Despite her giving a superstar performance, some people seem to think Doechii was lip-syncing at the 2025 Grammys. That is unequivocally not the case, the “Denial Is A River” rapper responded on TikTok.
In response to a user who claimed that “some parts of the live song you can see that she’s not saying anything and the song is still playing with her pre-recorded voice,” Doechii said, “That entire performance was LIVE. I was sick as a dog with bronchitis and the flu performing my ass off in a straddle on top of human men. You can hear my beads slapping the mic in the beginning.” She continued, “Worked my ass off to build my stamina for that for y’all to play in my face. I don’t lip sync, don’t ever f*cking play with me like that.”
Doechii gave an emotional speech after winning Best Rap Album (only the third woman to do so) at the 2025 Grammys. “I know that there is some Black girl out there, so many Black women out there, that are watching me right now, and I want to tell you, you can do it,” she said. “Anything is possible. Anything is possible. Don’t allow anybody to project any stereotypes on you, to tell you that you can’t be here, that you’re too dark, or that you’re not smart enough, or that you’re too dramatic, or you’re too loud. You are exactly who you need to be to be right where you are, and I am a testimony right now.”
A huge night in comedy went down this weekend with SNL50, a look back at half a century of Saturday Night Live. While the show has produced essentially countless cultural highlights over the past 50 years, not every moment from the show’s rich history has aged well.
SNL50 acknowledged and poked fun at that with an “In Memoriam” segment, which didn’t honor deceased cast members, but instead laid to rest some elements of the show they wouldn’t exactly re-introduce today.
Diddy was a musical guest alongside Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page on a 1998 episode, and again in 2010 as part of the trio Diddy-Dirty Money with Dawn Richard and Kalenna Harper. Kelly has never been a musical guest himself, but he did perform with Lady Gaga on a 2013 episode.
Others who were highlighted were OJ Simpson (who was famously charged with murder in the ’90s and with armed robbery and kidnapping in the 2000s), Robert Blake (also accused of murder), and former Subway spokesman Jared Fogle (who is currently in prison for child sex tourism and child pornography).
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 new music this week.
This week saw Drake bounce back from a tough 2024 and Selena Gomez adopt a renewed vigor for music. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.
Word of a joint album from Drake and PND surfaced as early as last August, and now the project, Some Sexy Songs 4 U, is finally here. Across the 21 tracks are highlights like the album-opening “CN Tower” (shout out Toronto) and the “Not Like Us”-referencing “Celibacy.”
Sabrina Carpenter — “Please Please Please” Feat. Dolly Parton
After having one of the biggest albums of 2024 with Short N’ Sweet, Sabrina Carpenter still has something left in that tank: Last week, she dropped a deluxe edition of the album featuring a twanged-up version of “Please Please Please” featuring country icon Dolly Parton.
Selena Gomez and Benny Blanco — “Scared Of Loving You”
Does Jack Harlow have a new album on the way in 2025? Maybe. He hasn’t announced one, but his recent run of singles is an apparent indicator, like last week’s “Set You Free,” which sees him grappling with relationship issues.
SZA — “Open Arms”
SZA had quite the Super Bowl weekend when she joined Kendrick Lamar on the Halftime Show stage. She also took advantage of the big day by adding even more songs to Lana (SOS Deluxe) as the game was going on, bringing the full album to a whopping 38 tracks.
Zach Bryan — “Dear Miss”
Congratulations are in order for both the Philadelphia Eagles and Zach Bryan fans: The NFL team beat the Kansas City Chiefs to win the Super Bowl, and because they did, Zach Bryan delivered on his promise to release a new song, “Dear Miss.”
Bon Iver — “Everything Is Peaceful Love”
We haven’t had a new Bon Iver album in six years, but that changes soon with the recently announced SABLE, fABLE. He followed up the announcement with “Everything Is Peaceful Love,” which arrived alongside a delightful video directed by How To With John Wilson creator John Wilson.
