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LOS ANGELES – It took just 2:17 for Angel City FC’s first-ever home match at Banc of California Stadium to turn into an all-out party. Vanessa Gilles was on the other end of a cross from Jun Endo and buried a header, prompting a bevy of pink smoke from the supporters section. The sold-out crowd of 22,000 came for a show and got one, with ACFC ultimately winning 2-1 over NC Courage.

The game was a culmination of efforts to bring professional women’s soccer back to L.A. Many of the club’s high-profile owners were on the field during pregame, as the ownership group includes everyone from Natalie Portman, Jessica Chastain, and Jennifer Garner to Billie Jean King, Mia Hamm, and Candace Parker. And the team seems committed to backing the players, with teammates earning one percent of all ticket sales as well as the club securing an eight-figure kit sponsorship deal from DoorDash.

ACFC even has its own anthem from Grammy winner and Alabama Shakes lead vocalist Brittany Howard, who teamed up with Inglewood native (and multi-hyphenate) Tia P on “Running With The Angels.” It’s a song Howard hopes Angel City supporters make their own, as she and Tia P used HBCU marching bands as inspiration for the horns-driven, uplifting track. Last Friday’s match was the first time the pair had been able to perform it live, with the song blaring over the PA after Angel City secured the win.

The song was created as part of the First Strides campaign from Johnnie Walker (who is a primary sponsor of ACFC), and Howard hopes it will continue to push the conversation forward for women’s equality and progress — in sports and elsewhere. UPROXX Sports had the chance to chat with Howard and Tia P about the making of the song, what it means to create a team anthem, and more.

Martin Rickman: My first question for you is, how did this all come together? How did you two get connected to create this song?

Brittany Howard: Honestly, it started with my relationship with Johnnie Walker. I love working with Johnnie Walker because they put everything that they’ve earned and put it back into the community. They want to see other people prosper. They want to see other people make strides. So I’m like, “Yeah, let’s do this.” Immediately I knew I wanted the song to be energetic. I knew I wanted to incorporate a marching band. Tia went to an HBCU.

Tia P: Howard!

BH: I loved it. I was in the marching band. I love the HBCUs, I love their energy. I knew I wanted that to be in the song, and then of course all the inspiration came from all the women before us, and making strides, making it better for each other, and then finally getting here with so many doors slammed in our face such as equal pay. I could go on and on. And this is a continuation of generations and generations and generations of hard-working women. They’re trying to make things better for each other. So of course, we are excited to be on the ground floor and we want to promote that with this anthem, to do so. And I met Tia … actually it’s crazy, the universe brought us back together. I was judging a Tiny Desk concert and I saw Tia on there. I was like, “Okay, okay!” You know what I mean? I was going crazy for Tia on there, and time kind of passed, and then next thing we know …

TP: We’re at my studio together.

BH: I heard Tia rapping and I said, “That is exactly the energy that needs to be on this track.”

TP: And we didn’t know until maybe about a week prior. I was like … because I’m a hip-hop baby. A lot of people don’t understand hip-hop. For me, hip-hop is bigger than just a genre. It’s about taking a story and moving that wherever it’s needed or wherever it’s necessary. So I was talking to my manager a week prior to having this opportunity and I wanted to branch out, do I do country or something? And then we get this call. It was just like it was just too perfect.

What was that moment like? Getting that email, that call?

TP: It was just like, “Word?” It took a minute to kind of settle in but once it did, once the, “Oh, wow,” factor kind of chills, it was like, “Okay.” Then you start to get real invigorated and excited, so after Brittany had laid her part, she did all the instrumentation, wrote the horns part, and had the chorus. She sent it to me and I think I did it in three, four hours.

BH: That was it. I couldn’t believe it. And it wasn’t just the rhymes, it was the ad libs. And the unison tracks. It was like, “Whoa, who is this?”

TP: It was easy. She laid the groundwork and that’s kind of just how this whole thing is. We’re standing on the shoulders of giants that have come before us and she laid the groundwork for the song. I just came and gave it whatever I felt I could give, and it just worked out painlessly. Our performance tonight was … It was our first time performing it together.

First time?

BH: Yeah. Very exciting.

TP: It just felt good because we still have stuff in our hearts that this is for. You know what I mean? It goes beyond the music. We’re using our gifts in music to broadcast a wider message of unity and women empowerment. This is here, we’re not going anywhere. Like we said earlier in another interview, if you don’t give us a seat at the table, we’ll build the whole damn house.

BH: Exactly. And that’s what this is, and that’s why we’re so honored and excited to be on the ground floor of this movement. And I’m excited for everyone in LA.

