Don’t feed the trolls. It’s the most basic of all the internet rules. This tenet has held true long as chat rooms, discussion forums, message boards, and social networks have existed. There have always been people so hungry for attention, engagement, and, hell, human contact that they will do or say almost anything to get it — including some truly disgusting, heinous, offensive stuff. Yet as long as this has been the case, it’s been almost impossible to convince people to observe that one, simple principle: If you ignore them, they’ll go away.

Tekashi 69 knows this — he probably knows it better than anyone else. It’s the human nature he banked on when he first set out to secure his position in the pantheon of rap superstars before him. NWA, Eminem, 50 Cent, Snoop Dogg, and more all leveraged that same tendency. Controversy sells; 69 just took it to the absolute extreme, blurring the lines between fiction and fact and buying into his own gimmick enough to end up on the wrong side of the law. That’s his genius and the reason why he just won’t go away, no matter what the above-mentioned rap stars, their peers, or their fans say, weathering every career-ending storm to emerge bigger than ever.

To condense the timeline a bit: 20-year-old Danny Hernandez made himself a viral star by choosing an over-the-top look, dubbing himself with a provocative stage name, and picking fight after fight with his rap peers and the enemies of his Nine Trey Bloods backers. In doing so, he built a brand that would prove to be bulletproof. His scream-rap style and rainbow hair drew attention, both negative and positive, as his antics also drew attention — from the federal authorities, who grabbed him and his Nine Trey cohorts in a racketeering case that pitted Tekashi against a potential 47-year prison sentence.

The possibility of serving out the rest of his adult life behind bars was enough to convince the young rapper to turn canary, testifying in a controversial trial that saw his former colleagues in Nine Trey receive long sentences. His own sentence was truncated to accommodate both his cooperation and the eventual COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic (Tekashi is asthmatic, making him more vulnerable to the virus’ effects). Upon his release, he went right back to his trolling ways, joking about being a snitch on Instagram and prepping the release of his first post-incarceration single “Gooba.”

Therein lies the genius of Tekashi 69: He knows that the one thing none of us can ever do is look away from a train wreck — especially now that there’s little else to do but watch those boxcars pile up. Tiger King, The Last Dance, Donald Trump’s daily briefings — we can’t get enough of watching bullies and trolls do what they do. Nor can we keep ourselves from reacting, which only turns the dial on their buzz further and further clockwise (insert Spinal Tap “this one goes up to eleven” quote here). We know we shouldn’t feed the trolls, but we do anyway. They want attention and they know that their provocations can and will garner plenty of it, so long as they are loud enough, boisterous enough, obnoxious enough, and/or wrong enough.

Tekashi 69 is all of those things. He’s “wrong” in the eyes of rap purists for his loud, aggressive, borderline arhythmic rhymes. He’s “wrong” in the eyes of street disciples (and their naive, melanin-deficient suburban acolytes) for breaking “street code.” His colorful presentation is eye-catching and irritating enough to the muted stylistic sensibilities of Westerners to inspire railing rants against it and what they think it represents. He’s also willing to lean all the way into the snitch jokes, inoculating himself against the accusations in much the same way Eminem’s 8 Mile character did against the white jokes that’d be leveraged against him in rap battles.

“69” or its unusual stylization, “6ix9ine,” nearly always find themselves near the top of Twitter’s trending topics, while Tekashi 69’s first Instagram livestream after his release broke Instagram’s previous reported record with 2 million viewers. It’s a constant feedback loop of commenters giving Tekashi their attention and Tekashi giving them an endless supply of fat to chew on, debate, discuss, or rant about — which only gives him even more attention. As much as fans and Tekashi’s contemporaries say they disapprove, they can’t resist doing exactly what he wants: Keeping his name on the tips of their tongues (or thumbs).

