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Charles Barkley has never been shy about how little he’ll follow the NBA during the offseason. It leads to Barkley receiving a ton of criticism — and to be clear, there is certainly something to the most prominent pundit in the league not diving into the nitty-gritty of the league that closely — but at the same time, the Inside the NBA folks have found a way to turn this into a popular segment early in the year: Who He Play For?

If you are unaware of the rules, Barkley gets presented a player and has to name their team. It usually goes horribly, and on Thursday night, it went horribly, as The Chuckster went 1-for-5.

Here’s how things went down:

Taj Gibson

Team: Charlotte Hornets
Chuck’s guess: New Jersey Nets

Talen Horton-Tucker

Team: Chicago Bulls
Chuck’s guess: Utah Jazz

Patty Mills

Team: Utah Jazz
Chuck’s guess: Utah Jazz

Doug McDermott

Team: Sacramento Kings
Chuck’s guess: Detroit Pistons

Garrett Temple

Team: Toronto Raptors
Chuck’s guess: Portland Trail Blazers

Of course, it’s possible this is the last time we see Who He Play For?, as Turner does not have NBA broadcasting rights after this year and it’s unclear what Inside will look like going forward, even though Barkley has committed to remaining with the network. If this is, indeed, the final time we’ll see the game, we’re just glad Chuck got to guess what team Garrett Temple plays for one final time.

Fame ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Halsey shares her thoughts on the subject on her wistful new song, “Only Living Girl In LA.” In it, she wonders, “If I ever left behind my body / Do you think they’d laugh at how I died? / Or take a photo of my family in the lobby? / The ceremony’s small in size… / ’Cause I don’t know if I could sell out my own funeral / At least, not at this point in time.”

Her words are extra poignant in the wake of the death of former One Direction member Liam Payne, after photos of his body were shared by TMZ, sparking a backlash among fans. In “Only Living Girl In LA,” Halsey ponders the public’s appetite for lurid stories about their favorite celebrities, and how quickly the audience can jump from one topic to the next, making artists feel lost and inadequate in the wake.

It’s an appropriate concept for an album called The Great Impersonator, which Halsey released today after sharing similarly introspective singles such as “I Never Loved You,” “Ego,” and “Lonely Is The Muse.” The singer previously said she thought the album “would be the last one I ever made” due to a lupus diagnosis and the resulting health problems, including a recent seizure.

You can listen to “Only Living Girl In LA” above.

The Great Impersonator is out now via Columbia Records. Find more information here.

Listeners better heed the words of Summer Walker‘s gracious new single, “Heart Of A Woman.” The throwback-sounding R&B ballad warns a fella who’s been slipping that the “only thing that’s saving you is the heart of a woman.” The graciously minded new track will appear on Summer’s upcoming third album, Finally Over It, and in keeping with the theme, it sounds less confrontational than her past output. Instead, she’s exasperated, fed up, and resigned — which is, to all you younger cats out there, never a good thing, trust me.

Walker has been teasing a new project for the past few weeks, updating streamers with the title of her upcoming third album, while leaving fans to guess at just how “over it” she really was, until finally revealing the “Finally” part on October 11, along with the announcement for “Heart Of A Woman.” Although Walker has yet to reveal the release date for the upcoming album, it’s already one of the most anticipated new music releases of the year, thanks to the warm reception of her prior releases, Over It and Still Over It. They both set new records in terms of R&B and with the excitement for number three reaching all-time highs, you can bet Finally Over It will make just as much of a splash.

You can listen to “Heart Of A Woman” above.

It should come as no surprise that Texas native Megan Thee Stallion has repurposed her home state’s unofficial slogan for her latest single. In fact, the only surprise is that it took so long for her to make “Bigger In Texas,” considering how much pride she has for her hometown, Houston, and the surrounding territory.

