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In this new monthly column, we’re taking a look at five artists who are steadily rising and positively need to be on your radar this month. Our February picks are from across the musical spectrum, touching on hip-hop, pop, soul, jazz and R&B from all across the globe. These are artists who made their presence felt in January, have more in store in February, and genuinely merit your attention.

Raveena

A welcome Indian-American voice in R&B and pop, Raveena recently announced her major label debut, Asha’s Awakening, out February 11th. Whereas 2019’s Lucid, saw her sweet voice shining over shimmering, sugary bedroom R&B, she’s exploring new artistic horizons in pop on the new release. She further embraces her roots on “Rush,” a cinematic Bollywood-inspired song that came to her on a psychedelic acid trip through a museum. On the sexy “Secret,” she’s joined by Vince Staples for a provocative turn, on a tabla and sitar-soaked beat. And all her accompanying visuals have been can’t miss as well.

Bakar

Chances are you’ve likely heard Bakar’s hit “Hell N Back,” with it’s jazzy upbeat soul swing that’s tailor-made for the happy-go-lucky moments of the Euphoria generation. The Camden native said he’s “always wanted to be an alternative for the Black kids who don’t fit in,” and his approachable and uniquely energetic tunes have cross-cultural appeal no doubt. Speaking of Euphoria, Dominic Fike even collaborated with Bakar on the wistful “Stop Selling Her Drugs,” but it’s his latest output that hint at the bright road ahead for him. There’s the anthemic, “The Mission,” the reflective “Build Me A Way,” and the hopeful latest offering, “NW3,” that show the promise of his upcoming debut album, Nobody’s Home, out February 25th.

Lady Wray

Atlanta’s Nicole Wray is living a new life. In the late ’90s she was discovered by Missy Elliott (as “Nicole”) and scored a modest hit with the Elliott-featured sumptuous R&B jam “Make It Hot.” But life is anything but linear, especially in the music industry, and she is now re-born as Lady Wray. On her latest album, Piece Of Me, Lady Wray is a muse of sorts for the dynamic canvases laid down by retro soul producer Leon Michels (El Michels Affair, The Carters) and it’s one of the coolest, purest expressions of soul music you’ll hear this year. “Through It All” is uplifting soul nostalgia perfection and “Come On In” is tinged with gospel a lean that lets Wray’s booming voice soar. She performed the latter on Colbert last week and it sure as hell felt like the full circle moment she’s worked towards for over 20 years.

Central Cee

Central Cee is poised to be the next big UK rapper in the shape of Dave and AJ Tracey. This past November, the West Londoner got a major look, hopping on FKA Twigs’ “Measure Of A Man,” for the film The King’s Man. His breakthrough track, “A Day In The Life,” got a shout out from Big Sean when it first dropped in 2020 and now he’s high up on the newly announced lineup of the Parklife festival. His style has morphed from grime to drill as he spells out his rise in the ranks. “Take that risk and go independent, I just turned down six figures /
On the phone you was loud, now we’re in real life and you’re soundin’ timid,” he spits over drill bass and East Asian strings on “Pinging (6 Figures).” He’s been building a steady catalog, including 2021’s excellent Wild West mixtape as he continues to drop tracks from the upcoming 23 tape, out February 25th.

Moonchild

LA jazz and R&B trio Moonchild make distinctly warm and embracing tunes, led by Amber Navran’s angelic voice. They’ve been able to break through artsy jazz circles through collaborations with Robert Glasper and Rapsody in the past, and now have a stacked slate of guests on their upcoming album, Starfruit, out February 11th. On “Tell Him,” Navran and Lalah Hathaway dazzle on a beat awash with breezy bass, keys, and synths. Theirs is music to fall in love with, fall in love to, and make love alongside. Beyond Hathaway, the new album features Alex Isley, Tank & The Bangas, Rapsody, Ill Camille, and more.

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

Not quite knowing your own story is one of the most relatable stories in the world. And yet it’s one we don’t see on film that often, probably because it doesn’t make for the easiest pitch. “Okay, so there’s this girl, and she doesn’t quite know what she wants to do with her life, and she has a series of relationships while she figures it out.”

