Month: June 2023

SZA is in the midst of bringing her beloved new album SOS to excited crowds on her massive tour. She’s currently in Europe and coming back to North America this fall. Last night (June 1) in Amsterdam, she brought out a special guest.

For “Low,” the singer was joined by the one and only Travis Scott. The crowd went predictably crazy as the pair showed off their chemistry onstage. Check out videos below.

Travis isn’t the only one to show up during this tour. In March, Phoebe Bridgers made a surprise appearance at the Madison Square Garden show on the SOS Tour. About the collaboration for the song “Ghost In The Machine” Bridgers explained, “She just hit me up. She just sent me a DM, and then it all happened so fast,” said Bridgers. “I wasn’t really used to that in that pop world, because vinyl isn’t so much of a consideration until way later. It’s just like, ‘Do you want to be on this record? OK, it’s out next week.’ It was so recent, which I really like. I like that turnaround time. Personally, I sit on stuff for so long and it takes me years to make albums. I like seeing someone else’s world from that angle.”

Watch fan footage of SZA and Travis Scott performing together above.

The Roots Picnic 2023 is going down this weekend. As one of Philadephia’s premiere outdoor music festivals, this year’s event is expected to attract fans nationwide. Despite the last-minute cancellation of Diddy as the closing headliner, R&B legend Usher being announced as the replacement quickly nulled over any lingering anger.

As for the music side of the festival, performances will go down on Saturday, June 3, and Sunday, June 4, at The Mann Center for the Performing Arts. Notable billed R&B acts include Coco Jones, DVSN, Soulquarians featuring the Isley Brothers, Syd, Ari Lennox, and Lucky Daye. To honor the 50th anniversary of hip-hop headliner Ms. Lauryn Hill and others such as the State Property Reunion will celebrate the genre’s impact.

Check out the set times for The Roots Picnic 2023 below. All times are p.m. and ET.

Saturday, June 3

Akin Inaj & Inutech — 2 @ Presser Stage
N3wyrkla — 2 @ Park Stage
Mike Phillips — 2:25 @ Park Stage
Fridayy — 2:30 @ Presser Stage
Uncle Waffles — 2:50 @ Park Stage
Symba — 3:10 @ Presser Stage
Adam Blackstone w/ Coco Jones & Mary Mary — 3:50 @ Park Stage
DVSN — 4 @ Presser Stage
State Property Reunion — 4:50 @ Park Stage
Baller Alert presents Rare Essence. vs. Backyard Band — 5 @ Presser Stage
Soulquarians feat. Isley Brothers — 6 @ Park Stage
GloRilla — 6:30 @ Presser Stage
Lil Uzi Vert — 7:30 @ Park Stage
Syd — 7:45 @ Presser Stage
Ms. Lauryn Hill — 9:15 @ Park Stage

Sunday, June 4

Dappa — 12 @ Presser Stage
Box Boys — 2 @ Park Stage
DJ Spinall — 2:15 @ Park Stage
Rocky — 2:30 @ Presser Stage
Little Brother — 3 @ Park Stage
Yussef Dayes Experience — 3:20 @ Presser Stage
Maverick City — 4 @ Park Stage
Saucy Santana — 4:20 @ Presser Stage
Kindred The Family Soul — 5:10 @ Presser Stage
Ari Lennox — 6 @ Park Stage
DJ Drama — 6:10 @ Presser Stage
J. Period Mixtape featuring Black Thought, Busta Rhymes, and Eve — 7:15 @ Park Stage
Lucky Daye — 7:25 @ Presser Stage
Usher — 9:15 @ Park Stage

Set times are subject to change—the official Roots Picnic mobile app to stay up-to-date with the latest information and updates to set times. Tickets for the Roots Picnic are on sale now. Find more information here.

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

Everyone, even Matt Gaetz, has wanted to flip Marjorie Taylor Greene the bird at some point. Probably more than once. Maybe every time she speaks. But only one person was brave enough to actually do it.

On Thursday, Taylor Greene shared a video from a town hall in Georgia, her home state. “WOW — thank you so much Cobb County! It is great to be back home in Northwest Georgia!!” she tweeted. Typical stuff from the used chapstick owner, but if you look closely, it’s a self-own for the ages. The room wasn’t even half full, and as noted by Patriot Takes, “Oops. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted video of a constituent giving her the middle finger as she exited the stage at last night’s town hall.”

