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Every second has felt like an hour for Swifties since early May when Taylor Swift confirmed her re-recorded Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) album during one of her The Eras Tour shows in Nashville.

Swift is preparing to stage back-to-back The Eras Tour concerts at GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri on Friday, July 7, and Saturday, July 8, and she’s bringing a one-of-one souvenir. We’re only hours away from the release of Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) at 9 p.m. PST and midnight EST.

Speak Now originally arrived in October 2010 as her third LP, and Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is the third of her re-recorded albums. Fearless (Taylor’s Version) and Red (Taylor’s Version) preceded it in April 2021 and November 2021, respectively. Both of those albums debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. It’s probably the safest assumption imaginable that Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) will become Swift’s 12th career No. 1 album — the most recent one being last October’s Midnights.

Swift leveled with her fans before they collectively revisit her Speak Now era while performing at US Bank Stadium in Minneapolis, Minnesota in late June, seemingly trying to preempt any online harassment that might be headed John Mayer’s way after “Dear John” reenters the mainstream.

“I’m putting this album out because I want to own my music, and I believe that any artist who has the desire to own their music should be able to. That’s why I’m putting out this album,” she said, in part. “I’m 33 years old. I don’t care about anything that happened to me when I was 19, except the songs I wrote and the memories we made together. So what I’m trying to tell you is I’m not putting this album out so you can go and should feel the need to defend me on the internet against someone you think I might have written a song about.”

On Wednesday, July 5, Swift also announced 14 additional international The Eras Tour dates for 2024 with Paramore serving as her opener. See those dates here.

Speak Now (Taylor’s Version) is out 7/7 via Republic. Find more information here.

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

Much has changed since Drake last headlined a North American tour in 2018. For example, concertgoers have a new favorite activity that’s strange, at best, and harmful, at worst: Throwing stuff at artists on stage.

Drake opened his and 21 Savage’s It’s All A Blur Tour at Chicago’s United Center on Wednesday night, July 5. The setlist spanned 50-plus songs, meaning Drake had to spend a lot of time on stage — enough time for someone to inexplicably launch a phone in his direction.

A TikTok posted by Jordyn Taylor shows Drake singing Ginuwine’s “So Anxious” when a phone grazes his arm. He looks at it confusedly but doesn’t stop singing. Off camera, people can be heard asking, “What was that?” Someone else yells, “A phone!” Taylor wrote, “Someone threw a phone at papi” atop the TikTok.

It was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment in a set full of spectacle including a larger-than-life Virgil Abloh statue and a younger version of Drake that might or might be a hologram.

According to several fan accounts, Drake also assured fans he has “an album coming out soon,” which is presumably the For All The Dogs album he previously teased around the release of his poetry book a few weeks ago.

Drake and Savage’s It’s All A Blur Tour will return to United Center on Thursday night, July 6. See all of the dates here.

The era of popular, prestigious miniseries has been a gift for fans who would love to see a beloved book adapted but don’t want it smushed into a movie’s feeble runtime. Now, fans of Holly Ringland’s wildly popular novel can rejoice at seeing a stellar cast bring that harrowing story to life.

Here’s the official synopsis:

“When Alice, aged 9, tragically loses her parents in a mysterious fire, she is taken to live with her grandmother June at Thornfield flower farm, where she learns that there are secrets within secrets about her and her family’s past. Set against Australia’s breathtaking natural landscape, and with native wildflowers and plants providing a way to express the inexpressible, this enthralling family drama spans decades. As she grows from her complicated past, Alice’s journey builds to an emotional climax when she finds herself fighting for her life against a man she loves. Sigourney Weaver stars as June Hart, Asher Keddie as Sally Morgan, Leah Purcell as Twig North, Frankie Adams as Candy Blue, and Alycia Debnam-Carey as Alice Hart.”

No surprise that it’s from the producers of Big Little Lies and Nine Perfect Strangers. The trailer is giving off the same kind of moody drama vibes.

Plus, there must be an interesting crossover between fans of the novel and fans of women kicking ass in space because Weaver and Adams have got PhDs in intergalactic beatdowns.

The first three episodes land on Prime Video August 4th, with a new episode coming out each week until the finale on September 1st.

The Portland Trail Blazers will keep Matisse Thybulle around going forward. On Wednesday, Thybulle agreed to an offer sheet with the Dallas Mavericks that would pay him $33 million over the next three seasons, and because Thybulle was a restricted free agent, the Blazers had two days to make a decision on whether or not they’d match it and bring him back.