Addison Rae — “High Fashion”
Rae had a bit of a surprise hit last year with “Diet Pepsi,” and now she’s riding the wave into 2025 with another new song: “High Fashion,” a smooth number that continues the social media star’s bid at pop stardom.
Jisoo — “Earthquake”
Jisoo announced her signing with Warner last month, and the Blackpink member didn’t waste any time getting a release out on her new label with the Amortage EP, featuring the thumping “Earthquake.”
Daniel Caesar and Rex Orange County — “Rearrange My World”
Who’d have thought that Daniel Caesar and Rex Orange County would be a natural pairing? Well, it turns out they are: They two came through with two surprise songs last week, and the Venn diagram of their individual styles has a compelling overlap.
Over the weekend, Roan shared the phone number “620-468-8646” (or “620-HOT-TOGO”) in an Instagram Story. When you dial the number, you’ll be presented with different scenarios: press 1 to book a dentist appointment, press 2 to reach an attorney, press 3 to report a plumbing issue, etc. Each option leads to a different lo-fi snippet from “The Giver,” which will presumably be her first single since “Good Luck, Babe.” Maybe with a music video where one of her new “iconic looks” is a plumber?
Last November, Roan described writing “The Giver,” a country song about how women “get the job done” (wink) better than men, in an interview with Brandi Carlile at the Grammy Museum. “It’s country, and we played it on SNL. It will come out! It will come out; don’t worry. But that was so fun to write,” she said. “I got to bring what I knew to the table, ’cause I’m a country girl. So I got to be like, ‘No, no, no, like, let me show you some country songs.’”
Sinéad O’Connor had one of the most memorable moments in Saturday Night Live history, when in 1992, she tore a photograph of Pope John Paul II while performing. It has long been rumored that she was banned from SNL (Lorne Michaels says that’s not true of her or anybody), but on the SNL50 special this weekend, the show took a moment to honor O’Connor, who died in 2023.
After being introduced by Aubrey Plaza (making her first public appearance since husband Jeff Baena’s death in January), Miley Cyrus, Brittany Howard, and The Roots covered “Nothing Compares 2 U,” which was written by Prince for his band The Family but was most famously recorded by O’Connor.
Elsewhere in the show, Dave Chappelle introduced a performance by Lil Wayne, who was also backed by The Roots. He performed a medley of hits featuring “Uproar,” “Lollipop,” “6 Foot 7 Foot,” “Mrs. Officer,” and “A Milli.”
There was a ton of music on SNL50 outside of the aforementioned. Sabrina Carpenter appeared in a new “Domingo” sketch, and she also joined Paul Simon to sing “Homeward Bound.” Paul McCartney also showed up and ran through a three-song medley.
Watch the performances from Cyrus, Howard, The Roots, and Wayne above.
The two-day festival — held at The Mann in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from May 31 to June 1 — also features Miguel; Latto; Kaytranada; Jeezy (celebrating the 20th anniversary of his album, Let’s Get It: Thug Motivation 101); J.Period Live Mixtape’s series featuring Black Thought, Pusha T, and 2 Chainz; Rich Medina’s Black House Set featuring Crystal Waters and Cece Peniston; Musiq Soulchild, Kur, Elmiene, Jagged Edge, Crystal Waters, Lay Banks, Laila!, and Kur.
The Roots will also give the anniversary treatment to their classic album Do You Want More?!!!??!, which came out 30 years ago.
Outside of the performances, this year’s The Roots Picnic also features a day party lineup, including Trap Karaoke, Doo-Wop… That R&B Party, Girls Love Karaoke, Kirk Franklin’s Sunday School w/ DJ Mal-Ski, Philly Black Pride, Interna$hional Bounce, All Spice World Dance, and World Series of Spades.
Presale tickets for The Roots Picnic 2025 will be available starting February 18, at 10 a.m. ET through Thursday, February 20, at 10 p.m. ET. The general on-sale begins Friday, February 21, at 10 a.m. ET. You can find more information here.
