As February came to a close, a new internet sensation broke out in the form of an entertaining music video that would be heralded as the second coming of “Old Town Road.” It soon was discovered that the man responsible for the song in the video, “Rascal,” was West Coast singer RMR. The juxtaposition posed between the ski-masked squad and the Rasal Flatts-sampling track quickly grabbed the attention of fans and from there a new band of supporters was formed. RMR would return a little over a month later with “Dealer.” The song would later be remixed by Lil Baby and Future and receive a visual treatment with the three artists as well.

Putting the finishing touches on his upcoming EP, Drug Dealing Is A Lost Art, RMR returns with yet another new single, “I’m Not Over You.” Rather than the usual midnight release, RMR took to Desus & Mero‘s Showtime platform to debut the single. For the performance, RMR is seen frantically stumbling through a sharply-lit abandoned building while pouring his heart on the new song.

Press play on the video above to hear “I’m Not Over You” and stay tuned for Drug Dealing Is A Lost Art which arrives 6/5 via Warner Records.

RMR is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Fitting right into the recent uptick of female talent in the hip-hop world, Blimes and Gab had their viral moment in 2018 courtesy of “Come Correct.” The video and song arrived before the group teamed up as an official duo, but following the formation, Blimes and Gab returned with another single in “Feelin’ It.” The song debuted their “big auntie energy” while confirming their chemistry was here to stay. Along with its release, the duo announced that a new joint project was on the way and nearly a year later, we know now when it will arrive.

Proclaiming that their debut album Talk About It would arrive June 26, Blimes And Gab also shared a new single from the album with “Shelleys (It’s Cool).” The disco-leaning track finds the duo riding a groove quite pleasing to the ear. Speaking on the song in a press release, Blimes and Gab said, “It’s the secret ingredient in the Blimes and Gab sauce. You’re gonna want it on everything.”

With features from Method Man, Iamsu!, Bahamadia, and Jay Park set to appear on the album, the West Coast duo also revealed the cover art for Talk About It thanks to its preorder link. Rocking contrasting black and yellow colors, Blimes Brixton and Gifted Gab are split-screened with phones in hand, a visual that fits in perfectly with the album’s title.

Press play on the video above to hear “Shelleys (It’s Cool).”

Talk About It is out 06/26 via The Orchard. Pre-order it here.

Serving as another step upward for the Brooklyn rapper, Saint JHN had a strong 2019 thanks to his sophomore album, Ghetto Lenny’s Love Songs. The project saw him working alongside well-known acts like Meek Mill, Lil Baby, Lenny Kravitz, and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. However, as of late, Saint JHN’s popularity can be credited to his 2018 debut album, Collection One, as it is the home of slow-burning single, “Roses.” Given added life thanks to a remix by DJ Imanbek, the track has grown to be Saint JHN’s most successful. Celebrating that very success, Saint JHN comes through with a new remix of the track.

Sliding through with Future for the new remix, the two rappers bring new energy to the track as Future contributes ad libs to Saint JHN’s verses as well as the song’s hook before laying a verse of his own. On his verse Future sticks to his usual format, letting off raps about women and jewels. The remix comes after Saint JHN stepped into the top 20 of the Billboard singles chart with “Roses” as well as topping the charts in Australia, the Netherlands, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK.

The remix also arrives after Saint JHN joined Marshmello and Southside for their “Been Thru This Before,” which arrived in early April.

To hear the remix of “Roses,” press play above.

It was just two months ago that Young Dolph announced that he would be retiring from music in a post to his Instagram story saying, “highly considering quitting music because I really wanna be with my kids 24/7.” Seemingly confirmed by Complex after reaching out to the Memphis rapper, Dolph had his eyes set on being a family man for the foreseeable future. However, two weeks later he made his return by teasing a new album was set to drop within hours. The album never arrived but fans were given a treat a month later with his “Sunshine” single.

Following the quarantine visual Dolph delivered for “Sunshine,” the Memphis native calls on Megan Thee Stallion as the two work some southern magic on their new single, “RNB.” Showing love to the money-packing guys and girls all around, Dolph and Megan deliver some crisp one-liners for their fans’ enjoyment. Dolph claims that he has “bad b*tches coming in by the twos like a Twix,” while Megan says, “this is not Sesame Street, I don’t kick it with no birds.”

