Category: Worldwide

The White Lotus‘ third season is currently reinforcing how excellent Patrick Schwarzenegger is at playing unsavory characters, and it’s also making me wonder whether Saxon will bite the dust like Patrick’s characters in The Terminal List and Gen V.

Speaking of the latter show, Patrick went through it while gearing up for the first season, both from his aghast father’s response and in reliving how his dad chucked his bed out the window. Additionally, viewers are aware that Luke Riordan/Golden Boy incinerated himself early on in The Boys spin off series, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that death wouldn’t prevent Patrick from returning for the second season. Maybe.

Will Golden Boy Return In Gen V Season 2?

He will not.

Patrick has revealed that he’s totally into potentially returning again, but the timing didn’t work out for his return in the second season. As he told Screenrant, “No, I wish, but I was, we were actually filming White Lotus at the same time that they were filming Gen V. So it didn’t work out. But maybe season three or some other time.”

This upcoming season will, however, pay tribute to Chance Perdomo, who died in a tragic accident on the eve of initially planned filming. Additionally, Supes who will be back include Golden Boy’s brother, Sam, portrayed by Asa Germann. We can also bet on seeing Lizze Broadway (as Emma/Cricket), Jaz Sinclair (as Marie Moreau), Maddie Phillips (as Cate) and London Thor and Derek Luh (both as Jordan). God U’s new dean, Cipher, will be portrayed by Hamish Linklater. Good luck to him.

Gen V will return in 2025.

In case you haven’t heard, golf is cool now. Once a sport for stuffy old guys and shady businessmen (what’s the difference, really?), golf has seen an overall change in its public image thanks to companies like Topgolf, new professional promotions like TGL, and endorsements from hip-hop stars like Schoolboy Q.

You can add Rolling Loud to that list. Widely considered the premiere hip-hop festival, Rolling Loud has announced a charity golf invitational ahead of Rolling Loud California this weekend. It’ll be held on March 13 (Friday) at Angeles National Golf Club, with proceeds going to Black Music Action Coalition’s (BMAC) Restore & Rebuild LA initiative. The program’s aim is to provide direct relief to Altadena residents and small businesses affected by the recent fires in Los Angeles County. The tournament will be a two-man scramble format.

Angeles National Golf Club is the perfect venue for the event thanks to its proximity to Altadena, the historically Black neighborhood most devastated by the recent wildfires. With the support of Rolling Loud and community golf club, Swang, Restore & Rebuild LA aspires to help Altadena families remain in their homes and restore some of what was lost.

Rolling Loud’s Golf invitationals are just one of the ways the festival is pursuing its founders’ goal to bring hip-hop back to its activist roots. Festival co-founder Tariq Cherif talks more about this goal here.

T-Pain has a rare distinction in music: When you think of one musical instrument, tool, or innovation, his name is the one that immediately comes to mind. Of course, this is due to him popularizing Auto-Tune in mainstream music.

But, if you ask him, he doesn’t believe he’s actually the person who made it “cool.” That honor goes to Snoop Dogg.

On a recent episode of Shaquille O’Neal and Adam Lefkoe’s The Big Podcast, Shaq asked if there was any “resistance” to T-Pain’s use of Auto-Tune initially, and he responded:

“Oh, that’s all it was. It was only resistance, until somebody cool did it. Who did that? Who made it cool? Snoop. Snoop did it, and it was totally fine. Everybody was like, you know, ‘OK, I guess we can listen to it’ [laughs].”

T-Pain didn’t mention a specific song, but he’s likely referring to Snoop’s 2007 single “Sensual Seduction.”

In 2021, T-Pain spoke about how some of that Auto-Tune resistance came from Usher, saying, “He was like, ‘Man, I want to tell you something, man.’ I was like, ‘What’s good?’ I thought he was about to tell me something real. He sounded real concerned. He was like, ‘Man, you kind of… you kind of f*cked up music.’ I didn’t understand. Usher was my friend. He was like, ‘Yeah man, you really f*cked up music for real singers.’”

Check out the full The Big Podcast episode above.

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw Jennie continue the run of K-pop solo dominance and Doechii give love to a re-emerging favorite. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters.

