrying a New York Rangers face mask with her. While Duguay’s team has not issued any statement on the matter, his dating history is pretty impressive. After dating Farah Fawcett in the ‘80s, Duguay married supermodel Kim Alexis in 1993; the couple divorced in 2013. Palin, meanwhile, split from Todd Palin—her husband of more than 30 years—in 2019.

(Via Page Six)

Joel Embiid has never been afraid of stirring things up on social media — hell, he even goes by “Troel” on Twitter — but on Thursday night a tweet by the Sixers big man got confused by many as him calling out Ben Simmons when, in fact, he was simply catching up on the AFCON semifinal between Cameroon and Egypt that he missed the end of due to the Sixers’ flight to Dallas.

In what became the first in a string of tweets about Cameroon’s meltdown in penalty kicks against Egypt, in which they missed three out of four attempts to lose, Embiid simply tweeted a photo of Charmin Ultra Soft toilet paper.

Given that yesterday featured a report that Ben Simmons was upset that Embiid put blame on him after last year’s playoffs when Simmons felt he could’ve done the same to Embiid in 2019 and didn’t, it was understandable why people would’ve immediately jumped to the thought that Embiid was finally fed up enough with the situation to call out his longtime teammate. However, as Embiid continued tweeting, it became clear that this wasn’t a vicious subtweet of Simmons, but simply the Cameroon native expressing his frustrations with his beloved national soccer squad fumbling away a chance at an AFCON final with dreadful penalty kicks.

For those hoping for an escalation of the current cold war in Philly between the Sixers and Simmons, I’m sorry to disappoint you. However, I’m sure Embiid also knew what he was doing when he led with that, allowing people’s minds to race to Simmons before he continued on to make clear it was about Cameroon’s AFCON tournament run ending in disappointing fashion.