The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
Nearly a decade before she cemented herself as one of the reigning queens of the indie art-pop scene, Caroline Polachek arrived in pop’s mainstream in grand fashion. Tucked away between enduring hits such as “Drunk In Love” and “Partition,” lies “No Angel,” a standout cut from Beyoncé’s industry-shifting eponymous 2013 album, which was co-written and co-produced by Polachek. That song’s breathless carnality and penchant for pairing spacious production alongside subverted song structures reverberates across the universe of Desire, I Want To Turn Into You — Polachek’s fourth studio album and second under her own name.
Across twelve tracks that each function as their own planets in the solar system of her own Desire, Polachek weaves the digital and the analog to create a new plane of existence through which she assesses, internalizes, defeats, and allows herself to be consumed by desire. When she “turns into desire,” she is not just seeking solace in the pleasure of her wants, she is quite literally transforming her very being into the emotion of desire itself. The all-consuming nature of desire transforms both Polachek herself and the world around her, as outlined by the album’s opening track, fourth single, and steadfast thesis, “Welcome to My Island.” With a vocal that stretches from belts and screams to faux whistle notes and robotic spoken word chants, “Island’s” balance of Polachek’s airy tone and angsty synths lays the foundation for the rest of the album.
A stunning exercise in maximalism, Desire triumphs by way of Polachek’s talents as a producer and curator. She understands when to pull back and when to keep her foot on the gas until a song is hurtling through the new solar system she’s created through an amalgam of expressive vocal performances, oscillating synths, and flamenco guitars. “Pretty In Possible” finds Polachek pairing a “Tom’s Diner”-esque intro with a decidedly plasticky breakbeat that fully embraces the vastness of the digital grounding of her world of desire. The imagery is carnal with a hint of despondence — “With your lipstick on my thigh / Drink the tears until they dry” — a recurring convergence of moods. “Bunny Is A Rider,” Desire’s much-lauded lead single, is even sharper in the context of the full record. Between devil-may-care whistles and infantile background coos that recall Aaliyah’s “Are You That Somebody,” the record deftly balances the effervescence of pop music with the coldness of the genre’s frayed edges. “Sunset,” like “Bunny,” and most of the album’s tracks for that matter, is one of those songs that reaches out from the tracklist and smacks you across the face. Steeped in the intrinsic urgency and passion of flamenco, “Sunset” is an intelligent analog complement to the staunchly digital firestorm that is Desire. The song’s themes of disillusionment should feel incongruent with the warmth of the instrumentation, but that’s the hat trick of contrast that Polachek has perfected with this record.
Desire has its fair share of bombast, but its quieter moments are equally rewarding. “Crude Drawing Of An Angel” is a mind-bending track, one that simultaneously exudes seduction and feels like a horrifying pool of squelching quicksand. When Polachek sings “all or nothing,” she flings herself between extremes that are certain to tear her very being apart in her pursuit of desire. The song’s histrionic pre-chorus outlines the insidious underbelly of Desire: how do you reconcile inevitable gratification with pockets of desire that are simply greed disguised as needs? It’s an aching slow burn that actually reaches its moment of release in “I Believe,” yet another standout that finds shimmering synths stabbing through the production, with Polachek’s falsetto piercing the volcanoes of sound that populate the album’s overarching soundscape.
With Desire, Polachek has unlocked a level of self-understanding that many artists strive for but never quite reach. If pop music at its best is the synthesis of the grandest human emotions into bite-sized pieces of saccharine melody, then pop music at its most abrasive and extreme is the filtering of the most minute and overwhelming intersections of human emotion into songs that both rely on and reject traditional notions of structure. Whether she’s anchoring her songs with wordless vocalizations (“Smoke”) or idiosyncratic tests of the elasticity of syllables (“Billions”), Polachek is succinctly conveying the allure of the danger that is intertwined with desire. Like any great pop star, she even invents her own language to make sense of the sheer vastness of this solar system of desire. “Hopedrunk,” “everasking,” “Wikipediated,” “mythicalogical,” you name it, or, rather, Polachek names these things, as if she is an omniscient creator reigning over her own personal Eden.
“Billions,” the album’s second single, closes the record with a bright-eyed children’s choir. It’s an obvious callback to the church bells that close the summery “Fly To You,” but, perhaps more pertinently, it’s a production motif that drives home the cyclical nature of life itself. In tandem, Polachek and the choir sing, “I never felt so close,” a reminder that pursuit, not desire, is the real reward. The implementation of a children’s choir brings to light voices that haven’t yet been tainted by desire which, in turn, build both “Billions” and Desire into odes to the ways in which the pursuit of desire ultimately leads you back to yourself with a deeper understanding of who you actually are — in any plane of existence.
