Jessie Ware is ushering in a brand-new era. Back in November, the singer announced a pivot from her former catalog with the disco-inspired track “Mirage (Don’t Stop),” arriving on her upcoming record What’s Your Pleasure?. After February’s slow-burning “Spotlight,” Ware is back again for another preview of her album with the dance-ready track “Ooh La La.”

The euphoric track opens with a funky bassline and crashing percussion. Ware’s fun-loving vocals narrate carefree imagery of young love. “Driving fast, driving fast, technicolour street lights / Cigarettes on the dash, we can have a sweet time,” Ware sings.

In a statement about her upcoming album, Ware says she feels excited to reveal a different side of herself to the world through her music: “It feels so amazing to be back making music, so much has happened recently. Some crazy exciting things but I feel so happy to be back to my first love. Music was the first scene that truly embraced me! I feel like these last few years I’ve had to do some exploration to figure out what I wanted to write about musically again and learn new things about myself. I’ve been yearning for that escapism, groove and maybe it’s time to say goodbye to the melancholy Jessie.”

Listen to “Ooh La La” above.

What’s Your Pleasure? is out 6/19 via Virgin/Universal. Pre-order it here.

In case you’ve been spending more time than usual in your fallout shelter, you may have missed one of ESPN’s most highly-anticipated television event in some time. We’re talking, of course, about the 10-part Michael Jordan documentary that premiered last Sunday, The Last Dance.

It follows the 1997-98 Chicago Bulls during their final championship run, and over the first two hours, we’ve learned so much about the team and the character involved that it’s difficult to keep track of all the moving parts. For instance, there’s already been a whole cycle in which we’ve worried about Scottie Pippen’s financial viability, learned that he’s doing just fine, then wondered again whether he might’ve been something of a villain.

It also gave us a chance to wonder aloud about Steve Kerr, a central figure of that second three-peat, who had one of the most notorious encounters with His Airness. But not only has Kerr not held a grudge toward MJ for punching him in the face one time in practice, he believes that exchange actually strengthened their relationship in the long run.

“I feel like I passed the test and he trusted me more afterwards.”@SteveKerr discusses how a practice altercation with MJ helped grow their relationship on #NBATogether pic.twitter.com/yUwghEt513

— NBA on TNT (@NBAonTNT) April 23, 2020

We’re not sure what type of test requires being okay with getting punched in the face, so we’ll just have to take Steve’s word on this one. He seems to be okay with it, and the results speak for themselves. Anyway, Sunday can’t get here fast enough as we eagerly await what we’ll learn next about one of the most iconic sports teams of all-time.

If you wondered why “Air Force 1,” “ASAP Rocky,” or “Nelly” spent the whole day trending on Twitter yesterday, the answer is simple. The same thing happened that seems to always happen: Someone unearthed an old, out-of-context quote, put it on the timeline, and sparked a controversy that caused nearly everyone with a working internet connection to weigh in on the debate. However, in this case, one voice was conspicuously absent — the person all the controversy was about.

However, The Breakfast Club — bless them — was already on the case, securing an interview with Nelly, the man of the hour, to finally settle the debate about who made Nike’s Air Force 1s more popular: Him or ASAP Rocky. He doesn’t hesitate to take credit for himself, although he does have one caveat. “At the end of the day, we have to look at the definition of famous,” he explains.

“Don’t get it twisted, we weren’t the first to start rocking Air Force 1s, we wasn’t the first ones that discovered Air Force 1s. But when you say ‘made em famous’ you gotta understand that Air Force 1s were more of a New York east coast thing. We didn’t rock Air Force 1s in the south or the midwest, they wasn’t rocking them on the west coast. Until we did what we did, Air Force 1s went from 59.99 to a hundred dollars in a year. The same year after we made our song, shot our video, and had our tour. I don’t know what A$AP is on, or whatever he’s talking about, but if he’s in any doubt all he gotta do is ask Nike. They sponsored our whole tour that year. We had a whole Air Force 1 that flew from the back of the stadium to the front of the stage during every show.”