They say a picture is worth a thousand words, but a video of someone giving the one finger salute to Marjorie Taylor Greene is priceless.

This isn’t the only mistake that the Georgia Republican has made this week.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) sent out a Memorial Day message on Twitter ― but it was undermined by a very visible mistake. Greene’s message contained a version of the U.S. flag with just 18 stars. Critics spotted the error of the conspiracy theorist lawmaker, who has called for a “national divorce” and spoke at a white nationalist event.

It’s one star for every person who attended her town hall last night.

(Via Patriot Takes)

Nikola Jokic’s debut in the NBA Finals on Thursday night was very much worth the wait. Jokic and the Denver Nuggets picked up a Game 1 win over the Miami Heat, and while he only shot the ball 12 times, he managed to have his fingerprints all over the game, as the two-time NBA MVP scored 27 points on 8-for-12 shooting with 14 assists, 10 rebounds, a steal, a block, and two turnovers in 40 minutes of work.

Despite only being 28, Jokic is in the midst of a Hall of Fame career, as he’s stuffed the stat sheet and been the biggest reason Denver is in the position it’s in right now. This has, invariably, led to conversations about Jokic’s place in basketball history, and on an episode of FS1’s First Things First this week, that conversation came up. It included one moment where longtime NBA reporter Chris Broussard came under some fire for saying that Dallas Mavericks legend Dirk Nowitzki “is overrated by a lot of people.”

Nowitzki is one of the more universally beloved former players, so it’s surprising to learn that Broussard’s take ruffled some feathers. This included Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma, who wants Broussard to be taken off of TV for this one and believes saying this is “so bad for our sport.”

Again, you’d be pretty hard-pressed to find too many people who dislike Nowitzki, as he was from a very recent generation of now-retired legends and earned a whole lot of fans in the basketball world for how he led the Dallas Mavericks to an NBA title against LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and the Heat. He’s an all-timer by basically any way you slice it, and while it’s not really necessary for anyone to call balls and strikes on this one, our hunch is that Broussard’s take is not exactly shared by everyone.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE – Harriet Walter had a pretty great week

Succession and Ted Lasso both ended this week. You can be forgiven if you thought that’s the only thing the two shows had in common. They were different in so many other ways. One was a mean little hour-long drama — with touches of comedy — about actual family members trying to destroy each other. The other was a sweet little half-hour comedy — with touches of drama — about a found family trying to build each other up. It turns out they did have one other pretty important thing in common, though: Harriet Walter.

Harriet Walter is a kind of iconic British actress. She has been in everything, especially if it needs a matriarch who scowls a little. Pick a British show then go look at her IMDb page and I bet you’ll find it. She was in Killing Eve, too, which isn’t really the point but still fun to make note of. And an episode of Documentary Now, which is also not the point but I do really like that show and will take any opportunity to bring it up. She is also in both Succession and Ted Lasso. And she appeared in both finales. Harriet Walter is having a pretty great week.

The wild thing here is that I watch both shows — and recap them — and I somehow just put this together this week. This might say something about my professionalism and attention to detail (or, uh, lack thereof), but it also might say something about Harriet Walter’s range. Let’s go with that second thing.

The best part is that she got off some of the best lines in both of the episodes, big-deal productions that wrap up a bunch of stories that had been bubbling throughout the respective shows. Here she is on Succession as Lady Caroline, the absentee mother of the Roy children, elaborating on her utter disgust with human eyes.

“Face eggs” will stick with me for a while.

Here she is in Ted Lasso as Rebecca’s flighty and fortune-teller-obsessed mother, who was out for lunch and drinks with her daughter and said… well, this.

This is cool. It’s cool to me. It might even be cooler than the thing where Stephen Root popped up in an episode of Succession and then appeared in an episode of Barry on the same night, like he was the damn king of HBO Sunday nights. It’s probably not as cool as the thing where I Think You Should Leave exists in the universe of Ted Lasso and that opened up a Sam Richardson-sized wormhole, but, to be fair, very little is cooler than that to me.

