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Ted Cruz continues with his dubious tradition of refusing to read the room. His most famous instance of this (at least in the context of letting down his state) was to flee to sunny Cancun during a devastating ice storm. He’s working hard to live up to that reputation (of shafting his constituents) by not pledging to do much about the Uvalde mass school shooting other than to crusade against doors, which he feels are much more to blame than (no) gun laws for how a gunman took the lives of 19 children at Robb Elementary School.

On Wednesday, Ted (who, for the record, hasn’t accepted nearly as many NRA donations as Mitt Romney, although those gun-lobby donations do exist) decided to ignore the Ulvade funerals that had started to flow (along with news of another mass shooting, this time in Tulsa at a hospital campus). As mourners gathered for slain teacher Irma Garcia (and her husband, Joe, who apparently died of a broken heart two days later), the much maligned senator from Texas decided to tweet about having “ridiculous fun” at a Poker After Dark charity event. He even posted clips:

And although his replies were stacked with people asking what on earth he was thinking, he kept tweeting more clips of the “awesome” poker game.

Ted then (weakly) pointed out that this poker game was months ago, alright? Still, he maybe could have waited to share those clips at a better time for fun.

Journalist Aaron Rupar’s reaction tweet says it all, and so do the rest of these social media users.

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.

A number of digital flyers cover Angel Olsen‘s Instagram page. They advertise her sixth studio album Big Time with witty quips. One-liners like, “Some of the saddest songs you’ve ever heard… and a few happy ones,” and “Out with the bangs, in with the twangs” get ahead of jokes about Big Time before they’re conceived. They point to some attributes the folk singer is known for, nodding to her recognizable bangs (which tend to look a little different with each album rollout) and her music’s propensity to be pigeonholed in the “sad girl” genre. But one flyer sums up Big Time effectively: “It’s not country, but it’s not not country.”

Historically, sorrow has found a home in country music. Some of the most revered country and bluegrass artists of the 20th century have been posthumously named “poets of pain.” In a time before online therapy existed, country music acted as a medium for artists to make sense of their despair, melancholy, and — using a classic country buzzword — lonesome. At the time of writing Big Time, Olsen was experiencing an overabundance of all three.

Big Time isn’t a country album in the sense that you won’t see Olsen accepting any trophies at the Country Music Awards, and her album won’t be stacked up against controversial names like Morgan Wallen on Billboard‘s Top Country Albums chart. But Big Time is Olsen’s bid to join the alt-country genre, a move that feels like a logical next step following 2020’s stripped down project Whole New Mess. Adopting a dusty slide guitar and slight twang, Olsen pens plaintive ballads formed in the aftermath of emotional whiplash. Olsen didn’t initially set out to write an alt-country record with Big Time. She didn’t even practice with her band before hitting the studio, but the songs pretty much wrote themselves.

Big Time was recorded during a tumultuous period to say the least. Now in her 30s, Olsen was unpacking her past traumas after growing up in a religious community and discovering her identity as a queer woman. Olsen came out to her friends with her new partner Beau Thibodeaux, summing up the feeling: “Finally, at the ripe age of 34, I was free to be me.” But only three days later, she got a call that her father had died. His funeral unexpectedly became the occasion Olsen introduced her partner to her extended family. If that wasn’t difficult enough, Olsen’s mother fell ill and passed away only a few weeks later. Suddenly, a time that was supposed to be filled with new romance and celebration became overrun with immense mourning and grief.

Olsen attempted to make sense of these emotional extremes — grief amid love and tragedy amid self-actualization — throughout Big Time. Unlike the country poets of pain before her who sought solace through spirituality, Olsen found herself escaping into dreamworlds on lulling tracks like “Dream Thing.” The hazy, atmospheric song offers a metaphor for all the things she wasn’t able to say to her parents before their passing. Olsen noted how differently time seemed to move during that period, as if slipping past her. “I kept having these dreams about time travel, and life just felt like time travel — losing my parents, going through the pandemic,” she told The New Yorker about her grieving experience.

