Category: Viral

The latest episode of Sound Check with Jeremy Hecht features an underground West Coast hip-hop veteran: Evidence. Born and raised in Los Angeles’ Venice neighborhood, Evidence was one-third of pivotal backpack rap trio Dilated Peoples (along with Rakaa and DJ Babu), and has had a long and storied solo career, encompassing six studio albums. The most recent of which, Unlearning Vol. 2, dropped in August on Rhymesayers Entertainment and can be heard on his Bandcamp. Y

Evidence finds himself choosing between some of rap’s most legendary pioneering acts in today’s episode, including tracks from icons such as A Tribe Called Quest, Dr. Dre, Gang Starr, Ice Cube, Mobb Deep, Run The Jewels, and Wu-Tang Clan. He also has to decide which producer’s beatmaking style he vibes with more: Dr. Dre or DJ Premier.

Here’s how it works: Jeremy plays two songs for the guest artist, who has to choose one and explain their choice, giving Jeremy a chance to learn their musical taste. Jeremy then has to guess the artist’s life anthem, the song they’d take to a desert island, which the guest wrote down earlier on a piece of paper. Our production team has also given him a decoy song, and Jeremy has to guess which is correct based on what he’s learned in the previous rounds.

Watch Evidence take on the Sound Check challenge above. New episodes of Sound Check drop every Wednesday at noon ET/9 a.m. PT on Uproxx’s YouTube.

From Coachella to Lollapalooza and the just concluded Austin City Limits — festivals that used to be a haven for indie and rock acts are now pushing pop stars to the top. Here’s what the names at the top of this year’s lineup say about the shifts of festivals and popular music in general.

To go forward, we must first go backwards — and when it comes to music festival culture in the United States, one of the best examples of how genres and festivals have shifted in popularity over time, is the line-up changes in one of our longest-running, biggest festivals: Lollapalooza.

Jane’s Addiction, the LA rock band formed in the ‘80s and fronted by Perry Farrell, was bidding adieu with a touring line-up that also came complete with Siouxsie and the Banshees, Nine Inch Nails, Violent Femmes, Ice-T & Body Count, and Living Colour in 1991. The tour was a booming success, and it continued in multiple forms — all with deeply rock-centric line-ups. By 2005, when the festival became an annual event in Chicago’s Grant Park, the genre allegiance continued with acts like The Killers, Primus, Dinosaur Jr., Widespread Panic, Pixies, and Weezer all topping the bill, with nary a pure pop act to be seen. As the years went on, a few electronic and hip-hop acts started to top the line-up, but it would be much longer before the likes of Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande would make the top spot.

Fast forward to this year, and based on not only the acts that were chosen for top billing for the Chicago festival but even the fans who made their way to the Windy City for the annual event, pop music is in its heyday, and pop stars are the new rock stars. Blame it on Chappell Roan’s iconic, history-making, crowded midday set last year, or the Charli XCX, Sabrina Carpenter, Gracie Abrams takeover that took place across airwaves, and Grammy Award wins in 2024, but the face of Lollapalooza was very different among fans and acts this year. Even with nu-metal legends like Korn pulling in the millennial plus crowd — the overall experience confirmed what we’ve seen on the charts: pop is in its heydey (again).

Even Newport Folk Fest, the country’s oldest indie, Americana, and folk festival, boasted pop-adjacent acts like Lana Del Rey on the stage made famous by Bob Dylan. At Austin City Limits, you got to decide whether you wanted to end your Saturday night with indie’s second coming of rock, The Strokes, or one of the world’s cheekiest pop stars, Sabrina Carpenter.

And sure, some of this is just a reflection of the ebb and flow of genre popularity in general. Avid festival goers will recall the rise of hip-hop and R&B on line-ups in the early 2000s that resulted in Kendrick Lamar and Jay-Z headlining the UK’s most formidable music festival, Glastonbury… and Noel Gallagher of Oasis famously saying “I’m not having hip-hop at Glastonbury. It’s wrong.”… and Jay-Z famously responding by pulling out a guitar and playing “Wonderwall” when he walked out onto the Pyramid Stage as the festival’s first hip-hop headliner.