Carpenter has been cemented in modern SNL lore thanks to the instant-classic “Domingo” sketch, which is based on a parody of her 2024 hit “Espresso.” Well, for the anniversary show, Carpenter herself participated in a new rendition of the sketch, which follows the same formula as the other ones: A bunch of bridesmaids share some uncomfortable revelations via a song parody.
Naturally, this sketch had a lot more star power, though, as featured were Bad Bunny, Pedro Pascal, Martin Short, Molly Shannon, and a handful of other SNL alums.
Elsewhere in the episode, Carpenter had the honor of sharing the stage with Paul Simon for a performance of “Homeward Bound.” First, Simon explained that he sang the song with George Harrison of The Beatles on SNL in 1976. Carpenter saw the opportunity for a joke and took it: “I was not born then, and neither were my parents,” she added.
Check out the “Domingo” sketch and Carpenter’s performance with Simon above.
After another poorly received All-Star Game, thee NBA’s new mini-tournament format might not be here to last. That is perhaps a bit of a shame because league’s latest attempt to create a more entertaining and competitive All-Star Game was reasonably successful in terms of the basketball we saw on the court.
The first two games were competitive and saw all four teams showing honest to god effort on both ends of the floor at times and looked like actual basketball games. The final game saw Shaq’s OGs jump out to a quick 11-0 lead on Chuck’s Global Stars and then devolved into the type of low-stakes basketball we’ve come to expect from the All-Star Game. The good news is, in a game to 40, even a bad game goes quickly. You get a guy to catch fire like Stephen Curry (trying harder than most in his home All-Star Game), hitting a halfcourt shot and some silly threes, and it’s enough to make things reasonably entertaining and ends quickly without falling into total chaos.
The problem with the 2025 All-Star Game had little to do with the quality of basketball on the court, which is perhaps the greatest compliment you can pay to the new format. The issue was that three games to 40 in an All-Star atmosphere go extremely quickly and the TV broadcast is determined to fill a three-hour window.
That meant we were treated to some truly dreadful segments, including an inordinate amount of Kevin Hart (in case you were not aware, Kevin is very short and NBA players are quite tall) and Damian Lillard having to purposefully try to miss enough logo threes to let a fan win $100,000 from Mr. Beast. They did that plus desk analysis from the TNT crew outside of each game, which was mostly notable because Draymond Green spent the entire night absolutely torching the new format, giving it a 0 out of 10 and decrying it as “not basketball” — which was a bit funny given we saw more actual basketball played tonight than we have in any All-Star Game since 2020.
I should say, the musical act this year was excellent and was not part of the problem. The Pass The Mic Live show with Bay Area legends was easily one of the best parts of the evening and far more entertaining than anything else they did between games. It also took less time from start to finish than one of the Kevin Hart segments with the Inside the NBA crew did and I really wish I was kidding about that.
The aforementioned segment saw Hart and some All-Stars send the Inside crew “Gone Fishing”, which could’ve been a fun moment if it had been done quickly and did not somehow create a 16(!) minute stoppage in the middle of the final game — also, Inside the NBA is not ending after this season and will instead be licensed to ESPN next year. It was emblematic of the problems of this year’s All-Star presentation, which was by trying desperately to stretch things out for a TV window, the basketball became secondary to a sketch show.
The problem is, I don’t think there’s really a fix unless you’re going to accept that this should be a two-hour long event. Part of why the games worked is the short format trims a lot of the fat that makes All-Star basketball tough to watch. There weren’t long spells of teams trading wide open dunks or heaving deep threes because the games to 40 make each game basically the two parts of each All-Star Game that are entertaining — the first 5 minutes and the last 5 minutes. If you made them games to 60 or 70, then you’d create more of that middle area where guys lose focus and open the door for more blowouts.
