Category: Worldwide

Editor’s Note: To sign the petition started by Hannah Lee and her fellow students, click here.

“I promise nobody cares at all. Let us have our fun and stay away from our school pride,” was what I was told when I asked a school-pride Instagram account if they would share a petition on educating students on Cherokee culture.

This is one of many interchangeable conversations that take place on the topic of honoring Native American people. My school showcases a singular problem that stems from a larger issue of negative societal views and perceptions; there are so many accounts of other political and economical impacts that take place because of the constant cultural appropriation and stereotypes that are said about this ethnic group.

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In a survey published in 2018, 40% of the respondents did not believe that Native Americans still existed. With this large misconception, how can we expect that Native Americans are rightfully represented, when they are not even recognized by a population that resides on their original land? During the Dakota Pipeline Protests, in which the Sioux tribe fought to protect their land, the media finally began to shine light on Native Americans. The Sioux were recognized for their efforts in preservation, and in the end, were granted justice.

These media coverages help put out that Native Americans were still, very much alive and fighting to have their voices heard. This situation happened in 2016-2017, resulting in the pipeline being moved to a different location.

However, in recent light of the COVID-19 pandemic, Native Americans have been forgotten once more. The virus continues to disproportionately affect Native American tribes. Because Indians have less access to government funding and supplies, they have had to be twice as careful when opening and closing businesses. To protect their own, many tribes have had to close their main sources of income. Not only does this further setback Natives economically, but it also threatens their longevity. Already, Native Americans have a lower life expectancy and higher rates of poverty. This virus and lack of government aid, (because officials do not give the same attention to reservations and tribes as they do to non-Native citizens!) contributes further to the erasure of the Native American people, culture, and history.

So, what does this have to do with your school?

Glad you asked, reader!

The East Coweta High School in Sharpsburg, GA mascot
assets.change.org

My school, East Coweta High School in Sharpsburg, GA, is part of the many schools and sports teams that use an Indian (or Native American) as their mascot. Though we (like-minded peers and I) have considered creating a petition to completely change the school mascot, we have come to a consensus in which that would be unnecessary for the purpose of changing the mascot (in our case).

After speaking with Lamar Sneed, a Cherokee Indian culture/history educator, he told us that the mascot was not offensive and was actually a way of honoring the Native American people as strong warriors. Furthermore, he talked about how the school systems, especially in high school, do little to educate its students on their local Native American culture and history. Dr. Sneed asked that students not wear headdresses or any mock “Indian garb”. The reason? By students doing so, they are disrespecting the huge symbolism and ceremonial significance that a headdress contains. Even within tribes, headdresses are not commonly given out; why should we, as non-Natives, culturally appropriate this custom?

Images from Elle Magazine via Mic

The type of “Indian garb” that students wear at my school is not only a Halloween-costume type garb, but also an outdated, stereotyped clothing that further stipulates that there is only one “type” of Indian. Currently, there are over 500 nationally recognized Indian tribes, and by students continuing to wear such clothing, they only contribute to the ever-deteriorating image that blatantly states that “Native Americans are from the past” and that “there is only one tribe of Indians”. Numerous sources ( including BBC and Mic) go on to say that while students claim to be honoring the Native American people through wearing these types of clothing, they rarely know the history or background of where that clothing came from.

These continued allowances of cultural appropriation derive from a lack of students being educated on these topics. The upside is that we have a plan! This plan would involve a video created by the Cherokee Indians, educating the high school’s students on the history and culture of the Cherokee and Creek Indian Tribes, which had presided in the school’s area in past history. This video would be shared throughout the community, and eventually shown in school during orientations and homeroom periods. The plan would also include banning students from wearing Indian garb and headdresses.

