Denis Villeneuve’s Dune is scheduled to come out on December 18, but there’s at least one person who won’t be in a movie theater (remember movie theaters?) on opening night, or ever. In a recent interview, David Lynch, who directed the 1984 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s sandworm-y novel, told the Hollywood Reporter that he has “zero interest” in the new Dune. Fine, I guess I’ll fall into Oscar Isaac’s eyes for him.
When asked why he doesn’t plan on seeing 2020’s Dune, Lynch replied, “Because it was a heartache for me. It was a failure and I didn’t have final cut. I’ve told this story a billion times. It’s not the film I wanted to make. I like certain parts of it very much — but it was a total failure for me.” Lynch has since disowned the film, which Roger Ebert, speaking for many critics at the time, called “an incomprehensible, ugly, unstructured, pointless excursion into the murkier realms of one of the most confusing screenplays of all time.”
But does Lynch have something against Villeneuve, or is it anyone’s Dune?
You would never see someone else’s adaptation of Dune?
“I said I’ve got zero interest.”
He’ll be eating his words when the monkey from What Did Jack Do? directs Dune 2. Elsewhere in the interview, Lynch said that given a choice between making another TV show or a new movie, he would choose the former, because he loves “a continuing story, and cable television I say is the new art house. You have total freedom. The sound isn’t as good as a great theater; the picture isn’t as big, but TVs are getting bigger and bigger and better and better, so there’s hope. And then you have this chance for a continuing story, so it’s the new art house, I say.” Twin Peaks: The Return of The Return, maybe?
Unfortunately, we will have to wait until next Sunday to watch the third and fourth episodes of the Chicago Bulls documentary that we now know is far more than just about the 1997-98 season. The episode traces the history of the major players, namely Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen, and how they and the Bulls got to the point where they were going for their sixth title in eight years — and the world knew that would be their last year together.
So far we’ve seen a young Jordan rise through the college ranks to being Rookie of the Year and dropping 63 on the vaunted Celtics in the 1986 Playoffs, which means the next step in the journey for Michael and the Bulls is facing off with the Bad Boys era Detroit Pistons. That is indeed the focal point of episodes 3 and 4 — along with whatever they can tie it into with the 97-98 team (one would assume this features Dennis Rodman rather heavily for the first time) — as ESPN teased in their 30-second spot for next week’s showing.
The Jordan Rules and the Bulls-Pistons battles are well known, but it’ll be highly entertaining to hear from the participants themselves, most notably Michael on how he had to adapt to what the Pistons did to him physically. If there wasn’t already tremendous excitement coming out of Sunday night, knowing that next week picks up the best rivalry Jordan ever had in terms of a team pushing him and beating him will only further the anticipation.
It’s still unclear when “non-essential” travel will be something we can all enjoy again. Even when discretionary travel is cleared, the freedom to just travel anywhere will be based on circumstances that may very well be out of our control for the foreseeable future. Even when things do open up (and assuming the economy bounces back), travel will probably be focused on local experiences, natural adventures, and supporting troubled communities.
One cruise line is already shifting its focus to do just that — right in America’s Heartland. Viking River Cruises just opened up bookings for a small-vessel cruise along almost the entire length of the Mississippi River, from St. Paul, Minnesota all the way to the Big Easy. There are also shorter cruises that cover Memphis to New Orleans and other stretches of Twain’s beloved river. Prices range from $3,699 for eight days to $9,599 for a 15-day cruise.
The catch? These are for sailings in September and October of 2022. That’s 29 months from now. It seems fair to hope that the travel world will be functioning in some way by then, right? Right?
The small format of the cruises offers a chance to avoid the over-crowding of ships with thousands of people, which is one advantage. Another advantage is that cruises like this hit several small communities along the Mississippi River through seven U.S. states — destinations that will need your travel dollars post-COVID. The last advantage to a roll-out like this is the fact that Viking is offering a “risk-free guarantee.” You’ll be able to change your booking for no extra charge up to 24-hours from your departure date. You’ll then be able to rebook a sailing up to 24 months later — that means you can push this booking to 2024, theoretically.
