Month: June 2023

AMC is not only having a blast while rolling out The Walking Dead: Dead City‘s semi-return of the “Old Negan,” but they’re also showing off some Daryl Dixon spinoff footage during commercial breaks. Last week, we got to see Daryl passed out on a boat while he floated his way over to France. This was an anxiety-provoking visual for a character who is not having a blast.

This week, we get to see how bummed out Daryl is upon his arrival. As previously revealed, the younger Dixon brother will be as mystified as the audience that he wakes up in Europe. And we already know that walkers can swim, so I’ve got no clue how he slept his way across the Atlantic Ocean without being attacked. I do know that I’m upset about no Dog on the scene.

Here’s a peek at Daryl in his new stomping grounds, which he definitely hates:

Can we get the guy a crossbow, please? There’s also still no word on how Carol surfaces in this spinoff. I would assume that she’s still in the Commonwealth, and those photos that keep surfacing might eventually reflect as much. It seems unlikely that Carol would also accidentally surface in Paris, but dang, wouldn’t it be something if she did? We’re already going to have to suspend disbelief long enough to watch Daryl trash The Louvre, so anything is possible in this franchise.

The Walking Dead: Daryl Dixon is still being mysterious about its release date.

The North American leg of Ed Sheeran’s Mathematics Tour began on May 6, around the release of his – (Subtract) album and overlapping with his more intimate Subtract Tour.

Khalid has been among Sheeran’s many openers, but he was forced to miss Saturday’s (June 24) show at FedExField in Landover, Maryland.

A fan video making the rounds online captured Sheeran opening for himself and explaining he was on stage earlier than expected because Khalid “got in a car accident this week.”

Sheeran continued, “He’s recovering, and we wish him the best. And I’m gonna say this after every song because if people don’t know I was gonna be the opening act today, people are gonna be walking in, like, ‘This show isn’t what I thought it was. I thought there’d be more fireworks.’ But here we are. I’m basically playing songs from – (Subtract).”

A separate TikTok shows Sheeran enjoying his unusual slot as an opener because “when you’re the main act, there’s a bunch of pressure because people have paid to see you” and joking that the last time he was an opener, MySpace was still popular.

According to Complex, Sheeran concluded his opening set by adding, “I really hope Khalid gets well soon and that he’ll be joining us in Boston.” The record-setting Mathematics Tour is scheduled to hit Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts for back-to-back shows on Friday, June 30, and Saturday, July 1.

As of this writing, Billboard has reached out to Khalid’s representation for further details but is awaiting response.

Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Travis Barker and Kourtney Kardashian’s unborn child has already attended two significant concerts.

Kardashian held up a sign reading “TRAVIS I’M PREGNANT” during one of Blink-182’s tour stops in Los Angeles to reveal her pregnancy to Barker, the band’s iconic drummer. After the show, Barker and Kardashian posed for photos. One of them featured Barker pretending to drum Kardashian’s baby bump, which proved to foreshadow their baby sex reveal party this past weekend.

Barker and Kardashian jointly posted the video to Instagram. In it, Barker simultaneously performs a drumroll and makes out with Kardashian, seated on his lap behind the kit, leading up to blue confetti filling the sky. They embraced and continued to make out after learning they are expecting a boy.

The baby will be the couple’s first child together. They married in May 2022 (we think, at least). Barker shares Atiana (24), Landon (19), and Alabama (17) with his ex, Shanna Moakler. Kardashian shares Mason (13), Penelope (10), and Reign (8) with Scott Disick.

On Sunday, June 18, Barker commemorated Father’s Day on Instagram with a photo carousel featuring his dad and his kids.

“Happy Father’s Day to the best Dad I could ever ask for who taught me everything I know,” Barker wrote as the caption. “My kids, I’m so blessed to learn from you and be loved by you. Being your father is the best thing in the world. You’re my best production yet and I’m so proud to be your father. I love you Alabama, Landon and Atiana. And thank you god for my future blessing.”

Blink-182 is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

If Greg Abbott was a Garth Brooks song, he would be “Shameless” for the way he shamelessly panders to his base — even if it means falling for an obvious hoax.

