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After testing positive for Drostanolone and Testosterone, New Orleans Pelicans forward DiDi Louzada has been suspended 25 games without pay by the NBA, announced in a press release from the league Friday afternoon.

According to the release, Louzada violated “the terms of agreement of the NBA/NBPA Anti-Drug Program.”

His suspension begins Friday with New Orleans’ contest against the Los Angeles Clippers and runs through Jan. 9, when the Pelicans face the Toronto Raptors.

Drafted with the 35th pick of the 2019 NBA Draft by the Atlanta Hawks, Louzada has scarcely played since joining New Orleans ahead of last season, seeing 63 minutes and scoring eight points through the early portion of his tenure.

While not currently a member of the rotation, Louzada’s suspension is another hurdle for the 2-14 Pelicans to navigate. Superstar Zion Williamson is yet to return, nor is his arrival imminent. All-Star forward Brandon Ingram also missed seven consecutive games earlier this year with a hip injury.

The slate doesn’t ease up for New Orleans either. Seven of their next nine games feature bouts against the 9-6 Clippers (twice), 10-5 Utah Jazz (twice), 10-5 Washington Wizards and 9-5 Dallas Mavericks. Louzada is far from the headlining setback for this squad, but for a team eyeing the postseason, his absence is further emblematic of the murky situation down south.

The remains of Jimmy Hoffa, the union boss who’s been missing since 1975, may have finally been discovered in a former New Jersey landfill. Maybe it’s just me, but that’s the first place I would look for a guy who was rumored to have been killed by the Mafia.

The New York Times reports that late last month, FBI agents arrived in Jersey City with a search warrant. “A worker, on his deathbed, said he buried the body underground in a steel drum,” the article reads. “The steel drum is said to be buried about 15 feet below ground, in the shadow of countless millions of drivers who have passed it by.”

An expert on the Hoffa case who brought the disclosure of the steel drum and its possible location to the F.B.I., Dan Moldea, a journalist who has written about the Teamster boss since before he disappeared, said the New Jersey site is “100 percent” credible, and that the new leads were very significant.

“A very prominent person disappeared from a public place 46 years ago and was never seen again,” Mr. Moldea said Thursday. “This case has to be solved.”

Hoffa served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1957 to 1971; he was last seen on July 30, 1975, and his disappearance has been a source of fascination ever since. He was played by Al Pacino in Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman (the way his death was depicted in the movie is seen as “unlikely” by scholars), and there was the rumor that he was buried beneath Giants Stadium in the Meadowlands. But all attempts to discover what happened to Hoffa have proved futile — so far.

“On October 25th & 26th, FBI personnel from the Newark and Detroit field offices completed the survey and that data is currently being analyzed,” FBI special agent Mara Schneider said in a statement. “Because the affidavit in support of the search warrant was sealed by the court, we are unable to provide any additional information.”

You should check out the entire New York Times article, if only for snippets of extremely mob movie dialogue like, “If the feds begin digging at the proposed dump in New Jersey, they would hit pay dirt.” Read it here.

(Via the New York Times)

You might know Sedona Prince as the leader of a top-10 Oregon team with its eyes on a national championship this season. You might know her as the viral TikToker who helped draw attention to disparities at the NCAA basketball tournaments last spring, from the weight room to the mess hall. Maybe you know Prince as a plaintiff in one of the bigger lawsuits against the NCAA, which argues that college athletes should be paid their part in revenues from college sports TV and sponsorship deals.

It’s not hard to tap into Prince’s mind and talent. But as new name, image and likeness rules open the doors for college athletes to partner with brands, Prince is taking advantage. Through a new campaign with Champs Sports x Eastbay and Uninterrupted, Prince is trying on her media and fashion hats as she dips her toes into these new waters.

She spoke with Dime as the NCAA women’s basketball season tipped off and the Uninterrupted series launched on YouTube about the campaign, the upcoming season, and the future of college sports.

This line from Champs and Eastbay is called More Than An Athlete and we know Uninterrupted has a history with that phrase, but what does that phrase mean to you?

It’s about a lot. We had a lot of time to sit down and think about that and I guess to me, being more than an athlete is about being involved in things other than your sport. That might include your community, things you love. Athletes strongly identify with the sport that they play, so to be more than an athlete is to really try to be as amazing a human as I can, do as many things as I can, help as many people as I can through and outside of sports.

I’m curious too, what stood out to you, what excited you the most about getting to be part of this rebrand, the content series and all of the stuff going into this whole package from Champs, Eastbay and Uninterrupted?

All of it. It’s a very cool opportunity for me because I get to kind of change my role as an athlete and now become someone that gets to interview kids and help people share their stories, help athletes say what they want to say to the world, and be that facilitator for them to talk about it comfortably on set or on Zoom.

Also I used to shop at Champs and Eastbay all the time as a kid, I still do, and now being able to be someone that’s a sponsor for them and holds true to what they believe in and their character as a company and to really represent them is a massive blessing.

You have your own history with getting to this point in college sports where someone can do a deal like this (Prince is part of a lawsuit aimed at allowing college athletes to earn revenue from TV deals and more). What did that part of it mean to you, to go out and represent yourself, partner with a company, and do all the things that only recently you were able to do (now that NIL deals are allowed at most colleges)?