A funny thing I noticed recently is how few comments my posts get these days. Not for nothing, I also noticed that the dropoff seems to correlate with the day I decided to stop entertaining them and let my biggest fans/trolls talk among themselves. It seems they got bored pretty quickly with talking to each other. I guess they don’t like themselves any more than they hate me. When I stopped feeding the trolls, they basically went away, save for a few diehards who seem to hold out hope (hey Deputy Dawg! I see you, boy! Hope your quarantine is going well). However, it’s easy for one person to resist taking the bait; it’s nearly impossible to convince the 2 million people who’d tune into an Instagram Live just to get the tea on a widely publicized legal case to do the same (seriously, nothing Tekashi said during his Live was new information). That’s why Tekashi will be here for a long time and why he’ll always get the last laugh.

Get ready for more of Lil Dicky, Elz, GaTa, and the gang’s comic misadventures in the rap biz — Dave has been renewed for a second season by FX, according to Deadline. The news should come as little surprise after the first season became one of TV’s most talked-about new series (in the same way Donald Glover’s Atlanta did back in 2016), but Deadline‘s report includes some numbers showing just how beloved Lil Dicky’s brainchild became in it’s opening run.

Dave is FX Networks’ most-watched comedy series ever, averaging 5.32 million total viewers (across live viewings, video on demand, and streaming, thanks to FX’s new deal with Hulu) per episode. In comparison, Atlanta, the previous ruler, averaged 5.2 million viewers in its first season. Dave also grew its week-to-week audience by more than a million viewers multiple times during its first 10 episodes — an impressive feat, considering it originally ran on FX’s FXX channel rather than the flagship station.

Dave is based loosely on the life and experiences of the real-life Lil Dicky, Dave Burd, who basically plays himself as he encounters rappers, managers, label execs, and fans while trying to juggle his relationship and his various neuroses about being an atypical, white rapper who sometimes toes the line of taste with his jokes but still wants to be taken seriously.

Watch Dave’s first season now on Hulu.

With all sports (and sports-entertainment) leagues currently hurting for new content to keep audiences engaged, networks are pulling out the big guns: Multi-part documentaries of some of their most iconic athletes. And what The Last Dance is to the NBA, Undertaker: The Last Ride is is to the WWE Universe. This five-part docuseries, whose first episode aired yesterday and will continue to air exclusively on the WWE Network every Sunday for the next four weeks, follows the journey of the Undertaker from the days before his WrestleMania 33 match in 2017 until, presumably, present day.

We at With Spandex will be watching along with the rest of you every Sunday and distilling each episode down in our new recap, Ride Or Die. Here’s what we learned from episode one of The Last Ride.

The Undertaker Is Getting Old

Filming for The Last Ride‘s first episode, The Greatest Fear, started three days before WrestleMania 33, at the personal request of Mark Calaway. The entire undercurrent of this episode is that ostensibly, this is the end for the Undertaker, and that Roman Reigns will be the one to retire him. Calaway is caught on camera joking around with Jim Cornette and Jimmy Hart about being pro wrestling’s version of Santa Claus (because he only comes around once a year), as well as ribbing fellow legends such as Kurt Angle and Shawn Michaels at that year’s Hall Of Fame ceremony, before later opening up about the stark reality of his current situation:

“The Streak is what made it okay for me to only work once a year, because I had to defend the Streak. It takes its toll. I had a five-year stretch where my schedule would be, I would prepare for Mania, I would have my Mania match, then I would have some kind of surgery to repair whatever had been bothering me going into that match, then go straight from rehab right into training to be ready to go for Mania again.”

He goes on to admit it’s a huge challenge to only work once a year (a sentiment later reinforced by Triple H) and that he simply can’t work a full schedule anymore.

The Undertaker Is Well-Respected

No big surprise here, right? The Last Ride pulls out the big guns in its first episode with a slew of legendary talking heads, all talking about how important Mark Calaway is to the wrestling business and how much respect they hold for the big man. We hear platitudes from legit WWE Hall Of Famers Mick Foley, Ric Flair, Bret Hart, Shawn Michaels, Batista, Edge, Steve Austin, Triple H, Kurt Angle, Mark Henry, Scott Hall, JBL and Jim Ross, plus surefire Hall Of Famers such as Randy Orton, Roman Reigns, Bray Wyatt and the Big Show (and also three-years-ago Chris Jericho, billed as “former WWE Superstar”). Plus Vince McMahon himself shows up — he doesn’t do that for very many of these WWE Network documentary pieces, so you know this one’s important.