When the hosts push back, saying that Rocky probably just meant he made them cool again — after all, about 10 years had passed between Nelly’s “Air Force Ones” single and Rocky’s rise to stardom — Nelly can’t see it. “He brought it back for the kids?” he challenges incredulously. “I don’t know, the price never changed my dude! We took em from $59.00 to $100.00! They never came back down my dude!”

At the end of the day, though, Nelly says, “I’m not doubting what A$AP feels, shout out to A$AP, to all them young bruthas, I fuck with all of them young bruthas.” However, he is adamant that credit is given where he feels it’s due. “We said who made them famous,” he reminds the hosts. “How we not make em’ famous, my dude?”

Watch Nelly’s interview with The Breakfast Club above.

The Kansas City Chiefs, by nature of winning the Super Bowl, had the final pick in the first round of the 2020 NFL Draft. The Chiefs don’t have a ton of glaring holes, but one spot where they could have used a little help was running back. As such, they opted to draft former LSU ace Clyde Edwards-Helaire.

While Edwards-Helaire was not as high on the big boards of many prognosticators as guys like J.K. Dobbins, D’Andre Swift, and Jonathan Taylor, his ability as a pass catcher and as someone who can make defenders miss should be stunning in Kansas City’s relentless offense. It is a perfect mix of team and player, and as an added bonus, the move is popular in the eyes of the Chiefs’ franchise player.

According to Kansas City coach Andy Reid, the team phoned starting quarterback Patrick Mahomes and asked who he wanted with the pick. Mahomes responded with Edwards-Helaire, and soon after, the pick was made.

With how much firepower the Chiefs’ offense already possesses, giving them a player like Edwards-Helaire is almost unfair. Comparisons are oftentimes made between himself and guys like Brian Westbrook or Darren Sproles, while his performance in LSU’s win over Alabama last season showed that he’s capable of doing a little bit of everything. It makes a whole lot of sense that Mahomes would want him a player like him, and now, Edwards-Helaire is headed to the champs.

Jason Isbell & The 400 Unit are just about ready to unveil their upcoming record Reunions. The album’s release is just around the corner, but the group is keeping fans at bay by sharing a handful of singles. Following the most recent track “Only Children,” the group has shared the nostalgic track “Dreamsicle.”

Opening with intricate guitar picking, “Dreamsicle” arrives as both a triumphant and nostalgic effort. With his textured vocals, Isbell narrates the story of a boy coming-of-age and having a difficult time realizing he has to leave the town he grew up in. “Broken glass and broken vows / I’ll be 18 four years from now / With different friends in a different town / I’ll finally be free,” he sings. The story reflects Isbell’s journey, who left home at just 14 to join his first touring band.

Just ahead of the “Dreamsicle” release, Isbell announced that they are offering a way for fans to get ahold of Reunions early while also supporting local businesses. The band is releasing physical copies of the album to independent record stores across the country a week ahead of its scheduled release. This way, fans will be able to get their hands on the vinyl while keeping their favorite local record stores in business.

Listen to “Dreamsicle” above.

Reunions is out 5/15 via Southeastern Records. Pre-order it here

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A lot of artists are taking to platforms like Instagram Live and YouTube to put on livestream concerts for their fans, but other artists are approaching livestreaming in different ways. For example, Lizzo and SZA recently decided to team up to host a meditation session.

Lizzo guested on SZA’s live broadcast, and once the two got settled, SZA tried her hand at playing a Tibetan singing bowl, and of course, Lizzo brought out her trusty woodwind to complete the fully zen atmosphere. When the pair wasn’t setting the mood, they also chatted about how their lives have been during the pandemic.

This wasn’t Lizzo’s first rodeo with meditations: She hosted one by herself in March, for which she also had her instrument on hand, as well as crystals and incense.