Lady Gaga — “Garden Of Eden”

Lady Gaga frequently shifts between musical modes, but on her new album Mayhem, it’s clear she’s back in her electronic-influenced pop bag. It’s Artpop-esque, as lush, in-your-face tracks like “Garden Of Eden” show.

J-Hope — “Sweet Dreams” Feat. Miguel

We’re in a bit of a golden age when it comes to K-pop group members flourishing in solo careers. BTS’ J-Hope is part of that wave, and last year, he teamed up with Miguel on the endlessly smooth “Sweet Dreams.”

Jennie and Dua Lipa — “Handlebars”

Another K-pop group member thriving, Blackpink’s Jennie also just landed a big collab with an English-language star: Dua Lipa, who joins on the longing “Handlebars” from the new album Ruby that’s out now.

Gelo — “Can You Please” Feat. GloRilla

LiAngelo Ball made it about as close to the NBA without actually getting in a regular season game as you can. But, he’s found another path to stardom, via music. As Gelo, he has a viral hit with “Tweaker,” and now he has followed that up by linking with GloRilla on “Can You Please.”

Turbo and Gunna — “Classy Girl”

Turbo and Gunna are peas in a pod, so of course the former called on the latter on the new single “Classy Girl.” The production isn’t as gloomy as Gunna tends to go, but he’s a natural fit on the track nonetheless.

Doechii — “Anxiety”

As Doechii’s star continues to rise, there’s been a lot of buzz around an older song of hers, “Anxiety.” The track never got an official release, but now Doechii has gone ahead and thrown the Gotye-sampling viral hit up on DSPs for the first time.

Jason Isbell — “Eileen”

In his review of Isbell’s new album Foxes In The Snow, Uproxx’s Steven Hyden writes, “At the heart of this album are sad but resigned songs in which Isbell takes fresh stock of the ‘forever’ he wrote about ‘If We Were Vampires.’ He’s no longer fantasizing about living out an eternal Nosferatu-like existence with his beloved; he’s now trying to appreciate fleeting moments of happiness, even from a newly pained, bittersweet point of view observed in hindsight.”

Hanumankind — “Run It Up”

Hanumankind had a breakout moment last year with “Big Dawgs,” and now he has followed it with “Run It Up.” The Indian rapper incorporates traditional instrumentation on the track, but there’s plenty of trunk-rattling bass in play, too.

Sasami — “I’ll Be Gone”

Sasami can be all over the map genre-wise, but she really leans into pop on her new album, Blood On The Silver Screen. “I’ll Be Gone,” for instance, wouldn’t sound out of place on Lady Gaga’s also-just-released new album.

Samara Cyn and Sherwyn — “Pop N Olive”

Last year, Samara Cyn told Uproxx he hopes people in the future see her music as “loving, genuine, [and] accepting,” and her latest checks those boxes: She and Sherwyn dropped “Pop N Olive” last week, and it’s an immediately comfy and catchy tune.

“Rolling Loud is hip-hop Disney,” is a bold statement to make, but it’s exactly what you’d expect from the festival’s co-founder, Tariq Cherif.

It’s also not that far off from the truth. 2025 marks the completion of the festival’s first decade; since its inception in 2015, it has grown by leaps and bounds — first within its native Florida, then expanding to iterations in California, New York, Portugal, Thailand, Toronto, and more.

Along the way, it has become the premiere festival for not just the Florida-grown brand of thrash rap for which it’s been known for the last few years, but also for millennial blog rap of Kendrick Lamar and Kid Cudi, the Atlanta trap of Future and Young Thug, and now, the música Mexicana purveyed by this year’s Rolling Loud California headliner Peso Pluma.

The festival returns to California this weekend, once again taking over the Hollywood Park area surrounding the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood with a lineup featuring ASAP Rocky, the rumored debut of Playboi Carti’s long-awaited new album I Am Music, along with the above-mentioned Rolling Loud debut of local hero Peso Pluma.

Talking to Uproxx via Zoom from his South Florida home, Cherif broke down the Rolling Loud “secret sauce” that has kept the festival at the forefront of hip-hop’s youth culture for the past decade, the delicate balance between feeding your base and adapting to the times, and what the future holds as he and his partner, Matt Zingler, keep the party rolling into its next decade.