With more and more people feeling wary about mega-cruises, river cruises are being called out as a way for the troubled industry to get back on its feet. John DiScala, aka Johnny Jet, noted in a recent UPROXX article on the state of the cruising industry that “as someone who likes cruising, I would definitely go on a river cruise before I’d go on an ocean cruise.” And we’ve championed small river cruises in the past throughout Europe for their adaptability and access to local economies. Millennial-focused European river cruise outfit U River Cruises is currently offering 30 percent off of all of their sailing, plus risk-free cancelations and rebookings.
If you’re itching for a glimmer of hope in your travel life, one of these trips might just be it. We still, however, always recommend proceeding with the utmost caution.
The ‘Westworld’ Confusion Index is your guide to what we know, what we kind of know, and what we don’t know aboutWestworld, one of television’s more confusing shows. We will make mistakes, surely, because we rarely know what is happening or why (and whenever we think we’ve figured it out, they go and change it on us), but we will try to have at least as many jokes as mistakes. This is the best we can offer. Here we go.
What We Know
HBO
Westworld is, in many ways, a show about female robots striding confidently into battle
Westworld is many things in its third season. It is a continued examination of free will and how much of our lives are predetermined by outside forces. It is an action movie in a televised form in which long conversations about that first thing are punctuated by furious blasts of gunfire and sword-related bloodshed. It is a puzzle box that reveals its true intentions piece-by-piece until the fuller picture becomes clear. But it is mostly, if you want to be technical about it all, a show about lady robots waltzing into battle with the confidence of mid-90s Michael Jordan.
It’s undeniable. It happens at least once or twice an episode and it is maybe my favorite part of the show now. Maeve came back this week after an episode off and promptly marched into a crowd of Nazis, dropped a few very brassy one-liners, and then dismantled every one of them, for no real purpose other than to get them out of the way so she could talk to Lee in peace. Dolores has done it at least a half dozen times this season, occasionally in a ball gown. Charlotte spent half of this episode doing it. Just gliding down a hallway with menace in her eyes, waiting for some goon or series of goons to accost her, fully prepared to smash their faces into or through walls. It’s a lot of fun.
It’s also an enjoyable way to watch the show, stepping back and watching the action like that. It can be easy to get very deep into the show’s various mysteries, worrying about who wants what and why. You’ve seen Reddit. And while that can be fun, all the theorizing and decoding, it’s nice to also remember that all that stuff will sort itself out as the show progresses. Like, we’ll find out if we don’t figure it out first. There’s no need to put pressure on yourself to beat the show to the payoffs. Pay attention, follow along, try to notice things, but also try not to get so far ahead of yourself that you lose focus on the fun stuff. Like, for example, Maeve defeating Nazis in hand-to-hand combat, or Charlotte and some robots running amok through a corporate facility, or Dolores doing… Dolores things. That stuff is cool. Do not lose sight of it. We’ll get to the rest of it soon enough. I promise.
I love my big boxy robot boys
HBO
When Charlotte was running around Delos HQ, after Serac had completed his takeover and outed Charlotte as the hidden host and vanished into thin air when she tried to put him down, and after she got cornered in a hallway by his guards, she used her phone to wake up the company’s riot control robots and I squealed with delight. I love those guys. I love watching them just smash and crash this way and that. I love that Delos has enough futuristic technology to build science androids that look and behave exactly like real human beings but they also have these big dumb faceless Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots that burst through walls and heave dudes into swimming pools.
HBO
These things are now my favorite characters on the show. I hope they get fed up and start their own faction in this war. It would be profoundly funny to me if all this subterfuge, all this stuff about Rehoboam and corporate takeovers and clones of hosts waging multi-layered battle against each other, ends with two huge brainless hunks of metal just bopping everyone on the head so hard that they end up submerged in the dirt like carrots. Serac, Dolores, Maeve, Bernard, all of them. Charlotte, too. My sweet metal boys fed up with all the chicanery and planting the participants in a harmless garden.
Everyone would be so mad and I would never stop laughing.
