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Since accepting a plea deal in connection to the YSL RICO case, Gunna’s public image has taken a hit.

For some rap fans, they vow to never support him again. But the dozens of sold tour dates (Wun Of Dem Nights Tour, The Bittersweet Tour, The Gift and The Curse shows), millions of streams (One Of Wun and A Gift And A Curse), and recent collaborations with Big Sean, Offset, and Normani proves that he will be just fine without them. Still, every now, and then you need to have a pep-talk with your self in the mirror. Gunna’s latest Turbo-produced single, “Him All Along” is that confidence-boosting chat put to music.

“They was tryna stunt my growth, I was steady chasin’ my goals / N****, why you watchin’? I’m grown, n**** can’t take my throne / Goin’ through the motions, stay strong, he done been him all along / Look at all this money we done grown, lot of different places I done flown,” he raps.

This is just the sort of reassured Gunna fans want to hear especially with set to kick off his Wun Of Dem Nights Tour tomorrow in Washington, DC.

Listen to Gunna’s new single “Him All Along” above.

Lil Durk fans waiting for the Love Songs 4 The Streets 3 project are going to have to wait a while long: The “Monitoring Me” rapper is releasing a whole new album, Deep Thoughts, instead.

To celebrate Deep Thoughts‘ upcoming release, today (October 18), Lil Durk shared a new strikingly personal single, “Opportunist.”

On the DJ Bandz- and Magic-produced record, Durk addresses a supposed opportunist in his inner circle with the help of his late brother DThang. Within the record, Durk incorporates an audio file of DThang discussing his generosity and how others have attempted to exploit it.

“Check this out, I want everybody on this planet right here,” he said. “For real, for real, if you get somethin’ from me, if you get motherf*cker. Listen, I’ll send the guys money ’cause I want to. I motherf*ckin’ give the guys money ’cause I want to. So if you ask me to do somethin’ for you and I do it. Please don’t think it’s a finesse, don’t think you finessin’ DThang, please don’t.”

Later in the song, Durk briefly touched on his very public beefs that eventually took the life of longtime friend and fellow rapper King Von. “When they die, you try to claim ’em to get a name, that sh*t be hot / The last time this war was this big was B.I.G. and Pac / Flowin’ all these drugs through my system, I missed ’em / Postin’ all his lo’s on his finsta, I missed ’em / I don’t take back nothin’ when I say it, when I dissed him / Even though he dead, I read our thread ’cause I miss him,” he rapped.

Listen to “Opportunist” above.

Deep Thoughts is out 11/22 via Alamo. Find more information here.

Last month, Cardi B announced she had given birth to her third child. Aside from being a major moment in Cardi’s personal life, this also seemingly means that she’s ready to put her head down and finish her long-awaited second album.

During an X Spaces broadcast on October 16, Cardi said (as Billboard notes):

“I’m also in LA because I have to do something pertaining the album. I know you guys are gonna be like, ‘What the f*ck, b*tch?’ But it’s something that’s gonna be done really f*cking quick. It’s just gonna be a one-two. I did it when I was pregnant, and nothing came out how I wanted it to come out, so we gotta do it again.

It’s gonna be amazing and unique because everything I do, it gotta be amazing and unique. I’m sorry for the delay. It’s not gonna be a crazy delay. It’s gonna come out amazing. I’m gonna be out here for nine days.”

Later in the broadcast, she said, “Album is coming really, really soon, announcements is coming really really soon. Things are getting more done now! I’m not pregnant no more.”

While there hasn’t been an album since 2018’s Invasion Of Privacy, she has popped up with new songs here and there, like this year’s “On Dat Money” with Rob49.

Lady Gaga is revving up to release the first single from her new album, the unofficially titled LG7, and it seems to be coming soon.

The “Die With A Smile” singer’s discography was updated on certain streaming services, including Amazon Music, Tidal, and YouTube Music, with seemingly random lowercase letters. For instance, “Dance In The Dark” from The Fame Monster is now “dAnce In The Dark.” Same with “eLectric Chapel” from Born This Way and “eNigma” from Chromatica. It’s seven songs total, but there’s a method to the capitalization madness: the lowercase letters read “disease.”

Is that LG7‘s first single? Or the title of the album? Or maybe it’s “seaside”? (Probably not that one.) We’ll know by the end of the month.

You can see the full list of altered “disease” songs here.

Gaga recently released Harlequin, a companion album to the box office dud Joker: Folie à Deux. “I think they’re all risky,” she said about the album. “Some of these songs, like ‘Get Happy,’ are from the 1930s. We’re in 2024, the song is nearly 100 years old. We focused on deploying slapstick and lyrical changes in reference to Arthur [Fleck]. He made his way into the album as well. The lyric, ‘If a nice guy can lose, what’s it matter if you win?’ — that’s pretty daring, considering who Arthur is, what he’s done, and it’s something the film grapples with. We’re rooting for Arthur, and yet he killed five people.”