We last spoke in, I want to say, it was like 2021, 2022. We were talking about the LoudPunx NFTs.

We still build the LoudPunx Lounge, which is a lounge that they can exclusively access, and yeah, the community’s still alive and well and strong, and it’s cool. I always stop by the lounge and talk to the people and hang out with them a bit, take some pictures. They’re always having a good time. It’s dope.

What’s the significance of the new flyer format? Because you guys went a completely different direction with the flyers this year. They’re very moody. You’ve been using the same flyer format for a decade, and suddenly you’ve got this new thing. I’ve been obsessed with it for months.

For years, like you said, we were doing the same type of flyer, the cartoon with the cityscape at the bottom, but what we started seeing was literally everybody started copying our flyer. Across all types of genres of festivals, everybody was doing the same shit, cityscape at the bottom, cartoon or drawing with similar color palettes, and with the lineup.

And then another factor, too, is our biggest line item on the festival is the talent budget. We spend the most amount of money on the talent, so why not have the flyer reflect what we spend the most amount of money on, so you could really see all the artists? I’m not saying that I’m married to it, but I think it represented a step in the direction of minimalism and maturity and sticking to our core value of providing this top-tier entertainment for our fans in an aesthetically pleasing fashion that’s nice on the eyes.

Something you just said was simple, but it was deep. “The biggest line item is the talent.”

People don’t know how much we pay artists. And I can’t sit here and tell you how much I pay any individual artist, but the budget is around $16 million.

Jeez! Let me get on the bill! What do you consider Rolling Loud’s secret sauce that … I remember you talked with Big Boy about trying to book Drake for the whole weekend, but Wireless Festival did it instead, then what you just said about people jacking the flyer. What do you consider to be Rolling Loud’s secret sauce that everybody is constantly trying to duplicate you guys?

Our secret sauce isn’t that we could throw the biggest budget, because any big company, any promoter with money can book the biggest rappers, right? That’s not the hard part. There’s eventually a number you’re going to agree on that they’ll do the show. But our secret sauce is knowing — because we are fans of, and we participate in hip-hop culture, and we are a part of it — we are constantly in tune with who the next wave of artists are, the underground artists, the up-and-coming critical darlings, the people that are able to sell out a small, 100-person show or the ones that are just starting to bubble up, or the ones that might be worth 1,000 tickets. When you see an artist finally make it onto a multigenre festival like a Coachella or a Lollapalooza or anything like that, they’re already big as f*ck by then.

But our secret sauce is we’re booking way more niche than that. So we’re booking artists that they might go do a tour in 300-person rooms, and we just constantly have our ear out, looking for these newer artists. We’re always on the internet, we’re going to shows, we’re producing small shows, everything in between, so that we’re hip to the 1900Rugrats and the Nettspends and the Osamasons and the Chow Lees and the Benji Blue Bills and the Homixide Gangs and all these smaller artists that aren’t even on other people’s radars, the EBK Jaaybos, the Rio da Young OGs, just these more niche, subgenre, or yet-to-be-mainstream rappers that you really got to be in this sh*t to know about.

I’m looking at the flyer and a couple of names jump out at me. Obviously Peso Pluma. That’s I think the biggest maybe departure from what we all know and love Rolling Loud for. What is the mental calculus of like, “Okay, we want to branch out, we want to spread, start to broaden the horizons of the festival a little bit.” Why is Peso Pluma the correct person to start stretching your wings, so to speak, with?

I think it’s important to note that hip-hop culture reaches far beyond just the music. If you look at the NBA or the NFL, what are the athletes listening to in the locker room or walking out to the game in their headphones? It’s hip-hop. What’s the lingo they’re using? It’s hip-hop. What are the dance moves they’re doing? It’s hip-hop. What are the Fortnite emotes based on? Hip-hop.

