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Disclosure Share ‘Energy’ And Announce A New Album Featuring Kehlani, Common, And More

Earlier this year, Disclosure mimicked their Caracal album promotion and ushered in a new era of music by releasing a single each day for five days in a row. While the UK duo shared many dance-ready tunes, it turns out that none of the previously-released singles will actually appear on an album. Instead, the duo’s record will see an array of big-name features. On Thursday, Disclosure unveiled the release date for their upcoming album Energy and shared the eponymous lead single.

Disclosure’s “Energy” boasts motivational clichés over a steady, clanking beat. The vocal samples belong to Eric Thomas, a hip-hop preacher who recites inspiring prose: “Look! Where your focus goes, your energy flows. Are you hearing me?”

In a statement, Disclosure explains they were inspired by Thomas’ encouraging candor: “When we found Eric many years ago, he was like a goldmine of inspirational quotes and motivational speeches. Even if he was speaking to a room of five, it was like he was addressing a stadium. He has an immense presence and energy about him that translates so well into music – especially house music. This time, we cut up various speeches to make something that makes sense. What he says is basically the whole concept for the record, that’s why it became the title track.”

In addition to Thomas, each track on Disclosure’s Energy record features guest vocals over their revved-up beats. Musicians like Kehlani, Common, Slowthai, and Mick Jenkins lend a verse on the upcoming record, which sees an August release. Speaking about their influence on the project, Disclosure said they pulled the title from how quickly they were working on music: “The thing that decided which songs made it and which songs didn’t was that one word: energy,” they said in a statement. “Every track was written really quickly. That’s why we had to write so many songs because those ones don’t come up every day. Or every week. Or every month.”

Watch Disclosure’s “Energy” video above and find their Energy cover art and tracklist below.

Capitol Records

1. “Watch Your Step” Feat. Kelis
2. “Lavender” Feat. Channel Tres
3. “My High” Feat. Aminé and Slowthai
4. “Who Knew?” Feat. Mick Jenkins
5. “Douha” Feat. Mali Mali and Fatoumata Diawara
6. “Fractal”
7. “Ce N’est Pas” Feat. Blik Bassy
8. “Energy”
9. “Thinking ‘Bout You”
10. “Birthday” Feat. Kehlani and Syd
11. “Reverie” Feat. Common

Energy is out 9/28 via Capitol Records. Pre-order it here.

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

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It’s Crazy Harrison Ford Did The Voiceover For ‘The Empire Strikes Back’ Trailer And It’s Amazing

Today is the 40th anniversary of my favorite movie of all time, The Empire Strikes Back. Funny thing, I’ve written about this movie so much since its 30th anniversary, I honestly don’t have a whole lot to add today. Even back on May 4th, I wrote a whole thing about the magical book Once Upon a Galaxy, which is a day by day diary about the making of The Empire Strikes Back that is (a) long out of print and (b) I can’t believe it exists.

(Though, if I had to recommend something else from the past, for The Empire Strikes Back 30th anniversary I interviewed the film’s director, Irvin Kershner. This wound up being his last interview before he passed away later that year. He made my favorite movie and to this day I can’t believe I got to do this.)

So, for the 40th anniversary, let’s keep it simple. One of my favorite tidbits about The Empire Strikes Back that not a lot people seem to realize is that in one of the film’s original main trailers, that was released in the fall of 1979, the upbeat, peppy, over-the-top voiceover is done by … Harrison Ford. Yes, I’m being serious.

What I love about this voiceover is that Ford is really going for it. Keep in mind, Ford is not really known for his wide-ranging animated vocal talents. His voiceover in Blade Runner is known for being one of the worst voiceovers in film history – though, that’s not entirely on Ford as he was pretty much tanking it on purpose in an attempt to sabotage the voiceover altogether since he and director Ridley Scott were forced to do it by the studio. It’s not a surprise the Blade Runner voiceover is pretty much lost to history today as it doesn’t appear on most home releases.

And proof of that is in this trailer for The Empire Strikes Back, because I don’t think I’ve ever heard Ford so … jubilant. He sounds like a really excited person who has no idea what the movie is about, even though he played a main character. And the way it ends, where his voice all of a sudden gets really deep as he says the title of the movie is just … great. Followed by, “Coming to your galaxy next summer.”

(Over the years I’ve probably watched this trailer for The Empire Strikes back at least 100 times and it never gets old.)

