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Another arrest has been made In PnB Rock’s murder as police continue the search for Freddie Lee Trone, according to HipHopDX via LAPD Online. Trone’s 32-year-old wife Shauntel Trone was arrested in Gardena on Tuesday (September 27) on suspicion of accessory to murder. Police also arrested a 17-year-old, Freddie’s son and Shauntel’s stepson, and charged him with actually firing the shots that killed the Philadelphia rapper. Police are still searching for Freddie, believed to be the getaway driver, and have warned Angelenos that he is “armed and dangerous.”

According to police, it is believed that Freddie and his son were already parked at the Roscoe’s House Of Chicken ‘N Waffles where they accosted Rock and demanded that he hand over his jewelry as he ate lunch with his girlfriend. This contradicted prior theories that the alleged killers had tracked the rapper through his social media posts. While police entertained the possibility that he’d been targeted by enemies from Philadelphia or even Atlanta, the truth turned out to be more mundane.

PnB Rock previously talked about being confronted by some local tough guys in LA, telling DJ Akademiks that robberies of rappers were becoming more common — a theory that LA OG Ice-T corroborated on Twitter a few days after Rock’s death.

Leaked phone calls from Russian soldiers (as recently compiled in a massive trove by The New York Times) have revealed what many people suspected about Putin’s Ukraine invasion. His soldiers were drop-shipped with very little preparation, and in many cases, they didn’t know that they were embarking upon what Putin calls a “special operation” until the day before it happened. Video footage also revealed that food and medical supplies essentially don’t exist, and soldiers are being told to bring tampons to treat their own bullet wounds.

It’s no wonder, then, that men of fighting age are fleeing Russia (and it’s chaotic at the airports) following Putin’s announcement to call up 300,000 reservists. Given that half of Putin’s army died by late July during this conflict, the natural fear is the draft will soon include civilians, and that’s why traffic is flowing at Russian borders. CNN reports that the Lars border crossing has seen 10,000 Russians per day following Putin’s draft announcement, and the Washington Post says that at least 180,000 Russians (and probably more) have fled to three nearby countries:

The emerging scale of the exodus — more than 180,000 Russians have fled just to three neighboring countries, with the full tally likely much higher — has raised questions about the Kremlin’s ability to sustain its war effort. As more Russians cross the border, escaping the restrictions imposed by Putin’s government, they are providing a glimpse of alienation and unease spreading back home.

This doesn’t account for the Russians who have hopped on airplanes and left the continent or those who have gone unrecorded in the chaos. In the meantime, Putin is somehow seeing success in Ukraine even though the New York Times revealed how the army won’t be able to take Kyiv, only individual villages in Ukraine. Still, Putin scheduled a “grandstand ceremony” for Friday, according to Business Insider, when he’ll formally annex four regions. Here’s the official word via Reuters:

Russian President Vladimir Putin will on Friday begin formally annexing 15% of Ukrainian territory, presiding at a ceremony in the Kremlin to declare four Ukrainian regions part of Russia.

Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the ceremony would take place at 3 p.m. (1200 GMT) on Friday in the St George’s (Georgievsky) Hall of the Grand Kremlin Palace to sign “agreements on the accession of new territories into the Russian Federation”.

There appear to be some “Baghdad Bob” vibes going on with this announcement. There’s also no telling how Putin plans to further staff this war if able-bodied men (of fighting age) leave Russia in droves. Meanwhile, Finland has closed off its border to Russian tourists, but the Financial Times reports that Georgia and Kazakhstan are among the countries that welcome fleeing Russians with open arms.

(Via CNN, Washington Post, The New York Times, Reuters, Business Insider & Financial Times)

In April, Future unveiled his new album I Never Liked You, which instantly went No. 1 and was packed with great tracks like “Puffin On Zootiez” and “Holy Ghost.” To celebrate the LP further, he went on Jimmy Kimmel Live for a performance.

Future kicked off his appearance by walking on the stage and sitting across from the host. “So how is the future, relatively speaking?” asked Kimmel. Future answered, “I be drifting off sometimes.” The screen faded into a new scene — a daydream in which he gave a hypnotizing performance of his song “Love You Better.” He rapped thoughtfully from an armchair as the floor became covered with a thick blanket of smoke.

Future just recently sold his publishing for “high eight figures.” In a statement, he said, ” “I put everything into my music, and I wanted to make sure these were in good hands as I thought about the next chapter of these songs. I’m proud to partner up with Rene [McLean, Influence Media partner and founding advisor] and the team at Influence Media and send a signal that this music has timeless value. My music is my art, and these songs represent some of the most precious artwork of my career.”