One day later and Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reports that Portland will, indeed, match the offer and keep Thybulle around its core of young, talented guards.

It’s not a huge surprise that the Blazers would want to keep Thybulle, whose defensive versatility is an excellent fit alongside the Scoot Henderson, Shaedon Sharpe, and Anfernee Simons. Add in the fact that he was a pretty solid three-point shooter when he got to Portland last year — he connected on 38.8 percent of his attempts and 41.5 percent of his corner threes — and this is a sensible bet for Portland to make.

As for the Mavericks, they were able to find a three-and-D option that can slot alongside Luka Doncic and Kyrie Irving elsewhere in the restricted free agency market. It was reported on Wednesday night that the team was part of a three-team trade with the Boston Celtics that saw them land Grant Williams, who will join the Mavs on a 4-year, $53 million deal.

Ron DeSantis‘ latest campaign ad is continuing to do him no favors. Launched just before the holiday weekend, the odd video attacks Donald Trump for being too soft on the LGBTQ community while championing DeSantis and his “anti-woke” initiatives. In essence, it touts DeSantis as the more bigoted candidate.

However, at the same time, the campaign spot compares the Florida governor to oiled-up Hollywood muscle men like Brad Pitt in Troy and Christian Bale in American Psycho, which is a particularly odd choice given Bale’s character is a serial killer. (The video also featured a clip from Peaky Blinders, which earned a now-viral rebuke from the popular series.)

Again, the DeSantis campaign video was very weird, and Morning Joe guest Donny Deutsch went to town on the “bizarre” video that only further highlighted DeSantis’ awkward performance on the national stage.

Via Mediaite:

DeSantis is such a dark, dark, dark character. I’ve talked a lot about in the show how at the end of the day, a candidate, Trump even though, you know, we eviscerate him and– there is a likability, if you’re a Trump guy, about him, he’s entertaining. He’s a lounge act. He’s this, and that.

This guy. he’s just dark, the Prince of Darkness. That is one of the darkest, most bizarre, twisted, deviant ads I’ve ever seen.

MSNBC analyst Mara Gay also weighed in by calling the DeSantis campaign ad “kind of homoerotic” to which Deutsch agreed. “I’m smiling because of what a gay friend of mine said, ‘Was that an anti-gay ad? I saw a lot of Brad Pitt looking hot.’”

(Via Mediaite)

Olivia Rodrigo just returned with the vicious single “Vampire” from her sophomore album Guts, which follows a complex, failed relationship.

Journalist Jia Tolentino addressed the lyrical content of this track in her new interview with Rodrigo for Vogue, asking if she’s in a relationship. Though Rodrigo couldn’t answer in a straightforward fashion, she reacted to having her relationships viewed in a public light, and revealed an unexpected fact about herself involving Harry Styles:

“It’s an interesting thing to think about,” she says, diplomatically, about the public interest in her relationships, which she weathered in extremity while she was still in high school. “I understand it. I could sit here and be like, ‘I don’t get why people do that,’ but I do it so often.” (Earlier, we’d talked about how her first internet passion was Harry Styles fan fiction.)

“I was upset about a certain situation and went to the studio alone and sat down at the grand piano, and the chords and melody and lyrics just poured out of me — almost like an out-of-body experience,” Rodrigo said about the song in a statement upon its release. “It’s a song about feeling confused and hurt, and at first I thought it was meant to be a piano ballad. But when Dan and I started working on it, we juxtaposed the lyrics with these big drums and crazy tempo changes. So now it’s like a heartbreak song you can dance to.”

Guts is out 9/8 via Geffen. Find more information here.

Earlier this year, I was faced with a surreal, worlds-collide moment when Lil Uzi Vert popped out at Wrestlemania at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles to perform their increasingly inescapable hit “Just Wanna Rock.” Just a month before, I had seen him perform the same song during his sub-headlining set at Rolling Loud, basically at the same venue, just outside. The first time, I was there to cover the music; the second, I’d been invited by a wrestling-obsessed friend who had floor seats for the main event.

Here we are, three months later, and Uzi’s new album, Pink Tape, features a similar dizzying moment of professional and personal crossover. The late-album song “Nakamura” actually samples the ring entrance music of WWE wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura, someone Uzi undoubtedly sees as something of a kindred spirit. Wrestlers, in general, are kind of weird (to me), but Nakamura takes it a step further with flamboyant, borderline androgynous ring gear and a demeanor somewhere between very intense and incredibly stoned.