The new single also arrives after Megan notched the first Billboard singles chart-topper of her career courtesy of her “Savage (Remix)” with Beyonce.

Listen to Dolph and Megan’s first collaboration in the video above.

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

To close out 2018, 6lack established himself as one of R&B’s brightest thanks to his sophomore album, East Atlanta Love Letter. The 14-track project landed on a number of year-end lists and introduced the Atlanta-born singer to a plethora of new ears. In the year and change following, new releases by 6lack have come in the form of features, some of which include K Camp’s “Black Men Don’t Cheat,” “Yo Love” with Vince Staples and Mereba, and Tinashe’s “Touch & Go.” With his third album still in progress, 6lack slides through with a new freestyle.

Sharing his “ATL Freestyle” with fans, many of which have been near-impatient in their wait for new music, 6lack brings his mellow nonchalance to reflect on his past and present in his beloved hometown. From performances in Atlanta to his friends and his youth, 6lack paints a picture of both the beauty and the ugliness in the hip-hop epicenter.

Hours prior to releasing the song, 6lack posted a message to his social media pages commenting on the current state of being black in America. Beginning his message, he revealed he was not entirely comfortable releasing a song due to the amount of “pain & anger I feel in my heart.” Further down in the letter, he spoke to his reason behind the letter: “I’m writing this letter because my heart and my skin color won’t ever allow me to be in the public eye and not make it clear where I stand in times of injustice… it wouldn’t be right doing so [releasing “ATL Freestyle”] without using my platform to bring awareness to larger social topics at hand.”

Listen to “ATL Freestyle” in the video above.

Following his stellar debut album, Good For You, one that proved he was much more than a one-hit-wonder, and his sophomore project OnePointFive, Amine took a well-deserved year off in 2019, giving us just a few singles including last May’s “Places + Friends” as well as a few other untethered releases. Reemerging this year and declaring 2020 as his for the taking, the Portland rapper returned with “Shimmy” in late February. Falling back for a few months, Amine touches down once again with a new single.

Bringing a similar hard-hitting feeling to his latest, Amine returns with “Riri.” The track, named after Rihanna who just celebrated the 15 years in the music industry earlier this week, finds Amine speaking about a partner who compares herself to the famed pop-star but fails to reach that mark by a landslide. Entangled in an on-and-off relationship with the girl, Amine declares enough is enough as his partner has broken his heart not once, but three times. Detailing his distaste with the relationship, the song ends with a skit from actor Jak Knight, a writer on the popular ABC show, Black-ish. It remains to be seen whether Amine has a project ready to go in the near future.

Check out “Riri” above.

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Whenever I think of Linda Cardellini, I think of a quote from Community. To be fair, I am often thinking of Linda Cardellini and Community quotes, so it was inevitable that they would cross paths. Anyway, it’s from the season three episode “Regional Holiday Music” when Britta makes an unexpected appearance as the Mouse King (not a mute tree) in Greendale’s Christmas pageant. Upon seeing Britta, Dean Pelton looks down at his playbill, and with a disgusted tone in his voice, asks, “Oh, Britta’s in this?” That’s me with Linda Cardellini, except with a joyful, more thrilled spin. “Oh! Linda Cardellini’s in this!”

I am never not excited to see Cardellini in a television show or movie, and it’s often a surprise. The actress is not, to use a recent example, the reason I watched Capone (Tom Hardy was), but she’s the one who gives the most humane performance in the otherwise-mediocre film. Cardellini exists somewhere between an A-list lead and a steady character actor (she’s not Cate Blanchett, but she’s not Stephen Root, either), and she’s almost always the best thing in every project she’s in, for over 20 years. Let’s take a look at some of Linda Cardellini’s more notable roles, dating back to my favorite movie named after a fictional burger chain based on a Nickelodeon sketch series.