By both these ideas being implemented, I believe that students would stray from making ignorant decisions, and grow as human beings to love, accept, and APPRECIATE the Native American culture, rather than appropriate it. In order to try and implement these ideas into real-life, a group of peers and I have created a petition with a goal of trying to reach 3,000 signatures. Though this may seem like not much, the town where I come from has proven difficult to sway to supporting this petition. Many say that by banning headdresses and Indian garb, that I would be taking away from my high school’s personal culture. For some people, I suppose it is hard to get rid of a normalized custom.

An example includes a petition started in opposition to the one that has been started by a group of peers and I. This petition has garnered almost 1,000 signatures (mostly from adults?) to call for my high school to continue using headdresses. The petition outlines that the reason they want to keep it, is because the headdress is my highschool’s culture (huh?). As these are grown adults signing this petition, I am shocked and saddened of the ignorance of some of the older generation. Contrary to this statement, there have been an amazing group of supporters who have shared and signed the petition. From old to young to the in between, the support has been strong enough to keep the petition relevant. As of now (me writing this), the petition has garnered a little over 300 signatures, 10% of the intended goal. My hope, as well as other supporters’ hopes, are that the petition will at least have started a conversation needed to be had on cultural appropriation and the normalization of these stereotypical forms of racism.

Does petitioning actually work?

Yes! Not only does it grab the attention of the person who has the power to make the petition happen, but it also helps to initiate the interest of community members as well. For example, when the Sioux Tribe was fighting to keep their sacred land out of direct contact with the Dakota Access pipeline, the 370,000 signatures goaded the president at that time, Obama, to issue a response and solutions that ultimately ended in the Sioux and other Great Plains Indian Tribes finding victory and justice. The newfound pressure that comes upon the person who can make it happen, is a result of people coming together on a topic that they support. This kind of pressure is showcased through the story in which the Washington NFL team ended up dropping their previously insensitive name. So, it isn’t necessarily the petitioning itself, but rather the hundreds of thousands of people rallying together to fight for what’s right that ends up convincing the decision maker to act!

This kind of support does not magically come up on its own, unfortunately. Which is why we need the help of people outside my small community, to help others become knowledgeable of these issues and ultimately work together to do what’s right: shed light on the Indigenous people and stop cultural appropriation from within.

Hannah Lee is a student at East Coweta High School in Sharpsburg, GA

Plain and simple, Garrett Oliver helped invent modern craft beer in the U.S. Oliver has three decades of brewing under his belt, a James Beard Award, and has been the brewmaster at the much-beloved Brooklyn Brewery since 1994. There are few people with more experience in beer than Oliver. He’s seen it all, as they say. Now, the industry legend is spearheading a foundation that aims to get more Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) into brewing and distilling.

The Michael Jackson Foundation for Brewing & Distilling will fund technical degrees and career advancement for BIPOC students across the country. The foundation is named after Oliver’s close friend and champion, the late, great booze writer Michael Jackson. Oliver was the first Black man to judge the Great British Beer Festival competition (way back in the ’90s), thanks in part to Jackson’s vehement insistence. The two remained very close friends after that powerful moment in beer history.

The aim of the MJF is to help balance the racial disparities in brewing and distilling that Oliver himself has experienced over the past three decades. Oliver — an African American brewer — never once in 30 years had another African American apply to be a brewer at his brewery. Eventually, he decided to take matters into his own hands — creating an environment that nurtures new talent from the BIPOC community.

I spoke with Oliver right around the time the fundraising for the MJF hit $75,000 (it’s at $91,000 now!). We talked the costs of an education in brewing, the critical importance of diversity in the industry, and how racism and alcohol intersect.

One of the things that I think people always need to be reminded of is something you mentioned a couple a weeks ago on Instagram. You said that in over 30 years of running breweries, you’ve never had a Black person come up and ask for a job brewing.

Can you walk us through the barriers that were keeping Black, Indigenous, and People Of Color away from the brewing community?