You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.

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18 Perfect Tweets About Joaquin Phoenix And Rooney Mara Having A Baby


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Drake Calls Kylie Jenner A ‘Side Piece’ On An Unreleased New Song

Drake just dropped a batch of fresh music with Dark Lane Demo Tapes, but he still has material on the way. He previously revealed his plans to drop an album this summer, and in recent days, he has taken to Instagram Live to preview new music. In one preview, he shared a song on which he sings in French for the first time. His latest offering, though, is far more controversial: On a preview of a new track, he refers to Kylie Jenner as a “side piece,” as TMZ notes.

Appearing yet again on OVO Mark’s livestream, the two played some new music. Drake rapped on the song in question, “Yeah, I’m a hater to society / Real sh*t, Kylie Jenner: that’s a side piece / I got twenty motherf*ckin’ Kylies.” He also said, “Yeah, I got twenty damn Kendalls / Young slim baddies and they en vogue / Yeah, I got twenty f*ckin’ Gigis.”

This of course follows rumors that Drake and Jenner were romantically involved. After Jenner’s falling out with Travis Scott last year, she and Drake were seen out together on multiple occasions in 2019 and earlier this year. Neither of them have confirmed whether or not the two have a relationship, but Drake certainly addresses it here.

Listen to the song snippets above.

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How One ‘Yesterday’ Screenwriter’s Dream Became Something Of A Nightmare

For years, Jack Barth had managed to eke out a living as an itinerant comedy writer. Over the course of his career, the former editor of Stanford’s humor magazine had co-authored a series of offbeat travel books, wrote freelance film and travel pieces for major magazines, and produced a television show in the UK. He even wrote an episode of The Simpsons — “A Fish Called Selma,” which Barth said he got greenlit after only “128 failed attempts.” (Barth clarifies that the bit about Planet of the Apes musical was, sadly, not his idea).

Such a varied career isn’t unusual for a writer. Certainly nothing to be embarrassed about, especially in a vocation where the simplest yardstick for success is whether you get to keep doing it for a living. Still, it felt something like a second-half redemption for Barth when, after 40 years in the business and 25 unproduced screenplays, he sold his first feature script at the age of 62.

A high-concept that was also personal, Barth’s script was about a not-especially-successful singer-songwriter who, through an unexplainable event, becomes the only person in the world who remembers the Beatles. Barth’s protagonist books a few more gigs with his newfound superpower and achieves some cult popularity, but mostly wonders why his one-of-a kind songbook isn’t bringing him the same fame and fortune it once brought the Beatles, or the fulfillment he’d imagined.

“I wrote it from my point of view,” Barth says. “Which was, I was lying in bed one night thinking, if Star Wars hadn’t been made and I just came up with the idea for Star Wars, I bet I wouldn’t be able to sell it. Carry that on to the Beatles, if I knew all the Beatles songs, I bet I couldn’t be successful with it.”

“Jack is a terrific writer, but he’s also great high concept guy,” says Trey Ellis, a screenwriter and friend of Barth’s who knew him from the Stanford Chaparral and had read early versions of his Beatles script. “This is exactly the kind of thing he thinks of all the time.”

If Barth’s concept sounds vaguely familiar, it’s because his script, Cover Version, was acquired by Working Title Films and eventually became Yesterday, from legendary British filmmakers Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle.

“I wrote the first treatment in 2012 and in 2013 I gave it to my agent. She gave it to a producer named Matt Wilkinson,” Barth says, of his script’s initial journey. “Matt tried to get it going as a project that we would fund for maybe $10 million, a low budget film, plus whatever it cost to clear the Beatles rights, which would’ve been a lot. [Wilkinson] got a guy named Nick Angel at Working Title, who’s a professional music clearance guy, working on the Beatles clearances. In the course of doing that, years later, he mentioned it to Richard Curtis because they’re friendly. Richard said, ‘That’s a great idea, I want to do it’ because he had a deal with Working Title/Universal to make a couple of films. He wanted [Cover Version] to be one of the films that he made.”

Barth’s Cover Version eventually became Yesterday, written by Richard Curtis (Four Weddings And A Funeral, Love Actually) and directed by Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire, Trainspotting). To get that kind of validation — two of the UK’s most celebrated filmmakers wanting to make his screenplay — after toiling away for years in the #content mines, sounds like any writer’s dream come true.

