DaBaby and Westside Gunn headline a strong field of releases this week in hip-hop, along with a solid showing from the West Coast in the form of joint tapes from two Compton mainstays and a debut from Shoreline Mafia affiliate Bravo The Bagchaser. Meanwhile, newcomer Fredo Bang and veteran Tech N9ne round out the list, showing that hip-hop don’t stop — not even in the face of the current crisis which has forced us all to stay at home and six feet away from each other for safety.

Fortunately, streaming makes it easy to stay on top of the wealth of releases dropping from week to week. Whether that includes Tory Lanez, Rod Wave, or Sada Baby, we can use the quarantine free time to check out the leaders of the new school, while big-name stars push back releases hoping for elaborate rollouts.

Here are all the best new hip-hop albums coming out this week.

Bravo The Bagchaser — Born 2 Win

Los Angeles-based Bravo The Bagchaser turns just 19 years old this month, but he’s already built a solid hometown buzz around the ratchet energy of his turnt-up beats and the hilarity of his off-the-cuff punchlines. With a tracklist featuring appearances from AzChike and Shoreline Mafia’s Fenix Flexin, his debut album is a promising look at a young artist with plenty of potential — and room for improvement.

Buddy & Kent Jamz — Jank Tape Vol. 1

Buddy’s first full-length since 2018’s Harlan & Alondra is a joint project with Overdoz’s Kent Jamz. The two artists are longtime friends and their chemistry shows on tracks like lead single “She Think.” It’s a bright, bubbly album full of soulful grooves and sunny vibes well-worth checking out, even if you’re unfamiliar with either artist’s previous work.

DaBaby — Blame It On Baby

Jonathan Kirk’s breakneck rap game takeover continues with his third album in the last year. This time around, DaBaby is coming with revamped flows — as illustrated on the guitar-driven lead single “Find My Way” — and a year’s worth of highs and lows to address with his signature insight and wit.

Fredo Bang — Most Hated

Hailing from Baton Rouge, Fredo’s breakout single “Oouuhh” has made him a national star. His first mixtape under Def Jam, Most Hated brings the same fiery flows and bottom-heavy beats of his early mixtapes, adding some big-name guest features including Lil Baby, Moneybagg Yo, and Tee Grizzley.

RJ & Royce The Choice — Rich Off Mackin II

Another staple of the Compton underground scene, RJMrLA has been a fixture on the local party scene with a number of fan-favorite tracks to his name. Royce The Choice is a rapper from the Bay Area whose biggest hit was a collaboration with RJ. Both artists are signed to Mustard’s 10 Summers label and this album is the second installment of their Rich Off Mackin mixtape series — the first in four years.

Tech N9ne — Enterfear

If there was any rapper who wasn’t going to let coronavirus stop his grind, it’s Tech N9ne, the vertically-integrated independent pioneer who has been banging out hits since the 1990s. As with his plethora of prior projects, Enterfear highlights complex lyrics, complicated cadences, and finds Tech sharing his spotlight with special guests from his label, as well as with outsiders whose talents he respects, such as Flatbush Zombies.

Westside Gunn — Pray For Paris

The Griselda mastermind turned this EP into a full-fledged album as a mea culpa to fans for waiting so long between projects — a whole six months. This time around, he’s looking to turn some heads, with a few smoother songs than the gritty Griselda usuals, bringing Wale, Freddie Gibbs, Joey Badass, comedian Jay Versace, and the usual suspects (Benny, Conway, and Roc Marciano) along for the ride.

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

So many things I need, so few places to go.

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The man was tested for COVID-19 but said he hasn’t gotten the result yet.

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Time to drift back into a comparably better past.

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Social media companies have struggled to combat misinformation about the pandemic so far.

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While NBA commissioner Adam Silver repeatedly has said no firm decision about the NBA’s timeline for a potential return will be made until May 1 at the earliest, several key developments related to containing the COVID-19 pandemic have reaffirmed optimism across the NBA about the eventual completion of the 2019-20 season.

