Last week, country group Lady Antebellum announced they would be altering their band’s name to Lady A in order to sever problematic connotations with the Civil War era. The shift sparked brief backlash as the band’s newly-minted moniker was already being used by a Black gospel singer, but Lady A apologized and has reached an understanding with the singer. Now, iconic country trio Dixie Chicks are following suit and have elected to alter their name to The Chicks, sharing a protest anthem to announce their title change.

Upon deciding to change their name, The Chicks were faced with a similar situation as Lady A. There is already a group that makes music under the band name. However, unlike Lady A, The Chicks were aware of this issue and reached out to the New Zealand duo of the same name. In a statement given to Pitchfork, The Chicks thanked their New Zealand counterparts:

“A sincere and heartfelt thank you goes out to ‘The Chicks’ of NZ for their gracious gesture in allowing us to share their name. We are honored to co-exist together in the world with these exceptionally talented sisters. Chicks Rock!”

The Chicks, who are gearing up for the release of their comeback album Gaslighter, shared the track “March March” in tandem with their name change. The single aims to inspire fans to use their voice, and their vote, to make a difference. “Tell the ol’ boys in the white bread lobby / What they can and can’t do with their bodies,” they sing.

The Chicks’ name change has already been represented on the group’s Wikipedia page, as well as all of their social media handles. The reasoning behind the band’s title change is likely similar to that of Lady A’s. The term “dixie” was originally derived from the Mason-Dixon line and referred to the collection of Southern states that used to form the Confederacy. The term has since evolved to have connections to racism and white supremacy, as many Southern Democrats severed their ties with the Democratic Party and adopted the label Dixiecrat in the late 1940s in opposition to extending civil rights to people of color. While Dixiecrats are by no means an official party, the term “dixie” maintains racist connotations.

Listen to The Chicks’ “March March” above.

With the Atlanta Hawks missing out on the NBA’s bubble league in Orlando, 22-year veteran Vince Carter has decided to officially hang it up.

In a new episode of his podcast at The Ringer, “Winging It,” Carter announced he was finally retiring. Though the circumstances — a pandemic, an injury barrage for the Hawks — are less than ideal, Carter said he takes solace knowing all of what happened was out of his control.

Few players have reinvented themselves like Carter. The Tar Heel great entered the NBA as one of the craziest athletes the league had ever seen, a potential franchise player for Toronto alongside his cousin, Tracy McGrady. After a few years with the Raptors, Carter left for the Nets, where he was a top-three player for a perennial championship contender and two time NBA finalist. Carter maintained relevance playing on solid playoff teams in Orlando and Dallas the next few years before settling in as the NBA’s favorite veteran leader.

Throughout stops in Memphis, Sacramento, and Atlanta, Carter became a sage veteran for young, rebuilding teams and a media favorite. Carter has long been seen as one of the next big TV analysts, and a bidding war between ESPN, where he’s been a frequent contributor on The Jump and Turner, which could use an upgrade on its color commentary roster, should play out before the 2020-21 season.

More than anything, Carter will be remembered for his dunks and being a good dude. It also helped that he was, you know, a very, very good basketball player — he made eight All-Star teams, two All-NBA teams, and scored nearly 26,000 points in the league. Based on longevity alone, Carter will have a case for the Hall of Fame.

After going No. 1 with Nicki Minaj on her breakout Hot Pink hit “Say So,” Doja Cat returns with another new single from her 2019 album. In the video for “Like That” featuring Gucci Mane, Doja again breaks out some smooth choreography, colorful costumes, and a dazzling, dream-like aesthetic. She also channels big Sailor Moon energy, as her performance scenes are intercut with some slick animation that transforms Doja into an anime superheroine, complete with visual references to the moon princess (20-year-old spoiler alert?) and her Sailor Soldiers.

The video arrives as a much-needed reset for Doja’s brand — one she’s become adept at employing in her relatively short time in the limelight. A few weeks ago, video surfaced of Doja participating in a video chat that some observers noted contained racist content, while at the same time an old song of hers confronting her conflicted feelings on race reappeared. The combined incidents caused fans to lash out at the young star, who made her apologies in both written and video form before lashing out herself yesterday to defend her TinyChat friends from the accusations of bigotry.

Similarly, shortly after her song “Mooo!” took off and exposed her to a new fanbase, it also exposed her to some new internet dirt detectives, who unearthed some old, offensive tweets of hers in an effort to “cancel” her newfound stardom. In that case, it again only took a fun, colorful music video to win most folks back to her side. This appears to be the new cycle of stardom in the era of social media and stans, but it looks like Doja — who now has a No. 1 record to boast — has cracked the formula to staying on top.

Watch Doja Cat’s “Like That” video featuring Gucci Mane above.

Gucci Mane is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary or Warner Music Group.

