Category: Worldwide

Zohran Mamdani’s inauguration as mayor of New York City was historic for multiple reasons: He’s the youngest mayor in NYC history and the first Muslim mayor the city has ever had. As Uproxx’s Jeremy Hecht points out, he’s also the first mayor to reference a member of The Lox during his inauguration speech.

Mamdani said:

“And throughout it all, ‘We will’ — in the words of Jason Terrence Phillips, better known as Jadakiss or ‘Ja’ to the mwah’ — ‘be outside.’”

Jeremy notes, “This referenced an iconic moment during Jadakiss’ Verzuz battle where he got on stage and said this: ‘New York, the real New York: I’m outside. I don’t live in Miami, I don’t live in Colorado. Come to my block and see me. This is ‘Kiss, I’m outside.’”

Furthermore, later in 2020, he teamed up with Itsbizkit and DreamDoll on “Outside Wit It” and said on his verse, “My whole life changed, we at the cookouts, we at the dice games / We outside, n****.”

Jeremy concludes, “Jadakiss proves that he still lives by that motto, creating this incredible video of him walking around New York City on New Year’s Eve, letting you know he is still outside. It feels like New York is about to go on a run. But more than anything, I think it’s time for a new Jadakiss album.”

Check out the video above.

Keeping up with music news and resources like Spotify’s giant and regularly updated New Music Friday playlist are great ways to keep your listening habits from getting stale. Sometimes, though, you need a deeper dive. That’s where Uproxx’s Baylee Lefton comes in as she routinely offers quick-hit lists of songs you need to add into your rotation this week.

She just delivered a fresh mix and it pays homage to years of standout women making R&B and soul music.

Beylee had the impossible task of sorting through decades (starting in the 1960s) of music and choosing just a song or two to represent each era: “I’m not going to lie: This was so difficult to only pick like one or two songs from each generation,” she says.

But, she did it and the mix is worth diving into. It starts with Dionne Warwick’s “Walk On By,” which music fans know through either its original version or the numerous hip-hop songs that have sampled it. From there, the set includes Aretha Franklin’s “Day Dreaming,” Sade’s “Is It A Crime,” Brownstone’s “Grapevyne,” SWV’s “You’re The One,” Erykah Badu’s “Bag Lady,” Ashanti’s “Baby,” Jazmine Sullivan’s “Excuse Me,” SZA’s “Go Gina,” Cleo Sol’s “Golden Child (Jealous),” and Coco Jones’ “ICU.”

Check out the video above and to listen to the full songs yourself, hit up the link in Lefton’s Instagram bio.

Music is one of the fastest-moving parts of the entertainment landscape. Generative artificial intelligence has introduced new possibilities and concerns essentially overnight. Social media platforms like TikTok can create new stars or revive public consciousness of classic icons. More and more each day, musicians are expanding the scope of their creative endeavors beyond music, turning themselves into multimedia forces.

Through it all, UPROXX remains dedicated to being at the forefront of innovation and what’s next in music and related fields. But, we can’t do it alone. That’s where you come in, and you could win a sweet prize for your efforts: We just launched the UPROXX Audience Survey, and as long as you’re 18 or older and live in the United States, you can participate and enter to win a $25 Apple gift card.

It’s a simple survey, taking a few minutes of your time, and your answers are confidential, reported in aggregate only. As for what to expect from the questions, there are a handful of things we’d like to know. Tell us how you’ve engaged with UPROXX and how your music-listening habits have looked lately, whether you’re blasting the latest Dua Lipa track on Spotify or listening to Zach Bryan on Apple Music. Share your thoughts on those preferred platforms and your gut reaction when your favorite artists drops new music. How does your TV fit into your relationship with music? What are your feelings on the use of AI in music creation?

To answer those questions and more (and to potentially win one of those gift cards), check out the survey here.

Short-lived ’80s band Green River were pioneers, commonly cited as offering some of the earliest examples of grunge. When the group dissolved a few years after its founding, some of the members went on to form Mudhoney, who continued the development of grunge as a genre. Their debut release, the 1988 EP (sometimes called an album) Superfuzz Bigmuff, was a pivotal and formative work in the space.

As Uproxx’s Joypocalypse notes, the project was incredibly influential and even found a fan in Kurt Cobain.

She says:

“From one great band to another: After Green River dissolved, we got Mudhoney, and then Mudhoney gave us the amazing album Superfuzz Bigmuff. An album highly regarded by Kurt Cobain, understandably so. The blown-out fuzz and gritty sounds in this album played a role in influencing the sound of grunge. Mudhoney’s loud, loose, and often fuzzed-out sound is awe-inspiring. And while Superfuzz Bigmuff is a fantastic album and a great place to start, I would recommend other Mudhoney albums like Every Good Boy [Deserves Fudge], Piece Of Cake, and Since We’ve Become Translucent, and also their self-titled Mudhoney.”