Rap fans love to talk about what “the Rap Game needs” because rap fans love to complain about what the “Rap Game” isn’t. The format has evolved so much from what it once was that its followers often feel caught in the lurch between always chasing the newest, latest thing and nostalgically wishing to return to the moment the genre was perfect for what they wanted (coincidentally, this time always seems to overlap with whenever a particular listener happened to be in eighth grade). Thank God we have Lil Uzi Vert, who can do both.

When Uzi first popped up on the scene from the primordial soup of SoundCloud, old-school rap heads were furious. Here was this kid from the streets of Philadelphia who seemingly bought all their clothes from Hot Topic and had pink dreads and facial piercings, as prone to yowling into the mic for extended bouts or hypnotically repeating a seemingly nonsense phrase over and over as spit a hot 16 full of punchlines and gun talk. Uzi wasn’t “real hip-hop,” and certainly couldn’t really rap. Except that Uzi was as much real hip-hop as the yay-slanging studio gangsters of yesteryear and actually could really rap their ass off if they wanted to — they just didn’t think they had to.

Now that Uzi is an established fixture of the hip-hop mainstream, they could have laid off the wild stylistic experimentation, gotten complacent, and just continued doing the same stuff that got them here. Instead, on Pink Tape they are doing stuff like covering System Of A Down’s signature hit “Chop Suey,” which has experienced a resurgence in popularity thanks to Zoomers on TikTok — people that grew with Lil Uzi Vert as their musical heroes the way millennials did with Jay-Z. Is it nostalgia that drove Uzi to record the cover or contemporary awareness? Who cares? It’s cool, whatever we who grew up on the original think.

Uzi straddles multiple genres across Pink Tape, opening the album with in-your-face braggadocio raps and immediately swerving into screeching trap metal on the very next song. There are screaming electric guitars and thundering 808s, futuristic anime references, squeaky voice crooning (645AR is somewhere punching the air), Eiffel 65 samples, horror-movie strings, and more. If anything here isn’t your cup of tea, don’t worry — something on the tape probably is.

The “rap game” — an inaccurate moniker, shout out to Vince Staples — needs artists like Lil Uzi Vert to remind us that hip-hop has always been on the cutting edge, not stuck in the same, capitalism-serving patterns of “what works” (read: sells) already. That hip-hop was always for weirdos and misfits who did stuff like watch wrestling and read comics and played video games. Busta Rhymes once name-checked Hacksaw Jim Duggan; the Wu-Tang Clan members gave themselves nicknames like Tony Stark and Johnny Blaze; The Notorious B.I.G. started a verse boasting he had a Super Nintendo and a Sega Genesis.

Somewhere along the way as we grow up, we get stuck in what rap used to sound like and start thinking that’s the only thing it should ever sound like. Uzi’s primal scream, anything-goes, try-it-and-see-if-it-sticks approach to music is here to shake us out of that complacency and boredom. Even if it doesn’t always work — let’s keep it real: most of this isn’t really for me, personally — it’s there to open up a new avenue that hasn’t been tried yet. It’s there to pay homage to what did work but to ask, “What if we tried something new?” Lil Uzi Vert indulges all their impulses to make it possible to see what happens like Nakamura climbing to the top rope. You don’t know what you’re going to see next, but you know it’s going to be special.

Pink Tape is out now via Atlantic.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

People have an inordinate interest in Olivia Rodrigo’s romantic interests because she writes so brutally honestly about relationships gone wrong. Rodrigo’s singer-songwriter introduction to the world was “Drivers License,” inciting constant and intense speculation around Joshua Bassett.

Rodrigo’s latest single, “Vampire,” is less than one week into its existence and already having the same effect — leading Rodrigo to address her fans’ guesses as to the identity of the bloodsucking “fame f*cker” in the form of a TikTok joke.

There is no such ambiguity about Rodrigo’s celebrity crush.

The 20-year-old three-time Grammy winner was revealed this morning (July 6) as Vogue‘s August cover star, formalizing her Guts album rollout. Within the accompanying profile by Jia Tolentino, Rodrigo shares that Bruce Springsteen is her “biggest celebrity crush of all time.”

The excerpt places Rodrigo and Tolentino in a record store, where they spot a Springsteen live recording from 1984. Tolentino describes the record’s title as saying, “PORN IN THE USA!” Rodrigo says, “I think I might have to get this for my new apartment. Yeah, you’re coming home with me.”

Rodrigo joined Billy Joel on stage at Madison Square Garden to perform “Deja Vu” and “Uptown Girl” last August. The next logical step is for her to perform somehow, somewhere with Springsteen.