What is that feeling like, to create a team anthem?

BH: I think there’s a base level of it. If you’re going to write an anthem for a team that has any longevity, I feel like you really got to write something that pumps yourself up. Every time you hear it, your ear pumps. That’s it.

TP: Hell yeah. That’s the thing. If you don’t feel it, how is that going to translate to other people? You know what I’m saying? And the way that this is the first time we really got to see an array of people react to it. The team first reacted to it when we did it about a month ago. Just to see that it’s the same for the people. It’s just as exciting as we hoped, as we were just laying it down. It’s just, it makes it feel like we did our job. And not only for us as artists, but for the team, everybody in the sport, and the message that rides with it.

BH: And this is created with so much joy and so much excitement. Not a single part of it was hard. Now I’m so happy it’s out there now. People can just enjoy it. I’m so excited to see what me and Tia have done here, to see it grow, and to see it become something entirely new.

You mentioned the marching band aspect of it, to have that drumming at a game, that visceral feeling you get with that.

TP: Here’s the thing. At the core, we’re both musicians. I play drums. It’s just that musicianship, I feel like it’s at the fore of what we do. Whether we say it or not, it’s going to have that live element like I know you [Brittany] have your live band when you perform, I have my live band. It’s just an entirely different experience. It just elevates it that much more. And that being the original dream and then seeing it come to fruition…

BH: It’s amazing.

TP: It’s a high. It’s a real high.

BH: And the marching band was my first love. I was in marching band, I was a marching drummer, and like Tia said, this is my dream. I can’t believe I wrote for a marching band, and it’s sick!

What do you hope to do to build off of this? Not just for Angel City but for a lot of the elements that you both just said are so critical to utilizing this platform, realizing this dream, and then continuing to push efforts forward?

TP: If you’re not looking toward the future what are you looking at? I feel like we definitely wanted it to be a statement for now, but not just a statement for now, but a statement for whatever else will come our way, any other type of adversity, this is something that will uplift these people. Because it’s so easy to get downtrodden, to get in the sunken place, but you really sometimes need music It’s such a powerful tool. It really gets people in a different headspace. If we can be that voice of change or reason, or just pushing, just go, just do it. Don’t even stop to think about it. Just go for the emotion, and if you can see yourself in that aspect, then we’ve done our jobs as artists.

BH: Exactly. And I’m also wanting to see more brands giving back to the people. I really appreciate someone getting their flowers and then wanting to pass them out to other people. It just really means so much. I know that America wasn’t really based on that principle so much, but I’m glad that we can see a giant brand like Johnnie Walker changing things, and I hope I see other brands following suit.

ASAP Rocky and Rihanna are super official in the video for Rocky’s new single “DMB” (Dat’s My Bitch). The smoothly edited video sees the two stars hanging out in Rocky’s hometown, Harlem, where they sip wine on the fire escape, shop at flea markets, and low-key stunt all over town. The video is shot on grainy, low-res tape, giving the whole thing a warm, home-movie vibe that matches the downmarket, uptown sensibilities of the song — and really, the couple’s whole relationship.

There’s also a scene of RIhana repeatedly meeting up with Rocky as he leaves jail — a scene that finds art imitating life. Rocky was recently arrested by the LAPD as the couple returned from Rihanna’s native Barbados on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon. He made bail the same dayhttps://uproxx.com/music/asap-rocky-released-jail-posting-bailt/. Police have been investigating claims that the rapper shot at another man in November of 2021, grazing the victim’s hand. Police raided Rocky’s home in a search for the potential weapon, but all the guns they found were legally obtained and registered; none were even the same caliber as shell casings found at the crime scene.

Since then, though, Rocky and Rihanna have mostly focused on preparing for the birth of their child together, throwing a rave-themed baby shower.

You can watch Rocky’s “DMB” video featuring Rihanna above.

OJ Da Juiceman finds himself at odds with the law once again, as NBC affiliate LEX18 reports he was arrested on Monday (May 2) in Hardin County, Kentucky. The 40-year-old rapper was charged with possession of a handgun by a convicted felon, possession of marijuana, and possession of drug paraphernalia. OJ was detained at the Hardin County Detention Center in Elizabethtown and is now looking ahead to his May 13 court date.

The 32 Entertainment founder‘s first legal wrinkle came in 2015 in Tennessee as he was arrested for intent to distribute, gun possession, and unlawful crime with possession of a firearm. The police found guns, marijuana, and 300 rounds of ammunition in his car as he was on his way to perform in North Carolina.

