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For a brief moment, it seemed like Sarah Palin was actually bucking the Republican Party by coming out in favor of masking and vaccines after her family caught COVID last year. It was a surprising stance for the former vice presidential candidate who’s been a stalwart Donald Trump supporter. However, Palin’s dalliance with common sense was fleeting as she kicked into full GOP mode barely six months later and swore she’d never get vaccinated while trashing Dr. Fauci on Fox News.

Jump to this week where Palin has been making headlines after her defamation suit against The New York Times was delayed because she caught COVID again. Things really took a turn when two days later, the COVID positive Palin was spotted eating out at a New York restaurant, which even Meghan McCain couldn’t resist calling “stupid” and “selfish.”

Naturally, late night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel got in on the act, and he came loaded with new nicknames for Palin during Thursday’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live! After referring to her as “The Unmasked Singer,” Kimmel unloaded on Palin for refusing to quarantine. Via The Wrap:

“You know, in New York, you’re supposed to isolate for five days after a positive test, but darn it, that’s not how [the] Alaska top hockey mom does it. She plays by her own rules. So the other night she caught some flack for eating indoors at a restaurant, despite the fact you’re supposed to show proof of vaccination to get in and she doesn’t have that.”

Kimmel then showed footage of Palin eating in a restaurant, and joked, “There’s Typhoid Mary having some linguini or something.”

Kimmel also roasted Palin for not getting take-out, which would’ve been ridiculously easy to do in her situation. “What’s she supposed to do,” Kimmel quipped. “Sit in her hotel room and order from any of the 20,000 restaurants in New York City?”

(Via The Wrap)

While some of us are mostly invested in Kanye West as a musician, there are apparently many, many people who care a great deal — perhaps even too much — about his love life. Headlines about the controversial rapper/producer have revolved around his nascent relationship with actress Julia Fox lately, as Ye works to move on from his divorce from Kim Kardashian West.

Another thing people are truly interested in is Kanye’s passive-aggressive feud with Drake. While the two rappers apparently buried the hatchet at their Free Larry Hoover concert in LA last year, they’ve appeared to settle their differences in the past before something sets one or the other off and they go back to taking petty subliminal jabs at each other in their music.

Here’s where that particular Venn diagram of interests intersects: According to Page Six, Drake and Ye have yet another thing in common. They both dated Julia Fox. A source told Page Six that Drake DMed Fox shortly after her role in 2019’s Uncut Gems, and when her prior relationship with Peter Artemiev broke up, the two spent some time together in New York in 2020, leading to drinks, a workplace drop-in, and a flight to LA, where Drake allegedly bought a pair of Birkin bags for Fox.

Fox was shacking up with Drake in Toronto the COVID-19 pandemic finally prompted lockdown measures, which sent Fox back home to the US due to the imminent closure of the US/Canada border. Fox reunited with Artemiev before meeting Kanye on New Year’s Eve, and the rest, as they say, is history. Whether this revelation leads to another round of back-and-forth between Drake and Ye remains to be seen, but considering Kanye is supposed to release his next album, Donda 2, next month, there might not be much longer to wait to find out.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — This is officially a thing now

A few weeks ago, Chris Noth’s character on the Sex and the City continuation series, And Just Like That, died as a result of a Peloton-related calamity. This was, and still is, extremely funny to me. It was a whole big thing, too. It was all over the news. Peloton had to put out a statement and everything. A full-on fiasco. The chaos of it all was delicious.

Then, this Sunday, against staggering odds, it happened again. Kind of. It kind of happened again. On the season premiere of Billions, Mike Wagner, played with mustache-twirling glee by David Costabile, was cranking away on his own Peloton when the paramedics burst into his home to inform him he was having a heart attack. They knew because of the device’s various monitors and gizmos and such. I don’t understand it all, to be honest, beyond knowing that it is very, very funny that it all happened again. Here, proof.