My point here is a simple one: Congratulations to Harriet Walter, man. The lady popped up in two of our buzziest shows in the final episodes in the span of about three days and got off killer lines and different looks and really just stole every moment she was on screen. That rules. It does make me a little self-conscious about what I was up to this week, though. I mean, I wasn’t even in one buzzy finale of a beloved television show. I really need to do better. I will work on this.

It would have been funny if Harriet Walter also appeared in the finale of Barry this week. Maybe as another character’s mom. Maybe as NoHo Hank’s mom. I would have liked that. And speaking of Barry and NoHo Hank and really great transitions…

ITEM NUMBER TWO – God, this is adorable

Check this out. It’s Anthony Carrigan, who played the previously mentioned Chechen mobster NoHo Hank on Barry, standing with his wife while she talks into a microphone. And she sounds a lot like he did when he played NoHo Hank! Almost like, as this tweet suggests, he took inspiration from his own wife for the character. Here, look at this.

This is another one of those Two Things Can Be True situations. The first thing, as I said in the heading of this column, is that, if that is in fact what is happening, it is adorable. I love it. I think I might just refuse to look into this anymore to be sure I don’t learn anything that refutes it and ruins it for me. Let’s all agree to let me have this one.

The other true thing here is that it’s really funny to picture Anthony Carrigan telling his wife that he used her for inspiration on-set as a new character and he wanted to surprise her with it and then they watched the first episode together and she turned to him and said “… that’s how you think I sound?”

ITEM NUMBER THREE – I like Ryan Gosling a lot after reading this

Okay, to be clear, I have always liked Ryan Gosling. Maybe not “always” like “as long as I’ve been alive,” if only because I was not aware of Ryan Gosling when I was, like, a baby, but definitely always as in “as long as I have been aware that he is a charming and goofy man.” Definitely since I saw him in The Nice Guys, which remains a good and fun movie that you should maybe consider watching again this weekend, maybe with me, maybe with some pizza that you brought over. Sausage and green peppers on it. Maybe some root beer. I can be flexible.

But I’m off-topic already. Let’s focus. There is a big profile of Ryan Gosling over at GQ this week, one tied to his role as Ken in the upcoming Barbie movie, which looks like a wild ride. It’s a good profile. And fun to read. I recommend carving out some time this weekend to read it all. But for now, let’s focus on these two paragraphs…

From Cornwall, Ontario, where Gosling grew up, to Toronto, where he began attending auditions as a child actor, was “like, a five-hour train ride,” Gosling says. He shares this, in part, because the two of us are on a train right now. The Pacific Surfliner, winding out of Los Angeles and along the coast. Just something he had never done and wanted to do. We’d walked through Union Station to the platform together and I’d watched a bunch of afternoon commuters, families surrounded by luggage, people with nowhere else to go just killing time, and kids in jaunty outfits like La La Land extras doing cartoon double takes, despite the white hat Gosling wore pulled down low.

Actually: “Let me make sure it’s five hours from Cornwall,” Gosling says, putting down the Starbucks cup that says “Freddie” on it and pulling out his phone. “Don’t wanna start self-mythologizing. It was a hundred hours on a train.” He puts the phone away: “Four hours and 15 minutes.” Margot Robbie, who produced and stars in Barbie opposite Gosling, calls him “an overthinker.” Gosling, she says, will say something, “and then 40 minutes later, he’ll come up to me and be like, ‘You know when I said that? I’m just clarifying that what I meant was, blah blah.’ And I’m like, ‘Why are you still thinking about that?’ ”

Three things here, all of them important:

• I relate so much to a lot of this, which you may have noticed from the first, like, three sentences I typed in this section
• Something about Ryan Gosling ordering coffee from Starbucks and having them write “Freddie” on the cup is both hilarious and charming to me
• I am thinking about The Nice Guys again

Let’s watch a clip from The Nice Guys.

This was a great chat.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR – RAYLAN

Welllllllll here’s the full-length trailer for the upcoming FX series Justified: City Primeval. Yes, I know, we did just talk about this show a few weeks ago when they released a little hat-based teaser, but we are gonna talk about it again for two important reasons: One, I want to, and; two, this is my column so shut up.

