The best new hip-hop this week includes albums, videos, and songs from Offset, Hit-Boy, Fivio Foreign and more.

August sure has flown by, but every week has mattered in some way. We have Offset’s solo (re)debut, Hit-Boy showing the people he is more than a super producer, Fivio Foreign continuing his major run over the year, and of course, the hidden gems you need to know about.

Here is the best of hip-hop this week ending August 19, 2022.

Albums/EPs/Mixtapes

Larry June — Spaceships On The Blade

Larry June revels in the simple things life has to offer, such as natural juices and nice cars, but there’s nothing simple about his lyrical ability. He articulates this well on his new album Spaceships On The Blade, specifically in the record “I’m Him.” Babyface Ray, 2 Chainz, Curren$y, and more appear on these 18 tracks that balance rapper swagger with healthy humanity. Larry is setting a different standard.

Internet Money — We All We Got

Internet Money has a knack for bringing talent together. The new six-track offering We All We Got features a diverse array of voices, namely Lil Yachty, Lucki, Yeat, Ken Carson, and more.

The Homies — It’s A Lot Going On

You may know them for their association with Jack Harlow, but The Homies are a talented collective that has been doing this music thing for some time. It’s A Lot Going On features Jace, Marzz, and Mason Dane for a musical display that accurately depicts this project’s title; The Homies can do it all and make it make sense.

OMB Peezy x DJ Drama — Misguided

Has any DJ Drama collaboration gone wrong? I’d say no, but let OMB Peezy show you for himself on Misguided. Peezy and Drama restore the feeling and enlist the help of G Herbo, NLE Choppa, and Morray for this 16-track masterclass.

YBN Nahmir — Faster Car Music

It appears YBN Nahmir is gearing up for an entire series with this first Faster Car Music EP. With sole feature Jeremih, he gets off to quite a good start with standout tracks “Bows” and “Lamborghini Truck.”

Kelow Latesha — Turbo

Kelow Latesha has her foot firmly pressed on the gas in her new project Turbo. The seven-track project only features Asian Doll, but with a range of records like “Titanic,” “OMG,” and “Charizard,” it may feel like this is a group effort.

Singles/Videos

42 Dugg — “IDGAF”

42 Dugg’s “IDGAF” is the whistle-rapper’s dismissal of anything that doesn’t serve him. He saw a huge rise over the last few years before having to spend time in jail, but his impassioned delivery is just another sign of the greatness that was unfortunately halted.

Pressa — “Blame Me”

Pressa’s “Blame Me” is a genuine inquiry as to why people hate on him. His high-pitched croon over thumping drums contributes to the earnest nature of his confusion, but he makes sure to remind listeners he is a “big killer” in case the vocals are misleading.

Doodie Lo — “I Swear To God”

Doodie Lo’s “I Swear To God” is less than two minutes long, but he doesn’t need more time. The message is he doesn’t trust a lot of people, he doesn’t kill and tell, and he keeps that heat on him in case anyone brings the wrong energy. Lil Durk looks like he’s having a lot of fun in the video too.

Big K.R.I.T. — “Extra Credit”

Big K.R.I.T opens “Extra Credit” saying it isn’t easy being great, but he sure makes it look effortless. When you hit every mark as a lyricist, do you really need extra credit? He’s coming for it all anyways.

Jay Worthy & Harry Fraud — “Winnipeg Winters” ft. A$AP Twelvyy

“Winnipeg Winters” quite literally sounds like a cold night driving through the city. Jay Worthy and Harry Fraud’s chemistry is magical, and A$AP Twelvyy adds some luxurious bars to boost the lush aura.

Armani Caesar — “Hunnit Dolla Hiccup” ft. Benny The Butcher & Stove God Cooks

Armani Caesar is, hands down, one of the best women rapping today. As she powers towards her next project The Liz 2, out on September 2, she taps wordsmiths Benny The Butcher and Stove God Cooks for the cash-chasing anthem “Hunnit Dolla Hiccup.”

Lil Zay Osama — “Set Up” ft. Fredo Bang

Lil Zay Osama and Fredo Bang stay on their toes in the “Set Up” video. As two of the most real out, they handle being challenged with poise and confidence. Not to mention, piercing bars for days.

