Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.
This week saw Travis Scott show love to his crew and Bad Bunny follow his latest album. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
Scott is putting the spotlight on his Cactus Jack Records artists with the new Jackboys 2 project, but he gives himself space to shine, too. There’s the solo track “Da Wizard,” for example, which fans have been awaiting since he started performing it live in 2024.
Bad Bunny — “Alambre Púa”
Bad Bunny is prolific, usually dropping an album a year, give or take. His 2025 effort was Debí Tirar Más Fotos, but now he’s already back with more: After debuting “Alambre Púa” during his Puerto Rico concert residency, he gave it a proper release last week.
Zach Bryan — “Madeline” Feat. Gabriella Rose
Bryan previously said he has an album called Motorbreath on the way, but at the moment, the focus is on a different project, With Heaven On Top. He teased it last week with “Madeline,” a Gabriella Rose collaboration that will seemingly be included on the release.
Blood Orange — “Mind Loaded” Feat. Caroline Polachek, Lorde, and Mustafa
Dev Hynes is busy, but until recently, it hadn’t been with releasing new Blood Orange material. That has changed lately, though, with last week’s announcement of Essex Honey, his first album in six years. He made a splash with “Mind Loaded,” which features Caroline Polachek, Lorde, and Mustafa.
Alex G — “Oranges”
Uproxx’s Steven Hyden compared the new Alex G album, Headlights, to R.E.M.’s Automatic For The People and added, “It sounds like his straightest album, in terms of it feeling like relatively normal singer-songwriter music. But it doesn’t seem he’s making any of the obvious ‘sellout’ concessions. It’s just a really likeable, accessible record.’
FKA Twigs — “Perfectly”
Twigs might be teasing a deluxe edition of Eusexua, although that’s not confirmed yet. What we do know is that last week, she shared a potential first taste of it with the club-ready “Perfectly.”
Alex Warren — “Eternity”
Warren is the biggest name in pop at the moment: “Ordinary” is enjoying a six-week run at No. 1 and it’s one of the most-streamed new songs of 2025 so far. Now his debut album You’ll Be Alright, Kid is here and it boasts highlights like the massive “Eternity.”
will.i.am and Taboo — “East LA”
will.i.am and Taboo make great use of a sample of Santana’s 1999 hit “Maria Maria” on “East LA.” As the title indicates, the track sees the two paying homage to their home and the diversity within.
Fred Again.. — “Victory Lap Three”
Fred released “Victory Lap” in June. Then he released it again, and then he released it again. He’s on his third iteration of the song now, which currently features contributions from Skepta, PlaqueBoyMax, Denzel Curry, Hanumankind, and a Doechii sample.
Kelcey Ayer — “Mother Is The Real Jesus”
Ayer, formerly of Local Natives, is striking it out on his own with a new EP, No Sleep, that’s out now. Just ahead of the release, he offered one more preview with the serene and moving “Mother Is The Real Jesus.”
While it has been a couple years since Blackpink last toured the US, things have changed pretty dramatically for the members. All four have solidified themselves as solo artists in the interim, to varying degrees of success. Rosé’s debut solo album rosie is an unqualified success, especially thanks to her massive Bruno Mars collab “APT.” while Jennie received the best critical reception of all the artists, as her first solo album Ruby has also found multiple breakout tunes in “Mantra” and “Like Jennie.” Lisa’s AlterEgo solo album is a streaming success, bolstered by her eye-popping performing capabilities that she recently showed off at Coachella, and even Jisoo is getting into the solo game, albeit more tepidly with the four-song AMORTAGE EP. The women can be seen on HBO Max (Jennie on The Idol, Lisa on The White Lotus), Korean entertainment (Jisoo is doing plenty on work back home in both television and film), and heard on film soundtracks (Rosé earned a spot on the massive F1 companion album). Even if you don’t know squat about K-pop, Blackpink has likely entered your orbit through the individual members’ output.
And though they are back for a stadium run, including two nights at SoFi Stadium last weekend, the whole endeavor still feels like a balancing act of group dynamics with individual ambitions. It’s not a coincidence that each member reps a different label for their solo career (Rosé is on Atlantic, Lisa on RCA, Jisso on Warner Records, and Jennie on Columbia) and that each reps different designer brands (Rosé is YSL, Lisa is Louis Vuitton, Jisoo is Dior, and Jennie is Chanel). They’re all aware that they need to exist as individual entities in the long-run, even if their touring power is still strongest as a group.