The takeaways from all of this are twofold:

• It does not seem like a fun time to work in the media relations department at Peloton
• This is officially a trend now

That second thing is important. Two characters have suffered Peloton-related health emergencies this year. The general rule is that things in life tend to happen in threes, which raises a question I am beyond delighted to try to answer: Who is next? What television character will — should — suffer a Peloton-related health crisis to complete the circle?

Below, I have listed some options. The key things to know here are as follows:

• Some of these are characters I would like to see killed or maimed because I hate them a lot, but most are just the ones I think would be funniest
• I have included characters who are no longer on television, in part because Sex and the City came back and killed someone off and in part because it’s really funny to me to picture Paulie Walnuts from The Sopranos having a heart attack on a robot bicycle

Make your own list if you’re so great

Here we go.

Literally any character on Succession

I’m serious here. Any of them. More than one. Kendall, sure, yes. Roman, of course. Shiv and/or Tom would be hilarious. Cousin Greg is maybe too on the nose but still something I want to see as long as he survives it. Karl or Frank would be perfect for this, too. Especially Karl. There is a 100 percent chance he owns a Peloton. I can see him right now with the towel wrapped around his neck. You can, too. Just give it a second.

Henry Winkler’s character on Barry

Henry Winkler could make an entire meal out of a Peloton crisis and I think we should let him do it.

Judy Gemstone

Peddling with alarming intensity until her heart tries to burst out of her body, BJ finding her and shrieking a little. I need it.

Pete Campbell

The tricky thing here is that Mad Men was set in the 1960s and 1970s and the Peloton was not invented for another 40ish years. I get that. I do. But consider this: It would be hilarious. Pete Campbell was the worst. I once wrote 1000 words about how I wanted him to get eaten by a bear. This works, too.

Paulie Walnuts

Please take five minutes today and picture Paulie Walnuts from The Sopranos having a mild heart attack on a Peloton. My gift to you.

Frank from It’s Always Sunny

Danny DeVito on an exercise bike, pumping away, really getting after it, then clutching his chest dramatically. This is comedy.

Queen Elizabeth on The Crown

It would make me happier than any of you could imagine if the next season of The Crown threw historical accuracy into the toilet and killed off Elizabeth via exercise bike disaster. I would never stop laughing.

Dewey Crowe from Justified

I miss him a lot. Just make this like a web short. For me. Send it just to me.

Kim Wexler and/or Lalo Salamanca

Kim and Lalo both exist in Better Call Saul but they’re both gone by Breaking Bad. Why? What happens?

Peloton.

Steve Martin’s character on Only Murders in the Building

Just for the physical comedy.

George Costanza

Perfect. No notes.

Baby Yoda

Baby Yoda trying to ride an exercise bike with his tiny little limbs, maybe getting electrocuted and launched 50 feet through the air, then landing, healthy and alive but dazed, and making one of his little faces.

This is television.

Vision from WandaVision

Here for the robot-on-robot violence.

Laszlo from What We Do in the Shadows

Need to hear him call it like “a confounded contraption” in the full Matt Berry voice.

These are good ideas.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Being a historically great Jeopardy! champion seems weird

The bad news here is that Amy Schneider’s run as Jeopardy champ ended this week. It’s bad for a few reasons, too, but mostly it’s bad because I love a dominant Jeopardy champ. I love to see them rip off win after win, I love to see people get excited, I love to see the close calls where they squeak out a win over a worthy competitor. Sometimes I daydream about being the one to take them down and I picture the crowd cheering for me — the scrappy underdog defeating the invincible champ — like it’s the end of Rocky IV or something. You are not allowed to psychoanalyze me for this. It is, I believe, a HIPAA violation.

There is good news, though, starting with the fact that she’ll actually get the million-plus she won for winning all those games. Jeopardy winners don’t get paid until their winning streaks are over. I learned that this week from this article in The Ringer by Claire McNear, who is basically the world’s foremost Jeopardy expert, and just generally very good at this stuff. Other things I learned from her article:

• Amy actually had to get demoted on-purpose at work because she was missing so much time
• Keeping the secret kind of forces you to become a spy

Here, look:

For players like Schneider, whose streaks have necessitated repeat trips to Los Angeles for taping, the secrecy of a streak-in-progress is that much harder to preserve. Jennings, for one, was forced to tip his hand to his boss, who covered for him with a series of excuses about sudden conflicts and illnesses, to the point that Jennings felt like he had a secret identity.