She concludes, “I think if you enjoy a lot of the earlier albums by the ‘Big Four’ of grunge, then Mudhoney is totally up your alley.”

Check out the video above.

This column is about the best indie albums of 2006. By which I mean, my favorite indie albums of 2006. The personal preference is implied, perhaps, but there are biases that have influenced the creation of the following list that must be disclosed before you read another word. I state the following in the spirit of fair play and transparency, so that the reader is equipped with the necessary information to properly assess my assessments. So that when a person reads this and says, “Whoever wrote this is an idiot,” they will do so with the assurance of having all the facts at their disposal.

PRE-LIST ENTERTAINMENT: A STATEMENT OF PERSONAL BIASES (POLITICAL, PERSONAL, AUTOMOTIVE, ETC.)

1. My memory of 2006, from a sociopolitical perspective, is mostly negative. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the decline of public faith in the federal government after the disastrous response to Hurricane Katrina, the foreboding (in retrospect) signs that the US housing market was untenable, the widening gaps in income and political unity — they all point to this being a dark, depressing period. (This is my political bias.)

2. My memory of 2006, from a personal perspective, is overwhelmingly positive. I met my wife in January that year, we were dating by March, and we were living together by October. I also started a new job that fall, and it signaled (in retrospect) the single most important and overall greatest pivot point in my writing career. It was also, for a time, an incredibly easy gig, with loads of down time. More than once, I snuck off to the parking lot at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday with a co-worker to smoke weed out of a bong made from an apple. (This is my personal bias.)

3. My most recent experience listening to many of these albums is last week, when I drove a total of 10 hours across the frigid tundra of western, central, eastern, and southern Wisconsin. I loaded my car with circa-2006 CDs and listened to them at full volume. This improved my opinion of virtually all of these albums, though some more than others. (This is my automotive bias.)

20. Girl Talk — Night Ripper

The most 2006 album of 2006. Night Ripper isn’t the record most responsible for mainstreaming mash-ups — in America — that was Danger Mouse’s “Jay-Z meets The Beatles” experiment The Grey Album from three years earlier. But Girl Talk does represent the height of the form. The cultural trajectory of a semi-clever DJ taking one popular song and combining it with another popular song began (in the popular consciousness) with Danger Mouse, peaked with Girl Talk, and then achieved simultaneous popular acceptance/aesthetic death with 2012’s Pitch Perfect. After that, it was damned to be a signifier of dated culture from the second George W. Bush administration.

But I can still feel traces of the same “a-ha!” rush I experienced upon hearing Night Ripper for the first time, the same way a war veteran can sense a missing limb lost in battle. It really was kind of mind-blowing to hear some dude with a laptop superimpose The Verve’s “Bittersweet Symphony” with the Ying Yang Twins’ “Wait (The Whisper Song)” for about 20 or so seconds. Along with being a go-to party album, Night Ripper functioned in its time as a form of music criticism, an audio-thinkpiece that dismantled the barriers between rockism and poptimism, a vision of a utopian world where Boston’s “Long Time” gets down with D4L’s “Laffy Taffy.” It was also, essentially, a gimmick, and one that starts to lose its novelty even before the album ends.

19. The Walkmen — “Pussy Cats” Starring The Walkmen

The basic premise of Night Ripper — “let’s combine rock songs with pop numbers in surprising and harmonious ways, no matter their contextual differences” — points to larger conversations happening at the time in the indie world about whether guitar bands of questionable popularity were getting too much attention. The long tail of the post-Strokes “rock is back!” boosterism happening in the media was coming to an end, along with expectations that making that kind of music could result (at least) in something resembling a “middle-class” musician’s life.

This album, deliberately or not, was one of the more fascinating responses to all that. As a band from New York City, The Walkmen benefited from the public’s brief fixation on NYC guitar combos, and they even scored an indie hit in the middle part of the decade with the immortal “The Rat.” But by ’06, they weren’t exactly trying to capitalize on that success. That year they put out two albums — the Dylanesque A Hundred Miles Off and this bizarre tribute to Harry Nilsson’s famously drunken (and professionally ruinous) 1974 John Lennon collaboration. Composed largely of covers, Pussy Cats derailed Nilsson’s own career, and The Walkmen seemed to be courting a similar fate by doing an album-length cover of his self-destructive gambit. The Walkmen ultimately carried on and put out some of their best work after “Pussy Cats,” but the chaotic recklessness of this record still communicates a certain truth of that era to me.

