Category: News

Nigerian superstar Burna Boy is very much a local hero in his homeland — and you can see just how admired he is in his new video for “Question.” “Question” is the afro-fusion star’s second all-new single of 2021 after “Kilometre,” suggesting that he may already be working toward releasing a follow-up to his critically acclaimed 2020 album Twice As Tall, even though he’s only five months removed from dropping the video for its most recent single, “23.” Also appearing in the “Question” video is Nigerian record producer Don Jazzy, who contributes cameo appearances and ad-libbed vocals throughout.

Burna’s mission to export afro-fusion to the American mainstream will continue this year even without a new album as he heads out on tour, hitting major festivals like Governor’s Ball and Outside Lands, as well as headlining his first major concert at the Hollywood Bowl. Queen Naija, Umi, and Donavan’s Sound Club will join him there as openers, then he’ll be off to France, Spain, and Sweden for more festival dates. A previously planned Twice As Tall tour was unfortunately canceled as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Watch Burna Boy’s “Question” video featuring Don Jazzy above.

Burna Boy is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Surely, you’re aware by now that Sony went and dropped the Spider-Man: No Way Home trailer, which has opened up all sorts of possibilities, including a few certainties: (1) Peter Parker is a Public Enemy Number One following the Spider-Man: Far From Home post-credits scene, in which J. Jonah Jameson (J.K. Simmons) exposed his identity and fingered him as the killer of Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal); (2) Doctor Strange starts f*cking around with the multiverse in order to make everyone forget that Peter is Spider-Man; and (3) Doc Ock (Alfred Molina) is back to cause more villainous fallout.

We don’t yet know whether we’ll see former Spideys Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield in this film. Their presence has been denied, but speculation runs rampant, and let’s face it: everyone wants to see a certain meme come to live-action life onscreen. In the meantime, a little trailer moment (around the 0:30 mark) has fans intrigued, to say the very least. That would be the moment screenshotted above, where a hard-hitting attorney slams paperwork down in Peter Parker’s face.

Rude, I know, but who is this guy? Clearly, the Powers That Be want us to be curious about this man’s identity, since they didn’t show his face, and speculation is currently running rampant that it could be Charlie Cox’s MCU character (previously seen on Netflix’s now-defunct round of Marvel shows). That would be Matt Murdock/Daredevil, the Ivy League-educated lawyer who ended up practicing in New York City while being sweet on Hell’s Kitchen. The character’s “limbo” waiting period has come to an end, so he should fair game for Sony, should they want to use him in No Way Home, possibly to throw the book at Peter Parker or to continue doing the defense-attorney thing.

Fans are now in an intense debate regarding whether this could be Murdock’s arms, waist, and, you know, booty.

So, is this screenshot negative evidence or confirmation of Murdock? Also, what of Charlie Cox’s infamous hip-to-waist ratio?

Hopefully, we won’t have to wait until the film’s release date (December 17) to find out the answer to this pressing mystery.

Jerry Jones would not be particularly high on my list of people I would expect to be staunch supporters of doing things for the greater good, but the Cowboys billionaire owner surprised many on Tuesday when he went on 105.3 The Fan in Dallas and made a rather stunningly good stump speech for why everyone should be getting the vaccine.

Jones says he supports people’s “right to make decisions regarding their health and body…until your decision as to yourself impacts negatively many others,” which, to Jones, at that point triggers a need to consider the “common good.”

It is the type of statement that many in leadership positions have not been willing to make, particularly in the state of Texas, but credit to Jerry Jones for taking this firm of a stance on such an important issue (which is a phrase I never expected to write). The part about needing to do things for the common good has been a sticking point throughout the pandemic, whether it be masks or vaccines or staying at home, but for someone like Jones to note the need for that kind of sacrifice with getting the vaccine is noteworthy. There are, of course, selfish reasons for Jones to want everyone vaccinated in the Dallas metroplex, as the more healthy folks there are, the more people can come to Cowboys games and spend money, but even factoring that aspect of it in, good on Jerry for voicing this publicly as, for better or worse, he has some significant sway in Texas.

After years of being accused of sex crimes and abuse, disgraced R&B singer R. Kelly has finally started his trial in New York City. A second woman recently gave a testimony to the court about the horrific abuse and sex crimes she faced at the hands of Kelly dating back to 2015, when she was just 17.

