Some of y’all reading this are probably too young to remember, but there was a time albums came out on Tuesday instead of Friday. Recently, a few artists have taken a swing at reviving the tradition, including Tyler The Creator, Earthgang, and now, Saba and No ID. The two Chicago natives have been promising their joint album, From The Private Collection Of Saba & No ID, for quite some time, and today, it’s finally arrived.
The duo kicked off the rollout back in 2023, with the release of the single, “Back In Office” (which does not appear on the final tracklist), following up with “Hue_man Nature” (likewise, was left off the final product). “Head.Rap,” “How To Impress God,” and “Woes Of The World” all made it onto the album, though, as do collaborations with Kelly Rowland and Raphael Saadiq (“Crash”), BJ The Chicago Kid and Eryn Allen Kane (“Every Painting Has A Price”), and all of Saba’s fellow Pivot Gang members.
So, what took so long to get From The Private Collection… out to the world? Audiomack’s Brian Zisook posted a fascinating conversation with Saba on Twitter, in which the Windy City MC blamed the nearly endless delays on a single sample clearance. Janet Jackson’s “I Get So Lonely,” used on track two, “Breakdown,” required a personal co-sign from Ms. Jackson herself, which Saba was finally able to secure after finessing a meeting with Jimmy Jam backstage at The NAMM Show. After connecting Jimmy and No ID (who didn’t have Jimmy’s number), the veteran producers were able to make it shake, although the clearance didn’t come through until February 25, the original planned release date (which was never officially announced, but known to a few).
“It’s a privilege to work with No ID. I wanted it to sound like that,” Saba explained. “We figured it out. We made it work. And now, finally, the world gets to hear it.”
From The Private Collection Of Saba & No ID is out now. You can find it here.
Lollapalooza is returning to Chicago’s Grant Park in 2025 with another stacked lineup. This year’s headliners are Olivia Rodrigo, Tyler The Creator, Sabrina Carpenter, Rüfüs Du Sol, Luke Combs, TWICE (the first female K-pop group to headline the festival), A$AP Rocky, Korn (making their first appearance since 1997), Gracie Abrams, and Doechii. The lineup also features Dom Dolla, Djo, The Marías, Martin Garrix, Cage The Elephant, Clairo, Bleachers, Mk.gee, Mau P, Barry Can’t Swim, Magdalena Bay, and Ratboys.
Also on the bill: T-Pain, Sierra Ferrell, Remi Wolf, Royel Otis, Marina, Bladee, Flipturn, Dominic Fike, JPEGMAFIA, Isaiah Rashad, Mariah the Scientist, Amaarae, The Dare, Ravyn Lenae, The Blessed Madonna, Overmono, La Femme, Julie, Rebecca Black, Otoboke Beaver, Fcukers, Orla Gartland, Young Miko, Nourished by Time, Gigi Perez, Sunami, Bôa, and Jane Remover.
Lollapalooza 2025 is scheduled for July 31-August 3.
The lowest price four-day tickets will be available on Thursday, March 20, at 10 a.m. CT for one hour only. Ticket prices will increase at 11 a.m. CT when the public on-sale begins. You can sign up for the pre-sale here. One- and two-day tickets will be available at a later date. There are also hotel and “experience” packages here.
Lil Durk’s upcoming ninth solo studio album, Deep Thoughts, has been delayed ever since October thanks to the Chicago rapper’s ongoing legal issues. But today, he shared some good news for his fans — Deep Thoughts has a new release date: March 28.
Durk revealed the release date alongside a short trailer giving a glimpse into the studio process. In the trailer, Durk’s team sits in the studio while on a call with him from prison, surrounded by whiteboards featuring song titles and sequencing ideas. Over the phone, Durk gives his approval for the concepts his team has been putting together, telling them he loves them before the call cuts off.
He’s since pled “not guilty,” but is being held without bond until trial. In November, he was charged with two additional felonies: “use of interstate facilities to commit murder-for-hire resulting in death” and “using, carrying, and discharging firearms in furtherance of a crime of violence resulting in death.”
Fortunately for Durk, he’d already filmed the “Truth In The Lies” video with Central Cee, allowing him to maintain some momentum, and now, it appears his long-awaited follow-up to Almost Healed is ready for the light of day.
Deep Thoughts is out 3/28 via Only the Family, Alamo, and Sony. You can find more info here.