Musicians are all about relaxation these days. Earlier this week, Diddy and Nick Jonas teamed up with Audible to release some stress-reducing program: Diddy offers a guided meditation, while the Jonas Brother helps you drift off to sleep by reading a bedtime story.

Let Lizzo and SZA guide you through a meditation in the video above.

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

For five seasons of Better Call Saul, we have all been so focused on the moment that Jimmy McGill transforms into Saul Goodman that we didn’t seem to notice that Kim Wexler may have been transforming into Kim Goodman until the moment that she turned around and gave us the finger guns. We shouldn’t be surprised, I suppose. This is what the Breaking Bad universe is about: What makes a good person turn bad? We’ve seen that question explored with Walter White, with Jesse Pinkman, with Skyler White, with Mike Ehrmantraut and with Jimmy McGill. It probably shouldn’t have come as a surprise to see Kim Wexler’s moral compass fall out of whack, as well.

There are a number of theories we have had to explain Kim Wexler’s absence in Breaking Bad over the years. Maybe she dies. Maybe she leaves Jimmy (for Howard Hamlin, even). Maybe Jimmy dumps Kim for her own good. Maybe Kim’s career becomes collateral damage to one of Jimmy’s schemes. Maybe she and Jimmy remain together, but she isn’t privy to Saul Goodman’s shenanigans on Breaking Bad.

What few people could have predicted, however, is that Better Call Saul may also be a breaking-bad journey for Kim Wexler, too. She is just as capable of acting amorally in pursuit of just ends. Some may say that this journey is different for Kim Wexler because she’s doing it for the right reasons — she wants to open up a pro bono practice and help the downtrodden. Yes, but Walter White’s motivations were also initially pure, to make enough money to support his family after his death. So were Mike Ehrmantraut’s, to support his son’s family. And so were Jimmy’s motivations: all he ever wanted was to impress his brother, Chuck. And then to impress his girlfriend-turned-wife, Kim Wexler. In the end, in fact, it is Jimmy who gets pulled into this life, partially against his will by Nacho, who gives him no choice but to defend Lalo, who gives Jimmy no choice but to fetch the $7 million bond money. It was Jimmy’s choice to associate with unscrupulous people, but he did not necessarily choose to be a lawyer for the cartel.

Kim Wexler, on the other hand, appears to be taking this path voluntarily and with eyes wide open. She is so convinced of her own righteousness that she is willing to destroy Howard Hamlin’s life and career in pursuit of it. There is hubris in that; the same kind of hubris that destroyed Walter White. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn next season, in fact, that Kim pushed Saul deeper into his line of work so that he could support her public interest career. She may have convinced both herself and Jimmy that his work with Gus and Mike and Walter White was all in pursuit of “the greater good.”

“Tthe greater good,” however, is a dangerously slippery slope. What if Kim Wexler destroys Hamlin’s life in pursuit of her own moral agenda? What if Hamlin dies? What if the guilt of that combined with Jimmy’s obvious PTSD breaks Jimmy mentally? What is Saul Goodman is a manifestation of Jimmy’s deep-seated guilt and other mental problems? What if Saul Goodman ends up being the Jesse Pinkman to Kim Wexler’s Heisenberg? What if …

No one knows exactly what will happen in the sixth and final season of Better Call Saul, not even the writers, who have just sat down to start work on the final season. I think, however, that we can make one assumption: that Kim Wexler probably does not die. That would not square with Vince Gilligan’s own prediction that Saul will have a better ending than Breaking Bad. Rhea Seehorn — who plays Kim Wexler — also believes that killing her off to get rid of her would be “way too simple.”