“Hmm, and you want money to make this?”

This pitch describes the basic framework of The Worst Person In The World, from director Joachim Trier and writer Eskil Vogt, but, like Boyhood or any novelistic take on one person’s life, the elevator pitch doesn’t begin to do it justice. Trier and Vogt’s take on one overachieving but aimless Oslo girl (Osloan? Oslian? Osloite?) is by turns earnest, sardonic, heartbreaking, and as a whole, weirdly thrilling.

In a year of two and a half-hour movies about superheroes and car chases that felt roughly seven hours long (looking at you, James Bond) The Worst Person In The World is 127-minutes of flirting, fighting, and intense conversations that had me hooked, basically from opening credits to closing. I still don’t know how that gets pitched or greenlit, but God bless the Norwegians for figuring it out.

Presented as “a story in 12 parts, with prologue and epilogue,” Renate Reinsve plays Julie, an Oslo overachiever on the cusp of adulthood who doesn’t seem to have a solid plan for her life. She studies first medicine then psychology then photography and then journalism, all while having a series of relationships — most notably with an older, bad boy cartoonist named Aksel (Anders Danielsen Lie). The morning after their first hook up, Aksel delivers an articulate, almost practiced-sounding shpiel about how this relationship could never work, because they’re both at such different stages in life and it’s probably better to just go their separate ways now and avoid the inevitable heartbreak. It’s at this point, Julie’s voiceover informs us, that she decides that she’s madly in love with this otherwise unremarkable man.

The “too real” relationship between them that ensues quickly becomes an emotional roller coaster. His career, as the Robert Crumb/Ralph Steadman-esque creator of a popular punk cartoon about a vulgar, horny bobcat, seems to thrive. There’s a transcendent moment during which Aksel, played by Lie with impeccable deadpan poise, explains earnestly why Bobcat needs to have his original drawn-on butthole, and why having it excised (Cats-style) for a treacly Christmas movie would be a crime against art.

While Aksel blossoms, Julie merely treads water, working at an indie bookstore while waiting for some bolt of divine inspiration about what she should do with her life. The two of them have, in many ways, the precise difficulties Aksel predicted to begin with, and also the same conflicts as in virtually every monogamous heterosexual relationship. She resents his independence, he resents her indecision, and there’s the constant tension that results from a partner with an established career at the stage of life when he could be starting a family trying to share a life with someone who’s still experimenting, figuring out who she wants to be, and sowing wild oats. The conflict seems to come to a head during a weekend away, sharing a house with Aksel’s children-having friends.

That all sounds like pretty standard fare on paper, but in practice The Worst Person In The World always has a remarkable specificity. Trier and Vogt’s wit, combined with Reinsve and Lie’s deft performances transcend everyday situations. Just as Richard Linklater can build brilliant scenes from dumbass characters (I like to think of him as “The Dumbass Whisperer”), Joachim Trier builds an oddly thrilling world out of slightly dull intellectuals, producing in me a reaction that shifted uncomfortably between derision and self-recognition from scene to scene.

The Worst Person In The World turns into a bit of a tearjerker in the final few chapters, thanks to a plot development that might’ve seemed manipulative or unearned in a different movie. Instead, I was fully invested by then, hanging on every word and feeling like I too had had the rug pulled out from under me. I find myself at a bit of a loss when trying to explain exactly what about it had me so engaged, probably for the same reasons Julie can’t seem to decide on a career. The Worst Person In The World feels like life. And how do you sum up a life?

The biggest outstanding question seems to be why it’s called “The Worst Person In The World.” Julie is clearly the main character, and she doesn’t seem like a great candidate for world’s worst. She’s occasionally a little naive or careless, maybe, but always far more relatable than despicable. Is it because Julie thinks of herself as the worst person in the world? This seems more plausible, but the justification for it still seems thin.

In any case, The Worst Person In The World is captivating, inspired storytelling, and you should definitely watch it. If you figure out which character in it is the worst person in the world, tell me, and next time I watch when they come on the screen I’ll make sure to nudge my date and whisper “Psst, that’s the worst person in the world.”