The woman, who wishes to anonymously go by “Jane,” laid out the accusations of abuse that took place during their five-year relationship, including grooming, sexual assault, and even a forced abortion in 2017. According to a report from NPR, Jane claimed she met the singer in 2015 when she was just 17 (meaning he was 48 at the time), hoping that knowing Kelly would lead him to helping her music career. She was already taking a number of music classes, hoping to score a music scholarship to college, and even landing a number of professional music gigs.

After meeting R. Kelly, Jane claims he pressured her into having sex. “I was against it,” she said in court. “I told him I did not come to please him. He continued to persist.” Jane claimed that afterwards, she was forced to live under Kelly’s “rules,” which included wearing only baggy clothes, not speaking to other men including members of his team, and being forced to stay in her room for days on end.

Read NPR’s full report on R. Kelly’s trial here.

R.E.M. have announced a 25th anniversary reissue of their fifth studio album, 1996’s New Adventures In Hi-Fi, arriving October 29 via Craft Recordings. To celebrate, the college-rock favorites have also unveiled an alternate version of album track “Leave,” for which Michael Stipe recorded new vocals. “I actually might prefer this version to the one that’s on the record,” he said in a statement. “Well, I wouldn’t say I prefer it, it just tells a different story with the lyric.” Check it out above.

As for what’s in the reissue: There’s a 2-CD/1-Blu-ray Deluxe Edition with a newly remastered album, 13 B-sides and rarities, an hourlong outdoor projection film, and a previously unreleased 30-minute EPK. Meanwhile, the Blu-ray features five HD-restored music videos (including “Bittersweet Me,” “Electrolite,” and “E-Bow The Letter”). Finally, there’s a 52-page hardcover book with archival photographs, plus new liner notes from journalist Mark Blackwell and reflections from all four original band members, as well as from Patti Smith, Radiohead‘s Thom Yorke, and producer Scott Litt.

There’s also an Expanded Edition available, which includes the remastered album, plus B-sides and rarities. Along with the 2-CD set, you’ll get an exclusive poster plus four collectible postcards, as well as a booklet featuring new liner notes and archival photos. Finally, the newly remastered album will be available as a 2-LP set, pressed on 180-gram vinyl.

New Adventures In Hi-Fi was famously written on the road, during the band’s 1995 Monster tour. It’s also the last album featuring former R.E.M. drummer and founding member Bill Berry. “The idea was, ‘Let’s challenge ourselves,’” guitarist Peter Buck told Blackwell about the album. “My feeling was, it’ll show exactly where we’re at right now in a way that maybe some of the records don’t at all. This record was just an attempt to be who we were at that minute.”

Look for the New Adventures In Hi-Fi reissue on 10/29 via Craft Recordings. Pre-order it here.

Doja Cat is a few months into the release of her anticipated album Planet Her, which landed at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Throughout the album rollout, Doja Cat has remained true to her left-of-center brand, asking her fans to roast her for falling on stage and joking that she’s been canceled “maybe 350 times.” Now, Doja Cat gets the chance to speak to another musician who is known for staying true to herself: Missy Elliott.

Elliott and Doja Cat sat down for a conversation with Interview Magazine. Throughout their chat, Doja Cat gushed about how much Elliott has influenced her as an artist. Elliott also gave Doja Cat advice on how to stay weird and authentic with her music, saying that she should stay away from second-guessing herself:

“For my first album, I didn’t listen to the radio. I didn’t watch videos. I didn’t do any of those things, and I didn’t realize how much that helped me at the time. But it helped, because me and Timb, we didn’t mimic. So if we did something far-left, we weren’t afraid, because we didn’t know what was hot anyway. But now, when I got my phone and I’m seeing things, I can think of something really far-left and then I’ll be like, ‘They’re going to think I’m crazy. Let me reel it back.’ […] It gets tricky sometimes, so here’s some advice. Whatever you’re doing, if you feel like you’re in this place, and it seems to be working, stay there. Don’t allow other things to make you second-guess yourself, as long as it feels good to you.”