The Undertaker’s Confidence Was Shattered Because Of WrestleMania XXX

Taker says his back-to-back WrestleMania matches with Shawn Michaels were challenging, and his match with Triple H at WrestleMania 27 was “brutal,” resulting in him spending two full days in a hotel room afterward just to recover, before eventually having hip surgery. That surgery rolled back his odometer a bit, though, as he says his next two Mania matches, against Triple H and CM Punk respectively, were “pretty good,” but when it comes to his WrestleMania 30 match against Brock Lesnar, that’s where everything gets tough.

This is without a doubt the most intense part of The Last Ride‘s first episode, as we find out more about Taker’s concussion he suffered mid-match and how it was much more severe than anyone had known until now:

“I’m not sure when I got concussed. I don’t know how that match happened. I have no recollection of any of that. My last memory of that day was at about I’d say 3:30 in the afternoon.”

WWE trainer Larry Heck confirms the story of Vince McMahon following the ambulance to the hospital, adding that Brock Lesnar was also with Vince. And even as Taker tried to tell people he was okay, Michelle McCool reveals otherwise:

“He was trying to cheat in the hospital. Nurses would come and go, ‘What’s your name?’ And he would ask me, ‘What’s my name again?’ He was so severely concussed he didn’t know his name, he didn’t know where we were, he didn’t know why we were in New Orleans. He didn’t know his name until 4 a.m.”

Calaway thinks it was a combination of age and ring rust that caught up with him in that Mania match. “One concussion and one match destroyed my confidence,” he comments, echoing a remark made by Steve Austin earlier in the episode: “Ring rust and timing is real. The nervous system, the nerves play into all that.”

Fast-forward to 2015, and WrestleMania 31. Taker’s opponent, Bray Wyatt, says he had no idea the Dead Man was lacking confidence, but it was apparent to Triple H, who approached him backstage and gave him a quick, profane motivational speech: “Show them who the fuck you are. Fuck last year. Kill this thing.”

After the match, Taker is shown joking with Vince about knowing his name, a big change from the aftermath of WrestleMania XXX. His restored confidence led to a more active schedule in the ensuing year, working an additional six matches in 2015, including two more with Lesnar.

The Undertaker Was Not Ready For WrestleMania 33

The final portion of The Last Ride‘s first episode focuses on the day of WrestleMania 33, which is clearly being framed as his final WWE match. You have some perfunctory remarks from Roman Reigns talking about how honored he is to be his dance partner, but more importantly, you have Taker himself reflecting on his own legacy, and his value to WWE.

“If I’m on the card, there’s some young guy that may not be on that card. It’s my duty to make sure it’s worth putting me on the card. No one would probably say anything to my face if I stunk it up, but i would know. That’s one of my biggest fears, is becoming a parody of myself. It would kill me to know that some dad who watched me when he was young has to turn to his son and go ‘yeah he’s moving kinda slow now but you should’ve seen him 10, 15 years ago.”

Fine speech. But the problem is, everyone else around Taker seemed to know he wasn’t in peak shape for this one. Just moments after calling him “the greatest performer that’s ever been in the history of this business,” JBL shoots from the hip and says, “I’d never seen him in worse physical shape than he was before WrestleMania.”

Edge compares Taker ca. 2016 to Brett Favre playing for the Vikings, noting that there will be always be flashes of greatness, but it doesn’t matter how spotty their performance is or what anyone else says, because due to their pedigree, “they have cart blanche to say when it’s time.”

As Taker approaches Camping World Stadium, he remarks, “They say fighters can grow old in one fight. Hopefully this isn’t that fight.” (Little does he know…)

Some of the most fun stuff happens as the cameras follow Taker around the stadium before the show. You get to see a visibly nervous Kofi Kingston shake Taker’s hand (but not before quickly wiping it on his pants), an embrace between the Dead Man and Lesnar (a beautiful acknowledgement of the war they put each other through) as well as the Dead Man and Goldberg (foreshadowing their disastrous match two years later) and the ever-observant Chris Jericho, who quickly puts two and two together when seeing a camera crew following Calaway around, realizing this is the end of his career.