Watch Future perform “Love You Better” above.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow, and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Power pop is a genre that never seems super popular nor on the brink of extinction. Instead, it just chugs along — sadly, sweetly, melodically, and with nice bangs.

For the past 50 years, there have always been bands committed to the art of making super hooky guitar-pop songs about heartache and horniness. This kind of music might not attract a huge audience, but the listeners who are into it are committed. And, sometimes, that fidelity is rewarded with a fresh wave of greatness. Believe it or not, but it appears that 2022 might be one of those times. There has been a cadre of very good and well-received power-pop albums this year, including efforts by Mo Troper, Young Guv, and Tony Molina. This week brings my favorite record of the bunch: Easy Listening by Philadelphia band 2nd Grade.

If you know the tropes of the genre, you won’t find any surprises on Easy Listening. Are there jangly guitars? Yes. Do the vocals sound boyish in a melancholy sort of way? Of course. Are the lyrics replete with references to Beatles and Beach Boys songs? No question. Is there a generous supply of handclaps and gooey backing vocals? As if you need to ask!

The point of power pop is never originality; it’s about musical craft and hitting the listener’s pleasure centers over and over via ruthlessly efficient and svelte songwriting. And on those counts, Easy Listening is a smashing success and one of my favorite albums of the year.

2nd Grade is led by Peter Gill, a 31-year-old musician who also plays another very good band, Friendship. On past efforts like 2020’s Hit To Hit, the country-rock stylings of Friendship infiltrated 2nd Grade. (Guitarist Jon Samuels also plays in both bands.) But Easy Listening is a purely power-pop affair, in which the most recent reference — musical or lyrical — is to the Seinfeld subplot about Kramer moving to Los Angeles to become an actor. It’s like taking a vacation in a world in which Big Star and The Raspberries still have a chance at being the biggest bands in the world.

I spoke with Gill about Easy Listening, his love of oldies radio in the ’90s, and why Tom Petty should be considered power pop.

The world of 2nd Grade songs is very much a 20th-century world. And not just in terms of the musical references, but also the lyrics. You have a song about being on the cover of Rolling Stone, and there are nods to MTV and VH1. Because of the age you are, it’s not like that’s necessarily your world. So why do you find it so attractive?

I feel like my generation, we grew up at the tail end of that sort of rock media. We knew about it when we were kids. It’s almost like we absorbed these Baby Boomer kind of rock ‘n’ roll dreams. And then, by the time I was a teenager or 18 or whatever, that stuff didn’t mean what it used to mean anymore. But I’ve still come to believe that it’s the pinnacle of something culturally. Also, more broadly speaking, I think a lot of records from the ’60s and ’70s, all that stuff is very thoroughly canonized now. There’s a million really well-written and thoughtful think pieces on hundreds of really cool records. So if you’re the kind of music nerd that digs into that stuff and wants to read about everything, you’re naturally drawn to that canon. And so that canon is really important to me. I have a really strong connection to it.

Do you consider what you’re doing to be nostalgist or escapist music?

Let me think about that. No, I don’t actively consider it to be nostalgic or escapist, but I also wouldn’t say that it isn’t those things. I feel like a lot of the time co-opting older styles and aesthetics and trying to infuse them with new ideas or ideas that feel new to me. I am of the mind that there’s nothing new under the sun, at least within music. There’s very little you can do that is actually new or completely original. And so mostly I just borrow from styles of music that I love that are older. But I try not to just have it be a rehash. If I’m writing a song, I want it to be a hook that I haven’t heard before or I just want it to be new somehow. The whole tradition of power pop is connoisseurs who are trying to fine-tune whatever came before, even though it’s not remarkably different.

What in particular do you feel like is new or modern about 2nd Grade?

One, trying to completely trim the fat off of a pop song and get down to just the most exciting parts. That feels modern to me because people’s attention spans in general are so oversaturated, and it seems fitting for the times to try to make the most streamlined pop music that I can. And these songs aren’t going to get played on the radio. So they don’t need to be three and a half minutes. Another modern thing, I think, is we purposely tried to have a big mix of fidelity on the record. There are some songs that are super hi-fi and were done in a really nice studio. And then there are some that were done at home on a four-track or even on an iPhone.

We have access to streaming data now. And it’s clear when you look at the numbers that people listen to the singles and they listen to maybe the first song or two on the album. Those ones get the majority of the plays. So why would a band in 2022 spend so much money to make a whole album in a really nice studio when people maybe aren’t even going to listen to half of it? Doing it this way is exciting to me because it really mixes things up, the way it sounds. But also it feels financially prudent and I feel like more and more records are going to be that way in the future.