18. Secret Machines — Ten Silver Drops

Another “end of mainstream-ish middle-class indie-rock bands” era album. With 2004’s No Here Is Nowhere, Secret Machines made heavy-duty space-rock with bitchin’ Bonham-esque drum tracks that was catchy enough to garner space in the “$7.99 CD” rack at Best Buy retailers. Their second album, Ten Silver Drops, wasn’t quite as grabby — it toned down the Zeppelinisms of the debut in favor of a hybrid, sonically, of Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Simple Minds. In a different time, it might have been a stepping stone to a bigger and bolder third album. But as it stands, Ten Silver Drops (in my household, anyway) endures as an indie-rock record that sounds like a major-label release, alternating between moody soundscapes and grippingly dour hooks that re-imagine AOR for the pre-streaming generation.

17. The Decemberists — The Crane Wife

Not technically an “indie” album, since this polarizing Portland band had just signed with Capitol Records before putting out their proggiest and most adventurous album yet. Here, again, was a sign of the times: One of our nation’s most famous and venerated record labels decided to do business with a band who centered their latest record on a nearly 13-minute, three-part medley called “The Island: Come And See / The Landlord’s Daughter / You’ll Not Feel The Drowning.” That was considered a commercial enterprise in the year of our lord 2006!

This was also around the time that a backlash was brewing against The Decemberists, who until then had been regarded (warmly) as a quirkily tuneful folk-rock outfit with literal pretensions or (less warmly) as kind of annoying but mostly harmless. After The Crane Wife, however, they became a signifier for the suffocating preciousness of indie rock in the mid-aughts. (The critic Carl Wilson zeroes in on that aspect of The Decemberists in his 2007 poptimism polemic Let’s Talk About Love, which otherwise is about the Celine Dion album of the same name.) At the time, this struck me as a raw deal, and that’s doubly true now. Without fully disputing their “kind of annoying” side, I do think a band like this garnering a Capitol Records-sized platform seems like an accident of history that should have been celebrated more in the moment.

16. Joanna Newsom — Ys

Of course, it’s not as though an indie artist had to be on a major label to make long, dense orchestral-folk songs. One of 2006’s most uncompromising releases, Ys makes The Crane Wife sound like a Noah Kahan record, with songs that range from seven minutes to 17 minutes. Newsom’s lyrics were as personal as any standard “confessional” folkie — the recent death of a close friend informs the album’s emotional tenor — but her unorthodox music and the epic length of her compositions put Ys far and away on its own wavelength. That is, unless you can think of another harp-centric indie-rock record accented by psych-baroque flourishes from the one and only Van Dyke Parks. If Night Ripper is the most 2006 album of 2006, this is the 2006 album that sounds like it could have come out a century earlier or later. (Or, somehow, earlier and later simultaneously.)

15. TV On The Radio — Return To Cookie Mountain

As the “return of rock!” thing was ending, an artier and quirkier version of NYC indie was on the rise. I understand that words like “artier” and especially “quirkier” come with a lot of baggage, but it didn’t seem that way in 2006. At that time, the arrival of something described like “another harp-centric indie-rock record accented by the psych-baroque flourishes from the one and only Van Dyke Parks” was viewed as fresh and inventive, rather than tiresome or (to use a term not yet in common use) “try-hard.” You could also, for example, call your record Return To Cookie Mountain and still be considered one of the hippest and most admired bands of your era. I liked TV On The Radio then, and I like them now. The only reason this isn’t ranked higher is that TV On The Radio is an A+ live band that makes B+ records. I will want to play the video of “Wolf Like Me” from The Late Show With David Letterman until the day I die. And I will always be slightly disappointed when I listen to the studio version.

14. Arctic Monkeys — Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not

Here’s another personal bias I forgot to mention earlier: I turned 29 in 2006. If I had turned 19 that year, this record might be my No. 1. People of my vintage didn’t really come around on Arctic Monkeys until Alex Turner started dressing like the Fonz and making upscale Black Keys songs. But if I were young, drunker, snarkier, and angrier that year, this would still be my preferred Alex Turner overdrive.

13. Sonic Youth — Rather Ripped

Speaking of turning 29 in 2006: I was exactly the kind of person who was excited about a new Sonic Youth album. Remember when we got a new Sonic Youth album every few years? When we had it, we didn’t appreciate it. And now that it will probably never happen again, it seems like a very precious commodity. Is it fair to classify aughts-era Sonic Youth as “underrated”? It seemed that way at the time, after the poor reviews given to 2000’s (pretty good, actually!) NYC Ghosts & Flowers. After that came a trilogy of records that represent the band’s most consistently tuneful and accessible work. And in the wake of 2002’s Murray Street and 2004’s Sonic Nurse, Rather Ripped just might be the most tuneful and accessible of the bunch. Whereas the two predecessors lean more on extended jams, this album is composed mostly of punchy and melodic rock songs. (Only two tracks approach even seven minutes.) Listening to Sonic Youth in this period, they seemed like a reliable classic-rock band that would just keep on putting out quality albums and playing kick-ass shows forever, like Manhattan’s answer to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.

