Karol G excited fans this week by announcing a new album, Mañana Será Bonito, with an endearing Instagram video. In it, the Colombian superstar spots a piece of paper urging anyone who feels sad to call the listed number. She dials it, and viewers are taken inside a call center run by children.

The young boy who picks up Karol G’s call gives her advice while wearing a purple T-shirt with “Mañana Será Bonito” written across it. The phrase translates to “tomorrow will be beautiful.” The video ends with the written message “COMING SOON…”

And that’s where we still stand. Karol G has not yet announced a specific release date for the album, though there’s a better than good chance that she will not be touring in support of it in 2023. Karol G did dish some details about the album in an exclusive interview with Rolling Stone.

“Every day, I kept finding something I wanted to change or rethink, or finding little details I wanted to update,” she told the publication. “It’s always hard, but now I’ve turned it in and it’s finished, and I can’t wait for people to hear it.”

She also explained the reasoning behind the title: “This definitely represents a specific phase of my life. The name of album is a phrase I kept repeating to myself when nothing felt great. I mean, I was going through the best moment of my career, but personally, I was really disconnected from myself and from my friends. I wasn’t unhappy, but I wasn’t happy either. So every day, I’d say to myself, ‘It’s okay, mañana será bonito — tomorrow will be beautiful.’”

Karol G last dropped KG0516 in 2021. It was nominated for Best Música Urbana Album at last year’s Grammys.

Rae Sremmurd returned with a brand new song, “Sucka Or Sum.” The duo members, Slim Jxmmi and Swae Lee, have put out a handful of songs recently, including “Torpedo,” “Denial,” and “Community D*ck” featuring Flo Milli.

They previously teased a snippet of the song in a Twitter video as they got fans excited by jamming out. Produced by Jaxx, “Sucka Or Sum” opens with a calming instrumental before dropping the booming beat.

The music video for the song finds the two brothers dressed as construction workers, in fancy suits, and just having a good time in their regular clothes. Add in some enticing visual effects, and it creates a seriously cool viewing experience.

Last May, Rae Sremmurd began teasing their long-awaited fourth studio album, which could potentially feature their latest few singles. “SREMM4LIFE,” they tweeted along with a photo of a “4” on fire. However, there is currently not a release date and only limited info about the project.

“We’ve got to give them something new, man. As an artist, it’s hard to be yourself, and I feel like with this album, it was like we’re not following a trend,” Jxmmi told GQ last year. “We want set the tone.”

Listen to Rae Sremmurd’s “Sucka Or Sum” above.

Coldplay is gearing up to continue their Music Of The Spheres Tour, including some recently added US dates. Music Of The Spheres arrived in October 2021, but Coldplay reached deep in their bag and brought out a track from their 2002 album A Rush Of Blood To The Head for Jimmy Kimmel Live on Thursday night, January 26.

On January 26, 2003, Jimmy Kimmel Live premiered. Coldplay was the long-running talk show’s first-ever musical guest. And so, Chris Martin joined Kimmel to commemorate the 20-year anniversary. Kimmel remembered telling Martin during the premiere episode that he and his crew “wanted to have a band on the show that we’d be proud we had on the show in 20 years, and boy, it was the one thing that we got right.”

Martin added that “we’re both really lucky” and thanked Kimmel before apologizing for not having a song to perform because Kimmel called Coldplay “kind of last minute.” He pretended he was there alone without the rest of the band and presented Kimmel with a music box. After Kimmel wound it, it started playing “Clocks,” the song that Coldplay performed on January 26, 2003.

You guessed it: Martin launched into another performance of “Clocks,” 20 years later.

It’s just one stop on Coldplay’s trip down memory lane in the coming weeks. Also on Thursday, Saturday Night Live announced that Coldplay will serve as the musical guest on February 4 episode hosted by Pedro Pascal. That will mark Coldplay’s seventh time performing on SNL, among the most appearances of any musical guest in SNL history.

Watch Martin’s nostalgic “Clocks” performance on Kimmel above.

