Author: GoneTrending

It may seem like years have passed since LiAngelo Ball — known professionally from here on out as Gelo — first went viral with the surprise hit, “Tweaker,” but in reality, it’s been less than six months. But the song recalibrated the modern sound of rap, set up Gelo for once-in-a-generation success, and laid the table for a string of follow-up singles that proved he’s no one-hit wonder.

Now, all of that culminates with the announcement of his debut album, the fittingly titled League Of My Own, accompanied by his next single, “Booted Up.” You can listen to “Booted Up” below. The song also appears in the trailer for the album, which you can check out up top.

Gelo’s path to rap stardom has been longer and more winding than most; he first rose to prominence not as a recording artist, but as a basketball prodigy, the middle child of the lauded Ball brothers. But while his older brother Lonzo and his younger brother LaMelo both went to the NBA, he wound up unable to gain a toehold after a couple of stints in the Association’s developmental G-League. However, after “Tweaker” took over locker rooms throughout the league this winter, he found his way to the NBA’s All-Star floor — albeit, as a musical performer rather than as one of the featured athletes. He also secured a record deal with Def Jam, which will result in his upcoming album, and performed at Rolling Loud California in a well-received set that proved he could hang with the rappers.

League Of My Own is due 6/27 via Def Jam. You can find more info here.

For the past couple of months, the incipient Song Of The Summer hopeful, “Whim Whammiee,” has steadily been rising in acclaim and recognition. The song, the creative fruit of a collab between Atlanta ratchet rap upstart Pluto and her homegirl YK Niece, is a weave-wagging, butt-bobbing sledgehammer of a street banger in the vein of GloRilla‘s “FNF” or Sexyy Red‘s “Pound Town.”

So, it’s only right that the one to seal the song’s ascent is the latter, who contributes her signature flair to Pluto’s “Whim Whammiee (Remix).” “Se-Sexyy gettin’ money / Sexyy gettin’ paid,” she yowls. “Shake my nyash, show that coochie, throwin’ bloods all in his face.”

Ever since its release in March, “Whim Whammie” has had all the hallmarks of a big breakout; it has generated over 12 million views on YouTube, sparked viral chatter all over social media, and spawned a slew of remixes from a bunch of Pluto’s soon-to-be peers, including Latto and Lizzo.

Pluto (and YK Niece) might be a relative unknown right now, but with those heavy hitting co-signs, the ascendant Atlanta native could very well be one of rap’s next big it-girls, just like the ones who’ve been remixing her hit record.

Listen to Pluto’s “Whim Whammiee (Remix)” featuring Sexyy Red above.

Before he officially released his debut album Withered, alternative rock-R&B singer d4vd created music via the digital audio workstation app BandLab, sharing tracks like “Romantic Homicide,” “Take Me To the Sun,” “Unrequited,” and “Where Did You Go?” via the tool’s social media functions. While many of those songs eventually made their ways to streaming via d4vd’s EPs Petals to Thorns, the latter two were never given official releases outside BandLab — until now.

While longtime fans might have been disappointed to not see “Unrequited” and “Where Did You Go?” on the Withered tracklist, that disappointment will turn out to be short-lived. d4vd has added both songs as bonus tracks to the album, making the former exclusives widely available on all DSPs for the first time.

“Unrequited” is a spacey, hazy reflection on a one-way crush, which he “can’t let go / ‘Cause my heart won’t say ‘no’.” Meanwhile, “Where Did You Go?” is a plaintive ballad wondering why “I’m still looking for an answer that will never come / You left me alone in an empty bed with songs you never sung.”

You can listen to “Unrequited” up top, “Where Did You Go?” below, and find d4vd’s Withered Tour dates here.

Withered is out now via Darkroom / Interscope Records. You can find more info here.

Nearly a year after announcing the title of their long-awaited reunion album, Let God Sort Em Out, Pusha T and Malice — collectively known as Clipse — have announced the album’s upcoming release date: July 11. To commemorate the occasion, the Brothers Thornton have released the album’s first single, the gritty, menacing “Ace Trumpets,” which is produced by longtime Clipse collaborator, Pharrell Williams — just like the rest of the album.

In addition to reuniting with Virginian classmate Pharrell for Let God Sort Em Out, the duo also once again taps graphic designer Kaws, who provides the album art and other design elements. Meanwhile, Jay-Z’s Roc Nation is the distributor, building on Pusha’s working relationship with the Brooklyn music impresario.

