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Alex Moss recently revealed his “Previous Engagements” piece for Drake, a 351.38-carat diamond necklace comprised of 42 engagement rings and representing “all the times he thought about it but never did it.” Well, Drake has at least committed to one thing for 2023. It appears that RIAA’s newly crowned highest-selling singles artist was semi-serious during his faux Her Loss promotion cycle with 21 Savage — or, at least about touring.

Drake was smoking hookah and relaxing by the pool during a livestream for Stake over the weekend when he was asked what he’s looking most forward to about next year. “Tour,” he said. “Ah, man, I can’t wait to see people.” He briefly reflected in disbelief that his last tour, Aubrey And The Three Migos, was all the way back in 2018. “And you know, it’s so unfortunate — the other day, I was rehearsing. I rehearsed a bunch of days, and one of the shows had gotten pushed back,” he continued. “But yeah, man, I’m just looking forward to going. It’s one thing to make the music, but to see it is the most gratifying feeling.”

It’s unclear precisely which postponed show Drake was describing, but earlier this month, his debut Apollo Theater show was pushed to January due to “production delays.”

Since 2018’s Scorpion, Drake has dropped three more No. 1 albums — 2021’s Certified Lover Boy; July’s Honestly, Nevermind; and last month’s Her Loss joint effort with 21 Savage — plus his Dark Lane Demo Tapes in 2020 and the three-song Scary Hours 2 in March 2021.

During Drake’s aforementioned fake media blitz with Savage around the release of Her Loss, he staged a spoof Howard Stern interview that teased a 2023 show in Savage’s native London. “A lot of people are like, ‘Yo, you’re like the pride of London,’” Drake said to Savage then. “That’s why that London, that O2 night, like, that has to happen. That’s gonna be some different — that’s like some real homecoming sh*t. I’m excited for that.”

In October, Drake performed in Atlanta for the first time since 2018 when he surprisingly joined 21 Savage’s set at the Morehouse-Spelman homecoming concert.

“In Da Club” was a huge moment for 50 Cent. It was the lead single from 50’s 2003 debut album Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ and it launched the album on a high note, as it ended up become the rapper’s first No. 1 single. Ultimately, the track was one of the defining songs of its era: In 2009, it ranked at No. 24 on Billboard‘s decade-end chart.

The song remains beloved, too. 50 got to perform it at the Super Bowl earlier this year and it was one of the halftime show’s most memorable moments. Furthermore, recently, Spotify revealed that the song had surpassed 1 billion streams on the platform, making it 50’s first track to do so. Currently, it has an additional 3.8 million or so streams on top of the billion. 50 shared the news on Instagram and offered a simple reaction: “take your time and make it a classic.”

It turns out the song very nearly wasn’t the lead Get Rich Or Die Tryin’ single. Eminem, a producer on the album, previously revealed, “We couldn’t decide on the first single from Get Rich. It was going to be either ‘If I Can’t” or ‘In Da Club.’ We were torn, so me, 50, Paul [Rosenberg], Chris Lighty, and Jimmy Iovine decided to flip a coin.”

Revisit the “In Da Club” video below.

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 Rosalía and Cardi B team up to wrap up 2022 on a high note and The Weeknd bless Avatar 2 with a song. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters. Also find our Uproxx HQ Spotify playlist, which is updated weekly with the best new music, at the end of this post.

Rosalía and Cardi B — “Despechá RMX”

Roslía and Cardi B both showed up big in 2022 and they weren’t about to end the year without a bang. Rosalía breathed some additional life into Motomami highlight “Despechá” by getting Cardi to hop on a fresh remix. Cardi does some well-earned flexing, rapping, “You were tryin’ too hard not to watch my stories / I was shakin’ this ass, better not report me / I’m close by even though it’s hard to reach me.”

The Weeknd — “Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength)”

After dropping off the cinematic album Dawn FM at the top of the year, The Weeknd has come through with a song that’s more literally cinematic: “Nothing Is Lost (You Give Me Strength),” his contribution to the Avatar 2: The Way Of Water soundtrack. Uproxx’s Aaron Williams describes the track as “a big, dramatic, epic song, full of tribal chants and drums, soaring strings, and emotive, uplifting lyrics — as befits the centerpiece song of the big, dramatic, epic comeback sequel of a big, dramatic, epic hit movie from visionary director James Cameron.”