We later see Calaway limping into a trainer’s room, getting a cortisone injection in his knee to “take the edge off it.” This might be the most human we’ve ever seen the Undertaker, emphasized by his remarks:

“The business comes first, first and foremost. Our job is to go out and be first-class professional entertainers and give our fans what they paid their hard-earned money to see.”

Unfortunately, we all know what happens next: A main event match against Roman Reigns that was passable at best, resulting in the Undertaker “going out on [his] shield” before quickly scrambling to his feet and putting his entrance gear back on, just so he can take it off in a dramatic fashion and leave it in the center of the ring.

Afterward, Taker is met by a similarly fatigued Triple H below the entrance ramp, who embraces him and congratulates him on a “hell of a run.” A little bit later, after he gets the excess fluid in his knee drained, Calaway remarks, “I’m pretty content riding off into the sunset. We’ll see what tomorrow brings.”

This could have been a standalone episode — and maybe had the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia never came calling, it might have been — but instead, we get four more. And given the iffiness of some of Taker’s post-retirement matches, it looks like The Last Ride is about to pick a whole lot of scabs in the coming weeks.

As students across the world have had to adjust to taking lessons online, Ed Sheeran chose to offer an elementary class some much-needed motivation. The singer surprised a Zoom music class at a South London elementary school to teach the children one of his songs and impart some of his wisdom.

Timothy Spoerer, the music director at Ecclesbourne Primary School, was teaching his music class over Zoom when the kids had a very special surprise visitor. According to The Sun, Ed Sheeran hopped on the call to chat with the kids and teach them some lessons.

Sheeran began by giving the students a tutorial of his hit song “Perfect” on guitar. Afterward, Sheeran held a Q&A session with the kids and answered questions about his schooling and decision to make a career out of music.

Sheeran told the students that because he didn’t do well in school, he thought that meant he wasn’t smart. “I basically wasn’t very smart at school I thought I was an idiot for a very long time,” he said. “I couldn’t do maths, science, and English, and I was told to be successful in life you had to do those things.”

The singer said he received a lot of support from his dad to pursue music: “I loved playing music, that’s what made me happiest. My dad always said to me, ‘If you want to be a musician work really hard at it’. I wanted to make music my job but it was a lot of hard work and struggling; essentially the way I got my income and paid my bills was by playing covers at weddings.”

As for new music, Sheeran told the students that he’s continuing a self-imposed hiatus in order to focus on his family life.

Ed Sheeran is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

When the Chicago Bulls entered the 1996 NBA Finals against the Seattle SuperSonics they were massive favorites to win their fourth ring in six years. After completing the best regular season in history, going 72-10, there were few that gave Seattle much of a chance, and the first three games seemed to prove those Sonics doubters right as the Bulls ripped their way to a 3-0 series lead.

Seattle would eventually claw their way back into a 3-2 series before getting closed out in Chicago on Father’s Day by an incredibly emotional Michael Jordan. One of the ways the Sonics worked their ways back into the series was by putting Gary Payton on Michael Jordan, unleashing the Defensive Player of the Year on Jordan and making life more difficult on him.

While Jordan laughed, quite heartily in fact, at Payton’s assertion his defense “took a toll” on Jordan, [extreme condescending MJ voice] The Glove did have some success on the defensive end against him and the numbers back it up. One of the reasons Jordan might remember not having trouble with Payton is that he felt he had a mental edge on the feisty guard thanks to a moment after Game 1 of that series, as Ahmad Rashad relayed in a tweet after Sunday’s episodes.

Now, with any story about Michael Jordan finding an edge, I would like to have a second source confirm this happened — else we find out this was a LaBradford Smith deal — but if it did indeed happen this way, I can certainly see Jordan seeing this as a moment he knew the Sonics were no match for that year’s Bulls. If Payton, their strongest willed player, was wanting Jordan’s shoes then that’s absolutely the kind of thing that would make Michael believe they as a team were too mentally weak — although you will never find me, personally, speaking ill of The Glove or his will to win.