Only for Barth it soon wasn’t. The trouble started with Barth accepting what he believed was a lesser credit than he deserved.

“My impression when they first told me ‘Richard Curtis wants to buy your film’ was that he was going to produce it,” Barth says. “Then when we got into the final negotiations, they said, ‘Also, here’s the credit that he’s insisting on having’ where he’d be the sole screenwriter and then I’d get co-‘story by’ credit with him. I thought, well that’s kind of fucked up to pre-arbitrate credits, I don’t think the writers guild would like that. But at the same time, I’d been at this for five years at that point and figured it would be nice to just cash out and finally move on. So I accepted.” (Barth notes that the film was made under the auspices of the British Writer’s Guild rather than the WGA, and the two have slightly different rules).

Barth’s screenplay — the early versions of which he worked on with MacKenzie Crook, who later left to work on his own BAFTA-winning BBC series, The Detectorists — shares a number of similarities with what would eventually wind up in Yesterday. In Cover Version, Barth’s protagonist is in a long-term relationship with his bandmate, a school teacher named Ella. After the inciting event, he’s noodling around playing “Yesterday,” and his bandmates compliment him on the catchy new tune he’s written. At first, believing this to be a prank, he Googles “Beatles,” only to find nothing but pictures of insects and Volkswagen.

In Yesterday, girlfriend Ella has become platonic childhood friend/lifelong crush Ellie, also a schoolteacher. The rest of the set up is all more or less as is, only after the event, unlike in Cover Version, where the lead’s new songbook yields only slightly better gigs, Yesterday‘s hero (played by Himesh Patel) becomes an overnight success, selling out arenas and becoming a worldwide sensation. His somewhat confusing conflict becomes having to choose between superstardom and dating a schoolteacher.

In both, the hero comes to a turning point when he seeks out an unfamous and unassassinated John Lennon, in this universe a grey and wizened fisherman still living in Liverpool. Both scripts end with a joke about no one remembering Harry Potter.

The main difference between the two, which would seem to carry Shakespearean significance based on what was to come, was that whereas the Jack Barth version was a meditation on professional disappointment, the message vs. the messenger, and personal expression vs popular validation, the Richard Curtis version was a rom-com about a childhood crush.

“I’ve been thinking about this a lot,” Barth says. “And I think that the reason that Richard turned him into the most successful songwriter of all time is because that’s how Richard’s life is going. He met Rowan Atkinson at Oxford, he came out of Oxford and immediately rode Rowan Atkinson to huge success in his early twenties, he’s never been knocked out, as far as I know. Why wouldn’t this guy become the most successful songwriter in the world?”

Having swallowed the bittersweet pill of his film being produced, but with a lesser credit for himself and a new, sunnier version of his story in the film, Barth then found himself on the sidelines during Yesterday‘s promotional tour.

“I contacted Universal Publicity and said, ‘Look, I’ve done some research and I don’t think there’s ever been a screenwriter who sold his first screenplay at my age,’” Barth says.

“It’s an interesting angle, almost inspirational. I think it’s a great story. But Universal didn’t want it, they kind of had their marching orders — that it was ‘Richard Curtis and Danny Boyle, two great British filmmakers working together at last.’ I understand that in terms of cleaning up the marketing.”

Barth accepted his diminished role at first. Being rewritten was nothing new, and as a film journalist himself he knew it’s easier to sell an interview when the subject is a big name. But then he watched as Richard Curtis, a writer so revered in the UK that he’s literally one step below a knighthood, seemed to do his best to minimize Barth’s contributions to the movie in interview after interview.

DenofGeek asked Curtis about a “germ of an idea” that Curtis “ran with.” To which Curtis responded, “I had the one-sentence then said I don’t want any more information because I sometimes found when I worked with original material that it doesn’t come from the heart. So I tried to write a whole film that meant something to me, rather than having too much extra information.”

That “one sentence” characterization of Barth’s script would become a theme again in an interview with SlashFilm (emphasis mine): “Yesterday was an odd one actually because I didn’t think of the one lined thesis. Someone rang me and said, you know, would you be interested — and I think maybe even directing — the film with this one line plot: a musician who’s the only person to remember The Beatles. And so, what happened after that is I said well no, don’t tell me anymore. Let me just write my own film,” Curtis said.