Historically, pop culture moments like Woodstock and Monterey Pop Festival upheld protest music as a way to bring safe spaces to the counterculture — a central location for, not just music, but also people who shared the same beliefs on civil rights, foreign wars, and politics to convene. As festivals have changed to a place for just celebrating in general, a quick assessment of line-up posters speaks to the shift from rock to EDM, rap and even back again — but for the first time in a long time, pop is the genre that seems to have staying power.

This, of course, is partly to do with what we define as pop. Lady Gaga’s headline set at Coachella this year, which merged real-life theatrics, rock-tinged new hits like “Abracadabra” and pure pop hits like “Poker Face,” is a clean example of how music that floats to the top of popular consciousness is the music that’s not afraid to toe the line of multiple genres. Take Olivia Rodrigo bringing out Weezer at Lolla or Carpenter’s ACL set this year with The Chicks joining her on stage at a fest that also highlighted genre blending artists like Marren Morris, Doechii, and Doja Cat (before she had to bow out of her slot) – when it comes to current pop stars, there truly is something for every type of music fan, and that’s allowing them to pull in bigger audiences who, like them, grew up on multiple genres, had the ability to make a Spotify playlist or Napster mix CD, and have no interest in sticking to one singular sound.

So what does this say about the future of music, music fans, festivals, and music culture in general? It says that we’re over homogeneous line-ups, that we’re more drawn to artists who are willing to play around in multiple genres, that we’ve had so much access to so much music and the ability to make our own playlist that we want that to be how music is reflected live.

There will always be the Tomorrowlands and Rolling Louds that appeal to single-genre fans, but for the rest of us who were first drawn to rock-centric festivals because of the expansive nature of the sound, it looks like we’ll be singing along to what we call “pop music”… even if only just for now.

Summer Walker’s Finally Over It is finally (almost) here. The sultry singer revealed the long-awaited release date for the third album in her Over It trilogy with an amusing trailer/short film in which she sits down for a Vogue magazine-style lie detector test.

The test dispenses with much preamble, jumping right in with, “Is the album coming out this year?” “Yes,” Summer answers, truthfully. “Is the album coming out this month?” follows, with Summer replying, “No.”

Of course, she can’t help teasing fans with a few more questions, including “Is London On The Track?” referring to her former beau, “Will you collaborate with Chris Brown?” “Are you single?” and “Are we sliding down the walls this album?”

Eventually, though, we get to the goods: “Is the album coming out November 14th?” Well, what do you all think?

The wind-up to the album has taken over a year, with Walker first teasing a continuation of Over It in early October 2024. With a November release date, Finally Over It will be dropping four full years after Still Over It and five years after Walker’s star-making debut.

Since announcing the trifecta, the R&B star shared two singles, “Heart Of A Woman” and “Spend It,” along with a video starring the cast of P-Valley. Earlier this year, she wrapped up a tour as opener on Chris Brown’s Breezy Bowl tour.

You can watch the full lie detector test teaser above.

Finally Over It is out on 11/14 via LVRN/Interscope Records. You can find more info at WhereIsTheAlbum.com.

Cross-generational collaborations where one of the acts involved is deceased are always tricky. It’s hard to know whether the decedent would actually have approved their voice pairing with the contemporary artist employing it.

However, there’s little doubt that DMX would have loved contributing to IDK’s new single, “S.T.F.” IDK and DMX are so similar philosophically that “Start To Finish” is a perfect mesh of their voices and styles. Kaytranada, with whom IDK had previously collaborated on the smooth Simple, provides a surprisingly hard beat that perfectly captures the propulsive vibe of DMX’s best work, while Jay turns his normally laconic flow up to 11 to match the energy of the Dawg’s vocals on the insistent chorus.

In the press release, IDK explains how the song came together, saying, “Back in 2020, I recorded a song for DMX called ‘Dream.’ After he passed, I always wondered what happened to it. Years later, while going through a folder of beats Kaytranada had sent me, one I originally passed on stood out — and my first thought was how X’s verse might sound on it. I reached out to Pat Gallo, and when he sent me the vocals, they locked in perfectly. Somewhere out there, the full DMX verse from the original record still exists, but what you hear now is the piece that became ‘START 2 FiNISH – S.T.F’.”

