Month: April 2024

Sometimes the best part about a buzzy and mysterious new movie is not knowing what you’re getting yourself into. Could there be a freak decapitation within the first act of the movie? Maybe! You never know.

With Alex Garland’s Civil War, the intensive military imagery might be alarming, but there is more to the story than the excessive gun use. The film takes place in a near-future America where a group of journalists race to Washington D.C. amid a violent conflict taking place on American soil. Here is a brief synopsis:

From filmmaker Alex Garland comes a journey across a dystopian future America, following a team of military-embedded journalists as they race against time to reach DC before rebel factions descend upon the White House.

While the film is shrouded in mystery, Garland hopes the film sparks conversation. “My hope is that I make something which is compelling and engaging, but the product of that is some kind of conversation,” he recently told IndieWire. Garland added, “The film is trying to function a bit like the reporters in the story, so it’s just showing something within a window of time.”

A24’s Civil War stars Kirsten Dunst, Wagner Moura, Cailee Spaeny, Stephen McKinley Henderson, and Nick Offerman. The movie hist theaters on April 12.

We are just weeks away from Zayn‘s upcoming fourth studio album, Room Under The Stairs. According to a letter shared with fans, Zayn has been working on the album for the past six years (though his previous album, Nobody Is Listening was released three years ago).

Ahead of the album, Zayn has shared “What I Am” and will drop “Alienated” this Friday (April 12). Both songs mark a departure from his dark pop sounds and feature more acoustic, stripped-back instrumentation. He has previously revealed that he wrote the song “Alienated” first, which then shaped the sounds of Room Under The Stairs. Today (April 10), Zayn took to social media to reveal the album’s tracklist.

The album will consist of 15 tracks, with Zayn writing the bulk of the material, and much of the production handled by Dave Cobb. Per the tracklist, there will be no features on Room Under The Stairs.

You can see the Room Under The Stairs tracklist and cover art below.

Zayn’s Room Under The Stairs Album Cover Artwork

Zayn’s Room Under The Stairs Tracklist

1. “Dreamin”
2. “What I Am”
3. “Grateful”
4. “Alienated”
5. “My Woman”
6. “How It Feels”
7. “Stardust”
8. “Gates Of Hell”
9. “Birds On A Cloud”
10. “Concrete Kisses”
11. “False Starts”
12. “The Time”
13. “Something In The Water”
14. “Shoot At Will”
15. “Fuchsia Sea”

Room Under The Stairs is out 5/17 via Mercury/Republic. Find more information here.

Eminem is looking for real-life Stans to appear in his upccoming documentary about the phenomenon. The Detroit rap icon famously coined the term that has become the bane of online music discussion and now, he wants his biggest fans to share their stories. He tweeted out a link to a questionnaire that asks when and how respondents first heard about Eminem, whether they consider themselves Stans or not, whether they collect Eminem merch, write fan fiction about him, or make artwork inspired by him.

The term “Stan” was famously coined by Eminem in a song from the 2000 Marshall Mathers LP of the same name. The titular character was a fan who wrote increasingly unhinged letters to Eminem (expressed in first-person lyrics from Eminem in character and played by Devon Sawa in the music video) as he engaged in a one-sided, parasocial friendship with the rap star. The song ends with Stan interpreting a lack of response from Eminem as a rejection, snapping, and driving his car off a bridge with his girlfriend locked in the trunk. In the final verse, Eminem does get around to responding, only to realize that he’s too late.

While he likely meant the song as a tongue-in-cheek satire of fans’ obsessions with celebrities, in recent years, the term has been applied to online fan clubs who engage in targeted bullying campaigns against stars’ perceived rivals and critics. These attacks have been known to escalate into offline harassment, including “swatting” or “doxing” victims (calling in false police reports or sharing private information online) and even allegedly threatening to vandalize family members’ gravesites.

Eminem’s Stans have even harassed writers of this very site (y’all really did not like our reviews of his last few albums). Maybe you can include those stories on the questionnaire, which you can find here.

Blackpink’s Lisa is continuing to further her career as a solo artist. Today, it was revealed that the pop star has signed a new deal with RCA Records, which will allow her to fully own her master recordings.

