Week 1 of college football: OVER. Week 2 of college football: HERE NOW. We were treated to some pretty wonderful football over the first week of the season, which happened over the course of five days because the start of the college football campaign inexplicably (but, to be clear, thankfully) takes up almost an entire actual week.
This week, the sport has one game that serves as a clear-cut headliner, and while the remainder of the slate isn’t exactly loaded, we should still be in for a fun Saturday. We’re here to get you ready like we do every week, as of last week, when we started doing this.
The Game Of The Year (Of The Week): No. 3 Texas vs. No. 10 Michigan
The defending national champs did not look especially great last week, as it took them until the fourth quarter to put Fresno State away at home in new head coach Sherrone Moore’s debut. While the Wolverine defense was outstanding (and should be all season long), there are real questions about their ability to take care of business on the offensive side of the ball, especially through the air.
The good news is we’re going to learn a lot about Michigan right away, as Texas is coming to town in an increasingly rare non-conference matchup on a college campus between a pair of teams with national title aspirations. The Longhorns were incredibly impressive last week, as they shut out Colorado State, 52-0, behind a smothering defense and a workmanlike showing from Quinn Ewers.
Michigan is obviously going to need to find a way to move the ball consistently against a rock solid Texas defense — look for how they use backup QB Alex Orji as a way to find a spark in the running game — but the matchup I’m most excited for is between Wolverine corner Will Johnson (who is the best defensive player in the nation) and Ryan Wingo, the incredibly exciting true freshman receiver for the Longhorns who flashed in his collegiate debut. With respect to Colorado State, he’s about to go from playing the game on easy to playing the game on the hardest possible level, and it should be a blast to watch.
Lock Into This One: No. 23 Georgia Tech vs. Syracuse
Not exactly the most box office slate in the world this week, although there are a bunch of really solid games that should be pretty compelling throughout the afternoon. As such, I’m gonna throw a game involving a pair of teams that I generally find interesting this year. The Bees were incredibly impressive in a win over Florida State in Ireland to kick off the season, as they showed off some nastiness and physicality that should bode well for them this season. They followed that up by taking care of business against Georgia State, which is not always easy for teams that play immediately after coming back from Ireland, thanks in large part to a very effective ground attack.
Syracuse, meanwhile, hit the transfer portal hard under new head coach Fran Brown, and has brought in talent that should have them in bowl contention right away, even if it took them a bit to create some separation from Ohio. They have one of the best running backs in the ACC in LeQuint Allen, one of the best tight ends in the country in Oronde Gadsden, and a battle-tested QB in Ohio State transfer Kyle McCord. The thing that could end up deciding this game, though, is how another transfer — ex-Texas A&M edge rusher Fadil Diggs — is able to get after Tech quarterback Haynes King, who has started the season well.
Under-The-Radar Banger: UTSA vs. Texas State
There are a lot of nice games a little farther down the card this week, but let’s go with a matchup between two solid G5 programs in Texas. Both of these teams are capable of putting up plenty of points, and are in the process of breaking in new quarterbacks — the Roadrunners turned to former Colorado QB Owen McCown and the Bobcats are the latest stop for well-traveled signal caller Jordan McCloud, who was fantastic at James Madison last year. It’s very possible UTSA wins the American and Texas State wins the Sun Belt this year, so this one has all the makings of being an early season G5 banger.
Message Board Meltdown Game Of The Week: Appalachian State vs. No. 25 Clemson
Buddy, if Clemson doesn’t look good this week against App State, look out. There’s no shame in losing to Georgia, everyone that’s played the Dawgs in the regular season has done that for more than three years. However, the Clemson offense looked worse than expected, even factoring the opponent, and if Cade Klubnik doesn’t bounce back against an App State team that’s always frisky, the Clemson faithful are going to have some thoughts about his status as the starting QB and Dabo’s future. The Tigers are more than two touchdown favorites against the ‘Eers, and they could really use a comfortable win to keep the spotlight on Florida State’s failures and not end up right alongside the Noles. An honorable mention here goes to Colorado-Nebraska, but that’s less a message board meltdown situation and more a national TV meltdown situation given how every game involving the Buffs (who are 7.5-point road underdogs) gets discussed now.