The penultimate track on the record, “Through The Fires,” exemplifies Olsen’s ability to write transfixing reflections on time. It’s a down-tempo piano ballad gently colored by a light string section and subdued percussion. Displaying some of her most touching songwriting to date, Olsen pens lines about an emotional trial by fire. “To remember the ghost / Who exists in the past / But be freed from the longing / For one moment to last.” Understanding that her grief and self-discovery have left her a different person entirely, she learns to let go of the dreams she once had in order to transcend her past and ultimately become better for it. “Time expanded in a different way for me,” she told The New Yorker. “I wasn’t the same. […] I really am irreversibly changed. I am a very different person than I was in 2020. I’m always me. But I did lose. And I went forward, alone, with my experience.”

“Through The Fires” also has a line about learning to “love without boundary,” something she still holds space for amid the anguish on Big Time. The album’s title track itself is an affectionate ode to her partner, who is also credited on the song. Lines about “good morning kisses” and rhymes of “mine” with “sunshine” border on corny, but the song is undeniably endearing and basks in the glow of a new romance. “I’m loving you big time, I’m loving you more,” Olsen sings, recycling phrases her parents would say to her and incorporating them into her current relationship.

Pairing Olsen’s mourning with her infatuation with her partner, it’s no wonder Big Time leans into the alt-country genre. Her slight country drawl and twangy steel guitar makes sense within the context of Olsen’s musical trajectory, especially since she now resides on the edge of the Great Smoky Mountains. The album walks listeners through her personal torment, something Olsen has never shied away from in the past. But despite doleful ballads and effusive love songs, one thing is strikingly absent from Big Time: Olsen’s incredible vocal range. In past records, Olsen’s voice acts as an instrument itself, bending and contorting between low, enveloping hums and shocking high notes to evoke a range of emotions. With the exception of the cinematic climax on her track “Go Home,” Olsen’s voice hovers in the low end of her vocal range, something she noted in an intimate live show earlier this year.

Perhaps the shift is intentional. Maybe she’s letting the music and lyrics on Big Time speak for themselves. After all, the songs are emotionally charged enough without her voice needing to climb several octaves. It’s possible she’s also saving herself from needing to re-experience her pain during live performances; because of her hyper-personal songwriting, she re-lives her highs and lows every night on stage, something she recently described as “an eternal birthday party.” Either way, Olsen’s initial advertisements about Big Time most definitely ring true. The album is filled with some of the saddest songs I’ve ever heard… and a few happy ones.

Big Time is out 6/3 via Jagjaguwar. Pre-order it here.

Frank Ocean is reportedly in talks with A24 and 2AM about writing and directing his own feature film, according to Discussing Film. The “Nikes” singer has always been open about his interest in filmmaking; he wrote and directed the 46-minute Endless, which streamed alongside his album of the same title in 2016.

It doesn’t stop there. He also interviewed Timothée Chalamet because he enjoyed Call Me By Your Name so much, he covered “Moon River” from the 1961 movie Breakfast At Tiffany’s, and in the Chalamet interview, he expressed interest in recording a film score someday.

Frank has also been reportedly shopping a new record around to labels. It seemed like he was gearing up to head into album mode back in 2019 when he shared both “DHL” and “In My Room,” but it’s likely the pandemic got in the way of any planned releases in early 2020. Though, he did put out another pair of singles in March of 2020, releasing “Dear April” and “Cayendo.”

During a recent Christmas episode of his Apple Music radio show, he also shared another new nine-minute track. Still, the best timeline we have for his new album is pegged to his rumored headlining slot at Coachella 2023. So it makes the most sense that even if we get a few new singles this year and in early 2023, the project would drop close to his appearance at the biggest festival in the world.

Following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, several Republicans pulled out of appearing at the NRA convention that was scheduled just a few days after the tragic event. However, others like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz did not bail on the convention because it might “look bad” after 19 elementary school children were killed by a gunman.