A new report from Sam Amick at The Athletic shows “widespread optimism” among people at all levels of the league that the NBA can get back on the court at some point this summer. Amick also reports that “internal conversations about finding a solution remain robust,” but that ultimately, “the virus will have the final say.”

Among the chief priorities for a return to play: Building a schedule that works for all involved, using consistent, rapid testing to create an environment that protects everyone from infection, and buy-in from fans and health experts.

According to Amick’s survey of NBA stakeholders, there is weariness in the league about the perception that in mid-March, as leaders within the United States quickly realized the scope of our outbreak, that NBA players were among the first and most high-profile people to procure diagnostic tests. While one could argue the public nature of players like Kevin Durant and Rudy Gobert testing positive actually led to more awareness about the silent infectiousness of COVID-19, the NBA does not want to open itself up to any belief that they are stealing valuable medical equipment or personnel from the broader American public.

However, Amick also reports that new, 45-minute COVID-19 testing is one of the main factors in the growing optimism around the NBA toward a return. Recent support from the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, toward a so-called “bubble league” built around constant quarantining and testing will likely help the NBA’s cause as well. In addition, the involvement of pro sports leaders such as Silver himself in the White House’s coalition to help reopen the American economy ought to build support for pro sports’ hastened return.

As has been the case from the jump, no one in the NBA wants to get ahead of themselves and jeopardize the health or wellbeing of players. At the same time, a sense of urgency and optimism seems to be propelling the league toward a return to the hardwood.

Spy movies already tend to be at least a little silly. How realistic is James Bond? Does any pencil-pushing agent get to ever leave cramped rooms, let alone jump on moving airplanes like Ethan Hunt? Even George Smiley, hero of Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, leads a more exciting life than anyone in British intelligence. But spy movies mostly play it straight, and as a result, there are plenty of spy comedies to make fun of them. There are many kinds of spy comedies: they can be parodies, they can be satires. They can be farces, even rom-coms. As we wait a bit longer for the next Bond film, No Time to Die, now due in November, let’s put up our feet and take a look back at a genre that dares laugh at stuff that, in the real world, could end with us all killed.

10. The Man Who Knew Too Little (1997)

You can separate Bill Murray’s career into two halves: There’s before he made Rushmore and there’s after. When Wes Anderson cast the deadpan comedy god as Herman Blume, a depressed Texan industrialist competing for the affections of a private school teacher with a 15-year-old boy, he unlocked the man’s deep, melancholic side, which had always been there but rarely been so visible. Anderson also saved a career that, by the late ’90s, was in trouble. No one, wisely, saw the wan elephant comedy Larger Than Life, nor, tragically, did they turn out to watch him, and his hair, steal the Farrelly brothers’ Kingpin. They didn’t see this spy comedy either, which is also a shame. Murray plays a dense Iowan everyman who winds up mistaken for a cunning secret agent by Russian intelligence, and he spends the majority of the film unaware that his life is in danger. Murray has always played cool and above-it-all, but here he leans full-tilt boogie into square silliness, throwing himself into ludicrous misunderstandings and energetic slapstick. And it’s probably the last time we’ll ever see Murray in full goofball mode, smiling, doing pratfalls, playing a happy idiot, not a brooding know-it-all.

9. Undercover Brother (2002)

Eddie Griffin had a short-lived stint as a Hollywood leading man, the best of which was this two-pronged spoof that sent up spy movies and blaxploitation. Based on the animated internet series from future 12 Years a Slave writer John Ridley, it’s silly and savage, stupid and smart, with Griffin’s titular freelancer joining a secret African-American agency called The B.R.O.T.H.E.R.H.O.O.D. that battles white power, led by a villain known, of course, simply as The Man. The plot finds The Man trying to take down a black politician (Billy Dee Williams) running for president, a whole six years before Obama beat McCain. It was funny then and there’s no way this hasn’t aged like wine. All that, plus Neil Patrick Harris doing some excellent pre-Harold and Kumar comedy as the agency’s “token: white intern.

