Charli XCX has kept her fans very involved in the creation of her quarantine album, How I’m Feeling Now. Over the past week or so, she has asked for their input on her latest track, “I Finally Understand,” and today, the propulsive song has been released. The track was produced and co-written by Palmistry, who Charli says is “somebody who I’ve to work with for a really long time,” adding, “I’m glad that isolation has finally allowed us to connect from afar on our first song!” The song also features additional production from AG Cook.

Leading up to the song, she first teased it while asking fans for their input on the single art, writing last weekend, “i’m gonna drop a new song late next week. the chorus lyrics go ‘baby i love you bad and lately i finally understand that maybe, this feeling that I’ve found might kill me, put me in the ground.’ based off of those lyrics should I go for image 1 2 3 or 4?”

Yesterday, Charli offered a status report on the update, saying about half of the songs expected to make the album are mixed: “6 songs mixed / in the process of being mixed. 3 or 4 other song ideas floating around. Spoke w AG today and we both feel like doing an 11 track album could be cool…”

Listen to “I Finally Understand” above.

How I’m Feeling Now is out 5/15.

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

As Lil Durk prepares for the release of his Cause Y’all Waited 2 mixtape this weekend, the Chicago rapper teams up with one of his Windy City neighbors, Polo G, and fellow “Lil” rapper, Lil Baby, to drop off the last single of the tape’s truncated promo run before it drops. “3 Headed Goat,” produced by Cicero and Aviator Keyz, finds the three rappers snapping off aggressive verses over a bass-heavy, high-speed beat. While Lil Baby handles the chorus, Durk and Baby fill their verses with brass knuckled punchlines.

Durk’s choice of rap partners comes as no surprise. While he’s a veteran of the rap game by now, he’s remained relevant by always knowing which artists are hot and being willing to share the spotlight with them. In the case of Lil Baby, the Atlanta spitter is one of the south’s foremost stars, with his sophomore album My Turn hitting No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart just a couple of months ago. Meanwhile, Polo G is next up in Chicago, breaking out last year with his intense debut album, Die A Legend, and its follow-up, The GOAT, right around the corner.

Cause Y’all Waited 2 is due this Friday, May 8 via Alamo Records and Interscope. Pre-order it here.

Listen to “3 Headed Goat” above.

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Late last December, Meek Mill’s then-rumored girlfriend Milan Harris announced her pregnancy when she debuted her baby bump at her own fashion show. The reveal ignited further speculation over Meek and Harris’ relationship, which would mean that Meek was going to be a father for the second time around. Meek finally put the theories to rest when he announced that Harris gave birth to their baby Wednesday night. Moreover, the rapper’s newborn son now shares his same birthday.

Meek made the announcement on Twitter, writing that Harris had given birth to their son on the same day as his birthday. “Milano dropped me off a king on my birthday!” he wrote.

Meek’s exciting announcement arrives after months of advocating for prisoners amid the coronavirus. A longtime champion of prison reform, Meek and his nonprofit organization recently launched the S.A.F.E.R. Plan. The plan outlines how correctional facilities should safely prevent the virus’ spread among its inmates. Meek and Jay-Z’s REFORM Alliance also announced their plan to donate a large number of protective masks to prisons. The duo’s organization is working to donate a whopping 100,000 masks to various prisons around the country.

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

Kim Petras just as busy as just about anybody in 2019, when she had a nine-week stretch where she released a new single once per week, in the lead-up to her Clarity album. Understandably, Petras has taken a breather since then, but she’s not about to let summer pass without dropping a banger for the occasion. Today, she has released “Malibu,” a sunny pop-rock track that sounds like a 2020 descendant of Katy Perry’s “California Gurls.”

Petras says of the song, “‘Malibu’ is a return to color, the feeling of being in love, and the escapism pop that I love the most. After Clarity, I had cried all my tears and moved on, so this is a reflection of how I’ve been feeling. I just want ‘Malibu’ to be a fizzy, refreshing drink that comes to you during this quarantine and makes you forget all your anxieties. I hope this can be a little vitamin shot that brightens your day.”

She has also shared an animated visual for the track, which serves as a sort of infomercial/behind-the-scenes factory tour of Malibu Moon Tanning Oil, presumably made so tanners the world over no longer need a sunny day to get their bronze on.

Watch the “Malibu” video above.

Although some of the proposed matchups for the Instagram hits battle series Verzuz have landed with more of a thud than a bang, every so often someone suggests a contest that makes perfect sense. For instance, on the latest episode of N.O.R.E.’s Drink Champs podcast, the hosts asked guest DMX who he’d want to trade hits with on Instagram and X set his sights high: “Jay.”

Yes, that’s “Jay” as in “Jay-Z,” with whom DMX has had a long, sometimes fraught but mostly fruitful relationship. The two New York rappers rose to prominence in the late ’90s as two of the main draws in hip-hop at the time. They even planned to become a group at one time along with Ja Rule; all three rappers shared the cover of XXL magazine’s June 1999 issue titled “Murder Inc.” Jay and DMX collaborated on numerous songs around the time and even appeared in a scene in the documentary Backstage freestyling during their 1999 Hard Knock Life tour.

Whle Verzuz has been proposed as an arena for any classic rap acts to finally hash out their differences, its creators Swizz Beats and Timbaland, as well as many of its participants, view it as more of a celebration of history, legacy, and culture. The next battle takes place Friday, May 8, between Jill Scott and Erykah Badu. Check out our post for more info.