This news arrives just a few months after it was revealed that each of the Blackpink girls would not be renewing their individual contracts with YG Entertainment, but will remain with the company for their band contract. The move allows each of the members to go to the label they want.

“I’m super excited to be joining the RCA family and I am confident they are the best team to create a bigger movement in my solo career,” Lisa said in a statement via Rolling Stone. “Looking forward to showing the world everything we have been preparing.”

While it’s unclear still when Lisa will be releasing new music under the RCA umbrella, she does have a lot of career plans still in the works. She is set to appear in season three of HBO’s The White Lotus, whenever that is finished and set to air on the platform.

Back in 2021, Lisa released her debut solo album through YG Entertainment and Interscope. After the band reunited for 2022’s Born Pink, she has only dropped a cover of Britney Spears’ “My Only Wish (This Year)” for the holidays.

Fans have been waiting for a response from Drake since Kendrick Lamar went scorched earth on his verse from Future’s Metro Boomin-produced song “Like That.” After K. Dot declared, “Motherf*ck the Big Three / It’s just big me,” plenty of hip-hop heads have looked forward to seeing how Drake approaches any potentional reply — especially since the last time he was in a full-tilt rap battle, things didn’t exactly go his way.

Increasing the anticipation was the fact that J. Cole beat Drake to the counterpunch, dropping his own response track, “7 Minute Drill,” last Friday. Unfortunately, J. Cole has since issued a retraction of his RSVP to this battle, citing his discomfort with going against someone he admires. Drake, on the other hand, has been compared to and contrasted with Kendrick Lamar ever since both began making noise on the blog circuit, so fan investment in his reply is higher than it’s ever been.

While Drake hasn’t made any overt announcements as yet, he’s hinted that he’s working on something, and now, Joe Budden has gotten involved (of course). The podcaster — who has long had his own friction with the Canadian superstar — suggested on his show that both rappers have recorded diss tracks and that they’ll release them sooner than later.

“Actually, I have it on good information that both sides went in the booth and came out,” he said. “What I’m hearin’ about both sides is that it’s nuclear. It’s up-up.” While it could just be another case of Budden blowing smoke (how’s that “girl rap wave is over” pronouncement working out, I wonder), his sources might be onto something since Drake and Kendrick have been at each others’ heads for so long.

Not everyone is cut out for the high-stakes world of vehicular-related action franchises. It might seem like a tough thing for, say, professional wrestlers to get involved in a dangerous universe, but many people forget that wrestling is just a glorified soap opera, so the wrestlers fit into movies very nicely! Just ask John Cena, Dave Bautista, or The Rock.

The Rock, a.k.a. Dwayne Johnson, successfully made the leap to becoming a movie star, but he might have made some enemies along the way. Johnson appeared in the Fast and Furious franchise where he entered a famous feud with co-star Vin Diesel. While it might’ve seemed like a publicist stunt, the “candy ass feud” has been ongoing for over five years. Now fellow wrestler-turned-action star John Cena is throwing his opinion into the mix.

Cena appeared on the Armchair Expert podcast hosted by Dax Shepard and he was asked about the “rough pairing” of The Rock and Vin Diesel. “There’s certainly rumors about that. I can’t deny that,” he admitted. “You have two very alpha, driven people. You get two, there can only be one.”

Cena appeared in F9: The Fast Saga in 2021, and he said that all of those years in the wrestling ring helped prep him for the Furious world. “I’m being invited into someone’s home, into someone’s family. And regardless of how they look physically in comparison to another human being, this is one IP that has had nine installments and it’s an action movie — that’s rarefied air,” Cena shared. “At the very least, there has to be respect for that.”

Next up, The Rock will appear in a Christmas movie titled Red One. It will probably be pretty “candy ass” (whatever that means).

(Via Deadline)

Maren Morris has been chasing her music dream since she was a child. During a recent episode of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Morris talked about some of the gigs she performed before making it big. One of the Fort Worth native’s earliest gigs was performing the National Anthem at an “amateur wrestling ring.”

Intrigued by this reveal, Colbert asked Morris “Could I sing the national anthem with you sometime?”