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

Throughout last year, Kali Uchis teased that she had finished not one but two new studio albums. After taking to Twitter to poll fans on whether they wanted the English album or the Spanish one first, she is now heading into her new era. Uchis revealed the title of her upcoming album, Red Moon In Venus, shortly after announcing the record’s first single.

Here is everything you need to know about Red Moon In Venus.

Release Date

Red Moon In Venus is out 3/3 via Geffen. Pre-save it here.

Tracklist

1. “In My Garden”
2. “I Wish You Roses”
3. “Worth The Wait” Feat. Omar Apollo
4. “Love Between”
5. “All Mine”
6. “Fantasy” Feat. Don Toliver
7. “Como Te Quiero Yo”
8. “Hasta Quando”
9. “Endlessly”
10. “Moral Conscience”
11. “Not Too Late (Interlude)”
12. “Blue”
13. “Deserve Me” Feat. Summer Walker
14. “Moonlight”
15. “Happy Now”

Features

Uchis’ new album will include three features currently: Summer Walker (“Deserve Me”), Omar Apollo (“Worth The Wait”), and Don Toliver (“Fantasy”).

Artwork

She unveiled the album cover on Instagram, along with a fiery photoshoot.

Singles

So far, Uchis has dropped just the album’s lead single, “I Wish You Roses.” Watch the video here.

Tour

Kali Uchis is set to head on tour in support of Red Moon In Venus this spring. Raye will be opening her shows, with more information available here.

04/16 — Indio, CA @ Coachella
04/23 — Indio, CA @ Coachella
04/25 — Austin, TX @ Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park
04/26 — Houston, TX @ 713 Music Hall
04/27 — Irving, TX @ The Pavilion at Toyota Music Factory
04/30 — Miami, FL @ FPL Solar Amphitheater at Bayfront Park
05/01 — Orlando, FL @ Hard Rock Live Orlando
05/02 — Atlanta, GA @ Coca-Cola Roxy
05/04 — New York, NY @ Radio City Music Hall
05/07 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Met Philadelphia
05/09 — Washington, D.C. @ The Anthem
05/10 — Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway
05/12 — Toronto, ON @ Coca-Cola Coliseum
05/14 — Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore
05/16 — Chicago, IL @ Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom
05/18 — Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium
05/21 — Portland, OR @ Keller Auditorium
05/23 — Vancouver, BC @ UBC Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre
05/24 — Seattle, WA @ WAMU Theater
05/26 — San Francisco, CA @ Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
05/28 — Las Vegas, NV @ The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas
05/30 — Phoenix, AZ @ Arizona Financial Theatre

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

To start, “Lavender Haze” is not Taylor Swift’s phrase — or, at least, it wasn’t before she put her uniquely Swiftian spin on it. And she was the first person to say that before Midnights, her record-breaking album, arrived in October.

“I happened upon the phrase ‘Lavender Haze’ when I was watching Mad Men, and I looked it up because I thought it sounded cool, and it turns out that it was a common phrase that was used in the ’50s where they would just describe being in love,” Swift said in an Instagram video. “Like, If you were in the ‘Lavender Haze,’ that meant you were in that all-encompassing love glow, and I thought that was really beautiful.”

And this is where she related it to her extremely private relationship with the British actor Joe Alwyn.

She continued, “I guess, theoretically, when you’re in the ‘Lavender Haze,’ you’ll do anything to stay there and not let people bring you down off of that cloud. And I think a lot of people have to deal with this now — not just, like, quote-unquote public figures — because we live in the era of social media, and if the world finds out that you’re in love with somebody, they’re gonna weigh in on it. My relationship for six years we’ve had to dodge weird rumors, tabloid stuff, and we just ignore it. And so, this song is sort of about the act of ignoring that stuff to protect the real stuff.”

Swift personalized “Lavender Haze,” the opening Midnights track and one of Uproxx’s Best Songs of 2022, even more by dropping the music video on Friday, January 27.

“The Lavender Haze video is out now,” she wrote on Instagram. “There is lots of lavender. There is lots of haze. There is my incredible costar @laith_ashley who I absolutely adored working with. This was the first video I wrote out of the 3 that have been released, and this one really helped me conceptualize the world and mood of Midnights, like a sultry sleepless ’70s fever dream. Hope you like it.”