YG Entertainment
But at this point in their career, it’s safe to start asking which aspect of the four stars’ identity is more compelling. At their live show, they’ve long found a way to balance both aspects, featuring solo sets as interludes between the full-group numbers. But on their latest tour, this takes on a whole new meaning now that they have genuine hits to be offering in those segments. Even walking around the crowd, while the vast majority of merch worn signified Blackpink as a whole, it wasn’t uncommon to see a Jisoo solo t-shirt or rosie merch. And outside of the group’s massive fanbase, there are surely people now whose first association with Blackpink is Lisa on The White Lotus or Rosé’s Bruno Mars-featuring smash.
In concert, though, it became evident why there is strength in numbers. Sure, Jennie can sometimes lose stamina and not quite hit the impressive choreography with the elite level of Lisa, but there’s something truly special about the moments when they gather together to interact. There’s a chemistry between the women that’s undeniable, and even extends to how they react to their solo moments. On this night, Rosé capped her solo section by bringing out Bruno Mars to perform “APT.” And, a few moments later, when the group was back together, Jennie was flabbergasted by how the moment had elevated the entire show, like a friend had brought caviar to the causal potluck. Going back a few months, it was as much Rosé, Lisa, and Jennie supporting each other at Coachella than it was the latter two’s performances that went viral. Fans still get a thrill about what they can do together, even if the solo music spreads more broadly.
For me, it’s when the women walk down the catwalk together and interact for the camera, Lisa putting an arm around Rosé or Jisoo playfully palling around with Jennie, that makes a Blackpink show feel like more than the sum of its parts. A solo song might have a higher reach, but savoring the moments they’re all together make the Blackpink group experience something that can’t really be reached as a solo artist. The hope is that this is not nearing the end for the group, as some have rumored. They’ve already found a good rhythm for being able to pursue their solo endeavors in both film and music while still returning to their stadium-sized home base. And if these recent concerts are an indication, being the biggest K-pop band in the world is nothing to treat lightly.
Benjamin Booker’s third album wakes up in a cold sweat, its narrator gripped by paranoia in the American surveillance state while a booming backbeat pounds at his temples. It ends with a hopeless alcoholic swearing to himself that tomorrow will be different instead of exactly like the night before. In between, Booker addresses homelessness, the psychosexual underpinnings of slavery and adopts a pitch-shifted, demonic vocal on “Speaking With The Dead” that would have made for a far more effective soundtrack to Sinners than the actual thing. Along with co-producer Kenny Segal, Booker aspired to have Lower triangulate Mobb Deep’s Hell On Earth and The Jesus And Mary Chain’s Psychocandy, two wildly divergent exemplars of bad vibes music.
The 36-year old New Orleans native swears he has no idea of how he’s perceived by his listeners, and here’s the most damning evidence: he really thought Lower would be the soundtrack to summertime cookouts and dorm room smoke sessions by now. “I guess I didn’t realize how depressing it was,” he jokes without really laughing.
Lower is a lot of things — harrowing, haunting, hummable, and the best album of 2025. But it is not chill in any way.
It also bears little resemblance to the music that made Booker a festival fixture throughout most of the 2010s. I’m talking to Booker six months after the initial release of Lower because — full disclosure — prior to 2025, I had only heard his music in bits and pieces but was firmly aware of his “deal”: a guy who opened for Jack White after putting out a live album on Third Man, getting signed to ATO Records, and working within the same realm as Alabama Shakes and Hurray For The Riff Raff: tasteful, rootsy, and politically minded rock music that neatly toes the line between NPR and Pitchfork readers. And then he mostly just disappeared since the release of Witness in 2017. “I mean, besides hanging out with my family and making music, I have no other activities,” Booker admits during our Zoom conversation.
This was not a situation where an artist completely went off the grid or lost his mind; Booker did take up painting and skateboarding while trying to make ten other songs as strong as “Slow Dance In A Gay Bar,” a woozy character study that served as proof of concept for Lower‘s radical reinvention. He found a co-conspirator in Kenny Segal, best known for his claustrophobic production work on Billy Woods’ twin masterpieces Hiding Places and Maps. “Kenny and I linked up in 2020 and he pretty much immediately understood what I was trying to do,” Booker explains. “The simplest way I had explained it was how Radiohead had taken IDM and incorporated it into rock music on OK Computer. I wanted to take his experimental hip-hop world and merge that with indie rock and he pretty much got it immediately.”