Over the weekend, the Texas governor shared an article about Garth Brooks, who recently riled up conservatives for saying his new restaurant will “serve every brand of beer” (including Bud Light), from something called the Dunning-Kruger Times on Twitter. “Garth Brooks Booed Off Stage at 123rd Annual Texas Country Jamboree,” he wrote, repeating the headline. “Go woke. Go broke. Garth called his conservative fans. ‘assholes.’ Good job, Texas.”

Here’s the thing: there’s no such thing as the Texas Country Jamboree. There’s also no city called Hambriston, where it purportedly took place, and the Dunning-Kruger Times is a replacement-level Babylon Bee satirical website.

Dunning-Kruger Times states on its website that all its content is “parody, satire, and tomfoolery.”

“Everything on this website is fiction,” the publication states directly on its website. “It is not a lie, and it is not fake news because it is not real. If you believe that it is real, you should have your head examined.”

Texas representative Greg Casar summed it up nicely: “Gov Abbott just accidentally posted a satire article because he wants to hate on queer Texans and Garth Brooks so bad. The Texas Country Jamboree doesn’t exist. Hambriston, Texas is not real. And the Governor is not fit to tweet, much less govern. Happy pride!” Abbott deleted the tweet, but screenshots are forever.

Abbott is feeling the heat for sharing the clearly fake article, just like workers across Texas are feeling the heat while not being allowed to take a water break, as per the governor’s orders.

(Via Newsweek)

Donald Trump continued to lean into the anti-trans fervor amongst conservative voters by, once again, busting out his lady weightlifter impression during a campaign event in Michigan.

Framed around the contentious issue of transgender athletes, the “bit” involves the former president doing a lot of awkward grunting and groaning at the podium. Although, this time around, Trump almost appeared to be moaning as he trotted out the impression that’s apparently become a key part of his stump speech.

You can see Trump’s impression below:

According to Trump (huge grain of salt right there), the impression comes from the time he watched a female weightlifter fail to beat a world record. Via Mediaite:

“She got over the barbell,” he said. “They put like a little tiny ounce on one side, an ounce on the other. This thing was– if you beat it by an ounce, you have the world record. And she got up there. Should I do it?”

The crowd hooted and hollered.

“I’m gonna do it!” he exclaimed.

Trump lowered his hands and brought them up like a weightlifter.

“Arghhhh!” he grunted. “She couldn’t do it.”

On top of trotting out the weightlifter bit, Trump also told the Michigan crowd that he’s the only one who can stop World War III, which he ominously declared is coming. The former president also pushed back on electric vehicles, according to the Detroit Free Press.

Per usual, the MAGA crowd ate out of Trump’s hands by booing whenever he mentioned Democratic Governor Gretchen Witmer and cheering when Trump promised to fight his “enemies” that are trying to “silence his supporters and take away their freedoms.”

(Via Detroit Free Press)

You are surely aware of how things got strange for Russia (and Vladimir Putin’s place as president) over the weekend. Late last week, Yevgeny Prigozhin, leader of Putin’s private mercenary army (the Wagner Group), went HAM and accused Russian leadership of lying about its reasons for invading Ukraine. On Saturday, Prigozhin decided that he’d had enough of being angry about his soldiers being turned into hamburger meat on the battlefield. So, he rounded up his mercenaries and attempted a coup.

It still remains clear exactly what happened to make this a failed coup, but Prigozhin did lead an armed uprising and seized a key Russian military base, but he stopped before reaching Moscow. Now, Prigozhin has agreed to be exiled in Belarus, and he’s reportedly at the only available hotel where no one can jump out of windows, meaning that he won’t join the list of former Putin associates who have mysteriously fallen from great heights over the years.

Whether Prigozhin manages to stay alive, one can only guess. However, U.S. officials declared surprise over how quickly the matter began and deescalated over the weekend. Meanwhile, Majorie Taylor Greene dreamed up a conspiracy theory to accuse Biden of being behind the uprising, and a few Fox News hosts echoed a similar point. Here’s Fox Business host Maria Baritromo at her Fox News weekend gig, Sunday Morning Futures, where she, too, went into conspiracy-theory mode. In Baritromo’s mind, this uprising must have been intended as a distraction from Hunter Biden’s legal woes:

“The White House wanted to give the media something else to cover and this is the M.O. This is the way they do things…. I said, ‘Wow, what a blockbuster WhatsApp message. I’m sure there will be an enormous story over the weekend that the White House will be pushing to take the story off the front page,’ and sure enough, we’ve got the State Department drumming up the drama that took place over the weekend in Russia. So I don’t know if it’s going to break through.”

