Although Lil Wayne has developed a semi-notorious reputation for not keeping up with modern musical trends, it turns out there is one other up-and-coming rapper that he listens to besides himself. During his new interview with NBA stars Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson’s podcast, All The Smoke, Wayne revealed the one other rapper who has become his current favorite: Quality Control Music’s Lil Baby.

As Wayne explains in the clip, “I was in a session with him before. He heard a beat come on out of the blue that I was working on. It was an uptempo beat. It was probably a feature for somebody. Baby was like ‘I couldn’t even begin to rap on no sh*t like that.’ After that session, I done heard two or three songs like that come out that he done did. I was like, ‘See, he went right back and figured it out.’” He doesn’t say what they did in that session, but it may have been the one that led to Baby’s My Turn standout, “Forever.”

That dedication to improvement is likely something that Wayne is drawn to; we saw it over the course of his career, from 400 Degrees to The Funeral, and in his admiration of NBA legend Kobe Bryant, who he also spent some time discussing with Barnes and Jackson — both of whom played against Bryant at various times throughout their careers.

“[Kobe] worded a few words from a verse and I was like ‘You really really know me?’” Wayne reminisces. “He was like, ‘Man, I been on you since Hot Boys.’ For a competitive guy like that, I figure whatever he was admiring it had to be my competitive nature.”

Watch Lil Wayne’s full interview with All The Smoke podcast above.

Previously on AEW Dark: The first matches in round one of the TNT Championship Tournament were announced, Preston Vance solidified himself as AEW’s Brendan Vink, and Jon Moxley met AEW’s next breakout star, Faboo Andre.

As a reminder and disclaimer, I think it’s great that AEW’s using Dark to give out-of-work indie wrestlers a spotlight and a payday, and the “Jobbers of the Week” gimmick is just a borrowed gag from the WWF Superstars column. Not an insult. Jobbers are the best.

If you’d like to keep up with this column and its thinly veiled Best and Worst format, you can keep tabs on the Ins and Outs of AEW Dark tag page. Make sure you check out the weekly Dynamite version of this column, and keep track of all things All Elite here.

Follow With Spandex on Twitter and Facebook. You can also follow me on Twitter, where everything and everyone is terrible.

You can watch the latest episode of AEW Dark here:

Jobbers Of The Week

Up first this week is Lee Johnson, who sadly goes one-on-one with his trainer, QT Marshall, instead of debuting as a tag team called LEE MARSHALL. I want them using 1-800-COLLECT to call in and let AEW know they can’t wrestle tonight, because they’re already in the next town. They should also refuse to stop calling Excalibur a “weasel,” whether it makes sense or not.

If you’ve seen a trainer vs. student match at your local wrestling school, this is basically it. Marshall gets to look way better than he’s ever looked in an AEW ring (because he’s 100% in charge of what’s going on), and Johnson’s got some good athleticism, but is clearly nervous and rushing. It’s normal. QT wins, of course, but not before getting busted open when Johnson’s elbow catches him in the cheek during a speed-run of the Lethal Combination.

Kip Sabian main-events the show against Tony Donati, who looks like Adrian Neville had a baby with Bo Dallas when they were both in NXT. The fact that he’s wearing hot pink tights and tells the camera he’s the, “toughest wrestler around,” makes me believe he could’ve walked into All Elite Wrestling straight from a WCW Saturday Night taping.