It looks so good. I think. I am still trying to decide if I like it because it’s actually a promising program or if I just missed seeing Timothy Olyphant wear a hat and tangle with some bad guys. It’s probably a little of both. I hope Jere Burns shows up as Wynn Duffy, in Detroit for some unspecified reason, double-parked in the Wynnebago right downtown. I really miss Justified.

Anyway, here’s the official summary of the show again…

Having left the hollers of Kentucky 15 years ago, Raylan Givens now lives in Miami, a walking anachronism balancing his life as a U.S. Marshal and part-time father of a 15-year-old girl. He crosses paths with Clement Mansell, a violent, sociopathic desperado who has already slipped through the fingers of Detroit’s finest once before. Mansell’s attorney has every intention of representing her client, finding herself caught in between cop and criminal, with her own game afoot as well.

… and here’s the exact moment of this new trailer where I rocketed off the floor and attached myself to the ceiling like a demon.

It’s weird. Raylan’s entire thing — shoot-first lawman who plays by his own rules and is rarely concerned with trivial things like “the Fourth Amendment” — would be horrifying to me in real life. I could read an article about some actual cop or law enforcement figure doing exactly the things Raylan does that make me cheer/whoop a little in the show and I would come away horrified. I don’t know. It’s a little troubling to think about, really.

So…

Let’s not!

Moving on!

ITEM NUMBER FIVE – Okay

Here’s what’s happened, short version:

• The Rock entered the Fast & Furious franchise in Fast Five — the best Fast & Furious movie — as Luke Hobbs, a law enforcement official who was hunting Dominic Toretto
• He and Vin Diesel then had a big feud and it was kind of funny and The Rock kind of left the franchise
• I say “kind of” here because he then returned for a spinoff with Jason Statham and then SURPRISE he showed up in a post-credits scene in the recently released Fast X

Which brings us to the news from this week: The Rock will star in an as-yet-untitled standalone spinoff as Luke Hobbs. At some point. The details are all still fuzzy. But it’s happening. Here, look.

Universal Pictures announced the project on Thursday. Longtime “Fast and Furious” collaborator Chris Morgan wrote the untitled film’s script. Plot details were not available, though individuals familiar with the deal said the new movie will bridge between the events of the just-released “Fast X” and the upcoming “Fast X: Part II,” which is expected in 2025. Johnson just appeared as Hobbs, a diplomatic security service agent, in a credits scene for “Fast X.”

Yes, sure, fine. The Rock also announced it himself in a very long tweet with a four-minute video attached. Or at least I assume he announced it himself. I have very few hard and fast rules in my life but one is that — barring crazy circumstances — I will not watch a four-minute video on Twitter.

Good for him, though.

My assumption here is that this standalone movie was part of the negotiation in him coming back for that post-credit scene in Fast X. Which is fine. I guess. I don’t know. I suppose it says a lot about me that I — a person who has loved these stupid movies so much for over 20 years now — would much rather watch the actual sit-down between The Rock and Vin Diesel where they hashed out their differences than this standalone movie starring The Rock.

I like to picture the two of them meeting on the top of a mountain. I like to picture The Rock getting up there by scaling the mountain with his bare hands and I like to picture Vin Diesel getting there by driving a muscle car up the face of a different mountain and using it as a huge ramp to launch himself to the peak where The Rock just climbed to. I like to picture Ludacris as the arbitrator who hears both sides. I like to picture all of it, really.

You see what I mean about this being more interesting than the actual movie, right? It’s fun. We have fun.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Paul:

I decided to do a rewatch of I Think You Should Leave with the new season being released this week. This time around I noticed that in the baby of the year sketch, the babies’ pediatrician is named “Dr. Skull.” In the last episode of the first season, in the Fenton horse ranch sketch, the ranch owners are Ted and Emily Skull. Not even mentioning how wonderful of a fake name “Dr. Skull” is (what do you think his first name could possibly be?), he has to be related to Ted and Emily right? Maybe Dr. Skull and Ted are brothers? The bottom line here is that Tim Robinson’s demented brain is the gift that keeps on giving.

I don’t have a lot to add here. I just really liked this email. I’ve watched the first two seasons of ITYSL straight through a few times and I somehow never picked up on the repeated use of Skull as a last name. I’m thinking about it a lot now, though. It really is a fun little piece of business. I feel like a good first name for Dr. Skull would be Jerry. Or maybe Ichabod. Dr. Ichabod Skull. That would be fun. Not a lot of Ichabods out there these days.