Additionally, Rachel Campos-Duffy accused the U.S. of playing some sort of role in orchestrating the uprising, too. On that note, it’s worth mentioning that, way back in March, Brian Kilmeade shut down Campos-Duffy’s claim that the U.S. had provoked Russia to invade Ukraine.

In Russia, Putin appears to have shut down his Wagner Group nemesis’ uprising for the moment. However, an uprising by one’s own private army is not a good look no matter how it’s painted. The Russian president only recently admitted that Russia is performing abysmally, so perhaps more fireworks are on the way. Either that, or Putin has already retreated to his pickle-filled luxury hideout to lick his wounds.

(Via Fox News, Acyn on Twitter, CNBC, Al Jazeera & Mediate)

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw Nicki Minaj continue her relentless streak of dropping new music and The Weeknd doing the exact same thing. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters.

Nicki Minaj and Ice Spice — “Barbie World (With Aqua)”

The Barbz have been eating lately, as it seems like Minaj has a new song out every week. Last week yielded one that’s a pretty full-circle moment for the rapper: She officially entered the Barbie universe by linking up with Ice Spice on “Barbie World,” a fiery new take on the classic “Barbie Girl,” made for the upcoming Barbie movie.

The Weeknd, Jennie, and Lily-Rose Depp — “One Of The Girls”

Much like Minaj, The Weeknd has been a busy bee lately, sharing new songs from The Idol on a weekly schedule alongside the show. Part of last week’s dispatch was “One Of The Girls,” on which he, Blackpink’s Jennie, and Lily-Rose Depp go in on a very Weekend-esque atmospheric slow-burner.

Dominic Fike — “Mama’s Boy”

We’re now a couple weeks away from Sunburn, Dominic Fike’s new album (which has a heightened level of anticipation after he increased his foothold in the pop culture consciousness with a memorable role in Euphoria. His latest preview of the LP is “Mama’s Boy,” which Uproxx’s Danielle Chelosky describes as “an off-kilter, sputtering journey that offers an immersive atmosphere.”

GloRilla — “Put It On Da Floor (GloMix)”

Big week for GloRilla! She was named to the esteemed 2023 XXL Freshman Class and shortly after shared “Put It On Da Floor (GloMix).” The video sees her load up the plate set by Latto’s “Put It On Da Floor,” delivering a freestyle that sees GloRilla confidently and deservedly celebrating just how well she’s been doing.

Juice WRLD and Cordae — “Doomsday”

There’s apparently something left in the pool of posthumous Juice WRLD material to work with, as the late rapper just popped up on another new song. This time, it’s the Cordae team-up “Doomsday.” Notably, in the video, Juice WRLD appears via AI, and while that might taste sour to some, it’s well-executed and Juice WRLD was close with both Cordae and video director Cole Bennett.

Young Thug — “Parade On Cleveland” Feat. Drake

Gunna recently dropped a new album, then last week, we saw the other side of the coin when Young Thug unveiled a project of his own, Business Is Business. He and Drake team up for “Parade On Cleveland,” and on the track, Thug keeps his head up regarding being behind bars: “Hands down / Yeah, the big dog coming back / Think you good?…Pants down, you smoking crack.”

Coi Leray — “Get Loud”

Earlier this month, Leray let it known that she’d like to team up with hip-hop’s best women rappers for an all-star collaboration, which would ideally be the first No. 1 hip-hop song of the year. Even if that doesn’t end up coming to fruition, Leray represents the rap ladies well on her new album Coi. “Get Loud” is an in-your-face highlight, which features a guest appearance from soccer star Trinity Rodman in the video.

Maisie Peters — “Run”

Peters’ debut album, 2021’s You Signed Up For This, made her a star in her native UK. Now it’s time to see if her just-released second album, The Good Witch, can expand her reach. It oughta with songs like “Run,” a rundown of dating red flags presented in a kinetic, propulsive pop package.