Leading up to the recording of Lower, Booker would often find himself singing over the eerie, molten beats of Hell On Earth, and “Slow Dance” was created in the same way, layering sultry croaks over Segal’s longing guitar samples; Booker didn’t touch a single instrument on the track. It’s gorgeous, but unnerving, with Booker’s romantic reveries (“I could find a good man / start a modern family”) set against the abject loneliness of the chorus (“I just want someone to see me”). This is how Lower operates, as even the most accessible moments have a disturbing undertone, most notably the field recording of a school shooting that interrupts the fuzzed-out soul of “Same Kind Of Lonely.” These were the risks Booker had to commit to honor the inspiration he took from massive cultural statements like Solange’s A Seat At The Table and Earl Sweatshirt’s Some Rap Songs.
It’s no surprise that Booker tastes in rap and R&B veer towards “critically acclaimed”; in a stunning role reversal, this is the first person I’ve ever talked to who became a musician after a stint as a frustrated music journalist. Though Booker honed his skills interviewing punk bands as a University Of Florida undergrad, he soon realized the disadvantage of attending an SEC school in a field that pays poverty wages while requiring an elite education. “I applied to a million magazines and didn’t get any internships,” he sighs. “And I had a bass player from Brown who had gotten literally every single internship that I applied for.”
Fortunately, Booker was soon diverted to a career path that was only slightly more stable than that of “music journalist.” He admits that Lower couldn’t exist without the success of his previous two albums, as well as the financial cushion that came with it. But even if his goal was to make a record on the level of Solange or Frank Ocean, it’s not to become them. “When I finished this record, I felt like I finally checked off all the things on my list of things I wanted to do with an album,” he states. “The goal is to exist like Harry Dean Stanton, whatever the equivalent of the character actor is in music. I think most people would want that.”
When I think back on “Witness,” that struck me as a classic protest song for the political atmosphere of Trump 1.0 — the message, the defiance, the Mavis Staples feature. Eight years later, a lot of the same problems remain and things seem even more bleak. How has your view of the world evolved with it?
I think when I was making the first album [Benjamin Booker], it was very “early 20s,” angsty, angry, more like lashing out at other people with the songs. By the time I got to the second album [Witness], I was older and it felt more reflective, looking inward at the problems that you are causing. Instead of going inward, this one was looking out, trying to paint pictures, not to really give answers or anything like that, because I don’t believe there are answers to any of these things. I started painting more over the time between the last album, and I think that’s where my head was at. It was more about the image of the song, where it was more about the message before.
I find that as artists age and the answers don’t seem to come as easily as they did in their 20s, they start exploring more of a spiritual side. Do you consider yourself a spiritual person?
I’m very… kind of traumatized from religion. Like, if I walk into a church, I almost get panic attacks. Well, I can go into Catholic churches, I like going to those kinds of places. But evangelical Christianity, it was honestly just scarring for me as a kid. My mom and I lived in Virginia Beach, which is where CBN is, the Christian Broadcasting Network. There was a big Christian school there, it was a very conservative town, and I was one of those kids that was just on church pews every day. When I was 10, I played a demon in a church play dragging gay people to hell. I did that.
I wonder if any of those people have followed your career and heard “Slow Dance In A Gay Bar.”
Oh yeah. [With spirituality], I think that the music is the force. If I’m going towards anything, it’s just trying to make more powerful music because when the songs are done, you don’t even understand how it got to this place. To me, that’s the thing. It’s just like, how far can I go? What can I get to at the end? How far can I push this in that direction? That’s what music always was, like a religious kind of thing. When I was younger, I listened to a lot of blues, old stuff. But I honestly never really connected to the music that much. I can’t play blues. I never bothered to learn to play that kind of music. But when I got older, I realized, “Oh, I’m a young Black kid. I’m not very connected to my parents. And here are these experienced, older Black men who’ve lived these lives, talking about life and the way that the world really is.” That’s how I also got into punk. I was looking for a way of living, that’s what I was looking for in the music.
Have you seen Sinners?
I did see it. I had very low expectations for that kind of thing, but I thought it was pretty good. I really don’t have anything bad to say about it… but I think it could have been shorter.
I bring that up because Sinners is the first time in a while where the blues are treated as a contemporary form of music rather than as an abstract signifier of “authenticity.” There’s one whiskey ad that always autoplays for me on YouTube that compares itself to an “old blues 45.” That really works for people and for better or worse, I feel like the first two records really caught on that kind of scene. Lower is a very aggressive way of leaving that “rootsy indie rock” world behind, but I’m wondering if you saw other younger artists in that world feeling boxed in the same way as you did.