Fans have been anticipating the Clipse reunion since the duo began performing a series of joint shows after nearly 15 years of working separately, beginning with Pharrell’s 2022 Something In The Water Festival. Last year, Pusha told Vulture, “I think the album shows the supreme maturation of a rap duo. I think this is where you get the difference between taste and filler. This music is curated. This is a high taste-level piece of work. You can only have that level of taste when you have the fundamentals down to a science.”

His sentiments were echoed by his brother, who said, “This is smart basketball. It’s fundamentals. And not only that, it’s authenticity. It’s what rap should look like if you’re real about your craft, real about your experience, real about your storytelling. It’s bringing the fans along to see the growth, not trying to fit in or fabricate.”

You can listen to “Ace Trumpets” above.

Let God Sort Em Out is due 7/11 via Roc Nation. You can find more info here.

Tennessee rapper Samara Cyn is on the cusp of one hell of a come-up, receiving high-profile co-signs from the likes of Lauryn Hill and St. Louis rapper Smino, who put her in his “Maybe In Nirvana” video and on his Kountry Kousins Tour, which is currently making its way across the nation.

After dropping the introspective “Bad Brain” last month, Samara returned the favor with “Brand New Teeth,” her latest single, which features a thoughtful rumination on the lofty status grills hold in Southern Black American culture over a beat that goes from mellow jazz, to full-on classical orchestration. She boasts (or bemoans) spending a full rent payment to ice out her smile, while Smino delivers a narrative verse about a onetime acquaintance nicknamed “Chains.” The result is a moody reflection on the trappings of wealth, and just how quickly they can become a trap for those who pursue them.

“You could say Brand New Teeth is about pressure,” she says in the press release. “Delusional pressure. Of the world, society, the way things are vs. the way we may like them to be. I started writing this after hearing a lot of ‘just enjoy the process’ type responses to me venting about struggling. Like how? I need things now. I need food now; I have bills now; I have dreams now. How do I let it go when the stakes feel high? Then Smi came in and just murked the entire record with incredible storytelling that really sealed the song and topic.”

The release of “Brand New Teeth” accompanies the announcement of Samara’s new project, Backroads EP, with which she’ll not only follow up on her breakout debut LP, The Drive Home, but also wrestle with the effects and expectations that have fallen on her shoulders since its release.

Watch Samara Cyn’s “Brand New Teeth” video featuring Smino above.

Backroads EP is due on 6/20 via VANTA Records.

F1 is rapidly speeding toward theaters, and its soundtrack has kept pace, with new high-octane songs from Don Toliver and Doja Cat, Rosé, Dom Dolla, Chris Stapleton, and Myke Towers.

If that diverse collection of artists doesn’t quite get your engine revving, Canadian pop powerhouse (and standing motorsports enthusiast) Tate McRae has entered the field, driving hard for fans’ attention with “Just Keep Watching,” which arrived with a race-training oriented video.

McRae references Grease in the video, doing her best impression of the leather-clad heroine Sandy (post-transformation) as she struts the treadmill in an F1 training facility and poses with stacks of tires. She also finds an… inventive way to use the stationary bicycle, and gives a show to an team of drivers while pursued by a high-speed camera. Her aerobic dance moves mark her as much of an athlete as any racecar driver (which is a demanding profession in itself), and her magnetic performance ensures that fans have plenty of reason to do what the song says.

You can watch Tate McRae’s “Just Keep Watching” video above.

F1 The Album is out 6/27 via Atlantic Records. You can find more info here.

F1, the movie, is out in theaters 6/27.

Addison Rae’s “first and last album,” Addison, is just a week away, and the TikTok star turned surprisingly adept pop singer has one more single to share ahead of its release. It’s called “Fame Is A Gun,” and like her prior singles, it’s a dance-forward, upbeat ditty that finds the singer being intriguingly vulnerable about her relationship with notoriety, comparing fame to a firearm, and admitting that she can’t resist pointing it at herself.