“Lying to everyone I know for months on end is taking a psychological toll as well,” Jennings wrote in his 2006 memoir, Brainiac. “The secret starts to make me feel a little schizophrenic. A couple days a month, I’m the Ken Jennings who’s shattered game show records, whose ever-growing daily winnings total is starting to look like a life-changing amount of money. But nobody knows about him yet. I still have to come home and be Ken Jennings the boring suburban dad, in his same old mundane treadmill of an office job, pretending nothing has happened.”

I want to be very clear about a couple of things here. The first is that this sounds both cool and stressful. Equally so, basically. I think it would be fun at first to play secret agent about all of it. I would have a blast coming up with excuses and sneaking around and having a little secret. One that’s good and won’t hurt anyone. A nice little secret, for me. And money. A secret and money. That could be cool.

This brings us to the second thing, though: There is something approaching a 100 percent chance that I would blab this secret to someone/everyone if it lasted longer than, say, two weeks. I would try to get cute about it, like “maybe I’ll be on longer than you think…” and then people would start grilling me and I’d spill it out everywhere. Everyone would know. The people at Jeopardy would be so mad at me.

The lesson here is that you should not tell me if you commit a crime. You will absolutely go to jail because of me. I’m sorry. But it’s better that you know.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Finally, someone has made a movie about thieves who use speedboats to rob yachts

Okay, so technically, if we’re being sticklers here, the picture at the top of this post is tangentially related to the subject matter. At best. It’s a screencap from a movie called Speed Kills, where John Travolta plays a champion speed boat racer who gets in business with drug runners and it becomes a whole thing. I watched it three years ago and wrote like 2000 words about it. I have so many screencaps of John Travolta driving a speedboat. Still. Today. Which turned out to be useful today. Joke’s on you.

Anyway, context. The greatest movie I’ve ever heard of was announced this week. Look at this. Read it all twice.

Jake Gyllenhaal is set to star in “Cut and Run,” a heist thriller about a group of thieves who use high-powered speed boats to rob super-yachts. Their caper takes a turn when they steal the wrong thing from the wrong group of people.

This is quite possibly the best one-two punch of sentences I’ve ever read. There is so much going on here, almost all of it wonderful. It keeps getting better, too. Because you think it can’t get better than “Jake Gyllenhaal starring in a heist movie called Cut and Run about dudes in speedboats robbing dudes in super-yacht” and then, blammo, “they steal the wrong thing from the wrong people.”

I’m already dying to know what this means. What is the wrong thing? Who are the wrong people? Did they steal a nuclear bomb from an arms dealer? Did they steal Dominic Toretto’s child? Did Jake Gyllenhaal steal an unreleased collection of songs by Taylor Swift, who in this scenario is playing a version of herself that is also secretly an international supervillain who has a pet alligator named Randy Sugarman?

Anything is possible right now. I’m almost too excited. I hope this becomes a franchise and I hope it goes on for decades and I hope the ninth movie features Jake Gyllenhaal driving a speedboat to outer space.

I’m a simple man.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — If this is an Olympic event this year, I will definitely watch the Winter Olympics

It is my position, generally, that the Summer Olympics are better than the Winter Olympics. The Summer Olympics have cooler events and a more diverse slate — track and swimming and gymnastics and fencing and basketball and horse things and so on — and just feel more right in a bunch of ways. Maybe it’s because I hate winter, as a concept. Maybe it’s because I was never into stuff like skiing or skating. Maybe it’s because so many of the events seem to me like falling down a mountain in different elaborate ways. I don’t know. It’s just how it’s always been.