Latto — “Another Nasty Song”

Latto has a lot of nasty songs, and last week, she delivered another one. Appropriately, it’s called “Another Nasty Song.” Indeed, there’s some nastiness, with lyrics like, “Pull up on my pimpin’, say my name while you in it / Type of p*ssy make him say my name while hе swimmin’ / Gangsta b*tch, I make him wear my chain whilе he drillin.”

Ab-Soul — “FOMF”

As we get closer to 2023, there are fewer and fewer new releases left to look forward to at the end of the year. Ab-Soul’s Herbert is a December highlight, especially since it comes six years after his previous album. The title of “FOMF” is short for “f*ck out my face,” and indeed, the song sees the TDE rapper putting up with no nonsense.

Juice WRLD — “Face 2 Face”

December 2 would have been the late Juice WRLD’s 24th birthday, while the 8th marked the third anniversary of his death. Despite that, new music from the rapper continues to surface, with last week yielding “Face 2 Face.” On the track, Juice confronts his struggles, rapping, “I won’t, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna implode / I won’t, I don’t wanna, it’s the end of the summer, it’s starting to get cold.”

Saint Jhn – “Stadiums”

As we start to look forward to 2023, Saint Jhn’s upcoming album In Case We Both Die Young is a release to keep an eye on. There’s no tracklist yet, but it would seem that new single “Stadiums” will be on it. The tune is a collaboration with London On Da Track and is sees Jhn confidently discussing how he achieved his high status.

PinkPantheress — “Take Me Home”

For Christmas, PinkPantheress gifted her fans a new EP, Take Me Home. On the title track, the early-20s singer deals with challenges of adult life, singing, “I went to the doctor again / I said I was behind on my rent / He said it’s not a problem for him.”

Rich The Kid — “No More Friends”

Rich The Kid, it turns out, is rich. In case that wasn’t clear, he makes it known on “No More Friends.” Furthermore, he also notes that he aims to share his wealth with those close to him and he doesn’t need anybody else trying to get in on that.

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

The hype surrounding SOS, SZA’s first album since her 2017 debut breakthrough Ctrl, was astronomically high ahead of its December 9 release. That’s reflected in the demand for (and reactions to) her supporting North American arena tour that will kick off in February 2023 with Omar Apollo. But SZA’s expectations were low.

SZA began her guest spot on the Sunday, December 18 episode of the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast with the broad admission that she “100 percent did not think” she’d grow to have such intense commercial popularity, hates predictions because “it can set you up for embarrassment” and wishes “everyone would have no expectations whatsoever at all times.”

Around the 14-minute mark, host Brian Hiatt asked SZA to identify her low point in the SOS process. “That happened every month or so, every week, where I’d be like, ‘This f*cking sucks. I don’t wanna put this out at all,’” she said. “It also happened probably just a few times, like, maybe up until the last week.” The Grammy winner added that she’d even told her engineer that they could move to India and disappear if the reaction to SOS was sour, and she expected the album reviews to be poor when people complained about how old “Shirt” was when she dropped it.

Elsewhere in the 33-minute conversation, as noted in a Rolling Stone article separate from the episode itself, SZA touched on her inclination to resist outside expectations in the specific context of how smashingly SOS has been received as a 23-track body of work: “I never thought in a million years that people would like it. My dad’s visiting right now, with my mom. Everybody came down to make sure I didn’t lose my mind if the album went bad once it came out. And now we’re just hanging out, ’cause it didn’t go badly!”

The overwhelming response to “Ghost In The Machine” featuring Phoebe Bridgers feels like a microcosm of SZA’s fear on the front end, considering she told NME she was surprised the song came together so quickly.

Still, SZA is human, and she shared with Rolling Stone at the end of their 33-minute conversation that her forthcoming first-ever headlining arena tour is “so terrifying” because she has “this weird fear of no one coming.” She can probably put that fear to bed, as Pop Base relayed over the weekend that SZA’s tour has sold out.

Tom Cruise has already dominated the season with his legendary holiday cake, so naturally, he’s upping the game by adding death-defying stunts into the mix. In a new video posted to his social media accounts, Cruise can be seen hanging outside of a plane as he addresses the poor cameraman that has to follow him around while he’s hurling himself through the air. Turns out, the actor is just really grateful for everyone making Top Gun: Maverick a massive hit this year, and what better way to show it than spitting in the face of death?