And so Peso Pluma, you catch him? He’s wearing a f*cking du-rag. His subject matter is very similar to the subject matter of a lot of rappers. He’s very influenced by hip-hop. Peso Pluma himself is working with a lot of rappers. He’s got songs with Rich the Kid and Quavo and a whole bunch of rappers. But again, my main point is the culture thing. He’s so clearly influenced by and a member of hip-hop culture based on what he chooses to wear, what he talks about, and what he’s into that I think it’s just like, “Hey, man, come talk that talk over here, man. We welcome you over here too. You don’t got to only do Hispanic, Latino festivals. You can come rock your show over here too.”

The first time I saw him, he was wearing a Nike sweatsuit. Doing corridos tumbados but looking like mandem. I said, “Oh yeah, he’s one of us.”

I think it was Central Cee who took credit for the Nike tracksuit, and some people were all up in arms about it, but I’m not really mad about it. Because it’s like every rapper should take credit for the Nike tracksuit becoming as popular as it is. Because dammit, every rapper made that shit popular. Every rapper, anything that’s popular in culture for young people these days, or even a decade ago or two decades ago, as far as I can remember, the cool sh*t, the fly sh*t, the hip sh*t, the relevant lingo came from hip-hop, man.

You guys have also managed to keep a top line of veteran, older, maybe, I hate the term lyrical, but cats that would appeal to the upper range of your target demo. You got Larry June on here, you got Dom Kennedy on here. I noticed on each day there’s a “California cool guy” set. I love that.

Because there’s all this talk about hip-hop being youth culture, but hip-hop is also 50 years old. There’s like three generations of people that grew up on hip-hop now, and another one that is growing up on hip-hop, they’re about to come of age with hip-hop being the most dominant style of music. So why has it been so important to you guys over the last 10 years to make sure that you stay in touch with that older, more serious, maybe backpacker vibe? And has there ever been any challenges in balancing that with the younger guys coming up? Because other festivals like Paid Dues and Rock The Bells have tried it, and it didn’t necessarily work that great.

Part of it is just being a fan of that. Well, first of all, you mentioned Paid Dues, shout-out to Murs. I always thought he was f*cking cool. And shout-out Rock the Bells and Paid Dues and everybody before us. They were from that era, so that’s all they booked.

And then I think we came up on this more DIY, underground, punk rock-influenced rap. It’s lit, it’s mosh pit time, that was our bread and butter. But what we realized is like, yo, hip-hop is a genre with multiple subgenres and it’s important to cater to all of them if for no other reason than I know as a human, I’m a fan of multiple subgenres of hip-hop.

I will listen to J. Cole just as quick as I’ll listen to Playboi Carti. Sometimes I’m in the mood for a lyrical miracle. Sometimes I want to get real introspective. Sometimes I want to kick back and listen to some Curren$y, Larry June, Dom Kennedy-type sh*t. And sometimes I want to listen to Playboi Carti, Travis Scott, Yeat, and just f*cking rage, you know what I’m saying? The human experience is complex. It’s not monotone. And the soundtrack to life should reflect that.

And so I think that as a hip-hop festival, it’s important that you cater to all the subgenres in some type of way. You want to really be on beat with what’s hot right now, but you also, you got to realize anybody going to a festival, they’re probably going to want to go with their friends, and you’re going to have a bigger group of friends going if it caters to more sh*t that the friend group likes.

There’s always debates among friend groups like, “Nah, man, bro, this the best rapper right now.” “Nah, nah, nah, bro, you’re tripping. This is the best rapper right now.” Man, have that argument at Rolling Loud. Why would I only side with one of the friends? So I think it’s important to have the more kick back, laid-back, lyrical guys and girls. I mean, we got Kamaiyah too. I think it’s important to have that vibe on the festival because in any friend group, you’re going to have somebody that’s really rocking with that type of stuff. And they’re still going to be friends with somebody that’s rocking with the more A$AP Rocky, Playboi Carti side of the equation.

Sorry for the long-winded answer!

That’s a good answer, man. I love the long-winded answers. They’re the best ones because it means you actually care. It means you’re thinking about this. So, what do you see for the next 10 years of Rolling Loud? We don’t know the future. We don’t know how things are going to pan out or what subgenres will crop up or who’s going to blow up or whatever. But what’s your guiding principle for making sure that Rolling Loud survives into the 20th, 30th year of its existence?