Check out Rodrigo’s Vogue cover spread below.

Guts is out 9/8 via Geffen Records. Find more information here.

Drake and 21 Savage’s It’s All A Blur Tour kicked off last night in Chicago, bringing all of the shenanigans and fascinating imagery we’ve come to expect from the Canadian superstar. In addition to teasing his next album, ostensibly titled For All The Dogs, and showing off a statue of the late Virgil Abloh, Drake’s stage dressing included a body double representing his younger self. The pair sits on a couch as Drake “reads” from a notebook while performing his loving ode to his mom, “Look What You’ve Done.” Some are assuming it’s a hologram, but the jury’s still out.

Check out some videos of the Drake double below, along with the remaining tour dates. You can see the setlist here.

07/08 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
07/09 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena
07/11 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden
07/12 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden
07/14 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
07/15 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre
07/17 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
07/18 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
07/20 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
07/21 – Brooklyn, NY @ Barclays Center
07/23 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
07/25 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
07/26 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden
07/28 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
07/29 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
07/31 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
08/01 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center
08/03 – Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum
08/12 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
08/13 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
08/15 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
08/16 – Inglewood, CA @ Kia Forum
08/18 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
08/19 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center
08/21 – Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena
08/22 – Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena
08/25 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
08/26 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena
08/28 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
08/29 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena
09/01 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
09/02 – Las Vegas, NV @ T-Mobile Arena
09/05 – Glendale, AZ @ Desert Diamond Arena
09/06 – Glendale, AZ @ Desert Diamond Arena
09/08 – Denver, CO @ Ball Arena
09/11 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center
09/14 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
09/15 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center
09/17 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
09/18 – Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
09/20 – New Orleans, LA @ Smoothie King Center
09/22 – Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center
09/25 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
09/26 – Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
09/28 – Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center
09/29 – Miami, FL @ Kaseya Center
10/01 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
10/02 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
10/05 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena
10/07 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena

Welcome back, leisurely body of water appreciators, to NBA Summer Vacation Watch! Since our inaugural dispatch, the getaways have been going strong and summer has officially kicked into high gear. Signs of this include Buddy Hield returning to the Bahamas (sort of the NBA SVW version of “nature is healing”) and Euro trips to the big three of Italy, France, and Greece continuing to trend. Signs also include a certain Fourth of July “white party” in the Hamptons, but every outlet from Vogue to Fox News covers that, and we prefer to go off the beaten track of respite reporting here. Plus, you know nobody got into what looked like a beautiful pool, lest they wreck their pre-wrinkled linens. Can Tom Brady swim?

I digress. Give us the sweltering summer goods! You’re all hollering at the screen. And I intend to.

Jimmy Butler

Butler was in Rio de Janeiro and took some time out of hanging with footy friends to play game where you play ping pong with a soccer ball, or soccer with a ping pong table, and then skipped rocks down by the river.

Rating: Trust Jimmy to squeeze all the usable, improvable hours out of summer vacation.

Luka Doncic

Doncic is – I’m going to venture a guess based on the Google mapping I’ve done of the northern part of the Adriatic Sea that abuts Slovenia – home for the summer, and sorry to bury the recreational watercraft lede, he’s ripping around in his new zippy watercraft! Could it be bigger? Sure. But why? This thing is going to get you where you need to go, corners like a dream, and best of all you can claim there’s no room/safety hazard when all of your freeloading friends want to come hang out on it for the day.

Rating: Just Luka and the open seas!

Pascal Siakam

After what we in the biz would call a particularly dank season for the Toronto Raptors, it’s nice to see Siakam jetted off to the tropics to have a chill and beautiful vacation. He’s got a beach umbrella, an infinity pool right beside that umbrella on the beach, matching vacation leisurewear, a bag of ice to put on his head in the hot sun, and a stack of pancakes.

Rating: If this column were ever about trades, which it will never be, I’d say the aforementioned list are pretty decent terms.

Shai Gilgeous-Alexander

Shai went home to Toronto to celebrate Canada Day, the superior early July holiday that falls three days prior to the American Fourth of July. That’s a giant chrysanthemum burst firework going off in the background, reflected in the deep, cool waters of Lake Ontario.

Rating: People always say Montreal is the most “European” of Canadian cities, but that patio bistro set? SGA’s lugtread patent loafers? The deeply aloof yet casually celebratory feeling emanating from this photo? Eat your heart out, all of France!

Russell Westbrook

The Brodie takes Paris! Specifically, for a special show of his own Honor The Gift line. Lots of league favs were in attendance to support the man of the hour, but Russ also had time to put a beautiful cornucopia of fit pics together for us here.