That said, if this commercial represents a real new event this time, in the Winter Olympics that start next month, I will change my tune. Because, like…

See, this I can work with. Why are you racing down an icy mountain on two skinny planks? Because DINOSAURS ARE CHASING YOU. Every world record would be broken. It would be thrilling. Some skiers and spectators would get eaten, sure. But the survivors would be true champions. Maybe we can put the dinosaurs on skis too. That would be funny. They’d be so mad. Stupid angry dinosaurs.

There is a very real chance that this commercial for the Winter Olympics and the new Jurassic World movie ends up bringing me more joy than the Winter Olympics and the new Jurassic World combined. I feel okay about it.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — Hey look, some good tweets

Joe Pera is the best. We’ve discussed this. His show, Joe Pera Talks With You, is so good and so pure and so sweet and so funny. But that’s not the point right now. It’s true, but not the point. It’s kind of the point, actually. Because Joe Pera is also from Buffalo. He roots for the Buffalo Bills. Do you see where I’m going here? I’ll explain.

The Buffalo Bills played the Kansas City Chiefs in the NFL playoffs last Sunday. It was one of the craziest football games I’ve ever seen. The last two minutes and overtime featured like four touchdowns and insane twists and I was almost out of breath watching it even though I don’t care about either team too much. People were going nuts. My twitter feed was scrolling faster than the Price Is Right wheel, with dozens of “BEST GAME OVER” and “HOLY SHIT” tweets, and then, mixed in there, like a flawless diamond in a pit of spiders, was Buffalo Bills fan Joe Pera tweeting this.

Beautiful. Perfect. I love him so much. All three seasons of his show are on HBO Max and all the episodes are like 12 minutes long and I just said all of this earlier this month. Please listen to me. I’ll just keep repeating myself until you do.

Hey, speaking of good tweets that I love…

I promise this is not hyperbole: I have watched this video at least 50 times this week since my colleague Josh Kurp showed it to me in Slack. It could be closer to 100. I watched it like 10 times in a row just now, while I was supposed to be writing this section. I bet I’ll watch it at least five more times before I finish. I refuse to do any additional research into it because it’s probably a bummer and I simply will not research myself into ruining something so beautiful.

I’m going to move on now but I understand if you get stuck here and just keep watching this clip. You’ll miss the phrase “contraband bologna” if you stop here, which is coming up soon, I promise, but I’ll understand. We’re all doing the best we can.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Matt:

Somehow, you have missed the most important pop culture event of the past two weeks: the debut of the intro video for Peacemaker. I don’t care that you ignored the show. It’s the dance routine we must discuss. First, let’s watch.

Where to begin. Is it the amazing choreography for John Cena’s weirdly swollen body? The seriousness of the expressions? Robert Patrick’s crotch explosion? I am going to propose it’s actually with the song, “Do You Want To Taste It” by Wig Wam. Consider that this song was recorded only 10 years ago. By these Norwegian guys. One of them is named Flash– can you guess which?

All of this is amazing.

James Gunn is somehow our greatest director now.

This is just a really good email. I like that it takes me to task for whiffing on something I should have — given everything we know about me at this point — covered extensively. I like that it includes both links and research. I like that it kind of does my job for me.

But first, just in case you didn’t click on the hyperlinks in there, here’s the aforementioned Peacemaker opening credits, which are beautiful and borderline revolutionary…

… and here is the full-length music video for the song by the aforementioned Norwegian band.

It’s all quite lovely. Yes, sure, the Succession credits with its theme song with the cascading tinkly pianos. We all love it. But that’s a little too classy for all occasions. Sometimes you need something chaotic and silly. That’s what this is. Chaos and silliness for the sake of being chaotic and silly. I appreciate it a lot. I’m so proud of all of them.

It’s a good reminder, too: there really aren’t as many rules out there as you think there are. You can get weird and break stuff a little sometimes. The only thing stopping you is the guardrails you slapped on your imagination around age 12. Bust those suckers down if you want. Get weird. Have John Cena dance a little.

This is admittedly a pretty specific example. Most of us don’t even know John Cena. And it would be weird if you ran into him and just shouted like “DANCE, JOHN.” So maybe don’t do that. But the rest of the point stands. Excellent email, Matt.