I suspect I will have more thoughts about the third season of ITYSL next week. I might get excited and rank all the sketches again. You can never tell with me. I’m a wild card.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To Vancouver!

Mounties in North Vancouver thwarted a toothpaste theft last Friday, seizing two duffle bags and one wagon’s worth of product.

One sentence into this story and we already have:

• Mounties
• A thwarted toothpaste heist
• The phrase “a wagon’s worth of toothpaste”

You should see the smile on my face.

In a social media post, the detachment says officers were responding to an unrelated matter near a Superstore when they noticed ” a man running out of the emergency exit followed by staff.”

The suspect was arrested and the toothpaste – estimated to be worth $2,100 –was returned.

God, this is just tough luck for the toothpaste thief. He probably thought he was in the clear. But then cops showed up to check out something else and caught him. With $2100 worth of toothpaste. Which is, like, so much toothpaste. Two duffel bags and a wagon’s worth, to be specific.

Wait.

Hold on.

Was he running out of the store dragging the wagon behind him?

Is that what’s happening here?

He was dragging a wagon filled with toothpaste as he ran out of a store with employees chasing him as Mounties who were there investigating another crime looked on and decided to intervene?

Please take a few minutes this weekend and think about how you would react if you were in the parking lot of your local grocery store and saw this chaotic scene play out in front of you. I would tell everyone I know. I would never shut up about it. It would be, maybe, the greatest day of my life.

North Vancouver RCMP spokesperson Const. Mansoor Sahak describes the theft as “unusual” and says the tubes – which were all the same and a particularly expensive brand – are thought to have been stolen in order to be resold on the street.

“They’re not using it for cleaning their teeth,” he said. “I don’t think anybody needs that much toothpaste.”

Okay. One of two things is happening here:

• This police spokesperson means the thief is not using $2100 worth of toothpaste to clean his own teeth, and is selling it on the street
• This police spokesperson is implying there is a second and possibly illicit use of high-end toothpaste and that is the reason for the theft

I really hope it’s the second one. I hope it was just the first step of a multi-part scheme, like an Ocean’s Eleven operation where they need a wagon’s worth of toothpaste for another step in a many-step plan that ends with the theft of many millions of dollars in cash and/or jewels.

You’re just going to have to let me have this one, too. I am already in too deep on it. You can’t take it away from me now.

The latest adventure in Miles Morales’ spidey saga is Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse which brings back various iterations of Spider-Man and his counterparts, including Peter B. Parker, Spider-Woman, Gwen Stacy, and other spider-adjacent superheroes.

The movie is being called one of the best animated films ever, thanks in part to its mixed-media style that’s a stark departure from the original cartoons. While it might be animated, it’s still a superhero movie and technically a Marvel film, so you know you’ll have to plan your bathroom breaks accordingly.

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse clocks in at two hours and twenty minutes, almost half an hour longer than the first installment. That means roughly 30 more minutes of action sandwiched between some teenage quips.

The movie brings back Shameik Moore as Miles Morales, Hailee Steinfeld as Spider-Gwen, Jake Johnson as Peter B. Parker, and Jason Schwartzman as a new character known as The Spot. The plot follows Morales as he jumps between the spider verses and learns about his destiny while meeting all types of spider-people.

But the story won’t end there: next March Spider-Man: Beyond The Spider-Verse will pick up where Across The Spider-Verse leaves off, which may or may not be a cliffhanger. You’ll have to sit through the 140 minutes to find out!

Back in the day, Sprite was among the first nationwide brands to really embrace hip-hop. I’m not talking about a “rap” jingle, as so many other brands tried (we’re still trying to get rid of that corny “My name is ____ and I’m here to say…” rhyme to this day). Instead, Sprite really recruited pivotal figures from the hip-hop community like Nas and AZ, Pete Rock, and Five Deadly Venoms to make awesome commercials like the Voltron spots with Common, Fat Joe, and Westside Connection (my good buddy Dan Charnas writes about it in his book, The Big Payback).