I read an interview you did last year where you were asked about 10 albums that influenced you. And I think eight or nine of them were Beach Boys albums. What is it about The Beach Boys that you love so much?

I think number one is just Brian Wilson’s melodies are the best around, no contest. His melodies are so innovative and always so hooky. He fits so many syllables into his melodies. It’ll be a really long breath and then jumping all over the scale. He’s almost like the Allen Ginsburg of pop music in that way, where Allen Ginsburg does these super long lines where you’ve got to hold your breath and say as many words as you can. Also with The Beach Boys, I just love how they took this metaphor of surfing as far as it could go. They wrote so many different songs where the imagery or the symbolism is surfing images. But think of where they started, those early surf songs, and then think of where they ended up, with “Surf’s Up.” They just picked the thing and did it.

Power pop generally is an interesting subculture — it’s pretty small and niche-y, but some of the groups that fit under that umbrella happen to be the most popular bands of all time.

To me, power pop is mostly a helpful framework for me to sit down and write songs. It helps me when I’m sitting there with a blank page and no idea in my head. It helps direct me.

How so?

Mostly just with a huge focus on melody, I think. And the instrumentation is instrumentation that I’m really comfortable with. I grew up in the suburbs in Maine listening to Tom Petty and listening to classic rock radio. And a lot of that Tom Petty stuff is really power pop.

Make the case that Tom Petty is power pop.

I don’t know if I have a super persuasive argument. It’s more of a feeling. It’s a gut feeling. His hits, the singles, they just do what I believe a good power-pop song can do. I can’t get into the semantics of it though because that’s where I get into trouble. If I get too specific about what power pop is, it stops being as helpful for me.

How about a specific Petty song?

“Even The Losers.” To me, power-pop music is loser music where losers become winners in their dreams. That’s almost like a thesis statement right there, that song.

There’s also the fact that Petty played bass on Dwight Twilley’s “Looking For The Magic.”

Oh really?

Yeah. That’s the best power-pop song of all time in my opinion.

Oh, cool. That’s interesting. I did not know that. I recently learned that it’s Phil Seymour who’s doing the harmonies on “American Girl.”

There’s a set of influences that it seems all power-pop bands draw from. And there are certain subject matter parameters — romantic heartache, sexual lust, going out on Saturday night, maybe a certain smart-alecky attitude. Is that what you mean by a framework?

Yeah, that sounds right. To me, I think of it as the genre that started as basically The Beatles, The Kinks, and The Beach Boys. And just wanting to write really good guitar-pop songs. If I’m going to sit down and write a power-pop song, it can’t just be a pedestrian melody or a song that three minutes from now, it isn’t memorable at all. It’s going to be bombastic in a way. It’s going to stick in the mind a little more. You’re going to write it in a way that in an alternate universe, it wouldn’t be that crazy for that song to land on the radio and be a huge hit even though that’s never going to happen.

Something I’ve noticed is that punk and hardcore musicians often end up evolving into power-pop musicians. Like, at some point they suddenly sound like Teenage Fanclub. Tony Molina and Young Guv are two obvious — and well done — examples of this. Why do you think that is?

Part of it is hardcore is a really intense kind of music to perform over a long period of time. You reach an age where it’s exhausting, probably. Compared to other places that a punk musician could go, it seems like a pretty natural pivot — early Teenage Fanclub is pretty heavy. But yeah, I’ve been noticing that and I feel like maybe 10 years ago the thing was punk musicians would go into country music. Does that still happen? I feel like I haven’t seen that as much.

I just find it interesting that Teenage Fanclub seems like such a touchstone. Not Big Star, not The Raspberries — it’s always Teenage Fanclub, and especially Bandwagonesque.

You still have noisy guitar solos in there. It’s a good, happy medium between melody and noise on that album.

Mila Kunis is out promoting for her new Netflix movie, Luckiest Girl Alive, but she’s also dropping some details about That ’70s Show spinoff that reunites (most) of the old cast. However, working on That ’90s Show meant Kunis would have to act alongside her real-life husband Ashton Kutcher, and to her surprise, their characters (Jackie and Kelso) are now married on the show, which didn’t make a whole lot of sense to Kunis.

As fans of the Fox sitcom know, Jackie and Kelso broke up, sending her into the arms of Danny Masterson’s Hyde and then later Wilmer Valderrama’s Fez. Obviously, Masterson isn’t returning for the show and will stand trial on sexual assault allegations. However, Valderrama will be there, and Kunis admitted to Access Hollywood that she doesn’t get why Fez and Jackie aren’t together.