Elsewhere in the conversation, Doja Cat opened up to Elliott about what she hopes to hone in her music. Along with wanting to fine-tuning her flow, Doja Cat says she hopes to open up about her personal life a little bit more in the future. “When it comes to rap I could be better,” Doja Cat said. “I think everybody feels that way with their own art, in all kinds of ways. But I see all these incredibly talented rappers around me, and I’m like, ‘Yeah, I’m doing pop, but I should focus on my pen now more than ever.’ I’m good, and I can be funny and charming, and I can do little punchlines here and there, but I need to talk about my life more, and about what’s going on.”

Read Elliott and Doja Cat’s full conversation with Interview Magazine here.

Missy Elliott is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Kanye West’s next Donda listening event is scheduled to take place in his hometown, Chicago, this Thursday ahead of the latest release date for the album, Friday, August 27. While West’s associates previously hinted to “expect a more detailed show on a whole other level,” this week, we’ve received more information about just how detailed the show we can expect it to be.

On Monday, photos of the interior of Soldier Field, the venue for the upcoming listening event, popped up on Twitter suggesting that West is building a replica of his childhood home inside the stadium. That house was previously the site of the Donda House foundation set up by Kanye and his early rap partner Rhymefest and the subject of a feud between the former friends when Kanye was unable to pony up the funds to fix up the house or support the foundation’s art programs.

Now, it looks like he’ll be rebuilding the house after all, albeit in a different location and with a different function in keeping with Kanye’s sense of extravagance. Of course, two listening events have come and gone without a release of the album named after his mom, so if he’s going all-out with this listening, he’s put a lot more pressure on himself to deliver.

In 2017, Sturgill Simpson made a post on Instagram that laid out the rest of his career. After quoting the chorus of Kris Kristofferson’s “The Pilgrim: Chapter 33” — in which the legendary troubadour sings about “a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction” — Simpson wrote that “my entire ‘country music career’ is a character based performance art piece in the form of five sequential concept albums all following the traditional Christian narrative of the journey of the human soul.”

This was heady stuff! At the time, Simpson had released only three albums. His most recent, A Sailor’s Guide To Earth, had been nominated for an Album Of The Year Grammy earlier that year. He was in his prime, and appeared to be rising even higher. It was, in other words, a strange time to be hinting that your quote, country music career, end quote, might soon be over.

But the Instagram post didn’t come completely out of the blue. Simpson had suggested for years in various interviews — most notably on The Joe Rogan Experience in 2014 — that he was ultimately only going to make five LPs. While Simpson quickly deleted his Instagram post, he reiterated his five albums promise one week later while busking outside of the 2017 Country Music Awards. During an informal press conference, he offered up a detailed sketch of how each album fit into his so-called “Christian narrative”:

Yes. I’m only making five albums. And they all do serve a cohesive narrative of a life journey of a human soul from a traditional Western perspective. So High Top Mountain was a seminal album or a past life, you can’t go home. Metamodern Sounds in Country Music was ethereal, literally like the soul’s journey through space. A Sailor’s Guide To Earth represents birth, and life lessons learning them. The next one is going to be about life and sin. We’re literally going to go to hell. And the fifth one will be returning to the light. Absolution.

What nobody beyond Simpson’s inner circle knew at the time is that he had already recorded the bulk of his fourth record, Sound And Fury, which finally came out in the fall of 2019. That caustic and hard-rocking album did indeed prove to be about “literally going to hell,” which reflected Simpson’s self-described “miserable” headspace in 2017, when he achieved his greatest mainstream exposure yet while also feeling extreme weariness from an exhaustive tour schedule. These factors — along with being waylaid by a sinus surgery and mourning the death of his beloved grandfather, Lawrence Gray “Dood” Fraley — fed into the extreme negative mojo of Sound And Fury.

But Simpson’s fantasies about a finite, five albums-only career can’t only be attributed to a temporary funk. According to a Rolling Stone profile posted last week upon the release of Simpson’s latest record, The Ballad Of Dood And Juanita, he insisted again that he’s stopping at five Sturgill Simpson albums. “This is the last Sturgill record,” he told the magazine. “I always said there would be five, and I wondered if I’d go back on that. But it really has cemented every step of the way how much I don’t want to carry all that weight.”

