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Charles Barkley has been talking about retiring from TV for almost as long as he’s been on TV. The Hall of Famer long insisted that he would call it quits from TNT when he turned 60, but instead inked a massive 10-year deal with the network just ahead of his 60th birthday.

That deal coincided with Shaq, Kenny Smith, and Ernie Johnson all re-signing with Turner, locking the Inside the NBA crew into long-term deals. Apparently, that was done with the upcoming NBA media rights negotiations in mind, as Warner Bros. Discovery was hoping that having the beloved show committed to sticking around for most of the next deal would help their cause in keeping the NBA. As we now know, that wasn’t enough and negotiations between the league and network fell through with TNT apparently balking at the NBA’s initial asking price in the exclusive negotiating window, then getting outbid by NBC for the B-package. TNT attempted to save a piece of the pie by exercising matching rights on Amazon’s package, but the NBA quickly denied that was a full match as that goes well beyond the financial element.

As a result, the future of Inside is up in the air, although Barkley and TNT have announced he won’t be leaving the network and will continue doing the show, in some form, beyond the 2024-25 season. Barkley has no clue what that looks like — and says TNT doesn’t either — but wants to keep his friends employed as long as possible, which is why he says he’s not following through on his promise to retire after this season. As he tells it, it’s the second time he’s put off retiring at the request of TNT, insisting to Bill Simmons he was really planning to ride off into the sunset at 60, but they asked him to stay through the negotiations.

“So my original game plan was to retire at 60. They’re like, you gotta stay til the new deal is done. And I’m like ‘F***,” Barkley said.

“Cause they needed you for the negotiations,” Simmons followed up.

“Yes, but little did I know they were gonna f*** that up,” Barkley said with a laugh. “And I was like, you guys been great to me, I’ll stay for two more years. Next year was supposed to be my last year, and I was gonna walk off into the sunset. It’s gonna be interesting cause I have zero idea what we’re gonna do.”

Barkley went on to explain that TNT said they haven’t figured out exactly what the show will look like after next season, as they don’t have the NBA and would need to pay for highlights, but he wants his friends to have jobs so he’ll stick it out. That said, he doesn’t seem tremendously confident in the WBD leadership to get it right.

As for the retirement claims, Simmons told him point blank he didn’t believe he was going to retire, and I tend to agree. Barkley loves to talk, as evidenced by how often he does various radio spots and podcasts (like this one), and it’s not like he’s hurting for time on the golf course doing the show once a week during the season. However, I do believe that’s one of the reasons he stuck to his guns when it came to not going to another network, because ESPN and even Amazon and NBC would likely have wanted him on air more often than he is accustomed to at TNT, where he keeps busy during March Madness and the Playoffs, but is otherwise on just Thursdays.

The Boys won’t be back for its fifth and final season (with an upgraded Ashley and an off-the-grid A-Train) until 2026, but we won’t be without screwed-up Supes for too long. Gen V will return for a second season in 2025, and Amazon’s other debauched superhero world, Invincible, should close its current season gap in shorter order than last time. Voice work was finished in April for a third season, and a fourth season is already in the works, too.

Invincible still counts as yet another reason why Steven Yeun is enjoying the best post-The Walking Dead career of the bunch, and with this Prime Video/Amazon series, Yeun is still keeping the Robert Kirkman comic book fires burning hot in adaptation form. Let’s talk about what to expect from the next season, including insights from Kirkman himself.

Plot

As viewers are aware, the last time that we were waiting for more Invincible, this involved learning the outcome of a climactic fight between Mark Grayson/Invincible (Yeun) and his bad dad, Nolan/Omni-Man (J.K. Simmons), who was off-site for most practical purposes in the second season. However, Robert Kirkman has revealed to Variety that “[h]e’s gonna be in Season 3 a little more,” but don’t expect the balance of screen time to change because “this is the Mark Grayson-Invincible show; it’s not the Omni-Man show.” Additionally, Kirkman previously revealed that Cecil Stedman’s backstory will surface in the third season.

At the recent San Diego Comic-Con, Kirkman elaborated more by promising that although the third season will bring many aspects of the show to a climax, this won’t be a series finale although it might feel like one. We’ve gotta believe Kirkman because Amazon already let the world know that the fourth season is coming, but on the more immediate horizon, Season 3 could contain perhaps too many major developments. That’s certainly better than the alternative prospect, and Games Radar quotes Kirkman:

“The stakes of the season are really high and the content of the season is really dense. So we’ve set up a lot of stories in season 1 and season 2 that are kind of coming to a head in season three. And so in a lot of ways, every episode does kind of feel like a finale. There’s something big about every episode, there’s a massive conclusion in every episode, there’s some kind of huge evolution of a character or story turn that happens in every episode. I’m really excited to finally get to see season 3 because it’s gonna be crazy.”