Via The A.V. Club:

“You know what, I called BS. I was like, ‘My character would be with Fez.’ I think that I ended up with Wilmer’s character. And I was like, ‘Why are you and I together?’ And also, he was married when ’70’s ended to Shannon Elizabeth’s character, I think.” (Elizabeth played Brooke, the mother of Kelso’s child, for whom Kelso moved to Chicago at the end of the series.) “And now we’re like, 20 years—no, 16 years later, whatever it is, and now we’re married with a kid. And I was like, ‘I don’t know about this one,’” Kunis concludes skeptically.

On top of being forced to stay married to Kutcher on the show, Kunis had one more issue: “My kid in it is too damn old,” she laughingly told Access Hollywood. “I would not birth such a child at my age!”

(Via Access Hollywood)

There has been some tension between Kanye West and Kris Jenner in recent times, so it seemed like more may have been on the way yesterday (September 28) when West changed his Instagram profile photo to an image of Jenner, the same one Jenner currently uses as her own profile picture. It appears West had good intentions here, though.

Yesterday, fans noticed that West had changed his profile picture; The first mentions on Twitter of Ye’s new profile image are from around 5:20 p.m. ET yesterday. Hours later, at around 10:30 p.m. ET, West took to his Instagram Story to explain what was going on, writing, “I posted Kris with thoughts of peace and respect. Lets change the narrative.”

This comes about a month after West shared screenshots of what appeared to be text conversations between him and Kim Kardashian. One of the texts apparently from Kardashian read, “From my mom- PLEASE Tell him to stop mentioning my name. I’m almost 67 years old and I don’t always feel great and this stresses me to no end.”

Meanwhile, West recently sat down for an interview with Good Morning America/ABC News Live, in which he said of Kardashian, “This is the mother of my children and I apologize for any stress that I have caused.”

Yesterday, the world learned that Coolio, the legendary rapper behind “Gangsta’s Paradise,” died at 59 years old. Reactions have since poured out, including a meaningful one from “Weird Al” Yankovic. He shared a photo of Coolio and himself (more on the picture in a bit) and wrote simply, “RIP Coolio.”

Coolio is of course a major part of Yankovic’s legacy thanks to the latter’s “Amish Paradise.” The song, a parody of Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise,” is one of Yankovic’s biggest hits: It’s his most-streamed song on Spotify and one of a handful of Yankovic songs to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

The rapper was initially not pleased with Yankovic’s parody but later expressed regret over his response to it on multiple occasions. In a 2011 interview, for example, he said, “I sat down, and I really thought it out. I was like, ‘Wait a minute.’ I was like, ‘Coolio, who the f*ck do you think you are? He did Michael Jackson. Michael Jackson didn’t get mad..’ […] I’ve since apologized to him. Again, that was so stupid. […] That was a stupid thing for me to do. That was one of the dumbest things I did in my career.”

As for the photo Yankovic chose to share, it’s a significant one. The pic shows the two hugging at the XM Satellite booth at the 2006 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. As Vulture notes, this occasion marked the pair’s public reconciliation after years of tension between them due to “Amish Paradise.” Yankovic later said of the encounter, “I don’t remember what we said to each other exactly, but it was all very friendly and after a minute, he was gone. I turned to the next person in line and said, ‘Did that really just happen?’”

Revisit our 2016 interview with Coolio here.

Kid Cudi is preparing for the release of his next album Entergalactic, whose tracklist was just unveiled. The closing track is titled “Burrow,” a nod to Joe Burrow of the Cincinnati Bengals. As per a new tweet from Team Reporter Marisa Contipelli, the quarterback appreciated the gesture.

She wrote, “Kid Cudi texted Joe Burrow to let him know a song on his new album was named after him. Burrow smiled pretty big when telling us that.”

In a recent interview, Kid Cudi divulged that he’s going to be stepping back from his music projects to focus on other endeavors. “I think I’m going to take a step back from the Kid Cudi stuff and focus a lot more on developing my own things,” he told Popsugar. “Writing — whether it’s movies or TV shows — producing things, putting stuff together. Just really getting my production company [Mad Solar] up to a place where, in the next three or four years, we’re a household name. I really have goals. We’re off to a great start with the documentary, X, Pearl, and now, Entergalactic. I mean, we have four bangers so far, so I just want to see what else we can do and keep going.”

Marjorie Taylor Greene has been a congresswoman for over a year-and-a-half, and it’s not clear if she ever does her job. Early into her tenure she was booted from committees over past (and present) inflammatory comments. But she still finds time to fill her day. She gets into fights, online and in person. She goes on places like Newsmax and OANN. She makes threats about what she’ll do when (or if) she becomes Speaker of the House. It’s exhausting to watch, and it may have exhausted her husband, too.