Three notes:

• Whoever is assigning these AEW Dark jobber themes is punching above their weight right now. Faboo’s theme killed it last week, and this week Donati’s entering to a song that’s either a pop banger from the early 1960s or a Foster the People B-side.
• Sabian still needs Penelope Ford interference to win a match against Tony Donati, a guy we’ve never seen or heard of who doesn’t even have a Twitter handle to put on his title card. Wanting to do “heel things” in matches shouldn’t be at the expense of making you look even mildly competent. Have Ford interfere when he’s wrestling Darby Allin, sure, but if the man can’t beat a guy Tony Schiavone could’ve taken to the wood shed, that not good heel work, that’s sad
• Jimmy Havoc sits in on commentary for the match and sounds like Nigel McGuinness just got back from the dentist. I also love that he mentions how he and Sabian live together, which doesn’t do Sabian’s character’s “bad boy” image any favors — would you have thought Ric Flair was that cool if you found out the Horsemen were splitting rent four ways on a two-bedroom apartment? — but DOES make me want to see a Being The Elite spinoff that’s just, like, Sabian forgetting to Venmo his half of the cable bill and Havoc getting mad and stapling it to his forehead.

Finally (because this entire episode is only 18 minutes long, which will probably be the norm going forward until the pandemic’s over and the state’s not locked down), here’s Ryan Pyles on his way to get eaten for breakfast by WARDLOW & ASSOCIATES.

The match is just that Brock Lesnar and Kofi Kingston WWE Championship match from the first Smackdown on Fox — Pyles runs at Wardlow, Wardlow scoops him up, hits an F-5, and pins him — only about 12 seconds longer. That’s such a sad thing to type, isn’t it? Pyles, who didn’t even get to break out his finishing hold which I assume is the PYLES DRIVER, gets thrown so awkwardly by Wardlow that his upper body doesn’t even make contact with the mat. He lands on the side of his ankles, ends up on his knees, and has to like, bend over and pretend there was impact.

Here it is in slow motion GIF form. That’s what happens when you think you’re a bad-ass and don’t guide your opponent to the mat so the bump’s safe and clean, and/or your opponent’s not experienced enough to know how to salvage it on the way down. Sometimes you throw them at your own back. This poor guy could’ve had his knees DESTROYED on this, and it wouldn’t have even looked good. Here’s Brock Lesnar doing the same version, if you wanna compare and contrast. Not that it’s fair to compare Brock Lesnar to Wardlow. Brock spins a bunch, but he’s ostensibly doing the same, normal F-5, and Moore’s bumping off it the same way. Brock didn’t just like, throw his little ass to the wind.

Anyway, that’s it for this week’s Dark. We may have to consolidate these into the weekly Dynamite columns until things get back to some version of normal, but thanks for reading!

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The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

For the last several years, the name Griselda Records has gone from being relatively obscure to eliciting massive hype surrounding each project the Buffalo, New York-based label announces. What makes the accomplishment even more impressive is the fact that this buzz has been sustained over a nearly nonstop album release cycle as the group punches out project after project at a rate even Amazon might envy.

The reason for much of this relentless production is Conway The Machine, who lives up to his name with a ceaseless cadence of musical releases purveying Griselda’s usual gritty brand of luxury street rap. Marketed to a brand of hip-hop head rooted in New York City nostalgia and pop culture paraphernalia, the Griselda sound is what would happen if Wu-Tang Clan and G-Unit tapes, a handful of Attitude-era WWE magazines, and a Naruto box set were thrown in a blender and recorded over 1950s horror movie scores.

It makes sense, then, that the most natural fit for this type of aesthetic is a producer who is partly responsible for its proliferation in the 2000s and early blog rap era: Los Angeles-bred producer The Alchemist. On his latest release, Conway teams up with The Alchemist for Lulu, a seven-song joint EP that may very well foretell the direction for the next five years of rap music, despite being so nostalgic in theory. In truth, Conway and Alchemist use the seven tracks to try to push the genre forward, finding new avenues to convey their grimy style.

From the harrowing “14 Ki’s” to the elegant “The Contract” to the chilly “Gold BBS’s,” Lulu is primarily preoccupied with the inner workings of the drug trade, but eyes it all from the detached lens of Conway’s steady flow and Alchemist’s beat mastery. The pair has been working together for a while, but on Lulu, their chemistry elevates to a higher level — and this isn’t even their final form. That’s what Conway tells Uproxx via phone, with his predilection for recording with anime in the background even seeping into his conversation style.