Who Won The Heisman Last Week?: Cam Ward, QB, Miami (FL)
There are a few possible answers here, but Cam Ward’s performance in a big-time matchup in the Swamp puts him ahead of some of the other Heisman favorites who piled up stats against lesser opponents. Ward was 26-of-35 for 385 yards, three touchdowns, and one interception, and aside from that early INT that came from forcing a ball back over the middle, it was about as good a quarterbacking performance as you’ll see. Ward was in full control of the offense and made throws we haven’t seen from a Miami QB in a long time, giving Canes fans reason to really believe they finally have it right at that position.
Best Bet: South Carolina-Kentucky UNDER 42.5
I stand by the Georgia State play last week, but sometimes you go 1-of-4 in the red zone for three points and lose by 2.5. That’s the magic of betting on college football. This week, there aren’t a lot of great games on the schedule, but we’re headed to Kentucky for a matchup of old SEC East foes in a game that should be a defense-first battle. South Carolina struggled to move the ball on Old Dominion and Kentucky wasn’t exactly a juggernaut on that side of the ball against Southern Miss. The real concern here is turnovers, but the game flow should be a lot of running the ball and playing the field position battle.
“ATTENTION HOTTIES,” Megan Thee Stallion captioned an Instagram post on Thursday morning, September 5. “WE ARE OFFICIALLY FAMOUS WE GOT A PEPSI COMMERCIAL.”
Yes, Pepsi and Paramount Global partnered for a brand new commercial blending Paramount’s forthcoming Gladiator II and the 2024 NFL season.
The three-minute spot begins with actors Jake Lacy and Lamorne Morris bragging about their respective fantasy teams. Then, we’re taken inside of their freshly served Pepsi can, which transforms into a Roman Coliseum. Travis Kelce, Josh Allen, Derrick Henry, and Justin Jefferson stalk out dressed as gladiators. Kelce, always hogging the spotlight, screams, “Are you ready?!” Megan Thee Stallion interrupts him to unleash tigers into the Coliseum and starts singing her unique spin on Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”
“Megan Thee Stallion is going to get people to pay attention; Travis Kelce and Josh Allen are going to get people to pay attention,” Paramount President Of Advertising John Halley told the publication. “It’s a first-class branding moment for Pepsi and one that is going to last.”
The new NFL season begins on Thursday night with the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs hosting the Baltimore Ravens. The game will kick off at 8:20 p.m. ET on NBC and Peacock.
As Complex notes, one user wrote, “Who tf told Cardi B she’s light skin? That term is used for lighter complexion black folks but y’all got everybody claiming it now.” Cardi replied, “Dominicans are so diverse when it comes to skin color Dark ,brown ,tan,light ,white ….sooo what am I supposed to say when I’m describing my complexion…Im Dominican skin ?”
Somebody else wrote, “idk maybe y’all need to come up with yall own terms.. ‘light skinned’ is used to describe BLACK people. Not whites, Dominicans, Mexicans, Asians… BLACKS!! You can’t just use the word to mean whatever you want it to mean chica.” Cardi responded, “what you saying is automatically invalid.The fact that you use whites … WHITES IS A COLOR AND A RACE ..DOMINICANS ARE A NATIONALITY WITH PEOPLE that are different COLORS AND SHADES ..NOT A RACE … Get your glitter hole out of here wit this fake rule you just came up wit.”
Cardi said in another tweet, “The term light skin is adjective to describe skin complexion …It is not exclusive to a single race …l guess Jamaicans and Haitians and West Indians can’t say they got brown skin ,light skin or dark skin because just like Dominicans they are also a nationality..now move JAWS.”
Adele has been a fixture in the British tabloids since she first broke into the scene with her 2008 debut album, 19. Like this one: “Someone Like Boo Hoo.” Following the conclusion of her record-setting residency in Munich, Germany, the “Hello” singer poked fun at the weird (and often fake) stories about herself by creating her own fake scandalous headlines.
“After years of putting up with the tabloids, I decided to join in on the fun and create my own for the Munich shows,” Adele, who is about go to on a long break from music, wrote on Instagram. “When I tell you it was a highlight of my week to write and create these every Sunday after the shows… I think I missed my true calling! A friendly piss take on myself and the real ones! Truly, it is so much fun writing absolute nonsense!”
One headline from the satirical The Saturn Times reads “IT’S ONE ADELE OF A RIDE,” and it shows Adele riding around the stage on a bike. “Days before opening night, Adele was seen gallivanting around the grounds of Adele World on a bike, as she prepares to kick off her run of shows in Munich,” the story reads. “Dressed in all black with white trainers, the London born songstress was sure to stay safe and responsibly wore a helmet.” Another headline screams “STORM ADELE,” as she performed during a torrential rainstorm.