However, now Cruz is calling out his fellow Republicans for not being a true profile in courage like him. During the recent episode of his podcast, Verdict with Ted Cruz, the Texas senator voiced his disappointment with members of the GOP who thought it’d probably be a good idea to sit this one out. Via Mediaite:

“I thought it was important to be there,” Cruz said. “I was disappointed to see so many others make the decision not to be there. In part because the media narrative that comes out of horrific crimes, horrific mass murders within seconds, the media immediately wants to politicize them and use them to advance their longstanding political agenda that they had moments before the murder occurred.”

Cruz took things further by pointing out that Trump also wasn’t thrilled that Republicans didn’t show up. Only Trump wasn’t as polite, and if you’re getting “Darth Vader being told about Stormtroopers messing things up” vibes, that’s almost definitely the point.

“I said, look, ‘It was important that you came, it was important that you didn’t back out. Thank you for being here,’” Cruz said about his chat with Trump. “And he of course agreed. And he had, let me just say, some choice words for some of the folks who chose not to be there.”

(Via Mediaite)

Cardi B had an eventful holiday weekend in Cabo San Lucas with her husband Offset. During their vacation, they encountered the unusual sight of a yacht sinking. Cardi captured the moment on camera while offering her usual hilarious comedy. “Oh my God, they can’t do nothing about it?” she wondered. “There ain’t no big boat that could save it?!?”

Later on, it appeared that the couple went to a club together, where Cardi channeled her old job by putting on a pole dance for her husband — as well as a few others who happened to be nearby. Offset apparently appreciated the view, as a video posted online caught him grinning from ear to ear as he watched Cardi kick off her Crocs and show off a few moves before climbing into his lap.

The vacation was well-earned. Cardi’s been quite busy lately, even without an album to promote. Most recently, she and Megan Thee Stallion teamed up to take on a football training camp with the LA Chargers for Cardi Tries, Cardi gave an insightful interview to David Letterman, and she’s been working on some “technical difficulties” with her new music before giving it a release date. Meanwhile, Offset has been gearing up to release some solo music of his own amid rumors of a potential Migos breakup.

Watch Cardi’s pole dance video above.

Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Saul Goodman we meet in Breaking Bad is a far cry from the Saul Goodman we know (and because he’s played by Bob Odenkirk, love) on Better Call Saul. Saul-era Saul Goodman finds a strip mall office out of necessity; Breaking Bad-era Saul Goodman embodies the strip mall, ambulance chasing lawyer, with his slick hair and complete lack of human decency. He also sexually harasses his secretary Francesca and says things like, “God, you are killing me with that booty.” (It’s worth noting that “booty” should be pronounced as “boo-tay.” Creeps and sleazes love to say “boo-tay.”)

That line, which Saul remarks in his first episode of Breaking Bad, season two’s “Better Call Saul,” is an interesting moment for the character, considering what we know after six seasons of Better Call Saul. He’s not talking to anyone but himself — so why is he still in character as Saul Goodman, and not letting his guard down as Jimmy McGill?

It’s a question that was recently answered by Breaking Bad and Saul writer Thomas Schnauz. “He’s alone in the scene. Even Francesca has already left and can’t hear it, he’s just saying the line to himself on his own. What’s the point of keeping up the show when nobody’s watching?” Twitter user @luukki wondered. Schnauz replied, “It’s 4 years later of being ‘Saul Goodman,’ and as we like to say, ‘The mask becomes the man.’”

The Better Call Saul season six midseason finale, “Plan and Execution,” takes place in 2004; the “Better Call Saul” episode of Breaking Bad is set in 2008. A lot happens in those four years. I fear that Saul refuses to allow himself to be Jimmy, even in private, because he’s masking a Kim-related trauma. She would not have let him say “boo-tay.”

Better Call Saul returns on July 11.

Quentin Tarantino continues to Quentin Tarantino.

This time, Quentin Tarantino is Quentin Tarantino-ing (talking very quickly and manically about cinema) in podcast form. AP reports that Tarantino and Pulp Fiction co-writer Roger Avary, who met in 1983 years ago when they worked together at video rental store Video Archive in Manhattan Beach, CA, are launching a podcast series in which they rewatch and discuss films from the original Video Archives library. The podcast is called Video Archives Podcast and it will debut on SiriusXM’s Stitcher this summer.