12. Magnolia Electric Co. — Fading Trails

Alas, that didn’t happen. And the sense of loss continues here. Jason Molina died seven years after after this album was released, and another seven or so years after that his influence on current indie singer-songwriters seemed obvious and widespread. But in 2006, Fading Trails had a bad reputation. Molina and his band had been working in various studios with multiple producers on a massive box set of new material that would eventually be released in 2007 as Sojourner. But Molina’s label Secretly Canadian, presumably antsy for more product, took nine songs from those sessions and compiled a snappy 28-minute album, to Molina’s ultimate dissatisfaction. But no matter the backstory, Fading Trails is his most immediate effort, offering an invitingly sad-eyed country-rock gateway to his voluminous catalog.

11. Midlake — The Trials Of Van Occupanther

The kind of record where if you bring it up to a 48-year-old indie-rock fan in 2026, that person will smile and either offer up a fist pump or a back slap. However, if that person is at least 10 years younger or at least 10 years older, they will have no clue what you’re talking about. Midlake was a Texas band who sounded like they were from the English moors of the early 1970s. They made witchy-sounding folk rock that evoked pre-Stevie & Lindsey-era Fleetwood Mac and The Wicker Man. And The Trials Of Van Occupanther was their big moment. It’s a record I can confirm sounds incredible if you are smoking weed out of an apple bong at 2 p.m. on a Wednesday.

10. The Strokes — First Impressions Of Earth

The quintessential “long tail of the post-Strokes ‘rock is back!’ boosterism” album. Naturally, it was made by The Strokes themselves. I listened to this record a lot in 2025 for reasons that will be made clear later this year. So, chalk this up to more personal bias and/or musical Stockholm Syndrome. But First Impressions Of Earth has as many very good-to-great songs as Is This It or Room On Fire. The problem is that it has an additional four to six more songs that aren’t very good-to-great, though the clutter stops being a bug and becomes a feature with repeat listens. But as an historical document — and as an album that captures what it felt like to live in 2006 — First Impressions Of Earth is absolutely essential. I point to the caustic “15 Minutes,” Julian Casablancas’ spin on “My Way” — both the Frank Sinatra and Sid Vicious versions — where he offers his own epitaph: “‘Cause today, they’ll talk about us / And tomorrow, they won’t care.”

9. Phoenix — It’s Never Been Like That

In the annals of Phoenix-dom, this is known as “the one before the big one.” Released three years later, Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix represents the band’s popular pinnacle, due to the signature singles “1901” and “Lisztomania.” But I still prefer It’s Never Been Like That. It might not have the hits, but it has lots of should have been hits. Side one, for instance, features a perfect run of songs, from “Napoleon Says” (the best Strokes song of 2006) to “Consolation Prizes” (second best) to “Long Distance Call” (third best) to “One Time Too Many” (my favorite song on the entire record).

8. The Knife — Silent Shout

Confession time: I never heard this album until last week. I was aware of it at the time — it was Pitchfork’s No. 1 album of the year. But I did not buy it, illegally download it, or get a free copy from a publicist. And those were the three ways I heard new music in 2006. This was the window of time between illegal downloads becoming untenable (unless you wanted to shred your laptop with malware) and streaming music being widely available (which didn’t happen until the 2010s). So, this was possibly the last time when you had a good excuse to not hear an album everybody was talking about. In this case, I was missing out, because this album rules! It sounds like Max Martin if he listened exclusive to Bauhaus. And it hits especially hard if you are traversing the frigid tundra of western, central, eastern, and southern Wisconsin in mid-January.

7. My Morning Jacket — Okonokos

This, on the other hand, is one of the two or three albums I played the most in 2006. (Again, it’s the apple bong of it all.)

6. Jenny Lewis with The Watson Twins — Rabbit Fur Coat

My No. 1 album of 2006, as determined by me at the end of 2006. At this point, it’s not even my favorite Jenny Lewis record. (That would be On The Line, which I’ll be discussing in 2029 for my “Favorite Albums Of 2019” column.) But it still has a very warm place in my heart, both as a “time and place” record (no other album is more closely associated in my mind with moving to a new town with my wife) and as an impeccable slice of country-soul with some of my favorite Jenny Lewis songs (“The Charging Sky,” “You Are What You Love,” “Rise Up With Fists!!”). This record is also responsible for me liking Jenny Lewis solo albums more than Rilo Kiley, a position that seems more contentious in 2026 than it did in 2006.

5. The Hold Steady — Boys And Girls In America

A no-brainer No. 1 album of 2006 for me in 2011, 2016, and (probably) 2021. But this record hits different now that I’ve recently pivoted from a “gonna walk around, gonna walk around, gonna walk around and drink” lifestyle. Now, I view this album like that one college friend you can only hang with every year or two. Any further exposure will wreck your liver, your marriage, and your more critical promises.