I don’t think that a lot of people approach music that way. I’ve made a lot of bad decisions in music from a career perspective. But most of the musicians I’ve met over the years are like, “This worked, I’m gonna ride it out.” They’re boxing themselves in. That was crazy to me. After the second record, I had made a little bit of money and thought, “Great, now I get to take time and do whatever I wanna do.” I’ll just use this to make the record that I’ve always wanted to make. But around me, I knew people who were millionaires who seemed kind of down about the music. But I was like, why don’t you just make whatever you wanna make? You have millions of dollars. Music is like something I really, truly love and has always been there for me, it’s the only thing that it’s been pure.
Having taken eight years between records, I’ve wondered whether you’ve worked mostly on getting these eleven songs right or if there’s a huge archive of outtakes.
I made a lot of really, really bad songs leading up to this record, probably multiple albums worth. There was stuff like, “This is it, like I’ve made a whole record,” and then got rid of them. It just took a long time to figure out the sound I wanted. The constant thing that I go through is that you make [a lot of] songs and then you write one song that’s so much better than the other ones. What do you do with that? You got to get rid of the other ones. With my favorite artists, their songs really don’t go below a certain baseline, you know what I mean? “Slow Dance In A Gay Bar” was the first song that we did and then it was like, “Oh man, like, the songs have to be as good as this song.”
How did the division of labor play out between you and Kenny?
All of the drums and bass that you hear on the record is Kenny. I play almost all of the guitars, some keyboards, and it really was sending stuff back and forth. “Slow Dance In A Gay Bar” is the only one in the whole album that is literally just Kenny. He sent me that [instrumental] and I just sang over it. But then there’s songs like “Show And Tell” and “Same Kind Of Lonely” and “Black Opps” where I’d send him demos. There’s a Dilla song called “Stepson Of The Clapper,” I did a demo where I chopped up that beat and then played guitar over it and sent that to him. A lot of times, I would send beat ideas and he would do a better version of the drums. One of the reasons I wanted to work with him was because he doesn’t do samples from records. He was into the idea of getting players, sampling players, and then doing it like that.
After doing a co-production on the last Armand Hammer album, have you considered doing more production for other artists?
I think I’m just too selfish. Anytime that I think about doing anything else, I just think about how it’s gonna take away from my own thing. The people who I really love the most are just kind of like, “You can’t spread yourself too thin,” you know what I mean?
I think back to the point where Timbaland was clearly outsourcing his beats, same with the second wave of Wu-Tang solo projects where RZA had his protégés do RZA-style beats while he learned how to play actual strings.
He did like a whole orchestra show recently.
[imitates Billy Woods on “Spider Hole”] I don’t wanna see RZA with an orchestra at Carnegie Hall.
It’s hilarious, my manager works for Wu-Tang and when we were practicing for this last tour, he asked me if I wanted to go see RZA do this orchestra thing. And Annie and Michaela, who play in the band, both told me that line.
You mentioned that Kenny wasn’t really a Mobb Deep guy, that he was more into Gang Starr and while most people in 2025 would likely think of them as “’90s NYC hip-hop,” there really was a distinction between those artists at the time, where one was “street rap” and the other was “lyrical.”
When I was growing up, the only rap that I was exposed to basically was the pop stuff, Nelly and things like that. I had no connection to it at all and it wasn’t until the whole newer wave of people like [Billy] Woods like Ka and Earl [Sweatshirt] came along. Once Some Rap Songs came out, that was a real mind-blowing moment for me. It was one of the only experiences that I’ve had listening to a record where it was immediately like, “Nothing sounds like this.” The thing that’s so great about it is how fucked up the production is, it’s so muddy and, like, terrible, it’s such a “fuck you” to anybody who does any kind of recording. But I think it only works because he was already big and when you’re big, you can do anything. If somebody else and put that out, you’d be like, “That’s terrible.” There were a lot of records that came out during that time that were kind of just like… I had to do something else. Within a few years, we had Black Messiah, Pinata, A Seat At The Table. Albums that were massive Black statements, where you’re just like, “This person put everything into the album.” You don’t really get those all the time, I can’t think of one recently.
Now that it’s been over a decade since most of those albums came out, it’s easier for me to see them as formative experiences for a newer generation, the way Aquemini or Voodoo or The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill were for people my age. And because of that, I have to believe something like that is happening for people in their teens right now.