Singling out this one because if you’re an NBA guy in Paris and you don’t do the “I’m picking up the Louvre Pyramid with my fingers” perspective pic, were you even an NBA guy in Paris?

Rating: The Louvre has since replaced the Mona Lisa with this photo.

Buddy Hield

As mentioned in the intro, Buddy Hield has returned to the Bahamas! He’s going to have plenty of working out on the beach to do (the only person that will ever be featured doing so here), but first he took a quick spin out to check in and catch up with the only other famous locals that can hold a candle to him, the swimming pigs.

Rating: Sorry it’s not the whole video but picture Hield chuckling and asking the pigs what’s good and there you have it, a cinema of the mind.

Kyle Kuzma

Kuz did indeed attend the well-covered white party, which was why he was in the Hamptons, but before he did he lounged by a very nice looking pool (two-tier, hot tub foreground and probably saltwater background) and showed off a new hair color in honor of staying in D.C.

Rating: I have no idea if that’s what the hair color was for but I feel deeply in my bones that G-Wiz would approve of the tone.

Myles Turner

Turner, we know (because we told you last time), was in Milan for fashion week, but then he took some time off the runways to hit the coastal waterways of the Amalfi Coast, with a stop in Capri.

He also did a quick run into those majestic, ancient hills of the Lattari Mountain range and took a bite out of the perfect slice to recover.

Rating: I can’t explain the specific math and logic of Summer Vacation, precisely, but the melon and languid coastal breeze cancels out the working out.

D’Angelo Russell

DLo and his family are in Croatia, likely enjoying the off the beaten track beaches they were getting to when they took this boat that went lightly skimming across the bay adjacent to the Adriatic Sea — if they hurry, they can probably easily catch up with Luka Doncic.

Rating: NBA SVW is anti-vacation location gatekeeping (like, in a general location sense, not in a paparazzi lurking around exact location sense) and DLo is with us!

Josh Okogie

When we last caught up with Okogie he, too, was in Milan for fashion week. He’s since been seen ripping around Europe like a Napoleon reborn (in terms of countries visited and miles traveled, not general demeanor or conquering tendencies). He’s made stops in London, Capri, and now Rome, where he played a pickup game with some teenagers, one of whom has a vertical block that might already have Popovich on the phone. This guy is already in the running for NBA SVW MVP.

Rating: I did see the spaghetti coming!!

Delon Wright

https://www.instagram.com/delonwright/?hl=en

Perpetual ray of sunshine Delon Wright was in Paris for vacation, but also for Westbrook’s Honor The Gift launch. In case you were panicking: Don’t. He also did the picking up the Louvre Pyramid photo.

Rating: Fit pic by a fountain that looks like it’s blasting out of you is a new, and great one.

Norman Powell

A friend saw me share these photos of Norman Powell on a nice, relaxing, rent a villa for all your best dudes vacationing in Greece trip, and said they thought it was me. Which: Thank you! But: Alas.

Rating: No offense to Norm, but I’m not sure Marcus Aurelius’, who is heavily quoted in The Daily Stoic Journal, could even conceive of infinity, let alone an infinity pool. Exalted Emp(eror)? More like summer simp.

Lou Williams

Big news! Newly retired Lou Williams is taking his new downtime seriously, and was handed the keys to the holiday grill this long weekend. Williams started off a little warily, listing all the things that would come under his supervision — hot dogs, burgers, chicken — but got right down to business in that snappy red Starbucks apron.

Rating: Not to mix up our ancient civs, but I’m pretty sure Lou Williams cooking you a hot dog is somebody’s form of Valhalla.

Patrick Beverley

Pat Bev landed in Nice (nice), then zoomed over to Ibiza, Spain, like the easy breezy summer skipping stone that he is. Pretty sure the “IYKYK” caption is regarding these jet skis, but it might also be referring to the vast and unknowable depths of the ocean itself.

Rating: Pretty sure it’s just the jet skis.

Terrence Ross

I’m sad we don’t get another update of “Nature with TRoss,” but happy we get this blurry still (best I could do, folks!) of Ross jumping off the ledge of his open-air Jamaica villa into the ocean.

Rating: In the Olympics, this style of dive is known as the very rare, very difficult, “Just totally winging it.” Excellent form here.

Where in the world is Metta Sandiford-Artest?

Sorry we couldn’t pin down Boris Diaw for you this week! Thankfully, Metta Sandiford-Artest has come through and made the sleuthing very easy for us.