Militarie Gun — “Life Under The Gun”

Militarie Gun recently told Uproxx of the road to their new album, Life Under The Gun, “We had all these songs written and demoed for the third time before we ever played a show. If we were impatient, we could’ve released All Roads Lead To The Gun earlier and went straight into releasing these songs before we ever started touring, but we knew how good the songs were so it was easy for us to have restraint

Peso Pluma — “Lady Gaga”

Peso Pluma, a major name in modern Mexican music, recently told Uproxx, “I’ve listened to Lady Gaga, but we really named the song that because there’s a verse that says that she wears sunglasses on her face like Lady Gaga. I remember Lady Gaga wore extravagant sunglasses at different types of galas. Like exotic [sunglasses]. It’s an exotic corrido and that’s why we called it ‘Lady Gaga.’”

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

This month, King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard released their 24th studio album. It is called (takes a deep breath) PetroDragonic Apocalypse; Or, Dawn Of Eternal Night: An Annihilation Of Planet Earth And The Beginning Of Merciless Damnation. (If that’s a little too tl;dr for you, just PetroDragonic Apocalypse will also suffice.) It is a tongue-in-cheek throwback metal record that nods to bands like Slayer and Tool, based on a concept recently described by frontman Stu Mackenzie as being “about humankind” and “planet Earth” and “also about witches and dragons and shit.”

If you know anything about these Australian rockers, you’re probably aware that they don’t normally make metal albums about witches and dragons and shit. Of course, they don’t “normally” make any kind of album. Focusing on the prolificacy and eclecticism of King Gizzard is a trope of every interview profile and record review ever written about them. But it’s also impossible to avoid. It would be like writing about Lee Harvey Oswald and not centering on his unfortunate run-in with John F. Kennedy. In the case of PetroDragonic Apocalypse, the album marks a dramatic shift from the bounty of music — five LPs in all — the Giz put out in 2022, which generally had a jammier edge. That jazzy, crunchy, and party-friendly sensibility have made them darlings among music fans who sit at the nexus of loving both the Grateful Dead and garage-punk indie rock. (Which is a much larger audience than the media might have you believe.)

But King Gizzard is nothing if not unpredictable, and PetroDragonic Apocalypse represents a deliberate zag from last year’s zig. Though it’s not unprecedented in the band’s overall body of work: 2019’s Infest The Rats’ Next, their 15th LP for those keeping score, was their first foray into heavy music. After that record, they pivoted hard again with 2021’s Butterfly 3000, a collection of poppy electronic songs.

For newcomers — and even relatively casual admirers like myself — staying on top of this band’s myriad musical adventures can seem like a full-time job. To help make sense of (part) of King Gizzard’s sprawling catalog, I recently did a Zoom call with founding member Joey Walker during a break in their recent U.S. tour, which wrapped last week ahead of a run of dates in Europe that begin in late July.

12 Bar Bruise (2012)

There were these bizarre proto-Gizzard shows that we were doing in maybe 2010, where we had this revolving lineup of members and friends. Anyone who wanted to play and could play. In 2011, the lineup became cemented. We weren’t necessarily hitting the road, because the shows were just on the east coast of Australia. But we were playing as much as we could.

As the first full-length album, it was the first iteration of us doing anything like that. We were just stabbing around in the dark a bit, in terms of process. The notion of even going to a studio was still really novel. It was ultra exciting. I mean, Stu was definitely spearheading that whole thing. It felt like he was leading the way, and it just materialized.

There were heaps of overdubs that were recorded like a voice memo on an iPhone. I think we recorded a lot of the vocals on a 10-watt PV solid state piece of crap amp. Stu did a lot of the vocals on that. But in terms of recording the beds — the main drums, bass, guitar elements of the album — we went into a studio. And then after the fact, we went in and mixed it in that same studio in Melbourne.

It’s one of our most cohesive albums, I think, in terms of the sound. We wear our influences on our sleeves on that one. There’s some big old nods to The Osees and that garage scuzzy rock thing that was happening then. It might have been a bit of a blip on the radar, that garage rock thing that the Osees were leading at the time. But to us, it felt like the be-all-and-end-all. It was the center of the universe, that world. It was the first of many versions of that, just dipping our toes into what it’s like to be in a band. We were still working out dynamics interpersonally, and what roles we had to fill.