4. Grizzly Bear — Yellow House

I am living more of a Grizzy Bear-type lifestyle these days. I aspire to the interpersonal equivalent of this album’s perfectly rendered harmonies and carefully composed instrumentation. Though I doubt I will ever have my shit together to a Yellow House-level degree. To be honest, this is my least favorite of Grizzly Bear’s “essential” albums — I prefer Veckatimist and Shields, as those are generally harder hitting “band-sounding” efforts. (I would even take 2008’s fantastic Friend EP in a Grizzly Bear draft.) But we are talking about one of the finest American bands of the late aughts, and any preference I might have for later work should not be confused for criticism of an otherwise excellent record.

3. Cat Power — The Greatest

For the longest time, I mentally docked this album a few points in deference to Cat Power loyalists who viewed it as a “too easy” stab at mainstream acceptance. These gorgeous slabs of Memphis soul set against Chan Marshall’s smoky, mesmerizing voice couldn’t approach the emotional catharsis of Moon Pix, I was told. But as much as I like Moon Pix, this record arrived at first listen like it had already been in your collection for 30 years. Which felt improbable when I was 29 but now seems like the hallmark of an instant classic that immediately creates a sweetly pained melancholy whenever I put it on.

2. Destroyer — Destroyer’s Rubies

The most “middle-aged indie dude” thing about me is that for many years from the past quarter-century, I can make an impassioned case that Dan Bejar made one of that year’s best albums. He’s the indie-rock mainstay who keeps rising in my personal power rankings, which I think is true for three reasons: 1) He makes good-ass music; 2) His albums don’t always make sense the year they were released, and they often don’t even seem all that likeable at first; 3) The second reason reminds me of all my favorite artists derived from the ’60s and ’70s. Destroyer’s Rubies is the Bejar album that most invites comparisons to the off-brand Bob Dylan and Van Morrison albums to which salt-and-pepper-bearded fellows like myself gravitate. It has the sound of Street-Legal and the soul of Common One. And if that means something to you, you’re probably confused as to why this isn’t at No. 1.

1. Band Of Horses — Everything All The Time

If you can drive across Wisconsin in January and not come out raving about how well this goddamn album holds up you are made of sterner stuff that I am. (Did I say “hell yeah” to an empty passenger seat when “Weed Party” came on? Do I have two ears and a heart?) Though I can’t just chalk this up to automotive bias. I think about Everything All The Time like cinephiles regard Midnight Run. The sort of well-made, sturdy, incredibly likeable, accessible, and endlessly entertaining work of popular art they just don’t make anymore. What Midnight Run is to studio action comedies, Everything All The Time is to beard-y, brawny, big guitars, big emotions, big-ticket indie. You can listen to it a million times and it doesn’t lose its charm. Or at least that’s my assumption. I’m currently on listen 981,123. I’ll let you know when I get through the remaining 18,877 spins.

Gale had a massive 2025. She released a new album, Lo Que Puede Pasar, which she previously described as “a very honest album about daring to live every experience with your heart without overthinking what might happen.” She also co-wrote the CA7RIEL and Paco Amoroso collaboration “#Tetas,” winning her first Latin Grammy Award (Best Alternative Song) for her work on the hit.

The Puerto Rican singer-songwriter’s 2026 is already going well so far, as she recently released “Me Tiene,” her first new song of the year. The single is playful and immediately full of electro energy. In a statement, Gale says of the track:

“‘Me Tiene’ is a sexy, fun song that celebrates that moment when you realize how good it feels to be with someone who truly loves you, takes care of you, and gives you your place. From the very beginning, I knew I wanted it to feel intense and high‑energy. Musically, it lives in the world of synth pop and electro pop: it has a unique, urgent energy that just makes you dance. And yes, it’s also a direct message to that toxic ex, making it clear they’re part of the past.”

Gale also celebrated the song’s release by performing it for The Sonic Route, an exclusive team-up between UPROXX and Toyota.

Listen to the song above and check out the performance below.

Earlier this week, we got our first taste of what the performances will look like at the 2026 Grammys, as Sabrina Carpenter was revealed as the first artist on the performance roster. Now we know more, as today (January 21), the Recording Academy announced that all of this year’s Best New Artist nominees — Addison Rae, Alex Warren, Katseye, Leon Thomas, Lola Young, The Marías, Olivia Dean, and Sombr — will perform as part of “a special Best New Artist segment.”