The collaboration was also approved by Desiree Lindstrom and Sasha Simmons, X’s former fiancée and daughter, who co-administer his estate. “It means a lot to have artists like IDK and Kaytranada tap into Earl’s energy and create something that is fresh and authentic to who he was,” they said in the press release. “He set this collaboration in motion before he passed, so it was important for us to see his vision become a reality.”

IDK has kept up a steady stream of singles and collaborations in the wake of his 2024 album Bravado + Intimo, including “S.U” with Denzel Curry, “Prince George” with Cordae, and “My Friend” with Theo Croker.

You can watch IDK’s “S.T.F.” featuring DMX above.

Not only has Sabrina Carpenter quickly become one of the biggest pop stars in the world, but she has done it while showing that she has one of the most fun personalities in the business, too. That, paired with her past as an actor, makes her the perfect candidate to pull double-duty on Saturday Night Live, appearing as both host and musical guest. That’s just what she’s doing this weekend, as it was previously announced.

Now, days ahead of the episode, we have our first teaser from Carpenter. In it, she goes full Sex And The City. It starts with a voiceover of her saying, “New York is one big apple and I’m taking my bite at Saturday Night Live.”

Someone then asks what she’s up to and she responds, “In these heels? Probably like 5’4″.” From there, she confidently struts through the SNL halls, then taking to a laptop to write, “The woman wondered what she’d gotten herself into. Having won over the cast and crew, the only thing left to do was…” At this point, others around her express their confusion, as the computer Carpenter was using was turned off.

Carpenter was previously a musical guest in 2024, but this will be her first episode hosting. She had a sketch during that episode and showed up during Quinta Brunson’s monologue later that season.

Check out the video above.

Two weeks after dropping her new single, “Baddie Baddie,” Ice Spice has followed up with a stylish music video. Directed by Ice Spice herself along with her frequent collaborators The Evil Twins, George and Frederick Buford, the “Baddie Baddie” visual was shot during September’s New York Fashion Week and sees Ice pair off with some of the industry’s most in-demand models, including Sudanese-American Anok Yai. Ice shows off her sturdiest strut as she catwalks her way through the streets of New York on the way to the hottest shows.

Prior to releasing “Baddie Baddie,” Ice Spice shocked the rap world by teaming up with Latto for the posterior-praising “Gyatt.” The two had spent early 2024 exchanging diss tracks, so to see them burying hatchets was almost as exciting for their fans as watching them twerk in the wrestling-themed video.

Ice’s latest song was produced by her longtime partner RiotUSA, which suggests that she’s going to stick to her formula on her next project. Likewise, keeping the Evil Twins in the mix after they directed videos for “Deli” and “Gimmie A Light” shows she knows her lane and isn’t looking to swerve too far out of it for the time being.

You can watch Ice Spice’s “Baddie Baddie” video above.

Nate Amos is busy, whether he’s performing with his band Water From Your Eyes or solo as This Is Lorelei. His first solo album, Box For Buddy, Box For Star, arrived last year. Now, he’s readying what a press release calls a “sort-of-second sort-of-album”, dubbed Holo Boy.

The reason for the uncertain labeling is that instead of a bunch of new songs, Amos grabbed older songs from his back catalog and re-recorded them in May 2025. The ten re-recorded songs from come nine different original releases and were written between 2014 and 2021. Out now is the new recording of “Name The Band.”

In a statement, Amos explained how the new project is different from its predecessor, saying, “The songs on Box For Buddy, Box For Star are really similar, and they’re produced in such a way that the differences are accentuated, whereas with Holo Boy, the songs are really different, but they’re produced in such a way that the commonalities are accentuated.” He added, “I tried to look at the catalog as little as possible and more just think to myself, ‘What are songs from the past that I feel like are good songs, demonstrate growth, and are significant to me, in terms of embodying a certain period of time?’”

Listen to “Name The Band” above and find the Holo Boy cover art and tracklist below, as well as Amos’ upcoming tour dates.