There is a new Japandroids album out today. It is called Fate And Alcohol. It is also the final Japandroids album. So now, I will give them their eulogy.

Japandroids are (were) an indie-rock duo from Vancouver. They were composed of Brian King (guitar, lead vocals) and David Prowse (drums, “whoa-oh-oh” vocals). They formed in 2006 and released four studio albums, one live record, and one compilation. In the early 2010s, I loved them intensely. I even started a podcast named after their most famous album. At some point, I transitioned to liking them. And then I shifted again, to my present “fondly remember the period when I used to care about them” status.

It’s customary in situations like these to recall the first time you saw the deceased. For me it was at South By Southwest in 2010. I was at an art gallery somewhere in Austin. Behind the building there was a makeshift stage abutted by a small bar serving free (or maybe it was severely discounted?) drinks. When I arrived, The Rural Alberta Advantage was on stage. I don’t remember any of the other bands on the bill. It’s possible the show was Canadian-themed, but that could just be my mind playing tricks on me. I was, after all, more interested in the drinks than the music.

Then Japandroids went on. They were the reason I was there. I liked their first album, Post-Nothing. And I enjoyed their American TV debut that January on Late Night With Jimmy Fallon, where they whipped through my favorite song from the record, “Wet Hair.” Now, I was about to hear Brian King holler about going to France to French-kiss some French girls in person.

They were good. Not great. Not revelatory. But good. And instantly sweaty. After the second or third song, they both looked like they had played four quarters against the 1989 Detroit Pistons. King bounded about the stage while sending splatter-buzz guitar licks at the audience, and Prowse bobbed eagerly on his drum kit as he kept erratically perfect time. In my mind, I predicted that they would release exactly one more album, and that album would receive a 6.8 from Pitchfork and instantly evaporate from existence. And that would be the end of Japandroids.

Flash forward two years. I’m sent an advance promo of the second Japandroids record. It’s called Celebration Rock. I put it on and I can’t believe what I’m hearing. It sounds like the record I would make if I were in a two-person band from western Canada. They sang about hanging out with buddies like it was a revolutionary act. They wrote about romantic relationships with the fevered intensity of a mid-seventies Bruce Springsteen song. Their instruments collided into one another with the style and grace of a blackout drunk Replacements bootleg. It was like they were trying to recreate the feeling of listening to every cool part from every cool classic rock record, simultaneously, only with limited funds and limited ability.

That was the thing about Japandroids: Even when they were great, they were really just good. But they elevated “just good” to an art form. I’m not going to repeat the tired punk mythos about how “anyone can do this.” But Celebration Rock connected with a certain kind of rock fantasist because Japandroids were ordinary guys who seemed to have stumbled into brilliance. It made you think that anyone could rock this hard with the right combination of self-actualization and intoxication. Even the cover communicated this idea: These dudes didn’t look cool or exotic, they were just two bookish Canucks decked out in scarves and glasses. They were uniquely not special.

There was a misconception about Celebration Rock in the media that shaped how Japandroids were written about and contextualized forever afterward. They were looked at as a party band, because the songs were, well, celebratory. But Celebration Rock did not take place in the present tense. They were talking about their past lives. Or “Younger Us,” to quote the album’s pivotal track. King and Prowse were both 29, which is the age when your sense memory of high school and college starts to fade. Eventually, you can only remember what happened back then, but you no longer feel what it’s like to be young. Most of us react to this by pouting melodramatically about “becoming old” as our thirties loom. Japandroids reacted by making Celebration Rock, an orgasm of last-ditch adolescent sentiment preserved in amber.

I was five years older than Japandroids, and I adopted their orgasm of last-ditch adolescent sentiment as my own. When the tour was announced and I saw that they were playing in my area one month before my first child was due to be born, it seemed almost too perfect. This is my last show of pre-fatherhood? Oh, and it’s also taking place on the first day of summer? The circumstances were simply absurd. The circumstances were simply a Japandroids song.

The concert was … not good. The songs sounded about 35 percent less powerful in person. And they stopped after each one for what felt like five minutes, as King painstakingly re-tuned his guitar and spouted interminable patter. It was as if the schism between reality and fantasy concealed by the album was finally revealed on stage. The truth about Celebration Rock is that it wasn’t what it sounded like, which is two guys bashing out eight songs over a six-pack in just one or two takes. It actually took an eternity to make and might not have come out at all if not for a record label edict. King, in particular, was a perfectionist who worked at a snail’s pace. Ultimately, the album he and Prowse made was, weirdly, a studio construction, like if Donald Fagen and Walter Becker had labored for months and spent millions to make Aja sound like Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash.