Of the Best New Artist nominees, a few of them also earned consideration in other categories: Katseye’s “Gabriela” is nominated for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance and Lola Young’s “Messy” is up for “Best Pop Solo Performance.” Leon Thomas, meanwhile, is all over the list as he’s up for Album Of The Year, Best R&B Album (both for Mutt), Best R&B Performance for “Mutt (Live From NPR’s Tiny Desk),” Best Traditional R&B Performance for “Vibes Don’t Lie,” and Best R&B Song for “Yes It Is.”

As for Carpenter, she’s well-represented, too. “Manchild” is up for Record Of The Year, Song Of The Year, Best Pop Solo Performance, and Best Music Video, while Man’s Best Friend is up for Album Of The Year and Best Pop Vocal Album.

It took years, but ASAP Rocky’s new album Don’t Be Dumb is finally here. Furthermore, fans will soon be able to hear the project on the road, as Rocky just announced a massive world tour set to run from May to September.

It starts with a North American leg, which features stops at venues like the Chicago’s United Center, Los Angeles’ Kia Forum, Toronto’s Scotiabank Arena, and Houston’s Toyota Center. A UK and European run follows starting in August.

The general on-sale for tickets starts January 27 at 9 a.m. local time. More information about that and about the various pre-sales can be found on Rocky’s website.

Find the tour dates below.

ASAP Rocky’s 2026 Tour Dates: Don’t Be Dumb World Tour

05/27 — Chicago, IL @ United Center
05/29 — Cleveland, OH @ Rocket Arena
05/31 — Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
06/01 — Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
06/02 — Boston, MA @ TD Garden
06/04 — Philadelphia, PA @ Xfinity Mobile Arena
06/07 — New York, NY @ Governors Ball
06/08 — Baltimore, MD @ CFG Bank Arena
06/11 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
06/12 — Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center
06/14 — Orlando, FL @ Kia Center
06/15 — Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center
06/18 — Dallas, TX. @ American Airlines Center
06/19 — Austin, TX @ Moody Center
06/20 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
06/23 — Phoenix, AZ @ Mortgage Matchup Center
06/25 — San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
06/26 — Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena
06/27 — Los Angeles, CA @ Kia Forum
06/30 — Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
07/01 — Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
07/03 — Edmonton, AB @ Rogers Place
07/04 — Calgary, AB @ Scotiabank Saddledome
07/08 — Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
07/11 — Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center
08/25 — Brussels, Belgium @ ING Arena
08/27 — Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Ziggo Dome
08/30 — London, UK @ O2 Arena
09/02 — Dublin, Ireland @ 3Arena
09/04 — Glasgow, UK @ OVO Hydro
09/05 — Manchester, UK @ Co-op Live
09/08 — Cologne, Germany @ Lanxess Arena
09/10 — Milan, Italy @ I-DAYS
09/11 — Munich, Germany @ Olympiahalle
09/13 — Lodz, Poland @ Atlas Arena
09/16 — Hamburg, Germany @ Barclays Arena
09/18 — Copenhagen, Denmark @ Royal Arena
09/20 — Oslo, Norway @ Unity Arena
09/21 — Stockholm, Sweden @ Avicii Arena
09/24 — Riga, Latvia @ Xiaomi Arena
09/25 — Kaunas, Lithuania @ Zalgiris Arena
09/28 — Berlin, Germany @ Uber Arena
09/30 — Paris, France @ Accor Arena

ASAP Rocky’s Don’t Be Dumb Album Cover Artwork

ASAP Rocky’s Don’t Be Dumb Tracklist

1. “Order of Protection”
2. “Helicopter$”
3. “Interrogation (Skit)”
4. “Stole Ya Flow”
5. “Stay Here”
6. “Playa”
7. “Trespass”
8. “Stop Snitching”
9. “STFU”
10. “Punk Rocky”
11. “Air Force (Black DeMarco)”
12. “Whiskey (I’m Not Resisting)”
13. “Robbery”
14. “Don’t Be Dumb / Trip Baby”
15. “The End”

Don’t Be Dumb is out now via AWGE/A$AP Worldwide/RCA Records. Find more information here.

After an exciting past year, Puerto Rican rapper Young Miko is in homebody mode.

Home in Puerto Rico, Miko — whose real name is María Victoria Ramírez de Arellano — abides by a consistent schedule. Mornings are reserved for press and promotions, and afternoons for high-intensity interval training in preparation for touring. At the time of our conversation, she is sitting at home with her one-year-old dachshund Naila in her lap.

Though her second album, Do Not Disturb, dropped only two months ago, she may pop into the studio later that day.

“I’m always in the studio, to be honest,” Miko says, “whether it’s working on the next project or just for the love of it. We have a studio at our place, and sometimes it’s just like looking at me, and I’m like, ‘I need to go in there with no expectations or pressure.’ I love what I do, I love my job. Music is my passion, and that’s the vibe today.”

Hailing from a town called Añasco, Miko moves by the power of love and camaraderie. She grew up playing “every sport” with kids from the neighborhood — soccer, karate, tennis, ping-pong, and basketball. For the latter, she played on her school’s boys team, as there wasn’t a girls team.

