Category: Worldwide

Nobody likes doing jury duty, not even rappers. While it is a civic duty and one of the foundations on which our justice system is built (although maybe it shouldn’t be, all things considered), it can be a bit of a hassle, cutting into work time and vacations alike. People have come up with some pretty wild ploys to get out of jury duty, but JID may have just one of the most novel ones yet.

“lol they got me in Jury duty like I’m not fina go Dr. Umar on they stupid ahh,” he tweeted, referring to the controversial motivational speaker/social media personality who has been criticized for his muddled applications of Pan-African beliefs. While he didn’t quite go that far, he later recapped his experience before deleting his tweet, lest he set a bad example (or get in trouble). “So Boom This lawyer nigga asked me a question, I didn’t even answer it,” he wrote. “I just said ‘The whole DOJ is corrupt. Free Brittany Griner.’ I was dismissed seconds later. The End.”

Of course, the US Department of Justice has very little say in the case of Brittney Griner, who was arrested for a tiny amount of marijuana in Russia earlier this year, sentenced to nine years in prison, and is being held in a penal colony as the State Department works to secure her release.

Perhaps you have been lucky enough in your lifetime to never have to fight for Taylor Swift tickets. In the past, maybe you’ve been invited by a generous friend or your parents bought your tickets for your 16th birthday. Maybe your sister’s friend’s boyfriend’s cousin couldn’t make it so gave you their tickets, or you just logged on to Ticketmaster an hour before and bought some nosebleed tickets for $30. The point is, buying tickets should not be hard! But it is.

Imagine a world, if you will, where you want to purchase tickets to a global popstar’s tour but you simply cannot. This is the reality for most if not all of the world’s population, which just so happens to be 8 billion, as of today. But nobody is celebrating! Because it seems like the entire world is currently trying to get tickets to The Eras Tour. It is not going well, and this is clearly the most important news of the day.

Netflix, which is no stranger to large pulling in large audiences, tweeted in support (or mockery) of the thousands (millions?) of Swift fans trying to get tickets to The Eras Tour, which will make over 50 stops around the country and become her largest tour yet. Can Netflix send some IT help over to Ticketmaster? They seem to be struggling a lot over there.

Maybe Netflix will strike up a deal with Swift to air her concert on the streamer for the millions of fans who will still be waiting in the Ticketmaster queue for the next 6 months. They’ve done it before, they can do it again!

After news began circulating that the world’s population is set to cross the eight billion mark next week, many folks concluded only one person could be responsible — Nick Cannon.

Cannon and his growing number of children are strangers to being the topic of conversation on social media. Recently, the television host and actor announced that he would have his 12th child with Abby De La Rosa, who is also the mother of their one-and-a-half-year-old twins, Zion and Zillion Cannon. — making it his fourth baby announcement this year.

The internet wasted no time having a field day at Cannon’s expense, alleging he was the reason for Earth being overpopulated.

“They saying Nick cannon planned this,” one person tweeted.

“STOPPPPP @NickCannon,” another person tweeted.

Another person pointed out that it seems women only have two choices these days — date Pete Davidson or procreate with Nick Cannon.

“You either date Pete Davidson or have a baby with Nick Cannon,” one person wrote. “Those are the only two life paths for women.”

One fan used a hilarious Taylor Swift GIF, implying that Nick Cannon knows he’s the problem but can’t stop himself.

While it’s obviously untrue the mogul/entrepreneur is the reason for the Earth’s recent expansion, it sure is funny as hell.

Today, the nominations for the 2023 Grammy Awards were announced. Beyoncé is nominated nine times: She is up for Record Of The Year (“Break My Soul“), Best R&B Song (“Cuff It”), Best Traditional R&B Performance (“Plastic Off The Sofa”), Best R&B Performance (“Virgo’s Groove”), Best Song Written For Visual Media (“Be Alive” from King Richard), Song Of The Year (“Break My Soul”), Best Dance Recording (“Break My Soul”), and finally, Best Dance/Electronic Album and Album Of The Year for her 2022 record, Renaissance.

This nomination sweep brings Beyoncé’s current total Grammy nominations up immensely, to 88. This actually ties her for the all-time record with husband Jay-Z, who had 83 nominations previously and picked up five more today.