Five years later, I saw them again. It was an interview for the podcast I named after Celebration Rock, on the tour bus their new label, Anti-, presumably paid for. Most of the questions were about their new LP, Near To The Wild Heart Of Life, which was dinged in some quarters of the critical community for feeling anachronistic in our bad, new Trump Era. I thought this criticism was preposterous then, and I think it’s preposterous now. It’s like complaining about how Deadpool & Wolverine did not thoughtfully address the Israeli vs. Palestinian conflict.

But to be fair, my review of Near To The Wild Heart Of Life has not aged well, either. “To put it in Springsteen terms,” I wrote, “Celebration Rock is Born To Run, and Near To The Wild Heart Of Life is The River.” Is Near To The Wild Heart Of Life really Japandroids’ version of The River? I couldn’t tell you. I haven’t listened to it since 2017. Japandroids for me was still the band that made Celebration Rock.

I’m stalling on getting to the end of the story. So, here it is: Fate And Alcohol is the first Japandroids album since then. There will be no tour bus interviews this time, as there is no tour. All we have is the record. And that leaves only one relevant question: If you loved Celebration Rock, do you need to hear Fate And Alcohol?

Let me put it this way: How you feel about this album will hinge on how you feel about going to your own high school reunion. Are you interested in seeing your old classmates decades later, or would you rather preserve the memory and pretend that those people (and you) never got any older? I fall solidly in the former camp, but professional obligation nevertheless required me to violate my personal code for Fate And Alcohol.

It’s a clumsy record. The sins of their past — try-hard corniness and conspicuous self-consciousness, which are evident even on Celebration Rock — have not abated. The songs are (still) populated by starry-eyed fellas and the ladies who love them beyond all logic and reason. I’m thinking specifically of “Positively 34th Street,” in which King sings, from the perspective of one of those ladies, “I don’t bet on boys / they just love you, leave you blue / but make it to my doorstep, I might roll the dice on you.” In the immortal words of Roger Murtaugh: I’m getting too old for this shit.

And yet, in spite of everything, Fear And Alcohol moved me. The critical flaw in the makeup of Japandroids as a creative vehicle is that it was designed to do one thing — make Celebration Rock — and not mature or evolve one iota beyond that. But they lurch forward anyway on this record, and even if it’s not always (or often) successful it feels nevertheless courageous. The bravado and romanticism are still there, but it’s shadowed this time by a recovering addict’s fragility. “You’re not dead, just dehydrated,” King sings in “Alice,” and you can practically feel his fists locked in a white-knuckle grip.

My feelings about this record were inevitably informed by the recent profile written by my friend and colleague Ian Cohen, in which King talks candidly about his newfound sobriety. “Our fans have this image of us at the top of the ‘dudes rock’ pyramid. Escapism has always been a big part of our appeal and I think they take comfort in the idea that at any given moment Dave and I are out there somewhere dudes-rocking together,” King says in the article. “Whereas in reality, we live in different countries, thousands of miles apart, and rarely see each other. There was definitely a long stretch of our lives where we were daily dudes-rockers, but those days are behind us.”

If Celebration Rock was about distilling youthful emotions into musical form as they rapidly slip from your heart, Fate And Alcohol is about outliving the fantasy and finally putting it behind you. This is necessary in life, and decidedly less than thrilling in rock. But at some juncture, life must take precedence. For them, and for us, too.

And with that, we must bid Japandroids adieu. We all loved in your shadow, dudes. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, whoa-oh-oh.

Following the tragic, untimely death of Liam Payne, we’ve gotten public reactions from One Direction bandmates Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, and Louis Tomlinson. Now we have the final piece of the puzzle, as Niall Horan has shared his tribute to Payne.

Today (October 18), Horan shared a photo of him and Payne together in their younger days. He wrote:

“I’m absolutely devastated about the passing of my amazing friend, Liam. It just doesn’t feel real.

Liam had an energy for life and a passion for work that was infectious. He was the brightest in every room and always made everyone feel happy and secure.

All the laughs we had over the years, sometimes about the simplest of things, keep coming to mind through the sadness. We got to live out our wildest dreams together and I will cherish every moment we had forever. The bond and friendship we had doesn’t happen often in a lifetime.

I feel so fortunate that I got to see him recently. I sadly didn’t know that after saying goodbye and hugging him that evening, I would be saying goodbye forever. It’s heartbreaking.

My love and condolences go out to Geoff, Karen, Ruth, Nicola and of course his son Bear.

Thank you for everything, Payno.