Currently, Billie Eilish has 64.8 million followers on Instagram. The amount of users she follows back is not nearly as high, though. In fact, that figure currently sits at exactly 0, as she recently unfollowed everybody she used to follow on Instagram.

On June 23, Eilish posted an Instagram Story that read, “If I am following your abuser DM ME & I will unfollow them. I support you.” Eilish later deleted the Story, with some suggesting the post was erased after users brought up that Eilish was following Chris Brown, XXXTentacion, Justin Bieber, and Ansel Elgort, all of whom have been accused of abuse (in Brown’s case, he pleaded guilty to felony assault of Rihanna). After the post, Eilish reportedly started to gradually unfollow users until her following count reached 0, where it remains now as of this post.

Following the flurry of social media activity, Eilish has not provided a public comment on the situation.

Meanwhile, Eilish hasn’t released new music in a bit, but she has remained part of the musical conversation in other ways. She and a number of other artists recently shared an open letter about police reform. Her music was also part of the inspiration for a new batch of charts from Billboard.

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Four of music’s most prominent, groundbreaking producers have teamed up to form a supergroup. 9th Wonder, Kamasi Washington, Robert Glasper, and Terrace Martin are veterans of the hip-hop, soul, and jazz worlds, participating in some of the most important projects and collaborating with some of the biggest names in music. Now, they have come together as Dinner Party and released their first single, the powerful and profound “Freeze Tag” with Chicago singer and producer Phoelix.

The group formed during a tour on which Martin and Glasper both participated. Martin and Washington have been friends in the LA jazz scene since high school, and 9th Wonder, despite not being a traditional musician, is connected to all three through various endeavors and mutual collaborators like Kendrick Lamar, Jay-Z, Rapsody, and others. They’ve all collaborated in some capacity in the past, but in 2019, linked up as a group to record an entire album as Dinner Party.

Phoelix is also a producer of some reknown, helping shape the new Chicago sound of rappers like Noname and Saba, and is an accomplished vocalist as well. He contributes impactful lyrics to “Freeze Tag,” speaking to the mood of the current moment in America. “They told me put my hands up behind my head,” he croons. “I think you got the wrong one.”

Watch Dinner Party’s debut video, “Freeze Tag” featuring Phoelix, above. The seven-song Dinner Party album is due 7/10 via Sounds Of Crenshaw/Empire. You can pre-order it here.

In September, Brittany Howard pivoted from her lead role in four-piece group Alabama Shakes to shine as a solo artist. The singer released her debut solo record, Jaime, which melts influences of rock, jazz, and R&B. Since its release, the singer has been gracing late-night television with select performances of her songs. In the past, Howard has stopped by The Late Show and Jimmy Kimmel Live. Now, Howard appears on The Tonight Show to give a moving rendition of one of her songs.

For the swaying Fallon performance, Howard tapped a full back-up band and elected to share a rendition of her poignant track “Goat Head,” which describes her experience growing up biracial. The song’s lengthy hook is all instrumental, with Howard’s band providing relaxing tones on a free-flowing keyboard. Just over a minute in, Howard’s vocals cut in. “My mama was brave / To take me outside / ‘Cause mama is white / And daddy is Black / When I first got made / Guess I made these folks mad,” she sings.

Ahead of the singer’s performance on The Tonight Show, Howard teamed up with radio streaming service Sonos Radio for her own curated station. Titled The Encyclopedia Of Brittany, the station features commentary by the singer along with an eclectic mix of music that is prompted by her influences and obsessions.

Watch Brittany Howard perform “Goat Head” on The Tonight Show above.

Jaime is out now via ATO records. Get it here.

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.

The City Girls are back at full-strength and once again subverting expectations on their latest album, City On Lock — their first release since JT’s release from prison for credit card fraud. The two Miami go-getters haven’t lost a step on their new release, picking up right where they left off on 2018’s Girl Code.

At the heart of their lascivious luxury raps is the understanding that America is an unequal society. As JT says in the larcenous outro from “That Old Man,” these dudes are dumb — the quiet part is that those dummies somehow wound up with all the resources and power. If they’re desperate enough for a taste of affection from women who obviously only want to use them to get a leg up in a man’s world, that’s not the City Girls’ problem.

City On Lock arrives at a critical juncture in the duo’s evolution. They made their bones in early 2018 as a throwback to the fierce, unapologetic thirst trap rap of Miami forebear Trina, spitting blunt punchlines about transactional relationships with men over neck-snapping, high-energy instrumentals. Their brand was simple, but not basic, embracing the same logic that drives BackPage and OnlyFans accounts to this day. If someone is buying, they’re willing to sell.

They were also willing to make money in a more underhanded, Hustlers-esque way: Cracking cards and swiping away to get the glamorous accoutrements they rapped about. The life caught up to them, sending JT — the more lyrically-gifted of the two and the engine of their dreams of rap stardom — to prison for a year and leaving Yung Miami, who had been content to continue trading company for cash, to carry the flag alone.