“Bigger In Texas” arrives along with 10 other all-new songs as part of her new album, Megan: Act II. Also included on the new project are a remix of her social media favorite, “Mamushi,” featuring K-pop girl group Twice, and the previously released RM collaboration, “Neva Play.” And while fans weren’t sure about the new collection’s artwork, they’ll almost certainly eat up new collaborations with Flo Milli (“Roc Steady”) and Spiritbox (“TYG”).

The new version of Megan follows a productive year for Thee Stallion, who independently released the original Megan as she completed her Hot Girl Summer Tour along with GloRilla. She also collaborated with Glo a couple of times, first on “Wanna Be,” then on its remix with Cardi B, and most recently on “How I Look,” leading to calls for the duo to consider a collaboration album — calls they appear ready to oblige. Meg also teamed up with Latto and Flo Milli on their “Sunday Service” remix. All that in just 2024 makes you wonder just how much she’ll be able to get done in 2025.

You can watch the “Bigger In Texas” video above.

Megan: Act II is out now via Hot Girl Productions. Find more information here.

Jack Antonoff has been popping up in some unexpected places these days. There’s the production work he did alongside Michelle Zauner for Marvel’s Agatha All ALong on Japanese Breakfast’s pop version of the show’s signature song “ The Ballad Of The Witches’ Road,” there’s the re-imagined version of his band Bleachers’ debut album, and of course, there’s the studio shot with Taylor Swift and frequent Kendrick Lamar collaborator Sounwave. But his latest output finds him on the Great White Way, playing musical director to a new adaptation of Romeo + Juliet starring Rachel Zegler.

Zegler sings and Antonoff plays on the first single from the cast recording, “Man Of The House.” From its opening chords, it’s very clearly an Antonoff production, with slow and steady keys building to a soaring, cheap seat-pleasing ballad. It’ll certainly be fascinating to see how it fits into the show, with Zegler’s Juliet singing it to Kit Connor’s Romeo (I think).

Romeo + Juliet opened at Circle in the Square Theatre tonight, October 24th, and is set to run through February 16th for a strictly limited 20-week engagement — although, it wouldn’t be surprising to see it get an extended run with a new cast after the uber-busy Zegler and Harrington move on. You can find more information about the show here.

Listen to Rachel Zegler and Jack Antonoff’s “Man Of The House” above.

After teasing her new song, “Disease,” earlier this week, Lady Gaga has released the paranoid new song, which follows her Bruno Mars collaboration “Die With A Smile,” and sees her back on track for the rollout to her upcoming seventh album after a detour to promote Joker: Folie À Deux (and its accompanying soundtrack).

Lady Gaga has adapted remarkably well to the “conspiracy theory” era of album marketing, kicking off the rollout for “Disease” by hiding clues in the tracklists of her past releases. By updating the titles of seven songs from Chromatica with lowercase letters, she spelled out the title of the new single, giving fans an epic Easter egg hunt to pique their curiosity and stoke their enthusiasm.

Gaga’s had a busy year so far; while she focused mainly on preparing for the media blitz for Joker, she also found time to rehearse for a huge, elaborate performance at the Summer Olympics in Paris and bring back her Jazz & Piano residency in Las Vegas (which, technically, probably helped out a lot with the Joker soundtrack, which also saw her cover plenty of standards). Now, with her anti-Harley Quinn in the rearview, perhaps her anticipated album will be arriving sooner than later.

You can watch Lady Gaga’s “Disease” video above.

The days of calling Addison Rae a “TikTok star” before any of her other talents are rapidly coming to an end. The release of her new single “Aquamarine” should speed along her acceptance as a true-blue pop star. The song, which arrived today with a gritty but glittery music video, displays her sensibilities, which borrow clubby production from the late 1990s (think “Ray Of Light”-era Cher) and combines them with ethereal vocals (picture prime Enya) for a dance floor burner that evokes the time of the singer’s birth. In the video, she struts the streets of Paris, after a cigarette break, dancing the night away with moves choreographed by veteran dancer Danielle Polanco.