I would say some of the most interesting music ever made is being made now, but it’s just impossible to find it. You have the labels looking for the most middle-of-the-road things to put out. When you think about the biggest indie acts now, something like Phoebe Bridgers, what’s the purpose of this? What does this bring to the table? Obviously, it’s the way that algorithms and having to use social media to get signed to labels pushes people towards those things. It’s not that there hasn’t always been middle-of-the-road stuff, I’m saying that’s the stuff on the surface. There’s plenty of amazing things that are always happening.
Now that you’ve started your own label, are you interested in signing other artists?
Oh no. I don’t really know what I would do for another record because it’s just more business stuff now than I would ever want to deal with. I would almost give up some of the freedom that I have now to just not think about any of those kinds of things. It was just kind of nonstop. In independent music, there’s so many bullshit things in the middle of you and getting to people. If you want an endcap at Rough Trade Records in New York, it costs $1,000 to do that. Or hearing from the distributors, “We need to put up posters in all the stores.” The kind of things where, first of all, I don’t think that any of this matters anymore. I feel like independent labels know that they have lost control and don’t really know what’s happening, but they haven’t found a solution yet. So it’s still kind of a mess.
I’m always frustrated at the shaming that goes on in “DIY culture” because it assumes that someone who’s good at playing guitar has a skill set that also transfers to booking shows or accounting.
I will say that the biggest people I’ve met are really business-minded people as well. It’s very rare that I meet somebody who’s successful in music and is not very on top of that kind of thing. I don’t know, it seems weird to think about, do you find that?
When I spoke to Greet Death a little while back, they believed that every band needs to have one “business guy” who knows how to work Excel.
They need that one guy and I don’t necessarily envy it. I never thought about music like this. After I made my first album on vinyl, to me, that was it. I wanted to have an album on vinyl, and I had no goals beyond that. Like, I was like, “This is it. I’ve done it. I put out a record.” But I didn’t realize that people [don’t always think that way]. Danny Goldberg wrote this book about being the manager of Nirvana, and when you grow up, you think, “This is the guy who didn’t like the attention, he just wrote these very simple songs.” And then you hear from the manager, this was the most cutthroat PR guy of all time and knew every journalist’s name and would not share songs with anybody. And you’re just like, “Oh, of course. That’s how you get to be those people.”
The legend of Kurt Cobain as an unwilling participant is a much better story.
I bought the story for a long time and I think that’s what surprised me so much about getting into music. I just thought that everybody would love it to where it was “music over everything,” but it’s like, “No, these people are trying to make a ton of money.”
Tough as it is in music itself, your old career path of music journalism is even more financially precarious.
Yeah, it’s such a bummer what’s happened to it. A lot of websites now have just gone to clickbait stuff and lists. I mean, there’s so much that I put into making this album and the details and things and then… oh man, like no nobody’s digging into this?
Are there people at shows who share with you how they’ve dug into the record?
It’s always nice to kind of hear that kind of stuff. I’m so in a box and I’m not very self-aware at all. I honestly have no idea how people see me. Maybe people just think I’m a super depressed guy, which I am. But with the people who come to the shows, I think that there’s an element to all the music that I make which comes from growing up with gospel. It’s acknowledging darkness and trying to move past the darkness. That’s what gospel music is generally about and that’s pretty much what I do. The people who come to my shows are generally going through a lot of stuff, but pretty hopeful and nice people. But I don’t know how they see me. I don’t think people associate me with everything that I write about. If I write “Rebecca” [a song from the perspective of a slave owned by Rebecca Latimer Felton, the first woman to serve in the US Senate] obviously this doesn’t have anything to do with me. I’ve never slow danced in a gay bar.
When you ask about what popular indie artists of today bring to the table, a lot of it is identification — like, you can assume everything that Lorde sings about really happened to her and thus you can reflect on whether that happened to you.
I’m not that interesting. If I want to keep making music, what am I just gonna write about? Hanging out with my kid?
But I’m told that “dad rock” is the wave in 2025.
Yeah, the dad rock record is when I would blow up [laughs].
Lower is out now via Fire Next Time. Find more information here.
Tyler The Creator has kicked off his new era, taking inspiration from hip-hop’s Golden Era in the process. Last night/this morning, he released his new album, Don’t Tap The Glass, at a surprise dance party at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in his hometown. Later, he followed up with an energetic video for its lead single, “Stop Playing With Me,” giving fans the first glimpse of his new look, which heavily references the crazy ’80s with an updated b-boy flair.