The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.
ITEM NUMBER ONE – Listen to me
I have tremendous news: Someone stole 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs. This is probably not tremendous news for the people who make and transport Cadbury Creme Eggs, I suppose. It is tremendous news for me, though. I’ve been clicking on stories about it all week long. I’ll probably keep clicking on them all weekend. I must know everything about it. I must know how and why someone stole 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs. I must know what they intended to do with 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs. I must know what, exactly, 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs looks like. That’s a big one. I can’t picture it right now. It’s about 199,980 more Cadbury Creme Eggs than I’ve ever seen at once. I don’t think I would know what to do if I saw a collection of 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs. I feel like I would just stare at it for a while.
The caper involved breaking into an industrial unit in Telford, outside Birmingham, on Saturday and making off with about $37,000 worth of the eggs, the police in West Mercia said in a statement on Twitter that was riddled with attempted jokes about Easter.
Honestly, good for the official police Twitter account. I mean, it’s still a crime and you want to be a little careful about taking it too lightly, especially if you are the police, but I’m going to cut them some slack here. This is too good. They deserve to have a little fun after posting a bunch of tweets about murder and arson and stuff. Stealing these eggs was almost a public service in that way.
I said almost.
Officials said the theft was premeditated — one that involved chocolate eggs that are more typically treated as an impulse buy at the grocery store. The prosecutor, Owen Beale, told Kidderminster Magistrates’ Court that Mr. Pool had used a stolen truck cab to tow away a trailer full of the treats, according to The Guardian. The police soon spotted him on the road, and he gave himself up, Mr. Beale said.
Well, that settles it. I need a television show about this. A full-on limited series. Eight episodes, minimum. It doesn’t have to remain perfectly faithful to this exact crime, but it does have to be inspired by it. I thinking some sort of Fargo situation, where we take a real crime and fiction-up the backstory a little bit. Maybe get… I don’t know… let’s say Will Forte in there as the egg thief. I’m just spitballing here. I can be flexible. Jesse Plemons works. So does Statham, I guess, especially since this happened in England. Get Guy Ritchie on the phone.
“This is clearly an organized criminal matter,” he said in court. “You don’t just happen to learn about a trailer with that kind of value being available.”
“This is clearly an organized crime matter,” the prosecutor said about the theft of 200,000 Cadbury Creme Eggs.
Yup, that settles it. This is the only thing I care about. I know I just said that two weeks ago about the theft of a huge Shrek sculpture but I mean it this time. I meant it that time, too. I especially mean it this time, though, because there appears to be an actual profit-driven motive for this one. Someone woke up with a plan to get a little rich by stealing Cadbury Creme Eggs and followed through with it all. If it was organized crime, that means there’s a scenario where a crime boss yelled “I NEED THOSE CREME EGGS” at an underling at some point last week. I feel like the crime boss should be played by Paul Giamatti.
If you see me out and about this weekend and I appear lost in thought a little bit, like my brain is cranking away on something and my eyes are fixed in an empty stare, there’s a very good chance I am thinking about all of this. Just leave me alone. I have a lot to process.
ITEM NUMBER TWO – John Wick is in the news
We are about a month out from the release date of the fourth John Wick movie. This means a few different things. It means I am getting very excited, for one, because one of the best movie franchises ever made about a legendary assassin going on a technicolor rampage because Theon from Game of Thrones murdered his dog is coming back on my freaking birthday weekend. It also means we’re getting a second trailer with lots of new footage, at least some of which features a dog leaping through traffic to disarm a gunman. Here, look at this very good boy.
LIONSGATE
But mostly, in the short term, it means we are going to find both some of the technical details of the movie and a little bit more about the people responsible for making it. One of the technical details we learned this week is that the movie is going to be very, very long.
Time may be running out for John Wick (Keanu Reeves) but the upcoming fourth installment of the gun-fu franchise certainly isn’t short on time. Collider has learned that John Wick: Chapter 4 will clock in at 2 hours and 49 minutes with credits, making it the longest in the franchise. When we last spoke to the film’s director Chad Stahelski, he promised that it would be the longest in the franchise—and it looks like he followed through on that promise.
That is… it’s just a lot of minutes. Too many minutes , some would say, which puts me in a tough spot, as someone who just confessed to being very excited about it, because I am on the record as saying anything over 120 minutes is too many minutes for… anything. I do not appreciate when the things I love put me in a position to question my personal values. I will allow it, for now, but still.
Moving on. To the things we are learning about the people. Things like, for example, this thing about Keanu Reeves having a lot of stuff to say about deepfake technology.