As of Friday evening, the Swift-directed video boasted over 5.3 million views. It didn’t take Swifties any time at all to start dissecting it for Easter eggs, including another nod toward Speak Now and a clever inclusion of hers and Alwyn’s zodiac signs.

Watch the “Lavender Haze” video above.

The best new hip-hop this week includes albums, videos, and songs from Lil Yachty, Flo Milli, and more.

We’ve got a little bit of a sleepy week on our hands, at least in regard to full-length drops. However, while only a few hip-hop artists released albums, we did get some buzzy tracks from the likes of Bas (“Diamonds“), Cordae (“Two Tens“), Denzel Curry (“Tally” with Midwxst), Rich Brian (“Sundance Freestyle“), Slowthai (“Selfish“). As for New Music Friday, it seems to have made up in quality what it lacked in quantity.

Here is the best of hip-hop this week ending January 27, 2022.

Albums/EPs/Mixtapes

Lil Yachty — Let’s Start Here

The highest profile release from a rapper this week isn’t technically a rap release, but Yachty’s still (technically) a rapper, and anyway, it’s my column, I can do what I want. Drawing comparisons to Kid Cudi’s experiments into alt- and psych-rock, Yachty’s latest draws on a slew of collaborators for that added dash of authenticity, but let’s face it; it’d be a compelling project by virtue of Yachty himself. His career has taken so many interesting turns and he only gets more likable with each

Reuben Vincent — Love Is War

The protege of veteran producer 9th Wonder and a member of 9th’s label Jamla Records, Reuben was just 16 years old when he got signed in 2016. Now 23, he’s releasing his debut album after a string of impressive mixtapes that showcased his promising talent. More polished and conceptual than you might expect, given his age, Love Is War reveals a fully developed artist who captivates all on his own, even alongside collaborators like Domani, Rapsody, and Reason.

Styles P — Penultimate: A Calm Wolf Is Still A Wolf

Styles’ first project since the death of his longtime manager Hovain finds him resting in a state of uneasy, coiled tension. As he says on the menacing “Intro,” “Sometimes you gotta let that 180 negative go, you know? That 180 positive is always there. That’s the balance.” Thus, the balance is between Styles’ poised flow and the itchy, edgy beats, which evoke the sort of restless nights that come with the rags-to-riches narrative that defines the Yonkers native’s journey.

Singles/Videos

ALLBLACK — “Literally”

The Bay Area native has quietly become one of Northern California’s most consistent presences over the past two years, dropping one project after another of upbeat but honest post-hyphy bangers. He’s been increasing his output in the past few weeks, suggesting the follow-up to 2021’s TY4FWM could be arriving soon.

EST Gee — “Blow Up” and “If I Stop Now”

The Louisville rapper already has a reputation for being as prolific as they come, and he only reinforces it with his double-single release. The back-to-back tracks offer two sides of Gee’s flow — one hard-hitting and the other, melodic — but both convey the same intensity and refusal to be anything less than real.

Mozzy — “Every Night” Feat. Baby Money

Mozzy’s back! His first release of the year is the intimidating “Every Night,” a gritty, blunt portrait of the dangers of Mozz’s environs. It’s a stern warning about the drawbacks of street life — and a promise that Mozzy’s 2023 is going to be bright.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Forgive me for going the long way round while describing the experience of playing the new GoldenEye 007 port on Switch and XBOX, but do you remember the ending of Interstellar? This is going to be a spoiler for that 2014 film, so come on back at the end of the paragraph if you haven’t seen it. But basically, Matthew McConaughey leaves his family behind to find a new, habitable home for mankind, losing time in bunches while traveling through space as years go by in drips and drops on a dying Earth, much to his dismay. When he finally finds his way back to the bedside of his daughter (Jessica Chastain), she’s lived a long, full, and heroic life but is near death. McConaughey, on the other hand, barely seems as though he’s aged. Their reunion is bittersweet, to say the least. He took too long to get home.

Okay, now to the game.