A new Vogue profile on Gaga notes she and Polansky “got engaged in April after a day of rock climbing.”
Gaga also revealed how she and Polansky met: “My mom met him and she said to me, ‘I think I just met your husband,’ and I said, ‘I’m not ready to meet my husband!’ I could never have imagined that my mom… found the most perfect person for me?”
She went on to speak about the 40th birthday party of Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster and founding president of Facebook, with whom Polanksy is friends. She said, “I got invited and I said, ‘I wonder if Michael is going to be there,’ and my mom said yes, and so I went to the party and I kept asking for him, and he finally came over to me and we talked for three hours. We had the most amazing conversation.”
Polansky shared his perspective, saying, “I didn’t know much about her and honestly wasn’t sure what to expect. I was struck immediately by her warmth and openness — she was so genuinely curious about what my life was like growing up in Minnesota.”
After talking on the phone and going on dates, the two ended up living together during the COVID-19 pandemic. Gaga said:
“It was really kind of special. I’d been so focused on my career since I was a teenager. And the gift of that time was that I got to completely focus on my relationship. I met this totally supportive, loving human being who wanted to get to know me — outside of Lady Gaga.”
Polansky said, “We had this amazing chapter of a weird kind of normalcy that’s essential for any relationship to develop in a real way — taking walks, making coffee, hanging out with the dogs, reading books together… The pandemic was easier on her than you might think. She’s used to being isolated because of her fame and was able to take so much of it in stride. I think she loved the chance to slow down. She’s been operating at an unfathomable level of intensity for years and it’s no secret it had caught up to her.”
Gaga also said:
“I feel very grateful that I wasn’t alone. I had never met anyone like Michael. He’s so smart and so kind. And his life and my life are very different. He’s a very private guy and he’s not with me for any other reason than that we are right for each other. But I think what I want my fans to know is that I’m just, like, so happy. I’m healthy. I feel like the last time they heard from me — in this way — was Chromatica, and that album was about an absolutely horrible time for me with my mental health. I was in a really dark place. I struggled for, like, many years before that. But everything started to change. Because I had a real friend who saw the ways in which I was unhappy and why. And he wasn’t afraid to truly hold my hand. And get to know me. On a very deep level.”
On Wednesday night, September 4, Drake and Lil Durk turned to another popular streamer. Adin Ross previewed an unreleased Drake and Durk song being referred to as “Discontinuing Wokhardt” on his livestream. Several X (formerly Twitter) accounts, such as Complex, have captured and circulated Ross’ livestream.
According to Genius, Drake raps (or sing-raps), “Discontinuing Wockhardt / What seal do I pop now? / What seal do I pop now? / What seal do I pop now? / You know that the Act’ gone, I can’t get no Wok now.”
Afterward, Ross said, “Wait, I just realized — why’d they have me preview that? Is it because I was on lean? I’m not on lean no more. And how does The Boy know about — yeah, nah, he’s tapped in. Damn, that was hard.”
When EA Sports welcomed a group of media members and streamers down to their Orlando campus for a launch event for Madden 25and College Football 25, there was a palpable excitement from the EA Sports team to show off what they were bringing to both games. While I was there mainly to get a first look at the first college football game in more than a decade, it was obvious that they felt this year’s version of Madden was a real breakthrough moment.
A big reason for that was their new physics-based tackling and rushing system, BOOM Tech, which they felt was going to lay the foundation for the next generation of Madden games. The product of more than two years of development, is the first time the Madden team has been able to build a physics-based engine, which takes into account everything from a player’s weight to how fast they’re moving and in what direction at impact to deliver an increasingly realistic feel to the game. The hope, if all goes right, is that this is will let them add more physics-based actions to the game to replace animation-based gameplay.
Just after the game launched, Uproxx got to sit down with Clint Oldenburg (Production Director) and Kenneth Boatright (Game Designer), who both went from playing in the NFL to being part of the Madden team, to discuss the two-year process of developing BOOM Tech. While a physics-based engine wasn’t an initial goal the team set for themselves, it turned out to be the solution they found when exploring how to give players more control and feel as ball-carriers and tacklers.