Viewers want to see Kim and Gene Taković reunite after the events of Breaking Bad. Viewers want to know what Kim Wexler was doing while Saul Goodman was advising Walter White to put a hit out on Jesse Pinkman. We don’t know what Kim Wexler’s role will be during that time frame, but we have for too long underestimated Kim Wexler’s capacity for bending the rules to get what she wants. She did everything right in her career, and she still ended up in a miserable job working with the likes of Kevin Wachtell and Howard Hamlin and Richard Schweikart to advance the interests of… banks. Now Kim Wexler wants to pursue more noble ends, but she understands that she may have to commit a light felony or three in that pursuit. We should not underestimate her ability to do so, because all we have done for five seasons is underestimate Kim Wexler. We underestimated her attachment to Jimmy. We underestimated her disdain for people like Howard Hamlin. And we have underestimated her eagerness to get her hands dirty for the right cause.

We know the danger that Saul Goodman poses. He wears his morally dubious personality on his sleeve. What’s so remarkable about Kim Wexler is that she might just be another form of Saul Goodman, disguised by a ponytail and a conservative suits, who wraps herself in moral pursuits. It’ll be very interesting to see how that plays out in the final season.

The improv comedy world simultaneously celebrated and mourned this week, as Middleditch And Schwartz brought the first-ever longform improv specials to Netflix on the same day that the New York iteration of the Upright Citizens Brigade theater announced they would be shuttering their flagship Hell’s Kitchen performance space as well as their training center. The announcement came after a string of well-documented financial struggles that were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the move uptown from Chelsea to Hell’s Kitchen in December of 2017, UCB took a stab at coming out of the underground and trying to integrate its nightly shenanigans into the real New York City Theater-with-a-capital-T community.

“Hell’s Kitchen was an amazing opportunity to perform in a legit theatre on 42nd Street,” remembers Connor Ratliff, a longtime UCB alum who criss-crosses through The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel as a guest star. “Whenever I was doing a show there and it was going really well, I would sometimes think, ‘wow, this is like a $12 show and I bet right now there are people down the street who paid hundreds of dollars to see something that isn’t quite as good as this.’”

But for an organization founded on the principles of DIY ethics and punk rock comedy, the attempts to “legitimize” the space exposed vulnerabilities in the governing structures, most notably the fact that the theater’s performers were not paid and expected to perform — and earn revenue for the theater — for not much more than “the love of the craft.” The move to Hell’s Kitchen also signaled the organization officially biting off more than they could chew, subsequently launching UCB into a state of disarray and financial struggles that resulted in mass layoffs and the ultimate shuttering of the New York venture as a whole.

Much has been said about UCB as a breeding ground for comedy legends, and as one of the last semblances of the counter culture in New York City. With its first theater in the city located underneath a supermarket in a (slightly) remodeled strip club, going to UCB Chelsea really felt like you were part of something special and truly underground, in a city where it feels increasingly difficult to find such a thing. But as the organization continued to expand throughout the city, from Chelsea to the East Village, and ultimately to its own training center in a Midtown Manhattan office building and flagship theater in Hell’s Kitchen, UCB became more than just a hot spot for silly goofs and future celebrities.

It created a community that made New York City a bit smaller, where most everyone that walked through the doors of the theater or training center was in search of something similar. At the training center, you could see people walking through the halls that you recognized from shows like Broad City, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, or even Stranger Things, and know that the playing field was, in a way, leveled. After all, you were both in the same place, at the same time, for a couple of hours of adult playtime.

“I learned more in my Improv 101 at UCB than I had learned in 5 years of acting training,” notes Ratliff, whose recent projects include the incredible Dead Eyes podcast, which follows Ratliff’s quest to figure out why Tom Hanks fired him from a guest role in 2001’s Band Of Brothers. “There is an image of an improv class being a bunch of people jumping around like idiots, but I learned how to be a more thoughtful performer and a more thoughtful person, generally. One of the best classes I ever had at UCB happened because an improv set went so horrifically off the rails that the teacher talked to us for 45 minutes about why it is important to think about why you’re even on stage as a performer, that you can’t just put pure nihilism onstage just because it’s shocking.”