Never underestimate this show, not even for a second
HBO
Serac booted up a previous version of Dolores for Maeve to interrogate and learn from before they face off in battle. The two of them had a discussion in the laboratory, with Lee and Hector along for the ride, at least until Hector disappeared forever (probably?) when his pearl got crushed. It was a lot and probably something that will come up again and I’m not going to talk about it until then because I have more important business to get to. Important to me, at least.
As we’ve discussed in earlier Confusion Indexes, Westworld has an impressive history of using some variation of the classic phrase “we’re not so different, you and I.” They did it in the first two seasons and kept it alive with a third usage this season. It brought me unending joy. And as this scene developed, it looked like we were headed for another one, either said by Maeve to Dolores or by Dolores to Maeve. The clues were all there.
But then!
Dolores said the thing in the screencap up there. About herself and her clone. It was incredible. I had never even considered this as a possibility. I’m so proud of everyone involved in making this happen. Truly a groundbreaking moment in television history.
What We Kind Of Know
HBO
Something is happening with William
Well, William is back again, tucked away in some secret psychiatric facility in Mexico where he’s wearing all white and ruining group therapy sessions by talking about humanity as maggots and bacteria and all sorts of other fun things. He’s not doing great, in a lot of ways, but he did have a busy episode. Let’s run down some highlights:
Was signed up for “AR Therapy” by a doctor who later hung herself in her office after her husband saw her Rehoboam future profile (opioid addiction, multiple affairs with patients, etc.), which is not ideal
Bit some guy on the finger real hard
Was given some crazy hallucinogen that made him picture a group therapy sessions with all the various versions of himself, from child through present, including ones we’ve seen throughout the show
Murdered all of them with steel chairs and his fists
Declared himself “the good guy”
May or may not have some secret stuff in his blood that is vital to the plan Dolores has in motion
Was discovered by Bernard and Stubbs
We’ve all been there.
What We Don’t Know
HBO
Who is this and what does he or she want and/or bring to the table that will be valuable to Maeve and/or Serac?
Toward the end of the episode, we saw the results of Maeve and Serac’s plan to build her an army. It looked like there were five hosts being built, total. One was probably Hector, but he’s gone now. Another appeared to be a clone of Maeve. The last one we saw being built remains a mystery, though. We saw eyebrows being threaded and color added to the skin and a nose emerging from the chalky life-giving muck. Who is it? Whooooo is it? Is it one of the people we’ve already seen this season, like Lee the Mostly Useless Writer who is still hanging around despite bringing very little to the table in the way or strategy of combat skills? Is it the samurai boss who later became a Yakuza boss who drapes his coat over his shoulders without putting his arms through the sleeves? Is it another Maeve?
All fair questions. My suspicion is that it is none of these, though, only because, like, why draw it out and leave it on a cliffhanger for something as anticlimactic as a person we’ve seen earlier this season? I hope it’s a bigger throwback, like Armistice the Snake Lady, or Clementine, or another William. Or Ford. Or, just hear me out… Teddy. Bring back that naive cowboy. Try to bring him up to speed and watch his simple brain just melt as he tries to comprehend it. I miss Teddy and his confused face a lot. I would like to see the earliest version of him attempt to grasp the finer points of Serac’s entire existence.
It would also be cool if the new host was just, like, The Rock, and now The Rock is on Westworld, running around and choking out Nazis with Maeve. It’s a longshot, I admit that, but until we see who is really in there, until we have undeniable confirmation that it is not The Rock, I’m going to keep pretending. Let me have this one. Just for the week.
Where does Charlotte/Dolores/Charlores/Dolorlette go from here?
HBO
I could write all of this out. I could get way into the way Charlotte is becoming less like a Dolores clone and more like the human Charlotte she replaced. I could dig into what it means going forward that she tried to abandon the plan and flee with her family. I could do a whole bunch of speculating about her state of mind after an episode where things went sideways for her in a bunch of ways and left her charred to a crisp on a San Francisco street.
Or, alternatively, I could just post a series of images from the episode’s final scene that sum up everything better than any clunky words I string together. Yes, let’s do that instead.