As per The Daily Beast, Perry Greene, who married her in 1995, filed for divorce on Tuesday, starting that their nearly three-decade marriage was “irretrievably broken.” He also stated that they’d been separated for some time.

In a statement provided through a spokesperson, Greene is quoted as saying, “Marriage is a wonderful thing and I’m a firm believer in it. Our society is formed by a husband and wife creating a family to nurture and protect. Together, Perry and I formed our family and raised three great kids. He gave me the best job title you can ever earn: Mom. I’ll always be grateful for how great of a dad he is to our children. This is a private and personal matter and I ask that the media respect our privacy at this time.”

Perry also released a statement: “Marjorie has been my best friend for the last 29 years and she has been an amazing mom! Our family is our most important thing we have done. As we go on different paths we will continue to focus on our 3 incredible kids and their future endeavors and our friendship.”

Shortly after her House stint began in early 2021, rumors broke that Greene was cheating on her husband with a “polyamorous tantric sex guru,” as well as the manager of a gym. She denied these claims, but the former stated that he was sad at what she’d become.

(Via The Daily Beast)

There are few things that feel more awful than being stranded at the altar by your spouse-to-be. That’s why people are cheering on Kayley Stead, 27, from the U.K. for turning a day of extreme disappointment into a party for her friends, family and most importantly, herself.

According to a report in The Metro, on Thursday, September 15, Stead woke up in an Airbnb with her bridemaids, having no idea that her fiance, Kallum Norton, 24, had run off early that morning. The word got to Stead’s bridesmaids at around 7 a.m. the day of the wedding.

“[A groomsman] called one of the maids of honor to explain that the groom had ‘gone.’ We were told he had left the caravan they were staying at in Oxwich Bay (the venue) at 12:30 a.m. to visit his family, who were staying in another caravan nearby and hadn’t returned. When they woke in the morning, he was not there and his car had gone,” Jordie Cullen wrote on a GoFundMe page.

u201cDevastated bride goes ahead with party after groom stood her up on their wedding day ud83dudc4fnn[THREAD] ud83euddf5u201d

— Manchester News MEN (@Manchester News MEN)
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Stead spoke with the groom at 4 p.m. the previous day, but they stayed the night with their respective parties to save some mystery before the big day. “The groom and I had already agreed not to speak the night before the wedding anyway, so I didn’t know what was happening on his end, I didn’t have a clue,” Stead told The Metro.

Stead was in absolute shock after hearing the news. She had paid for nearly the entire wedding herself, using up all of her life savings on the £12,000 ($13,000) affair. “As a joke, the videographer said ‘Why don’t you carry on, girls? You’ve spent all this money, you’re not getting it back, all your guests are there, why don’t you just go?’” Stead told The Metro.

So, she did just that. Stead decided that the wedding would go on without her fiance.

u201cKayley Stead made the brave decision to carry on with the celebrations without her partner of four years Kallum Norton after he ditched her before the ceremonynnhttps://t.co/BoBM7KUSOhu201d

— The Daily Record (@The Daily Record)
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“That’s when I was like, I’m going to do it,” she said. “I’d spent all this money, I’d been looking forward to the food, a dance with my dad, spending time with my family, so why not?”

Stead, her friends, family and even the groomsmen didn’t let things go to waste and they enjoyed her wedding entrance, food, speeches, dances and even posed for photos. “I didn’t want to remember the day as complete sadness,” she said.

“She was the most beautiful bride we had ever seen,” Cullen added.

The good news is that after the party, Cullen set up a GoFundMe page to help Stead recoup her losses and it has already reached its goal of £10,000 ($10,830). Almost two weeks after the event, Stead still doesn’t know why she was stood her up on her wedding day.

u201c”There were so many special moments, like my wedding entrance, the sparkler walk, the first dance and punching the wedding cake, so there was still happiness in the day. I’d spent all this money.” – Kayley Steadu201d

— Birmingham Live (@Birmingham Live)
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The Sun caught up with Norton and he refused to apologize. The only thing he had to say was, “I don’t want to talk about the article.”

While it’s terrible that Stead was stood up on her wedding day, she should be applauded for making the best of the worst day ever. It’s also wonderful that her bridesmaids and family stood by her side and supported her as she dealt with a serious blow. Let’s hope she finds someone better soon. It shouldn’t be too hard—standing someone up at the altar and then not even explaining yourself is a pretty low move.