Variety adds that Kirkman also teased, “But Season 4 dwarfs Season 3 in a lot of really crazy ways. It’s an escalating show where each season is going to be bigger, crazier, more intense, and that stuff really kicks off with Season 3.” In other words, hold onto your spandex pants. Speaking of which, Mark’s black-and-blue suit will make its entrance in the third season, which will “reflect” the “different headspace” of the protagonist after what he’s processed about his father attempting to help the Viltrum Empire take over Earth and (not to diminish this part) having another family elsewhere in the galaxy.

That provides a convenient segue for another Kirkman revelation: Oliver/Kid Omni-Man (the son of Nolan and Andressa) will grow up rapidly because of his Thraxan heritage, and there are of course more moving parts to this series than we can practically address here, but the most promising news, perhaps, is that Kirkman has admitted that the split-season approach of the second season was “not the best” method for viewers. That wasn’t a promise to avoid split seasons in the future, but that sentiment does sound positive.

Cast

The cast continues to be a who’s-who of worthy celebrity voice talent with Steven Yeun (Mark Grayson/Invincible), J.K. Simmons (Nolan Grayson/Omni-Man), and Sandra Oh (Debbie Grayson) leading the central broken-family dynamic. Additional cast members still include Seth Rogen (Allen, the Alien), Sterling K. Brown (Angstrom Levy), Zazie Beetz (Amber Bennett), Jason Mantzoukas (Rex Sloan/Rex Splode), Walton Goggins (Cecil Stedman), Zachary Quinto (Robot), Gillian Jacobs (Eve Wilkins/Atom Eve)…

[Pausing to catch breath]

… Ross Marquand (The Immortal, Aquarius, Omnipotus, Kursk, Proprietor), Scoot McNairy (King Lizard), Kevin Michael Richardson (the Mauler Twins), Daveed Diggs (Theo), Calista Flockhart (April), Lea Thompson (Carol), Tatiana Maslany (General Telia and Queen Aquaria), and Ben Schwartz (Shapesmith).

Release Date

The second season only arrived earlier this year, so it seems unbelievable that the show could return in less than two years, give its previous gap in release dates. However, Comic Book reported word from Ross Marquand, who believed that “it’s probably going to be early next year” because “[W]e’re almost wrapped.” The show did confirm that voice work was completed back in April, so perhaps early 2025 isn’t too optimistic of a window.

With that said, Amazon has not confirmed an actual release window, but if it’s any consolation regarding the show’s future, Kirkman told Variety that the series should continue far beyond the currently-in-process third and fourth seasons: “I feel like we’re just getting started. I’m very hopeful that this show can be around for awhile.”

Trailer

Since no trailer has been released yet, it’s not a bad time to enjoy this peek at Seth Rogen in the voice booth as Allen.

Over the years, Megan Thee Stallion has made no secret of her love for Japanese animation, or anime. Her music is littered with countless references to shows like JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, My Hero Academia, and Attack On Titan, while she’s been known to cosplay (short for “costume play”) as her favorite characters in videos, performances, and on social media.

But while Megan often talks about her love of anime, she’s rarely gone in-depth about just why she relates to it so much. In a new interview with Billboard, however, she does just that, explaining how the medium inspires her and informs her own artistic expression.

“I really like the storytelling in anime,” she explains. “The thing that resonates with me while watching a lot of the anime I like is watching the character development — seeing the character go from nothing to everything. When I feel like I’m getting beat up in life, I remember some of my favorite characters. I see that they had to go from literally zero and getting their ass whooped in their training. Even when they start popping and getting their muscles — because you know they be skinny as hell, then they start getting a little ripped — even when you start seeing the character getting a little swole, you like, ‘All right, he’s going to defeat all you motherf–kers. It’s over with’.”

“I resonate with that,” she continues. “No matter how many times I get knocked down, I never feel like, ‘F–k it, Imma quit.’ I just need to get better. I need to get back, try again, train harder and go harder, so I can keep evolving into my best self.”

She’s not alone in that respect among rappers; several have talked about how their love for anime — specifically, heroic anime like Dragon Ball — helped them push to become their best selves.