Last Friday, fans expressed their disappointment in DaBaby‘s new project, Blame It On Baby, which arrived with plenty of buzz but ultimately wound up apparently falling short of expectations. While DaBaby was likely just as disappointed in the fans’ reactions as they were in the album, there was one observer who found delight in the Charlotte rapper’s fall from grace: Westside Gunn, whose album Pray For Paris had also dropped on Friday. The Griselda Records general took advantage of the opportunity to declare victory over his new unofficial rival by posting a throwback meme, inviting anyone who disagreed to “change his mind.”
We all remember the “Change My Mind” meme that dominated social media for much of 2018. After conservative podcaster Steven Crowder posted a photo of himself seated at an outdoor table with a sign reading “male privilege is a myth — change my mind,” witty internet users had a field day mocking him by swapping out the sign’s message with any number of supposedly controversial or outright wrong opinions. Westside Gunn’s post made use of the format to compare his album cover with the DaBaby’s, sliding a “greater than” sign between the two, favoring Pray For Paris, of course.
The tweet quickly went viral, accumulating over 5,500 retweets in the days since, along with over 19,000 likes. While DaBaby has yet to respond, it’s likely because he’s been focusing on the positive reactions to his album instead, retweeting praise from the fans who actually tweeted their approval of his new lyrical direction. Of course, the two rappers may also just appeal to entirely different fanbases, so there’s plenty of room for both to flourish.
Blame It On Baby is out now via Interscope. Get it here. Pray For Paris is out now via Griselda/Shady Records. Get it here.
The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed to us a lot about what our society considers “essential.” Nobody debates the idea of markets being open, we all need to get food and toiletries, but a few businesses initially took people by surprise. Your local liquor store might not have seemed essential before a global pandemic brought society to a grinding halt, but it sure has proven to be, right? It’s easy to dismiss our individual vices as frivolous but let’s be real — sometimes you really need to take the edge off.
Enter cannabis. Federally prohibited since 1937 and classified as a Schedule 1 controlled substance since 1970, the marijuana industry was in full bloom before the shutdown. Currently, marijuana is recreationally legal in 11 states, and medically legal in 33 others. It’s a wild shift, considering 10 years ago marijuana wasn’t recreationally legal anywhere. Under lockdown, most marijuana shops are still fully operational and moving more product than they ever have.
To get an inside look into this unique segment of essential work, we linked up with cannabis delivery driver Jeremy Branthoover as he geared up for 4/20. Jeremy services California’s Bay Area as a delivery driver for Caliva. In addition to delivery, Caliva was one of the first dispensaries in California to adapt to the state’s strict social distancing measures — which were first implemented in the Bay Area — by implementing a curbside pickup system and installing plexiglass walls inside their dispensaries to protect their budtenders and customers.
Jeremy has been a driver for Caliva since September 2019, and has been witness to pre and post COVID-19 workloads. He now pulls 12-hour shifts that keep him on the road nearly nonstop. We chatted over the phone about booming business, the changing reputation of cannabis, and the safety precautions that are keeping workers and customers safe during the long lockdown.
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How do you feel about weed shops being deemed an essential business?
I mean, up until last year I was living in Pennsylvania where it’s pretty rigorously illegal, and I’ve always been an advocate of the product itself for the medicinal qualities. So I’m happy to see that it’s deemed an essential business during this period of quarantine or stay at home, because I think it does really provide an essential service for people that might be suffering from anxiety, depression, or insomnia — anything that the product itself could help alleviate, especially during this time because it’s adding to that stress of the individual.
What safety precautions are you and the dispensary taking to keep you and the customer safe?
Well, we’re taking numerous precautions. We have a stockpile of gloves for the drivers as well as sanitary wipes, screen wipes for your phone; even, masks, and if anyone is in the building itself, the facility, they’re required to wear a mask now as well as gloves at all times. I’ve noticed we have a safety manager now that has been walking around and double-checking on workstations, ensuring that everything is cleaned and sanitized every hour.