Miami then got pregnant with her second child — a prospect that once would have derailed the entire enterprise due to the archaic and misogynist rules of the new game they’d chosen to play. Motherhood is already a fraught proposition; for rap starlets whose primary selling point is their sex appeal, it should have been disastrous. But JT came home, coronavirus hit, and sex work experienced a boom as more and more women were forced to turn to quarantine-safe occupations.

The resultant shutdown of normal, everyday life gave City Girls the time they needed to regroup and further normalized their brand of raunchy content. if you’re going to twerk to something on Demon Time, it should be something that feels empowering, not degrading, and that’s exactly what their brand of stripper pole-friendly scammer anthems do. City Girls judo flip the world’s masculine-feminine power imbalance on its head, making those transactions a matter of choice rather than survival.

That theme runs throughout City On Lock, from the high-maintenance demands of “Jobs” to the exacting standards of “Broke N****s” to the overt extravagance of “Flewed Out.” The latter adds a snarky layer of playfulness with its title, which Miami coined as part of their 2018 promotion for the song “Twerk.” After a certain class of fans sniffed and glared down their noses at her unpolished language, she simply made it part of the lexicon, earning her rightful place alongside her partner-in-rhyme.

Make no mistake, though; having JT back is this album’s biggest boon. While Miami shows improvement, JT is the driver of group’s lyrical direction, tossing off jeering wordplay reinforcing her and Miami’s dominant role in their dealings with men. “I’m goin’ in, like a bitch got a curfew,” she sneers on “Broke N****s,” “Don’t got my money? Go back to the bitch that birthed you.”

The pair relishes in their sisterhood even above their hunger for luxury, though, praising each other’s profit prowess on “That’s My Bitch” and inviting Doja Cat along for some slick, salacious “Pussy Talk.” Their bond is, after all, what got them here and what has allowed them to outlast their trials to date — including their most recent test, which perfectly demonstrated the skill with which they can reverse and counter any punch thrown at them.

City Girls weren’t set to release City On Lock just yet when it was leaked late on Juneteenth, quickly spreading across the rap internet. The girls responded by dropping the video for “Jobs,” then the entire album. While the duo expressed frustration at the unplanned leak, they had already turned it into a victory, taking the lemons life handed them and turning them into lemonade. In true City Girls fashion, they’re hustling that lemonade into power, profit, and the potential for another runaway hit, proving they really do have the city — and the rap game — on lock.

City On Lock is out now via Quality Control Music/Motown Records. Get it here.

The closer Better Call Saul gets to the Breaking Bad timeline, the likelier it is that Walter White and/or Jesse Pinkman could appear in a background scene or maybe interact with Hank Schrader, who made his BCS debut in season five. Not that we need a cameo, mind you. Better Call Saul is doing perfectly fine without the Breaking Bad leads; to introduce them in the show’s final season would be putting a hat on a Heisenberg hat.

They were also already in El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie, and as co-creator Peter Gould told Collider, that (probably) means we’ve seen the last of Walter and Jesse.

“I like to think that we don’t have as much of an obligation to have Walt and Jesse back in Better Call Saul because they’re such a great appearance in El Camino,” he said. “But having said that, I would love to have them back. I’d love to have Bryan direct an episode. I got to write an episode [of Breaking Bad] that Bryan directed and I was on set with him every day, and it was a wonderful experience… And Aaron Paul is possibly the happiest human being I’ve ever met, and he makes everybody around him happy. So yeah, I would love to have them back.” Gould’s comments make it sound like, of the two actors, Paul is more likely to reprise his role, while if Cranston was to return, it would be in a behind-the-scenes capacity. That’s fine. It means more screen time for Lalo.

The final season of Better Call Saul is expected to air next year.

There has been some sort of collaboration between Kanye West and Nicki Minaj in the works for some time now. In late 2018, Kanye teased that he and Minaj had made a song about slut shaming for Yandhi. Then, a few months after that, a Kanye/Minaj collab was further teased on an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Now, the song, titled “New Body,” has become popular on TikTok thanks to a leak of Yandhi. This has made fans thirst for the full song to be officially released, so Minaj gave her followers advice on how to make that happen.

In a now-deleted tweet, Minaj suggested that she doesn’t have control over the song at the moment, so she encouraged her fans to pester Kim Kardashian for the song. Fans have also been hoping for Minaj’s ASAP Ferg collab “Move Ya Hips,” and she addressed that in her tweet as well, writing, “Y’all gotta light up Ferg comments everyday if u want MTH. And light up KIM comments everyday if you want NB,” followed by a shrugging emoji.

Meanwhile, Minaj is having a stellar 2020 so far. She earned her first No. 1 song be featuring on Doja Cat’s “Say So,” and she just got her second chart-topper with her Tekashi 69 collaboration, “Trollz.”