‘The Worst Person In The World’ is available in theaters February 4th. Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Give Gunna credit for his ongoing DS4EVER rollout and the smooth way he’s been able to integrate his vision into his live performances. After delivering a pillowy performance of “Empire” on The Tonight Show, the Atlanta rapper employed a similar aesthetic for his appearance on The Late Late Show with James Cordon to perform the moody “Die Alone.”

This time, he hits the fog-covered stage standing up with an overhead mic and a massive fur coat, letting the stripped-down set highlight the somber sensibilities of the track itself. The cloud-shaped cutout in the wall behind him reveals a cloudy sunset, contributing to the overall reflective vibe and subtly suggesting that there’s always more going on beneath surface.

In addition to his live performances, Gunna has drawn considerable attention to his album with his campaign of littering social media with P emojis in conjunction with the single “Pushin P.” The new slang term has apparently caught on in a big way, filtering out to corporate accounts like IHOP, all to Gunna’s apparent approval — and no wonder, with the related streams driving his album all the way to No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart.

Watch Gunna’s Late Late Show performance of “Die Alone” above.

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

After sharing a few new tracks in 2021 with her re-released project Beam Me Up Scotty, Nicki Minaj is gearing up for her first new music of 2022. Last week, the rapper began teasing a joint track with Lil Baby and ahead of its official release Friday, Minaj dropped a cinematic trailer for the upcoming collab, “Do We Have A Problem?”

The trailer parodies a big-budget film and presents Minaj as a special agent tasked with interrogating someone who claims to be a “high-powered hitter.” He ominously informs Minaj that “the heads of the world’s top criminal organizations will meet” the following night, saying it’s possible to “acquire rare items that money can’t even buy.” After the trailer shows clips of Minaj’s fellow agents infiltrating an opulent building, the man leaves Minaj with one last message: “So you take out the target, you become the f*ckin’ target.” While Lil Baby doesn’t appear in the trailer, his verse is briefly previewed in the last few seconds of the clip.

Apparently, the trailer isn’t the only way Minaj is getting her stans to hype up the new single. She also set up a hotline where her fans can call in with problems they need Minaj’s help solving. “Did you guys leave a message on the hotline?” the rapper asked her fans on Twitter. “Tmrw when I go on live I’ll be responding to some of your voicemails & giving you advise about whatever the ‘problem’ is.”

Watch Minaj and Lil Baby’s “Do We Have A Problem?” trailer above.

WARNING: Spoilers for The Book of Boba Fett below.

After The Book of Boba Fett Episode 5 saw the return of Din Djarin a.k.a Mando, Star Wars fans went nuts for what was essentially the Season 3 premiere of The Mandalorian. However, while the epic Darksaber-wielding episode was an absolute blast, it also noticeably had nothing to do with The Book of Boba Fett, which only highlighted growing criticisms that the spinoff is falling way short of matching what makes The Mandalorian so great. And, now, Kevin Smith has entered the fray.

During a recent episode of his Fatman Beyond podcast, Smith shared his biggest problem with The Book of Boba Fett: you see way too much of the dude’s face. As Smith elaborates, Mando showing up in Episode 5 only exacerbated the problem that Boba Fett just doesn’t have the same mystique anymore. Via Comic Book:

“One of the things I loved about Boba Fett through most of my life is that we never took his helmet off,” Smith explains. “And in Boba Fett now, Episode 4 or whatever [Chapter 5, actually], we are accustomed to Boba Fett just going au natural Charlie Brown style and stuff. And it don’t matter; I understand storywise he’s not a Mandalorian and so forth and such – like I’m not dumb. I’m just saying this episode, seeing Din Djarin… seeing this guy never take his helmet off just makes every scene cooler. Where you’re just like ‘I don’t know what he’s f*cking thinking.’”