Indie music has grown to include so much. It’s not just music that is released on independent labels, but speaks to an aesthetic that deviates from the norm and follows its own weirdo heart. It can come in the form of rock music, pop, or folk. In a sense, it says as much about the people that are drawn to it as it does about the people that make it.
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Palmyra – “Palm Readers”
The South holds a rich musical lineage. From country luminaries like Lucinda Williams to hip-hop eccentrics like Outkast, the South has got something to say, as André 3000 so famously put it. Enter Palmyra, a Virginian indie-rock trio that re-configures an instrumental palette of mandocello, upright bass, and banjo to suit the emo-tinged milieu of I’m Wide Awake-era Bright Eyes. Restless, Palmyra’s forthcoming debut album, sets introspective studies on gender dysphoria, self-harm, and financial turmoil to a suite of six-strings. “I’m so damn lonely tonight,” sings Sasha Landon on “Palm Readers,” its latest single. Their words convey deep isolation, but the music underneath is its own balm, as warm and communal as a night in with close friends.
Feeble Little Horse – “This Is Real”
There’s a lot going on in Feeble Little Horse’s new single. “This Is Real,” the Pittsburgh four-piece’s first new song since their 2023 breakthrough Girl With Fish, pushes digital maximalism to its outermost edges, contorting and refashioning the ’90s alt-rock template of their first two records into uncanny (complimentary) shapes. It reaches its apex when Lydia Slocum unleashes the most feral scream in indie rock this side of Black Francis on the bridge of “Monkey Gone To Heaven.” “This Is Real” abides by no strictures or structures. Instead, befit to Feeble Little Horse themselves, it follows its own zany path.
Florist – “Moon, Sea, Devil”
In the years since Florist released their self-titled 2022 album, Emily Sprague found herself thinking more and more about our shared humanity, as “a collective entity, influencing each other and the world around us with many small actions, emotions, and reactions,” as she put it in a press release. The latest preview of the forthcoming Jellywish, like many Florist songs, is a soft, gorgeous paean to the Earth and the people who inhabit it. “So I reach through the veil / All the other worlds surround me,” Sprague sings over a lilting piano and swaying drum beat. Beauty is all around us, and Florist are always happy to point us in its direction.
Matt Berninger – “Bonnet Of Pins”
The National’s most recent records saw the Cincinnati crew traffic in analog drum machines and downtempo piano ballads. Frontman Matt Berninger, on his forthcoming second solo album, Get Sunk, goes back to the tried-and-true, pristine yet punchy indie rock that was all over 2010’s High Violet. Still, as lead single “Bonnet Of Pins” shows, Berninger remakes it in his own image. Alongside a coterie of contemporaries like Meg Duffy and Kyle Resnick, Berninger’s latest batch of character studies is, like “Bonnet Of Pins,” ruefully incisive.
Set Dressing – “Date Line”
Scott Fair of Mandy, Indiana recently announced a new side project, Set Dressing, via the ambient, foreboding anti-single “Class Valedictorian.” Now, with “Date Line,” Set Dressing heads in a poppier direction, albeit one with the twists and turns you’d expect from the lead songwriter of one of the buzziest industrial bands of the moment. Taken from his forthcoming debut EP, I Can’t Be Alone Tonite, “Date Line” is what you’d expect from an artist so adept at defying those expectations. With its cascading synth arpeggios, new wave drums, and vocals pitched-shifted to the high heavens, “Date Line” re-imagines pop music in Fair’s wonderfully strange world.
Sumac & Moor Mother – “Hard Truth”
Sumac and Moor Mother’s first collaborative album, The Film, is full of Homeric epics that stretch well beyond the five-minute mark. For their latest single, “Hard Truth,” the post-metal group and experimental poet opt for brevity. But that’s not to say that the piece is an immediate rush of dopamine. It’s a slow burn that grows from a bubbling, low-end pulse to flashes of distorted, buzzing guitars, which flicker throughout the stereo field like fireflies in an engulfing darkness. It’s merely a hint of the ambitious work to come.
Jack Riedy – Raw Deal
Chicago musician (and music writer) Jack Riedy just released his debut album, Raw Deal, a combination of power-pop, new wave, and psych-rock. All eight songs play like showcases for Riedy’s hooky songwriting and immaculate bass lines. Take the New Order-meets-Strokes danceability of “Your Timeline,” or the rhythmic backbone supplied by (another music writer!) Al Shipley’s drumming on “Clockwork.” Alongside (another music writer!) Hannah Jocelyn’s pristine mix, Raw Deal is, simply put, the real deal.