“We never imagined that 30 years after we worked together behind the counter at Video Archives, we would be together again doing the exact same thing we did back then: talking passionately about movies on VHS,” Tarantino and Avary said in a statement. “Watching movies was what originally brought us together and made us friends, and it’s our love of movies that still brings us together today.”

When Video Archives went out of business, Tarantino, a preserver of cinema through and through, bought their inventory, so he essentially has the entire store (an estimated 8,000 VHS tapes and DVDs) in his home. On Video Archives Podcast, Tarantino and Avary will cover a wide variety of genres from “controversial James Bond films” to “surprising exploitation pics and beyond.” Seeing as Tarantino is a host, there will most likely be conversations about feet as well.

“Quentin and Roger have made such enduring marks on filmmaking,” Scott Greenstein, Chief Content Officer at SiriusXM said. “We’re so excited to be able to help them revisit this formative moment in their careers, and to bring their recommendations to new and larger audiences.”

(Via AP)

Kanye West, through his various endeavors, has a foot in pretty much every field of human endeavor right now; Recently, for example, Donda Sports has received attention for signing Aaron Donald and Jaylen Brown. Now, it looks like Ye is keeping an open mind when it comes to entering the amusement park game.

According to trademark attorney Josh Gerben, West — or more accurately, his Mascotte Holdings, Inc. company — filed 17 new trademark applications based on his Yeezus name, on May 27. The filings suggest Ye intends to attach the Yeezus name to things like amusement parks, blockchain-based currencies and non-fungible tokens (cryptocurrencies and NFTs), stores, toys, games, sporting equipment, buttons, clothing, bags, household items, and cosmetics, among others.

Aside from aforementioned ventures, West has kept busy with new music: Over the past week, he collaborated with Vory on “Daylight” and XXXTentacion on “True Love.” The new Yeezy Gap Engineered By Balenciaga collection also just had a global launch, and more reveals about what Ye has been up to have been shared as the new Hulu series The Kardashians. For instance, he apparently walked out on Kim Kardashian’s Saturday Night Live monologue after taking exception to some of what she said, and took his kids to school in a fire truck.

If you’ve started planning your vacations for the remainder of the year, then you’re sure to have been struck with the harsh reality that flight prices are absolutely bonkers right now. Flights from LA to San Francisco are hovering around $700. Going international? Good freakin’ luck. While we’re beyond excited to see the return of travel, it certainly comes with its downfalls — namely that it’sn more difficult to wander for those of us on a budget. Fortunately, there are resources out there to help you save a buck without sacrificing adventure.

Enter, Scott’s Cheap Flights, an online subscription newsletter that takes the legwork out of sifting through flights. Scott’s tracks airfare price drops from your local airport and sends you the best deals each week, so you can save on flights to your dream destinations. It’s a must for regular travelers who embrace spontaneity and adventure.

We chatted with Scott’s Cheap Flights founder, Scott Keyes, about how to get the best flight deals in 2022 — from the best flight-searching websites to the most affordable days to fly to the one thing every budget traveler should keep in mind when booking flights. Check out the conversation below for everything you need to know before booking your next plane ticket.

What can someone who’s new to the platform expect from Scott’s cheap flights?

How it started was back in 2013. I was a poor recent college graduate who wanted to travel the world but had basically no money to do it. I had zero expertise on how to find cheap flights. I wound up just devoting months to researching flights. And long story short ended up stumbling upon the best deal that I’ve ever gotten in my life still to this day, nonstop from New York City to Milan for 130 bucks round trip. I was able to go to Milan and North Italy for 130 bucks and had an amazing trip. When I got back, all my friends and coworkers kept coming up to me.