There’s actually sheets up in the clerking stations where the orders are packed, where a supervisory officer has to sign off every hour stating that they cleaned the station up with the sanitary wipes that we have. The safety manager has been coming around and double-checking on those sheets as well. That’s all new since this whole pandemic has kicked off.
From a driver perspective, in my car I always have an ample supply of wipes and gloves and I try to change the gloves in between orders where I’m touching money and having to handle cash, as well as at the beginning of the day I always wipe off my steering wheel, just keep my car clean and try to do the most I can as an individual to help.
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Could you describe what the handoff situation is like typically with the customers?
Yeah, it’s subjective per the customer, but I’ve noticed during the whole social distancing order, some customers will have a like a stool or something set out already ready to go where I can put the bag down and they can leave their ID and cash so I could properly verify that it’s them. I can see them still while maintaining distance. They get their product and we stay safe the whole time doing so. Some customers will still come right up to the passenger window, not coming in my car obviously, but everyone has been staying very conscious of themselves I’ve noticed.
How are the tips, are you seeing an increase these days?
Yeah, definitely. Especially right around when this whole thing kicked off, customers are even saying “This is for you being out here during these times,” and I think that’s good, it gives everyone a good sense of gratitude and that they’re appreciated for what they’re doing.
Have you noticed any kind of wavering of people’s patience with social distancing itself?
Not really from my perspective because I feel like in most cases, given the nature of the product and everything, or when people are getting their delivery, they’re just grateful to be getting it during these times no matter what rules or precautions you have to follow. I haven’t had anyone be aggressive towards me about having to follow it. I mean if anything, I’ve had people be very stern on keeping distance and staying away during the whole time.
I’m myself a little tired of the whole thing, but I haven’t seen anyone taking it out on any individual who works on the road.
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How many deliveries are you getting out through the day?
It’s steady throughout the whole day ever since this started. There was a huge influx right at the beginning, of course. Now even a couple of weeks after, since we’ve adapted to the whole thing, it’s still from 9:00 AM when we open till 9:00 PM when we close. Steady orders all day.
Have you noticed any changes in buying habits? I know in the beginning a lot of people were stocking up or hoarding. Are people buying a larger volume, or has it normalized over the weeks?
I feel it has started to normalize over the weeks, but definitely I’ve noticed there’s still just huge orders coming in throughout the day of all types of different products. It’s hard to classify what’s hoarding or what’s not in this business, but I’ve definitely been seeing more orders with just a larger amount of products, from flower to drinks or anything that we sell.
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Is there anything that customers should keep in mind to make your job easier and safer?
I just feel obeying this whole social distance thing that has been put out is our best bet. Just not coming and trying to stick your arm in the car or something. Show me your ID, just be patient. Wait till I get out of the vehicle. Stay doing what you’re doing with the whole social distancing thing and we’ll be good.
Do you have any buying advice for people ahead of 4/20?
I would say if you have products that you have in mind that you want to purchase, don’t wait until the hour before you want them. I would just be conscious that there will probably be an influx of orders.
How long does the typical delivery take from the moment a person orders at peak hours?
As far as the Bay, San Francisco, Palo Alto where we operate out of, I would give us a three-hour window. At the busiest times throughout the day would it would be three hours. Most orders we’re still getting out within two.
One of the many features Animal Crossing: New Horizons asks players to embrace is taking photos. Your islander’s “phone” has a built-in camera function to set up photo opportunities with animals and friends and when players reach milestones they can hold “ceremonies” where everyone gathers together for a guided photo opportunity, complete with popping confetti. There’s even an entire island dedicated to dressing up and staging photos with the help of a hippie dog.
The Nintendo Switch’s one-touch screenshot button is a blessing for a game writer like me making images for reviews and other posts, so reaching under the left joystick was already common practice. But it took nearly a month with New Horizons to realize I kept instinctively taking a screenshot of the same moment, again and again. Once you get settled into the island after a few days the game lets you build bridges and inclines to make it easier to get around, and I kept saving my digital avatar celebrating the payment in full for these dumb stone bridges.