What’s frustrating about that is you lose your agency. When you give a performance in a film, you know you’re going to be edited, but you’re participating in that. If you go into deepfake land, it has none of your points of view. That’s scary. It’s going to be interesting to see how humans deal with these technologies. They’re having such cultural, sociological impacts, and the species is being studied. There’s so much “data” on behaviors now. Technologies are finding places in our education, in our medicine, in our entertainment, in our politics, and how we war and how we work.
This is all somehow both a little surprising and exactly what I thought Keanu would think about the whole thing. On one hand, it’s easy to forget he’s a deep thinker if you still have the image of him from Bill & Ted in your brain. But on the other hand, it’s a very Matrix-y stance on the whole thing, which feels… right. There’s a lot going on here. That’s what I’m getting at.
Hopefully, this second thing will keep me occupied long enough that I forget the thing about the runtime. At least for a while. I’m still not ready to think about that too much.
ITEM NUMBER THREE – Help, I can’t stop making screencaps of Paul Rudd
Okay, here’s what happened. In addition to the part of my job where I write hundreds of words about people stealing candy, I also edit some blogs. One of the blogs I edited this week was this one, a very good thing by my colleague Nina Braca about Paul Rudd telling made-up stories on Late Night With Seth Meyers. And one of the things I did while editing was look for a nice screencap from the clip to publish with the blog.
So, I clicked play and paused at random to see if I could get a decent representative image. But Paul Rudd was making a face. So I tried again. And he was making another face. Same thing the third time. And the fourth. And the fifth.
And then I started getting curious and hopping around and just grabbing screencaps of whatever I paused on. Guys, Paul Rudd does so many faces. Look at all of these.
NBCNBCNBCNBCNBCNBCNBCNBC
There are two takeaways here, as far as I can tell:
Paul Rudd is a freaking professional and will pull out all the stops to sell a bit when he’s out promoting a movie
I probably should not be in charge of things, for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I am a guy who will take 20 minutes to edit a short little blog because I get distracted by faces Paul Rudd makes
To be fair, I think we all already knew those things.
ITEM NUMBER FOUR – I feel like Brie Larson understands me on a very personal level
Marvel
Brie Larson has always struck me as a good egg. She seems like one of those people who is fun to hang out with, and not just in the “Hollywood star putting on a show about it” way that you see sometimes, where it stinks of effort. You know what I mean here. We don’t need to name names.
Anyway, my position on this matter was confirmed this week when Brie Larson tweeted about pizza.
Still thinking about how we eat pizza from the inside out
That is a good point! One I had but considered until I read this tweet and will probably think about at least 70-80 percent of the times I eat pizza for the rest of my life. I can already hear my friends sighing when I say “Hey, did I ever tell you guys what Brie Larson said about pizza?” for the tenth consecutive time we get together for a couple of slices. I get excited.
Speaking of tweets I saw and me getting excited, please check out what the verified account for Fozzie Bear tweeted after Raquel Welch passed away this week.
I have Raquel Welch to thank for becoming a more confident comedian. On The Muppet Show, she helped pick me up when I was down and she was someone I could confide in. Thanks for being my friend, Raquel.
The main thing I want you to take away from this tweet is that it is kind of incredible. Please go read it again now but picture Fozzie Bear saying it with his voice and face. I did it again just now and it’s taken over my brain again. Which brings me to the other thing I want you to take away from this: If any of you have an in with the Muppets and can have one of them give the eulogy at my funeral, that is definitely something I would sign up for. Any Muppet, honestly, but I think my first choice is the Swedish Chef. That would be a fun little treat for me. Hell, I might fake my death Huck Finn-style just to chill out in the back and see people’s reactions.
ITEM NUMBER FIVE – This is important to me
SIMON AND SCHUSTER
There are really very few things I enjoy in this world more than the comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. I have the full collection right here in fancy-looking books that I still pull out and go read in a park every summer. The stuff is foundational to my entire personality. It resonated so much with me when I was a younger guy. You may not be shocked to learn that I was also a mischievous little snot with an overactive imagination. Some people would say I still am. Those people are not wrong but do not need to be such jerks about it.
I do not think I need a great reason to express my love of Calvin & Hobbes on a random Friday in February, but I do have one this time. The creator of the comic, Bill Watterson, who has more or less disappeared from public life since Calvin & Hobbes wrapped up its run, has a new book coming out later this year.
From Bill Watterson, bestselling creator of the beloved comic strip Calvin and Hobbes, and John Kascht, one of America’s most renowned caricaturists, comes a mysterious and beautifully illustrated fable about what lies beyond human understanding.
In a fable for grown-ups by cartoonist Bill Watterson, a long-ago kingdom is afflicted with unexplainable calamities. Hoping to end the torment, the king dispatches his knights to discover the source of the mysterious events. Years later, a single battered knight returns.