The Wall Street Journal, in a story Barth pitched himself, was one of the few outlets to focus on Barth’s involvement, and how his and Curtis’s visions differed. But even with Barth as the focus, Richard Curtis seemed intent on minimizing: “’When I wrote my version I hadn’t actually read Jack’s; that was the deal,’” Curtis was quoted.

Yet if Curtis hadn’t read Barth’s version, how did they both hit upon, among other things, the idea of an alive-and-well John Lennon living as an obscure fisherman?

Meanwhile, the Harry Potter bit at the end of the movie would seem an almost throwaway gag. That is, if only Richard Curtis hadn’t once again written Jack Barth out of it. In this case, Curtis credited, strangely, Sarah Silverman: “I also definitely had a conversation with Sarah Silverman, who’s got a credit at the end of the movie,” Curtis told the Huffington Post. “She said, ‘At the end of the movie, he should find out that no one can remember Harry Potter. That’d be a good joke.’ So that joke ended the movie, but what I can’t remember is whether I already had the idea that other things should disappear, or whether she said that first. But it was a lovely little thing to play around with.”

(I contacted Richard Curtis’s representative, who said Curtis wouldn’t be available for comment. Virtually everyone else involved (producers, agents) either declined to comment or didn’t respond to my calls or emails.)

Would people respect Richard Curtis any less if they knew he hadn’t come up with every scene and bit in Yesterday? One would think not. But it’s also not unheard of for beloved creators to fall so in love with other people’s ideas that they forget the ideas were other people’s. Robin Williams, to name just one, was famous for it. Williams also never really denied it, and most of his victims, to whom he generally cut a check, didn’t seem to hold it against him.

As for Curtis, there was one time when he did credit Jack Barth, according to Barth.

“Just before the film came out, a writer in Australia got a lot of international press claiming that we stole his idea from an ebook he wrote,” Barth says. “I turned in the first draft before his book was published, so that would’ve been an easy one to bat away, had anybody asked. Within 24 hours, Richard Curtis sent me an email — for the first time ever –‘congratulating’ me for supplying such a great idea, which, he gushed, was all mine, not his at all.”

One could argue it’s a simpler marketing story to sell a “Richard Curtis/Danny Boyle movie,” or even “Sarah Silverman contributed a joke” than “Richard Curtis makes unknown 60-something writer’s screenplay more commercial.” And so Barth says he once again swallowed his pride and didn’t make a stink to avoid hurting the movie. He even attended the Tribeca Film Festival premiere — where, contrary to his contract, says Barth, he had to pay his own way from the UK, where he’s lived since 2000.

Whether or not Barth’s silence helped, Yesterday was solidly successful, going on to gross $153.7 million worldwide on a $26 million budget.

Barth’s reward for that success? Financially speaking, nothing. While he was paid “a reasonable price” for his initial script, Yesterday‘s success has, to date, garnered nothing in the way of a payout. In fact, as reported in Deadline, Barth’s accounting statement still shows Yesterday $87 million in the hole.

How does this happen? Well, being a relative nobody at the time, Barth’s deal was for a share of net, or “below the line,” profits, the only kind of profit-share nobodies can generally get.

And net profits, as most people in the entertainment business (or anyone who’s heard the term “Hollywood Accounting”) will tell you, are virtually worthless. As of 2011, the actor who played Darth Vader still hadn’t received residuals for Return of the Jedi (which opened in 1983 and earned $475 million on a $32 million budget). One entertainment lawyer I contacted told me that in 28 years, only three movies they’d worked on had ever “hit net.” As another explained, “Basically, how important you are determines when or if something is legally considered profitable.”

All of which makes Barth’s treatment, like the protagonist of his script, not especially notable. The sad irony of an exploitative business practice is that the more widespread it becomes the less juicy a story about it seems. And by the time he spoke up about it, Barth says, most news outlets had long since moved on from the kooky non-Beatles Beatles movie.

“I didn’t realize Richard was going to do this to me until the week that the film was released,” Barth says. “Then all the publicity hit all at once and I could see that he was taking credit for everything. I think I could have done something then but I didn’t want to jeopardize the film. I got lawyers to contact Richard’s lawyers and they just dragged it out.”

“By the time I realized I needed to get the story out there myself, it was really hard to pitch something that was for a film that had come out eight months earlier. Most of the media is concerned with just promoting the current films, they’re not interested in a story about the abuse of the powerless by the powerful.”