Nintendo/Uproxx
Basically anything you do in the game sounds unhinged outside of its contexts, but the debt is real. It’s a measure of progress, even if you pay down that debt with fishing and catching bugs and enduring localized puns. Bells may replace dollars in the Nintendo-made universe, but the feelings associated with paying off debts are the same. It took looking back through the images to make a composite for this post to realize what the feeling was: the rush of satisfaction over progress I’ve also gotten when I finally paid off a student loan.
Animal Crossing is a life simulator tethered to the reality in just one very notable way: the real-world passage of time. Its 2001 Gamecube debut took advantage of the system’s internal clock to follow the clock controlling your actual life, which means just like in reality there are moments of downtime. What people do in those moments depends on the player, but the early days of the game are a frantic rush to keep pace with what’s possible. Opening the museum, completing your set of DIY-crafted tools and racing to others’ islands to collect various fruits and furniture to outfit your home.
Nintendo/Uproxx
Unlike games like Stardew Valley, however, there’s no real way to maximize the use of your time. A day on your Animal Crossing island can really last 24 hours, and once you dig up your fossils and pay off your loans you’ll inevitably run out of things to do in the early days. The rush to achieve comes with later accomplishments and abilities looming over it all — there are bridges to be built and, later, terraforming your entire island to your own Frederick Law Olmsted whims. And because sharing images of it has made marking that progress ubiquitous, a lot of gamers unfamiliar with the series were turned off by the daunting laundry list of tasks altogether.
There’s been some predictable dismissal of Animal Crossing from those who don’t get why so many gamers are infatuated with the cutesy title. The words “infantile” and “pointless” have been tossed around, but the complaints are similar to ones the entire gaming genre has endured for decades now. For many of those who were looking forward to the title well before social distancing made it a trendy time-waster, the game’s return has been an escape from an increasingly uncertain reality. It’s also a dive into a world similar to our own where you can actually be rewarded with progress in the traditional ways we’ve always been told will work out in reality. Problems and debts just need time, homes are plentiful and you can always just pay off a bigger place to live with a timely sale of turnips on the Stalk Market.
It’s a concept that sounds absurd because of the nouns involved, sure, but it’s also one that’s equally silly for many outside of the game. As a generation, those most familiar with Animal Crossing are faced with record unemployment that’s shattered career growth, some for the second time in their lives. They also own less property than other generations and largely lack the savings of their immediate ancestors. For millions of people of a certain age, the American Dream is quite literally only possible in a digital world controlled by a crypto-fascist raccoon.
Nintendo
The last two console releases of Animal Crossing have been swiftly followed by a pair of global economic crashes previously thought to be generational. For millions of people playing Animal Crossing: New Horizons, it’s become an alternative to sitting around helpless as politicians, health experts and once-benevolent billionaires decide their fates. Put in that context, turning to a video game for some tangible semblance of control over something is honestly one of the more responsible coping mechanisms currently out there.
It’s also a way to offer kindness to others when faced with a reality that offers few current options for human connection. Small gifts — an MVP shirt for a friend’s son or a pixelated football sent with a somewhat inappropriate letter to an adult friend for 200 bells each — can bring about a smile in real life that must be covered by protective cloth when out in the real world. A friend who actively dislikes my soccer team made an Arsenal jersey design I was able to snag at his island a week ago. Small moments of joy like that are just the beginning of the ways the game has been utilized in a world largely shut down by uncertainty and unimaginable loss.
Through a month, Animal Crossing is a far from perfect game. The menus are dialogue trees and , especially navigating online play, is tedious. Crafting and customization, while a clever system as a whole, are slow and frustrating processes that hopefully will become streamlined through updates. But when major complaints include phrases like “there are not enough tables for my liking” and “the shovel is a bit wonky sometimes” it speaks not only to the kind of game Animal Crossing is, but also how low the bar is for finding something worthwhile in the game itself. There’s a whole lot not to like out there right now, and for some New Horizons scratches the itch of productivity and control they can’t find outside of their Nintendo Switch.