Megan Thee Stallion’s 2024 got off to a fractious start, with her January single “Hiss” not only touching off a short-lived battle with Nicki Minaj, but also setting a quarrelsome tone for seemingly all of hip-hop for the first quarter. However, she’s not letting that belligerent energy define her entire year. During her tour with GloRilla earlier this year, the two Southern stars celebrated the sisterhood of hip-hop, inviting Latto, Cardi B, and more to join them in a series of shows of mutual appreciation.

That positive energy could carry over to a new project from Meg with Glo, as they carry over the good vibes from their “Wanna Be” collaboration to a full project. In her new cover story for Billboard, Meg and Glo both expressed enthusiasm for the idea of a joint album. Megan said, “I think that would be very fire. I ain’t gon’ say too much, but it feels like it’s going to get done.” Meanwhile, Glo explained why such a project has them both excited. “Megan is a real rapper, and I’m also a real rapper,” she said. “We actually be talking and coming with bars on some down South gangsta sh*t. [It would be] some down South, real turnt, real rap [sh*t].”

I. “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome”

On Friday, a 25-year-old singer-songwriter from Asheville, North Carolina named MJ Lenderman will release a new record. It’s called Manning Fireworks, and it’s my favorite album of the year. Manning Fireworks would be my favorite album of most years, but in 2024 it feels like an especially precious commodity. It’s the kind of record that makes me want to write like Jon Landau after seeing Bruce Springsteen in 1974. But I’m going to try hard not to do that. My job is to maintain critical perspective. In this instance, maintaining critical perspective will be a Herculean task.

I might have already failed. But let’s proceed anyway.

I heard Manning Fireworks for the first time in April. Like the protagonist of “She’s Leaving You” — the album’s first single and one of Lenderman’s finest songs — I was a middle-aged man wiling my life away in a Las Vegas hotel room. The room was not free, but I was feeling lucky. The night before, I bumped into a music industry friend at the concert I was in town to cover. We struck up a conversation about Lenderman, and he asked if I had heard the new record. I said I hadn’t, so he promised to text me a streaming link. And now here I was, playing the songs on repeat as 90-degree heat pounded against the windows like aggrieved hornets.

By then I was already two years into serious MJ Lenderman fandom. It started midway into my first listen of his third LP, 2022’s Boat Songs, when I suddenly realized that he was my new favorite artist. I can’t say that Boat Songs is a perfect record, but I can confirm that it is perfect for me. On every track, he delivered exactly what I wanted. Each song was about three minutes and 30 seconds and included an average of one smoking guitar solo and at least one standout lyrical turn-of-phrase. He was funny but not in a smug or jokey way. He wore his heart on his sleeve, but without coming across as wimpy or cloying. His influences — Neil Young, Jason Molina, Wilco, Drive By Truckers — were obvious but not in an overbearing or obnoxious way. As a young, curly-haired brunet dude, he made exactly the kind of music you would expect from a young, curly-haired brunet dude. But he did it so much better than his peers. I did not know how much better this kind of music could still be — after all this time, after so many iterations — until I heard him.

Have I mentioned that he rocks? MJ Lenderman rocks, man.

I texted my music industry friend and gushed about all the things I just mentioned in the previous two paragraphs. But mostly I quoted lines from the record that were already lodged in my brain. I pecked out a gloriously unpredictable jumble of words — “I’ve got a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome” — from the fourth track, “Wristwatch,” a character study about a materialistic bozo whose self-aggrandizing blather becomes increasingly unhinged right before MJ plays a smoking guitar solo. (Along with everything else he has going for him he plays nearly every instrument on his records.)

“Probably the saddest song written about an Apple Watch,” my friend texted back. He was right. And he also nailed the MJ Lenderman aesthetic. He locates the soul inside the inanimate banality of everyday life. The houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome is never just a houseboat docked at the Himbo Dome.

I then confessed what I had been thinking privately since hearing Boat Songs: “I’ve been waiting for an artist like this for a long time.” It felt almost like a romantic proclamation. I was slightly embarrassed after typing it out, but it was the truth. Boat Songs was an instant classic, and then he put out a concert record with his live backing band The Wind that I liked even more. And now Manning Fireworks arrived as an undeniable “level up” album, even from those previous triumphs. The lyrics were sharper. The music was punchier and more fully realized. The arc from the beginning (the title track, a brutally pretty country dirge with a narrative about a church-bound lothario) to the end (“Bark At The Moon,” which is probably the saddest song written about Guitar Hero) was satisfying but understated, like the album was consciously designed for your 75th listen to be the most mind-blowing.

I already looked forward to my next 74 spins through Manning Fireworks.