They said, ‘Hey Scott, next time you find a deal like that, can you let me know so I can get in on it too?’ So rather than trying to remember every single person I needed to notify next time I found a great deal, I said, ‘why don’t I just start a simple little email list?’ And this way, anytime I find a great deal, I can let everybody know at the same time. That was how Scott’s Cheap Flights began. I didn’t know it at the time, it was just a hobby for the next two years. But the premise is that airfare is the most volatile thing that most of us purchase in our regular lives. It is extraordinarily expensive one day and then downright cheap the next day. So you have two options. You can either be glued to Kayak or Google Flights 24-seven searching for flights to make sure you don’t miss out on a great deal, or you can live your life and then risk missing out on a deal of a lifetime, like that $130 flight to Milan.

What we do is make sure that you can live your life but still make sure that you find out about when those great deals do pop up from your home airport.

Travel’s obviously ramping back up again this year. There are fewer restrictions on people who are vaccinated. What do you predict the summer season’s biggest trends will be and how will that likely affect flight prices?

You’ve absolutely nailed it. Travel is ramping up and ramping up quickly. I think this summer is going to be one of the busiest travel seasons in my memory. Not only are people taking so many of those trips that they hadn’t for the last few years, but you’re also seeing that planes are going to be more full than they were pre-pandemic. The makeup of travelers will be skewed this summer towards leisure travelers because business travelers are somewhat still lagging. The airlines, in order to make the economics work, end up having to book more seats largely for leisure travelers. You see it even in statistics today where it’s like 89% of seats on average are full this week compared to about 87% three years ago on the same week.

I think that’s going to be even more true this summer in terms of popular destinations. The big winners throughout the pandemic have been Miami, Cancun, Cabo, and to a lesser extent, Hawaii. These sorts of outdoorsy, beachy, leisure destinations, where not only is there strong demand for folks who felt like they wanted to take a vacation but wanted to be able to be outdoors and stay socially distant. I expect that to continue this summer. The number of flights to Cancun and Miami is significantly higher now than it used to be.

As a result, I think there’s actually great value on flights to Europe this summer. People think of planning a Europe summer trip as a really iconic thing. In normal times, it’s very expensive because everybody wants to take that trip. But this year there’s a kind of interesting anomaly happening where domestic travel demand is fully rebounded. It’s as high if not higher than it was pre-pandemic. But domestic travel supply, the number of flights available, is actually down about 10 or 15% compared to where it was three years ago. The actual supply for many destinations in Europe is actually going to be higher this summer than it was pre-pandemic. So for folks who are interested and willing to travel overseas, I actually think flights to Europe are excellent value this summer.

In your opinion, outside of Scott’s Cheap Flights, what are the best flight searching websites out there right now?

The kind of open secret in the travel world is that it really doesn’t make much difference where you search for your flights. Whether you prefer to search on Kayak or Orbits or Skyscanner or Google Flights, the results are basically all going to be consistently the same or very similar. The reason why is that they pull all their information from just two or three global distribution systems. These are essentially warehouses of airfare information.

That said, I always just go with the one that feels like it has the best user interface and the best user experience. To me, that’s Google flights. The results are lightning-fast. You can search from seven origin airports to seven different destination airports at the same time. Then you’ll be able to see the absolute cheapest fair on any one of those 49 possible routes. If it’s cheap enough, it might be worth a bus or a train up to one of those airports in another city.

I just like the way that Google Flights helps you find that information quickly. The last thing I’ll note here is that while I’m a big advocate of searching on these flight search engines, to be able to compare across airlines rather than searching directly on one airline’s website, the best practice is generally to book directly with the airline.

There are a couple of reasons for that. One is because there are certain federal protections that are afforded to you if you book directly with the airline. Those are not necessarily afforded if you book through an online travel agency. For instance, you’re guaranteed a 24-hour window from the moment you hit purchase to where you can get a full refund of your money back, no questions asked. Similarly, if there’s any sort of issue with your flight, and you need to change or it gets canceled, it’s far simpler to make changes to your itinerary. If you can deal directly with the airline, rather than having to deal with a middleman, it’s just much, much simpler.