Beyoncé is now the first female artist to receive over 80 nominations. She surpassed Frank Sinatra with the most nominations for Record Of The Year at eight times.

Beyoncé also only needs three more Grammy wins to tie as the highest-awarded artist. She currently has 28. However, if she wins four times from any of this category, bringing her up to 32, she will become both the most nominated and awarded artist of all time. Considering just how many categories and songs from Renaissance she is up for, this record isn’t out of the question for the 2023 Grammys.

Stormzy‘s upcoming album, This Is What I Mean, will be the UK rap star’s third studio album and is set to release later this month.
This past October, the UK rapper dropped his first track off his forthcoming album, “Mel Made Me Do It,” featuring a cameo from Jose Mourinho, the Portuguese professional football manager, and some narration from actress and screenwriter Michaela Coel.

It’s no surprise Stormzy kept that same energy for his next song, the official lead single for the project, “Hide & Seek,” featuring Top Boy actress Saffron Hocking. Stormzy recently revealed that his latest upcoming project, which will include 12 tracks, was created with “freedom” and fun in mind.

“When you hear about music camps, they always sound intense and somber,” Stormzy said in a recent statement. “People saying: ‘We need to make an album.’ ‘We need to make some hit records.’ But this felt beautifully free. We’re all musicians, but we weren’t always doing music. Some days we played football or walked around taking pictures. And the bi-product [sic] to that was very beautiful music. Because when you marry that ethos with world-class musicians and the best producers, writers, and artists in the world, and we’re in one space, that’s a recipe for something that no one can really imagine. You can’t even calculate what that’s going to come up with. And it came up with a big chunk of this album.

This Is What I Mean is out on 11/25 via Def Jam/Interscope. Pre-save it here.

Check out the full tracklist below.

1. “Fire + Water”
2. “This Is What I Mean”
3. “FireBabe”
4. “Please”
5. “Need You”
6. “Hide & Seek”
7. “My Presidents Are Black”
8. “Sampha’s Plea”
9. “Holy Spirit”
10. “Bad Blood”
11. “I Got My Smile Back”
12. “Give It to the Water”

The biggest night in music is nearly upon us. As musicians anxiously tune into the 2023 Grammy nomination stream, Kendrick Lamar can sit back confidently. The “We Cry Together” rapper has earned six nominations for the ceremony beating out all other hip-hop acts.

Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, brings the Compton native’s nomination total to 47. The album and lead single, “The Heart Pt. 5” snatched the nominations for Song of the Year, Best Rap Album, Best Rap Performance, Best Music Video, and Record of the Year. A close runner-up with three nominations, DJ Khaled is the second most nominated hip-hop act.
Khaled and Lamar will battle it out in the same categories, except Best Music Video, Record of the Year, and Album of the Year.

This year’s ceremony will be quite interesting to watch as Nicki Minaj is notably absent from the nomination list. Also, other notable nominees, Young Thug and Gunna are still incarcerated as they are fighting a RICO case against the state of Georgia.

The 65th Annual Grammy Awards ceremony will be held at the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles on February 5, 2023. The ceremony will be broadcasted live on the CBS Television Network and streamed live and on-demand on Paramount+.

Just a few months ago, GloRilla was in Memphis hangin’ out the window with her ratchet-ass friends. Today, she’s nominated for a Best Rap Performance Grammy for “FNF (Let’s Go),” the song on which she raps the previous reference.

What a year it’s been for GloRilla. In the wake of the success of her and Hitkidd’s breakout hit, she was signed to Yo Gotti’s label Collective Music Group, following up with a string of well-received singles including “Tomorrow 2” with Cardi B, which delivered her first-ever appearance in the top ten of the Hot 100. And while you’d be hard-pressed to imagine how things could get better from there, Glo wound up winning Best Breakthrough Artist at the BET Hip-Hop Awards, being the voice of her hometown Grizzlies’ 2022-23 season hype video, was tapped to perform at the 2023 American Music Awards, and got shout-outs from all over hip-hop, from Lil Baby and ASAP Rocky to living legend Nas on his new album King’s Disease III, which dropped the same night as her debut EP.