II. “How many roads must a man walk down til he learns”

MJ Lenderman — his friends call him Jake, we will stick with the stage name — started playing music at age 8. Guitar Hero was the gateway drug. He jammed on guitar with a friend and cycled through lessons and local School Of Rock-style camps. In his freshman year of high school, he attempted songwriting for the first time. He described his early method to me as “trying to rip off My Morning Jacket.” By the end of high school, he realized it was easier to sing a song with words he felt good about.

Not long after graduation, he put out his first album, MJ Lenderman, in 2019. Most people didn’t hear it until Boat Songs made MJ Lenderman a medium-famous rising indie star. What’s interesting about MJ Lenderman in retrospect is how it doesn’t conform to the house style with which he is associated — the sports talk, the Gen Z pop culture ephemera, the classic rock worship, the endearingly trashy southern imagery. On MJ Lenderman, he’s a post-adolescent almost-man making post-adolescent almost-man music. The songs are long (often around eight minutes) and paced like shipping barges lurched toward the shore. Humor is nonexistent. Earnest romanticism reigns. He is, in practically every way, a painfully typical singer-songwriter.

There are exceptions. “Basketball # 1” is a troglodyte version of the sorts of songs that MJ Lenderman will go on to write. “We used to play basketball, now he sells drugs, or maybe he’s locked up / For having something like bad intentions,” he sings. It’s clunky, but unlike most of the lyrics on the debut, it’s memorable. It sounds like a line that Patterson Hood or Mike Cooley might have considered for Southern Rock Opera before committing to another round of revisions.

The following year, Covid happens. A one-time ice cream shop worker, Lenderman goes on unemployment. Stuck at home, he commits to writing exercises inspired by David Berman, in which he writes 20 unrelated lyrics per day. Most are eventually scrapped, but a few are keepers. He also jams with his roommates and improvises words over the communal din. Over time his next record, Ghost Of Your Guitar Solo, takes shape.

In every important aspect, Ghost Of Your Guitar Solo is the opposite of the self-titled record. The songs are short, sometimes barely a minute, with sparse but vivid lyrics. Many of them are funny. A critical track is “Gentleman’s Jack” — later revived at the end of the record as “Live Jack” — in which Lenderman sings about “Jack Nicholson’s courtside seat / Purple foam imprinted with celebrity ass cheek.” And then there’s “Someone Get The Grill Out Of The Rain,” an early example of Lenderman’s seizing upon a mundane object and turning it into a melancholic metaphor. The rusted-out grill sitting in the yard is more than just a rusted-out grill sitting in the yard.

Ghost Of Your Guitar Solo was the beginning of Lenderman writing from a regional perspective. On his Bandcamp page, he cites the authors Harry Crews and Larry Brown as inspirations, “southern, self-taught writers who balanced empathy, humor, and darkness.” On that count, another southern writer in much closer proximity to Lenderman must also be counted as an important influence: his former partner Karly Hartzman. They started dating in the late 2010s, and Hartzman eventually invited Lenderman to play guitar in her band, Wednesday.

Hartzman’s own artistic evolution paces slightly ahead of Lenderman’s — Wednesday’s 2021 LP Twin Plagues is her Boat Songs, and last year’s excellent Rat Saw God is her Manning Fireworks. On those albums, Hartzman writes about what I call the Gummo South, a nod to Harmony Korine’s grotesque 1997 horror-comedy shot in Nashville about a white trash town in the wake of a lethal tornado. Her songs are populated by rundown nail salons and seedy roadside sex shops and neighborhood trap houses with cocaine and guns stashed inside the walls.

Like Lenderman, Hartzman is a natural wit, though his songs tend to be less centered on small-town sleaze. He accumulates the accoutrement of southern miscellanea to decorate the exterior worlds of characters otherwise consumed by their interior lives. On Manning Fireworks, he’s learned to do this in an ambient sense; it’s so subtle that the environments are felt as much as they are described. In “Joker Lips,” a person works at a disreputable hotel, “draining cum from hotel showers.” Later, Lenderman rhymes “Kahula shooter” with “DUI scooter,” forming a kind of redneck haiku. “Hoping for the hours / To pass a little faster,” the guy in the song prays. Because Lenderman has done the work, you feel the tedium. You can practically sense it on your skin, like August humidity.