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To the Texas border!

Hundreds of pounds of contraband pork bologna were seized at the Texas border as U.S. citizens tried smuggling the lunch meat in two recent incidents, officials say.

CONTRABAND BOLOGNA

I KNOW THIS IS SERIOUS

I’M SORRY

BUT YOU NEED TO GIVE ME A MINUTE TO ALL-CAPS ABOUT CONTRABAND BOLOGNA

In the first case, a 40-year-old resident of Albuquerque tried entering the U.S. at the Paso Del Norte crossing in El Paso on Jan. 13, according to a CBP news release. He did not declare having any meat products. During an inspection of his car, agriculture specialists with the agency say they found 55 pounds of bologna hidden under a bag of chips, under the seats and in the trunk compartment of the SUV.

Imagine getting arrested for smuggling 55 pounds of bologna. Imagine explaining that to… anyone.

“It says here you were arrested in 2022. What happened?”

“So… you’re familiar with bologna, the lunch meat, right?”

Fascinating. And it gets weirder.

In the second incident, on Jan. 21, a 40-year-old resident of Pueblo West, Colorado, tried entering the Ysleta border crossing in El Paso, officials say. She also did not declare any meat products. But when her vehicle was inspected, officials say they found 19 rolls of bologna totaling 188 pounds under the back seat, inside the duvet cover liners and hidden with some luggage

The thing about this one is that I kind of just want to see 188 pounds of bologna. It seems like a lot. I also kind of want to see footage of the search, just to see the faces of people nearby when the agents just keep pulling bologna out of the car, over and over and over.

I’ve got to believe this kind of thing is rare, though. I can’t imagine bologna smuggling happens a lot.

This isn’t the first time someone tried illegally bringing bologna into the U.S.

Hmm.

Tell me everything.

In September, McClatchy News reported that a motorist tried bringing 320 pounds of bologna and 30 pounds of turkey ham across the Texas border.

And in February, 277 pounds of contraband bologna were found in the floorboards of a car crossing the New Mexico border. Also that month and in New Mexico, McClatchy News reported that 194 pounds of bologna were seized from a different vehicle.

I need three seasons on any streaming service about this as soon as possible. We can start with a McMillions-style documentary and then branch out to the Narcos-style loose fictionalization. Get Paul Giamatti as a frustrated bureaucrat. Get Brian Tyree Henry as a border patrol agent. Get Florence Pugh as an international bologna smuggling queenpin.

I am not joking. I would never joke about contraband bologna.

Though she’s still a relative newcomer on the scene, UK producer and DJ PinkPantheress has already amassed a very passionate fan base. Boosted by a healthy dose of virality on Tiktok, her glitchy songs like “Just For Me” (and its subdued video), or the mini-doc she made with Spotify, Feast On This, helped introduce pave the way for her debut mixtape. To Hell With It seemed to encapsulate not just the producer’s mood at that time, but a collective ennui that had set in during the fall of 2021 that helped the tape’s sometimes frenetic, sometimes lonesome sound really resonate.

Now that it’s a new year, though, PinkPantheress has something else in store for fans of To Hell With It. While the original tape was just her, with no features, a new remix version she’s dropping today has got a whole host of guests involved, including Flume, Anz, Powfu, LSDXOXO, Sam Gellaitry, and Nia Archives. “I’m extremely happy to have had all some of my favourite creatives work on this project,” PinkPantheress said in a press release. “These remixes get me up and dancing like there’s no tomorrow, and I hope they have the same effect on everyone that tunes in.”

Check out the new version of the tape above, and the most recent US tour dates from PinkPantheress right here.

A few days ago, Neil Young threatened to take his music off of Spotify due to the platform’s relationship with Joe Rogan, a threat he later made good on. Since Young first made his thoughts heard, he has gotten a bunch of support online, so much so that it prompted #CancelSpotify to become a trending topic on Twitter yesterday (as Consequence notes). Some of that activity on Twitter came from fellow artists who have Young’s back.