With only two episodes left in The Book of Boba Fett, the series could make moves to draw Boba Fett more firmly into Mandalorian culture addressing Smith’s concerns. Or the show could simply content itself with Boba Fett riding a Rancor, and then it’s back to The Mandalorian where the real action is. And by real action, we mean Baby Yoda. Always assume it’s Baby Yoda.

The Book of Boba Fett is currently streaming on Disney+.

(Via Comic Book)

Spotify is in a tough spot right now. The Joe Rogan Experience is a tremendously popular podcast, but the titular host has prompted Neil Young to actively protest the platform and take his music off of it. Other artists, like Joni Mitchell, have joined Young in removing their work from Spotify, and now Graham Nash — Young’s former bandmate in Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young — also wants his music taken off.

Nash wrote in a statement shared this morning:

“Having heard the Covid disinformation spread by Joe Rogan on Spotify, I completely agree with and support my friend, Neil Young and I am requesting that my solo recordings be removed from the service.

There is a difference between being open to varying viewpoints on a matter and knowingly spreading false information which some 270 medical professionals have derided as not only false but dangerous. Likewise, there is a difference between misinformation, in which one is unaware that what is being said is false, versus disinformation which is knowingly false and intended to mislead and sway public opinion. The opinions publicized by Rogan are so dishonest and unsupported by solid facts that Spotify becomes an enabler in a way that costs people their lives.”

He posted a similar statement on Instagram as well, in which also notes, “It should also be acknowledged that many younger musicians, and many musicians of all ages, rely on platforms like this to gain exposure to a wider audience and share their music with the world. Not everyone is able to take steps like this which is all the more reason that platforms like Spotify must be more responsible and accountable for the content they are obligated to moderate for the good of the public at large.”

Nash’s most popular song on Spotify is “Better Days,” a highlight from his 1971 debut solo album Songs For Beginners. It has racked up about 22.6 million streams.

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

Doja Cat has canceled yet another performance over COVID concerns, this time her upcoming set at the 2022 BRIT Awards, where she’s nominated international artist of the year and best international song for “Kiss Me More,” featuring SZA. Doja announced the cancelation in a tweet, revealing that “numerous” members of her crew had tested positive for COVID-19.

“Unfortunately, due to cases of COVID within my crew, I will no longer be performing at the Brits,” she wrote. “My team and I have been in rehearsals for weeks and despite taking the utmost caution, numerous members of my crew (both on and offstage) have tested positive for COVID. It’s simply not safe for us to continue to rehearse together and put each other in harm’s way. I can’t wait to perform for my UK fans as soon as I can. Take care of yourselves.”

Before this, Doja Cat’s participation in the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball tour was also canceled after she tested positive herself. It was the second announced time she’d tested positive after contracting the bug in summer of 2020. Perhaps these cancelations could be a blessing in disguise, though, offering the blossoming star an opportunity for rest after expressing frustration with the pressures of her career. Hopefully, she’ll recover soon and be able to get back to doing what she loves, performing and making music.

Does Mitski really want to be here? The 31-year-old indie star has been sending mixed signals for a while now. In 2019, she announced a hiatus that many fans presumed was a retirement. She insisted at the time that she wasn’t quitting, but in recent interviews she confirmed that actually she did plan at the time to quit her music career. But she ended up not quitting. Only she has hinted that she might quit at some point in the not-so-distant future.

What should be made of all this? Having interviewed Mitski myself, I know that her interactions with the press can be cordial but distant. On stage, she is one of the most magnetic and theatrical performers in indie rock, radiating star appeal even when she was playing dingy rock clubs. In interviews, however, she’s enigmatic, prone to giving statements that seem revealing in the moment and then vague once you see them in print. And that seems entirely deliberate, and also understandable given the close readings her songs and press clippings have invited in the past. But the success and indie fame she received in the wake of 2018’s Be The Cowboy has exacerbated this reticence. In at least two of her recent magazine profiles, she declined to give the names of her cats, for fear that this information could be used to track down her personal information. (Is there a Google Cat app that I am not aware of?)