8. True Lies (1993)

Action and comedy don’t tend to go together, no matter how many times they’re combined; it’s hard to be funny when you’re worried about your next stunt. Moreover, James Cameron is not a funny guy. His movies are big, serious, sometimes painfully didactic. The weirdest outlier on his CV isn’t his debut, Piranha II: The Spawning; it’s the fact that he made an absurdly expensive action movie that’s actually funny. A remake of a far more modest French comedy called La Totale!, it’s got a great premise: Arnold Schwarzenegger is a spy so good at anonymity even his family doesn’t know his secret. The story’s middle section goes to some strange places; the stretch where our hero tries to punish his wife (Jamie Lee Curtis) for considering, but not actually going through with, an affair with a sleazy car dealer (a godly Bill Paxton) — complete with him blackmailing her into a private striptease — is such a skeezy look into the mind of neurotic men it could have been written by Albert Brooks. But mostly Cameron is able to have his cake and eat it, too, satirizing the spy genre while delivering eye-popping set pieces — and, unfortunately, peddling some casual anti-Arab racism that was on the verge of finally becoming uncool.

7. Our Man Flint (1966)

The ’60s were the Golden Age of spy movies. They were everywhere! Everyone wanted their own James Bond franchise, and there were countless knock-offs, the best of them being Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer series. But there were also countless spy movie spoofs. Dean Martin did four stints as Matt Helm (including The Wrecking Crew, prominently featured in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood), Doris Day was mistaken for a Russian spy in The Glass Bottom Boat, and Columbia spent a gazillion dollars on the bloated, star-studded parody Casino Royale. The only good early Bond era spy comedies are the two with James Coburn as Derek Flint, a renaissance man and wealthy playboy whose many talents include espionage. Coburn is arguably the coolest actor who ever lived, and his Flint is even more of a badass than Connery’s 007. Here and in the sequel In Like Flint, he plays it straight, which only makes the wacky, psychedelic hijinks around him all the funnier.

6. Spy (2015)

Paul Feig’s movies with Melissa McCarthy are always far better than they had to be, and this one takes a basic premise — what if Melissa McCarthy was in a spy movie? — and goes above and beyond. She’s a CIA desk jockey who winds up trotting the globe, getting involved in intrigue and mayhem and not going only for easy fish-out-of-water gags. McCarthy’s a very generous performer, and she lets numerous others steal her stage: Jason Statham as a foul-mouthed, self-serious agent, Miranda Hart as her gossipy friend, and best of all, Rose Byrne as a posh terrorist who at one point compares McCarthy to “a sad Bulgarian clown.” And while Feig loves improv, he’s also cares about camerawork and mise-en-scène, meaning its action scenes are almost actually exciting.

5. The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015)

Guy Ritchie’s blockbuster career is a bit dodgy; what did you expect the guy who made Snatch to bring to Aladdin? But adapting the titular ’60s spy show turned out be a perfect fit. Ritchie is both a hyperkinetic, inventive stylist and a man with a cheeky sense of humor, and though it’s more a thriller than a comedy, the fact that the comedy is character-based — and delivered by two leads, Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer, who aren’t natural comedians, and aren’t trying too hard to earn yuks — is what makes this such a charming brew. Get on that sequel, Guy!

4. Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery (1997)

In the late ’90s, Mike Myers could do whatever he wanted, and what he wanted in 1997, for whatever reason, was a ’60s Bond spoof. Why not! It took a while for audiences to feel the same way, and while the bigger, actually badder sequels aren’t much to speak of, the original is still a solid and weird gag machine. Horny Austin himself has always been of limited interest, but it’s his Blofeld-ish Dr. Evil who’s always been secret weapon, from his love of sharks with frickin’ laser beams attached to their heads to that absolutely bonkers monologue he delivers to guest star Carrie Fisher. And of course, there’s this excellent visual gag.