Sadie Dupuis of Speedy Ortiz encouraged her followers to take action, sharing a link to a pre-existing anti-Spotify petition and writing, “30,000 artists signed a petition in 2020 outlining why spotify was bad for us (this before daniel ek made massive military industrial complex investments) and if you are just now paying attention thanks to neil young… welcome! sign on!”

Other artists who weighed in include David Crosby, Peter Frampton, and Sebastian Bach.

Eve 6, as they tend to do, also came through with a bunch great tweets about the situation. In the most serious of them, they write, “i honestly didn’t think neil young meant to follow through with this and that even if he did there was no way his label would allow it. he meant it man. respect.” Meanwhile, one of the funniest reads, “just ran some numbers and neil young stands to lose 4 dollars over the next twenty years.” Check out Eve 6’s tweets below.

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

Ted Cruz is at it again. He consistently embarrasses himself whenever he talks about TV or movies, but he can’t help it. This week, he tweeted about Fight Club and received (Cancun) comeuppance. This followed Ted’s strange take on Watchmen (he believes “rabid environmentalists” are the real supervillains) and the noted The Princess Bride superfan’s silly feud with Cary Elwes. Yet Ted never learns, so he decided to show off his Marvel Cinematic Universe knowledge while defending Ant-Man and The Wasp star Evangeline Lilly’s anti-vaxxing stance.

Lilly, like Sarah Palin, couldn’t seem to make up her mind at the start of the pandemic. She first publicly refused to self-isolate before apologizing over her “arrogant” and “dismissive” remarks. And it seems like she’s back to square one with her attendance at an anti-vaxxer D.C. protest to “support bodily sovereignty.” Lilly also posted her thoughts on Instagram, where she declared her opposition to workplace mandates and how anti-vaxxers are shunned by society. “This is not the way,” Lilly declared, and Ted was happy to support that sentiment.

“Not all heroes wear capes,” Ted tweeted with a link to a news story about Lilly’s anti-vaxxer crusade. “But some do.”

Lilly and Cruz both miss the point on how there’s really no “excommunication from society” (which is how Lilly put it) to be found. It’s common sense for vaccinated people to not want to be in close proximity with the unvaccinated because (and this is not difficult science) that’s how the virus spreads. That’s not the most relevant point here, though, because — in true Ted fashion — he’s botched another area of pop culture. Do you see a “cape” on Lilly’s MCU character, Wasp, at all? Nope, because she has to have room for her wings.

Ted Cruz strikes out again. And it remains to be seen whether Lilly will see repercussions for her anti-vaxxer cheerleading with the Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania shoot on the horizon. And in other Cruz news, he’s also been tweeting about “Whole Foods” while retweeting comedian Karl Hess, who had briefly changed his account handle to “ted cruz is the zodiac killer.” It’s almost like he enjoys people taking shots at him, right?

It says a lot about a person’s state of mind that they would more readily believe the U.S. Intelligence Community is using its time and resources to fabricate threats from Russian than that Russia would be plotting a cyberattack on the U.S. in retaliation for our attempts to help Ukraine—which is on the verge of war with Russia—better defend itself against Vladimir Putin and his people. But that’s exactly where we found ourselves on Thursday night, when Donald Trump Jr.—shouty as ever—called bullsh*t on the well-sourced rumblings that Putin has put his best people on planning a massive cyberattack on America.

As Raw Story reports, Trump Jr.—who is regularly featured on Fox News as a political pundit, despite having no political experience whatsoever—railed against the U.S. Intelligence community and made the outrageous claim that there is no threat to America from Russia. “I imagine that’s our people lying to us to try to instigate getting us into another war to distract from the incompetence,” Trump Jr. said.

The most disturbing part of Trump’s rant was when he claimed he gets to read intelligence reports?! While his father, as a former president, would have access to this information, “Aimless Adult Son of Former President” is not typically a job title that gets a person that kind of security clearance.

As Raw Story writes, “Trump Jr. then went on to claim that Ukraine is ‘calling in favors’ from Biden to cover up his son’s alleged corruption, despite the fact that multiple European countries are also sending military assistance to the nation.”