All of this has made headlines like “Mitski Had To Quit Music To Love It” not entirely convincing. She hasn’t quit music, but she also hasn’t demonstrated that she loves it. In the Rolling Stone interview, Mitski admitted that she wrote “Working For The Knife” — the first single from her new album, Laurel Hell, due Friday — at the end of 2019, around the time she was reminded of a contractual obligation with her record label to put out another album. “I just didn’t know whether I would ask the label to take it and keep me out of it,” she said, “or I would actually go out and present it.” The song itself doesn’t resolve this ambivalence. Over a mid-tempo shuffle accented with goth-y synths, Mitski croons about a spiritual malaise that one could easily apply to her own career narrative: “I used to think I’d be done by 20 / Now at 29, the road ahead appears the same.”

Apparently, Mitski has opted to go the “actually go out and present it” route. The release of Laurel Hill will be accompanied by a three-month international tour of large theaters that launches in about two weeks, and is already almost entirely sold out. After that she will join Harry Styles for a short run of stadium concerts in Europe. As for the album itself, it’s her most overt pop move yet, with another single, “The Only Heartbreaker,” co-written by Dan Wilson, a collaborator of Adele and Taylor Swift and one of the top hired guns in the business.

And yet, the question persists: Does Mitski really want to be here? Unlike the bravado she displayed on the preternaturally confident Be The Cowboy, she seems markedly less assured on the follow-up. It feels muddled, as if the author couldn’t decide on an overall vision. Mitski has said that Laurel Hell went through many iterations — including country and punk versions — before she decided that “I need to dance,” according to Rolling Stone. But the throwback 1980s sheen applied to the songs is ultimately noncommittal. The central conflict here seems to be this: Is this a full-blown bid for pop superstardom? Or is it a subversive spin on the idea of a pop record akin to Mitski’s other work? I can’t tell as a listener, and I’m not sure Mitski knows, either. She’s trying to have it both ways — simultaneously stepping up and retreating — and succeeding at neither.

On Be The Cowboy, Mitski mined the space between pop and indie music, landing in her own uniquely perverse space. Like on the album-closing ballad “Two Slow Dancers,” a climactic torch song in which she likens the familiarity of a long-term relationship to the smell of a school gymnasium. But there is no such alchemy on Laurel Hell, which oscillates between pop and perversity without ever integrating those poles.

On the perverse side are several slow, noirish ballads that telegraph an indefatigable weariness with slasher-movie synths and dreary piano chords. “Sometimes I think I am free / Until I find I’m back in line again,” she sings in “Everyone,” capturing the captive resignation that permeates much of the album. And then there’s “Stay Soft,” in which media commodification is reimagined as an S&M dynamic between audience and star and set to a queasy bump-n’-grind rhythm. Not all of these songs work — “Stay Soft” is kind of clumsy — but at least they hint at Mitski’s ability to write songs that can beguile and befuddle in equal doses, pinpointing the shared attributes of fear and desire. It’s on the more upbeat songs that the weaknesses of Laurel Hell are most acute.

Simply put, the would-be bangers here don’t bang nearly hard enough. Along with the vintage 120 Minutes-style alt-pop of “The Only Heartbreaker,” the ’80s signifiers come hot and heavy on songs like “Love Me More” and “Should’ve Been Me,” which quotes musically from Hall & Oates’ “Maneater.” But this is nothing we haven’t all heard many, many times from indie and pop artists for about a decade now; by now, the 1980s have been strip-mined for every last gated drum track and retro keyboard squiggle. It’s still possible to do this sort of thing well, however, and Laurel Hell suffers from arriving so close after The Weeknd’s Dawn FM, one of the most brilliant evocations of ’80s pop nostalgia of recent years. On Dawn FM, every song is loaded with hooks and ace production choices, a testament to the battery of songwriting and production talent at Abel Tesfaye’s disposal. Laurel Hell sounds feeble by comparison.