The Atlanta rapper first broke through in the late 2000s, collaborating with Gucci Mane, Jadakiss, Swizz Beats, and more. He was recognized by XXL in the 2010 iteration of their Freshman List alongside J. Cole, Wiz Khalifa, Nipsey Hussle, Big Sean, Jay Rock, and Freddie Gibbs. While he has not been the biggest selling artist in the game or from Atlanta, he did burst onto the Billboard 200’s Top 20 chart with his debut album The Otha Side Of The Trap.

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

While discussing the recent attack on Dave Chappelle during a performance at the Hollywood Bowl, which has dragged the Will Smith and Chris Rock slap back into the headlines, comedian Jim Jefferies has revealed that he was getting smacked on stage way before any of that. Jefferies opened up about the incident during a recent episode of Howie Mandel Does Stuff. However, unlike Mandel, Jeffries didn’t seem particularly concerned with a growing threat on comedians. In fact, Jefferies still finds his own onstage assault to be pretty funny.

“It was quite famous at the time,” Jefferies said via Mediaite. “I did not heckle. I did not speak to this guy, he was upset by a joke earlier on. We don’t know which joke. So there was no interaction with the audience member, he just walked up and hit me.”

According to Jeffries, he and his team later figured out that the young man, who was pulled off of the comedian by the audience, was on a date that wasn’t going so well. “Allegedly the girl that he was with wasn’t enjoying the show, it was a joke that happened earlier on, allegedly,” Jefferies said. “Once he finished his drink he thought ‘I’ll take care of this’ and he ran on the stage.”

The incident occurred all the way back in 2007, and Jefferies knew back then that you can’t buy this kind of publicity. “I put this on the internet right away,” he told Mandel with a laugh. “My tour started selling out!”

(Via Mediaite)

Five Supreme Court justices and the far-right believe that women should be barred from abortions, and to add to that awful look, Brian Kilmeade dropped his own take on pregnant women holding down jobs. Never mind that women must work to support their unwanted pregnancies after being forced to carry them to term, but that’s perhaps beside the Fox and Friends point.

Brian Kilmeade, the Chris Columbus enthusiast who recently sparred with co-host Steve Doocy over boosters, decided to go off on Biden’s new “disinformation czar.” There’s plenty to be said about the strangeness of that position, but Kilmeade wasn’t talking substance while questioning why Nina Jankowicz is on the scene. Rather, Kilmeade decided to draw attention to an issue that was grinding his gears: Jankowicz entered the job while already pregnant, and Kilmeade can’t see why “a job,” let alone an “important” job, should even go to a pregnant woman. Via Media Matters:

“For the last few months, we have had a disinformation czar and a unit within the Homeland Security Department…. Then, we find out who is in charge of it, and this woman that’s in charge of it, Nina Jankowicz, who’s about eight-and-a-half-months pregnant, so I’m not sure how you get a job and then you just – you can’t do a job for three months. I’m not faulting her, but I don’t know why you would give someone a job that you think is so important.”

This, naturally, didn’t sit too well with Kilmeade’s co-host, Ainsley Earhardt, who quizzed him on how long Jankowicz has been on the job, which appears to be “about two months.” From there, Earhardt leveled with Kilmeade: “Well, I’ll defend her on that one, Brian. She has the right to have a baby and have maternity leave.” There’s no telling why Kilmeade even went to this subject, but there you have it: awkwardness on Fox and Friends made for an interesting morning.

You can watch the video at Media Matters.

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.

Kehlani’s sophomore album, It Was Good Until It Wasn’t, focused on absorbing the destruction that failures in love and life caused against her while disallowing it from throwing her off her journey. This theme of navigating through the presence of an unwanted being was fitting at the time as the world was forced under the glass dome of a global pandemic. For Kehlani, everything else was good until it wasn’t, and for the rest of us, by that same token, the once-normal world that we previously took for granted was good until it was deemed otherwise. With that, it leaves us with two options: wait for things to work themselves out or acknowledge the circumstances as a sign to make changes in your life. With her third album Blue Water Road, Kehlani opts for the latter.

Recreating happiness is what Kehlani strives for on Blue Water Road. In its best form, it’s as pure and euphoric as the ocean waters that sat across from the Malibu stretch of road that her third album is named after. Luckily for Kehlani, happiness is not uncharted territory for her. The singer’s 2015 debut album SweetSexySavage is probably the giddiest and most spirited we’ve heard her be so far. But it came with a heavy dose of naivety and overflowing charisma that, together, asked “what could go wrong?” Well, a lot did and that’s what brought us to It Was Good Until It Wasn’t. However, time heals and it did for Kehlani as it placed her on an upward trek that returned her to her better days. Kehlani succeeds at recreating happiness on Blue Water Road while her old naivety is replaced with the gratitude to be here again. It also comes with the understanding that she’s not only experienced the worst, but a permanent residency at the top of the world goes unguaranteed.