You can watch his unhinged rant below.

(Via Raw Story)

In 2021, Migos completed the rollout for Culture III, dropping videos for “Straightenin,” “Why Not,” “Roadrunner,” and “How We Coming” in addition to hosting their own three-day festival in Las Vegas and appearing on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series. Now that they’ve reestablished their grip on pop culture as a group, though, it looks like they’re making another go at dropping solo releases. The first is Quavo’s new single, “Shooters Inside My Crib,” which dropped with an exuberant, flex-filled video.

Made up of both documentary-style footage of Quavo and his Migos fam on tour and in the studio and performance shots of Quavo crooning in luxury hotels and restaurant kitchens, “Shooters Inside My Crib” finds the band’s de facto frontman reflecting on the grind and the eventual benefits thereof. Decked out in glittering chains with diamond-covered Yoda pendants and banging away on his piano at home, Quavo shares his thoughts on remaining patient and persistent until patience and persistence pay off. “I was patient, now my ice go glacier” he sings on the chorus. “I was trapping out the vacant ’til I got some paper.” With Quavo preparing to release the long-awaited follow-up to his solo debut Quavo Huncho, it looks like there will be more of the same on the way.

Watch Quavo’s “Shooters Inside My Crib” video above.

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

Things are looking up for Saba. On the Chicago rapper’s last album, Care For Me, he came to grips with the trauma of losing his cousin and Pivot Gang bandmate John Walt to street violence, and in the last two years, he’s seen another member of the crew, Squeak, fall victim as well. So, you’d be forgiven for being surprised that his first new effort in three years, Few Good Things, takes a completely opposite tack compared to its predecessor.

This was intentional, as I learned during a Zoom call with Saba to discuss the new project and all he’s done since Care For Me became a fan favorite. That album, he says, is “so personal that it’s like my fans and people who are fans of that album, they now have an emotional connection to those songs and those lyrics in that time period. So going into this album, there’s something that you have to accept as an artist and that’s that once people develop an emotional connection and it’s not just an objective connection to something, that’ll be your best album regardless of what you do.”

This is why he approached Few Good Things as an “anti-Care For Me.” Creative decisions that would work for one wouldn’t work for another, so Saba had to reverse the formula that made Care For Me such a success – a risky move which he acknowledged, accepting that fans’ reception of the new work could go the other way as well. “Every decision we made on [Care For Me], how do we make the opposite decision on this one while still being original and organic and authentic to who I am? Because Care For Me is such a part of me, but also Few Good Things is a fuller scope of who I am.”

As Saba points out, there were as many years between those two albums as there were between his initial breakout on Chance The Rapper’s Acid Rap mixtape and Care For Me. The same level of growth and evolution is evident, as well, although he sticks close to his roots as one of the products of Chicago’s Young Chicago Authors open mics. Those same open mics produced city standouts like Chance, Mick Jenkins, Noname, and the rest of Saba’s Pivot Gang crew Joseph Chilliams, Frsh Waters, MFnMelo, and John Walt. That sound – effortlessly complex, full of heady wordplay and surprising, off-kilter cadences – remains an anchor point for the 13 songs on Few Good Things, while Saba makes an effort to expand the sound beyond the muddled, rainy palette of his prior work.

For instance, on “Fearmonger,” produced by Pivot mainstays Daoud and Daedae, a bright bassline underpins a stripped-down instrumental as Saba meditates on the nature of the near-constant anxiety that comes with growing up at the lower end of the income spectrum – and seeing that course slowly reverse through his own precarious efforts. Not only does the song represent a hard left turn from the introspective material he’s best known for, but he also shared it as the first single from the album as an intentional bid to reset fans’ expectations ahead of time.