Good Burger

For years, I assumed Freaks and Geeks was the first thing I saw Linda Cardellini in. Nope! Before one of the greatest shows ever premiered, she appeared on 3rd Rock from the Sun, ABC’s Goosebumps-lite Bone Chillers, Boy Meets World (as a “mountain girl that has an interest in Cory” — girl, you could do better), and had small roles in Dead Man on Campus, the direct-to-video comedy The Prince and the Surfer (watching this ASAP), and my Cardellini introduction, the All That spin-off movie Good Burger. She plays a psychiatric center patient who develops a crush on Ed after telling him, “I’m a psychopath.” It’s, uh, not the most tasteful role (her character is described as an “insane girl” on Wikipedia), but to her credit, Cardellini goes all-in on playing Nickelodeon’s idea of “crazy.” If only she got to show off her dance moves like she would in another movie I’ll get to. She would later appear in an episode of Kenan & Kel as a different character, which mucks up the otherwise-narratively solid Kenan & Kel universe.

Freaks and Geeks

Freaks and Geeks might be, objectively speaking, the most perfect show ever? It’s funny, it’s sad, it’s painfully and wonderfully relatable, and because NBC canceled it after 12 episodes (with six more that eventually aired on Fox Family Channel), there’s no it-was-on-for-too-long dip in quality. Freaks and Geeks also launched the careers of many actors who are still working today, including Seth Rogen, James Franco, Jason Segel, Busy Philipps, Lizzy Caplan, John Frances Daley, Samm Levine, and Cardellini, who played Lindsay Weir, one of the more complicated teenage characters ever depicted on TV. She’s not a freak, but she’s not a geek, either. Maybe she’s a Deadhead? We’ll never know. Lindsay is searching for her identity, like every high school student ever.

Legally Blonde

Cardellini rarely plays villains — she’s too darn likable — but that makes her an excellent unassuming foil in Legally Blonde. And speaking of foil: think of all the tin foil that no-good murderer Chutney Windham required for her perm. Look, I’m not crazy enough to claim that Linda Cardellini gives the best performance in Legally Blonde (Reese Witherspoon does, obviously), but I will say that Chutney Windham is a much better name than Elle Woods. It’s easily the best character name in her filmography, with Wendy Corduroy from Gravity Falls in second place. Cordelia Starling is good, too.

Scooby-Doo and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed

I was about 10 minutes into the direct-to-streaming Scoob! before I said to no one, “Man, at least the live-action movies had Linda Cardellini.” The She’s All That-ing of Velma in Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed isn’t great (who knew there was an attractive person beneath those hideous glasses!), but I stand by my assertion that Velma, Shaggy, and Scooby are the only essential members of Mystery, Inc. Shaggy and Scooby, because they’re always leaning on a bookcase that exposes the villain’s lair, or whatever; Velma, because she’s not blandly hunky dead-weight like Fred or a karate fanatic (???) like Daphne. No offense to Sarah Michelle Gellar, but seriously, what is Daphne’s defining characteristic? Velma is the effortlessly charming Smart One, and Cardellini is a natural at playing that character archetype.

ER

Samantha Taggart is one of the better post-original cast additions to ER, even if she occasionally felt like a lesser Abby Lockhart (I could also write 1,500 words on Maura Tierney, and might!). So, it’s a shame that she ended up with John Stamos’ Tony Gates, who the Atlantic accurately refers to as the “final, and weakest, attempt the show ever made to introduce a Really Handsome Dude.” That being said, watch ER. It’s good!

Brokeback Mountain

I’m not saying being in a poorly edited YouTube video of Brokeback Mountain scenes set to “Unusual You” by Britney Spears is Cardellini’s greatest career accomplishment, but it’s top five, right? The Brokeback cast was stacked. Outside of Heath Ledger, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Michelle Williams, who were all nominated for Oscars, there’s also Cardellini, Anne Hathaway, Anna Faris, Kate Mara, David Harbour, and Randy Quaid.

Especially Randy Quaid.

Grandma’s Boy

For my recent Happy Madison ranking, I slotted Grandma’s Boy at #10, not because of the jokes that haven’t aged well, or Nick Swardson, or Oscar nominee Jonah Hill nuzzling between a stripper’s breasts, but for the scene where Linda Cardellini dances to “Push It” by Salt-N-Pepa at a party. It’s my favorite kind of performance: the one that’s too good for the terrible movie it’s in (it’s called pulling a Philip Seymour Hoffman).