For the book’s illustrations, Watterson and caricaturist John Kascht worked together for several years in unusually close collaboration. Both artists abandoned their past ways of working, inventing images together that neither could anticipate—a mysterious process in its own right.
This sounds much heavier and darker than a comic strip about a little rascal and his stuffed tiger going on adventures together, but it also sounds like a book I am going to pre-order and talk about non-stop for a while. This is a big deal for me. You’re all going to have to give me some time to freak out a little.
READER MAIL
If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.
From Joe:
Had a weird dream over the weekend that I feel like you’ll appreciate.
So basically Cris Collinsworth was sick (food poisoning or something) and they needed a new color commentator for the Super Bowl. Who do they turn to? That’s right, Anna Kendrick. A shocking choice, but apparently Anna has been doing color on the Jets radio broadcast for the past several years and no one noticed because it’s the Jets (I know the Chargers would make more sense, but in my dream, it was the Jets). So she comes in and in the 2nd surprise of the night, Anna Kendrick is one of the people who really enjoys offensive and defensive line play. So instead of Collinsworth, we get 4 hours of Anna Kendrick breaking down blocking schemes and pass rushes, and everybody loves it.
I like three things about this email:
Everything about it
The general concept of dreams as a thing where our bodies shut themselves off every night but our brains are like “Nope, I got some more business for us to attend to”
The thing where Joe woke up and said “I should tell Brian about this
Please send me emails like this. As often as you want. I really do love them. Be more like Joe, everyone. He’s a good man.
Well, this is certainly interesting, I suppose. But I really don’t see how it can top the story I led with this week about the stolen creme eggs. That was really someth-…
A statue of the comic strip character that was stolen from a park in Monterey, California, last summer was found submerged in a nearby lake.
I am now completely invested in this.
The park’s original statue was stolen in 2006 and hasn’t been found. Its replacement was stolen in August 2022 by someone who cut through its foot to remove it.
So, wait. This is the third stolen Dennis the Menace statue? From the same place? And the second one involved a theft so pre-planned that they brought along a cutting implement to chop off the thing’s foot? Holy hell. I still want a television show about the egg heist, but now I want this one, too. Maybe it can be a whole limited series, like how Ryan Murphy does American Horror Story and American Crime Story. At the very least, I need both of these to become episodes of Pierce Brosnan’s new heist show on the History Channel. I need to hear him explain this.
And this, too.
In the years between the two thefts a Dennis the Menace statue was found in a Florida scrap yard and was sent to Monterey, where officials determined it was not the right one, KSBW reported. It had actually been taken from a Florida children’s hospital.
To be clear here: there is a nationwide epidemic of Dennis the Menace heists and I am just learning about it all now. I am thrilled, mostly, but also a little mad that no one told me about it before this week. I mean, honestly. It’s my whole thing!
Come on!
The hospital allowed Monterey to keep that statue, which is now in front of a city parks building.
This is very sweet and I’m glad they did it but I do worry that revealing its location like this will put it in danger of being stolen again. We need to put these things into some sort of witness protection. Or at least give them some sunglasses and a wig. Things are pretty dangerous for them out there, apparently!
From the very early days of the pandemic, Evangeline Lilly courted controversy by sharing an Instagram post where she refused to self-isolate herself or her children. She ultimately walked back those remarks and apologized for being “arrogant” and “dismissive,” but she still voiced a concern about a loss of freedom. That concern manifested itself again in January 2022 when Lilly attended an anti-vaccination rally in Washington, D.C. She would later voice support for the anti-vax trucker convoy in Canada.
While social media speculated on Lilly’s future with Marvel, she remained a part of the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania film. Much like Letitia Wright, it appears Lilly’s anti-vaccine views were not a problem for Marvel, and in a new interview, she now claims that she spoke to the studio and Quantumania director Peyton Reed. According to the Wasp actress, both were “respectful” and “supportive.”
“They’re very respectful. In fact, I’ve had direct conversations with them that I have instigated and they’ve always said, ‘That’s not our business. That’s not for us to tell you how to live your life or what opinions to have.’ And I actually even got a really supportive phone call from Peyton Reed at one point and just saying like, ’Just so you know, there’s some rumors spreading about Marvel ditching you or canceling you. And that didn’t come from Marvel and that didn’t come from us, so just ignore that.”
When Happy Sad Confused host Josh Horowitz noted that it’s “huge” to know that Marvel has her back, Lilly agreed.
“It’s really nice. And I think it’s really healthy,” she said. “I think there there needs to be a divide between your professional life and your personal life.”
He’s already back today with Heroes & Villains (Villains Version). It’s an entire remix of the album done by OG Ron C and DJ Candlestick. The previously 15-track album now has 30 songs; it’s a real treat for fans.