This journalistic apathy in turn, is sadly understandable. Covering entertainment requires access, and in times of precarity, when so many seemingly well-established colleagues are being furloughed or laid off, annoying the powerful — which once upon a time journalists considered their main function — is mostly just a professional liability. The same high risk/low reward calculation probably contributes to those producers and agents involved not wanting to participate in the story.

So once again Barth finds himself cursed with a great story that’s maybe just a tad too real, a tad too complex for mass consumption. He’s in the somewhat quixotic position of simultaneously wanting the credit he feels he deserves for the premise and some of the good bits of a movie, while disavowing the saccharine tone of the same film. At the very least, Barth thought, having been even a small part of such a successful movie would help him get the kinds of meetings he couldn’t before. So far, that hasn’t panned out either.

“This is why I’m so upset, this is why I actually feel like Richard has damaged me financially,” Barth says. “I write and say I’m the guy who created the film Yesterday and they look and they go, ‘No, you’re not, that’s a Richard Curtis movie, you moron.’”

“It’s really hard to get a project going, because the one thing about Yesterday, people are mixed about it, but one thing everyone agrees on, it’s a great idea.”

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Aubrey Plaza Confirms That The Awkward Photo Of Her And Michael Cera Is ‘Real Life, Deal With It’

Here’s some inside-baseball for y’all: the longest debate the editorial staff had while compiling the Best Comic Book Movies of the 2010s list wasn’t over what should go where, but whether Scott Pilgrim vs. the World should be included. It was eventually decided that yes, obviously Scott Pilgrim should be eligible; there are comic book movies outside the Marvel Cinematic Universe and DC Extended Universe after all, and it ranked third on the list, behind only Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and Logan.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is a fun, visually clever movie with a great soundtrack (“We are Sex Bob-omb… 1, 2, 3, 4!”), and to celebrate the upcoming 10th anniversary, director Edgar Wright hosted a tweet-along on Wednesday night. Comic book creator Bryan Lee O’Malley, screenwriter Michael Bacall, and stars Aubrey Plaza, Brandon Routh, and Ellen “Knives Chau” Wong also took part, sharing behind-the-scenes information about Ramona Flowers and her evil exes. There was a lot of Chris Evans talk.

As wonderful as everything about that is, Plaza was the real MVP of the night.

“Jason Schwartzman and Nick Offerman and I share a birthday. JUNE 26. We are BIRTHDAY BROTHERS AND YOU SHALT BOW DOWN TO US,” she tweeted, before later adding, “I fucking love Scott Pilgrim Vs The Fucking World and am so fucking grateful to have been a fucking part of this fucking cast and fucking crew.” The Parks and Rec star also discussed that endearingly awkward (and frequently viral) photo of Michael Cera sitting in a booth in front of a group of teen girls and… is that Aubrey Plaza?

“I’m settling this once and for all. YES THAT IS ME. THIS IS REAL LIFE. DEAL WITH IT,” she wrote. Everything about this photo is great. The grainy quality, Cera’s uncomfortable smile, a mid-chew Plaza looking at someone off-camera, the half-eaten burger. I demand an oral history of this photo. This one, too.

Anyway, go watch Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.

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Polo G Shouldn’t Be This Good At Expressing Trauma On ‘The GOAT’

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

When Polo G named his debut album Die A Legend, he put his grand intentions on Front Street. The cathartic introduction was a commercial and cultural success, solidifying him as a name to watch and putting him on track to join Chicago’s legendary rap lineage. For his sophomore effort, he hammered his foot on the gas even more by deeming himself The GOAT.

A great artist is but a testament to the impact of their predecessors. During Polo’s adolescence, Chicago artists like Chief Keef and Lil Durk helped push the boundaries of what hip-hop could sound like. Polo’s cathartic, melodic album demonstrates two things: how much Chicago’s 2010s GOATs inspired him, and how capable he is of taking the baton as the mouthpiece for a new generation of teens and 20-somethings.

The production is handled by a star-studded cast, including Mike Will-Made It (“Go Stupid”), Mustard (“Heartless”), Hit-Boy (“Flex”), and Tay Keith (“Go Stupid”). There’s a different producer on each of the project’s 16 songs, but to Polo’s credit, the project is a cohesive soundscape of downtempo, oft-piano laden tracks which are apt for him to rattle off his trademark sing-songy flow.