The GoldenEye nostalgia high has you touching clouds when the first chords of the familiar score hit your ear and you reacquaint yourself with pixel Pierce Brosnan and the dossier menu of GoldenEye. But it’s hollow. Like most purely nostalgic things, it offers a pop of initial giddiness and then a building feeling of, “Is this it?” Because the reality of the thing can’t compete with the sweet memory of the original and everything connected to it. This game imprinted so deeply on me because it came at that transitional moment when I was feeling like a kid, but also fascinated by and looking forward to the excitement of more adult things. That’s powerful. But this new GoldenEye’s greatest sin is that it doesn’t come with a time machine. Its second greatest sin is that it took too long to get home.

A GoldenEye 007 port to modern systems has been rumored for years and years, including an XBLA version in 2008 that teased HD graphics and a toggle to play with N64-era visuals. The timing of that would have been perfect, filling a hole for longing fans whose memories were still ultra-fresh, but it died on the vine and we got the half-baked GoldenEye Reloaded in 2011, the occasional rumor, and the lingering desire to get into emulators or find a CRT monitor and an N64. A fading desire, to be honest. Twenty years is a long time to carry a torch for a game.

Putting aside mushy meditations on GoldenEye as an emotional vessel and re-centering on the technical accomplishment of it for a moment, the game was unlike anything I had ever played before. But that was 1997. Jump ahead to 2023 and it’s obviously been lapped several times over by games that took its influence and evolved the idea of what an FPS can be with the benefit of hardware that’s a world away from an N64. You probably used to love using an Etch-A-Sketch, but if someone told you to spend a lot of time with that over a tablet and an Apple Pencil, you might get bored quickly after the awe of reflection dimmed.

I should add (so as to live up to the idea of this as a “review”) that the raw experience of playing this version of the game is great for what it is — I greatly preferred it on GamePass to Switch owing to the limitations of the Switch controller, but your mileage may vary. Visuals are blocky and unrefined, lacking dimension, but they’re of the original era (though fit for modern screens). There’s a kind of beauty to some of the landscapes and the way colors blend. Accidentally otherworldly instead of hyper realistic. It’s kinda trippy when you’re cutting through the snow on a red hazy night in search of a bunker while dozens of foot soldiers trudge through the cold to try and shoot you on sight. And I was playing straight.

I should also point out that I suck at this game, at least on first play. I set a high bar for myself, playing through its levels hundreds of times as a kid, aiming for perfection when it came to how quickly and efficiently I cut through the endless parade of guards and bads. These 35 percent marks for accuracy and clumsy crawls through maps I used to know like the back of my hand? A disgrace that falls squarely on me. But I’ll get better. I’ll run through these levels a few more times to prove to myself that I can be as good at it as I was back in the day. I’ll occasionally tinker with multiplayer in search of those similar nostalgia hits and memories of when I made my little sister play with me when none of my friends were around (and how she kicked my ass at it).

But while that’s more than enough value to get from something that’s basically free on subscriptions I already pay for, I used to think a new GoldenEye was going to be a big part of my gaming diet for a long while if it ever came out, just like it was in the late ’90s, but I just can’t see that happening now. And while that’s a surprise, I don’t know that it’s anyone’s fault, nor do I think it’s a bad thing, especially considering the amount of joy this thing has given me over my lifetime.

I’ve been thinking about nostalgia and who it’s for a lot lately. How I enjoy it, but how it might be toxic for me and for culture, in general, if I treat it as more than an occasional treat. Try as I have through the bulk of my adult life to live in total defiance of reality and time, I can’t be 12 forever and I probably shouldn’t expect or demand the things I grew up with to always be there, capable of holding my attention like they used to.

I do hope people who have never played GoldenEye give it a go and that the fun and novelty of it finds appreciation. It looks like crap (compared to modern games, of course), but the play is still smooth with richly detailed levels that are as fun as they are challenging. Multiplayer, in particular, could be the centerpiece of a lazy weekend night hang with friends. Slap Mode with the aid of a bottle of wine = laughs galore. It’d also be a full circle kind of thing because the original wasn’t built to carry the weight of personal connection or the epic legacy we’ve hung on it, it was meant to be a fun escape then, now, and forever.