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The ‘Billions’ Stock Watch is a weekly accounting of the action on the Showtime drama. Decisions will be made based on speculation and occasional misinformation and mysterious whims that are never fully explained to the general public. Kind of like the real stock market.

STOCK DOWN — Bobby Axelrod

Good news and bad news for Bobby Axelrod this week.

The bad news is that he got played, bamboozled even, by Mike Prince, at Mike’s own event. The fireside chat, the charity work, all of it. Axe had it all worked out. Prince was playing into his hands and he was going to have the market cornered on medicinal ayahuasca, or pharma-huasca, if you want to talk like some capitalist psycho. What a perfectly Axe move this was going to be, in two distinct, extremely Axe-y ways: One, he was going to commodify an ancient treatment that comes from nature and has been used for centuries in a hunt for enlightenment, and he was going to turn it into a premium weekend brain twister for rich white people in the Hamptons, which is really just classic Bobby Axelrod; two, it revealed that his own experiment with the treatment in the premiere was not part of his own search for meaning as much as it was a business trip to lock in a key partner, because Bobby Axelrod will never change, not once, not ever.

Unfortunately for him, again, the bamboozling, which was revealed to both him and the audience in the final moments of the episode when Prince introduced the shaman and announced his plans to corner the very market Bobby thought he was about to corner. Which brings us to the good news, believe it or not…

The man got to say the sentence “You stole my shaman.” That’s one pretty wild collection of words. I’m not sure anyone has ever said them before in that order. Maybe they have. I don’t know. I’m not fully up on the history of duplicitous shaman maneuvers. I do know that I am absolutely delighted that I got to put the phrase “shaman heist” in this headline, though. I did not expect that to happen today, or any other day for that matter. A great start to the week.

Anyway, I guess Axe is fed up and planning to start his own bank now. We’ve all been there. Kind of.

STOCK UP — Smiling at your enemy while the camera has you framed in front of a crackling fire to reveal you as the devious bastard you truly are

Love Mike Prince. Love him. Love his whole deal, talking about giving back and privilege and his high school hoops glory days. Love how he infuriates Axe in every way, down to Axe’s icy core, with his talk about fairness and community and teamwork. And I especially love that there is very clearly a killer lurking about six inches below the surface of all of that. I did not necessarily see the exact shaman switcheroo coming, but I did know something devious way in play from Mike, and I knew it for two reasons:

• The look on his face in the screenshot at the top of this section, which, when coupled with the fire crackling behind him and the perfect “dramatic music” caption — always watch Billions with captions on — was such a villainous moment that I’m surprised he didn’t fill the room with poison and strap on a gas mask:
• Dude named his big fancy do-gooder conference “The Mike,” which is his first name

Don’t listen to his words. Look into his eyes. Mike Prince is a predator, too. He’s just sneaky about it.

STOCK UP — Lying to yourself

Oh, Chuck. Oh, you sweet delusional man. All this talk of your new code, with various Dexter references and support from Sacker in staying on the right path, with the goal of only using your diabolical powers for good, for society, for justice… you know this is all hooey, right? You know it. You have to. I say this because, in the same episode you started preaching this sermon, you also froze your soon-to-be ex-wife’s assets and steered your alleged friend Judge Adam out of one job he wanted and into the job you wanted him to have, the latter of which involved leaked memos and long games and tough senators. Yes, you protested, the ball had been rolling on this before you announced your code. But you sure did not try to stop it from rolling, not even a little.

It’s sweet that you think you’re in control of “the monster” that you and Bobby both referenced separately, though. Cute, even. I give it three episodes, four tops, before you ruin, like, an elementary school crossing guard to knock down a single domino in your battle with Axe. But good for you.