In the video, Tyler rocks a red GOLF trucker hat, transparent Cazal frames, a mustache, and gold fronts to top off a red-leather tracksuit and matching Converse weapons. Mostly, it’s just scenes of T rapping and dancing between two massive speakers, with cameo appearances from LeBron James, Maverick Carter, and Clipse‘s Pusha T and Malice. The stripped-down look goes well with the new music; clearly, T was inspired by Kendrick Lamar’s reach back to LA’s freestyle roots on GNX and decided to delve even deeper into music designed to make you dance.
“I asked some friends why they don’t dance in public, and some said because of the fear of being filmed. I thought damn, a natural form of expression and a certain connection they have with music is now a ghost, it made me wonder how much of our human spirit got killed because of the fear of being a meme, all for having a good time. I just got back from a ‘listening party’ for this album and man was it one of the greatest nites of my life. 300 people. No phones allowed. No cameras, just speakers and a sweatbox. Everyone was dancing, moving, expressing, sweating, it was truly beautiful. I played the album front to back twice. It felt like that pent-up energy finally got released, and we craved the idea of letting more of it out .there was a freedom that filled the room. A ball of energy that might not translate to every speaker that plays this album, but man did that room nail it. This album was not made for sitting still. Dancing driving running any type of movement is recommended to maybe understand the spirit of it. Only at full volume, don’t tap the glass.”
Don’t Tap The Glass is out now via Columbia Records. Get it here.
Atlanta rapper Quavo has had pop crossovers in the past, but who knew he was such a Backstreet Boys fan? Over the weekend, he attended the millennial boy band’s residency at The Sphere in Las Vegas, where he apparently had the time of his life. On his TikTok, he posted an endearing video singing along to their 1999 hit “I Want It That Way,” fittingly adapting it to his own signature ad-lib: “dat way!”
“I want it dat way!” he quipped. “The rich way! The right way! The best way! The good way! The only way!”
While his fondness for late-90s pop may come as a surprise to some, it probably shouldn’t. Quavo has done multiple crossovers with BSB’s solo spiritual successor Justin Bieber, including 2020’s “Intentions,” 2018’s “No Brainer,” and 2017’s “I’m The One,” in addition to enjoying a friendly relationship with the singer. They’ve played pick-up basketball with Drake and participated in the NBA’s All-Star Weekend Celebrity Game together, so they’ve had plenty of chances for Biebs to put Quavo on.
Then again, Quavo could have just been a dyed-in-the-wool Backstreeter from the very beginning. At 34 years old, he would have been right in the target demo when “I Want It That Way” ruled the airwaves, back when monoculture was still a thing. Those were simpler times, and for one night, Quavo got to experience them again.
The biggest meme of the past few days could have only been missed if you were taking a break from the internet. To refresh, though, it happened at a Coldplay concert. The band was taking a moment to highlight some of the fans in the audience and show them on the big screen. When they showed a man intimately holding a woman, the two quickly panicked and tried to hide themselves. Chris Martin quipped that they were either having an affair or just shy, and it turned out to be an affair. Specifically, captured on camera were Andy Byron, CEO of data operations startup Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the company’s chief people officer.
Wallen performed in Glendale, Arizona on Friday the 18th, and between songs, he told the audience with a shrug (here’s a video), “Anybody in here with their side chick or whatever, I think you’re safe here.” He continued, “I don’t condone cheating… anymore.”
As for the last sentence, it’s seemingly a nod to the supposed infidelity in his previous relationship with KT Smith, with whom he has a child.
If you’ve been online over the past few days, you’ve seen it: At a recent concert, the group highlighted some audience members with a fan camera that put attendees on a video screen. It went sideways, though, when a man and woman had a panicked reaction to being shown in a comfortable embrace: The man was identified as Andy Byron, CEO of data operations startup Astronomer, and Kristin Cabot, the company’s chief people officer and, most importantly, not Byron’s wife. Byron has since resigned from the company while Cabot was reportedly placed on leave.
The moment was widely memed and now Coldplay is getting in on the fun, too. At their next concert, in Wisconsin on July 19, Martin smiled as he said, “We’d like to say hello to some of you in the crowd. How we’re gonna do that is we’re gonna use our cameras and put some of you on the big screen. So please, if you haven’t done your makeup, do your makeup now.”
Young Nudy is a hood tour guide in the eye-popping video for the latest single from his new album. “Iced Tea” features Nudy’s cousin and frequent collaborator 21 Savage, as well as Project Pat, as he offers a group of tourists a look at life in his hood via the local trap house. The guys are playing NBA2K23 (because why get the new one?), a dead body grows cold on the lawn, and everyone smokes the stickiest of weed while occasionally being entertained by dancers on a portable stripper pole.