Love you brother.

Nialler.”

Find Horan’s post here.

This week’s episode begins with a quick Sportscast on some of the biggest buffoons in sports, who happen to work in Philadelphia and New York. From there, Steven and Ian talk about the final album from Japandroids, Fate And Alcohol, and how it gives their career closure. Then they discuss two recent critically acclaimed metal albums from Blood Incantation and Chat Pile, and how the genre has evolved in the past decade.

In the mailbag, a listener fact-checks Steven’s recent rant about sports stadiums in Milwaukee. They also address an email about “slow burn” album openers on recent LPs by MJ Lenderman and Waxahatchee, and whether they set a good tone or are simply boring.

In Recommendation Corner, Ian talks about the latest from Touche Amoré and Steven recommends the new album from Tim Heidecker.

New episodes of Indiecast drop every Friday. Listen to Episode 211 here and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. You can submit questions for Steve and Ian at [email protected], and make sure to follow us on Instagram and X (formerly Twitter) for all the latest news. We also recently launched a visualizer for our favorite Indiecast moments. Check those out here.

It’s been remarked by both visitors and residents of Los Angeles that South LA is like a completely different country. The language, the customs, and the people are miles away — socially and geographically — from the glitz of Hollywood. As such, Ab-Soul and JasonMartin give a quick lesson in LA politics (with some help from Thirsty P) in their new video for “All That,” explaining the ins and outs of the culture. If you get it, you get it, and if you don’t… stay north of Pico.

Produced by frequent TDE collaborators Rascal and TaeBeast, “All That” features a rumbling beat and some head-spinning examples of LA slang and the two rappers’ always excellent wordplay. “All That” is the first single from Ab-Soul’s recently announced mixtape, Soul Burger, which has a November 8 release date. Soul Burger is a tribute to Soul’s childhood best friend, Doe Burger, who died in 2021. While Soul was normally known for introspective concepts and murky, slow-paced beats, Burger pushed Soul to make more upbeat music for fans to dance to at his shows.

Soul Burger will be Ab-Soul’s first full-length project since 2022’s Herbert, which itself was a return from a nearly six-year hiatus. It’s due on 11/8 via TDE.

You can watch Ab-Soul’s “All That” video featuring JasonMartin above.

You’d be forgiven for thinking Ferg was finished with music after a relatively quiet last few years — but not by Ferg himself. His latest single, “Thought I Was Dead,” calls out the doubters who wrote him off, defying them with boisterous boasts about his current circumstances over a thunderous, threatening beat produced by Mike Will Made-It. The song’s video opens with Ferg rapping amid brassy instruments decked out in angel wings and a matching durag, but after a beat switch on the bridge, resets to more familiar territory for the Harlemite: The streets of New York, surrounded by homies on ATVs.

“Thought I Was Dead” is the second single from Ferg’s upcoming album Darold. He announced the album’s impending release with “Allure” featuring Future, while his latest update brings the official release date for the self-titled album: Friday, November 8. Meanwhile, he’s been busy as a featured artist this year, as well, appearing on “Hot One” from Denzel Curry and TiaCorrine, and lending an assist to NBA star-turned-rapper Jaylen Brown on Brown’s debut single, “Just Do It.”

With a new nom de plume, a slew of collaborations in the cut, and his comeback album on the way, Ferg is certainly proving those who thought he was dead wrong.

Watch Ferg’s “Thought I Was Dead” video above.

Darold is due on 11/8 via RCA Records.

It’s often said that love has the potential to drive us crazy, but in the video for Ari Lennox‘s new single “Smoke,” the Dreamville singer makes that message literal. Set in an old-timey mental institution, the video opens with Ari getting electroshock therapy and sees her terrorizing the orderlies, performing in a facility talent show (clad in a dress made from her hospital gown), and staging a getaway with her backup singers. It’s the R&B equivalent of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, all set to her doo-wop-accented new single.

Mental health has been on the DMV area native’s mind a lot lately; she recently shared an update with fans that she would be permanently departing from social media, despite how much she’s used it in the past. “I’m working on a plan to transition off of social media for good,” she wrote. “I don’t believe I’ll ever mature and be happy as long as I have it. So my last day of socials will be December 18th, my 2-year sobriety anniversary. I will be deleting my FB, IG and TikTok permanently.”

She noted she would have made this decision sooner, after so many hairy experiences online, but fear of losing business opportunities kept her online. However, she called herself “exhausted with my addiction to the internet and gossip and attention and validation and yearning to be in control and over sharing,” telling fans she’d keep in touch through her newsletter instead. Whether “Smoke” will precede a full-length album from the singer remains to be seen; she has until December to make the announcement.

You can watch the “Smoke” video above.