Kaela – “Superliminal”
The debut album from M83 keyboardist Kaela Sinclair is nearly here. Due this May, Supraliminal sees the Texas native transpose her penchant for luxe synths into atmospheric dreamworlds. “Superliminal,” its latest single and (almost) title track, builds from its kick-and-synth-bass pulse to a gauzy break with harp-like arpeggios. At the halfway mark, her voice rises to the top of the mix, cloaked in reverb: “Super. Liminal.” Cleaving the word into two discrete halves, Sinclair issues the statement like a universal truth. As the song approaches its endpoint, everything fades away, but Sinclair’s voice remains a spectral presence, not heard so much as felt.
Coolant – “The Lack”
Colin Joyce began writing “The Lack,” the lead single of his forthcoming EP, Pest, after discovering an ML Buch guitar tuning on Reddit. Clearly, the unconventional tuning unlocked something in him. As Coolant, music critic and musician Joyce got together with Ricky Eat Acid’s Sam Ray in Florida over Christmas, and, together, they recorded four songs. “The Lack,” its opening track, draws from slowcore, drone, and post-rock to reconfigure the familiar six-string into novel, emotionally resonant shapes. Atop an undercurrent of ambient feedback, Joyce’s acoustic guitar pierces through the curtain of noise with startling clarity.
Mister Romantic – “Dream”
Who knew Wreck-It Ralph had such a beautiful voice? Dewey Cox did, apparently. John C. Reilly (yes, that one) initially showcased his pipes as the protagonist of the 2007 fictitious biopic-comedy, Walk Hard. One decade and vaudevillian stage show later, Mister Romantic, Reilly’s musical sobriquet, is putting out his debut album. What’s Not To Love? positions the prolific actor as one of the great American songwriters. That is, it’s a collection of covers adapted from the Great American Songbook. It’s a role he steps into with the captivating aplomb he’s known for in his acting career, as made evident by lead single “Dream,” a lush rendition of Johnny Mercer’s 1944 standard. Across the tracklist, Reilly chronicles his titular character’s search for love. What he finds at the end of his journey is that searching is a worthwhile endeavor in and of itself.
Selena Gomez has previously some uncertainty when it comes to her future in music. The immediate future is pretty clear at the moment, though, as she and fiancé Benny Blanco have a new album, I Said I Love You First, on the way.
Before this project, though, Gomez admits she was feeling “very frustrated and kind of confused” about what she should do next musically.
“I was, to be honest, very frustrated and kind of confused on where I wanted to go next musically. And we had been together for a while, and obviously I would confide in him. I couldn’t figure out my sound. It helps that he knows a little bit about music, and it kind of happened organically to where I felt like this process was unlike any other process I’d ever been through.”
Blanco also said of the songwriting and recording process:
“She’d wake up, I’d have a pen out, and I’d write what was on her mind. Then we’d go into the other room and create it, and it became a song. It was such a cathartic and therapeutic experience. All the songwriting, it’s all our friends. There’s no, like, ‘Man, we’re gonna get in with this person for the first time — I wonder how this is gonna go.’ We also kept this one really close to the chest, because I feel like it was so important for it to be written exactly how we wanted it and to feel exactly how we wanted it to feel.”
For his time on stage, Bad Bunny performed the Debí Tirar Más Fotos highlight “Eoo.” He utilized a simple-but-striking stage design featuring an elevated platform and a number of dancers. The dancers did more than just enhance the environment by moving around as Bad Bunny performed, though, as the rapper even crowdsurfed on them at one point.
Bad Bunny was nominated for Latin Pop/Urban Artist Of The Year (which Feid ended up winning) and for Latin Pop/Urban Song Of The Year with his Feid collaboration “Perro Negro” (which won).
This comes weeks after Bad Bunny took an L on Hot Ones, quitting the challenge before the end and after expressing concern by saying things like “I’m worried about my colon” and “I think I will be at the bathroom the whole trip from here to Puerto Rico.”