In an interview, Metro Boomin talked about what sets him apart from others as a producer. “I feel like as a producer, you’ve always got to be open and receptive, looking for what’s new and what’s next and up-and-coming on the ground vs. you being a producer coming on like, ‘Yo, I gotta make a beat for Drake,’” he said. “They’re gonna be who they’re gonna be regardless, so that don’t really prove nothing you’re doing as a producer. You can still make great songs with them, but as a producer, it’s like, what are you bringing? You’ve got to break artists, you’ve got to bring new artists. That’s a big part of your duty.”
Check out Heroes & Villains (Villains Version) below.
As the dust settles from an exceptionally busy 2023 NBA trade deadline and the league’s attention shifts to Salt Lake City and All-Star Weekend, the Phoenix Suns are in the center of the frame. Granted, the Suns earned additional focus in the wake of a blockbuster trade earlier this month, acquiring one of the best players in the world in Kevin Durant and unquestionably going all-in on a core that still includes Devin Booker, Deandre Ayton, and Chris Paul. In fact, Phoenix is now the betting favorite to win the Western Conference at virtually every outlet, even as the Suns have only a small lead on a jumbled Western Conference middle, to the point where a bad week could send Phoenix sliding into the play-in mix.
It makes perfect sense that Phoenix would rise near the top of the spectrum, simply because Durant is really that good and Booker remains an All-NBA player. Ayton and Paul give the Suns a tremendous top four and, even amid legitimate concerns with depth and defense, it stands to reason that the Suns’ expectations would fly through the roof once Durant is back and healthy.
Still, Phoenix’s ascent, as well as the power of the past, have seemingly thrown many off the scent of a team that appears for all the world to be the favorite on paper: the Denver Nuggets.
The team enters the All-Star break with a 41-18 record. Die-hards will certainly know that regular season win-loss record is never the only vessel by which contender status is measured, but Denver currently has a five-game lead on the rest of the Western Conference and the best net rating (+4.5) in the conference. The folks at Cleaning The Glass paint an even more optimistic picture that includes a +5.0 net rating when removing garbage time, and FiveThirtyEight now projects the Nuggets to finish several games ahead of the West field in the regular season with a similarly prominent gap to odds to reach the NBA Finals. If you simply covered the column that lists team names, it would be quite difficult to understand why the team with the best statistical profile wouldn’t be considered the favorite.
The reality that “defense wins championships” is the dark cloud hanging over Denver’s candidacy, and that is a legitimate concern. However, the Nuggets bring the league’s best offense to the table, scoring 117.6 points per 100 possessions this season. Denver’s ball movement is tremendous, as 66.1 percent of their field goals come off assists, they generate 29.1 assists per game, and have 1.95 assists for every turnover this season. Michael Malone’s team leads the NBA in effective field goal percentage (58.2 percent), field goal percentage, and three-point percentage, which is difficult to do, and the Nuggets also boost efficiency with 55.2 points in the paint and 16.8 fast break points per game.
In short, there is little reason to think Denver can’t keep up with any team on the offensive end, even in a playoff setting when the game historically slows down. The largest appeal for the Nuggets is the presence of the two-time reigning MVP in Nikola Jokic. While some remain inexplicably skeptical of Jokic’s individual brilliance, he leads the NBA in various advanced metrics, including EPM and RAPTOR by comfortable margins, this season. From a “traditional” standpoint, he is averaging a triple-double with 24.7 points, 11.5 rebounds, and 10.1 assists per game, and Jokic is an efficiency monster, shooting 63.2 percent from the field and regularly delivering high-quality looks for his teammates with his obscene passing.
When Jokic is on the court, the Nuggets are fantastic. Denver is 38-13 in games when Jokic plays, and the Nuggets are scoring 124.7 points per 100 possessions under his leadership. That leads to a ridiculous +14.3 net rating and, while the Nuggets have scuffled without Jokic on the floor for years, he projects to play more minutes in the postseason and this year’s Denver team is investing well into the luxury tax to support increased depth.
It would be fair to suggest that the Nuggets have had relatively solid health this season, but it isn’t as if the Nuggets have a spotless health record, with Jokic missing eight games, Jamal Murray sidelined for 14 games, and Michael Porter Jr. on the shelf for 17 games. Denver will certainly need the best possible performance from Murray and Porter, in addition to various supporting pieces, to get over the finish line. In the case of Murray, he has a strong playoff track record, and Jokic has single-handedly flummoxed various opponents in the postseason, even when the Nuggets were overmatched elsewhere.