Ever since her second album, 2013’s self-released Retired From Sad, New Career In Business, Mitski has collaborated with the producer and musician Patrick Hyland. While the partnership has been fruitful, the music on Laurel Hell suggests that it might have run its course. Mitski is now at a career crossroads. When The Weeknd exited the world of indie prestige for genuine superstardom seven years ago on 2015’s Beauty Behind The Madness, he enlisted no less an authority than Max Martin to help with the transition. He fully accepted that his job was now to make larger-than-life pop smashes, and he dedicated himself to the role. Laurel Hell meanwhile is a tentative, frustrating record of half-measures trapped between musical worlds to which Mitski refuses to commit.

I ask again: Does Mitski really want to be here? Does she want to stay or does she want to go? If she stays, does she want to be a mainstream star who performs in stadiums with other mainstream stars, or does she want to be an enigmatic cult indie hero? Laurel Hell suffers from not resolving these issues before now. She has the talent to go either direction, but as it stands her music either needs to be a whole lot catchier or much weirder. The time has come for Mitski to finally choose.

Given that Jackass co-creator Johnny Knoxville has dedicated the past 20-plus years of his life to voluntarily being smashed in the nuts, tasered, getting the sh*t beaten out of him by Butterbean (a professional fighter who tips the scales at close to 400 pounds), and going head-to-horns with a couple of very pissed off bulls, it stands to reason that he has broken just about every bone in his body (his penis included). In fact, as Mediaite reports, Knoxville estimates that he came very close to not making it out of a stunt alive at least five or six times.

While Knoxville has managed to escape death a good half-dozen times now, that doesn’t mean his pain level isn’t a daily reminder of his many years of jackassery. Just ahead of the premiere of Jackass Forever, the fourth—and, as of right now at least, final—installment in the Jackass movie franchise, Knoxville was a guest on Jason Bateman, Will Arnett, and Sean Hayes’ “Smartless” podcast, where he shared that “I have to live with all my past injuries. I’ve had like 16 concussions—I’m not very in touch with my body… And I figured I did this to myself, right?”

In addition to several very serious head injuries, Knoxville shared that he’s sustained a lot of damage to his back as well. “I have two blown disks in my lower back, so that’s something I have to deal with just with exercise and anti-inflammatories,” he said.

Still, Knoxville is able to look on the bright side. “I’m so lucky I’ve had some stunts that almost had forever consequences five or six times,” he said. “I’m almost dead five or six times.”

Jackass Forever arrives in theaters on Friday, February 4th.

(Via Mediaite)

Madison Cawthorn isn’t a subtle guy. The far-right whippersnapper recently opted to clean his gun while sitting through a hearing on toxic burn pits (and their devastating effects on veterans). He’s also (all photographic evidence to the contrary) declared that MAGA rioters were simply “normal people” who were only “kind of wandering in,” so it wasn’t too much of a surprise to see Cawthorn as one of the Republican congresspeople who are reportedly linked (by Rolling Stone) to the Jan. 6 insurrection. Nor is it off base for him to give a bonkers interview to the Daily Caller’s Brianna Lyman.

One of the gems in this interview: Cawthorn raves about how Donald Trump is a “genius” and a dad figure who somehow hops on the phone with him every day:

“Trump is like a father to me, I get to talk to him every single day. He’s incredible, he’s a genius. Being 26 years old obviously I don’t have a ridiculous amount of experience with dealing with foreign policy, so if I can just call the former president of the United States and say, ‘hey, what would you do in this situation?’ and he can tell me exactly what the whole background is to it. So I love him. He’s been very good to me and he’s been so good to our country.”

Uh, does Don Jr. know about this? Regardless, Cawthorn’s cult-y, possibly grifty way of speaking perked up some Twitter users.

That wasn’t all. Cawthorn also declared, “I think there are members of the federal government deeply involved in Jan 6.” Eyebrows are raising over how on-the-nose this statement might be.

And finally, Cawthorn made a clearly false statement about how the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests resulted in “all of our major cities burned to the ground.”

It’s a wild set of statements to make, especially when a group of lawyers is working to prevent Madison from running for reelection this year. He’s also got a contender, Josh Remillard, waiting in the wings. Patton Oswalt tweeted support for Remillard and raised some awareness for donations to the North Carolina hopeful’s campaign.