While accepting the award for Tour Of The Century for The Eras Tour at the 2025 iHeartRadio Music Awards on Monday night, Taylor Swift wore a snake necklace. Snakes were a major motif in the Reputation era, and this being the Year Of The Snake, Swifties are convinced that this means the Taylor’s Version of the album will be out before the beginning of 2026.
“Taylor Swift is wearing a necklace that looks very similar to the one she wore in the Look What You Made Me Do music video,” a popular fan account noted. Even Public Enemy rapper (and big-time Swiftie) Flavor Flav noticed the jewelry, writing, “That necklace tho. If ya know ya know.”
“The only reason I was able to take on those challenges, among others, the ambition of the production, the length of the show, the amount of shows, all the different countries we played in, that’s all because of the fans,” Swift said in her Tour Of The Century speech. “You made the songs for the last couple decades into what they became so that we could do a three and a half hour setlist. You had the passion and the generosity to care about traveling to see us on tour in all these places all over the world. It blows my mind. I’m never going to stop being grateful for it, and I appreciate this more than you know.”
Steven Knight’s new Hulu gangster series revolves around the intersection of London’s bareknuckled boxing scene and an all-woman gang in the 1880s, which was about four decades before the events of Peaky Blinders.
In A Thousand Blows, we meet the Forty Elephants, led by their “queen,” real-life crime boss Mary Carr (Erin Doherty). She is maneuvering in the same underground world as menacing fighter Sugar Goodson (Stephen Graham), who encounters an opponent like he’s never experienced until now.
We quizzed Knight on what viewers might take from the Elephants’ story in these fraught current times for women’s rights with the writer and producer telling us that he does not “write with the intention of trying to smuggle a message in,” but that “the message is there,” particularly in an overarching story where every character, regardless of race or sex, is working class and struggling to break out. And as with Peaky, this show is a layered snapshot of an era (with fitting storytelling liberties taken) that can be both foreign and familiar to our own.
For more on building the world of A Thousand Blows and the power of a good needle drop, check out the conversation below.
When I heard about A Thousand Blows, I was reminded of how the Shelby women felt like their own gang. You let their voices and struggles and dreams shine, so this new show’s setup feels like a natural progression.
Yeah, I’ve wanted to do this show for a long time, back to when I was doing research into Peaky and discovered the true story, which is remarkable, of the gang who called themselves The Forty Elephants. Their name possibly came from Elephant and Castle, but when they went to Harrod’s and stole so many items of clothing and put them on to steal them, and they walked out, they looked like elephants because they were so big. And the humor of them, the look of them, and the name of them was always very, very beguiling to me.
And then Stephen Graham approached me with this story of Hezekiah Moscow [Malachi Kirby], and again, he’s a true person, someone who arrives in England in the 1880s from Jamaica with a mission to be a lion tamer. This is not stuff you can make up, but instead, he becomes an incredibly successful bareknuckled boxer. And I just thought, that idea was great. The Forty Elephants were in the same city at the same time. Imagine if Mary Carr and Hezekiah Moscow met, and there is no proof that they didn’t, so therefore, it’s possible. That’s what this story is, imagine if that happened.
Hulu
You just mentioned a “what if” type scenario, but in general, when you choose to take liberties with history, how do you decide what is worth tweaking for the sake of the story?
I always think that what really happened is so remarkable that it almost dwarfs anything that you make up, but when you tell a story with lots of moving parts and lots of characters, sometimes reality takes a turn that isn’t going to work somehow. So I feel fine, as long as the characters are true to who they really were, then I think you can introduce into fiction things that either may not have happened or didn’t happen. And just see how that takes the story. And it’s not really, to be honest, a logical thing that I do, where I sit and think, “Wouldn’t it be interesting if this happened?”
I tend to be led by my fingers when I’m writing, so that when I’m actually writing something, I sometimes look back and realize what it’s about because this stuff has just come when I was writing. And I think that happens when you’re confident that the characters are correct. You sort of feel a bit of freedom to let them talk to each other.
Mary Carr is a closed book for most of this season. When did you decide it was time for that emotional outpouring?
I always think when various characters that one creates, especially when they’ve had incredibly difficult lives, that Mary Carr did have. Her life, in reality, was brutal from the moment she was born. And I think that in my opinion, when someone is in that situation, then the likelihood is, and from whatever records of who Mary Carr was and what she did, that she closed down any sort of trust in other people. And if you show emotion, you’re sort of trusting people to be delicate with you. And to be okay with you. So therefore, I imagine from quotes from her and court cases where she gave evidence, here’s someone who was quite tough, very hard.