1TakeJay — “Social Media” ft. Blue Bucks Clans

Who better to offer a scathing analysis of social media than two artists who have gained traction through it? 1TakeJay and Blue Bucks Clan value being cool in real life as opposed to the timeline, but they show they can do both in this upbeat jam.

Stylistic Murder — “Represent The Real” ft. AZ & KRS-One, O.C., and DJ Flip

Just reading these names, you know you’re bound to hear a vintage rap record. Stylistic Murder, AZ, KRS-One, O.C. and DJ Flip overdeliver on “Represent The Real.” It will always be pleasing to get these nostalgic offerings as the rap landscape continues to change.

Jay Fizzle — “50 Freaky B*tches” ft. Lil Harold

Jay Fizzle and Lil Harold live every man’s dream. They sample the Mission Impossible theme song while among many beautiful women wearing less and washing cars more. “50 Freaky B*tches” is as fun and arousing as similar scenes look in movies.

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

88rising hasn’t taken their foot off the gas with their recent collaborations, and “Mind Games” adds another check mark to their list of jobs well done. Labelmates Milli and Jackson Wang have no interest in the complications of love, singing their hearts out in full rejection of anything that doesn’t bring them pleasure in the track written by Gallant and produced by Monsters & Strangers.

“Who says I want to think it through? Who says I want to play these mind games anymore?” Wang sings in the refrain after deeming himself a “mannequin in the world of emotion.” Milli later harmonizes with Wang in the powerful line, “Middle of the night asking you why I’ve been asking twice for so long,” before a beautiful saxophone solo.

“Mind Games” follows 88rising’s 2022 offerings “The Weekend,” “Don’t Go Changing,” and “Split,” all set to appear on Head In The Clouds III, the label’s third installment of their collaborative efforts bringing together close friends, family, and collaborators they respect from all over. 88rising is also gearing up for their Head In The Clouds festival taking place on August 20 and 21, with tickets available for purchase here.

Check out the new single “Mind Games” above.

88rising is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Ahead of the 2022 Tournament of Champions, Jeopardy! great Amy Schneider will take part in another game show. The Titan Throwdown, which also added Matt Amodio and James Holzhauer as participants, benefits Project 150, a non-profit providing “free support and services to homeless, displaced, and disadvantaged high school students.”

The event received a boost from Jeopardy! host Ken Jennings, who tweeted, “Whoa, this is some lineup! And benefits a great cause. (NOT just @James_Holzhauer getting smacked around. A Las Vegas nonprofit called Project 150.).” The GOAT also shared an article about being on the Call Me Kat season premiere with co-host Mayim Bialik, which prompted a cranky tweet from a follower who is not thrilled by Schneider’s continued involvement with Jeopardy! (Thursday’s episode was a rerun from her historic stream).

“Why is Amy Schneider back on as a contestant? It is not fair to the new players. I won’t watch Jeopardy while she is on. I know she is your favorite winner,” Dina (who has one follower) tweeted, to which Jennings replied, “It’s a rerun Dina! Settle down!” That’s good advice for 95 percent of people on Twitter, actually: settle down.

The 2022 Tournament of Champions kicks off in November. Until then, here’s more information on this weekend’s Titan Throwdown, including how to attend:

Nathan Fielder will be back to confound audiences with a second season of whatever the heck he’s doing on The Rehearsal. HBO has officially renewed the maybe reality (maybe brilliantly scripted) series, which provided the comedian with a stunningly hilarious amount of resources that allowed him to evolve his sociological experiments from Nathan For You to a wild new level.

“Nathan has sparked such a lively conversation with THE REHEARSAL,” Amy Gravitt, Executive Vice President, HBO Programming said in a statement. “We have no idea where season 2 will take us, and that is the delight of this boundary pushing show from a truly singular talent.”

Over the past five episodes, The Rehearsal has deviated from its simple premise of helping people “rehearse” for delicate interactions to an awkwardly mad-cap exploration into Fielder’s own psyche with a treatise on religion thrown in for good measure. Literally, no one knows what the show is working towards in its season finale. Critics were only provided the first five episodes of The Rehearsal, so it will genuinely be a surprise when it airs.