Those ads kicked off a legacy of connection with hip-hop for the brand that continues today, as hip-hop celebrates its 50th anniversary. As part of the ongoing Hip-Hop 50 celebrations, Sprite paid homage to its own history with the culture by creating a new TV spot with Nas and Rakim and updating the premise with contemporary stars GloRilla and Latto. The commercial has all four rappers quoting “Rapper’s Delight,” the first official rap hit, while performing snippets of their own signature hits. Check it out:

The ad is a nice, throwback nod to the original Sprite rapper commercials of the early ’90s, which featured rappers like Kriss Kross, Kid N’ Play, KRS-One, Missy Elliott, and more, often performing original songs or their own hits to showcase the promotional power of hip-hop. This one’s still the best, though:

Forget Barbie vs. Oppenheimer. The biggest rivalry of the summer is Tom Cruise vs. Oppenheimer. The actor is reportedly none too pleased that Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One will have a limited run in some IMAX theaters before Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer comes along and hogs ALL the IMAX theaters.

Puck reports that Cruise “has been complaining loudly to Paramount executives and others about the IMAX situation… Mission 7 has booked most of the IMAX screens for the week of the film’s July 12 opening, but then on July 21 comes Universal’s Oppenheimer, which has locked in all the IMAX screens in North America and other territories for three full weeks.”

Oppenheimer was shot using IMAX cameras, and Nolan told the Associated Press that the “best possible experience” to see it in theaters is the IMAX 70mm film presentations (although there aren’t many of those across the country). Then again, Top Gun: Maverick “saved Hollywood’s ass,” as Steven Spielberg put it, so you can somewhat understand Cruise’s annoyance.

He’s been furiously showing the film to exhibitors in an effort to convince them to switch their plans from Oppenheimer or Barbie, which Warners scheduled opposite the Nolan film on July 21 as a middle-finger to Universal after it stole Nolan during the HBO Max day-and-date debacle. (Oppenheimer has not screened for exhibitors yet; I’m not sure about Barbie.) And Cruise is even personally calling around to exhibition and studio executives, per multiple sources.

Here’s an idea: give all the IMAX theaters to Barbie. Matter solved.

(Via Puck)

Today (June 2), the soundtrack for the Spider-Man movie is out, lengthily titled Metro Boomin Presents Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse Soundtrack From And Inspired By The Motion Picture alongside the release of Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse. However, there’s a track that doesn’t appear on the album that’s definitely worth a listen.

Dominic Fike’s “Mona Lisa” appears to be a part of the deluxe version of the soundtrack. The artwork for the song reads: “I made a song for a superhero movie… This is the cover for now.” It begins with his smooth vocals singing intimately against acoustic guitar before a beat imbues it with more energy and he eases into a chill flow: “I know you like your space and distance / Yeah, you don’t take admissions / They told you not to date musicians / Yeah, but can’t make you listen.”

Fans are eagerly awaiting his forthcoming album Sunburn, which will be arriving in July. The singles “Dancing In The Courthouse” and “Ant Pile” have listeners hooked so far. The singer also just announced the Don’t Stare At The Sun Tour, which will kick off right after the album is out. It’ll hit cities all over North America.

Listen to “Mona Lisa” above.

In the past few years, Janelle Monáe’s talent has become evident, if it wasn’t already, thanks to her triple threat status, impressive performance in Glass Onion, and the anticipation for her upcoming album The Age Of Pleasure sparked by the singles “Float” and “Lipstick Lover.” She didn’t always receive praise for being so good at so many things, though.

In a new list of outtakes from their recent Rolling Stone profile, Monáe recounted an incident in which they found themselves dodging bricks after a high school talent competition. They recalled their mom “driving me in her 1988 Dodge Plymouth, to and from talent shows, while people would throw bricks at our car because we won the talent show three, four times in a row.” They do, however, clarify that this only happened once.

The reactions to Monáe have certainly turned around recently. These days, folks tend to be more excited to see the singer/rapper/actor popping up to promote her music, especially as this album cycle, she’s taken to occasionally popping her top and flashing fans at her private listening parties. While she’ll probably have to tone it down when she goes on tour later this year, she explained this tendency in Rolling Stone, saying, “I’m much happier when my titties are out and I can run around free.”

Janelle Monáe is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.