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Vic Mensa teams up with jazz-soul superproducer Thundercat on his latest single, the spaced-out “Strawberry Louis Vuitton.” Thundercat offers a cotton candy backdrop for Mensa to pen a lyrical love letter to a woman who’s got a hold on him.

Singer Maeta provides backing vocals, bolstering Vic’s own sung chorus, and as the song progresses, the instrumentation grows more and more elaborate, culminating in Thundercat’s falsetto bridge and a crunchy bass breakdown. Check it out below.

Mensa is fresh off the success of his and Chance The Rapper’s Ghana-based music festival, Black Star Line Festival, which also created the opportunity for Vic to build water boreholes that will provide clean water to over 200,000 Ghanaians. Over the holidays, Vic also gave away $10,000 of gas money in his hometown, Chicago, continuing the streak of philanthropy and activism which has defined his career so far. Musically, his last collab was with Chance on The Rapper’s “Wraith (Writing Exercise #3),” the latest in a string of new collaborations they’ve created since reuniting a few years ago.

Thundercat, meanwhile, has been working on some interesting projects of his own, including a contribution to a tribute album for Japanese jazz great Ryuichi Sakamoto and an upcoming tour with the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Flea called ‘Cat his favorite modern bassist). He also popped up on the title track for Gorillaz’s upcoming project Cracker Island, kicking off his 2023 with plenty of high-profile appearances.

Picking All-Star Game participants is hard. Picking All-Star starters is even harder. Unfortunately, someone is going to end up missing out who deserves a starting nod in the NBA’s mid-season showcase, and in the Eastern Conference, the player who has the most justifiable gripe about not starting in Salt Lake City next month is Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid. One of the frontrunners for the MVP award this season, Embiid lost out on a starting spot to Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant, and Jayson Tatum.

Now, for a collection of words that will come to the surprise of absolutely no one: Daryl Morey thinks Embiid got “completely hosed.” Morey appeared on a Philadelphia radio show on Friday morning and touched on Embiid missing out, and blamed “the shameless Boston media” that is “way overrepresented” in the voting process.

We think Morey is having some fun with this for an audience of people — Philadelphia fans who listen to sports talk radio — who are very likely to get some joy out of jokes about Boston sports media. This is in part due to the fact that the media voted Embiid third, behind Tatum in first and Antetokounmpo in second. The players also put Embiid in third (Antetokounmpo and Durant were ahead of him), while the fans were the ones who put Embiid the lowest, as they had him in fourth behind the three dudes who ended up getting sporting nods. (Daryl, if we have an incorrect read on this and you are actually trying to wage war with Boston sports media, we will happily correct.)

Morey did go on to bring up the NBA’s resistance to making All-Star and All-NBA teams positionless and rewarding “the 5-best people” despite the fact that “there’s so many players that are unique to history that you can’t put ’em in a box of an F label, or a G label, or a C label.”

Look, I love Justified as much as you do. Top 5 show for me, really. Yet there’s still part of me that cannot help but hope that Justified: City Primeval arrived not only by the grace of Quentin Tarantino conversations but because of something that I’m totally imagining. I want to believe that Olyphant wanted to do revivals for both Justified and a certain Netflix show — which he vowed to keep showing up and filming even though the streamer cancelled it — and only one of them was possible, so he ran with it.

Yes, that’s silly, but I feel like Raylan Givens would appreciate that offbeat (and insurgent) sense of humor. On a more serious note, filming on Justified: City Primeval hit some dangerous hitches last year when real-life gunfire erupted from two vehicles that burst onto the Chicago set. Olyphant has had the opportunity to describe how things went down on that day, and this happened on Conan O’Brien’s very charming Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend podcast.

By the way, there are few more pleasurable moments in talk-show history than when Olyphant and Conan have linguistically thrown down together. Let’s get to those podcast quotes, though. Via ComicBook:

“It went on forever. We started hearing cars, you can hear them driving and you realize they’re coming around the park, heading right towards us and there’s and if the gunshots and stuff didn’t already kind of give you a tip on what kind of people we’re dealing with, they completely ignored the road closed sign where it says filming don’t come this way. So they’re coming straight down the street that we’re on and they’re just you know this machine gun fire and it was just insane.

“I saw the first car go goes right by us I can hear the bullets hitting off the back of the car. Then the second car goes by, this muscle car… there’s a guy shooting a pistol out the window that’s clearly been modified and the other guys out the sunroof with a little machine gun and he’s shooting a machine gun. Those guys go by like 100 miles an hour …And then a third car went by and the crazy thing is then they kind of continued around the neighborhood.”

Fortunately, all cast and crew members were accounted for and safe after the incident. The production was, however, disrupted on a later date when someone tossed an incendiary device onto set. Has anyone seen Boyd Crowder lately? There’s another bad joke, but fortunately, the season finished filming despite the chaos, and we can expect to receive Justified: City Primeval on FX sometime in Summer 2023.