III. “Please don’t laugh only half of what I said / is a joke”

The press cycle for Manning Fireworks began in June with an interview in The Guardian. The most remarked-upon portion of the article concerned the phenomenon of “dudes rock,” and how the online meme is frequently attached to Lenderman’s work. Lenderman apparently brought this up, unprompted, to distance himself from it. “I don’t think all my songs are necessarily about dudes – I don’t really resonate with whatever ‘dudes rock’ is,” he said. “I don’t want the music to come across like it’s not inclusive to everybody – like somebody who’s not a dude.”

On one hand, he’s absolutely correct — Lenderman’s songs really are inclusive. One of his primary concerns (an apparent remnant of a Catholic upbringing) is shame, the most universal of all emotions. (“I wouldn’t be in the seminary if I could be with you,” from “Rudolph,” is perhaps the definitive MJ Lenderman lyric.) But he’s equally interested in the lack of shame, particularly on Manning Fireworks. It’s the characteristic that applies to almost all of his characters: the philanderer in “She’s Leaving You,” the status-obsessed stooge in “Wristwatch,” the burnt-out partier in “Rip Torn,” the self-destructive loner in “You Don’t Know The Shape I’m In,” and so on. These are people who do not, and cannot, see themselves for what they really are. On that note, I have a hard time believing that Lenderman isn’t writing mostly about men. In fact, I think he’s one of our most perceptive writers addressing the deeply confused state of modern masculinity.

A word that recurs throughout Manning Fireworks is “jerk.” The album in some ways is a taxonomy of jerkdom, whether it’s the “perfect little baby / who’s now a jerk” in the title song or the jerk fighting creeping self-awareness in the cowbell-powered “Rudolph.” In that Guardian interview, Lenderman speaks derisively about internet influencers peddling a comic-book caricature of manliness, defined by silly displays of brute strength and piggish misogyny, though in his own songs he approaches these types with surprising evenhandedness. Lenderman expertly avoids self-pity (the classic trap for male singer-songwriters since early ’70s OGs like James Taylor and Jackson Browne) and self-righteousness (the go-to tactic for deferential male “allies” in the contemporary world). Instead, he portrays these guys as “drowning in plain sight” losers who put up facades — often without knowing it — that barely conceal how broken they are.

Warren Zevon used to be the master of this kind of songwriting, where you neither redeem nor judge your toxic characters. Rather, you put the listener in that headspace for a few minutes, the way a short story writer does, as a form of psychological tourism. On Boat Songs, Lenderman achieved this partly via the proliferation of lyrical references to famous athletes, a clever acknowledgment of the “Remember Some Guys!” method of male communication. But on Manning Fireworks, he sets the Michael Jordan and Dan Marino shoutouts aside in favor of more direct invocations of delusion and despair. He can do this with humor — like in “On My Knees,” which opens with a sly one liner about being “burdened by those wet dreams, of people having fun” — but then he’ll remind you that these guys are not totally kidding.

I don’t know that I have ever heard “dudes rock” uttered or texted or tweeted without some element of self-mockery. Most guys I know feel at least a little self-conscious about enjoying stereotypical “guy” stuff, like betting on football or eating at Buffalo Wild Wings, and there’s an instinctual desire to defuse that feeling by exaggerating their “dudeness” to the point of knowing silliness. It’s a defense mechanism at a time when the expectations for “acting like a man” have never been less clear. Nevertheless, at the root of “dudes rock” is a genuine yearning for community in a culture where men are more isolated (and suicidal) than ever. For me the most heartbreaking moment on Manning Fireworks occurs in “Joker Lips,” when Lenderman sings, “Please don’t laugh all half of what I said / is a joke.” Pouring your heart out and having it treated as a punchline — I don’t know that there is a better definition of loneliness than that.

IV. “Every day is a miracle / not to mention a threat”

I love MJ Lenderman’s music. I love it so much that I actually worry about him. I’ve interviewed him twice, and he struck me as unusually grounded and guileless. Are the usual villains of the music business — the hangers-on, the enablers, the vapid and malignant soul stealers — threatening to invade his inner circle? Are bad substances and worse love interests looming? Is someone going to ruin this guy?

Is it possible that … I’m the problem? Is raving about the greatness of MJ Lenderman’s songs the biggest threat to the potential greatness of MJ Lenderman’s songs in the future? Could it be that compliments are potentially more perilous than a line of coke or hooking up with a Kardashian? “For me personally — the more I see written about me and see other people’s perception of me — it makes me start to think about me a little differently,” he told me in 2022. “I feel like that’s probably not a great thing for an artist, so I try to avoid that as much as possible.”

Again: This is an unusually grounded and guileless person. Please do not show MJ Lenderman this column.