Perhaps most importantly, however, UCB popularized a form of cognitive behavioral therapy delivered under the guise of comedy training. Students are forced out of their comfort zones and to conquer their social insecurities — if you can make a fool of yourself and make a room of strangers laugh, why not go ahead and voice your opinion in a work meeting, or stop thinking about the stain on your shirt at a party? The comedy in an improv scene doesn’t come from making jokes, but rather from just being a fucking weirdo. Rather than suppress your quirks in an attempt to fit in, UCB encouraged you to embrace your weird and exploit it, and that’s something that can never be forsaken, especially in light of the organizational struggles.

“No matter how you feel about UCB, you can agree that there was a strong community there,” notes Ian Abramson, creator, host, and full multi-character cast of Saturday Night Quarantine, which streams weekly on Twitch. Now, with Saturday Night Live starting to make a remote comeback, Abramson has elected to move his show to Sunday night, as to not compete. “I think that the most positive thing about comedy institutions is the community that they can help organize. [But] an institution owes it to its community to support the people in that community, in whatever way it can. I think the only way that you could ignore the community that you fostered in its time of need is with the philosophy of ‘don’t think.’”

Along with fundraising efforts like Mike Birbiglia’s ‘Tip Your Waitstaff’ livestream series, Saturday Night Quarantine is one of many ways that the community is taking matters into their own hands with these institutions closed or indefinitely on pause. “Creativity will take the shape of whatever it’s inside of,” Abramson explains.

In the case of Saturday Night Quarantine, the sketch show started out as a bit on Twitter, before evolving into a weekly sketch show written and performed, in full, by one person. As it turns out, this type of insanity is what people are flocking to in an attempt to shut out the true insanity awaiting them outside their home. Each week, a few hundred people tune in to watch Abramson perform for an hour. “We’re having a really great time trying to make this happen and I would love to keep doing it in some form or another, until it doesn’t make sense to.”

Despite the closures of all official UCB locations, the organization’s founders Amy Poehler, Matt Besser, Ian Roberts, and Matt Walsh (known as the UCB4) have declared in a lengthy letter to their staff that “UCB is not leaving New York City. The school and the theater will continue on in a pared-down form, which will be very similar to how we operated when we first started in NYC over 20 years ago.” As such, UCB-branded shows will still continue at venues such as SubCulture in Greenwich Village, while classes will be taught “at various locations across the city that we will rent on a per-class basis,” similar to upstart comedy ventures like the Brooklyn Comedy Collective.

Even so, the shuttering of UCB’s New York City theater and training center are a massive blow to the community, one that leaves a gaping hole begging to be filled. But instead of wallowing, let’s raise a glass to Two Trenchcoats In A Kid.

Earl Sweatshirt is back again after the release of his Feet Of Clay EP, dropping off the woozy single “Whole World” featuring fellow LA underground rapper Maxo. “Whole World” has a hazy, guitar-strumming beat courtesy of The Alchemist, who recently completed a whole EP with gritty New York rapper Conway The Machine. For around three minutes and thirty seconds, Earl and Maxo trade introspective, intricate bars about self-reflection and the skeletons in their respective closets.

Late in 2019, Earl found another outlet for his crowded, cloudy thoughts via a sit-down discussion with distinguished law professor Cheryl I. Harris — who just so happens to also be his mom — at Los Angeles’ Museum Of Contemporary Art. Over the course of the conversation, they touched on Earl’s sudden rise to fame in the last decade with Tyler The Creator and the Odd Future crew, as well as the unintended results of garnering an impassioned fanbase that didn’t yet understand the lines between themselves and the public figures they admired.

Earl previously teamed up with The Alchemist on the 2018 track “E. Coli” from The Alchemist’s Bread EP. Meanwhile, Maxo is a little over a year removed from his Lil Big Man album.

Listen to “Whole World” above.

Earl Sweatshirt is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.