Eyes Like The Sky (2012)

There’s a song on 12 Bar Bruise called “Sam Cherry’s Last Shot,” which is spaghetti western sounding surf rock song. We were all in our early 20s and trying to be like Nick Cave. I’d just dress up like Nick Cave or Warren Ellis, and go to parties, and walk around trying to wear a suit or something like that. And I remember I was reading Blood Meridian, that Cormac McCarthy book, and I got an excerpt of an audiobook on YouTube. And I played that over “Sam Cherry’s Last Shot.”

That was the inception of being like, “Fuck, we should maybe investigate this.” One thing led to another, and Ambrose [Kenny Smith’s] dad, Broderick, who unfortunately just passed away, but he is this Australian music icon from the ’60s and ’70s. He was in a blues boogie band called Carson, which was deeply influential on us in the early days. The Australian take on American-style rock boogie thing. He’s also a writer, constantly doing stuff, and he had this audiobook that we scored. Once we knew what it was going to be, it came together quite quickly. Like a lot of albums, we were feeling around in the dark for some form of concept or some form of parameter. Once those are dialed in, the album comes together really quickly. We’re really efficient at that these days.

Float Along — Fill Your Lungs (2013)

At that time it was pure naivety. Not knowing, no plan for the future, no idea as to what we’d be, or if we’d make another album. It was quite a haphazard sense of what would happen. We’d only been a band for 18 months or something, and it was just like, “What the fuck is this?”

It was well and truly more than a few albums in when I felt like, “Oh, okay, maybe this is a thing that we’ll keep doing, moving on to something that’s exciting to us.” But [at first], I was just assuming that we would be doing that garage rock type of record again. After that was Float Along, which is less cohesive. It was us experimenting, going down a bit more of a psychedelic path.

I was in awe of Stu’s ability to just throw something out there and move forward and commit to whatever that was. I was a lot more pedantic. I would overthink it, like, “Oh, this sounds too much like that.” Whereas he just never had that neurological setup in his brain. It didn’t feel like he thought twice about that type of stuff. He used to say, “It’s just a song, it’s not the first or last thing you will ever do. If it’s a shit song, just make another one.”

Quarters! (2015)

My natural way of thinking back in the early days was, “OK, cool, that’s an album. Let’s breathe for a second.” But Stu was like, “Let’s keep going.”

We weren’t really jamming anywhere near close to the degree we are right now on stage. But on I’m Your Mind Fuzz, which I think preceded Quarters! there’s some little moments, like “Slow Jam 1,” which go into a little bit into that territory of what became Quarters! So it’s like, “Oh, cool, that’s fun. Let’s do that.” That was definitely the first iteration of us trying to jam in an improvised way. The album recordings were products of live-take jams, and then we would stitch it all together.

As for “the 10-minute-10-second thing” with all four tracks, it was like, “Oh, we have a couple of long-form songs.” And for whatever reason, they were all around nine minutes. “The River” went for 10 minutes, and then another one went for 10 minutes. And then Stu was like, “I reckon we can get all of these songs the exact same length.” So all of a sudden the concept just materializes. And then you’re like, “Okay, the four songs, they all go from the same time. Quarters!, obviously.” There’s a little bit more foresight or calculation that we employ these days, but back then it just capitalizing on happy accidents.

Nonagon Infinity (2016)

“Robot Stop” and “Gamma Knife” were the first time we were properly starting to fuck with odd time signatures in a way that was at the core of what the album felt like, or was a thing that we were building the album around. And playing with motif — referencing melodies or ideas or words that happened more than once throughout the album.

Stu came up with an idea: “Imagine if it ends in the same way it starts, so you can just have it on loop, and they’d just link up.” And that was pretty much it. It was just like, “Fuck, let’s make this album, the whole album, on loop.” And then once we had that, we titled the album Nonagon Infinity. The blending of all the songs, and linking stuff together, that was the first time we really worked on doing that. When it was finished, I was like, “Fuck, how did we do that?”