(Via Comic Book)

After conquering the music scene and appearing in movies, the next frontier for Bad Bunny is video games. On Monday (January 23), the Puerto Rican superstar appeared in the teaser trailer for WWE 2K23 alongside an invisible John Cena.

As a longtime WWE fan, Bad Bunny made his wrestling dreams come true in 2021 when he started appearing on Monday Night Raw. This time last year, he participated in the Royal Rumble. Bad Bunny was one of the last five men standing until Brock Lesnar took him out the ring. Bad Bunny will return to wrestling via the WWE 2K23 video game, which will be released worldwide on March 17.

In the teaser trailer for WWE 2K23, Bad Bunny hangs you with Cena, who is invisible in reference to his of his “You can’t see me” catchphrase. Cena’s hat with his his signature message “hustle, loyalty, respect” is shown floating around and lifting weights with Logan Paul. While Bad Bunny is talking with Triple H, they greet a visible John Cena in passing. “Wait, they can see me?” he says.

Bad Bunny will also be a playable character in WWE 2K23. Pre-ordering any version of the video game will come with access to the Bad Bunny Bonus Pack. That pack will include Bad Bunny on the game’s roster and a Ruby Bad Bunny MyFACTION Card.

Harry Styles had a massive 2022 with the release of the wildly successful Harry’s House, but he’s had some bad luck lately. The singer is suing multiple online sellers over fake merchandise, and one of his Love On Tour vans was hijacked at gunpoint in Brazil.

Now, another unexpected, unfortunate event happened. While playing a concert in Inglewood, California, he ripped his pants performing “Music For A Sushi Restaurant.” To make matters worse, Jennifer Aniston, who he revealed years ago in an interview with Ellen DeGeneres was his “first celebrity crush,” was in attendance. He didn’t let it hinder his performance — he finished with a towel. Other people in attendance include Kylie Jenner, Trevor Noah, and Ellen DeGeneres.

On a lighter note, Lewis Capaldi has been hyping Styles up. When he was asked about being nominated for the 2023 BRIT Awards, he expressed enthusiasm about being in the same room as Styles. “To be honest, I don’t think either of us has to worry ’cause ‘As It Was,’ Mr. Harry Styles, is in the same category,” Capaldi said. “So, I’m just looking forward to going along and seeing what regalia he turns up in and accepts the award in. I’m very excited, and hopefully, I’ll get close enough to him that I can smell him.”

Rauw Alejandro finally revealed “Track 7” on his latest album Saturno. The Puerto Rican superstar teamed up with reggaeton pioneer Daddy Yankee for his new single “Panties y Brasieres” which was released last night (January 26).

When Alejandro released his Saturno album last November, one of the songs was missing. “Track 7” originally played a “loading” message. Now that song has been unloaded as “Panties y Brasieres.” He let it be known that they recorded the collaboration before Daddy Yankee’s official retirement from music last month. Alejandro is known as “el zorro,” or the “fox,” while he calls Daddy Yankee “la cabra,” or the “G.O.A.T.”

“The last dance!!” Alejandro wrote on Twitter. “El zorro and la CABRA!! I’m not lying to you. The literal last dance. YANKEEMAN in Saturno.”

Alejandro and Daddy Yankee embrace reggaeton music’s roots in the freaky club banger. The song includes a sample of “Camuflash” from the ’90s Playero #40 mixtape that featured a young Daddy Yankee. Alejandro once again pushes reggaeton’s classic perreo sound into the future with his electronica touch. Alongside Daddy Yankee, he sings about the bras and panties that have flown their way during their concerts.

More bras and panties are going to hit the stage when Alejandro kicks off his Saturno World Tour on February 18. Alejandro is nominated for Best Música Urbana Album at next month’s Grammy Awards for his Trap Cake, Vol. 2 EP.

This week saw the Razzies got raked over the coals for nominating 12-year-old Ryan Kiera Armstrong for “Worst Actress” based on her performance in the Hulu remake of Firestarter. The backlash was so swift and justified that the “comedic” organization quickly walked back the nomination and enacted an age limit that will prevent anyone under 18 from being targeted by the awards show. Razzies founder John Wilson also apologized to Armstrong in a public statement.

Despite the Razzies making a quick reversal, the original Firestarter, Drew Barrymore had some things to say. The actress dragged the satirical organization not once, but twice on Thursday starting with an appearance on CBS Mornings where she called the nomination straight-up “bullying.”

Via Variety:

“She is younger and it is bullying. We do want to be cautious about how we speak to or about people because it encourages other people to join in on that bandwagon. I’m glad to see people didn’t jump on the ‘let’s make fun of her’ wave and instead said, ‘This isn’t right.’”

Barrymore added, “You got to have a sense of humor but when you’re talking about children all bets are off. I don’t like it.”

Later that day, Barrymore used her own talk show to call out the Razzies again as she revealed that the whole situation “makes my blood boil.”