I think that you have to start off with economics. So a lot of people are not aware that in the United States — and anyone can look this up anywhere that they like — African American families, on average, have one-tenth the family assets of white families. So that is a place to start because to some extent — even though it’s not expensive — craft beer is a luxury item, even if you’re talking about yes it costing 50 cents more per bottle. It’s slower to come into communities of color or people who are economically disadvantaged. So that’s one.

Then you have this falsehood — generally promulgated by society — that beer was created by and for people of European background. And that it was created by and for men. So this is the image that beer has put forward certainly during my lifetime. And of course, none of these things are even vaguely true.

There’s not even a whisper of truth to any of it. It’s interesting to note that not only does every traditional society in Africa have its own beers, but at the outset of the United States until the end of slavery, almost all the beer in the United States was made by Black people. This is true of distilling, too, or any other physical work that you care to name.

Of course, women were the people who traditionally made beer in a lot of households. So this is where we are from a societal point of view. And then on top of that, and I take my full responsibility for this part, we get to the level that Brooklyn Brewery is at. We’re operating like a Michelin star restaurant. We are very serious about what we do. We are serious about quality. If someone is inexperienced in the brewhouse, and they don’t know what they’re doing, they’re not going to ruin a piece of fish, as they might in a restaurant kitchen. They could kill somebody. Or they’re going to ruin a $50,000 tank full of beer. We are not joking, this is a profession.

Therefore, the people that I was looking to have come through the door were people who were very well qualified, who had a few years under their belt or had coursework behind them that would say to us, “this person knows what they’re doing. They’re not going to make these rookie mistakes in your brewhouse.”

And that’s prohibitive in-and-of-itself, right?

Yes, there is a cost for that. When you look at the fact that only 0.6 percent or so of brewhouse personnel in the United States are African American, maybe a little bit more might be Latino and other people of color, then you start doing the math about the family assets. These are people who have one-tenth of the amount of money in the family. Then you look at the prices of the courses.

What’s the average price tag there?

So the course is anywhere from, say, $3,000 on one end to $16,000 on the other end. So how exactly then would you expect an African American to show up with the qualifications or the coursework?

The realization that I had was that old saw about a definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. There would never be a different result because this is the way things are. Also, let’s face it, we live in a segregated society — especially at the higher end of things — that we like to think is not a segregated society. Chris Rock had a great joke one time, he’s like, “Have you ever noticed that every Black person has four white friends, but every white person has 1.2 Black friends?”

It’s a joke, but it’s kind of true. You don’t necessarily notice when you go to a high-end restaurant, or wherever else, that there may be no people of color in the room: either as servers, as bartenders, on the line cooking, or as patrons. As humans, we get a little worried when we look around and we don’t see anybody who looks even vaguely like us. That is part of the background of craft beer, too.

There are also huge stigmatizations around alcohol towards people of color across the U.S. I’ve lived my whole life under the shadow of whites thinking Indians are all “drunks,” and that sort of keeps a lot of Indigenous people out of alcohol in general. It’s still very real. Of course, you also see these stigmatizations towards the Black and Latinx communities as well. How does one overcome that mentality?

People who have been economically disenfranchised — especially with Native Americans — of everything are going to have, as a result, societal problems which have nothing particularly to do with alcohol. These are mental health issues — whether it’s violence in the home, whether it’s all sorts of things that are endemic — that were not endemic in society before all this happened. As it turns out, most people if left alone will be fine. But if you take everything away from them, turns out that they start drinking a lot, or turn to drugs. What a surprise!

Certainly, whether it’s true or not, this was a common tale among African Americans. It turns out during the last century that you had a certain amount of families in the community with what was called “Indian blood.” In my family, it was Narragansett. And we had people in the family who died of alcoholism. But even my grandmother — who at least was said to be half Narragansett — did not oppose the fact I became a brewer. In fact, she was very proud of me. I was really thankful for that because nobody ever put a stigma upon it. We were looked upon as people who could make our own choices, make our own way through the world, and not be held back by any sort of societal thing that had happened in the past.

