Month: January 2025

The boys are back! Steven and Ian catch up after the holiday break with a quick Sportscast about college football and the NFL. Then they do their Fantasy Albums Draft for Q1 of 2025 and discussing upcoming records from FKA Twigs, The Weather Station, Ethel Cain, and more. (Also, is it possible that Steven didn’t win the Q4 2024 draft after all?)

From there, they review their predictions for musical happenings in 2024 — how accurate were they at anticipating the most hashable trends of last year? Then they set about making predictions for the new year. Will this be the year that Sky Ferreira’s album finally drops? Let’s guess!

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 220 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

Lil Baby’s new album WHAM (Who Hard As Me) is out now, and with it, the video for the dismissive single, “F U 2X.” While 2024 was a relatively quiet year for Lil Baby, it looks like he’s carrying a bit of the combative energy from last year into the new one, with lyrics teasing his enemies with flagrant taunts. “Claim to be a player, but I fu*cked your wife,” he sneers on the chorus. “You ain’t nothin’ to a real hitter, f*ck your life up… Middle fingers in the air, f*ck ya twice.”

The new album — Baby’s first since 2022’s It’s Only Me — also sees the reunion of the Atlanta rapper with his mentor Young Thug after the latter’s release from Fulton County Jail. Thug was locked up for the past two years fighting racketeering charges; in October, he pled “no contest” to one charge, accepting a deal that would give him a truly ridiculous probation term, but ultimately allow him to go home. He, Lil Baby, and Future all reunite on the WHAM track “Dum, Dumb & Dumber.”

Ahead of his album’s release, Baby noted that it would be one of two full-length projects this year.

Watch Lil Baby’s “F U 2X” video above.

WHAM (Who Hard As Me) is out now via Quality Control / Motown. Listen to it here.

The past couple of years have had a decided dearth of new music from Young Thug. That’s understandable, considering he was incarcerated while enduring a trial for racketeering. The length of his trial — the longest in Georgia history — was miserable for Thug fans, who had to be satisfied with Business Is Business, which was cobbled together without him.

He’s officially free now, though, and returns with a vengeance on “Dum, Dumb And Dumber,” the latest single from Lil Baby’s upcoming album, WHAM (Who Hard As Me), which also rejoins the two rappers with fellow ATLien Future. All three are in top form, but it’s Thug who sounds truly rejuvenated, insisting that he never even felt like he was ever locked up. Still, he sounds relieved to be back on the streets, rapping with all the passion and slippery delivery fans have come to expect from him.

It’s also a great look for Lil Baby, who is hunting for a bounce back after the lukewarm reception of his 2022 album, It’s Only Me. It’s also bittersweet — pun intended — because of who isn’t included on the single: the fourth leg of the increasingly unlikely Super Slimey 2.

Listen to Lil Baby’s “Dum, Dumb, And Dumber” featuring Young Thug and Future.

Things are pretty weird for Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat right now. At last check, Butler — in his return to action from an illness — had a modest night with one especially wild shot attempt and did not play in the fourth quarter of the Heat’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday night. Erik Spoelstra cited the fact that he hadn’t played in a while, but decided to go with a different group of players down the stretch.

On Thursday, things were escalated further by Butler. First, in his postgame press conference, he expressed some serious skepticism about his future in Miami, expressing that he doesn’t think he can enjoy basketball as a member of the Heat.

“I want to see me get my joy back from playing basketball, and wherever that may be, we’ll find out here pretty soon,” Butler said. “But, I wanna get my joy back. I’m happy here, off the court, but I wanna be back to somewhat dominant, I wanna hoop, and I wanna help this team win. Right now, I’m not doing that.”

When asked if he can get his joy back on the court in Miami, Butler quickly replied, “probably not.”

Not long after, Shams Charania and Brian Windhorst of ESPN reported that Butler is no longer looking for a trade to a specific team. After previous reporting indicated that Butler wanted to go to a contender, ESPN’s new report indicates he’s willing to cast a wider net now.