STOCK DOWN — Waterboarding, generally

Pretty tough for waterboarding to go down from its previous position, given its decades of history. And yet, here we are. Chuck Rhoades said it: if even he didn’t enjoy it, given his own decades of history with various forms of torture, I mean… yeah. Just a rough week for waterboarding as an entire concept.

Also, while I do love Billions very much, I am livid at everyone involved that we were denied the scene where Chuck offered to be waterboarded. Come on. I can see the whole thing in my head: him floating the idea with a twinkle in his eye, everyone kind of smirking, Karl getting all excited about it. Give me this as a web extra. I deserve it. We all do.

STOCK DOWN — MaseCap, Lauren excluded

Taylor had a bad meeting with Oscar, in which he said he doesn’t want his money with Axelrod and will pull it from Taylor because of it

Chuck knows Taylor triple crossed him and told them at a clandestine meeting in some parking lot, threats included, because why even have a clandestine meeting if you’re not issuing threats.

Hammon is getting railroaded by Wendy and doesn’t know her place after the merger and is feeling all sorts of useless and confused and her concerns were not exactly assuaged in the brief meeting she had with Taylor, which was yet another 30-second meeting that took place in person even though it could have easily happened over, like, text, which is just a perfect Billions thing.

But Lauren — Lauren — continues her rise in the business world and the unofficial power rankings I keep in my head, thanks to Wendy’s co-sign and her staggering competence at whatever exactly it is that she does. There’s something devious about her. I can’t put my finger on it. But the way she dunked that teabag while greeting Hammon… I can’t decide if she’s the most menacing character on the show or just the coolest. Maybe both.

STOCK UP — Dollar Bill

See, you’d think Dollar Bill would be a Stock Down situation this week, what with his performance issues and crusts of confidence. It’s a dark time for Dollar Bill, right now, in this moment.

But look at him at the end of the episode, when he turns down a minivan romp with Bonnie and opts for quiet time. He’s on a journey. He’s looking into himself. He knows something went awry and he’s trying to fix it. That’s not nothing. It’s a big step. Dollar Bill is getting himself back on the right track. I’m proud of him.

It won’t be great when he comes out of this with a plan to, like, buy up a chain of daycares and load them up with debt that leads to mass closings and layoffs, but that’s an issue for another week. Baby steps.

STOCK UP — Fancy pasta

Few shows on television make me as consistently hungry as Billions. This week was no exception. Look at that pasta. Look at it. Uggghhh I want it in my face right now. I don’t even know exactly what it is. It looks a little like a fancy cacio e pepe. What’s better than cacio e pepe? Not a lot, buddy, I’ll tell you that. There was probably some schmuck at this conference who was pissed he didn’t get lobster or steak or both. What a doofus. Lobster and steak are great. I’ll eat them for dinner tonight if you’re buying. But I would cut you with your own steak knife for this pasta. I’m a simple man. A simple, apparently violent man.

STOCK DOWN — Wags, but not for that reason

Wags discovered his daughter was stripping at a fancy strip club in the mountains and promptly freaked out, explaining to Axe that he failed the Chris Rock test by not keeping his daughter off the pole. That’s not why his stock went down, though. That happened because:

• He was apparently such an absentee father that he had no clue what his daughter was doing with her life until he saw her dancing to “Cherry Pie”
• He didn’t know where she was living, or he did and he made no effort to see her when he was in the area, instead opting for multiple nights of his patented debauchery
• He yoinked her out of the club and stuck her “in a facility,” which is fine if she has a drug problem, I guess, but maybe what she really needs is a dad who isn’t all Wags-y all the time.

It’s a “chickens coming home to roost” situation. I hope they reconcile and she moves in with him and Wags suddenly has to become a dad. Give me that entire spinoff. Give him three other kids, too. There’s a television show.

In just about each episode of The Last Dance we have heard Michael Jordan tell a different story about how he would find additional motivation for himself going into big games. That motivation sometimes came from a genuine place, like trying to topple the Bad Boys Pistons who knocked them out of the playoffs two years in a row.