“I would just say to them, ‘Please don’t do this to people who are younger. That’s not nice,’” Barrymore said. “And I really like Ryan… don’t do this again.”

(Via Variety)

You may have been on the fence about starting The Last Of Us, HBO’s latest hit series that follows charmingly grumpy apocalypse survivor Joel as he sets out to protect a young girl who might be the key to survival. You’ve probably seen the memes and Pedro Pascal’s various wholesome interviews floating around and thought, “Hey, maybe I should watch this guy,” but never really got around to it. Well HBO knows that, and they really want you to get hooked, so they are offering the first episode for free. Are you on board yet?!

Ahead of the next episode in the series based on the popular video game franchise, HBO is streaming episode one for free in hopes that some more people will want to join the Pedro Pascal hype train. Episode three of the nine-episode season will air Sunday at 9 pm, and that one won’t be free. Sorry.

You can watch the first episode in the series by simply going to HBO’s site and clicking play without needing to sign up. It’s truly never been easier to watch an unsettling post-pandemic zombie wasteland! Of course, to watch the next episodes, you’ll have to purchase an HBO subscription. But that also makes Succession available to you before season four premieres in March, so it might not be a bad idea. The choice is yours.

Fans are raving about Lil Yachty’s new album, Let’s Start Here. To some, the departure from his signature rap sound to the project’s psychedelic alternative rock core came as a surprise, but to the rapper and his die-hard fans, this was to be expected.

A year ago, as the musician discussed what he had planned for his next official studio project, he plainly told Atlanta jewelry store Icebox listeners should brace themselves because it would be “a non-rap album.”

Yachty went on to gush about the creative direction saying, “It’s alternative, it’s sick! I’ve always wanted to [do one], but now I’ve met all these amazing musicians and producers. It’s like a psychedelic-alternative project. It’s different, and it’s all live instrumentation. I’ve changed my entire dynamic. I’m telling you, with this album and on, I’m creating music a whole lot differently.”

Fast forward to today, and Let’s Start Here is available across streaming platforms, and the list of the musicians and producers that he worked with has been revealed. While Lil Yachty co-produced the entire album, the project features a list of heavy hitter guest producers, including Justin Raisen, Sad Pony, Patrick Wimberly, Unknown Mortal Orchestra’s Jacob Portrait, Nick Hakim, Magdalena Bay, and Jam City.

As far as writing credit goes, Lil Yachty has been the go-to rap pen for the new wave of rappers including the City Girls, but artists Mac DeMarco and Alex G are also given co-writing credit. During the initial announcement, Yachty did not list any guest vocal features. Still, after listening to the album, music buffs will recognize recording artists Foushée, Diana Gordon, Teezo Touchdown, and Justine Skye all made an appearance on it despite their names not being listed in the titles.

Details about the featured instrumentalist featured on the project are still being revealed, but one standout musical guest includes MGMT’s Ben Goldwasser, who played the keyboard on the album.

When discussing the inspiration behind the album and his robust approach, Yachty sternly replied, “I wanted to be taken seriously as an artist, not just some SoundCloud rapper. Not some mumble rapper, not just some guy that made one hit.”

View the official tracklist with unlisted guests added below.

1. “The Black Seminole”
2. “The Ride” Feat. Teezo Touchdown
3. “Running Out of Time” Feat. Justine Skye
4. “Pretty” Feat. Fousheé
5. “Failure”
6. “The Zone” Feat. Justine Skye
7. “We Saw the Sun!”
8. “Drive Me Crazy!” Feat. Diana Gordon
9. “I’ve Officially Lost Vision!!!!” Feat. Diana Gordon
10. “Say Something”
11. “Paint the Sky”
12. “Should I B?”
13. “The Alchemist” Feat. Fousheé
14. “Reach the Sunshine” Feat. Daniel Caesar

Let’s Start Here is out now via Quality Control. Get it here.

Drake’s brand-new mansion in LA had an unwanted visitor this week, leading to a search of the neighborhood and the burglar’s eventual arrest, according to TMZ. Drake bought the house last year from English singer Robbie Williams for an estimated $50 million after selling off his “YOLO Estate” in Hidden Hills.

The new place, though, seems to be exactly the kind of home burglars are looking to hit. While Drake wasn’t home at the time, his security called the police after seeing an unknown man leaving the property carrying something. By the time officers arrived, he’d disappeared, but a few hours later, the police were able to find and arrest the man.

Weird things seem to happen at Drake’s house a lot when he’s not home. Also last year, a man claiming to be Drake’s son popped up there looking for him. Of course, Drake’s actual son is the five-year-old Adonis; the man police arrested last year was 23 — just 12 years younger than Drake, who turned 36 in October.

He might just be used to folks showing up at odd hours and helping themselves to his stuff, though; in 2017, a woman broke into Drake’s old place and took a Sprite, a Pepsi, and a bottle of Fiji water out of his fridge.