But even as a star athlete, Miko always had music on her mind. Miko briefly attended the University Of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras campus, where she studied drawing and played for the university’s soccer team. However, budget cuts affected credit hours in her degree program, so Miko later transferred to the Interamerican University Of Puerto Rico in San Germán, where she studied visual arts. Even through her academic career, she felt that she wasn’t pushing the artistic buttons she wanted to push.

“College is when I started exploring the world [of music],” Miko says. “And as soon as I graduated from college, I was like, ‘Okay, I gave my parents my bachelor’s degree — which is the only thing they asked of me.’ And I was like, ‘Okay, guys, I’m gonna make music. This is what I want to do.’ And, well, the rest was history.”

Miko got her start by uploading freestyles to Soundcloud, over beats she found on YouTube. She funded her music by working as a tattoo artist to cover studio costs. In 2023, she earned a breakthrough hit in the form of “Wiggy,” a bouncy Spanish hip-hop track which samples “Aserejé” by Las Ketchup.

In Hispanic and Latine households, “Aserejé” was often said to be a satanic song, given the nonsensical chorus, which itself is a spin on “Rapper’s Delight” by The Sugarhill Gang. But Miko only has joyful memories of this song. “People sometimes will literally talk whatever, but that was such a huge song in my house growing up. My mom specifically used to love it so much, and we would do the little dance at home anytime it was on.”

Since 2023, Miko has been on the road supporting some of the biggest names in music. She’s accompanied Karol G on the Mañana Será Bonito Tour, headlined her own XOXO Tour, and opened for Billie Eilish on the Hit Me Hard And Soft Tour. During that time, she released two albums — her debut ATT and Do Not Disturb.

As her star continues to rise, Miko has navigated fame with her loved ones by her side.

“I feel like I’ve done well with my mind and with my heart,” says Miko. “I’m still surrounded by the people I grew up with, which I feel has been a key piece to me being able to feel at ease and good with my heart, and where I stand and my morals. And having my parents around as well. They’re my No. 1 fans. I just feel blessed, to be honest, and I feel happy that people are enjoying what I do, and that they have felt connected to it. I’ve gotten to do so many amazing things, thanks to the music that we do. So I just hope this continues.”

As the title of Miko’s sophomore album suggests, Do Not Disturb was inspired by her time on the road. Many of the songs “were born in hotel rooms,” Miko says. Perhaps the best example of this is “En El Ritz,” a trap-fueled ode to one-night stands in luxury hotels. “Vamos a chingar en el Ritz,” she repeats on the song’s chorus.

Miko isn’t one to shy away from her flirtatious ways. The Lil Wayne-sampling “Wassup” captures scenes of herself flirting with women in clubs while partying in different cities. But she’s no hedonist. In fact, her heart is always open for love. “I’m definitely a softie lover girl,” Miko says. “I cannot hide it.”

Still, she insists that she keeps her heart and her soul on DND for the time being, prioritizing her craft and her creativity. A textbook Scorpio, Miko feels love with a sense of unwavering passion, but directs this toward her music.

“As soon as ATT came out, I already knew that I wanted to make this album,” says Miko. “And when we started the tour, I did my best to try to get some studio [time] in. It was really hard at first, because we were doing so many shows, and we were on the road. But a lot of concepts were born, even from me not having the name [of the album] yet, or even the slightest concept of how I wanted to aesthetically tie everything together. I always had my ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign on my door. Some hotels have a little button, and I’d be putting it on. It’s funny how sometimes it was just under your nose the whole time.”

Miko takes a hybrid approach to her songwriting. Most of the time, she writes her bars down. She often enters a flow state while in the booth. When she’s in this state of mind, the top melodies and cadences come naturally to her. From there, she may mumble and hum placeholders for lyrics and bars, but the words soon follow.

Some of these words may have your abuelita praying a rosary. Miko hides nothing when it comes to sex. But despite her unfiltered approach, she maintains a degree of privacy in her personal life.

“I always go with the flow,” Miko says. “But I like to be selective with my words and what I share. I’ve always been a private person, but who doesn’t love sex, you know? It’s part of us. We’re human. It’s love at the end of the day, and it’s a form of expression. It’s art. I just wanted to talk about it.”

But as a Scorpio, Miko seeks balance. With her confident, raunchy bars comes the more romantic, spiritual side. She showcases such duality with her vocals and singing chops. On a standout track, “Ojalá,” Miko expresses hope for meeting a current love in an alternate timeline. “Maybe, maybe, maybe, en otra vida maybe, ojalá que nunca me olvides,” she sings, meaning “maybe, maybe, maybe, in another lifetime maybe, I hope you never forget me.”