Butler does not plan to furnish the Heat with a list of favored destinations, sources told ESPN. He is open to playing anywhere other than Miami and feels he can make any team a contender — no matter where he is moved, sources said. He does plan to take part in all team activities and will plan to do whatever the Heat ask of him during this process, sources said.

Before this, Pat Riley announced that the Heat have no plans to trade Butler, who can become an unrestricted free agent after this season. Miami lost to the Indiana Pacers on Thursday, 128-115, to fall to 17-15 in the East.

We haven’t really had an especially lengthy Charles Barkley riff during the 2024-25 NBA season, but with the calendar flipping to 2025, Barkley finally found something that got him fired up: Los Angeles Lakers coach JJ Redick. Recently, during our latest cycle of people freaking out about NBA television ratings, noted former media member Redick cited a lack of “storytelling” and “celebrating the game” as problems the league is facing, and went on to say that “If I’m a casual fan and you tell me every time I turn on the television that the product sucks, well, I’m not going to watch the product.”

The comments weren’t specifically directed towards anyone, but Jason McIntyre of The Herd expressed that these comments lined up with his criticisms of “Inside the NBA.” Well, word got back to Barkley about this, and despite the fact that “Inside” was trying to go through highlights of a game between the Boston Celtics and the Minnesota Timberwolves, he decided to turn his attention to Redick.

“Y’all heard JJ Redick said something about me?” Barkley asked the desk. “JJ, you better calm down, cause when you come for the king, you better not miss … He said something about we’re the reason people ain’t watching this crappy product we got. Yeah, us, like we’re out there jacking up 100 threes a night … JJ, you come for the king, you best not miss, cause I can get you, brother. Remember, I got your Lakers games. You can’t hide them flaws they got. You just a dead man walking — they got rid of Frank Vogel who did a good job, they got rid of Darvin Ham who did a good job. You came out there thinking you were gonna change things with that same ugly girl you went on a date with.”

It is again worth mentioning that Redick never specifically identified the “Inside” guys as a problem, even if McIntyre turned this into a critique of them (one that, in fairness, is not exactly uncommon). Barkley, meanwhile, continued to critique the Lakers and Redick, saying that the Lakers “stink” and sarcastically saying that Redick thought he could make things work in L.A. He also turned his attention to his issues with how the game is played.

“We’re the reason ratings are down,” Barkley said. “We’re the reason, like we’re playing. If me and Shaq played, the ratings would be down. But in fairness, if me and Shaq played, we’d be like the third and fourth best players on that Laker team right now … bums out there, but it’s Frank Vogel and Darvin Ham’s fault! I’m tired of these people jacking up 100 threes saying we’re the reason ratings are down. ‘Thirty seconds to another three-point shooting contest!’”

I’d bet that Redick is going to get asked about this the next time he talks to the media, in large part because this came from way out of left field. Again, these are all pretty common complaints about “Inside,” while Barkley’s critiques of the increase in three-point attempts is by no means unique. But still, Redick has never been shy about critiquing the media for how it discusses basketball, so unless he decides to totally ignore all of this, this has the potential to be a lengthy back-and-forth between the coach of the Lakers and the most prominent pundit in the game.

Rap fans looking forward to a new year cleansed of conflict and bad vibes after a fractious 2024 might not get their wish. Just a day into 2025, Joey Badass seems to staked his claim on the top spot in his hometown’s rap rankings for himself — a position that’s sure to be disputed by somebody in the argumentative Big Apple — with his new song “The Ruler’s Back.” But one line, taken from a classic Jay-Z hit, has some fans thinking that the rift between the East and West Coasts of hip-hop has been reopened by Joey’s chest-beating new track.