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Last week, Diet Cig revealed Do You Ever Wonder About Me?, the duo’s third full-length album and their most cohesive. Anchored by Alex Luciano’s infectious vocal stylings and Noah Bauman’s powerful percussion, the duo tears through ten power-pop tracks that center around introspection in the wake of lost love. But somehow, Diet Cig manages to fill Do You Ever Wonder About Me? with enough love itself to make you feel warm while listening.

In celebration of the new album, Luciano and Bauman sat down to talk Lorde, burritos, and Las Vegas in the latest Indie Mixtape 20.

What are four words you would use to describe your music?

Fun, cathartic, punk, personal.

It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?

Relatable tunes that still make people feel less alone.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?

Boston, MA.

Where did you eat the best meal of your life?

Chilaquiles burrito at a walk-up window in LA.

What album do you know every word to?

Melodrama by Lorde.

What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?

Kimya Dawson @ a church in Albany.

What is the best outfit for performing and why?

A big bud press jumpsuit! I wear them on stage sometimes but we just got custom ones for tour! Makes it easy to pick out your outfit when theres only one piece, and no wardrobe malfunctions.

Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?

Right now I love @grossypelosi on instagram, the best cooking content!

What’s your most frequently played song in the van on tour?

Cowboy Song by Thin Lizzy.

What’s the last thing you Googled?

“Can you see the live chat after the live stream youtube” lol we just did our livestream and I wanted to look at what people were saying in the chat afterwards!

What album makes for the perfect gift?

The Space Jam Soundtrack.

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?

In a parking lot in the desert outside of Las Vegas because everything in Vegas was either too expensive or too sketchy cheap.

What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?

AC from The Spook School gave us matching apple tattoos while on tour with them at like 4am the last night!

What artists keep you from flipping the channel on the radio?

Lorde, Mallrat, Ratboys, Elah Hale.

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Noah and my mom and our friends threw me a surprise birthday BBQ for my 23rd bday, it was so cute.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

Stop doing everything the night before.

What’s the last show you went to?

The Addy record release show for Eclipse at Gallery 5 in Richmond.

What movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?

The Devil Wears Prada.

What would you cook if Kanye were coming to your house for dinner?

Toss him a bottle of Soylent.

Do You Ever Wonder About Me? is out now. Listen or pick up a record here.

Florence Pugh made her professional acting debut in 2014. Her breakout role, in period-piece Lady Macbeth, came two years later; and by 2020, she was an Oscar nominee and future-Marvel Cinematic Universe star. She would be a current-Marvel Cinematic Universe star, if Black Widow‘s release hadn’t been pushed back from May 1 to November 6, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. In a new interview with Elle UK, Pugh discussed her choice to join the MCU after mostly starring in low-budget indies.

“When you think of Marvel, it’s big and daunting. Especially being a relatively small actor to look at it and go, ‘Oh! I’m going to be a part of this,’ that’s a big decision,” she said. Pugh was nervous to make her San Diego Comic-Con debut (“I was scared because my Russian accent was going to be out there and I didn’t know what it sounded like”), but it helped that Scarlett Johansson, who’s been doing this for years, was also anxious:

“We both stood there and I instantly had clammy, sweaty hands. Scarlett gave me her hand and we squeezed each other, and she also had clammy hands! And then I was like, oh, this never gets old. This is just as powerful [for you] and you’re their legend.”

Comic-Con was an odd experience for Pugh (it’s odd for everyone, tbh), but it wasn’t as “so amazing, so strange, so weird” as the Oscars, which she attended for the first time this year. The Little Women actress almost had a potential-viral moment when “everyone stood up to applaud Martin Scorsese” and she had “just got out a bag of M&Ms. As we all got up, a camera popped right in my face and I was waving this bag of M&Ms about. So I just had to drop it… on the floor. I thought, I can’t be the girl who’s eating M&Ms while giving Martin a standing ovation.” You can, Pugh. You can. What do you think the first “M” in M&Ms stands for? (If it’s anything other than “Marty,” please don’t correct me.)

(Via Elle UK)

Megan Thee Stallion is only 25 years old, but already, she has achieved what is a lifelong dream for many artists: She collaborated with Beyonce, who hopped on a new remix of “Savage.” A song with Beyonce is tough to follow, but there’s one superstar artist who Megan would also be thrilled to make music with.

Megan was asked how she tops working with Beyonce in a recent interview, and she responded, “I’m good, I don’t need anyone else to collab with. I already collabed with Nicki and I’ve collabed with Beyonce, my life is made — bye, thank you. Thank you, everybody!” When asked about possibly working with Rihanna, though, she offered, “Rihanna is that girl, and I always wear Fenty, so… Oh my God, that would blow my mind! If I could collab with Rihanna, I would honestly be super happy.”

She also broke down how she came to work with Beyonce, saying, “I was like, ‘God? Is this real?’ Like, we really did it! But shout out to Beyonce, like, thank you so much! Roc Nation is my management, so somebody from my team called me like, ‘Hey, Beyonce wants to do a ‘Savage’ remix,’ and I’m like, ‘Shut up — y’all are lyin’!’ They’re like, ‘Seriously, go record a new verse.’ I didn’t hear the song again until the week after that. When I heard it, I was like, ‘This is really Beyonce! Like… this is really Beyonce. Do y’all know that this is really Beyonce?!’”

There were actually rumors in 2019 that Megan and Rihanna were working together, but Rihanna said that story was “a lie.”

While a Rihanna collab is something potentially on the horizon, Megan has another big meet-up that’s out right now: Diplo’s Major Lazer has offered their own remix of “Savage,” which infuses more of an electronic house influence into the track. Give that a listen below.