Remnants of G Herbo and Lil Bibby’s astute lyricism and poignancy permeate tracks like “Don’t Believe The Hype” and the BJ The Chicago Kid-featuring “Wishing For A Hero,” the album’s Tupac-inspired closer. Chief Keef and Lil Durk’s knack for melody is evident all over the project, especially on “Flex,” featuring a posthumous appearance from Juice WRLD. Both artists float over Hit-Boy’s quaking production, as Polo hits pockets with such ease that a listener could see him churning out similar earworms for the rest of the 2020s.

Of course, one could have said the same thing for Juice WRLD before his tragic death last December. It’s eerily fitting that Juice WRLD is on the album. If one ever wanted to know how real Polo’s peril is, it’s exemplified by Juice having one of the best guest verses on the album — and a tribute song two tracks later. Juice’s appearance elucidates two of the album’s major themes: grief and the corrosive consequences of trauma.

On “21” Polo figuratively speaks to the sky to tell Juice, “We was tweakin’ off them Percs, I popped my last one with you,” on a track where he also notes, “I was in the trenches, tryna see a life beyond that / ‘Cause complacent n****s usually die up in they complex.” The track is a quintessential example of the squeezed-between-the-sides survivor’s guilt and moral excavation that frames The GOAT.

It’s squarely evident that Polo G is a gifted MC, capable of harmonizing or tearing through verses as he does on “Go Stupid” with NLE Choppa and Stunna 4 Vegas. “Martin & Gina” and “Beautiful Pain (Losin My Mind)” even demonstrate an ability to talk about romance beyond the genre’s crass, misogynistic norms.

But what’s also glaring is how inexorably the Chicago streets have framed Polo’s worldview. He matter of factly states, “’Too much madness in this world, shit got me fiendin’ for pills” on “Trials And Tribulations.” Seemingly every song on the project is shackled by the specter of death. His generally easygoing delivery belies the bare grimness of lines like “he f*cked up in the head, he wanna see some more brains” from “Heartless’” or “they been killin’ legends, I refuse to put my pole up” on “Chinatown.”

On “DND” he plays both sides of the coin. He salutes that his shooters “hawk sh*t down ’til you get tired of runnin’,” but in the very same rhyme scheme laments, “I dressed up for too many funerals, I’m tired of comin’.” That dissonance reflects his youth, but undermines the album’s potential. His ability to encapsulate his pain (and that of his peers) is so compelling that idle threats and empty boasts about sexual conquests feel like wasted bars, even if it’s understandable that he’s trying to reach a demographic accustomed to such. He can definitely fit on a song with any of his gun-toting, menacing peers, but he shows potential to be so much more. Consider how much he says in the opening verse of “Relentless”:

“White folks starin’ like I don’t belong
What about them nights I had to suffer?
Like they tryna make me feel insecure about my color
Ever since I made a play, been tryna educate my brothers
Heaven ain’t the only way we can escape up out the gutter
And I been through so much that it be hard to say I love her”

It would have been intriguing to see him explore more elements of race as a young Black male, how to “escape up out the gutter,” and even how his trauma informs his vulnerability — or lack thereof — with women. But at 21, he’s still trying to find those answers for himself. On the second verse of “I Know,” he shows a willingness to speak on taboo topics, exploring a young boy’s molestation by his Aunt and linking that trauma to a desire to “stand over a n****, leave his face destroyed.” And on “Wishing For A Hero,” one of the album’s finest moments, he channels Tupac’s social agency while appraising a bankrupt system over a modern redux of his “Changes” classic. 20 years later, his conclusion is like Pac’s: “Some things’ll never change.”

From Meek Mill to G-Herbo to Lil Baby, who provided a perfect change of pace on The GOAT’s “Be Something,” so many young artists are being forthright about how systemic inequality stokes trauma. Polo’s The GOAT is one of the strongest entries in a canon that probably shouldn’t exist. Polo is way too adept at communicating what trauma looks like in underserved areas, and The GOAT reflects that bittersweet gift. Hopefully, with more life experience, he can evolve into his full greatness and balance his lyrical gifts with more exploration of what healing looks like.

The GOAT is out now on Columbia Records. Get it here.

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Lil Uzi Vert And Future’s ‘Wassup’ Video Stars Deep Faked Celebritites

“Wassup,” the collaboration between Future and Lil Uzi Vert that Future teased last week with a URL scavenger hunt, has officially arrived. Where the preview would only play 30 seconds of the track before relocating it to another URL on the list provided at the teaser site, you can now play the whole thing above thanks to the animated lyrics video, which keeps the same techy theme.