“There were two steps that led to it,” Oldenburg explained about their realization. “Number one, our players were very clear in telling us ‘animation-based gameplay,’ as they referred to it, is not what they wanted anymore. They wanted more control, agency, and emergence in their gameplay. So that set the problem statement. And then once we started brainstorming with all of our internal teams — and that’s not just to say American football or Madden — we were working with some of our advanced teams around the entire EA Sports label to find different solutions for that. And when physics-based tackling became one of those solutions, then we started doing consumer insights, testing and stuff with our players, and that was the thing: Of all the different solutions that we had kind of brainstormed about how to accomplish the vision against that problem statement, that was the thing that the players that we surveyed said was most interesting to them. And so we started building it with what we call our A Team, which is an advanced animation team that every sports team at EA utilizes, and working directly with them to see how we could bring it to life.”
From that point, it was a matter of building, tuning, and refining the system, trying to strike the right balance between realism and player control — two things that don’t always work in harmony when building a video game. For as much as players want the game to look and feel like what they see on Sundays, they also want to be able to do things that you wouldn’t ever see on the field and are only really possible in a video game.
Both Oldenburg and Boatright pointed to that as one of the great challenges in designing the game. Whether the challenge was creating a running and tackling system, or building the game’s blocking system and tuning it to get it to work how they wanted and how they thought players would want it, the sheer size of this effort was one of the main reasons it took two years for BOOM Tech to make it into the game.
“The tools that we have are pretty powerful in that we have the ability to swing it pretty far in either direction. I wish we could, externally, show some of the early videos of this thing,” Oldenburg said with a laugh. “We’d tune the physics up so far that we can explode a player all across the field if we wanted, right? So we have mins and maxes, and obviously we’re not going to go to either end of that, because that would not be authentic or realistic, kind of funny to look at.
“But finding that center point is difficult and rewarding all at the same time, and the way that I think of it, football is a game of inches,” he continues. “Any coach or player will tell you that. And what we’re trying to portray to our players is that every inch matters. So as the tackle is starting, what is the approach and angle and leverage point of the tackler? What is his speed and momentum? And then that carries through into the point of impact. That pays off into the tackle resolution. And all of those factors of physics, just like they do in real life, impact the outcome of that tackle. And that’s why, you were at the media event, we referred to this as physics-informed animation selection. Very clearly not ragdoll. We could make it more ragdoll if we wanted, but that’s not what it looks like on Sundays. And so we’re literally using all of those different factors, different physics factors, to find the most perfect outcome that we can produce that looks as authentic as possible.”
That is also where having former NFL players like Boatright (a former defensive lineman for the Seahawks and Cowboys) and Oldenburg (who spent time with six different teams as an offensive lineman) on the design team pays dividends. They can provide firsthand guidance on what something should look and feel like, and also how the game’s AI should think and operate.
“I think the biggest thing is considering the player’s weight, player ratings, and really just thinking about a player’s intent,” Boatright said. “As a defensive player, I can be lining up a guy perfectly, but there’s certain elements that you just can’t account for: the ground, a blocker coming out that you might kind of stutter to deal with. But it’s just the feeling of when you have a guy squared up, you’re a cornerback, he’s Derrick Henry. Now, it doesn’t matter how much intent that corner has in them, there’s certain factors that come into play where it’s just like, hey, you’re not going to blast this guy the same way a big Ray Lewis type might with a smaller guy, you know what I mean? So just getting that momentum, getting that feel of, this guy’s a big dude that has punishing ability. Getting that intent, that momentum to feel proper, the way the contact and their approach angles change, just trying to make sure those things are correct. When talking to some of the other designers that were involved in this area, trying to make sure it felt like, this is the NFL player that has that boom to him. We got to make sure the way these guys fall feels accurate. So there’s just a lot of conversation around trying to make sure that the momentum of the stuff and the outcome of it looked realistic.”
The Madden team sees the game’s future as being physics-based, with BOOM Tech and the tackling engine as their first foray into the space. Their goal is to expand that to everything that happens on the field, but as they learned with BOOM Tech, that’s a process that requires considerable care and a willingness to be honest about when it’s ready to deploy. The goal was to unveil BOOM Tech as part of Madden 24, but they decided to keep it out of that game to give themselves another year to work with it, particularly as they ran into a number of unknowns in the development process.
By giving themselves an extra year rather than rushing out a product that wasn’t ready, they not only got more time to tune and get things right, but also avoided a situation where players decided that physics-based engines weren’t what they wanted because it didn’t function as intended at launch.