And people like that are a bit like Tommy Shelby. There’s a locked door, you can’t get in. And I think that whenever people come across a locked door, they wanna know what’s on the other side. Or a locked box, they want to know what’s inside the box. And where you get given a character like this, who is so closed off and doesn’t let anybody in, I think what you can do then is just choose your moment to open the box a little bit. And it has such an effect when you see someone who gives nothing suddenly give something, it’s like a bomb going off. So I think that’s always a gift when you’re writing something.
The music of A Thousand Blows takes a very different approach than Peaky, which had a lot of needle drops from pop culture, but here, you go with a more score-based approach.
Having a show that’s set in the same world [Birmingham with Peaky], but you have contemporary music, that’s one way of going down that road. With this, we felt that the score could do the same job, but it could feel very contemporary. And I believe that music in film and television is such a powerful thing that people don’t really think about. In other words, if you strip it all back, when you’re watching something, and it feels absolutely realistic, you’re watching it if that’s really happening, but there’s this music, though, with no explanation of where it’s coming from.
We’re just so used to having a score, we’re used to having a piece of music that compliments what you’re seeing. And it’s so powerful, and I believe that when you are writing a scene, and hopefully, you’re creating a particular emotion, it’s only when the music comes in at a certain point that you get permission to cry, for example. That’s what makes you cry is when the music comes in, and it sort of almost overloads the emotion. So I think that it’s an incredibly important secret weapon in the creation of a TV series or a film, which everybody knows about, and we all get it, but it doesn’t get analyzed, I don’t think. Even though it’s quite odd that it’s there at all.
That reminds me: I’ve got a Peaky needle drops list that I’m planning to publish closer to the movie’s release. Do you have a favorite of all time?
Oh, Ane Bruin, “It Don’t Matter Where You Bury Me” [All My Tears].
And here I am being more obvious by elevating Radiohead and Black Sabbath and Nick Cave and Bowie.
Oh listen, they’re all so beautiful, but that particular song shouldn’t have worked, and it really works in the moment that it’s in. And it’s a good example of Peaky music, where it’s not the track that you think is gonna happen, but I find that song so haunting.
‘A Thousand Blows’ is currently streaming on Hulu and Disney+.
Celine Song directed one of the best movies of the decade so far in Past Lives. Now she’s back with her new film, Materialists.
The A24 romantic-comedy (emphasis on the romance) stars Dakota Johnson as Lucy, a young, ambitious New York City matchmaker who finds herself torn between the perfect match and her imperfect ex, played by Pedro Pascal and Chris Evans, respectively. It’s nice to see Johnson and Evans out of the Marvel system, although hopefully they passed along advice to Pascal.
The trailer, which you can watch above, includes an original song from Japanese Breakfast (who releases her own album, Melancholy Brunettes (& sad women), later this month).
When Pascal was asked by GQ why he wanted to work with Song, he replied, “Past Lives is one of the best movies I’ve seen in years, number one. There’s that simple answer. I met Celine and we became fast friends before the idea of ever working together. It really came down to it being, anything that she may or may not want me to do, I’d be willing to do it as an artist and as a friend. Working with that caliber of talent is the goal ultimately, and so I’m the lucky one.” Johnson also sung Song’s praises calling her a “masterful filmmaker.”
The 2025 iHeartRadio Music Awards went down last night (March 17), and aside from some trophies being handed out, it was also a big night for performances. Among the artists taking the stage was Billie Eilish (along with Finneas), for a rendition of “Wildflower.”
Eilish was a leading nominee at this year’s show, with five nods. She only walked away with one win, but it was a big one: Album Of The Year.
Meanwhile, Eilish recently said of her plans for the next 12 months, “Definitely getting back into the studio and doing stuff. Next 12 months, I want to… I definitely have more tour, lots of tour to do, and probably more than I’m even scheduled for that’s gonna come, which I’m excited about. I feel like [touring], I’ve really made it into something really fun and enjoyable where it’s not always been that way. I’ve really suffered on tour and I feel like it’s gotten to be really, really enjoyable, so I’m excited for that.”
Check out Eilish’s performance above, and find the full list of 2025 iHeartRadio Music Awards winners here.
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