“Iced Tea” is the second single from Paradise, Nudy’s upcoming fifth studio album (the first single from Paradise was “BTA”). It’ll be the follow-up to 2023’s Gumbo, which landed at No. 83 on the Billboard 200 chart, driven by the 21 Savage collaboration “Peaches & Eggplants.” He was also featured on Latto’s Sugar Honey Iced Tea track “Shrimp & Grits,” as well as fellow ATLien Childish Gambino’s Atavista song “Little Foot Big Foot.”
Paradise will be out on August 8th via PDE Records/RCA Records. In the lead-up to its release, Nudy will perform a series of free shows for fans who pre-order the album called Road To Paradise. You can find more information on the pre-order site here.
Watch Young Nudy’s “Iced Tea” video featuring 21 Savage and Project Pat above.
Few rappers these days see the kind of breakout success from a debut effort as Gelo has. But then again, few have the sort of name recognition he had ahead of the release of his game-changing first single, “Tweaker.”
LiAngelo Ball is the middle brother of NBA stars Lonzo and LaMelo Ball. To be fair, their entry into the public discourse was equally buzzy, thanks to their dad LaVar, whose boastful interviews about their potential made them a controversial hot topic while they were still in high school. Their self-created leagues and Big Baller Brand shoe line furthered the debate; some saw LaVar as a genius, others as just crazy.
In some ways, Gelo is the black sheep of the brothers; While they were able to smoothly transition into high-profile roles in college hoops and then the NBA, the middle brother was more, in his own words, “turned up.” Despite following his siblings into the NBA — he spent three years in the G League, and signed briefly with the Detroit Pistons in 2020 — he didn’t stick the same way they did.
Then, “Tweaker” happened. Fueled by a nostalgic beat and Gelo’s anachronistic, drawling flow, the song took over first NBA locker rooms, then playlists, radio, and clubs. Its success led to a deal with Def Jam and high-profile performances at Rolling Loud, the NBA’s All-Star Weekend, and just this week, the ESPY Awards.
Now, he’s released his debut album, League Of My Own, filled with even more catchy odes to a style of music that ruled the airwaves when Gelo was still learning to speak.
Everything about his career so far has been rare, so let’s throw one more thing on the list: Prior to this interview, I’d known the Ball family for years from my work at Los Angeles pro-am the Drew League. And yet, here we are, at my day job, talking about his new album, and making the leap from the court to the stage in his own unique way.
Obviously we have to start with the elephant in the room, ball player to rapper, the transition. How has that been for you? What drove you to want to really buckle down and do rap?
Everything I do, I try to do it at the highest level. So, when I was playing basketball, that was my goal at the time. I’m not even thinking about rap. I’m trying to make the NBA. This is some years past and then that’s how the transition happened. Everything wasn’t going as smoothly as I hoped it would on the hoop side. But when I went to music, I feel my talent and just the way I am is going to have me on an NBA level, but for music.
That’s how I took my swag over to the music game. And I will say, I have always been hella turned up since a little kid. I toned it down a lot to play basketball. I feel like it’s a lot more rules and stipulations in hoops. So when I came to the rap life, it’s like I could be me now, that’s easier.
I love that you said taking it to the NBA level because you did take it to the NBA level: you performed at the All-Star Weekend. Do you hold that over their heads a little bit? Because I know Lonzo had his little moment where he was trying to rap, too, and I know Melo probably got his little bars off somewhere, but you are the one that made it, so now you have something to hold over them.
Yeah, they give me support, though. They think I’m the biggest in the rap game. They want to relate to my sh*t, and it helps for real. I’ll say that.
How has your routine changed from then to now?
Now my schedule GTA for real, I just get up and go about my days. I got a lot more free time to do things, I’ll say. Because in the NBA, I always had practice, got to be up at seven o’clock, ready to hoop, ready to shoot, and then after that, you going home, resting, and right back to practice. You know how that hoop stuff goes, so it ain’t really as much free time as what people think. So in the music world, everything’s more on my time. I could wake up at 3 a.m. and go to the studio and that’s just like working.
How do you address people or how do you respond to people who are saying that, “Oh, he coming from basketball, he don’t know nothing about rap life?”
I don’t want people to be like, “Oh, he think he a street man, he a gang banger, all this stuff.” I’m not. If you listen hard to my music, I’m not really preaching none of that sh*t. I will say I have been around that sh*t since a young age, bro. We always traveling. My cousins is a little wild sometimes.