So … is this it? Is the reigning outlaw country singer of our time going to actually retire in the prime of his career? If it is it, what are we to make of the five albums he’s made and how they fit together? (Actually, he’s made seven — more on that in a moment.) Is this five-album arc an incredible called shot on Sturgill’s part, or just plain weird and even misguided?

For starters, it’s worth mentioning that Simpson gave himself an out in that Rolling Stone interview. “Going forward, I’d like to form a proper band with some people who I really love and respect musically, and be a part of something truly democratic in terms of creativity,” he said. “Not having to stand up there behind my name would allow me to be even more vulnerable, in a way.” So, he’s not done done. He’s just done making music in which “Sturgill Simpson” is the predominant brand … maybe. (At the 2017 CMAs, he floated the tantalizing possibility of a Highwayman-like supergroup with Jason Isbell, Chris Stapleton, and Margo Price. I’d be very curious to find out if that is still on the table.)

As a fan of both Sturgill and five-album arcs, I love that he’s been pushing this “‘Christian narrative” concept for his catalogue, especially since it appears that he’s not actually retiring. I love it so much that I’m willing to overlook the obvious flaws in Simpson’s logic, starting with the fact that he’s conveniently leaving off the two volumes of Cuttin’ Grass records he put out in 2020. (Which I think is justified, given that those albums consist of old material reworked in a bluegrass style. They function essentially as greatest hits records.) I’m also skeptical that Simpson had the foresight to truly map out his discography with such precision. For instance, did he really know that Covid would kill the 52-date Sound And Fury tour, therefore alleviating his professional angst and leading him to work with the crack bluegrass pickers who back him on the Cuttin’ Grass records and his concluding “absolution” LP, The Ballad Of Dood And Juanita? Is this a country singer or Nostradamus?

Let’s set all that aside. The same premeditation about his art and career that has annoyed some critics — particularly in light of the divisive Sound And Fury — has endeared Simpson to me. And it has also endeared him to his most loyal fans, who have written insanely detailed and deeply fascinating Reddit posts about how his catalogue parallels the five stages of mysticism.

I wouldn’t go as far as to call his career “performance art,” but the overtly conceptual aspect of Simpson’s work puts him closer to self-conscious pop superstars like Kanye West and Frank Ocean than anyone in the Americana sphere. It’s a big reason why he’s more interesting than almost all his peers; he’s not merely presenting himself as an “earnest” master of “authentic” music, he lets you know that he may in fact be playing a character. Whether he actually plotted his career out well in advance or improvised the particulars on the fly in accordance with the ups and downs of career is irrelevant. The fact is that you can look at his albums, including the new Dood, and see a through-line that more or less does tell a redemption story … if that’s what you want to see.

While Simpson posited his proposed discography as “five sequential concept albums” in that deleted Instagram post, I would argue that (aside from Dood And Juanita) he operates mainly in song cycles. His previous records don’t tell stories as much as riff on a central idea. High Top Mountain is the “nostalgist” record. Metamodern Sounds is the “subverting nostalgia with psychedelics” record. A Sailor’s Guide is the “subverting psychedelics with fatherhood” record. Sound And Fury is the “subvert my entire damn career” record. Then you have the Cuttin’ Grass records as palate cleansers. (Carrying over the “Christian narrative” metaphor, perhaps these albums can be likened to purgatory between hell and heaven.)

And now comes The Ballad Of Dood And Juanita, his first real concept record and a culmination for his catalogue, in which you can hear elements of all the other albums come together in one 28-minute package. It’s traditional but subversive, equal parts witty and melancholy, with a feeling of peace leavened with an undercurrent of violence. It’s his Once Upon A Time In Hollywood — both an expertly rendered homage to Simpson’s old reference points in ’60s and ’70s country and an elegiac summation of the themes and ideas he’s embedded throughout his work.

It also feels cyclical with how he started. Simpson has said that he made his traditionalist 2013 debut High Top Mountain to please his grandfather, a hardcore “classic” country fan and the very same “Dood” who is saluted on Dood And Juanita. (Juanita is the name of Simpson’s real-life grandmother.) The new record is precisely the sort of music that fans of High Top Mountain have likely been waiting for him to make again. But it’s also more iconoclastic and cinematic than the debut, following a trend in which film has played an increasingly large role in Simpson’s career. (His part in Martin Scorsese’s forthcoming movie marks a new peak in his acting career.)