With that, I don’t feel that it’s in any way incumbent upon African Americans to take on broader psychological problems that have been put upon us by history. These are things for all of us to overcome. And when we have a more equitable society, we’ll have less abuse of everything. People will have balanced lives where it’ll be easier to be happy.

That plays into an answer you had for a writer a few years ago when they asked if brewing had a race problem and you poignantly pointed out that that’s the wrong question. I’m paraphrasing but you said, if you’re not looking at the American system, you’re not seeing the big picture. Which brings us back to the Michael Jackson Foundation for Brewing and Distilling. Walk us through what the foundation aims to do?

It’s actually, by design, very simple.

You’ve heard me talk about what we look for as qualifications, as kind of a higher-end brewery and the fact that we did not see many people who would even approach us. We did have many people from other countries. I’ve sent Gambians to brewing school. I’ve sent Iraqis to brewing school. But these were people who came through a different pathway into the brewhouse. Some of them were refugees. One guy came in as a forklift driver, and kind of way worked his way up on the bottling line and became so good that we sent him to packaging school. But the normal walk in the front door applicant who would like to work in the cellar or the brewery … no, we’ve had none.

So what I am doing is “making” the sort of people that we want to see. There are people out there who want these jobs, but they don’t have the qualifications. They may be working already and learn by rote. So if someone says, “Okay, you do this, and then you do this, and then you do this”, but you don’t know exactly why you have an outcome scientifically, it’s very hard for you to move up. It’s very hard for you to be a person who’s going to say, “Hey, let’s change this, and then that will happen.” Because you don’t know.

We’re going to backfill all of that knowledge, through accredited courses, and give people the underpinning that would allow them to confidently walk up, say, “Yes, I went to the American Brewers’ Guild course”, or “I’ve been through these few Master Brewers’ Association of the Americas courses”, or “I went to UC Davis and got this certificate, and I’m prepared to be a junior brewer in your organization.” Those are the people that we want to see. I’m not saying that this is the only pathway into the brewhouse. It isn’t by any means, but it is one path. Just like going to cooking school is one path into the kitchen. Therefore, we are basically giving people a tool that we can absolutely know will work.

This seems like an easy win for anyone looking to take the next step.

There’s no real possibility of failure unless the person fails to finish the course, or not take in the information in the course. So the fact that it has a low probability of failure, they know they’ll get that job.

Look, I don’t think that at the average brewery when someone walks in the door and says, “Hey, I’m looking for a job,” that the person sitting there is like, some sort of avowed racist … in most cases. They’re looking for people who can do the job. So proof that you can do the job is the thing that we need to boost in this situation.

What does your foundation cover?

People will make an application to us, and the successful scholarship awardees will then have tuition and other expenses at their chosen institution paid directly by the MJF.

That’s fantastic. So after someone gets this certification, what the occupation process like afterward?

Another part of the scholarship is that as the person goes through their course, they’ll be assigned a mentor. That mentor is a person of color within the industry who’s got a few years in, at the very least. If you don’t get along somehow, or you don’t vibe with this person, we get you somebody else.

They’re going to be somebody who can understand where you’re coming from if you have a bad day or whatever else. Somebody to talk to who’s been in your shoes. Then that person can ask, “Well, I’ve completed the course, can you help me out.” Plus, we will publish a list of the people who have just finished their courses for the breweries to see. We will also promote them in the industry.

Then as these people make their way through their careers, we will come back to them like the Godfather. We’ll ask them to be a mentor to somebody else who’s coming up and pass that knowledge back down the line so that we build a community.

Who are you looking for in a candidate? Would this work for someone walking in cold off the street or is more for someone already with their toe dipped in the pool so to speak?

To a certain extent, it’ll be a combination of what the educational institutions look for: Someone who shows that they have a lot of initiative in their life. We will start off with people who are already kind of at 30,000 feet and then put them into orbit, rather than trying to start from the ground up. Which is great — and much more exciting — but actually much, much harder.