When asked why now was the best time to release this particular collaboration, both Conway and Alchemist seem nonplussed. “Why not?” they both ask. They praise each other’s skillsets, with Alchemist calling Conway “one of the best rappers out right now” and Conway reciprocating: “When you got producers like Alchemist, you gotta do it.” It’s obvious that the mutual respect bleeds into the music itself, as their shared nostalgia for 1970s Blaxploitation flicks and 1990s wrestling references makes itself evident through vocal samples employed on Lulu as interludes, taking from The Mack and 2000s hood classic Paid In Full.

Cinema is even the inspiration for the album’s title. While Conway jokes that “Lulu” is actually the name of a lion — then a tiger, in deference to my questions about whether the duo has watched the viral Netflix miniseries Tiger King yet (they had not) — astute film buffs will recall that “Lulu” was the nickname of Luis Lujano, the drug dealer from Pain In Full. As Conway puts it, “Lulu’s the plug.”

However, despite all the drug references that permeate Griselda’s oeuvre, Conway wants me to know that he can do much more. He highlights the wrestling and fashion references that make up much of his lyrical catalog and even offers up a serviceable facsimile of the so-called “Migos flow” as proof that “It’s not just the grimy sh*t… What a lot of people don’t realize is I can do any style,” he says. “We can rhyme about bricks or wrestling. I can switch up the flow.” Meanwhile, Alchemist notes the irony in a West Coast-bred producer being so beloved on the opposite coast, despite the two hip-hop hubs’ past rivalries. “I’m just a student of the game,” he says. “I’m blessed to have been around some of the greats — Mobb Deep, Jadakiss, Nas.” He’s quick to add Conway to that canon.

When asked about the ultimate impact they want Lulu — and by extension, all of the Buffalo rhyme unit’s gritty-style, throwback rap music — to have on hip-hop, they demur. Instead, they say, they’re focusing on “rejoicing” in any success the EP garners, then getting back to work. When I relate that mentality to a recent encounter with a group of sidewalk hustlers still on the block despite “safer at home” orders in Los Angeles, Conway rejoins with the perfect response. “Hustlers don’t take days off.” Alchemist echoes: “The game will keep moving.”

Lulu is out now via ALC / Empire. Get it here.

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People are spending a lot of time in their homes right now, which makes it a perfect time for Drake to kick back and appreciate his Toronto mansion. The opulent home is the subject of a new Architectural Digest feature, and in it, Drake and architectural and interior designer Ferris Rafauli offer a look at the sprawling place, which seems like not the worst place to be quarantined.

The publication describes the 50,000-square-foot building as “a marvel of old-world craftsmanship, constructed of limestone, bronze, exotic woods, and other noble materials.” They also highlight features like the “NBA regulation-size indoor basketball court crowned by a 21-square-foot pyramidal skylight,” the “monumental iteration of Lobmeyr’s iconic Metropolitan chandelier” that has “more than 20,000 pieces of hand-cut Swarovski crystal,” and Drake’s bed set-up, which they note weighs “roughly one ton and [costs] more than many people’s entire homes.”

Drake says he takes pride in his home for multiple reasons:

“Because I was building it in my hometown, I wanted the structure to stand firm for 100 years. I wanted it to have a monumental scale and feel. It will be one of the things I leave behind, so it had to be timeless and strong. […] It’s overwhelming high luxury. That message is delivered through the size of the rooms and the materials and details of the floors and the ceilings. I wanted to make sure people can see the work I’ve put in over the years reflected from every vantage point. […] I think the house shows that I have true faith in myself to take on this task when I was just 27 and see it through. I also think the house says that I will forever remain solid in the place I was born.”

Read the full feature here.

New developments in Japan’s response to the coronavirus pandemic have had new impacts on the country’s pro wrestling industry.