On one hand, it makes perfect sense that some would remain skeptical of Denver. After all, the Nuggets haven’t reached the NBA Finals with this group and last year’s team exited in the first round of the postseason. It is noteworthy, though, that the Jokic-Murray Nuggets do have a conference finals berth in the not-so-distant past, and Denver is arguably playing its best basketball of the entire Jokic era this season, as evidenced by the aforementioned regular season profile.
In a playoff series against the Suns, Grizzlies, Warriors, or other potential contenders, the Nuggets will be forced to prove they can generate enough defensive stops to survive. Jokic has improved dramatically as a regular season defensive anchor, and the metrics support that, but he does have physical limitations in space, and the Nuggets have other potential defensive issues with both Porter and Murray. Denver has been a solid defensive team by regular season standards but, with few exceptions, title-winning teams usually bring elite-level defense to the table by the postseason, and it may be hard for the Nuggets to get there.
While the Nuggets may not be quite as big of a favorite as the current regular season profile suggests, they do, however, boast clearly the best metrics in the Western Conference right now and, with the understandable rush to anoint another team with clear potential drawbacks in the Suns, Denver is being overlooked. This isn’t a season in which it would be wise to take any single team in the West against the field, and that is likely the case for Denver as well, but the Nuggets are doing all they can do to assuage doubt in the regular season and playing a lot like a legitimate contender as the All-Star break arrives.
The next handful of Saturday Night Live hosts has something for everyone: the sports fans, the emo kids, and the Now You See Me fandom (we exist!).
SNL will return next week with host Woody Harrelson and musical guest Jack White. Harrelson starred in last year’s Triangle of Sadness, the movie that all of your cool friends tried to get you to watch. Up next, the actor will star alongside Justin Theroux in White House Plumbers as one of the guys who accidentally brought about the Watergate Scandal. Hey, it happens.
On March 4th, the Kansas City tight end Travis Kelce will host with musical guest Kelsea Ballerini, where there will likely be some sort of pun about their name similarities.
Finally, and this is the one for the books, Wednesday star Jenna Ortega will host what will inevitably be a whole series of Wednesday-inspired sketches and jokes (if they know what’s good for them, anyway). Ortega will be joined by musical guest The 1975, making it the must-watch comedy event of the year for weirdos and goths alike. As long as Matty Healy behaves himself.
Ortega has been one of the most in-demand actresses as of late, thanks to her role on Wednesday and the upcoming Scream installment. Maybe Lady Gaga will make a quick cameo! One can only hope.
Drill music has been taking over lately as more and more US rap artists tap into the crunchy, upbeat instrumentals that define the sound pioneered by UK producers. Maryland rapper IDK is no exception, but in the video for his new track “Radioactive,” he heads straight to the source, running the “endz” of London as he tries out his new rap style.
The scenery and wardrobe look straight out of Top Boy as IDK, bundled in a down jacket, surrounds himself with roadman dem to goad any wannabe bullies to come see him on the block. The estate houses loom in the background, suggesting the strong connection between hoods on both sides of the pond.
IDK’s latest stylistic departure should come as no surprise to anyone who’s been following his career. The PG County native has switched through hip-hop subgenres like school clothes from MF DOOM homage “Monsieur Dior” to the dancefloor groove of his and Kaytranada’s album Simple (with part two coming soon!) Also, funnily enough, IDK was actually born in London, much like 21 Savage.
If IDK’s first song of 2023 is any indication of his future output, his next project could see him going back to his roots. Stay tuned.
At the 65th annual Grammy Awards ceremony, hip-hop celebrated a major milestone: its 50th birthday. To commemorate the occasion, the genre’s pioneer acts, as well as some of today’s rising talents, took the stage of the Grammys for a tribute performance honoring the cultural phenomenon. With a diverse range (or so they tried) of ages, geographic regions, and gender expressions showcased on stage, from the outside looking in, you’d think that hip-hop is a warm, welcoming environment. This couldn’t be any further from the truth, especially as it relates to Black women both in front of and behind the microphone.
Although legendary hip-hop group Salt-N-Pepa, multifaceted talent Queen Latifah, the evening’s Global Icon Award recipient Missy Elliott, and newbie on the block GloRilla delivered a stellar performance, it has been a fight for them and other talented women like them to gain the respect of their male counterparts and predominately male fan base. Whether it comes to being deliberately left out of the conversation (i.e. the late Gangsta Boo being left out of the in-memoriam portion of the Grammys), being harshly criticized for the music’s subject matter (i.e. the Latto and p*ssy rap debate), or the public’s treatment of Megan Thee Stallion during Tory Lanez’ trial for assaulting her — hip-hop still has a misogyny problem.
In her memoir, Her Word Is Bond: Navigating Hip Hop And Relationships In A Culture Of Misogyny, veteran rapper Psalm One provides an unfiltered account of what it is truly like finding your way through the industry as a Black queer woman and all the nuance that comes along with these intersections.