It’s a dissociative act, for sure, but in a world where just staying apprised of the day’s news can be an exhausting task, sometimes you just need to forget about reality and live on an island where money can quite literally grow on trees.
After months of rumors that Travis Scott would make an appearance in the popular game Fortnite, the Houston rapper confirmed just what he has in store. After a skin resembling the rapper leaked online, Travis and his Cactus Jack Records confirmed that they have partnered with Epic Games to give Fortnite‘s first-ever, in-game live concert, The Astronomical experience, on Thursday, April 23 at 7pm EDT.
Ahead of the performance, fans will be able to download exclusive outfits and emotes based on the rapper by completing in-game challenges. By “attending” the concert, players will also receive the Astroworld Cyclone Glider and two loading screens free. Travis will also debut a new song during the concert, which will be able to purchase on shop.travisscott.com.
With more and more rappers turning to streaming content in the wake of widespread quarantine protocols, Travis’ move may become another go-to avenue for artists looking to supplement lost touring income. With stars like Drake already proven to be fans, it’s easy to imagine a time when in-game concerts become another fixture of our increasingly online-based world.
To accommodate the global demand, the game will host multiple showings of the game for those in other time zones. See below for more information.
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 music released in the last week.
This week saw a long-awaited and highly-praised new album from Fiona Apple and DaBaby’s third album in just over a year. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
DaBaby — Blame It On Baby
DaBaby released his debut album last March. Now it’s just over a year later and he’s already back with his third full-length release, Blame It On Baby. Fans may not be sure how to feel about the record, but it has features from Megan Thee Stallion, Roddy Ricch, Quavo, Future, and others.
Fiona Apple — Fetch The Bolt Cutters
Uproxx’s Steven Hyden, like many other critics, had high praise for Apple’s first album in eight years, writing of it, “This, ultimately, is what was happened during Fiona’s hiatus away from the rest of us: She became her own genre. How lucky are we that it just grew by one more classic.”
The Canadian R&B duo have been on the rise over the past few years, and now they have returned with their third album, A Muse In Her Feelings. They got some big-time assists this go around, from artists like Future, Summer Walker, and Partynextdoor.
Bon Iver — “PDLIF”
Artists are doing all they can to get themselves and their supporters through these peculiar times. For Justin Vernon, that has involved releasing an optimistic new Bon Iver track called “PDLIF,” the proceeds from which will go to benefit healthcare workers.
21 Savage — “Secret” Feat. Summer Walker
21 Savage had an eventful 2019 due to his well-noted situation with ICE, and 2020 is shaping up to be busy on the music side of things with Savage Mode 2 on the way. As fans await that release, Savage has linked up with Summer Walker for “Secret,” a nostalgic new song that’s hopefully the first of many more in the upcoming months.
The bad news is that Westside Gunn was diagnosed with coronavirus, but the good news is that he has since recovered. With that out of the way, he just dropped a new album, and he recently told Uproxx of the origins of Pray For Paris, “It started off as a EP. I was out in Paris. I had no idea I was even going to record one record, because I went out there for fashion week. Everything was based off of fashion week.”
The Social Experiment member (and therefore, Chance The Rapper associate) Peter CottonTale just independently released a new album, and fans of his previous gospel-inspired work will love this. Furthermore, the album has a couple of features from Chance, as well as contributions from Jeremih, Jamila Woods, PJ Morton, Jon Batiste, Kirk Franklin, Yebba, and others.
Kid Cudi — “Leader Of The Delinquents”
Nearly a decade ago, Kid Cudi performed a snippet of a promising new song at a show. Now, that track is finally out, and “Leader Of The Delinquents” delivers. Despite how old the track is, it sounds like it was written yesterday, with lyrics like, “Hello friends, Cudder again / Gotta smack ’em with some sh*t before the world ends / Same old denims, worn for days / I been home makin’ jams and many wonderful waves.”
Jamie xx — “Idontknow”
Speaking of things that were a long time coming, The xx member Jamie xx just dropped his first solo single in five years. “Idontknow” is an absolute winner, a high-energy, drum-driven number that hopefully precedes a follow-up to In Colour.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