For a lot of people, it is an entry point into the band, or the first time they heard the band. We were all ultra proud of it. What we were as a band and our identity started to come a bit more into the clear for us.

Murder Of The Universe (2017)

Stu and I in particular are fairly big sci-fi heads. There’s a book that had a huge impact on me, a lesser-known Philip K. Dick — I think it was his last book — called Valis. I picked that up on tour in the early days. I think we were in Chicago. I’d read A Scanner Darkly and some of the classics. But I got Valis, and it literally fucked me up. It’s actually this semi-autobiographical account of Philip K. Dick, when he was completely fucked up on acid and psychedelics for a long period of time. He was living in an altered reality, and the world around him was oblivious to that. He has this theophany, this religious experience, that ends up being this alien. Anyway, it sounds crazy, but I feel like a lot of etymology of Gizzard lore has come from that book, especially with my writing.

Infest The Rat’s Nest (2019)

Infest The Rats’ Nest was 100 percent like, We’re going to make a heavy album. That was me, Stu and Cavs, the drummer. Us three are the only people in the band that grew up listening to heavy music. By now we had weaponized the genre-jumping thing. It’s just what we’re defined by. But if we were going to do a heavy record, we wanted it to do it our way and be confident about it. As soon as we started doing it and committing to it, we also had a lot more of an idea of our sound, a King Gizzard sound. We felt confident enough to commit, and be like, “Oh, we’ll make it our own.” Even though you can hear all of the influences that went into it — obviously Metallica and Slayer and Tool. Tool is huge for Stu, myself, and Cavs. I was probably 13-years-old when Lateralus came out, and I remember I was just insanely obsessed with it. Had no idea what a time signature was. I remember just playing along to what I now know are fairly complex guitar riffs, and I feel like that actually was quite an important thing in terms of my development.

But yeah, that was a completely and utterly calculated experiment. We were just fucking throwing shit at the wall in that respect.

Ice, Death, Planets, Lungs, Mushrooms, And Lava (2022)

Part of the concept was just going through all of the modes of the major scale. All of the song titles start with the first letter of each mode of the major scale. The first track “Mycelium,” it sounds like this almost reggae or African-type thing, because it’s played with a major scale. And then as it moves through the songs, or the scales, they grow just due to the simple nature of what notes you’re playing. They can sound more dissonant, or more dark. Before we even jammed, it was like, “This jam is going to be in the Phrygian scale,” which is very metal sounding. So just due to its very nature, you know it’s going to have a Soviet marching feel. It could only go one way, just due to just the nature of the notes you were using.

PetroDragonic Apocalypse (2023)

After making the Ice, Death, Planets album, and making Changes, those are meandering, jammy kinds of albums, and the temperament of them is a lot more placid. I think often we’ll just be like, “Fuck, we need to expel some energy or something.” But even though sonically it is vastly different, the actual process of how we made Petro is similar to how he made those albums. Especially the Ice, Death record, it’s, that was a product of all of us jamming, stitching the jams together, and then creating the song out of that. And then writing lyrics as a collective. Then we were like, “Fuck, I reckon that would work really, really well if we tried to do a metal version of that.” So that’s where we went with that. When I look back on the recording, the Petro record, it felt so sunny. It was just so fun to do that stuff. I see Petro as a playful, tongue firmly planted in cheek album.

We made that Butterfly 3000 record, which is purely electronic, and we haven’t really had enough time or wherewithal to incorporate a lot of that style into the live show. So more of the electronic stuff, I feel like are we’re going to do that and jam it moving forward. Therefore it’s about trying to work out a way in which we can do that. What gear do we get? How do we fucking implement a MIDI so we can all be in time?

We’ve just started doing that on this tour, and I’ve got my modular synthesizer. I feel like that’s going to start to really penetrate how we play live. And it’s cool for me, because I’ve always played guitar my whole life, but dance music and electronic music kind of is my jam the most. That’s what I listen to. The other guys never did at all. I would kind of be the butt of some jokes, like, “Fucking hell, go listen to your doof-music and shit.” But I feel like it’s just inevitable. If you like music, you might dismiss electronic music, but eventually, it’s like jazz. If you actually give it the time, or you experience it in the right context, it’s undeniably some of the purest form of music. So the other guys are starting to be excited by that.