Regular Show / Gravity Falls / Sanjay and Craig

Or, the reasons your kids know what Linda Cardellini sounds like.

Mad Men

You know who Linda Cardellini reminds me of sometimes? Alison Brie. They’re both equally adept at comedy and drama and in more of your favorite things than you realize, including Mad Men, where Brie plays Pete’s wife Trudy and Cardellini portrays Sylvia Rosen, the neighbor of one Don Draper… who she’s sleeping with, even though she’s married to Dr. Rosen. On one hand, I get it: he’s Jon Hamm, she’s Linda Cardellini — makes sense! On the other, they both know what they’re doing is wrong, and they get their comeuppance when Sally, that well-adjusted child, catches them in the act. Trudy would never (but re-make Thelma and Louise but with Alison Brie and Linda Cardellini).

New Girl

New Girl was about the wrong Day sister. I am 100 percent certain of this.

Green Book

One of my quarantine projects is watching every Best Picture winner, and I am dreading the day that I get to Green Book. So, instead of talking about one of the Academy’s more regrettable choices for the Oscars’ biggest prize, let’s remember that Linda Cardellini, who plays Tony Lip’s wife, was also in the music video for Outkast’s contribution to the Scooby Doo soundtrack, “Land of a Million Drums.” It’s archival footage, but still counts! Also, she won a gas fireplace on The Price Is Right. Outkast music video star and The Price Is Right contestant? An icon.

A Simple Favor

I agree.

The Curse of La Llorona

With the exception of The Nun, The Curse of La Llorona might be the most forgettable movie in The Conjuring Universe, but that’s not Cardellini’s fault. She has the thankless role of playing a mom who has to protect her kids from an evil spirit… you know how it works, you’ve seen a horror movie before. But Cardellini has solid chemistry with her child co-stars, no easy task, and it’s tempting to picture her in a horror movie that relies less on cheap jump scares and more on actual horror. All I’m saying is, The Babadook 2 starring Linda Cardellini. Make it happen.

Avengers: Age of Ultron / Avengers: Endgame

Get that Marvel money, Linda Cardellini. Get that Marvel money.

Bloodline / Dead to Me

If I was hunting for a “unified theory” of Netflix superstar Linda Cardellini, I’d say this: I recently watched It Happened One Night, and there’s a scene where a bus driver drives the bus off the road, causing a mother to faint and her young son to begin weeping. Clark Gable’s character Peter rushes into action, first checking on the passed-out woman, then the crying kid, then the bus driver to find out what happened. He’s in complete control of the situation. That’s how I feel watching Linda Cardellini. Even if the movie itself stinks, a metaphorical bus crash, you’ll still be able to walk out of the theater saying, “Well… at least Lindsay from Freaks and Geeks was really good in it.” And if she’s in something great, she’s probably one of the main reasons why it was great.

Trust is an important component in the relationship between actors and viewers: we trust Tom Cruise will save the day in Mission: Impossible, but would you feel the same way about Jeremy Renner as the new Ethan Hunt? I think I speak for everyone when I say: lol. I trust Linda Cardellini, because for over 20 years, she hasn’t let me down.

I guess my biggest complaint about Betty is that it is torture. Not the show itself, or the plot, or the characters, or the acting. Those are all great. It’s the summer of it all that is killing me. Everyone is outside and hanging in groups and eating ice cream and popsicles and doing cool summer stuff that is not going to be an option for most of us this summer due to a virus whose name starts with six letters that also spell out the name of a decent beer to drink in the summer with a hunk of lime wedged into the bottle. That part is torture. Everything else is good, though. It’s a very cool show.

In fact, I don’t think there’s a cooler show on television. HBO handed a six-episode series to Crystal Moselle — director of the 2018 film Skate Kitchen, which shares a big chunk of story and cast with the show — and she in turn created a show that’s not entirely like anything else on television right now, or in recent memory. It’s breezy and fun and serious and… it’s just very cool. And a blast to watch. And features one of my favorite television characters of the year. But we’ll come back to that.