The Philadelphia Eagles and the San Francisco 49ers will square off in the NFC Championship Game on Sunday. The game will feature Niners quarterback Brock Purdy, a rookie drafted out of Iowa State with the last pick in the 2023 NFL Draft, facing off against Eagles quarterback and NFL MVP finalist Jalen Hurts.

This isn’t the first time Hurts and Purdy have faced each other in their athletic careers. In college, Hurts and Purdy went head-to-head in a thrilling Big 12 showdown with Hurts and the Oklahoma Sooners getting the best of Purdy and the Cyclones, 42-41. The highlights of that game recently went viral ahead of their first matchup in the NFL coming with such high stakes.

Elsewhere in the City of Brotherly Love, Sixers forward Georges Niang met with the media after practice on Friday. Niang, who attended Iowa State with Purdy and is friends with the Niners signal caller, was asked about who he’s rooting for on Sunday and made clear he’s supporting his current city.

Sure, Niang could support his friend who has had a fairytale season by going undefeated and winning his first two playoff games as a rookie third-string quarterback, but keeping Philly fans in his corner is, obviously, more important. Niang has played in the city long enough to know that.

The 2023 Grammys are right around the corner. This year’s award show is set to be a historical one, as there are a ton of “firsts” among the nominations. Kendrick Lamar is the first artist to be nominated for Album Of The Year for four consecutive releases. Beyonce tied her husband Jay-Z as the most-nominated artist in history. BTS’s “Yet To Come” is the firrst Korean-language song to be nominated. And Bad Bunny’s Un Verano Sin Ti is the first Spanish-language album ever nominated for Album Of The Year.

In addition, Trevor Noah will host for the third time in a row, while the first round of announced performers includes Bad Bunny, Brandi Carlile, Kim Petras, Lizzo, Luke Combs, Mary J. Blige, Sam Smith, and Steve Lacy, with a rumor circulating online that Jay-Z will join DJ Khaled to perform his fan-favorite “God Did” verse. More performers will be announced in the coming weeks.

With all that history flying around, the Grammys will be worth watching… but how do you tune in?

The 2023 Grammys will air live on Sunday, February 5 at 8 pm ET/5 pm PT from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. You can watch on CBS or stream from Paramount+ or the Grammys website.

In between filming Dune, drinking Aperol spritzes, and spearheading the Free The Nipple movement, Florence Pugh has also been working on something a little different for her next movie, A Good Person. While appearing on The Run-Through with Vogue, Pugh revealed that she is releasing her own music that is featured in Zach Braff’s upcoming drama.

“I’ve actually got music being released this year,” Pugh confirmed when asked about her 2023 projects. “I wrote music for [A Good Person] and that’s been a whole exciting experience that I’ve been desperate to do for years.” Pugh stars as a young woman named Allison who goes through a tragic loss at the peak of her career and finds an unlikely friendship with Morgan Freeman’s character. Her original songs will be featured in the movie, which hits theaters on March 24th (the same weekend that everything else is happening).

Pugh is no stranger to music, as she used to upload covers to her YouTube channel before she was a household name. “Ever since I was in school, I really thought I was going to be a musician before I was going to be an actor. And I think it just flipped along the way,” she explained, adding that she had taken time away from music for so long in order to focus on acting.

“[Music] is one of those things that can mean so much to you, and the less you do it the less confidence you have and you end up losing your heart in it,” the Dune actress explained, adding that Braff’s script inspired her to get back into it. “For years I was so scared of how to do it. And eventually, this opportunity arose and I read Zach’s script and I said ‘I’ve been inspired to write a song.’ And we put them in the movie.”

Pugh said that she’s really excited to release “real” music, so there is a chance that maybe one day we will witness her having her own pop star moment. “I’ve been able to dabble in it with some characters in some projects I’ve been able to sing, but never fully do it for real.” Not many people would consider releasing a song with Harry Styles as just a warm-up for making music for “real,” but Pugh certainly can!