If you have somebody who’s been brewing for a year, they likely started somewhere else in the brewery — maybe they were a tour guide or something like that — but they don’t actually have any real background besides what was taught on the brewery floor. Which might have been great for doing this one particular job, but not necessarily applicable in a broader way. We’re going to say to that person, “Okay, your employer supports you and thinks you’re doing a great job. We’re going to attach a rocket booster to your career by putting you through this program. And when you come back from it, you will be a much more valuable employee. You will be more employable anywhere that you want to go, and your career will take a different trajectory as a result.”

So we have to be mindful of what are we trying to do. What we’re trying to do is increase representation within the industry. What is the best way to do it? The best way is the quicker, stronger path first. We have to gain our skills at doing what we’re doing, and then build the organization from there.

I think this is sort of the elephant in the room. You’ve been around for 30 years. You’ve seen ups. You’ve seen downs. What would you say to someone who’s getting into brewing and wants to follow this path in 2020?

Well, my feeling is that brewing has almost exactly the same chances of success that most industries in the United States have right now. Whose situation is not in peril by a pandemic? Unless you’re manufacturing PPE, or insurance, or something like that.

We are hopeful, though, that it’s not going to be forever. By the time we award our scholarships in the first quarter of next year, then you complete your course and you’re available on the market, it’ll be next summer. And hopefully, we’ve stemmed this thing. Places will be open and people will go back to bars. Yes, it’s going to take a while. And yes, breweries will close. But if you have an interest in getting into this, or almost anything else, you’re going to need to have a leg up.

I think that brewing has as good a chance of success as almost any other industry. Everyone’s taking a hit. If anything, I see that as the best reason to go for it.

The Michael Jackson Foundation is currently accepting donations to help send BIPOC students on the path towards becoming professional brewers and distillers right now, you can donate here.

Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion dropped the eye-catching visual to their track “WAP” last Friday, and the video went instantly viral. The raunchy lyrics and scandalous outfits of course drew attention, but so did the use of animals, which drew criticism from both PETA and Tiger King star Carole Baskin. While leopards featured in the video were not physically on set at the time, there were a handful of live snakes that were more than present. In fact, Cardi said one snake even peed on her during the filming process.

In a recent interview with i-D, Cardi spoke about the internet-breaking video. While there were several roadblocks to the filming process, perhaps the worst for her involved the snake portion of the shooting schedule. “One of the scariest parts was the snake scene,” Carid said. “I was naked and one of them peed all over me.”

In the same interview, Cardi also revealed another difficult aspect of the video shoot. Because there were many staff members and performers present on set, the rapper had to make sure they were being careful about the coronavirus. So much so that Cardi spent $100,000 on COVID testing for the cast and crew of the shoot.

Check out the full interview with i-D here.

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

The list of artists performing at this year’s MTV VMAs ceremony has expanded in recent weeks, and now a major artist has been added: For the first time since 2013, Lady Gaga will grace the VMAs stage. She joins a lineup that includes Doja Cat, BTS, J Balvi, The Weeknd, Roddy Ricch, Maluma, and CNCO.

Gaga made the announcement by sharing a video of herself set to dramatic string music, in which she enjoys a drink outside of her house and wears a mask/hat that makes her look like a pink bug with giant feathers for antennae. She wrote in the post, “I’ve been at home dreaming of #Chromatica, and it’s finally time to take off for the first live performance. Tune in to the #VMAs on 8/30!”

This follows her performance of “Applause” at the 2013 show, which she began by wearing a white costume with a square-shaped mask and, after a series of dancer-assisted costume changes, ended in just a shell bikini with a flowery bottom.

Gaga is one of the leading nominees at this year’s awards, as she and Ariana Grande have each earned nine nods, which are tied for the most of all artists in 2020. Find the full list of this year’s nominations here.