3. Burn After Reading (2008)

The Coens’ goofiest — but also bleakest — movie isn’t really a spy movie. But it’s spy-adjacent, and that’s good enough for this list. John Malkovich plays a former CIA agent who decides he’s going to write a tell-all about his career. (By the way, this is the same set-up for another great spy comedy: 1982’s Hopscotch, starring Walter Matthau at his slyest, though the plots diverge from there. Please watch it, it’s on the Criterion Channel.) But the disc containing his memoir winds up accidentally in the possession of some dundherheaded gym employees (Frances McDormand and an unforgettably coifed Brad Pitt), and eventually Russian intelligence get involved, and at a time when still fearing the Russians seemed ridiculous. It’s the Coens at their broadest, with Clooney, in particular, acting like he’s in a Tex Avery cartoon. But it’s also their darkest treatise on humanity, on life, on America, in which stupidity reigns, lives are destroyed by other people’s mistakes, and the film’s nicest, kindest character winds up with a hatchet to the head. “What did we learn?” asks J.K Simmons CIA honcho as he surveys the damage in the hilariously chilling final scene. “I guess we learned not to do it again. F*cked if I know what we did.”

2. Charade (1963)

There are scores of Hitchcock knock-offs, but few as wonderful as Stanley Donen’s fizzy, twisty-turny Parisian romp. Audrey Hepburn plays a woman whose husband is mysteriously killed, leaving behind a secret fortune that’s gone missing. While trying to avoid three former spies who want the dough, she’s wooed by a stranger played by Cary Grant who — shades of Hitchcock’s own Suspicion — may not be trustworthy. A smooth blend of spy thriller, romance, and comedy, it’s as much Hitchcock as it is Donen, a filmmaker (best known for musicals like Singin’ in the Rain) of great warmth and humor, who made something Hitchcock never quite could.

1. Top Secret! (1984)

They’re known as ZAZ — the team of David Zucker, Jim Abraham, and Jerry Zucker. Their trade, during their ’80s peak, was rapid-fire parodies, one gag after another, teeming with references and non-sequiturs, no dead air, and filled with actors all playing it straight. Everyone knows Airplane! and Police Squad and The Naked Gun and Hot Shots! But the cool kids know the real ZAZ apex is this under-the-radar parody of Cold War spy movies, with Val Kilmer —in his screen debut — as a fresh-faced agent taking on the Nazis. There are Elvis-esque songs, there are priceless one-liners (“I know a little German. He’s right over there”), there are elaborate sight gags (the backwards scene with Peter Cushing), there’s even an underwater fight, complete with aquatic bar stools. It’s ZAZ at their peak powers, never letting up, and it’s time it held the same cultural currency as Airplane!

Runners-Up: Kingsman: The Secret Service, Spy Kids, The Brothers Grimsby, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, RED, Jumping Jack Flash, OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies, Get Smart, Johnny English

Decidedly Not On This List: Leonard Part 6, Spies Like Us, The Experts, Spy Hard, The Avengers (1998), Dr. Goldfoot and the Girl Bombs

There’s a game we play around here, called Plot Recreated With Reviews. That’s where we take a movie we’re definitely not going to see, read every review we can, and attempt to piece together the entire thing using nothing but expository quotes from reviews. Some movies are just better secondhand.

I admit we have no excuse with Trolls World Tour. It was originally supposed to open in theaters this week, but thanks to COVID quarantines, Universal made the (very good) decision to release it directly to streaming on the same date. Many wondered if this unprecedented decision by a major studio would be the brick that shattered the previously sacrosanct 90-day theatrical window — presumed to help theaters stay in business.

Whatever the larger implications, you can stream it right now in your living room right now. Would you believe this movie is even tracking 70% recommended on RottenTomatoes? So yes, it is reportedly a decently watchable film that we could watch ourselves with minimum effort… but if I’m being honest, I’d rather hear from the people who saw than see it myself.