“Hey everyone, here we are over stunning South Africa, and we’re filming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning parts one and two,” Cruise yells via Variety. “I didn’t want the year to end without thanking you all for coming out to the theaters, and thank you for supporting Top Gun: Maverick.”

In a surprise twist, Mission: Impossible director Christoper McQuarrie is along for the ride, and he tells Cruise to wrap it up so they can get the next shot for the movie. Cruise shoots him the gun fingers then leaps out of the plane, but he’s not quite done wishing people a happy holidays.

“As always, thank you for allowing us to entertain you,” Cruise says while literally falling through the air. “It truly is the honor of a lifetime. I’m running out of altitude, so I’ve got to get back to work. We’ve got to get this shot. You have a very safe and happy holiday. We’ll see you at the movies.”

Buddy, wouldn’t it have been easier to send us all cakes? Sweet, delicious cakes. We appreciate the message, but you almost died for the video equivalent of a Hallmark card. You don’t have to do this!

(Via Tom Cruise on Twitter)

Harry & Meghan is a glorified-if-inoffensive commercial for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but based on how the Brits are reacting to the Netflix docu-series, you’d think it was a snuff film — and Paddington is the one getting snuffed. Piers Morgan had a freaking meltdown, but his over-the-top reaction was nothing compared to Jeremy Clarkson’s. The radio broadcaster and Top Gear creator, who refers to himself as a “small voice of calm and reason” in his Twitter bio (spoken like the worst guy at every dinner party you’ve been to), wrote an op-ed for The Sun that is not going over well.

“I actually feel rather sorry for [Harry] because today he’s just a glove puppet with no more control over what he says or does than Basil Brush. Meghan, though, is a different story. I hate her,” Clarkson wrote. “I hate her on a cellular level. At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement… Everyone who’s my age thinks the same way.”

First off, no they don’t. Second, someone needs to chill out by 40 percent. At least.

The column has received over 6,000 complaints, especially the passage comparing Markle to Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones. Even Clarkson’s daughter, Emily, publicly opposed her dad’s manifesto, writing, “I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything my dad wrote about Meghan Markle.” In response to the backlash, Clarkson tweeted, “Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.” The column, with the Thrones reference, is still up.

And no one is buying his apology tweet.

(Via the Sun)

Britney Spears has often spoken out about her years-long conservatorship, but somebody we haven’t heard from as extensively is her father Jamie Spears. Now, though, he has shared his thoughts about the situation in a new interview.

Jamie told The Daily Mail that he believes the conservatorship saved both Britney’s relationship with her sons and her life. He said:

“Not everybody’s going to agree with me. It’s been one hell of a time. But I love my daughter with all my heart and soul. Where would Britney be right now without that conservatorship? And I don’t know if she’d be alive. I don’t. For protecting her, and also protecting the kids, conservatorship was a great tool. Without it, I don’t think she would have got the kids back.”

He also said of how the conservatorship benefited the children, “My relationship with Kevin [Federline] gave them a sense of peace, and of protection. Kevin will tell you this too — it was us who raised the kids. I just did what I was supposed to do, or felt like I needed to do. I didn’t make any decisions on my own — the team of people were me and my associate, and Kevin. We could all take the kids to the doctor, and to school. At that time, Kevin had a lot going on. And the conservatorship made sure the boys never left that house without security. They didn’t go to school one day without lunch.”

Jamie went on to insist that the conservatorship helped save his daughter from financial ruin, saying, “She was broke. She had no money whatsoever. The conservatorship set a resource where she could get back financially. And, you know, we worked — and she worked — and she got herself straight up financially.”

He also noted of the status of the family’s relationship, “Each individual has got lots of work to do. I don’t know if some of them want to do the work or not. It’s going to be a tough thing, but that’s the goal. Like I say, family’s not in good shape right now. That’s all I can say. It’s better — but we’ve got a lot of work to do.’

Read more from the interview here.

Tom Cruise may have loved it, but not everyone was able to see Tenet, which came out during one of the many peaks of the pandemic in 2020. Christopher Nolan is making up for that film’s limited theatrical release with his next blockbuster.

Oppenheimer is an “IMAX-shot epic thriller that thrusts audiences into the pulse-pounding paradox of the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it,” according to the plot synopsis from Universal. That man is J. Robert Oppenheimer (played by long-time Nolan collaborator Cillian Murphy), the so-called “father of the atomic bomb.” Did the Dunkirk and The Dark Knight director recreate a nuclear explosion without the use of CGI? Of course he did. Back to the movies, indeed.