That last acknowledgment blew the 23-year-old rapper’s mind, prompting her to gush about Nas’ legendary status (and unwittingly undercut 21 Savage’s assertion that he is no longer “relevant”). Glo will now be competing for the honor with other huge artists like Doja Cat, Gunna, Kendrick and Lamar, along with their respective features including Jay-Z, Future, Young Thug, and more.

You can see the full list of Grammys nominations here.

Mike (real name Michael Jordan Bonema) is a special hip-hop talent. It’s not uncommon to see the New York-based rapper being praised for both his lyricism and production skills. Indeed, he’s a well-rounded individual, and any renaissance man like that must have quite the story to tell. Mike sure does and he outlines it in a new episode of Scenes.

In the clip, he discusses what drives his signature lyrical honesty, saying, “When I was younger, it was hard for me to just talk about emotional stuff. Music became a thing where… that was the one place where vulnerability was OK, for me to feel like my whole self and not just the bit that’s conforming to the rest of what the world wants me to conform to.”

Beyond that, he also gets into topics like his record label 10k, his associates, the role New York plays in his life and career, and what’s next.

The music community started taking notice of Mike when he dropped a handful of well-received self-released projects in 2015. He had a bit of a commercial breakthrough with his latest project, 2021’s Disco!, his first album to rank on the Billboard Top Current Album Sales chart. He’s looking to build on that momentum with Beware Of The Monkey, a new album set to drop just before the year comes to a close, on December 21.

Check Mike out in the video above.

More performers were added to the 2022 Latin Grammy Awards. In an announcement made yesterday (November 14), Colombian superstar Karol G and Dominican-American icon Romeo Santos were added to the line-up.

Karol G is nominated for three Latin Grammy Awards this year. Her nominations include Song Of The Year and Record Of The Year for her global hit “Provenza.” Karol G’s breakup anthem “Mamiii” with Becky G is up for Best Urban Song. In 2018, she won her first Latin Grammy Award for Best New Artist.

Santos will also be performing at the event. He has achieved global success as a solo artist and as the lead singer of the group Aventura. Romeo Santos is nominated for Best Long Form Music Video for the documentary Romeo Santos: King of Bachata. As a member of Aventura, he shares a nomination with Bad Bunny for their collaboration “Volví” in the Best Urban Fusion/Performance category. In September, Santos released his album Fórmula, Vol. 3 with the hit “Sin Fin” featuring Justin Timberlake.

Latin Grammy Cultural Foundation scholarship recipients Xavier Cintrón, Valentina Garcia, Nicolle Horbath, and Sergio De Miguel Jorquera will also be performing alongside Nicky Jam. Bad Bunny is the most-nominated artist of the year with 10 nominations. The 2022 Latin Grammy Awards will take place in Las Vegas on Thursday, November 17. The ceremony will be broadcast live on Univision.

The Grammys nominations have arrived — but for two of the nominees, their acknowledgment has to be bittersweet. Gunna and Young Thug are learning about it from behind bars while facing the possibility of not only missing the ceremony but also ending up incarcerated for the next several years. They’re nominated for Best Rap Song for Gunna’s song “Pushin P” which also features Future — which is ironic, considering they are both currently locked up awaiting trial on racketeering charges due mainly to their rap lyrics shouting out their crew YSL.

While the acronym stands for Young Stoner Life, the name of Young Thug’s label (where Gunna is one of his premier artists), Georgia prosecutors insist that it’s really a reference to Young Slime Life, a gang they say has ties to the Bloods (an iffy proposition, considering there’s no nationwide organization for the California-based gang or its various spin-offs). The use of the rappers’ lyrics to connect them to supposed criminal activity has been widely criticized both by the music industry and by lawmakers in other jurisdictions, who’ve proposed legislation limiting the use of lyrics, which is seen as racist and unjust. They’ve also been denied bond multiple times, despite prosecutors failing to prove they are a danger to the public.

Gunna and Thug will be competing against Jack Harlow and Drake (“Churchill Downs”), DJ Khaled featuring Rick Ross, Lil Wayne, and Jay-Z (“God Did”), Kendrick Lamar (“The Heart Part 5”), and Future and Drake (“Wait For U”). But their real fight will begin before that when they go to trial in early 2023.

Gunna and Young Thug are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.