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THE SETUP

Once more we are in the spirited company of Poppy (Anna Kendrick), the exhaustingly joyful queen of the pop trolls (LA Times)

still ruling over her domain happily enough with the help of her friend (Guardian)

former grouchy survivalist troll (Polygon)

Branch (Justin Timberlake), who is unable to confess his feelings for her. (Guardian)

Their mismatched temperaments give rise to a lot of bickering and mixed signals but never fear: Differences, after all, are what make harmony possible. (LA Times)

It’s set in a storybook kingdom that’s all sweetness and light and glitter and fuzz and bursting psychedelic pastels. (Variety)

But this film, with a bit of sleight-of-hand, now reveals the importance of the queen’s name. (Guardian)

THE REVEAL

They have pretty much always thought of themselves specifically as pop trolls: pop music is their thing. But it is revealed to Poppy that the troll kingdom is bigger than they thought. (Guardian)

Neighboring kingdoms have trolls defined by Funk, Country, Techno, Classical, and Rock music. (IGN)

The brightly glowing techno trolls dwell in an underwater grotto that offers just the right bioluminescent arena for their neon-hued raves. (LATimes)

It’s a true wall of sound rushing at your children, an onslaught that begins with Anthony Ramos, of Hamilton fame, yelling, “What’s up, techno trolls??” (Vanity Fair)

THE ANTAGONIST

Their rave is then invaded by spaceships designed like mini-dungeons. They’re a fleet led by Queen Barb (Rachel Bloom), monarch of the Hard Rock Trolls. (Variety)

A heavy-metal hellion in a red mohawk, wearing fishnets and three thick hoop earrings, she’s a self-styled demon goddess of hard rock (Variety)

who wants to force the others to stop grooving and start moshing. (Empire)

“We’re all going to have the same vibe,” she announces, sounding like Jack Black crossed with Joan Jett merged with Maleficent. “We’re all going to be one nation of Trolls — under rock!” (Variety)

THE EVIL PLAN

Daughter of Thrash (voiced by Ozzy Osbourne), Barb is on a world-tour mission to conquer all the other troll kingdoms and make them submit to the awesome majesty of rock. It appears that way back in the mists of time, the six types of music were six strings on a mystical Orphean lyre. (Guardian)

But the Trolls grew hostile to each other’s tastes, resulting in a land of colonies that sound like Sirius XM channels. (Variety)

Barb plans to collect all six strings as trophies, put them on her guitar and play one single devastating power chord: a Tolkienian moment which will (Guardian)

turn all trolls into “rock zombies.” (IGN)

POP TO THE RESCUE

Poppy and Branch head off on a world tour – to save the other tribes from being enslaved by Barb and to enjoy their musical stylings (Empire)

in an agreeable but rather one-dimensional slow-poke road movie, in which Poppy, Branch, and their stowaway sidekick, the charmingly terrified Biggie (James Corden), pay a visit to each of these musical lands, which turn out to be visually captivating but borderline cliché places. (Variety)

And so we get to meet the classical trolls (presided over by a troll named Trollzart), who like to perform Beethoven’s Fifth in charming pastel-powdered 18th-century wigs. (Vanity Fair/LA Times)

The land of the country Trolls, known as Lonesome Flats, features Kelly Clarkson as a really big-haired C&W diva singing the lachrymose “Born to Die,” and yields one more fellow traveler for Poppy and company: a chivalrous Deep South centaur named Hickory (Sam Rockwell). (Variety)

There are even other pockets they find along the way, too, including those for hip-hop, Reggaeton and even dedicated yodelers. (AP)

BUT WAIT

While Barb’s cause seems patently unjust, it is a form of payback — a rebellion against pop’s colonization of other music. (New York Times)

Poppy learns that the history lesson unspooled by her father is willfully papering over her ancestors’ colonizer crimes. (“Scrapbooks are made by the winners.”) (IGN)

The pop trolls’ Torah (seriously) neglects to mention they have crowded out the marketplace. If you were to connect some dots and apply way too much thought to the movie’s iconography, there is a hint here of an anti-Semitic trope: Jewish domination of the entertainment industry. (NY Times)

Then, that shocking reveal is glossed over when the Funk contingent instantly forgives them with a hip-hop song about love and unity. (IGN)