In July, when laying out the candidates for the 2024 “Song Of The Summer,” I attested, “Ultimately, of all the songs on this list, [Sabrina Carpenter’s] ‘Espresso‘ may have the least working against it for ‘Song Of The Summer’ consideration.”

At least in terms of Billboard data, that turned out to be correct.

Today (September 4), Billboard named their top 10 songs of the summer, based on performance on the weekly Global 200 charts from June 8 to September 7. Here’s the full list:

10. “Gata Only” by FloyyMenor X Cris Mj
9. “Too Sweet” by Hozier
8. “Million Dollar Baby” by Tommy Richman
7. “Beautiful Things” by Benson Boone
6. “I Had Some Help” by Post Malone Feat. Morgan Wallen
5. “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar
4. “Please Please Please” by Sabrina Carpenter
3. “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” by Shaboozey
2. “Birds Of A Feather” by Billie Eilish
1. “Espresso” by Sabrina Carpenter

“Espresso” ended up at No. 1, and Carpenter is the only artist with multiple songs in the top 10, as “Please Please Please” is No. 4. As for “Espresso,” Billboard notes that it was the only song to spend all 14 weeks of the summer tracking period in the top three. “Please Please Please” and Eilish’s “Birds Of A Feather,” the latter of which came in second on the list, spent six weeks in the top three this summer.

Megan Thee Stallion can’t explain how to reconcile her beef with Nicki Minaj, because she doesn’t know how it started in the first place. In a new interview with Billboard, Meg admitted she doesn’t know why Minaj turned on her, and that she only spent the early part of the year exchanging diss songs with her former collaborator because she “knew what I had to do and what I had to say.”

“I still to this day don’t know what the problem is,” she confessed when asked about a potential reconciliation between the two rappers. “I don’t even know what could be reconciled because I, to this day, don’t know what the problem is.”

For what it’s worth, Meg and Nicki certainly started their relationship on a good note, teaming up to rap together on Meg’s 2019 single “Hot Girl Summer.” The song peaked at No. 11 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the US Rhythmic chart — Meg’s first and Nicki’s eighth. However, in 2022, Nicki recalled taking umbrage at a joke Megan made during a party, which ultimately led to their falling out (although, I gotta say… that’s the sort of thing you have a conversation about, not hold onto for five years and make a slew of diss tracks about).

Meanwhile, some fans believe Nicki actually turned on Meg when her 2020 collaboration with Nicki’s rival Cardi B, “WAP,” turned out to be much more successful, spending four non-consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Hot 100, and becoming one of the most buzzed-about songs of that year. Minaj took some apparent shots at Meg on her 2023 single, “Red Ruby Da Sleeze.”

Nicki and Meg opened 2024 with back-and-forth diss songs, beginning with Meg’s lead Megan single, “Hiss,” which addressed a number of her other detractors at the same time. Nicki responded with “Big Foot,” but the lukewarm response to the song — and Nicki’s accompanying days-long Twitter rant — caused the “beef” to fizzle out quickly. Still, it set the tone for the year, which has seen skirmishes between Ice Spice and Latto, and Drake and Kendrick Lamar.

One of the most-acclaimed indie bands of the mid-2000s is back. TV On The Radio are releasing a 20th anniversary edition of their debut album, Desperate Youth, Blood Thirsty Babes, featuring five bonus tracks, two of which are previously unreleased. The reissue comes out on November 15. The group — now a trio of Tunde Adebimpe, Kyp Malone, and Jaleel Bunton — is also going on tour with dates in New York, Los Angeles, and London.

Tickets for the shows go on sale on Ticketmaster on Thursday, September 12, at 10 a.m. local time.

You can see the tracklist and tour dates below (and as always, please watch TVOTR’s iconic performance of “Wolf Like Me” on Letterman).

TV On The Radio’s Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes (20th Anniversary Edition) Tracklist

1. “The Wrong Way”
2. “Dreams”
3. “King Eternal”
4. “Ambulance”
5. “Poppy”
6. “Don’t Love You”
7. “Bomb Yourself”
8. “Wear You Out”
9. “Staring At The Sun”
10. “You Could Be Love”
11. “Staring At The Sun (Demo)”
12. “New Health Rock (Remastered)”
13. “Modern Romance (Remastered)”
14. “Final Fantasy” (2004 Recording)”
15. “Dry Drunk Emperor (2005 Recording)”

TV On The Radio’s 2024 Tour Dates

11/25 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall
11/26 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall
11/29 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall
11/30 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall
12/04 — Los Angeles, CA @ The El Rey
12/05 — Los Angeles, CA @ The El Rey
12/06 — Los Angeles, CA @ The El Rey
12/10 — London, UK @ Islington Assembly Hall
12/11 — London, UK @ Islington Assembly Hall
12/12 — London, UK @ Islington Assembly Hall

Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes (20th Anniversary Edition) is out November 15 via Touch And Go Records. Find more information here.