From her childhood, spirituality has been a key component in everything Miko does.

“When I was growing up, I read this book called Many Lives, Many Masters by [Dr. Brian Weiss], and it changed my brain chemistry forever,” Miko recalls. “I had always wanted to have a song where I could talk about that. ‘Ojalá’ was a gorgeous process. It was very emotional for us, and it’s probably one of my favorite tracks on the album. That was a song where I didn’t write anything down, and everything was a flow state. That song just happened, and when we were finishing up, I kept repeating the word ‘maybe,’ and it kind of just happened. We were so happy about it.”

It could be months or years from now before we hear Miko’s next album. As she enters the studio, she takes inspiration from a rapidly evolving Latin music landscape. “I never know what to expect out of music, because it will be the most unexpected thing sometimes. Maybe suddenly, it’s like sexy drill, then it’s reggaeton again, then we’re trapping, then it’s like Jersey. Now we have these pop girls taking over the world, which is so fire to me. And I just think Latinos have every sort of flavor in them. I like to be taken by surprise.”

In the days to come, Miko is looking forward to seeing Latin artists dominate, especially as fellow Riqueño Bad Bunny is performing the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show in February. Miko herself also has a few festival performances lined up — including slots at Festival Estereo Picnic in Bogota, Colombia in March, and Hinterland Music Festival in St. Charles, Iowa in July.

But when she’s not training or recording, Miko is loving spending time at home — where she has everything she needs.

“I’m in a very domestic era,” says Miko. “I’m enjoying my rent and spending time with my parents. And I like to draw. I draw a lot. Honestly, I have this whole corner in my house where it’s just a bunch of paper, notebooks, and markers. I always try to keep my creative side stimulated.”

It’s not uncommon these days to see alcohol brands sponsoring sporting events. In fact, the two go hand in hand.

Whether it’s Hennessy as the NBA’s global spirits partner or Budweiser at the Super Bowl, drinks brands have long known that, though the athletes might be dry, working alongside sports leagues to ensure their spectators are taken care of is a key piece of the experience. Surely, anyone who’s been tailgating at a football game can tell you how much better the experience is with great drinks in your glass (or red plastic cup).

The rise of the UIM E1 Series, which first launched in 2024 and recently wrapped up its sophomore season late last year, offers insight into how vital these partnerships are to alcohol brands. As the official gin partner of the UIM E1 World Championship, Bombay branding could be seen everywhere at the championship finale at Miami Seaplane Base, from a wrapped electric powerboat and, of course, at the bars where race guests were treated to live cocktail demonstrations in addition to delicious libations.

The effort to transition into E1 sponsorship reflects a broader push by Bacardi-owned brands to enter the world of sports. Patrón has F1, a league whose popularity E1 hopes to emulate, and Bacardi Gold has an NBA partnership, while Bacardi also has its hooks in the sailing world with the Bacardi Cup. The visibility that comes from these strategic partnerships is evident on game day, but it doesn’t just help with brand visibility. These sponsorships also serve to elevate their respective sports, making sailing and E1 more accessible and enjoyable for people who might not otherwise tune in.

In 2025, several reports indicated that alcohol consumption in the United States is stagnating, if not declining, in certain segments, making it crucial for brands to expand beyond the bar to reach customers. With E1 in only its second season, Bacardi clearly sees room to grow, and getting in on the ground floor of the exciting aquatic sport (with big-name celebrity ties ranging from Tom Brady and Will Smith to Rafael Nadal and LeBron James) both elevates the brand and supports that growth.

Having attended the UIM E1 Championship race in Miami, the tie-ins for Bombay Sapphire make sense. With “step into the blue” as a brand platform, there were Bombay Sapphire cocktails everywhere, cast against the blue waters of the Miami Seaplane Base. It pairs well with E1’s initiatives to support marine sustainability. Energy efficiency, waste reduction, and the restoration of coastal areas aren’t just window dressing for the aquatic sports league; it’s a necessity. In that way, each partner works together to raise awareness of environmentally sound practices that champion aquatic conservation. Maintaining the integrity of our coastal regions is imperative not only to the growth of aquatic sports but also to spirits brands like Bacardi, which rely on an eco-friendly reputation in a competitive consumer market and, of course, require clean water to create their products.

The synergy of this particular union seems self-evident, but taking a step back to look at the broader world of spirits-and-sports partnerships reveals two sides that clearly need each other. Athletes themselves might not be actively consuming alcohol before competing, but for those of us on the sidelines, enjoying drinks is an easy way to get into the game and support the growth of these leagues. Your drink doesn’t have to be stiff, but supporting drink brands that make the leap into sporting partnerships creates a rising tide that lifts all boats.

The success of the UIM E1 Championship’s second season, and the Bombay Sapphire cocktails available race-side, serve as the perfect example.

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