I understand where all that came from. I give props to my pops, though, for real. Even when we was kids, he was like, “G, you could be a gang banger. You gonna die or be in jail,” or he was like, “You can go hoop and be on your own sh*t and make this money.” He’s really talking to us like that as a kid. So I always knew how to just maneuver and manage myself amongst all that type of sh*t.
Can I just say, by the way, I love your dad. He’s probably one of my favorite people that comes by the Drew. But I do have a theory about why you sound good on these old-school 2000-era… like Big Tymer, No Limit beats. You were born the year before Snoop Dogg made No Limit Top Dogg. Was that an album that got played around the house a lot? Because that’s part of my theory is that like, yeah, you were maybe a little bit too young to grow up with that, but somebody around you was playing it. There is a link between West Coast and the Southern style you like.
I just think my pops put that on us because that all he used to bump was Lil Wayne, bro. I heard Tha Carter II, III, all the way to IV, VI, all of them. And then all that Lil Wayne, The Drought Is Over, all the mixtape sh*t. Zo used to have all the mix tapes of Wayne. So I was always hearing Lil Wayne for sure. And he had the coldest lyrics. I like how he fly. I liked the sh*t he be saying. So I feel that built my sh*t up as a kid, not even knowing.
Listening to the song “Humble Abode,” it feels the way that people talk about the legacy of the family weighs on you. How do you manage all of those expectations and the things people might say?
How do I explain this? My mind hella strong. Since I was young, I feel like I have heard it all, for real. My pops even told me straight up, “Man, they’re going to hate you,” because I was the lightest one around all Black kids when I’m hooping. So they’re trying to take my head off. But he told me straight up, “They going to hate you.” He was like, “Everything you do, it is a target on your back already, so just be ready.”
And since I was young, I just always remembered that sh*t. I always just move how I move, for real. I’m going to be stepping man, that sh*t don’t be hurting me because I be getting stuff done on my own time.
What made GloRilla the right person to be the only feature on your debut album?
I was just familiar with her music at the time. I got some homies in Memphis, and then I linked up with her a couple of times, and she cool as hell. So I felt that was the perfect fit for the album, really. I mean, she was turned up. I just like how she delivered her songs and I felt it would sound great on that beat.
A lot of other NBA guys are also rappers; Do you have a favorite ball player, rapper?
Yeah, I’m going to get a song off with RTB [Miles Bridges]. He got some bangers, bro. I listen to Brandon Ingram, too. A lot of people don’t know he be rapping, but he got some sh*t in his vault, I’m telling you.
What were some features that didn’t make the album, if you’re allowed to say?
I got to keep it a secret. I am going to drop a deluxe. I got some whammers on there, bro. I’ve been working with a couple of people, bro, and I got some big names on there. We going to turn the city up, for sure, but I’m going to leave that because I’m going to probably put the deluxe out in August or something.
And one more question for me. Are you going to make an appearance in the gym?
To the Drew? Hey bro, if I do, though, it’s going to be scary. I’m coming with Zo and Melo, bro. I’m only getting in there if they do it for real. We all three going to go to that sh*t, if we do go.
League Of My Own is out now via Def Jam Recordings. Find more information here.
Tommy Richman is going for a new sound in his latest single, “Miami.” As he puts it in the song’s press release: “‘Miami’ is a song to bring in the summer, a fun uptempo pop record expressing the griefs of feeling numb in every romantic scenario.” To that end, it’s a deceptively bouncy track, whose synth-pop sonics belie Tommy’s maudlin musings.
“I don’t wanna be prone to the suffering,” he sings. “Life is a mess, I’m steady buffering / Don’t open up the gates, don’t let that in / I’ll tell it who you are you’re a sex addict / It’s been a long time, don’t let the bad in.” Meanwhile, the video is simple and straightforward, appearing to take a lot of cues from Drake’s viral 2016 video for “Hotline Bling.” It’s Tommy in a lightbox (whose walls are made of shoji, or Japanese rice paper on a wooden lattice), dancing and posing.
It’s fairly in line with the content of his last few offerings, such as “Actin Up” and its remix with Sexyy Red.
After taking a fair degree of flak for proclaiming himself to not be (just) hip-hop, the new single is a step in the right direction for an artist looking to prove he can do more than “Million Dollar Baby.” While it may not appeal to all of his day-one fans, it’s a promising sign of musical growth.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