“The direction that we’re moving now and into the future is physics-based. We’re starting with physics-based tackling because that was the most obvious spot,” Oldenburg said. “But we want physics-based across all of gameplay, because that’s what our players are telling us. And to your point, if you put a feature out a little bit too early or a little pre-baked, the response is going to be, ‘We don’t like this. This isn’t what we asked for.’ Even though it might be in two, three, four years a really good feature, you’re not going to get the leverage or the ability to keep that in and keep iterating on it if it doesn’t hit the mark when it first comes out the door.”
One of those areas that can be expanded on in the future is blocking, which isn’t the first thing that comes to mind when people think about video game football, but will be the biggest complaint if it doesn’t work how players want it to. Oldenburg, the former offensive linemen, previously headed up blocking in Madden but recently handed that off to Boatright, who made his career on the other side of the trenches. They believe having that perspective from both sides of the ball has given them a more well-rounded approach to line play in the game.
Part of the challenge of developing better line play in the game is accounting for all the things that happen in video game football that don’t happen in real life. The principles that dictate how lineman move and function in various systems on the field can be broken when players get moved around the field in ways in a game that don’t happen otherwise, with how players will lurk and try to shoot gaps. As a result, they’ve tried to expand lineman logic to give them a bit more individual freedom to pick up defenders that might not be their normal responsibility.
“We got some new technology in place that allowed us to do some different things within the blocking realm. We added some new functionality between the pass protections. Users had a lot of issues with certain glitchy behavior being allowed, certain blitzes and metas or whatnot,” Boatright said. “But when you’re making a game it’s that piece that Clint talked about, one realistic and then the game world combined. There’s certain stuff that you can do in the video game that you have to account for that you just won’t see in real life on Saturdays and Sundays. So there was just a lot of work that went into trying to account for the freedom that we give users, the control that we give users, and then trying to allow each individual blocker a way to think a little bit more about his individual situation that’s going on between logic as well as animation play.”
There are still areas for improvement, but as they note, it has to be looked at as a years-long process. The reason physics-based tackling is in the game now is new game systems allow for that kind of detail and the technology has come far enough to make that a reality. The same challenge exists in expanding blocking logic, because there are limitations placed on what lineman can do because their movements and decisions are dictated by an algorithm. As Oldenburg explained, that is something they’re constantly working on and figuring out ways to expand the algorithm to take more into account and allow blockers to operate more lifelike.
“Open field blocking is one of those artificial intelligent pieces that I think we’re always going to be iterating on, year over year. What makes it extra challenging in real life as a blocker — and I was a zone guy, so I pulled a lot and I was downfield a lot. In real life, I have a brain, and I know the concept of the play,” Oldenburg explained. “And so instantly, as I’m running in the open field, I have an idea in my head where that ball carrier is supposed to be. And that’s going to give me a pretty good idea of who I need to block and which direction I need to block them in when I’m trying to find a target. In a video game, that’s just an algorithm. It’s basically an exercise in finding … every frame or every couple of frames, it’s running an algorithm to say, “Who is the biggest threat to the ball carrier at this time?” And that’s why you see, sometimes they wander and change their mind. They don’t have eyes, they don’t have brains, right? I know that’s kind of breaking down the veil of a video game. They can only do what the algorithm tells them to do, and improving that algorithm so it can take into account, where’s the ball carrier supposed to be? Or maybe, where is the ball carrier now? Or, what is my leverage point? Those are things that we’re always talking about to improve authenticity. Not necessarily simple to put in the game, but as technology grows, the hope is that we can take some of this data from real world NFL GPS tracking, and some of the knowledge we have about how a play should be blocked, and start applying that to the algorithm.”
The nature of building a video game with an annual release is as Madden 25 launches, the team is already focused on Madden 26 and figuring out how to build on the foundation that exists. Part of that is constantly evolving the game logic and taking advantage of new systems and technology that allows them to give video game players more to consider in real-time, so they can think and act more like the players on the field. Now, having built a physics-based engine for tackling and running the ball, they’re looking at where they can go next with that idea. Oldenburg hopes to add physics-based trenches to pass and run blocking, as well as how defensive backs and wide receivers interact.
Ultimately, the goal is to create less predictability and give users more control. The challenge is providing that control while staying true to the product on the field, which is the ever-present push and pull that exists with creating a sports simulation video game.
The New York Times’ Joe Coscarelli profiled the 27-year-old born Michael Todd Gordon and noted, “Gordon has been writing and recording with Bieber.”
“He’s searching,” Mk.gee said, adding, “Anything that comes out of his mouth: That’s pop music. You can really do pretty wild stuff behind that, just because it represents something.”