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

Reebok will this week celebrate the 25th anniversary of Allen Iverson’s Question Mid signature shoe by re-releasing a suede-toe version of the sneaker as well as a magazine entitled Beyond Question.

The Question Mid OG Red Toe will hit the Foot Locker family of stores on August 21 at a price point of $140, as Reebok and Iverson take fans back to the shoe that started it all for AI, who looked back on the feeling of getting his own signature sneaker in an interview for Beyond Question

“It was a dream come true,” said Iverson. “It was close to the same feeling of when you get drafted. Only a certain amount of people have their own signature shoe; that really means you’re special. And for it to happen to me, it was just a beautiful thing.”

The magazine features story from young journalists who interviewed people around the country about the impact of the Question Mid and, of course, the interview with Iverson himself. Among those featured in the magazine will be current NBA players Montrezl Harrell and Josh Richardson, who have worn the Questions in games this season, as well as the Question designer Scott Hewett, streetwear designer Eric Emanuel, and many more.

Fans can read the entire magazine at Issuu.com and enter a raffle to win a physical copy of the publication here.

Following the release his debut album Top Shotta and his appearance on the 2020 XXL Freshman Class cover, Memphis rapper NLE Choppa completes his victory lap with a passionate performance of his album’s closing track “Depression” for UPROXX Sessions.

The 17-year-old rapper’s performance may surprise longtime fans who know him from high-energy tracks like “Walk ‘Em Down” and “Top Shotta Flow,” as he taps into a moody vein of introspective crooning for “Depression.” As Choppa reflects on his early years and lost friends, he employs a singsong flow that showcases his growth as an artist since his star-making single “Top Shotta” made him one of the artists to watch throughout 2019 and early 2020.

Watch NLE Choppa perform “Depression” from his new album Top Shotta above and watch Uproxx’s “Who Is NLE Choppa?” documentary below.

Top Shotta is out now via NLE Choppa Entertainment and Warner Records

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s new performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too..

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

NFL teams have begun training camps around the country, steadily working their way into a return to football while also trying to thread the needle of doing so during a pandemic without seeing outbreaks among teams.

For this to work, teams must be diligent about testing, tracing, and having protocols in place to mitigate the risk for players. But most importantly, players have to do the right things when they are outside of the facility. Positive tests are inevitable, but the league and teams are hopeful they can isolate those cases and not lead to baseball-like team-wide shutdowns. Whether that’s possible outside of a bubble remains a point of contention, but the league is insistent on giving it a go and teams are taking their protocols very seriously.

Seahawks rookie cornerback Kemah Siverand learned exactly how serious all this is when he was cut this week for reportedly trying to sneak a woman into the team hotel disguised as a player by dressing her in team gear, per Tom Pelissero of NFL Network.

Given the situation, this is a serious issue and one teams and players have to call out, because the risk of transmission in a locker room is incredibly high and players bringing in someone from the outside isn’t just selfish, but threatens the entire start of the season. As such, a player without any tenure in the league is not going to get any sort of benefit of the doubt in a situation like this, and now, the undrafted rookie out of Oklahoma State is out of a job before he even got a chance to try and secure his place in the league.

On Tuesday, XXL unveiled the poster for their highly-anticipated 2020 Freshman Class. Among the inductees were NLE Choppa, Jack Harlow, Chika, and Mulatto, and people had their fair share of opinions about the picks. Now, the rappers have come face-to-face with their haters with XXL‘s new series, Mean Comments. The rapper took a look at what some people were saying about them online and had some choice words in response.

At just 17 years old, NLE Choppa has made a name for himself in music and now expects to get a career boost with the XXL co-sign. While his career is impressive at such a young age, not everyone has respect for the rapper. One Instagram commenter wrote: “why yall putting a 14 year old on xxl.” NLE laughed at the comment, jokingly responding with, “Why are you saying 14? I could be 15 at least.”