They say the music you hear when you’re 15 to 17 years old, you can never be a fan of other music or feel other music as much as that, because it connected with you at that right time for it to influence your life forever. But I’m trying to not have that be the case, and I just try to keep a open mind, and just allow music to make me feel something, and just let that gut feeling keep guiding the way.

The data’s important, but that gut feeling, you can’t replace it. And I’m just trying to keep that gut feeling, that inner ear, just open and open-minded and willing to hear new sounds and evolve with the genre. Who knows what direction the genre will go in the next 10, 20, 30 years, but it’s up to us to evolve with it. Because what we do know is that if you don’t evolve, if you stay stagnant, if you only keep doing the same thing, that’s the quickest way to die.

As always, you do a lot of interviews, I do a lot of interviews. I always ask the same questions, you answer a lot of the same questions. But are there any things that you would love to say or talk about that nobody has ever asked you about? If you could ask the question, what would you ask and what would the answer be?

I would say a two-part thing. I would say I would like to see fans of artists maybe give their artists a little more, not be so cutthroat on your artists. I feel bad for my boy Playboi Carti, he’s trying to get this album out and I know it’s coming, but the fans are just being so hard on him. This is art at the end of the day, and you can’t rush greatness.

And I remember when Whole Lotta Red dropped, I loved it. And the whole internet was hating on it, but look how it evolved and it became a trend-setting album for hip-hop. So I would just say, people on the internet could maybe just chill out a little bit, stop being so hateful on each other.

And then my other thing is I would love to see a slight return to activism within hip-hop culture as far as within the music. You think back to Public Enemy, Fight the Power. I just think that there are genocides happening in the world, there are severe power imbalances happening in the world, there are oppressed people in the world.

I love rappers talking about fly shit, don’t get me wrong, but there was also a time when we had popular rappers talking about injustices of their day. And I would love to see more of that. I think it’s a cultural responsibility to … Don’t worry if you’re going to lose a brand deal because you spoke the truth. We need fearless artists.

Reacher‘s third season is in full swing with the Big Guy sporting an “I Love Maine” t-shirt as the show adapts Lee Child’s Persuader novel. Alan Ritchson’s leading man has been working to stay undercover while also dealing with a foreboding and lifting menace named Paulie, and the fourth season is already renewed with a Neagley spin off coming in the interim. Still, that means a drought between effortless fights between Reacher and most foes, so you’ll want to know when to prepare for withdrawal.

How Many Reacher Episodes Are In Season 3?

Eight total episodes will fill this Big Guy vs. Bigger Guy season, and so far, five have hit streaming.

The season finale will surface on March 27, and it is a doozy. If you haven’t started the third season yet, here’s the synopsis:

Based on Lee Child’s novel Persuader, Reacher hurtles into the dark heart of a vast criminal enterprise when trying to rescue an undercover DEA informant whose time is running out. There, he finds a world of secrecy and violence and confronts some unfinished business from his own past.

From there, the speculation can begin on which Jack Reacher novel will be adapted next. Lee Child has teased how the Prime Video/Amazon show could potentially revisit One Shot and Never Go Back, which are the books adapted for the Tom Cruise movies. That would be an unexpected development, especially with dozens of Reacher novels for the taking, so we shall see.

Jennie — one of the four very active members of Blackpink — released her debut solo album last week. Ruby includes hit singles like “Love Hangover,” “ExtraL,” and “Handlebars,” which also features Dua Lipa. Jennie has now released a music video for the sultry track, which captures the thrill of falling in love without considering the consequences.

You can watch the “Handlebars” video above.

Back in 2023, Jennie went on Dua Lipa’s At Your Service podcast and talked about her complicated feelings about being Blackpink’s rapper. “I’ve gotten into the whole idea of rapping because of the language that I was working with,” she said. “Back when I was a trainee, I thought, ‘This is what I’m supposed to do’ and I got so into it that by the time we debut in my head I’m thinking, ‘I’m a rapper.’ In my head I’m gonna go out there and rap my ass off.”

She continued, “I kind of got confused because the more I did singing and music I came to realize that there’s a big side of me inside that I love to sing, just play with my vocals. But I actually never had the chance to really explore that as a trainee because I got told that I should be a rapper, you know? So there was a phase where I would hate to rap.”