The Weeknd has been teasing a new album for months now, and he just dropped the biggest breadcrumb yet.

A video The Weeknd shared today (September 4) features scrolling text set to eerie music. The text reads:

“Yesterday was fourteen years ago…

We held our breath, falling into a shimmering sea in the after hours of the night…

Attempted to cleanse the wounds with melodies and lights, a bulletproof bandage to shield what lies beneath.

In a place where the seasons never changed, where time ceased to exist. But therein lays the problem.

Today has felt like an endless spin. I keep distorting the truth, immune to the dizziness, numb to the nausea. What lies beneath — screams in silence.

I look in the mirror and feel both old and new, stuck in limbo and unable to move. I still haven’t faced myself.

More songs could help, but what do I have left to say? Woe is me in my gilded cage, right?

The very thing that once made me invincible failed me on the world stage. A new trauma surfaced, opening floodgates.

A new path awaits.

When today ends, I’ll discover who I am.

Hurry Up Tomorrow.”

That last bit was written in gigantic letters, and since the post is captioned “ALBUM TITLE,” the name is the album appears to be Hurry Up Tomorrow.

A press release confirms that, also noting that the album “represents the creative apex of the [trilogy] project, serving as the third and final chapter crafted with existential and self-referential themes as seen with the latest visionary teasers that have set fans ablaze with anticipation for this concluding installment.”

Now, we wait for news of a release date or a new single.

If you turn on any random NFL game on a Sunday afternoon, odds are you’re going to see some pretty spectacular play out of at least one tight end. The position, as a whole, has never been in a better spot, as we’re seeing Hall of Fame players intersect with promising youngsters and a middle-class at the position that is filled with guys who can really play.

For Tony Gonzalez, watching tight end play at this point in NFL history is a blast. Arguably the greatest tight end to ever play the game, Gonzalez helped revolutionize the position, and now, he sees the unique ways he was used during his time with the Kansas City Chiefs and the Atlanta Falcons become standard operating procedure for tight ends.

“When I got in the league, it was three-point stance and blocking half the time,” Gonzalez told Uproxx Sports. “And not that I didn’t do the three point stance, I’m still from that old school tight end you had to block, put hands on people and block them. But I started, one of the things that I did, it was like, hey, put me in the spot, put me at wide receiver, line me up all over the field. And you’re seeing, I mean, Travis Kelce, Kyle Pitts, [Dalton] Kincaid, all these young tight ends that, they hardly ever put their hand in the dirt.”

Recently, we got the chance to sit down with Gonzalez to talk about the position, his partnership with Crown Royal, this upcoming NFL season, and more.

What do you have going on with Crown Royal?

Well, I’ve partnered up with Crown Royal this year, and we’re gonna be spreading generosity. We’re gonna start it out next week in Kansas City, we’re gonna be on the Royal Rig, which is a big 18 wheeler, I’ll be there with Rob Riggle, big Kansas City Chiefs fan, and like I said, spreading generosity, hanging out with the fans, supporting the military, which is obviously close to my heart. And so, can’t wait to get it started next week in Kansas City.

What’s the ideal preparation of Crown Royal? Are you someone who likes throwing in a cocktail? Do you like to sip it on the rocks? What are we going with?

I’m more of a rocks guy, but back when I was hitting the club up, it was a crown and coke, having a good time.

That’s a classic, you can never go wrong with it.

Yeah. It was big one with the team, too. A lot of people on the team loved a Crown Royal.

Obviously, we’re here because the NFL season is right around the corner. And I guess just broadly, how are we feeling about the NFL season being back?

I mean, come on, the NFL has something that no other sport has, not even close, it’s the drama every season. You always have your contenders, but you know for sure there’s going to be three or four teams that surprise everybody. For sure, there’s gonna be some of those “contenders” that fall off, like Philly did last year, that aren’t as good. It’s exciting to see, and right now, I know I’m being a homer here a little bit, but Kansas City, best team in the NFL, I think you’re foolish, honestly, and I think you’re just trying to be a contrarian, if you don’t pick them right now to go back to the Super Bowl. Of course, anything can happen health wise, but they’ve gotten better. They look great, defense, offense.