Jack Harlow also got some hate for his appearance, with one user saying he has a remarkable resemblance to Drake’s son Adonis. “Drakes son grew up fast damn,” they wrote. Harlow shook off the comment, even agreeing with the fan. “Shesh I’ve been hearing that a lot, actually,” Harlow said. “I suppose we share some features.”

Chika had the most words for her haters. After one user said she reminds them “of a librarian,” Chika quipped: “You know what? I’mma take that because, yeah, I read you n****s every single day on the internet. Its all I do — is drag y’all on Twitter. It’s all I have time to do. So, thank you. I hope I remind you of a librarian. B*tch.”

Another user called her an “industry plant” to which she replied: “Who would have planted me here? I’m the neediest plant they ever would have had. You know how much I cancel myself on a regular basis? Nobody planted me here. No, I’m not feeding any narrative for the industry. I fought to be here. Do you wanna fight me? Literally, pull up I’ll drop the location.”

Watch NLE Choppa, Jack Harlow, Chika, and more react to mean comments above.

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

Dua Lipa released her shimmering sophomore album Future Nostalgia earlier this year, debuting to critical acclaim and earning a spot in Uproxx’s Best Albums Of 2020 So Far list. With the record, Lipa made a decisive turn to ’80s-inspired pop music, making the reference apparent through brightly-colored spandex in her “Physical” video. Since Lipa’s Future Nostalgia era has been peppered with references to the decade, it’s only fitting that the singer collaborated with an iconic star from the time.

On Thursday, Lipa served up a remix of her track “Levitating” and it features verses from Madonna and Missy Elliott. For the instrumentals, Lipa tapped DJ The Blessed Madonna, formerly The Black Madonna, to transform the laid-back, groove-driven beat to have pounding bass and flickering synths. Lipa described how the epic collaboration came to be in a statement: “I decided to take the party up a notch with the incomparable The Blessed Madonna, who secretly helped me to craft the mixtape that would become Club Future Nostalgia and the absolute queens Missy Elliott and Madonna joined me for an epic remix of ‘Levitating.”

The Blessed Madonna echoed Lipa’s excitement about the remix, saying it was her “dream come true” to work with a team of big-name like Lipa, Madonna, and Elliott: “It is no overstatement to say that reimagining Dua’s amazing record ‘Levitating’ with Madonna and Missy Elliott was my dream come true. That’s a phrase that is overused, but in this case, it is absolutely literal…Being a part of this was not only an honour but the very best medicine for dancing feet that are stuck at home. I hope it lifts up the spirits of everyone that hears it, as much as it has lifted mine. Truly, I am levitating.”

Listen to Dua Lipa’s “Levitating” remix with Madonna and Missy Elliot above.

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

Summer Walker dropped her latest release, the Life On Earth EP, in July, and she returns today with a fresh visual from the project, for “White Tee.” The clip (presented in a 4:3 aspect ratio, as opposed to the more modern 16:9) appears to have been filmed on an old camcorder, and it shows walker and NO1-NOAH (who is featured on the track) enjoying a night out on the town.

Walker told Apple Music of the song, “‘White Tee’ is another song featuring NO1-NOAH, and in the chorus he talks about treating someone like a white tee. You know you always wanna keep a white tee fresh and clean, but in my verse, I’m basically saying the opposite.”

Meanwhile, Walker will have a presence at the VMAs in a couple weeks, as her guest appearance on Khalid’s “Eleven” earned her a Best R&B nomination. She also made the long list for Best New Artist, but ultimately didn’t make the cut when the list was pared down to six nominees. One list she did make, though, was the tracklist for Aminé’s recently released new album, Limbo.

Curiously, she also seemed to have drawn the attention of Donald Trump recently when the POTUS liked a tweet about her new album bringing “the stripper back.”

Watch the “White Tee” video above.

Life On Earth EP is out now via Lvrn/Interscope. Get it here.