Some facts: Betty follows a group of teenage female skateboarders in New York as they, to quote various press materials, “navigate the male-dominated world of New York skateboarding.” And it is about that. Kind of. There are lots of cutaways to skateboard tricks and most of the action takes place in skate parks or on the way to or from a skate park. It’s mostly about friendship and growing up, though. There are large chunks of the show that just feature the characters talking about whatever they want, in a way that does nothing to advance any specific plot but builds out the show’s world to make it feel lived-in and real. Sometimes life is about stuff happening. Most of the time life is what you do between stuff happening. Betty gets that and makes it compelling. It’s a cool trick.

That’s not to say nothing happens on the show. Plenty of stuff happens, and is still happening. One of the characters, Janay (Dede Lovelace), is dealing with a male friend who was accused of unwanted sexual advances at a party. Another, Honeybear (Moonbear), has very conservative parents who don’t get just about any of her skater/artist deal. Another, Camille (Rachelle Vinberg), is new to the group and super-talented and stuck between the male skaters she admires and the females who support her. Another, Indigo (Ajani Russell), is a child of massive privilege who prefers to hang with the skaters and sell weed pens for a goofball drug dealer named Farouk who calls everyone — male, female, presumably dogs and cats — “buddy.” Everyone has something going on, but it’s rarely been the heavy focus of any episode. It’s just who they are, and they bring it with them wherever they go.

This brings us to Kirt, played by Nina Moran. Kirt is the best. She’s a stoner in baggy shorts and a backward hat who carries herself with the same energy as The Dude from The Big Lebowski if The Dude were a queer teen New York skateboarder. Most of the time. Sometimes she heaves a skateboard through a window in a misplaced attempt to support her friends. Sometimes she’ll break off a hookup right in the middle to go look for a popsicle. She calls everyone “bro” or “dude” regardless of gender or age and, yes, I would watch an entire episode where she and Farouk go on a road trip — Farouk drives a clunker van, although I feel like you probably knew that already, just by filling in the blanks — where they get lost and have entire hour-long conversations consisting of only the words “dude” and “buddy.”

Here’s the wildest part, or at least the wildest part for people who don’t know the story behind Skate Kitchen: none of the show’s core five skaters are actors. They weren’t actors, at least, not until all this got going. They were legit skateboard kids who Moselle ran into on a train and became fascinated by. It probably contributes a great deal to the very natural feel of the show. A lot of times, shows about teenagers suffer from a Theater Kid vibe that is always lurking a few inches below the surface. There’s too much polish, too much training for anything to feel fully authentic. This is not meant to imply that Betty is amateur hour. Lovelace especially has a serious arc to carry and is doing it well. There’s something to be said for pointing a camera at people with natural charisma and letting them do their thing. Betty is more professional than that, but not much. I mean this in a very good way, I swear. It’s loose and relaxed to a degree that matches its tone perfectly. Like I said earlier: unlike any other show on television.

The result of it all has been a fun late-spring watch, in large part because, again, it’s just very cool. The characters are cool, the stuff they’re doing is cool, the real-like skaters playing them are cooler than you’ll ever be. Hell, even the time slot is cool: Friday at 11 p.m., like it has no interest in shoving itself in your face, like it’s perfectly happy to sit back and let you find it if you happen to be in the right place at the right time.

It’s one of my favorite things about television in 2020, stumbling into a show like this that catches you off-guard. I had no reason to expect the show to be bad, but it is a little surprising — and more than a little fun — that I, a dude in his 30s who grew up in the suburbs and never mounted a skateboard, is now this invested in a show about female skateboard teens in the big city. There’s a lot of stuff out there that can open your world up a little if you seek it out. That’s cool. Television is cool. Betty is really, really cool.

I could use fewer shots of people eating ice cream together on a sidewalk, though. That’s still torture, only because it might be the closest any of us actually gets to having a summer this year. But it’s, like, good torture. If you work for HBO and need a pull quote for the show to put in commercials or on a billboard, there you go. Here to help.

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