There probably isn’t a better way to execute an All-Star format if the goal is “reasonably competitive basketball” — barring players being open to a 1-on-1 tournament — and even the somewhat controversial inclusion of the Rising Stars winner worked as intended. They were trying very hard and pushed the OGs to the most competitive game of the entire thing because they really wanted to win and the All-Stars didn’t want to get embarrassed by losing. However, it cannot be a three-hour event because there’s nothing to fill the time basketball-wise — unless they give up on Saturday Night and put the Three-Point and Dunk Contests between games, which they’ll never do. Otherwise, you have a night of stops and starts where the basketball part (which the league has insisted has to be better) gets shoved to the periphery.
We’ll see what the league and NBC cook up next year in the first year with a new network taking charge, but given how reactive the league has been to criticism in recent years, I’m not sure the mini-tournament format is going to make it to 2026. After the players have gotten plenty of blame in recent years (at times quite deservedly so), the league has to take this one on the chin because it wasn’t a basketball issue this year, it was the 2.5 hours of nonsense happening around 30 minutes of hoops.
Not too long ago, Draymond Green was proclaiming himself the leader of The New Media, who would change the way the game is discussed on TV and celebrate the game. This weekend at All-Star Weekend in San Francisco, Green has been a fixture on TNT’s broadcasts but he spent much of his time decrying the state of not just the All-Star Game but NBA basketball as a whole — seemingly fully morphing into the type of former player analyst he once hated (and somehow did so while still being an active player).
At All-Star media day, Green called the current style of play in the NBA “boring” and saying it lacked substance because it’s just about who can run faster and hit more threes. The comments certainly aren’t unique, as there has been a lot of focus on the rate of three-pointers taken in the NBA now as a problem for the league.
Older and former players have been particularly vocal about the three-point issue (some for a long time), but Oscar Robertson isn’t among them. The Hall of Famer got asked about Green’s comments on Sirius XM NBA Radio on Sunday and took some jabs at Draymond in response.
“Who cares what Draymond says? It doesn’t mean anything,” Robertson said. “This is what I mean, one guy can say this, another guy can say that, the game is what it is. Either people like the game or they don’t, and I think people enjoy the game, especially if their team can win. And if you look at the basketball, it might be boring to him because if he’s not passing the ball to Curry, what is he doing? I mean, not to single that out because I think he knows how to play basketball, but he’s passing to Curry more than anyone I’ve ever seen in basketball. So it might be boring to him at times cause maybe to him at times because he’s not shooting a lot, he’s not guarding a lot, so it gets boring.”
I did not expect to see The Big O torching Draymond Green at All-Star Weekend, but he seems as tired of the “the game is bad now” takes as anyone — possibly because he’s seen those arguments take so many different shapes over the years.
Well, the “Baile Inolvidable” musician has something special made just for them. Thanks to Bad Bunny’s partnership with Rockabye Baby!, he is ready to help the kiddos turn down for bed or a brief nap. Yesterday (February 15), Benito’s Lullaby Renditions Of Bad Bunny was announced.
Across the 14-track project, instrumentals of Bad Bunny’s most beloved songs including “Tití Me Preguntó,” “La Canción,” “Me Porto Bonito” and more will be repurposed for smoothing benefits.
Although the body of work isn’t set to hit streaming platform until next week (February 21), Bad Bunny has shared a bite of what’s to come. Over on YouTube, guardians can loop a claymation video of lullaby version of “Dákiti.”
Continue below to view Lullaby Renditions Of Bad Bunny‘s tracklist and artwork. Watch the official video for Bad Bunny’s “Dákiti” above.
Artwork
Tracklist
1. “La Canción”
2. “I Like It”
3. “Dákiti”
4. “Si Veo a Tu Mamá”
5. “La Santa”
6. “Ignorantes”
7. “Me Porto Bonito”
8. “Tití Me Preguntó”
9. “Ojitos Lindos”
10. “Callaita”
11. “Cómo Se Siente”
12. “Te Boté”
13. “MIA”
14. “Después de la Playa”
Rockabye Baby!’s Lullaby Renditions Of Bad Bunny is out 2/21 via Rimas Entertainment. Find more information here.
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