Other times, that motivation was manufactured from something the media said (like, Clyde Drexler was on the same level as him) or if he knew Jerry Krause was fond of a player on the other team (poor Dan Majerle). By 1996, Jordan’s ways of manipulating the truth to feed his competitive fire were well known, and George Karl was trying his best to avoid that same fate when he saw Jordan at a restaurant with Ahmad Rashad prior to Game 1 in Chicago.

As Jordan and Rashad remember it, Karl walked right by them without acknowledging them, which angered Michael because they were two UNC guys who played golf together. As Karl told Scott Van Pelt on SportsCenter Sunday night, he was simply trying not to get caught up in Jordan’s head games or say the wrong thing to him with a comment Jordan could flip into some motivation.

“It is true. I had Brendan Malone on my staff from the Detroit Pistons, and he said Michael plays head games with you all the time, and he said you don’t want to mess with him in the series. Say hello at the beginning of the series, shake his hand at the end of the series, but during the series don’t let him use anything to motivate himself to be a better player than the greatest player in NBA basketball.”

By simply trying not to do something wrong, Karl did something wrong and that’s just how it was going against Jordan. You were damned if you do and damned if you don’t, because he could always find something that worked as a slight against him — even if it meant making it up.

Billie Eilish has been enjoying her alone time in quarantine instead of catching up with friends on Zoom calls, but the singer is still staying productive. On top of Eilish launching a new radio show with her father last week, the singer is also devoting time to recording new music.

Eilish detailed the status of her new music in a recent interview on Apple Music’s Beats 1 with Zane Lowe. The singer revealed she has been spending a good amount of time in the studio with her brother/producer Finneas. The duo has completed an entire song so far, and have even more in the works.

“We’ve been in the ‘stu,’ which just means Finneas’ basement, basically,” Eilish told Lowe. “We actually, we wrote a whole song in its entirety — an entire song, which is kind of rare for us. I really love it. It was like exactly what I needed to say when we wrote it.”

Eilish continued that the track is a way for her to work through the landslide of emotions that she has experienced with the onslaught of the global pandemic. Though Eilish thinks she is supposed to be feeling despondent, the singer is actually enjoying a break from her the limelight:

“Honestly, I feel great. The song I was talking about earlier that we wrote a couple weeks ago that felt so right was … I wish I could sing it for you, but I can’t. It was just about, there was this part in it — I needed to say this — which was I know I’m supposed to feel unhappy right now because of this break and because I’m not seeing anybody … I feel like there’s this kind of thing that I feel like is floating around of like you’re supposed to be missing people. You’re supposed to be missing this person and be missing people in general. I kind of have this feeling of like, I miss my really close friends, I miss people, of course I do, but I also at the same time am liking the space.”

Listen to the full Beats 1 episode here.

As Swizz Beats and Timbaland’s Verzuz hits battle series on Instagram grows in popularity, their viewer numbers grow with it. After Babyface and Teddy Riley set viewership records for the show at around 500K viewers despite uncle-related technical difficulties, the first woman-oriented battle demolished the previous record, with Eyrkah Badu and Jill Scott’s battle/celebration of each other reaching a reported high of around 750K. The “battle” started off exactly as many expected, with both stars playing their versions of The Roots’ Grammy-winning hit “You Got Me,” as Badu projected a Bruce Lee movie on the wall behind her and Scott picked up the slack when Erykah’s connection dropped out.

Verzuz has become the in-home distraction de rigeur for many music fans during the extended quarantine as millennial music legends face off to play ten rounds of their greatest hits, share stories from the good old days, and occasionally talk sh*t during their livestreams on Instagram. While billed as a battle, they function more as history lessons and celebrations of stars’ careers and legacies, attracting both contemporary fans and younger ones curious to see what all the fuss is about. Fans have even begun speculating about which matchups they want to see, while stars themselves have taken to challenging each other, with Ja Rule and 50 Cent rekindling their rivalry, DMX challenging Jay-Z, and 2 Chainz issuing an open challenge that culminated in fans selecting Meek Mill as a worthy opponent (this battle has yet to happen, though).

The next Verzuz matchup between Ludacris and Nelly has been confirmed. See more here.