“Sure,” Morris replied.

Morris sang the melody and Colbert sang the harmony — as, evidently, that’s the only part he knows. The two delivered a choral rendition, each of them equally slaying their parts. Morris was visibly impressed by Colbert at moments and even asked him at the end, “Where did that come from?”

Which is a good thing, as this is likely the last music-related thing we’ll get from Morris for awhile. Elsewhere in the interview, Morris, whose last album Humble Quest was released in 2022, revealed she’s taking her time writing her next album.

“There’s a lot of personal stuff right now I’m wading through, processing, writing through,” said Morris. “So, yeah, I’m giving myself the time to do that and not having to rush a very, huge personal thing through an album being delivered. So, yeah, it’s going to take a little bit longer than I had hoped, but I have to trust the process.”

You can see the clip above.

The Joker: Folie à Deux trailer slammed onto the internet last night, giving fans their first taste of what to expect from the Todd Phillips-directed sequel and its musical twist. As viewers went wild over finally seeing Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, some of them woke up on Wednesday morning to discover a new addition to the trailer: a warning message from YouTube.

“The following content may contain suicide or self-harm topics. Viewer discretion is advised,” the warning message reads before prompting users to click on a button that reads, “I understand and wish to proceed.”

When Warner Bros. first unveiled the trailer, the warning message wasn’t present. Variety has a theory on what may have prompted YouTube to take action:

The scene that may have triggered the content warning: Harley Quinn (played by Lady Gaga) makes a finger-gun gesture then holds it to her head before pulling the “trigger.”

“I’m nobody. I haven’t done anything with my life like you have,” Harley Quinn tells Joker as she mimes shooting herself in the head.

As Variety reports, YouTube’s Community Guidelines allows the platform to add “a warning on your video before it starts playing, indicating that it contains content relating to suicide and self-harm.” YouTube will also add a panel directing users to suicide prevention resources.

Joker: Folie à Deux opens in theaters on October 4.

(Via Variety)

Olivia Rodrigo wrapped up her run in New York with her fourth and final Guts Tour show last night (April 9) at Madison Square Garden. Considering she opened this tour stop by bringing out Noah Kahan, fans had wondered if she would have any other surprise guests in store. And they were right to think so.

Although Monday night’s concert was just her, it was still just as incredible to see her run through all the solo songs. During yesterday’s show, Rodrigo treated the crowd by bringing out Jewel, as the two performed a duet of “You Were Meant For Me.”

“She is such an incredible songwriter. When I first started writing my songs, I would listen to her album Pieces Of You before I went to bed,” Rodrigo shared during her introduction speech. “She’s incredible and it’s such an honor that she’s here with me tonight.”

Rodrigo has creatively used the Guts Tour as a chance to spotlight older artists like Jewel alongside newer pop performers — allowing younger fans to discover musical acts that might’ve been out of their reach. Her NYC tour openers were also The Breeders, who shared that they were shocked that the “Drivers License” singer even thought of picking them.

Check out a video of Olivia Rodrigo performing with Jewel in NYC below.

While it may seem like the whole rap community has beef at the moment, at least one pair of feuding friends seems to have laid their discord to rest. JT and Yung Miami, known collectively as City Girls, fell out and made up over the course of several hours yesterday after a heated back-and-forth on Twitter (never X) was reconciled by something as simple as a phone call. How novel!

The tweets have all been deleted, but The Shade Room proved useful for something, capturing screenshots of the tail end of their exchange. After one last tweet from JT popped up on the timeline arguing that she has reason to be mad, Miami expressed confusion, saying “Jatavia we just got off the phone… now we back to the internet???”

Fortunately, the issue was quickly resolved. “This tweet was BEFORE the phone conversation,” JT explained. “Don’t know why it didn’t go through. Maybe because everyone was blowing up my phone!” In response, Miami declared she was “moving on,” telling her partner-in-rhyme, “I love you.” JT’s reply? “I love you more. I actually love you the most!”

Now THAT’s how you handle a falling out.

While Drake and Kendrick probably won’t be doing this anytime soon, it’s nice to see that some folks still know how to act, even if fans online love to feed into the negativity.