For budget travelers, what would you say is the number one thing they should keep in mind when searching for affordable flights?

I love this question because I think people have a strong, justified desire to get cheap flights, but the way that most people actually search for their flights has it exactly backward. What I mean by that is that the normal way to search for flights is a three-step process. Step one, you decide where you want to go. Step two, you decide when you want to go there. And only on step three do you look at the flight costs. Setting the price as the last priority, it’s not terribly surprising if you end up with some pretty expensive flights. Instead, if it’s really important to you to get cheap flights, as it is for many people, don’t make it the last priority. Make it the top priority. Take that same three-step process and flip it on its head.

Step one, where are there cheap flights available out of my home airport? Understanding that airfares change by the day, you’re constantly getting new opportunities for cheap flights from your home airport. Step two, which of those places are cheap, and which one interests me the most for my next vacation? Then step three, what dates work for my schedule and have these cheap fairs available? By setting prices as the top priority rather than the last priority, that’s how you end up with some really cheap flights and end up being able to afford to take three or four vacations for the same price you used to pay for one.

For someone who is set on traveling to a specific destination, what would be your top tips for finding cheap flights?

Not every trip can be a flexible one, and not every trip is a vacation where you get to decide when and where you go. Instead, for those trips where you don’t have much flexibility and you’re locked into a certain destination or certain dates, your best bet at that point is to still have flexibility on when you book your flights. My recommendation is to book during what I call a “Goldilocks window.” This is a period in advance of travel when cheap flights are most likely to pop up. If you’re talking about, domestic flights, it’s usually one to three months in advance of travel. For international flights, it’s two to eight months in advance, but if you’re hoping to travel during a peak travel period, you need to add a few months to those recommendations.

A lot of folks are asking about travel this summer. My really sad response to them is that the cheap flights popped up four or five months ago. Now it’s only gonna be expensive inflated flight prices. But the good news is that if you’re traveling for Thanksgiving, Christmas, or New Year’s, now is the time to start monitoring for those deals. What my recommendation is for those peak seasons is to always book the opposite season.

Is it true that there are specific days of the week that are best for booking flights? Or is that a myth?

I’m so glad you asked. It’s a myth that there are the cheapest days to book your flights, but it is true that there are the cheapest days to take your flights. Let’s start with the myth, and this is a myth that actually used to be true. 20 years ago, when airlines first started selling their tickets online, they would usually load their fairs up once a week, say on Tuesday at 1:00 PM. So if you were one of the first people to search for a flight, then you really could get some of the best deals. They just had a very limited number of tickets available at those cheap fairs. The problem is that’s not how airlines have sold their tickets for decades. Now, airfares constantly change, and it’s set algorithmically. You could take that Tuesday at 1:00 PM, Wednesday at midnight, and throw it out the window.

The good news, though, in terms of actually taking your flights, there are cheaper days to fly. The cheapest days to fly tend to be Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday. The reason why is that business travelers tend to avoid travel on those days and business travelers usually aren’t willing to pay much more for their flights. Airlines’ price flights lower because they think it’s probably going to be a more price-sensitive, leisure traveler buying it. The only thing is that you don’t want to overlearn this principle. It’s not every single time that Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday are going to be cheaper than a Monday, Friday, or Sunday. It’s just most of the time.

In your experience, what are the best airlines for booking domestic US flights?

My favorite airline is the cheapest airline. I am loyal to no airline. I am loyal to cheap flights and cheap flights alone. If you’re staying loyal to one airline then that’s your own expense. I don’t think the difference in the experience of flying an economy in Delta versus economy in American is all that different. They’re all pretty similar. Unless there’s some really compelling reason like you’ve got a lead status that might get upgrades or your schedule really demands that you have to fly at a particular, I tend to always try to stay loyal to the cheapest flight options.

Do you have any booking tips for people who want to visit multiple cities in one trip?