By the end of Blue Water Road, Kehlani’s lifelong search for serenity is complete, and it’s quite fulfilling. In an Apple Music interview, she revealed that her initial intention on Blue Water Road was to make music for a deluxe release of It Was Good Until It Wasn’t. What Kehlani didn’t know at first is that the growth she needed was already in progress, and thus the music that came out of those sessions was no longer connected to her sophomore album. We waste no time learning about these changes as Kehlani yearns to “throw a paper tantrum” at a strip club for a dancer she’s grown very fond of. Just two years ago, she forced herself to be in the middle of loud music and erratically flashing lights while noting, “Damn, you know I hate the club.” Where It Was Good Until It Wasn’t begins with a chilling anecdote about a “Toxic” love, Blue Water Road sets off with accountability and the recognition of her faults in love through “Little Story.”

Kehlani progress on this journey comes with its missteps and unsuccessful moments. It’d be wrong to assume that the ever-growing 27-year-old singer suddenly figured out how to perfectly and flawlessly approach life. She enters a new relationship only to leave with regrets on the Slick Rick-sampling “Wish I Never,” she’s gaslit on “Get Me Started” with Syd, and she attempts in a very Issa Rae way to justify her infidelity on “More Than I Should” with Jessie Reyez. It’s all honest and relatable and it’s what makes Kehlani’s music so indulgent. She never approaches it from a holier than thou perspective, and she never throws stones from her glasshouse. We understand Kehlani cause we’ve been there before and we all aim to fit life’s complicated puzzle pieces together to solve some problem that we have.

With that, Kehlani successfully achieves serenity through her ability to establish it within her. You can’t fall in love without knowing and accepting what you love, and you will never find peace without dealing with the chaos that lies within. A perfect example of that comes on “Altar,” where Kehlani grapples with grief and achieves the initially impossible feat of accepting that a loved one is no longer physically present. “Soon, I’ll see your face,” she sings with undeterred optimism. “Don’t know why I ever thought you were far away / I shoulda known better.”

So what does serenity look like for Kehlani? It could be finding a love so perfect and united that she confuses her hair, reflection, and her skin for her lover’s on “Melt.” It could also be enjoying the fruits of her labor towards a healthy love on the nearly-NSFW “Tangerine” where she sings, “So don’t tell nobody what’s done in the garden / The fruits you can harvest, they grow where you water.” However, it’s best captured on “Everything” as the arrival of a new lover who checks off her physical, verbal, and compatibility boxes leaves her to praise the heavens for this gift she’s waited so long for. As a result, her excitement for it can’t be bottled. “That was before me, it’s childish, you done with your wildin,’” she sings. “Now you can be wild with me, run that mile with me / Catch some flights out with me.”

Simply put: Kehlani won. She found new love and accepted her natural identity – both sexual and physical – all while managing to keep the thunderous clouds and unsettling fires that shook her world on It Was Good Until It Wasn’t out of her present-day life. Nowadays, things are better than good, they’re great, and it’s all thanks to Blue Water Road.

Blue Water Road is out now via TSNMI/Atlantic. You can stream it here.

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

You can thank the artist very briefly not known as Prince for ensuring that one of the greatest sitcom couples of all time became a couple in the first place.

The music legend Prince was a huge fan of FOX’s New Girl, which ran from 2011-2018 and starred Zooey Deschanel as Jess Day and Jake Johnson as Nick Miller. Prince appeared as himself in a season three episode aptly titled “Prince” that aired in 2014. On The Kelly Clarkson Show on Wednesday, Minx star Jake Johnson told host Kelly Clarkson that Jess and Nick got together because it’s what Prince, inarguably the most important fan of the series, wanted.

Johnson, with his Minx beard intact, described Prince’s iconic arrival on set. “He came around and he was talking to Zooey [Deschanel],” Johnson said. “He looked at me and said to Zooey, ‘I would like to meet Nick now.’ Zooey looked at me and, obviously, whatever Prince wants…[Prince gets]. She walked over and was like, ‘Hey Nick, come over here.’ I met Prince and he was as nice as it gets.”

But it turns out the greatest musician of his generation and superfan, who passed away in 2016, came to the New Girl set with an agenda. “He wanted to live in the reality of the show, and he wanted Nick and Jess to be together,” Johnson said. “So he said he would do the show if he could help them get together. He got to live a little fantasy. He wanted them together, and we wanted Prince. Prince is the best.”