After “Finding Frances,” the daring and shockingly brilliant season finale of Nathan For You, expectations are high for what kind of trick Fielder has up his sleeve for The Rehearsal season finale, if there even is one. The show has been as unpredictable as it gets, so there’s no telling what will happen as Fielder continues to dive even further into a simulation of his own creation.

Here’s the official logline from HBO even though it’s debatable if this description even applies to The Rehearsal anymore. It’s gone so far off the rails, and we’re here for every awkward second of it:

THE REHEARSAL explores the lengths one man will go to reduce the uncertainties of everyday life. With a construction crew, a legion of actors, and seemingly unlimited resources, Fielder allows ordinary people to prepare for life’s biggest moments by “rehearsing” them in carefully crafted simulations of his own design. When a single misstep could shatter your entire world, why leave life to chance?

The Rehearsal Season 1 finale airs on August 19 at 11 PM EST on HBO.

Simon Pegg‘s new series, The Undeclared War, is terrifying. Not in a zombies, rural weirdos, or aliens eating, attacking, or replacing us kind of way. More in a tiptoe toward World War III or, at the very least, utterly disrupt vital services tipping us back to the stone age kind of way. Which is way more terrifying for how realistic the scenario is.

Created by award-winning writer and director Peter Kosminsky, the six-part series (which you can stream on Peacock) co-stars Pegg as a government official working for GCHQ (the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters Headquarters) and overseeing the triage and possible response to a debilitating cyber attack on the UK. In the midst of this, the tension is ratcheted up by the typical territorial pissing matches and blame games while relative newcomer Hannah Khalique-Brown brings a relatable, human element to the story as she’s thrust into not just an international incident (on her first day at GCHQ) but also a family trauma. Again, everything is very grounded and slow-burn, allowing you time to sit with thoughts about the possibility of these things, which unlocks a whole bunch of anxiety.

Uproxx spoke with Pegg recently about the series and the tense state of antagonistic behavior and muscle flexes that could one day push us over the edge, the destabilizing influence of troll farms on our discourse, being a source of actorly wisdom for young actors, seizing an opportunity to play a straight drama, and the big picture when it comes to talking about mental health.

We spoke at Tribeca a couple of years ago for Lost Transmissions and afterward, we shot the shit for a moment about Game Of Thrones. I thought about that when I saw that you had said something about Star Wars and it had blown up on the internet. And so I was thinking it must suck to see something like that happen anytime you have any kind of comment about pop culture. Does that make you want to talk about that stuff less?

Yeah. I think the problem these days, is that, and this kind of feeds into the show in a way, in terms of the way that information is disseminated in that you’ll say something which is, if it’s taken out of context and isolated and then kind of turned into a clickbait sound bite, then it becomes a talking point. And then that talking point is addressed as though it was just the thing that was said. Everything is very reductionist. The discourse online is so kind of binary and unsophisticated at the moment. And I think that’s kind of what the troll farm thing takes advantage of when it comes to people in conversations about slightly more, probably arguably more important things like politics and society.

Arguably more.

The idea is that these kinds of massive arguments and contentious debates can just erupt, fueled by, in this case [regarding politics and society], adversarial players who are actually trying to cause problems. I mean, everyone is already in this state of, “I’m ready for a fight.” And when anybody says anything about anything, people are ready to weigh in as they can online with impunity, just for the sake of it. And it’s kind of part of how the internet is being used to disassemble our society.

Certainly. I’m in the US and we certainly see that with our politics here. Even when it’s not a troll farm. Like, when the thing happened with the Trump warrant, every single commenter had the same, “If it could happen to him, it could happen to…” reaction. It almost feels like a troll farm, because people are saying the same thing.

It probably is. I mean, there will be people in that conversation online immediately.

I mean, like, Senators.

Oh yeah. They get retweeted by bots and they feel like they suddenly become empowered because they suddenly have a kind of ego boost by all these people that are seemingly agreeing with them when it’s adversarial players just trying to stoke up the MAGA crowd or whatever.