Back in 2015, after your interview with City Pages detailing what you had faced at your former record label (Rhymesayers), you were called everything but a child of God, which you address in the book. Did that play a part in any hesitation you might have had when it came to releasing the memoir?
Being in the court of public opinion for something that happened to me, I felt neglected. It was harmful, and it was really hurtful. I then understand why a lot of women, in particular, disappeared from hip-hop. In 2019, when I started writing the book, you know, I was writing it in sort of like a loose chronological order of my life. So I wasn’t even at those chapters yet. And by the time we started editing those chapters in 2020, my former label got called out again, and it had nothing to do with me. It was bigger than me. It was bigger than my story, but it encapsulated everything that I had dealt with. But because of what happened in 2020 and the boycott, I was like, this is absolutely the time.
So there’s one quote in the book that hit me deeply. You wrote, “It was absolutely heartbreaking to find out that I had tours on the table that my label ignored. It always felt like they didn’t want me to win. They just wanted to say they had a woman on the label so they could look progressive.” We see this not only in your case, we see this even with Megan Thee Stallion’s ongoing battle with 1501 Entertainment. What cautionary tales, advice, or suggestions do you have for these upcoming women rappers that are looking to be validated in those male spaces?
The validation comes with so many caveats. You just never know until you know who really messes with you. I believed these men telling me, ‘Oh, you’re cool and all, but you ain’t like this, or you need to compete with Jean Grae,’ and I could never compete. How am I going to compete with Jean Grae? You’re not giving me any support. Where’s the budget? How could I ever compete with her? And I can’t compete with her, even with a budget. Let me just say that because Jean Grae is like ‘mom’ to me. So it’s like my rap mom. So, like, seriously, it was like sh*t like that made me so confused about what my purpose was. And I wasn’t really given the space to grow as an artist as much as other artists on that label. It makes you feel isolated. It makes you feel like, “Damn, I got to do something extra.” So it is very difficult for a woman to thrive in this space because it was built on a male fantasy. It was built on a straight male fantasy, and it was never built for women to thrive.
In the book, you also mentioned that you found, maybe not directly, but certainly indirectly, that you needed to take full ownership of the business side of your particular art when looking at the success of Nicki Minaj. So did her trajectory have any influence on you on what you wanted to do in terms of, like, the business side?
I think that with Nicki Minaj, I just saw her being supported in a way by her label that I had never seen before, and I just felt like I was jealous. Let’s just call it what it is. It’s jealous. When you look at someone else and say, ‘Why not me?’ That’s just jealousy. And I think that’s something that a lot of artists don’t like to do, especially rappers. I’m not bothered. I’ll never be pressed, I’m never jealous. A lot of artists only move out of that. They move out of jealousy and competition, and it’s upsetting and devastating to many people’s trajectory because they’re chasing.
Once I realized I couldn’t chase Nicki Minaj, it added perspective. But the support that she received, at least the way it looked when she first came out with Wayne, Ye, and Diddy and all these really big people embracing her and saying, “No, you’re the one,” that, to me, was something that I never experienced. And it was something that I thought was great, and it was something that I had wanted for a long time. Now it’s just about not waiting on people because look at Nicki Minaj today. Look at what happened to her last year. It’s a wild thing because I’m like, “If that’s the pinnacle of female rap, if that’s the biggest woman on the scene, and this is what she’s doing, why am I aspiring for this?”
So, in the beginning, we talked about the boycott against your former label, and then to follow that up, the opening line of your Medium article, “I am ready to forgive them.” Have you forgiven them yet? And what does forgiveness look like for you?
Forgiveness is a journey. It is not a destination. It is something that I am very good at some days, and other days I’m not. And also, let’s never forget the saying, “forgive, don’t forget.” It was very important for me to forgive myself and to forgive my former label for everything because that was the only way I was going to be able to move through it. The “Me Too” movement is still a movement. No matter what Amber Heard does in court, no matter what Tory Lanez does in jail, whatever it is, it’s still going to be an issue. It’s something that plagues many artists. It doesn’t matter if you’re a woman or not because, honestly, in the professional abuse that I endured, I had men in my DMs telling me they [experienced] the same thing as me, minus the sexual stuff. You can’t expect people to just be good to you if they weren’t good to people. And I think a lot of labels will “fam” you up, but this is a job. But for me, forgiveness does not mean forgetting. And forgiveness doesn’t mean I shut up.
So what’s next for you in your career overall?