Given the direction of the show and the characters, Nick and Jess likely would have gotten together without Prince’s involvement, but Prince certainly made it happen quickly. Thank you for your service, Prince. You can watch video of the interview below.

Dr. Dre famously said he became hip-hop’s first billionaire (a title actually held by Jay-Z) back in 2014 when he sold Beats Electronics to Apple, but his boasting about it caused an ungodly amount to get cut from the final sale price. According to HipHopDX via The New York Times reporter Tripp Mickle’s new book, After Steve: How Apple Became a Trillion-Dollar Company and Lost Its Soul, when Dre talked about the deal in a video posted on social media, Apple took the sale down $200 million due to a confidentiality clause in the initial $3.2 billion agreement.

If you don’t remember, the video was posted to Facebook by Tyrese, who was hanging out in the studio with Dre, both apparently drunk. As they shouted out South Central Los Angeles (Tyrese is from Watts, Dre is from neighboring Compton), Tyrese boasted that “the Forbes list just changed,” referring to the publication’s annual lists of top earners in the world of hip-hop. Dre backed up the brag, touting himself as “the first billionaire in hip-hop.” Interscope founder Jimmy Iovine, Dre’s partner in Beats, found out about the video from Diddy, who called him in the middle of the night after the video went up, prompting him to panic as Dre and Jimmy were invited to Apple’s headquarters by CEO Tim Cook.

They worried that the deal would get the ax, but instead, Cook used the opportunity to save Apple some money, adjusting the sale price by $0.2 billion. Ultimately, the deal worked out; Dre got to keep his boast, and Apple got to keep Beats, which is still paying off to this day. And really, what can you buy with $3.2 billion that you can’t get with $3 billion (although I’m sure he’d have loved the extra $100 million to give to his ex-wife)?

“Five conservative Justices on the Supreme Court are apparently poised to overturn Roe v. Wade and erase a woman’s Constitutional right to bodily autonomy, subverting the will of the vast majority of Americans and defying a half-century of legal precedent.” That’s how Seth Meyers kicked off his “A Closer Look” segment on Wednesday night, but that was just the intro of what was to come.

While Meyers discussed the “virtually unprecedented” leak of this magnitude in the history of the Supreme Court, what he was really interested in talking about was the painfully obvious irony of people complaining about the privacy of the court being violated, when said court’s goal is to ban women from having any right to privacy, or autonomy, when making decisions about their own lives, bodies, and health care.

But what irks Meyers most of all is the (admittedly unsurprising) way in which conservatives—who are set to “reap their biggest political victory in 50 years”—are still finding a way to paint it as a woe-is-us moment because of the leak itself. But what the Late Night host deemed the “most unhinged” reaction to the SCOTUS leak was a couple of bumbling Fox News hosts, including Mike Huckabee, referring to the leak of an unclassified document as “an insurrection.” Meyers wasn’t having it:

“Leaking a document is not an insurrection. January 6th, when a mob of rioters violently stormed the Capitol, that was an insurrection. In this case, someone posted a piece of paper online. Here, I’ll prove which one is worse: Do you think Mike Pence would rather be whisked out of a building by Secret Service while a mob chanted ‘Hang Mike Pence!,’ or read a leaked memo that said ‘Hang Mike Pence’?”

You can watch the full clip above.

“The reign of House Targaryen begins…”

HBO will attempt to wipe the bad taste that the Game of Thrones series finale left in many people’s mouths with House of the Dragon, a prequel series set 200 years before Bran was pushed out of any towers. Get ready for icy blonde wigs, dragons, and if you love Targaryen lore, folks, this is the show for you. “Men would sooner put the realm to the torch than see a woman ascend the Iron Throne,” Rhaenys (Eve Best), who got passed over for the Throne by Viserys (Paddy Considine), tells Princess Rhaenyra (Emma D’Arcy as an adult, Milly Alcock as a youngster) in the teaser trailer above.

Daenerys, many years later, can relate.

A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin has watched a couple of House of the Dragon episodes. and he’s very “pleased” with what he’s seen. “Those of you who like complex, conflicted, grey characters (as I do) will like this series, I think,” he wrote. “There will be plenty of dragons and battles, to be sure, but the spine of the story is the human conflicts, the love and the hate, character drama rather than action/ adventure.

House of the Dragon also stars Matt Smith, Olivia Cooke, Steve Toussaint, Fabien Frankel, Sonoya Mizuno, and Rhys Ifans, while Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik are showrunners duty. The 10-episode season premieres on August 21.