You can watch the first full-length trailer above.

Oppenheimer also stars Emily Blunt as Kitty Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr., Robert Downey, Jr. as Lewis Strauss, Florence Pugh as Jean Tatlock, Benny Safdie as Edward Teller, Michael Angarano as Robert Serber, and Josh Hartnett as Ernest Lawrence, as well as Rami Malek, Kenneth Branagh, Dane DeHaan, Dylan Arnold, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, and Matthew Modine. Good cast! Oppenheimer comes out on July 21, 2023, the same day as Barbie. I wonder what Stanley Kubrick will see first.

Billie Eilish has already reached so many milestones in her young life and this weekend brought another major one: On December 18, she turned 21 years old. To mark to occasion, she threw herself a big birthday bash and the stars were out in full force.

British Vogue notes that attending the celebration, hosted at The Edition in Hollywood, were Eilish’s boyfriend Jesse Rutherford, Lil Nas X, Dove Cameron, Kendall Jenner, Hailey Bieber, Avril Lavigne, Euphoria‘s Barbie Ferreira, and Judas And The Black Messiah‘s Dominique Fishback. Per social media evidence, also present were Doja Cat, Eric Andre, Justin Bieber, Olivia Rodrigo, Khalid, Lauren Jauregui, Noah Cyrus, Raveena, Skylar Astin, Hailee Steinfeld, MLMA, Njomza, and Phem.

Furthermore, Eilish is also selling an exclusive bit of birthday merch for just 24 hours: a simple t-shirt that reads, “been a good girl for 21 years.”

Elsewhere, Eilish’s mother Maggie Baird also shared a touching message, writing on Instagram, “Happy Birthday darling Billie!! In so many ways you have lived more in twenty one years than most of us could imagine in a lifetime. You have worked incredibly hard, sacrificed so much and missed some of the milestones others get to experience easily. Through all of it you have stayed kind and thoughtful and so funny and hilarious. You have used your gifts, platform and money to make the world a better place and have given so much joy to your family and all who love you and I couldn’t love you more or be more in awe of the person you are. Happiest of birthdays to you and thank you for being such a shining light!!”

Find more photos and videos from the party below.

Drake has been quite busy this year — from releasing two albums and racking up a slew of nominations to eclipsing other commercial juggernauts like Eminem and breaking the Beatles’ record for most top-five singles. The Canadian hitmaker has cemented his cultural footprint with a career that spans nearly a decade.

By collaborating with the hottest artists out right now, like Jack Harlow and Tems, the rapper consistently finds ways to stay relevant and atop the Billboard charts. Drake always finds himself at the center of cultural conversations, whether it’s a new hair change or sparking debates about misogyny in rap. Here are some of the biggest moments from Drake in 2022.

Drake Releases Honestly, Nevermind

With his seventh studio album, Honestly, Nevermind, Drake transports fans into an electronic dance fever dream. With cascading beats and the rapper’s notoriously emo lines, the album will have you pumping your fist in the air in one moment and crying in the next. The album also caused a significant debate about the roots of house music, where fans claimed that Drake was “reclaiming” the Black art form.

The album represents a full-circle moment for the pop star, who has slowly been edging toward more dance-themed hits like 2016’s “One Dance.”

Drake Eclipses Beatles For The Most Top-Five Singles Of All Time

The hitmaker has been racking up record-breaking awards all year, but this might be the biggest. The rapper has now eclipsed the Beatles for the most top-five singles ever. “Staying Alive” by DJ Khaled and featuring both Drake and Lil Baby helped the “Sticky” rapper claim his 30th top-five song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

But it doesn’t stop there: The rapper has also become the highest-selling artist in RIAA history, surpassing Eminem.

Drake Releases Her Loss With 21 Savage

After releasing a collaborative project with Future in 2016, What A Time to Be Alive, fans were eager to know when the rapper would do another collab and, more importantly, with who. Following the release of Honestly, Nevermind this past summer, the rapper teamed up with 21 Savage for his next project, Her Loss.

Along with topping the charts, the album caused quite a bit of controversy. Drake found himself in hot water with Megan Thee Stallion fans after allegedly dissing her on one of the album’s tracks, “Circo Loco.” Vogue also sued the rapper and 21 Savage for using a fake cover during the rollout of their album.