Tapping Conductor Williams and Mario Luciano to produce a soulful beat, Joey raps, “Too much West Coast dick lickin’ / I’m hearing n****s throwin’ rocks, really ain’t shit stickin’ / ‘Cause if we’re talking bar for bar, really it’s slim pickings / I rap like I draw pentagrams and kill chickens.”

The line nods to Jay-Z’s 1996 track, “22 Twos,” which appeared on his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, at the height of the friction between Suge Knight’s Death Row Records, led by Tupac Shakur, and Sean “Diddy” Combs (then known as Puff Daddy) and his imprint, Bad Boy Records, which was fronted by The Notorious B.I.G.

While Joey doesn’t name any names here, the West Coast bar is a clear nose thumbing to the past year of fanfare celebrating Kendrick Lamar and his spanking of Drake in their spring battle. It looks like he wants some of that attention back on the birthplace of hip-hop — and himself, naturally. We’ll see if anyone steps up and accepts the smoke, but something tells me we’ll be looking at a much less contentious calendar year.

When rap fans saw “RIP Wayne” trending on social media today, some of them couldn’t help panicking — then, expressing their relief that the departed musician receiving an outpouring of appreciation online wasn’t Dwayne Carter Jr. (better known as Lil Wayne), but Wayne Osmond, the second-oldest of the ’70s pop-rock group, the Osmond Brothers. Osmond was 73, passing from a stroke on New Year’s Day.

After seeing the “RIP Wayne” trend on Twitter (not “X”), fans couldn’t help noting the similarity between the two stars’ names. “I saw RIP Wayne and almost fell out,” wrote one fan. “Ya’ll have got to be more specific.”

“Respect to the Wayne that died but I saw ‘rip wayne’ under the music trending bar and I almost freaked out,” echoed another.

And, of course, the “Relieved Denzel” meme is taking over the trend, which serves as a reminder of just how big Lil Wayne is among hip-hop fans — if not the organizers of the upcoming Super Bowl Halftime Show. Despite some consternation on his part over that last bit, it seems he’s since cleared the air with this year’s performer, Kendrick Lamar.

Thankfully, it seems we’ve still got plenty of Lil Wayne to look forward to in 2025.

Talk about a star-studded team-up! Louis Vuitton has just dropped a new video announcing the LV x Takashi Murakami re-edition collection that combines Zendaya’s undeniable star power with Murakami’s colorful art, set to the music of visionary late producer SOPHIE. It’s loud, vibrant, psychedelic — everything you’d hope a team-up of this magnitude would produce. What a way to start off the new year.

The collection is a refresh of Murakami and LV’s team-up from the early 2000s and features reimagining of some of LV’s most popular signature women and men’s accessories and leather goods, including the Speedy Bandoulière, the criss-cross cardholder, Sunset Flat comfort sandals, cosmetic pouch, Keepal Bandoulière, trainers, belts, and more.

This collection is absolutely huge, we’d list as much as we can, but we’re talking about over 200 pieces across the entire LV catalog, all featuring Murakami’s iconic Y2K Superflat art style. So if you’re a fan of charms, psychedelic but playful imagery, or bright color palettes, you’re going to find a lot to love in this collection.

Instead of running through the best pieces of the collection, we’re going to instead point you in the direction of this BTS video where Zendaya breaks down the entire collection below. It’ll be a lot more fun than us just explaining it! Shop the full collection here.

Sci-fi devotees are feasting at Apple TV+ these days. From For All Mankind (which will spin off into the Star City series) to Foundation and Silo, no shortage of original-series hits exists. The tech giant’s streaming service is hard at work on the movie side, too, with an added secret weapon-team of atmospheric wizards, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who have scored upcoming film The Gorge. This creature feature will also star a sci-fi legend behind the leading duo, so let’s explore what to expect from his movie.