I’m working on a lot of collaboration this year as far as, like, getting my voice on other people’s raps. I have a deluxe version of my last album on the way. My follow-up project is done. I just got the cover art for it. We’re just mixing and mastering, working on a couple of other projects. My partner Angelina has a bunch of projects that we’re trying to get out for her this year. I write music reviews and concert previews for the Chicago Reader, which is a trip because I used to always want to be in the Reader for my work. And now, I’m in the Reader not only for my work but also for reviewing other people’s work, which has allowed me not to be a bitter rapper. So you’re going to see my pen in a lot of different ways, not just rapping.
Psalm One’s book Her Word Is Bond: Navigating Hip Hop and Relationships in a Culture of Misogyny is available where all books are sold. To purchase a physical or digital copy, click here.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
R&B duo DVSN may still be working on their karma, but it is surely paying off on the road. The OVO Sound pair (singer Daniel Daley and producer Nineteen85) is currently on the road for the first time since 2018 to support their latest album, Working On My Karma which features lead single, “If I Get Caught.”
The Canadian tag team has become the face of modern-day baby-making music ever since the release of their debut EP Sept. 5th back in 2015, and their admiration from their women fans has only heightened since then. Their international Working On My KarmaTour, which kicked off last month in Denmark, is sure to leave behind a trail of broken hearts in each country it makes a stop in.
Partnering with event promoters Trap Karaoke, potential concertgoers will now be given the opportunity to sing along with the group in a way never possible before. To prepare for your possible solo moment on stage with DVSN, take a look at their Setlist.fm confirmed setlist below.
The remaining Working On My Karma Tour dates can be found under the setlist.
“Last Time”
“Don’t Take Your Love”
“With Me”
“Bring It”
“Freak Me” (Silk cover)
“Memories”
“Mood”
“A Muse”
“P.O.V.”
“Greedy”
“Too Deep”
“Flawless (Do It Well Pt. 3)”
“Do It Well”
“Touch It (Do It Well Pt. 4)”
“If I Get Caught”
“I Hate U” (SZA cover)
“Get Even”
“Between Us”
“Nuh Time / Tek Time”
“Hatin”
“I Don’t Wanna Know” (Mario Winans cover)
“Take It Slow”
“Dangerous City”
“Tired”
“Sept. 5th”
“Kiss It Better” (Rihanna cover)
“Body Smile”
“What’s Up”
“Think About Me”
“Hallucinations”
“Conversations in a Diner”
“…Again”
“The Line”
02/18 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore
02/21 — New York, NY @ Terminal 5
02/24 — Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore
02/25 — Baltimore, MD @ Soundstage
02/26 — Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz
02/28 — Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore
03/01 — Atlanta, GA @ The Tabernacle
03/03 — Dallas, TX @ South Side Ballroom
03/04 — Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live
03/05 — Austin, TX @ Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater
03/07 — Denver, CO @ Summit
03/09 — Phoenix, AZ @ The Van Buren
03/10 — Las Vegas, NV @ House of Blues
03/11 — San Diego, CA @ House of Blues
03/14 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Novo
03/16 — San Francisco, CA @ The Warfield
03/18 — Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo
03/19 — Portland, OR @ Crystal Ballroom
03/21 — Vancouver, BC @ Orpheum Theatre
03/23 — Calgary, AB @ MacEwan Hall
03/24 — Edmonton, AB @ Union Hall
03/25 — Saskatoon, SK @ Coors Event Centre
03/27 — Winnipeg, MB @ Burton Cummings Theatre
03/28 — Minneapolis, MN @ Varsity Theater
03/30 — Chicago, IL @ Radius
03/31 — Detroit, MI @ Royal Oak Music Theatre
04/01 — Cleveland, OH @ House of Blues
04/03 — Montreal, QC @ MTELUS
04/04 — Ottawa, Ontario @ Bronson Centre Music Theatre
04/06 — Toronto, ON @ HISTORY
DVSN is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
True Blood, the campy vampire series that inspired headlines like “The Best Hookups On True Blood, From Neck-Twisting Hate Sex To Orgies,” is coming to the same channel as NCIS: New Orleans reruns.
Edited episodes of the Anna Paquin-starring True Blood will air on TNT, while TBS will be the new home of Silicon Valley, which features slightly less neck-twisting sex orgies. (TBS and TNT are owned by the same parent company, Warner Bros. Discovery, as HBO.) “As this is TV — not HBO — the shows will be edited both for content (receiving a TV-MA rating) and ad breaks,” Variety reports, which added that this multi-channel partnership is “a first for programming produced and aired on HBO in recent years.”
The reruns will launch immediately out of NBA All Star coverage on the the cablers, with True Blood beginning Saturday after the game on TNT and Silicon Valley on TBS. Following that initial premiere, True Blood will move to its regular time period on Mondays at 10 p.m. on TNT. Silicon Valley will air Sundays at 10 p.m. on TBS.
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