“We dropped ‘Fearmonger’ first because it’s the most sonically opposite of the entire Care For Me album,” he explains. “I wanted to scare people, I wanted them to not be sure how they felt about it and that to me is what pushes sonic boundaries, especially in hip-hop.” He offers an even wider perspective, pointing out that, “it’s a lot of monotony, it’s a lot of the same, so I think when I do a record like ‘Fearmonger,’ I want to put that out and push that because there’s an individualistic approach to the conception of that record. So, some fans might hear that and not understand how to listen to it but based on fan-hood and them wanting to like it — because fans want to like the music — some of them will listen until they do like it. And I think that’s how music’s meant to be listened to.”

Putting out a song called “Fearmonger” in the hopes of scaring people out of complacency – and doing so so completely fearlessly – is a bold move, but the rollout for this project is full of them. In addition to the album, Saba has shot a short film, also titled Few Good Things, hoping to capture the spirit of the music. He also betrays next to no apprehension about switching disciplines, instead displaying the same bold confidence with which he talks about juking fans’ expectations.

“I think the cool part of being able to play music, but music specifically that is lyric-based, is that we’re able to use our language to set scenes,” he explains. “We can make our language really visual, and I think that’s one of the elements that make telling personal stories, firsthand, telling things that are valuable to me, I think that’s one of the things that makes it unique. It makes people connect to it, but I think it’s always been, with our writing style, it’s always been really visual.” That skill, he says, is critical to making the leap into a visual medium. “When we started really locking in and working on this album, the director of this film, C.T. Robert, was really close,” he says.

“Every song that got done, he got immediately. We talked. We had full conversations, pretty much every time anything new got added to the mix, where we broke down family stuff. We broke down the lyrics. We broke down everything so that it was really open, in terms of the writing of the film, while also the writing of the album was happening simultaneously.” However, he’s still not sure how he feels about the movie or the album, yet, because they’re not out there in the world where viewers and listeners can consume them – his one concession to the artistic anxiety he’s been able to somehow escape throughout the process.

“I think I’ll experience that the day of the screening, the day it’s public, the day everybody is able to see it,” he says, “because that’s the day that it’s going to feel like, ‘Alright. This is real. This is tangible. We’ve released this.’ I’m so used to having things months and months and months in advance that it almost is imaginary until it’s released. This album, even Few Good Things, it’s been music that has been done for months and months and months. So, to finally be releasing it next week now, it’s just a crazy, crazy, crazy feeling.”

As far as what he wants those fans and consumers to take away from the concept of Few Good Things, he offers a few examples of the things that have become important to him and sustained him through the tough times that aren’t even all that far in the rearview. “One thing that I got from these last couple of years is time,” he observes. “I got a lot of my time back, and in having that time, you’re able to realize how valuable just that is. Just being able to spend your time how you want and not having to make choices based on necessity and survival and all of this other shit, but just how would you spend your day if you could spend your day how you wanted to spend it and that’s what true wealth equates to.”

Few Good Things is out 2/4 via Pivot Gang, LLC. You can pre-save here.

Chris Brown is being sued by a woman who says he drugged and raped her on a yacht, according to Rolling Stone, which obtained a copy of the lawsuit. The woman, a choreographer, dancer, model, and recording artist, is asking for $20 million; the lawsuit says that the incident took place on December 30 near Diddy’s Star Island home, where the boat was docked.

The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, says a friend invited her and another woman to the yacht, where Brown expressed an interest in helping her with her music career. She says after Brown made her two drinks, she became “disoriented, physically unstable, and started to fall in and out of sleep.” Brown allegedly led her to a bedroom, blocked her attempts to leave, undressed her, and raped her. The next day, he also allegedly told her to take a Plan B pill.

In a statement, Jane Doe’s attorney, Ariel E. Mitchell of Vrabeck Adams & Company, said, “My partner [George Vrabeck] and I want to ensure all parties are held accountable so that we may begin to eradicate this behavior from our society.”

Brown appeared to address the accusation on his Instagram Story, writing, “I hope y’all see this pattern of [cap]. Whenever I’m releasing music or projects, ‘THEY’ try to pull some real bullsh*t.” Brown was previously accused of rape in Paris in 2019, however, the case was dropped due to lack of evidence.