I’ve been someone who sort of thinks, “oh, maybe the internet was a mistake.” But then this show reminds you how everything is so interconnected. It would be such a devastating blow if something like this happened. How did this open your eyes in terms of the societal import of tech?

Well, I found making the show incredibly educational, in terms of it opened my eyes as to how tenuous the pieces at the moment, global pieces, particularly online are. It’s a very, very tenuous kind of deterrent that we have. It’s similar to the nuclear deterrent that we had in the ’80s. That we still have. Every player who has a cyber warfare infrastructure has exploits placed in their adversary’s infrastructure. So we’ve all got things ready to go. That line in the show about dropping Putin’s plane 20,000 feet, that could happen. We could do that. They could do stuff to us and that’s all that exists right now. We’re in that state of play at the moment. And it’s tempting to feel like everything’s fine, that we’re safe in our countries, and that everything’s such a long way away from us. But these foreign players, these adversaries, even domestic adversaries, are in our living rooms, because they are in our computers and they could do untold damage quite easily. And we could do untold damage to other people. And these things can escalate very quickly because. Like Danny [Pegg’s character] says, “You get attacked, and it looks like it’s Russia. But in actual fact, it’s North Korea pretending to be Russia.” So you retaliate against Russia and Russia, if it’s a first strike for them, they retaliate on you. And suddenly you’ve got a third world war, which is engulfing the entire planet.

Hannah Khalique-Brown is so good in this, and I hadn’t seen her in anything before, so it was a revelation for me. When you’re on set with actors who are younger — not to age you — but do you feel a sense of responsibility to mentor or be available for their questions at this point in your career?

Oh yeah, 100%. I immediately got on well with Hannah. She’s got such a great attitude. She’s no ego. This was her show. And at no point did she ever behave like it was her show. She was incredibly collaborative. We’d all sit round off set during the setups and we’d talk. And she said to me quite early on, “Oh my brother and I grew up watching your films”. And I was simultaneously flattered and immediately felt old, but I just loved working with her. The two sides of that coin are, I’m working with Alex Jennings who is an incredibly established, brilliant character actor who is a joy to work with. Most of my scenes with David Neal, who Alex plays, I had such fun. I’m a big fan of his. And then on the other side of that, I’m working with someone like Hannah, who’s literally just started her career, who has boundless enthusiasm and she’s incredibly uncynical. Not that Alex is cynical in any way, but you know what I mean. It’s so fresh and she’s a delight. I’ve got massive respect for her. I think she’s going to do so well.

So you identify someone who’s just starting, someone who’s been in the game for a while, and you’re somewhere in the middle. Do you find it hard to keep cynicism at bay?

No. I generally get cast doing similar things. I’m perceived in a certain way, particularly in the states, but here too, in terms of being a comedic actor or whatever. So to be given the chance to be in something which is far more dramatic gave me the chance to flex different muscles. I came into it feeling more like Hannah than Alex. This isn’t a place where I usually get to play. And so I had zero cynicism and particularly working with someone like Peter Kosminsky, who I really admire as a dramaturge and as a writer, as a person, I felt lucky to be there and I always try and maintain that, just so I always enjoy my job. I’d hate to let cynicism creep in and start to just take it all for granted.

As a writer, do you feel like you’re moving in a different direction as far as the kind of roles you want to write for yourself?

Yeah. Not least because I’m older. I couldn’t write a show like Spaced again because that’s not me anymore. I’ve always believed in the idea of writing from the truth, of writing about what you know, never guessing. And so there has to be a kernel of truth in everything I write and my truth is different to what it was when I was 25. I’d like to try and diversify into more sort of dramatic work as well, because that’s something I like to do and don’t always get the opportunity. So it feels fresh to me.

Writing from a place of truth obviously makes sense right off the tongue, but is that something where you question whether the material would be good if you weren’t coming from that place or is it about needing to be grounded holistically in what you’re working on?