Absolutely. Let’s say you’re from New York and want to visit Europe. You want to go to Amsterdam and Paris. The key to that is searching for a multi-city flight. You want to search for where the outbound leg is from New York to Amsterdam and the return leg from Paris to New York. The reason why you want to search it that way is that it’s telling the airline you’re making a round-trip flight, even if it’s a multi-city flight. They’re going to price it much more attractively than if it looks like two one-way flights. By searching it as a multi-city flight, you’ll end up getting a much better price, typically.

You’ll notice I didn’t include a leg from Amsterdam to Paris. In most cases, it’s actually better not to include that short kind of intermediary leg in your flight search. Instead, it’s usually better to do that separately, whether you book a budget flight from Paris or take a train. You’ll be able to do so much more on your own schedule and at your own leisure, but you also end up getting a better price overall, even for your tickets across the ocean.

Now when we’re talking about the flight from New York to Amsterdam and Paris to New York, if I include Amsterdam to Paris as the sort of middle leg of this search, then all of a sudden I’m restricting it. The only results I’m going to see are when either the airline itself or a partner airline operates that middle leg from Amsterdam to Paris. It just ends up being much more convoluted and oftentimes more expensive. When you just book those separately, you’ll get the cheaper flight both on that short leg and on the rest of your itinerary as well. So book it as two itineraries rather than one itinerary.

Which credit cards do you recommend most for the best flight mileage, but for someone who wants to limit themselves to two cards max?

Most times when you ask folks in the points and miles world what credit cards to get, they’ll say, ‘oh, get the one that gives you five points per dollar on airfare,’ and this and that. I do not put basically any weight on those points per dollar earned on X amount of spending. The reason why is that I just focus exclusively on one aspect, and that’s the signup bonus. Take the Chase Sapphire Preferred. Right now, they have a signup bonus of 80,000 points. I think you have to spend like $4,000 in three months or something to get the 80,000 points.

Those 80,000 points are gonna be plenty to be able to get a round trip flight to Europe, maybe even two round trip flights to Europe. It’s going to be very, very valuable. If you think about 80,000 points for $4,000, that is 20 points per dollar that you’re getting. Wow. So I’m just not very swayed by five X, three X, or two X on things that I might not purchase because then I gotta try to keep track of which card I should pull up for restaurants, the grocery store, etc. I just basically ignore all of that miles per dollar thing and just focus exclusively on the signup bonus. Now, if you are somebody who is interested in getting into credit cards and maximizing their point value, I think that works very well.

If you’re somebody who just wants simplicity, you want to be able to earn miles and be able to redeem them and not have to pay a bunch of money, my best advice is basically to find one that has no annual fee. The simplest one with points and miles is probably the Chase Freedom card. But frankly, the simplest thing at the end of the day is to do something like the Citi Double Cash, which gives you 2% back on all spending. Then, with that 2% back, you’re just accumulating cash that you can use to buy flights.

Days away from the release of his fourth studio album, Twelve Carat Toothache, Post Malone is getting candid. In an interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Malone spoke on fatherhood, how he feels about the sound of his own voice, and his thoughts on social media.

When asked about TikTok, Malone admitted that he enjoys scrolling through clips. However, he doesn’t feel that making his own videos comes naturally.

“There’s so many different ways to get people to listen to your music,” Malone said. “And TikTok is so f*cking huge… And you have people check on my new song and it goes f*cking viral and that changes people’s lives. And you discover talented people on there and everything. But it’s just so hard for me to make something natural. And it’s just so interesting. It’s interesting to hear [Halsey’s] opinion on that.”

Malone is referring to a series of TikTok videos Halsey recently posted, claiming their record label wouldn’t allow them to release their single, “So Good,” without the song first getting a viral TikTok moment.

Continuing his spiel on TikTok, and social media in general, Malone said. “I just think it’s my personal opinion and the changes that I’ve made mentally to distance myself from that and that’s really impacted my life in a positive way. It’s just whatever makes your comfortable because at the end of the day, you just got to be comfortable with what you’re doing. And social media is something that I’m not super comfortable with.”

Check out the full interview above.

Twelve Carat Toothache is out 6/3 via Republic Records. Pre-order it here.