A tale of love and revenge that crosses a Sergio Leone-style story with Coen Brothers-like eccentricity, Dood And Juanita practically is a film for the ears, with a plainly told story involving cold-blooded killers, a heart-rending romance set to Latin-tinged guitar licks played by none other than Willie Nelson, and a very sweet and very dead hound dog. If this is the end of Sturgill Simpson as we know it, The Ballad Of Dood And Juanita is an appropriate closing statement.

Of course, this likely is the end of just this part of his career. And I think it will be worth regarding these five albums as a discrete section of his discography, however it may take shape from here. (Also, for the record: I think he passes the Five Albums Test with The Ballad Of Dood And Juanita.) Then again, it’s equally likely that Simpson will change his mind and knock out a pedal steel-accented prog-rock album under the Sturgill Simpson banner by Thanksgiving. I admire Sturgill, but I don’t exactly trust him. I do appreciate, however, that he remains unpredictable, even if he claims that he’s told us what he’s up to all along.

The Ballad Of Dood And Juanita is out now via High Top Mountain Records. Get it here.

Co-signs from an established artist can be huge in the music industry, and perhaps the biggest co-sign an up-and-coming rapper can get from Eminem is being signed to his Shady Records label. Now, Eminem has revealed what he looks for in a Shady Records artist.

Atlanta rapper and Shady signee GRIP is the subject of a new Complex profile, and for that, the publication spoke with Eminem, who said of GRIP, “We all got excited about GRIP after we heard [the 2019 album] Snubnose. It was really refreshing to hear a new artist so focused on making a conceptual project and it caught my attention.”

Eminem went on to detail his desired traits in a Shady rapper, saying:

“It’s definitely great when artists we sign connect with a larger audience, and 50 [Cent] is a perfect example of that. Obviously we want anyone who signs with Shady to succeed. But first and foremost we’ve always focused on the raw talent and ability of the artist as an MC. We’ve always been pretty clear on that being the main thing we look for: high level fundamental skills and mechanics are definitely the priority.”

He also spoke about his philosophy on collaborating with Shady artists, saying, “It’s really important in a creative collaboration for there to be that personal connection for it to succeed. Shady is a boutique label and we don’t sign a lot of artists, so we have a chance to get involved at a deeper level with the ones we do. And I think that goes both ways. I like to be motivated by the artists we sign and I want to feel pushed by their creativity as well. The people we sign have a point of view and vibe that made us want to work with them in the first place. Part of our job is to help them get out to a bigger audience but also I don’t like to insert myself where I’m not needed. I am looking to find where and how I can get involved that adds to or builds on what the artist is already doing.”

Check out the full feature here.

Ahead of their upcoming collaboration for Don’t Look Up, a Netflix original that takes a dark comedic look at the pending climate crisis, Jonah Hill sat down for a lengthy interview conducted by director Adam McKay in which the two reminisced on Hill’s career. Interestingly, Don’t Look Up is their first time working together, but they’ve known each other going all the way back to Hill’s breakout performance in Superbad. As Hill recalls, he could tell his life had significantly changed thanks to an unforgettable experience involving McKay, Will Ferrell, and a taco shop. Via GQ:

I remember when we met, because Seth Rogen lived in an apartment behind Canter’s [Deli, in Los Angeles], and then Seth was the first one to start making paper. And so he got a house, and then I moved into his apartment behind Canter’s. There was a taco shop around the corner, and you and Will Ferrell were eating tacos. It must’ve been right before or after Superbad came out, but I remember that you guys wanted to talk to me. And I sat down and talked to you guys. And you guys were, like, talking to me. And I was like, This is the sickest! This is it! I get to talk to these people I’m obsessed with.

As McKay recalls, he was actually aware of Hill thanks to his small turn in I Heart Huckabees, and he also remembered the taco shop meeting because Hill kept cracking him up with taco jokes. “Anyone who can talk about tacos with joy and humor is okay by me,” McKay said. This is a good life lesson for all of us, really, and especially today. It is Taco Tuesday, after all.

(Via GQ)