I think it’s about the show, or whatever you’re writing, feeling authentic, feeling like it’s not sort of aimless or vague. Shaun of the Dead was as an easy film to write because, A, we were massive zombie fans and B, we were kind of living that life at the time, same as Shaun and Ed. Shared flats and inactivity. Hot Fuzz, we had to really research. We did a lot of research and we learned about the police. We learned about the rural experience and we learned about the metropolitan experience. And then with The World’s End, again, we were all turning 40 at that time and had lived a certain amount of that kind of [experience]. Certainly, me and booze, I had lived a bit of that. And I always feel like if you’re writing from the truth, then it’s going to feel more real to the people that are watching it.

You’ve been open about things like alcohol. I know from personal experience that when you talk about something that you’ve gone through, it can be cathartic. But when you see the reaction to things like that, do you still feel the reward of that or is there sometimes a feeling of, “Oh, I wish I hadn’t revealed that much of myself?”

Sometimes. You just think a lot of people want to talk about it all the time and I feel like I’ve kind of said everything I need to say about it, but I think what the positives of it are, far outweigh the negatives. It’s good. This is a time, I think, where the notion of discussion is becoming more and more important, particularly when it comes to mental health. And I think if anything that pushes that agenda forward, the idea of actually opening up, then that’s a good thing, I think.

‘The Undeclared War’ is currently streaming on Peacock.

There have been a lot of random anniversaries of classic records this year, but yesterday marked the 20th birthday of the app Shazam. If you don’t know — which, how? — Shazam is an app that always comes in clutch by telling you the title and artist of a song after it hears a brief clip.

To celebrate, they’ve put together a playlist made up of the most Shazamed song of each year for the past two decades. It’s on Apple Music and will definitely cause strong feelings of nostalgia, reminding you of when Adele’s “Rolling In The Deep” was virtually inescapable, or Evanescence’s “Bring Me To Life” had everyone turning emo, or Gotye‘s “Somebody That I Used To Know” was everywhere.

Adele has been able to keep up the momentum since that hit, but she recently had to postpone her Las Vegas residency. “There was just no soul in it,” she explained. “The stage setup wasn’t right. It was very disconnected from me and my band, and it lacked intimacy. And maybe I tried too hard to give it those things in such a controlled environment.” She added, “The first couple of months was really, really hard. I was embarrassed.”

Check out the playlist here.

Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Flea is one of the most esteemed and recognizable bass players of the past four decades. So, for a younger bass player, getting praise from him has to be a sort of dream-come-true moment. Now, Thundercat has had that pleasure, as he is apparently Flea’s favorite modern bass player.

That’s what RHCP bandmate Chad Smith said speaking with Apple Music’s Hanuman Welch recently. Smith was asked about getting Thundercat to join the Chili Peppers on their tour and he responded:

“Oh man, it was a no-brainer. We were so happy when he said yes, because like you said, he’s such a great musician. He can play in any setting. He’s so musical, he’s an amazing performer. His band is incredible, he’s got great songs, but a lot of people don’t know him as his own thing. I think it’s great to give him some exposure that he more than deserves. Obviously Flea loves him, we all do. But as a bass player, he’s like, ‘He’s my favorite bass player,’ [favorite] modern bass player right now. He’s just incredible. He gets the crowd going. He’ll play the most soulful funky Stevie Wonder kind of thing. He can do it all. The only complaint from me is he’s playing too short, but he’s awesome. Get there early if you can people, you will not be disappointed. Thundercat is the real deal.”

Check out Red Hot Chili Peppers’ upcoming tour dates here.

Red Hot Chili Peppers is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Madden 23 is officially released on Friday and it is expected to be a major moment in the franchise. Not only is this game an homage to the late, great John Madden, but it’s introducing a key new gameplay feature that is supposed to make Madden more fun to play than ever before. FieldSENSE is the big new addition in this year’s Madden, and it’s meant to give gamers more control than ever before.

To showcase this new feature, Madden 23 launched with a trailer featuring a star-studded cast of faces to represent the new game. The trailer featured Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson and Cowboys linebacker Michah Parsons, but it also had some celebrity faces like Cordae and Hit-Boy talking up the game’s new features alongside Twitch star Nickmercs and Amazon Prime Thursday Night Football reporter Taylor Rooks.