I definitely know we won’t make a reggae album. But you also never know. I fucking love that shit. And we have rap songs now. So nothing is sacred in this band.

For years, people have been asking Damian Lillard about his future with the Blazers and, for years, he has insisted he wants to stay in Portland for the rest of his career.

This summer, however, the tone of his messaging has changed a bit. He has continued to insist he wants to be there, but with the caveat that he wants them to build a contender around him. Up until the Draft, that meant the focus was on whether Portland would find a trade for the third overall pick to bring back a co-star for Lillard. Ultimately, Portland passed on trade overtures for that pick and selected Scoot Henderson, bringing yet another young guard onto the roster alongside Lillard.

Since then, there have been seemingly daily updates on Dame, ranging from “he did not contact the Blazers front office on Draft night” to “he really likes Miami but still wants to make it work with Portland.” He can’t be traded until the second week of July because of when he signed his extension last year, which likely means two more weeks of this posturing until something more concrete comes of it. That is bad news for all of us who are very tired of hearing about the passive-aggressive dealings behind the scenes, and you can count ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins among those who is tired of seeing Dame’s name on the rundown each day.

When you’ve lost Perk, a man whose commitment to hot takes is astounding, it says something. Perk is an analyst who will overreact to a small sample or a slight shift with the best of them, but even he cannot handle the constant Dame non-update updates.

His point about this likely coming down to when Portland pulls the plug is likely correct, as Lillard clearly doesn’t want to be the one to issue a trade request. He can push buttons and make it clear what he wants, but he’s dug in too often for too long to want to be the side that breaks first. The Blazers, however, can take a look at the reality of the situation which, as Perk notes, is that this isn’t a roster that’s just an upgrade or two away from being a contender, and help make that decision for Dame, understanding what he wants out of a trade and move on from there. It certainly seems like the team has already made their choice with their draft day moves, but it’s possible there’s one more thing up their sleeve to start free agency.

Again, we’re likely going to get another week-plus of this same cycle until the Blazers either make a splashy move that few around the league see as being available to them, or Lillard becomes trade eligible and the two sides finally part ways. You can count Perk out of those discussions, if he has it his way, but I’m sure he’ll be back next week being asked the same things and only growing more exasperated.

Latto said for the new Cosmopolitan cover, “I don’t see myself doing music forever,” but she’s at the top of her game right now. The BET Awards 2023 on Sunday night, June 25, was ostensibly her Super Bowl.

Latto delivered a grocery-themed “Put It On Da Floor” performance and won Best Female Hip-Hop Artist over fellow nominees Cardi B, Coi Leray, GloRilla, Ice Spice, Megan Thee Stallion, and Nicki Minaj. Before accepting the award, Latto giddily took off one of her heels and jumped up and down on the stage with her sister, Brooklyn Nikole.

“I got one heel on, one heel off. OK. I’m not gonna cry this year. Shout out to God,” Latto said in her speech. “He be doin’ his big one on me! Shout out to all the other women in the category. All the women who paved the way for this to even be possible. This category is going crazy this year. Oh! Shout out to some women who I think should have been in the category. Doechii, I love you, baby. Maiya The Don, Flo Milli, Mello Buckzz, TiaCorine. Shout out to all the women. We killin’ it.”

She continued, “This is the year of the female. Year of women. Hopefully, we gon’ see an all-female tour, you feel me? Very soon. Keep killin’ it. Mama, I love you. And thank you to my man.”

The unbridled celebration continued online, as Latto posted a video of her shaking her head and squealing in utter excitement. “Put it on da floor, b*tch!” she said to the camera while stomping her foot (now wearing pink slippers). “Put it on the mothaf*ckin’ floor, b*tch! Put it on da floor, b*tch!”

Doechii (“THE BIGGEST”), Lizzo (“YESSSSSSSS”), Remy Ma (“BIG LATTO!!!! Congratulations”), Winnie Harlow (“I KNOW THATS RIGHT”), and G-Eazy (crown emoji) stopped by Latto’s Instagram comments section.

Watch Latto’s full acceptance speech above.

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