Her “taste of the glamorous life” has been fed by previously released singles such as “Aquamarine,” “High Fashion,” and “Headphones On,” all of which have been undeniable bops. While you mightn’t have thought she’d be such a standout pop purveyor, she certainly has a knack for earworm production and hooky, endlessly repeatable choruses — which shouldn’t have been a surprise, considering her proficiency at making herself an indelible part of the TikTok experience before trying her hand at producing the pop that fuels some of the app’s most viral trends.

She’s been gaining the respect of her new peers, as well, paying off such viral-baiting stunts as announcing her album with her underwear. When Addison drops, Ms. Rae might just enter the vaunted halls of some of the pop music industry’s fan favorites.

Watch Addison Rae’s “Fame Is A Gun” video above.

Addison is out 6/6 via Columbia Records. Find more information here.

Rico Nasty has been bringing it during the ongoing Lethal era, especially when it comes to her music videos. Visuals for songs like “Butterfly Kisses” and “Crash” have been high-production and visually crisp efforts, and she’s at it again with her new “Son Of A Gun” video that dropped today (May 29).

The visual makes great use of a simple, grungy warehouse setting, utilizing Rico’s natural energy and some creative camerawork and framing to squeeze every drop out of the environment and performance.

In a new interview with DIY, Rico said of the album, “I feel like I don’t pay attention to the pressure anymore. As long as you’re making art that you like, it doesn’t really matter how fast people think you should be making it, or if something is better than the last thing. Art is subjective. There’s always going to be an era that someone loves more than the other, so I stopped taking it so personally. […] I just know that I didn’t want to be something that I’m not. That was the biggest thing going into it. I had to put myself and my interests at the forefront. For this album, I didn’t tease music to see if people would like it. I liked it, so it’s gonna come out!”

Watch The “Son Of A Gun” video above.

Lethal is out now via Fueled By Ramen. Find more information here.

No matter how many horror movies you’ve seen, Bring Her Back will make you squirm.

But for the jump-scare-averse crowd, don’t worry: The new A24 film from Talk To Me directors Danny and Michael Philippou isn’t just a horror movie. It’s also a character-study drama about a pair of siblings — Andy and Piper, played by Billy Barratt and Sora Wong — who move into a secluded home owned by their new foster mother Laura (the always-wonderful Sally Hawkins). She has another foster child, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who is a first-ballot inductee into the Creepy Kids In Movies Hall Of Fame.

I recently spoke to the Philippou brothers about casting Bring Her Back, sound design, and chewing on knives. Just a note: I credited their answers together because a) I learned the hard way that it’s not easy telling their voices apart in an audio-only recording, and b) they so frequently and enthusiastically finished each other’s sentences, it seems like they share a brain, anyway.

So my first question is, where did you find Jonah Wren Phillips, the young actor who plays Oliver?

It was our casting agent. I put out a big net, and she brings in all these audition tapes. And it’s so weird when you see the character, when you see the actor, you know straight away that they’re right. There’s never two actors here, like, “Oh, it’s hard to pick between the two.” As soon as you see them, you know they’re right. So as soon as Jonah’s audition came in, we’re like, “Oh my God. This is literally the kid.” He’s perfect, and both of his parents are actors as well. So they helped get him comfortable. He’s incredible.

It’s — and I say this as a total compliment — one of the most f*cked-up child actor performances I’ve ever seen. He really blew me away. And speaking of great actors, how did you land Sally Hawkins?

She was at the top of the list. Like, there was a list that was made of 10 different actors that would be exciting for the role. And Sally was at the very top because we knew we wanted to have a really strong character actor, and because she’s never played a horror villain. Every single one of her performances, every single one of her characters, is completely different. The idea of her giving that skill set to this character was so perfect for us, but it felt impossible. We didn’t think we’d even have a meeting with her, but it got sent to her, and then she wanted to talk to us. We were afraid of a big Hollywood ego or something like that, but we had a Zoom with her, and she was the most amazing human being. And also had picked up all these nuances in the script that no one else had. She had thought about everything.

I appreciate any movie that doesn’t use obvious needle drops, so can you talk a bit about how you settled on the songs for Bring Her Back?

There’s an amazing music supervisor that we work with named Andrew Kotatko, and we always do temp music and temp edits when we’re putting things together. We knew we wanted there to be this upbeat sort of pop song that Laura’s blasting. She’s trying to get over her nerves so she plays loud music whenever she’s in an uncomfortable situation. What is the right track for that? When she’s in that unhinged moment and she’s lost her mind, [Kotatko] helped find this awesome Yoko Ono song, which is that really primal screaming and crying.