We’re currently in the process of playing as much of the game ourselves to give a full review of the Madden 23 experience, and while our full thoughts will be withheld until then, we can say that the FieldSENSE feature is meeting the hype early on. It’s the most control Madden has ever given the player and it’s a big step in the right direction for the franchise.

One would be hard pressed to put a label on Jean Dawson, who experiments with all types of music and embraces the many iterations of himself within. Dawson’s new video for “Three Heads” shows the artist quite literally appearing in three different forms on the screen, riding around recklessly in a car, and behind beds of fire. Though it may be difficult to determine who he really is, the music makes the puzzle solving worthwhile.

“Three Heads” arrives alongside Jean Dawson announcing his forthcoming album Chaos Now for October 7. Chaos Now will be the 26-year-old’s first offering since 2020’s Pixel Bath and will be an especially momentous occasion as he kicks off his debut headlining US tour in support of the album. The Los Angeles duo will be joining Dawson in his near month-long tour finishing up in LA on November 17.

Check out the video for “Three Heads” above. Below, find Jean Dawson’s upcoming tour dates.

11/16/2022 – San Diego, CA @ Voodoo Room
11/18/2022 – Las Vegas, NV @ The Space
11/19/2022 – Phoenix, AZ @ Rebel Lounge
11/21/2022 – Austin, TX @ Come and Take It Live
11/22/2022 – Houston, TX @ Warehouse Live
11/23/2022 – Dallas, TX @ Cambridge Room
11/25/2022 – Atlanta, GA @ Masquerade Hell Stage
11/27/2022 – Washington, DC @ Union Stage
11/28/2022 – Allston, MA @ Brighton Music Hall
11/29/2022 – Philadelphia, PA @ The Foundry
11/30/2022 – Brooklyn, NY @ Elsewhere
11/01/2022 – Montreal, QC @ Le Belmont
11/02/2022 – Toronto, ON @ Velvet Underground
11/04/2022 – Detroit, MI @ Shelter
11/05/2022 – Chicago, IL @ Lincoln Hall
11/06/2022 – Minneapolis, MN @ 7th Street Entry
11/08/2022 – Denver, CO @ Cervantes Other Side
11/09/2022 – Salt Lake City, UT @ Kilby Court
11/11/2022 – Vancouver, BC @ Biltmore Cabaret
11/12/2022 – Seattle, WA @ Chop Suey
11/13/2022 – Portland, OR @ Holocene
11/15/2022 – Oakland, CA @ The New Parish
11/17/2022 – West Hollywood, CA @ The Roxy

Chaos Now is out 10/7 via P+.

Ahead of the season two finale of Only Murders In The Building, star Martin Short was extremely excited to be on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, though he said it “might be the Vicodin and Xanax talking.” Either way, Short quickly dove into what was one of the most chaotic late-night interviews of all time.

The actor went on multiple tangents during his guest spot, touching on everything from Mar-a-Lago to Kim and Pete in just a 30-second span of time. Of course, he also had to mention his co-star Steve Martin, as the duo is embarking on the “Steve Martin and Martin Short: You Won’t Believe What They Look Like Today!” comedy tour.

“[Steve] is the most talented guy in the world,” Short said. “He juggles, he plays banjo. And somehow he’s famous. We are a team now. We are like Florida and a lower back tattoo.”

When asked about what he has learned while working with Martin on both Only Murders and their comedy tour, Short had a very serious response: “I’ve learned that he will pay top dollar for clean urine. I’ve learned that you don’t need to have a pool to have a pool boy. He is really amazing, you know he butt-dialed me the other day, which is kinda amazing because he had a rotary phone.”

Both Martin and Short are nominated for their work on Only Murders, though Short believes he is the front-runner for the Outstanding Lead Actor in a comedy series. “The finale’s on next Tuesday, you know. But Steve and I are nominated. If I can’t win, I hope he wins. But I can win, so screw him. If I lose I’m gonna send Will Smith up to slap him. Why not?” We, as a society, cannot go through this again.

Of course, Short cannot leave without roasting Fallon. “If someone had told me 20 years ago that I would be on the Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon with all of these Emmy nominations I would have said….Jimmy Fallon?”

Check out the clip above.