Plot

This film will land during the Valentine “season.” Don’t roll your eyes because, to that end, co-star Miles Teller told Screenrant that this movie is “good alternative programming… to your typical love story,” and Anya Taylor-Joy added that this movie weaves in “so many genres” to showing that romance. Teller further promised that “they have to go through some really entertaining, engaging, high-octane, hellacious sh*t to end up with each other,” which is supported by the film’s trailer that doesn’t hold back on story hints.

Director Scott Derickson (Sinister, Doctor Strange) helms the story of two snipers (Levi and Drasa), who are recruited by Sigourney Weaver’s mysterious character to guard opposite sides of a gorge that might be “the door to Hell,” according to a character portrayed by Sope Dirisu. The sniping duo isn’t allowed outside contact or communication with each other, but they end up falling in love (as much as two people can) through binoculars. Voyeuristically? Maybe. From Apple TV+’s film synopsis:

Two highly-trained operatives are appointed to posts in guard towers on opposite sides of a vast and highly classified gorge, protecting the world from an undisclosed, mysterious evil that lurks within. They bond from a distance while trying to stay vigilant in defending against an unseen enemy. When the cataclysmic threat to humanity is revealed to them, they must work together in a test of both their physical and mental strength to keep the secret in the gorge before it’s too late.

The film involves hefty fight-or-flight scenes and heavy stunt work, but while speaking with Collider, Teller revealed that the most difficult part of the movie to film was actually a dance scene due to technical difficulties involving a camera and wifi, which led to the pair filming “a whole day” to achieve “one shot” in the dance sequence. The lo-fi trick, apparently, was when Derrickson “just [took] the camera outside and [reset] it, and that worked.”

Another presence will loom larger than the Lovecraftian creatures in The Gorge, too. That would be the score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and you can always count on Reznor to be vocal about any situation. As he recently told Indiewire, the pair has now almost entirely devoted themselves to scoring films because they enjoy “the collaborative experience with interesting people.” Additionally, the pair dropped hints to GQ about their “kind of haunted, chanting murmur” that will set the mood for The Gorge, including in scenes such as “Teller and Taylor-Joy in an evil-looking spiky forest.”

Reznor, as well, praised his musical partner for their symbiotic process, in which Reznor tends to watch a scene and “improvise some music,” and then Atticus uses his “superpower” to pull everything together to actually work with the scene. Their approach has made them a go-to pair for prestige-project scores since David Fincher’s The Social Network.

Cast

The creature(s) and the atmosphere do plenty of acting in this movie, but Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy are headlining with Sigourney Weaver picking up her sci-fi queen crown for another go.

Release Date

Happy Valentines Day: The Gorge streams on Feb. 14, 2025 on Apple TV+.

Trailer

The trailer sets up the movie’s romance and adventure:

PinkPantheress spent some time touring in 2024, but other than that, she was relatively quiet in terms of musical output, aside from the single “Turn It Up” and collaborations with LE SSERAFIM and Kaytranada.

It appears 2025 will be different.

On X (formerly Twitter), PinkPantheress shared a couple of photos of her in a minimal home studio setup, featuring a couple laptops and a few pieces of audio and production equipment on a desk. She also wrote, “oh we are soooo back #2025 i missed y’all [heart emojis] thanks for waiting on me [single tear emoji].”

If a new album is set for 2025, it will be PinkPantheress’ first since 2023’s Heaven Knows.

Meanwhile, PinkPantheress spent some time in 2024 ruffling feathers with her thoughts on albums and songs. In an interview, she said, “I don’t listen to albums. I just listen to songs. […] That’s why when it came to my own album, I was like, ‘Do people care about tracklisting?’ I couldn’t believe it. Some people would were like, ‘Oh, it’s a great album, but the tracklisting doesn’t make sense.’ I’m like, ‘Just listen to the songs.’”

In another interview, she declared, “I was able to experiment and making short songs was just a result of me experimenting. A song doesn’t need to be longer than two minutes 30, in my opinion. We don’t need to repeat a verse, we don’t need to have a bridge, we don’t need it. We don’t need a long outro.”