Ruby is out now via Odd Atelier/Columbia Records. Find more information here.

This past weekend marked the one-year anniversary of Ariana Grande‘s Grammy-nominated album, Eternal Sunshine. To celebrate, the “Yes, And?” singer is releasing a deluxe edition of the album, Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead, which includes remixes with Mariah Carey, Troye Sivan, and Brandy & Monica, along with a few new songs that haven’t been revealed yet.

“It’s funny because I really thought that it was just a very concise body of work that it what it is, and I think, forever in my head, Eternal Sunshine is that album,” Grande said on You star Penn Badgley’s Podcrushed podcast. “But, with time, I’m like, ‘Oh, maybe there are some new ideas that could be included.’ But yeah, I’ve been writing a lot, and maybe there’s some more, but I would like to do a deluxe at some point.” That time is March 28.

You can check out the Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead album cover artwork and tracklist below.

Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead Album Cover Artwork

Ariana Grande’s Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead Tracklist

1. “Intro (End Of The World)”
2. “Bye”
3. “Don’t Wanna Break Up Again”
4. “Saturn Returns (Interlude)”
5. “Eternal Sunshine ”
6. “Supernatural ”
7. “True Story”
8. “The Boy Is Mine”
9. “Yes, And?”
10. “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait For Your Love)”
11. “I Wish I Hated You”
12. “Imperfect For You”
13. “Ordinary Things” featuring Nonna
14. TBD
15. “Yes, And” with Mariah Carey (Remix)
16. “Supernatural” with Troye Sivan (Remix)
17. “The Boy Is Mine” with Brandy and Monica (Remix)
18. TBD
19. TBD
20. TBD
21. TBD
22. TBD

Eternal Sunshine Deluxe: Brighter Days Ahead is out 3/28 via Republic Records. Find more information here.

It was International Women’s Day over the weekend, on March 8. To celebrate, Rihanna hopped on social media and shared photos from two of the most special moments of her life: The births of her and ASAP Rocky’s sons.

The post is captioned:

“by far the most powerful thing I’ve ever done as a woman…my little miracles! #InternationalWomensDay

1- RZA
2- Riot Rose

And yes I gave birth in pearls and sunglasses…don’t ask, a lot was happening.”

As Rihanna indicated, the first photo is of her getting some post-birth skin-to-skin time with RZA Athelston Mayers, who’s laying on his mom’s chest, near her jewelry-adorned neck. The second photo is of Rih and Riot Rose Mayers, enjoying an intimate moment looks up at the camera from behind her pink-framed sunglasses.

Meanwhile, Rihanna is starring in the upcoming Smurfs movie, and it sounds like it’s one RZA and Riot will watch at some point: Rihanna previously said, “Getting to do animation is a fun journey for me. I’m usually front and center with everything with my likeness […] but this was fun. I got to imagine, I got to show up in my pajamas in my third trimester, and be a blue badass. I hope this gives me a little bit of cool points with my kids one day.”

Lady Gaga was a dynamo in one of the best episodes of SNL this season. Her performance of “Killah,” a highlight from new album Mayhem, made great use of the Studio 8H space, and she sarcastically thanked the Razzies for nominating her for Worst Actress and Worst Screen Combo (which she and co-star Joaquin Phoenix won) for Joker: Folie à Deux.

But Gaga had a hard time keeping it together during one of the episode’s more memorable sketches. In “Little Red Glasses,” the “Abracadabra” singer appears alongside cast members Sarah Sherman and Ego Nwodim to preach the power of, well, little red glasses. “Little red glasses have the eye-catching quality of a stop sign,” Nwodim said, with Gaga adding, “And they pair perfectly with things that make me me, like if I’m in the sauna, you know you’re seeing everything.” It’s the next line, delivered by Sherman, that caused Gaga to break: “All my dress-up clothes are a little bit Asian.”

As noted by @katiesenigma on X, “if you’re wondering why the crowd was laughing so hard around 1:12, gaga fully broke character and was laughing her ass off (you can see her bend down in the side of the frame).” Even though Gaga is mostly off screen, you can still tell that she’s shaking from laughter.

You can watch “Little Red Glasses” above.