But other teams, love what the Baltimore Ravens have done. I think Philly, I think they’re gonna be a different team. They’re gonna be right back on top. They got the new coordinators, Vic Fangio and Kellen Moore, that’s gonna make a huge difference for them. And then you got the outliers, like let’s see Aaron Rodgers out there with the Jets, if he can get it back that old flavor that he used to have, that MVP-type level, who knows what they can do? So it’s exciting, the NFL, they’ve got it. It’s a great product that I love watching.

I was going to ask about them in a sec, but I want to just ask about Kansas City, because obviously, you had such a great career there, now they’re the team to beat in the NFL year over year. And I’m always interested in how they seem to find another gear once the playoffs roll around. What do you attribute that to? Is that just, like, we have Mahomes, it’s winning time, we know that he’s just going to be able to get the job done. Or do you think there’s something else to that?

No, it’s a combination of things. You have Hall of Famers — Hall of Fame coach, Andy Reid has always been one of the best, just couldn’t get over the hump because he didn’t have the quarterback. Donovan McNabb’s a good quarterback, but he’s not Patrick Mahomes. You get Patrick Mahomes, and you combine it with Andy Reid, it’s kind of like [Bill] Belichick combined with Tom Brady. It’s a perfect storm, and they’re going to be great for a long time, and when they get to the playoffs, those guys step up, and it starts at the top.

Then on defense, Chris Jones. Chris Jones, always, he’s having a good year, good year, gets in the playoffs and just takes control of the games, unstoppable. And that’s the difference between good players and great players, and great players with the best in the league. And then the best in the league with some of the best of all time. This is kind of like the Dak Prescott thing — great during the regular season, get to the playoffs, it’s not the same. The other quarterback will play better than you, and that’s the reason why they’re having trouble signing him this year.

So, I think with the Chiefs, get used to this, they’re gonna be good for a long time. And I think this year, this might be the best team that they’ve had in the last three years.

I know you just went through a couple of teams that you find interesting going into this season. You put Philly in there, you put the Ravens in there, a couple others. Is there one that you think is flying under the radar going into this year for one reason or another?

Sure. I will sound like a homer again, but I think the Atlanta Falcons. I think they got a quarterback, and he’s good, Kirk Cousins. They have offensive weapons, they went out and got Matthew Judon for the defense. They got Jessie Bates, A.J. Terrell, one of the best corners in the league. They’re somebody that could surprise some people, and if they get hot, they can beat you, they can beat any team in NFC. They can beat San Francisco, they can beat Philly. But yeah, I think them, and then maybe a dark horse in the AFC, I would go back to the Jets. If the Jets stay healthy, and Aaron’s Aaron, watch out. They can light it up and do pretty well.

I’d be remiss if I did not ask someone who’s on the tight end Mount Rushmore about what we’re seeing in the position in the NFL right now, because you turn on any game and it seems like you’re guaranteed at least one elite tight end. Do you feel like the position has evolved in the decade or so you’ve been out of the league? Or is this just a matter of, listen, there’s a lot of talent coming in, it is kind of inevitable that this was going to happen?

I think it’s evolved, for sure, just like it evolved when I got in the league. When I got in the league, it was three-point stance and blocking half the time. And not that I didn’t do the three point stance, I’m still from that old school tight end you had to block, put hands on people and block them. But I started, one of the things that I did, it was like, hey, put me in the spot, put me at wide receiver, line me up all over the field. And you’re seeing, I mean, Travis Kelce, Kyle Pitts, [Dalton] Kincaid, all these young tight ends that, they hardly ever put their hand in the dirt. I mean, maybe five, six times a game, otherwise they’re staying up and blocking from there, too.

But the position has evolved, and it’s been great, and you’re seeing every team, you have to have one. You have to have one to be successful, because it’s such a weapon for a quarterback and your receivers. That’s why these guys are blowing up the league. They’re the personalities of the league, the tight ends, and they drive that offense, they’re leaders on the offense. Hopefully they start paying them more, they need to pay them like a wide receiver, as far as I’m concerned.

And then my last question, such a big part of your story is that you’re, in addition to a great football player, one hell of a basketball player. If you were to make a starting five of the best basketball players you were around in the NFL, who would you pick?

Well, me. Antonio Gates — I’m gonna name a lot of tight ends now! I think Jimmy Graham. I’m gonna go with an old name, Andre Risen. He was a great point guard. And then Greg Jennings. Is that five? I think that’s five right there, that’s a great starting five right there. And Julius Peppers, too. I gotta put him in there.