Using deep fake algorithms, the video features a “Boom” (a parody of Zoom) call between a number of hip-hop stars — and political figures like Kim Jong Un, President Obama, and Trump — who all mouth the word “wassup” over the chorus. Uzi’s verse simulates a Google image search, superimposing his face over famous portraits like Steve Jobs, the Mona Lisa, Michael Jackson, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Meanwhile, Future’s verse zooms out a bit to observe the computer’s user, a busty woman lounging around half-dressed. The video closes as the laptop crashes thanks to a bunch of error messages.

It’s a creative way to present the song, which doesn’t appear on either artist’s most recent albums — Uzi’s Eternal Atake and LUV Vs. The World 2, nor Future’s High Off Life — suggesting that Uzi’s claims that he has more new projects on the way may be a reality after all.

Listen to Lil Uzi Vert’s “Wassup” featuring Future above.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

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Jason Momoa And Peter Dinklage Are Reteaming For A Project That Sounds Wild And Wonderful

No one knows when productions will resume in Hollywood. Michael Bay would like to fire things back up in five weeks, but whether that’s possible remains to be seen. Still, one cannot help but hope it’s possible to get things rolling sooner rather than later when projects like the following start to come together. Game Of Thrones co-stars Jason Momoa and Peter Dinklage will reteam on a project that you might want to tattoo on your brain. Granted, it’s not as though Khal Drogo and Tyrion Lannister were up in each other’s faces at all onscreen, but they were both big in the Mother Of Dragons’ book, and they’re pals with chemistry. I mean, look at these photos, particularly the second one.

The project in question sounds fantastic as well. Palm Springs director Max Barbakow will helm Good Bad & Undead, which will star Dinklage as famed vampire hunter Professor Abraham Van Helsing. Momoa will be playing a vampire with a change of heart. Van Helsing will reluctantly help this vampire survive when everyone else wants to stake his heart, and oh boy. If you think this description carries some buddy-comedy potential, you’re not wrong. According to Deadline, the “intent is Midnight Run in a Bram Stoker world.” From the synopsis:

Dinklage will play Van Helsing, last in a long line of vampire hunters. He develops an uneasy partnership with a vampire (Momoa) who has taken a vow never to kill again. Together they run a scam from town to town, where Van Helsing pretends to vanquish the vampire for money. But when a massive bounty is put on the vampire’s head, everything in this dangerous world full of monsters and magic is now after them.

There’s no projected release date for this project, but still, I’d buy a ticket right now. In the meantime, Dinklage will also star with Josh Brolin in a movie that sounds like a homage to Twins with the release date unknown. Meanwhile, Momoa will appear as Duncan Idaho in Denis Villeneuve’s upcoming Dune epic, which is scheduled for December 18. Fantastic movies will be coming to theaters, it’s only a question of when.

(Via Deadline)

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Soccer Mommy And Jay Som Cover Each Other’s Songs For A New Singles Series

As the pandemic continues, artists are coming up with new and creative ways of using their talents to help out during these difficult times, whether it’s by raising money for charity or just performing to keep fans entertained. Those two goals often go hand in hand, as they do on the latest venture from Soccer Mommy.

Today, Sophie Allison has announced the Soccer Mommy & Friends Singles Series, for which she and another artist will cover one of each other’s songs. She kicks things off by covering Jay Som’s “I Think You’re Alright,” while Jay Som performed “Lucy.” Upcoming artists set to participate include MGMT’s Andrew VanWyngarden, Beach Bunny, and Beabadoobee.

Allison wrote while announcing the series, “i’m super excited to announce the soccer mommy & friends singles series with contributions from @jaysomband, @whoismgmt’s andrew vanwyngarden, @radvxz, and @beachbunnymusic! pre-order the full series now to get each volume as they’re released. […] vol. 1 is out now – we’re kicking things off with jay som’s awesome cover of ‘lucy’ paired with my cover of her amazing song ‘i think you’re alright’.”⁣

Additionally, all profits from Bandcamp sales of songs from the series will go to Oxfam’s COVID-19 relief fund. On top of that, Soccer Mommy notes, “Oxfam has an anonymous donor who will match every dollar raised by this series, up to $5000, which will double the impact of your purchase.”

Listen to Jay Som’s cover of “Lucy” and Soccer Mommy’s rendition of “I Think You’re Alright” below.