Due to a rise in COVID-19 cases and increasing concerns about overwhelming the healthcare system, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared a state of emergency yesterday through May 6. Wrestling companies that had been holding no-fans shows, including All Japan Pro Wrestling and Dragon Gate, have begun to outright cancel events in April and May, and New Japan Pro Wrestling, which started canceling shows at the end of February, has called off its events scheduled through Wrestling Dontaku on May 4.

On its website, NJPW announced the cancelations with the statement:

In response to the continuing Coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, and in light of state of emergency measures across Japan announced on April 7, New Japan Pro-Wrestling has arrived at the decision to cancel all events that were scheduled up to and including Wrestling Dontaku 2020 on May 3 & 4.

We deeply apologize to fans who were looking forward to these events. Our thoughts are with everyone affected by the disease. As eager as everyone at New Japan Pro-Wrestling is to return to the ring as soon as possible, the health and safety of our fans, wrestlers and staff, as well as society at large is our utmost concern.

NJPW also says the company will “make announcements about events scheduled after May 4 upon careful monitoring of this developing situation” and that they are “exploring the possibility of presenting matches without fans in attendance” but “this would only happen if staff and wrestler health and safety can be protected to the highest possible standard.”

The soonest scheduled New Japan show that hasn’t been canceled is on May 12, the beginning of the Best of the Super Juniors tournament. With wrestling events on hold, NJPW has been putting talk show programs called the NJPW Together Project featuring its wrestlers on its NJPW World streaming service.

NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series usually brings performers to a confined space to play for an intimately gathered crowd. That isn’t exactly the most acceptable practice during these self-isolating times, so NPR has changed their strategy in recent days, by having artists perform Tiny Desk-style concerts but from their homes a safe distance away. Soccer Mommy launched the series last month, and now the latest artist to perform is King Princess.

Performing from her “quarantine shed” in Hawaii and having “brought as much gear in the carry-on of my plane ride as possible,” she kicked off her three-song set with “Isabel’s Moment” on keyboard, about which she said after, “I love that song. It makes me think of all of the mischief that people are getting up to during this quarantine time. People are texting their exes, they’re texting their ex-best friends, they’re all around on the social media lurking, and I feel like that song is truly an homage to that, that type of quarantine thirstiness we’re all feeling right now, except for me, because I’m really lucky.”

From there, she shifted over to an electric guitar and performed “Prophet” and “Homegirl,” rounding out her set of songs that all came from her 2019 album Cheap Queen.

Watch King Princess’ Tiny Desk performance above.

In a new interview with Variety, The Weeknd takes time out of talking about his new album, After Hours, to reveal how he spent his 30th birthday hanging out with his childhood hero, Jim Carrey. The Canadian artist credited Carrey’s 1994 comic book comedy film The Mask with inspiring him to become an entertainer as it was his first film. Incidentally, decades later, the two were introduced at a party and turned out to be not only mutual fans of each other’s work, but also neighbors in LA.

“The Mask was the first film I ever went to see in a theater — my mom took me when I was 4, and it blew me away,” The Weeknd explains. “I texted him the address of my condo in L.A., and he said, ‘I can literally see your place from my balcony,’ and we got out telescopes and were waving to each other. When I told him about my mom taking me to see The Mask, he knew the theater!”

He continues with an explanation of how Carrey helped him celebrate his birthday. “Anyway, on my [30th] birthday, he called and told me to look out my window, and on his balcony he had these giant red balloons, and he picked me up and we went to breakfast. It was surreal. Jim Carrey was my first inspiration to be any kind of performer, and I went to breakfast with him on my first day of being 30.”

It’s definitely one of those “only in LA” stories, but it’s also pretty fun to think about not just these two popular performers being friends and neighbors, but also the idea of them just having telescopes laying around the house. It only makes sense that an artist who once called himself “Starboy” and the Man On The Moon actor would both share an interest in astronomy.

Read Variety‘s full profile of The Weeknd here.

Even her fellow celebs were rattled.

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