How hard was it, from a location scouting perspective, to find the house that so much of the movie takes place in?

We knew we wanted to find a property where the pool was at the heart of the house, and from every single window, there was a vantage point of the pool. And another thing was, it was in a valley, which was perfect because the sun would set earlier, so it wouldn’t be nighttime, which would help us create that overcast feel for the raining scenes. It was in Brown Hill Creek, like 30 minutes outside of Adelaide, and it was on this main road, part of public land, so people can actually walk through the front yard. It’s such a nightmare. You were doing these crazy scenes and there’s people just walking past, and you don’t want them to take videos or photos. It was strange seeing like this lady at 2 a.m. in the morning. She was just standing by the pool. She’s like, “I’m just looking at the pool. I’m allowed to do that.”

One of the MVPs of the movie is the sound design, in particular the sounds of chewing on a wooden table and chomping on a knife.

Emma Bortignon, she’s the sound editor. She’s incredible. She worked with us on Talk To Me as well. You don’t realize how much sound there is. We looked at the overall amount of layers: 750 layers of sound that’s happening in the movie. Air, wind, movements, footsteps.

Random people looking at the house.

As for the knife chewing, it wasn’t sounding right or sounding real, so I [Michael] came into recording one day, and Danny was just chewing on a knife and they were recording it. [Ed. note: they showed a video as proof.] And did the same with a table. So Emma, right now, if you look at her desk, there are teeth marks because Danny was trying to get that initial crunching of the bite.

I hope A24 has good dental insurance.

I’ll sacrifice my mouth a little bit.

How much of yourselves do you see in the siblings?

It was based on a friend and his little sister, and we filmed him take her to the set, and she felt her way through the different places and mapped it out herself. A lot of their relationship and their bond was based on those two. And then Billy was the same age as Sora was when he was in his first film, so he was able to mentor her. That was part of their bonding process, and it came across on the screen so incredibly.

I guess the one bit that’s sibling-related is when we were young, our sister, who is two years older than us, was jealous that we were getting attention when we were born, so she tried to poison us. She gave us Panadol. We had to get our stomachs pumped. She was such a young age, and she didn’t really know what she was doing, but she knew that you weren’t allowed to have that stuff, and she was angry.

Little did she know you’d be eating knives all these years later. Something I’m sure you hear all the time is people saying, “I don’t watch horror.” How would you convince someone like this to give Bring Her Back a shot?

I think by just letting them know that it’s a character-driven film and it feels like it exists as much as a drama film as it does a horror film. That’s always my favorite part of the process, to make the characters feel as lived in as possible. That they could hold their own in a drama film, that you could remove the whole horror elements and their arc would still fit. I would just pitch it like, “Yes, it’s a horror film, but also it’s a mother battling with loss and how she comes to terms with it — or that she doesn’t.”

Bring Her Back hits theaters on Friday, May 30.

Ava Max has a new era loading (her “most fearless” yet, per a press release). In February, we got “Lost Your Faith,” and today (May 29), she’s back once again with a video for “Lovin Myself.”

Read between the lines and it’s easy to figure out what the song’s about as Max sings on the chorus, “I don’t need nobody, I’m lovin’ myself / Tonight it’s all about me, yeah, it’s good for my health / And I know how to please me, I don’t need no help / Nobody, nobody can lo-lo-love me like I’m lovin’ myself.”

Max told Rolling Stone of the song:

“This song came from a moment where I finally realized I didn’t need anyone else’s validation to feel whole. I’ve been through a lot of phases in my career, highs, lows, public scrutiny, private growth, and through all of that, I started to understand that the most important relationship I’ll ever have is the one I have with myself. The lyrics really sum up where I’m at emotionally and creatively right now.

‘Lovin Myself’ is the most honest I’ve been in a song in a long time. It came out of a period where I was really learning how to stand on my own, not just as an artist, but as a person. I realized that loving yourself isn’t some cliché, it’s a survival skill. This song is about choosing yourself, not in a selfish way, but in a healing way. I wanted it to feel like an anthem for anyone who’s learning to be their own anchor.”

Watch the “Lovin Myself” video above.

Don’t Click Play is out 8/22 via Atlantic Records. Find more information here.