QUESTIONS REMAIN

For some reason, the smooth-jazz Troll (Polygon)

a brainwashing creep called “Slow Jazz Chaz” (IGN)

(Jamie Dornan), also a bounty hunter, whose mellow sax playing induces lysergic visions and paralysis (New York Times)

is derided all the way through the movie, in spite of the preaching about acceptances and differences. (Polygon)

Nobody likes that guy. (New York Times)

[Trolls World Tour also delights in] getting in a dig at the 20th century’s most unfairly maligned sub-genre, disco. (Why not teach the little ones of 2020 to love disco? Why perpetuate the cycle all for the sake of one joke they won’t understand, and is actually too dated for even their parents?) (Vanity Fair)

The K-pop trolls, the reggaeton trolls and the yodeling trolls are depicted as bounty hunters. Does something about regionally associated music suggest unscrupulous, mercenary qualities to the filmmakers? (New York Times)

Why do the pop Trolls claim Psy’s “Gangnam Style” as “one of their most important songs,” but consider the K-pop Trolls, voiced by actual K-pop group Red Velvet, to be separate from them? (Polygon)

It is dangerous to over-read Trolls World Tour, which celebrates musical diversity — pushing back against pop music’s appropriation of African-American artists’ innovations — and whose multiculturalism is clearly intended in a spirit of inclusiveness and good humor. (New York Times)

EDITORIALIZING/BEGRUDGING COMPLIMENTS

It’s all very episodic and predictable, building to the inevitable genre mash-up singalong, but there’s a likeable simplicity to it. (Empire)

It’s essentially a sped-up version of the jukebox musical. It runs through so many songs that it might be better called a Spotify musical, with infinite skips. (AP)

Trolls World Tour doesn’t really require the full effect and may actually be more enjoyable — more endurable — at medium volume. A TV screen and living-room acoustics serve to mitigate the sensory overload. (LA Times)

When they’re not too loud and you’ve sufficiently shielded your eyes, their sugary highs are pleasant enough and occasionally tuneful. An animated movie can do worse than indoctrinate another generation to the joys of Earth, Wind and Fire’s “September.” (AP)

The movie, directed by Walt Dohrn, still gives you the sensation of being barricaded in a karaoke lounge where all the attendees have snorted Sweet Tarts. (New York Times)

World Tour is essentially a primer for children on the vast diversity of musical styles, though pared down into a small handful of categories. I suppose there is some value in that, though a quick trip around Spotify could do the same, and spare you the cake-pooping giraffes. (Vanity Fair)

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Wow, I’ll be honest, I did not expect the Trolls sequel to be a veiled lesson about musical colonialism. I feel strangely like I want to see it now. Talk about a surprise, Josh Gad isn’t even in it.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. Read more Plots Recreated With Reviews here.

Playboi Carti gets artistic in the NSFW video for “Meh,” the first official single from his upcoming album, Whole Lotta Red, which fans have eagerly anticipated for over a year. The video, directed by Carti and Nick Walker, is relatively simple: Carti poses in front of a backdrop like the ones you’d find at fancy photo studios while a pair of extremely scantily clad women twerk and preen for the camera. The simplistic premise is offset by dark lighting, a juxtaposition that would make pretty much any professional photographer chuck their camera in frustration.

The beat is a bubbly production from Jetsonmade, which features the Carolina-based producers signature rollicking 808s, but is a departure in the tinkling synths. The effect is perfect for the naturally buoyant Carti, who floats over the track with his usual strained yelp of a flow, talking sh*t with a repetitious chorus of “Them p*ssy n****s ain’t ’bout that sh*t.”

Whole Lotta Red has been shrouded in mystery since its announcement. While Carti promised in Fader that the album would feature appearances from Gunna and Trippie Redd and production from Pi’erre Bourne, that was nearly a year ago and the plan has changed up so many times since that the album has taken on almost a mythical status among fans.

Carti recently revealed the cover art for the project, though. Check it out here.