This Is Lorelei’s Holo Boy Album Cover Artwork

This Is Lorelei’s Holo Boy Tracklist

1. “I Can’t Fall”
2. “But You Just Woke Me Up”
3. “Dreams Away”
4. “SF & GG”
5. “My Friend 2”
6. “Name The Band”
7. “This Is A Joke”
8. “Mouth Man”
9. “Money Right Now”
10. “Holo Boy”

This Is Lorelei’s 2025 Tour Dates

12/17 — Brooklyn, NY @ Music Hall of Williamsburg +
12/19 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore ^

+ with Dutch Interior
^ with The Front Bottoms

Holo Boy is out 12/12 via Double Double Whammy. Find more information here.

While Solange’s big sis Beyoncé racks up the hits, the younger Ms. Knowles has taken a more circuitous path in the music business. It’s led her to some interesting places; she’s directing films, scoring ballets, curating events, and learning new instruments, proving that there is more to musicianship than simply recording music and performing concerts.

Solange’s latest resume addition furthers that end; this week, she began a three-year position as the University of Southern California’s (USC) first-ever scholar in residence for the Thornton School of Music. As part of her duties, she’ll teach a course, Records of Discovery: Methodologies for Music and Cultural Curatorial Practices, while helping to develop program offerings in music curation, and hosting student workshops. In addition, she will join the Dean’s Creative Vanguard Program, along with Raphael Saadiq, the program’s inaugural member.

In an interview with The Los Angeles Times, Solange said, “I am a G.E.D. graduate. I was a teenage mom. I was pregnant with my son at 17, so I didn’t get to further my education in the classical sense. But I was really blessed and honored to have enriched these other parts of education through my art, through travel [and] through the globalization of my life … so to be able to have access and broader tools as a scholar in residence, to enrich that and deepen that, is really so exciting for me.”

Wale knows how he can be. Over the year’s the DMV area pioneer has earned himself a reputation for being short-tempered (to put it nicely) and sensitive about his status in hip-hop. After all, very few other artists with his resume get talked about the way he does, and almost no one is meaner to him than he is to himself.

He aims to change that with “Mirroronnabenz,” the latest single from his upcoming eighth studio album and Def Jam debut, Everything Is A Lot. Over a BNYX-produced Afro-swing beat, Wale gets real with the man in the mirror, shifting his self-talk with more encouraging affirmations. “Mirror, mirror, mirror, look at all your transgressions / N****s think you crazy, crackers think you too aggressive,” he muses. “The people think you mad, I ain’t mad, just reflecting.” At the end of the song, he tells himself, “Say I’m good enough / Say I’m Black enough / Say I’m rich enough.”

It’s an intriguing idea for an artist with a complicated legacy, and it’s fascinating to hear after “Blanco,” another self-reflective single in which Wale appears to hold himself accountable. His next album will be his first since 2021’s Folarin II, and it looks like he’s used the intervening four years to work on some things.

You can listen to Wale’s “Mirroronnabenz” above.

Everything Is A Lot. is due on 11/14 via Def Jam.

St. Louis crooner Jordan Ward released one of the best R&B albums of 2023 in his debut Forward, snapping up attention with its single “White Crocs” and becoming one of the most exciting young voices in music today.

Now, he’s returned to announce its follow-up, Backward, and share the first single: “Smoking Potna” featuring Florida breakout singer Sailorr. In the single, Ward asserts that his “smoking partner” is the only person he smokes with, highlighting the special connection between them. “I don’t pass the blunt to no one else but you, baby / You can help yourself.” Sailorr doubles down on this sentiment, explaining that she may have low tolerance for the smoke, but she likes her own smoking buddy enough to put up with it.

Meanwhile, in an interview with Rolling Stone about the new album, Jordan said, “Coming up off the last project, I felt I had a lot of room to grow with the songwriting, as far as structuring [it,] having more clear takeaways for the songs.”

He says he wants “to keep the story evolving,” and to do so, he’s looked at the songwriting of legends like Donny Hathaway, Joni Mitchell, Bob Marley, James Taylor, and Roberta Flack. The results will arrive January 30th.

You can watch the video for Jordan Ward’s “Smoking Potna” featuring Sailorr above.

Backward is due on 01/30/2026 via ARTium Recordings/Interscope Records. You can find more info here.