Rae kicked off her musical career in earnest in 2021, with the release of “Obsessed,” which saw her pivot from dancing to singing with a more traditional pop angle. Then, last August, she delved into spacier production styles alongside Charli XCX on “2 Die 4,” reuniting with Charli on the latter’s remix of “Von Dutch” from Brat And It’s Completely Different But Also Still Brat.

In the meantime, Rae continued to make waves as she branched out from the video-based social media service to signing a multi-picture deal with Netflix.

You can watch the video for Addison Rae’s new single “Aquamarine” above.

The Minnesota Vikings have fallen back to earth after their 5-0 start to the season, losing back-to-back games to the Lions and Rams. That loss to the Rams finished under some dubious circumstances on Thursday night, as Los Angeles, leading 28-20, sacked Sam Darnold in the end zone for a game-winning safety, as they were able to put knees on it to end the game after the free kick.

However, it was very apparent that Byron Young grabbed Darnold by the facemask on the sack, meaning instead of the game being over, the Vikings should’ve moved the ball out to the 20 yard line and had a little bit of life.

In case there was any doubt, Young didn’t even celebrate his sack and grabbed his helmet in frustration because he figured the ref would’ve seen an obvious facemask on the quarterback — who they protect to an insane degree usually. Instead, he got away with an egregious facemask and the Rams were able to not even sweat out a game-tying drive from Darnold and the Vikings.

Now, the likelihood the Vikings came back to win the game was extremely low, as they would’ve needed an 80-yard touchdown drive with 90 seconds on the clock and no timeouts. However, that’s still a chance, and the Minnesota sideline and their fans are understandably furious with the lack of a call. It was bad enough that the NFL didn’t even post the video of the game-winning safety to their social accounts, which is usually a pretty good indicator that there was a big time mistake made by the officials.

It has been about a year since Beyoncé launched her Cé Noir fragrance, which — like most things Beyoncé puts on the market — has been a roaring success. Today, she announced its follow-up, a new fragrance called Cé Lumière. For those who don’t speak French (or took the Beauty And The Beast character’s candlestick transformation less metaphorically), that means “light.”

As such, the fragrance leans in a different direction than its predecessor. According to fragrantica.com, Cé Noir is considered a darker, more mysterious scent, while Cé Lumière is a lighter, brighter fragrance; essentially, “Cé Noir” represents darkness and “Cé Lumière” represents light. To that end, it switches up the original scent, which had “top notes of clementine and golden honey, heart notes of rose absolute and jasmine sambac, and base notes of Namibian myrrh and golden amber,” opting for Madagascar black pepper and Italian mandarin, a heart consisting of jasmine Sambac absolute and rhubarb, and a base of Indonesian patchouli and skin musk.

Cé Lumière is available for pre-order on Beyoncé’s official website in the US and Canada, priced at $160 for a 50 ml Eau de Parfum, with shipping scheduled for November 2024.

You can watch the trailer for Beyoncé’s latest fragrance above.

Piece By Piece, the Lego-animated biopic/documentary about the life and career of Pharrell Williams is out now. Although its box office receipts don’t exactly reflect it, it’s one of the most innovative and interesting examples of the genre, even with a growing number of “weird” biopics on the market. The new music video for its title track is a shining microcosm of the vibrancy of the film, including clips from the movie’s musical sequence highlighting the song and bits and pieces (heh) from throughout its colorful narrative.

The film knows it’s an unusual take on the genre, too, pointing out repeatedly that animating a story — with Lego pieces, no less — is a move most musicians wouldn’t take. Pharrell even went so far as hiding its animated format from some of the interview subjects, like Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar, to ensure they’d give more naturalistic responses. The result is as visually stunning as Pharrell’s production catalog has been for audiences’ ears for the past 20 years — although it does take a few liberties with the facts of Pharrell’s development as an artist and a pitchman. It’s still fun to see little animated details on the Lego avatars of his collaborators, like Lego Snoop Dogg’s little pocket bandana or Lego Gwen Stefani’s painted-on, Rocksteady-era abs. It’s worth checking it out, when you get some time.

In the meantime, you can watch the “Piece By Piece” video above.