Bieber has plenty to write about. He and Hailey Bieber, his wife of six years, recently welcomed their first child, Jack Blues Bieber. The 30-year-old perennial hitmaker announced Jack’s birth with an August 23 Instagram post showing the baby’s tiny foot.
Meanwhile, Mk.gee just kicked off his second tour of 2024 after releasing Two Star & The Dream Police in February. Check out his purported setlist here, and see his remaining dates below.
09/06 — Oakland, CA @ Fox Theatre
09/07 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium
09/08 — Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Palladium
09/09 — San Diego, CA @ Observatory North Park
09/11 — Denver, CO @ Summit
09/13 — Houston, TX @ White Oak Music Hall
09/14 — Austin, TX @ Emo’s
09/15 — Dallas, TX @ House of Blues Dallas
09/18 — Atlanta, GA @ Tabernacle
09/19 — Louisville, KY @ Mercury Ballroom
09/20 — Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works
09/21 — Newport, KY @ MegaCorp Pavilion
09/23 — Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore Silver Spring
09/24 — New Haven, CT @ Toad’s Place
09/25 — New York, NY @ Terminal 5
09/26 — Boston, MA @ Citizens House of Blues Boston
09/28 — Philadelphia, PA @ Franklin Music Hall
09/29 — Brooklyn, NY @ Brooklyn Paramount
10/01 — Toronto, ON @ HISTORY
10/02 — Detroit, MI @ St Andrew’s Hall
10/03 — Chicago, IL @ The Vic Theatre
10/05 – Minneapolis, MN @ Uptown Theater
10/29 — London, UK @ Electric Brixton
10/30 — London, UK @ Electric Brixton
10/31 — London, UK @ Electric Brixton
11/02 — Paris, FR @ Elysee Montmarte
11/04 — Berlin, DE @ Betonhalle
11/05 — Amsterdam, NL @ Paradiso
12/03 — Brisbane, AUS @ The Triffid
12/05 — Sydney, AUS @ Metro Theatre
12/06 — Meredith, AUS @ Meredith Music Festival
12/07 — Melbourne, AUS @ Max Watts
12/08 — Melbourne, AUS @ Forum Theatre
Ludacris is known for doing a number of different things — he’s an actor, a businessman, a philanthropist, and a guy who drinks glacier water in Alaska. Before he was able to make a career doing those things, though, Luda was a rapper from Atlanta who specialized in making some absolutely iconic music videos.
Perhaps his most well-known video is for the track “Get Back,” which was directed by Spike Jonze and is famous for the comically large arms that he wore the entire time. If you are like me, you’ve probably wondered what the hell happened to those arms after the video came out, and on Wednesday evening we got the answer: Ludacris still has them.
We know this because he threw out the first pitch for the Atlanta Braves’ game against the Colorado Rockies at Truist Park. And As you can guess, he wore the arms out to the mound, kept the baseball stuck to his palm, and launched it to home plate — you can watch the video here.
Shockingly, this was not the worst first pitch any of us have ever seen, because while it was a ball, he at least got it to the plate. Credit to Ludacris for that, and I hope this is not the last time that we see him throw out a first pitch at a baseball game while wearing the “Get Back” arms.
Sade has not released an original studio album since Soldier Of Love in 2010. While there’s no news of that changing anytime soon, Sade will soon release her first song since contributing to the A Wrinkle In Time and Widows soundtracks in 2018.
On Wednesday, September 4, Sade confirmed her participation in Transa, a compilation album by the non-profit Red Hot in an effort to support transgender awareness. Sade’s track is entitled “Young Lion,” and, according to Variety, is dedicated to her son, Izaak.
Variety additionally relayed that Transa consists of three-and-a-half hours of music. The album “has over 100 contributing artists and is structured across eight chapters and 46 songs — a nod to the eight-stripe rainbow pride flag.” Transa will be released on November 22.
“We started talking about all the gifts that trans artists have been giving to the world, and wanted to create a Red Hot project that centered and celebrated those gifts,” Dust Reid said, as per Variety. “We hoped to create a narrative that positions trans and non-binary people as leaders in our society insofar as the deep inner work they do to affirm who they are in our current climate. We felt this is something everybody should do. Whether you identify as trans or non-binary or otherwise, if you took the time to explore your gender, get in touch with the feeling side of yourself, maybe we would have a future oriented around values of community, collaboration, care, and healing.”
Reid put together Transa with Massima Bell, beginning in 2021.
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