We were talking on the show a little bit about NIL opportunities, what it means and what they can be. It’s an opportunity to truly decide what NIL can be. It’s not just sponsorships, it’s not just posting a picture on social media, but I got to go into a studio and wear a brand and kind of be on a podcast. It truly just shows what these NIL opportunities can be for athletes.

It’s pretty cool, I kind of got to sit back like wow, this is such a blessing, being able to be here right now is a once in a lifetime opportunity that I’ll never forget.

How did you go about operating within the NIL rules and concept right now? Were you waiting to see an opportunity that suits you, were you and your reps diving right in? What was your approach?

We waited a little bit. I wanted to wait on getting an agency for a good two or three months just so I knew (the landscape). I just wanted to sit, wait, see what other athletes were doing, continue to build my brand so I could do me and watch the kids around me.

Now that I started with an agency, I’m able to do different things through TikTok videos, Instagram posts, or even just getting sent free gear and this opportunity. We’re still pursuing many different opportunities that won’t just be for NIL. Obviously NIL will be for the next one or two years I’m in college, but these will be lifelong partnerships that I’ll have for the rest of my pro career.

What are your goals this year on the court?

We will go to the Bahamas (this week), so to win that tournament. Obviously every team wants to win a national championship, a Pac-12 championship, and I really think we can do it this year because we have such an incredible team.

For me personally, it’s just to grow a lot. Keep telling my story on the court and just inspire more fans to watch women’s basketball, be a leader, show younger kids how incredible this game is. And then yeah, be the best player I can be, develop my game, hopefully have an opportunity to make it pro this year or next year, and prove everyone wrong.

I ended up breaking my leg freshman year and nobody really thought I would ever play basketball again at all, so now that I’m here, I have an opportunity to become a story that’s an inspiration to others, which is truly what I want.

Are you the type when you see the all-Pac 12 national championship game last year, are you quietly rooting for that so your conference is repped, or are you the type where that kind of lights a fire under you because you think you should be there and could have beaten them?

A little bit of both. We barely lost to Stanford last year, same with Arizona. It shows how amazing our conference is that both of those teams made it to the championship (game) and were fighting for a title and we played them twice if not three times in a year, but it also proved to our team that that could have been us. 100 percent, that could have been us fighting, we could have been there. It kind of gave us some motivation for this year of what we have to face for our conference. It’s going to be a challenge. We have to go into every game knowing the outcome could go either way, win or lose because every team is so challenging. But there’s also the motivation of we can truly make it all the way. We have preparation the entire year knowing we’re playing against the top teams in the country.

Looking forward a bit, I appreciate your insights into NIL and I’m sure that’s something you’ve thought a lot about and that you in your own way are associated with, but at the same time you’re associated with this women’s sports equity report that came out, becoming the viral sensation that you were, and of course there’s the lawsuit as well. So I’m curious what you see, if I were to give you the keys to college sports and ask in five years, what does Sedona want this all to look like, what would you tell me?

Definitely from an NIL standpoint, just figuring it out. It’s such a new world that everyone is just trying to get their hands around it and learn about it, so I think in the next five years, everybody should have an easier system for athletes to make money. They should know exactly how to match companies with certain athletes’ brands.

Another thing is having equality. Out of the top 10 athletes (on social media), seven or eight of them are women. That really just shows that women have such a large impact in sports, so I think them being able to profit off their names more than men who don’t have as big a reach, that’s going to really be something that I really want to see in the future.

And athletes just being able to come to college and just know that they can take care of their families if they need to, that they’re able to live this amazing life, they’re able to take this money and retire with it, they’re able to use it for their kids’ college if they’re not going pro, start their lives with it when they graduate. They don’t have to have the option of going pro or not. It’s an awesome opportunity.

Ahead of her upcoming performance on SNL this weekend, Saweetie has released her latest Pretty Bitch Music single, “Icy Chain.” While she’s been teasing the track, performing it both at 88rising’s Head In The Clouds festival and on her Icy Season Amazon special, it looks like she wanted to give fans an early holiday gift before playing it live on Saturday night.

Produced by Lil Aaron(!) and Rocco Did It Again and based on the Memphis trap sound popularized by the likes of Juicy J and the Three-6-Mafia, the energetic single finds Saweetie telling her listeners exactly what to do to secure themselves an Icy chain of their own: Twerk that ass. On the verses, Saweetie coolly flaunts her luxurious possessions — a crocodile Birkin, a mink, a Rolex, and a Prada bikini — while dismissing any potential detractors, from jilted ex-sponsors to pretentious animal rights protection groups.

Meanwhile, Saweetie fans were given no shortage of new material from the bougie Bay Area rapper this week, who also contributed to French Montana’s new album (reuniting with Doja Cat on “Handstand“) and the soundtrack to Halle Berry’s upcoming Netflix directorial debut Bruised. And last week, she dropped the full version of her single “Get It Girl” on the Insecure soundtrack after teasing it in a Beats By Dre ad earlier this month. It looks like it really is Icy Season — and Pretty Bitch Music is hopefully also right around the corner to cap it off.

Listen to “Icy Chain” above.

2021 has been kind to Wale and deservedly so. The Uproxx cover star dropped his seventh studio album, Folarin II, last month and even declared himself as “one of the greatest of all time.” Ego-stroking aside, the DMV icon has stayed firmly in the limelight, headlining Afropunk festival in Atlanta in September and then bringing out the elusive Q-Tip at Rolling Loud in New York to perform “Poke It Out.”

Now Wale, who has been very vocal about how much he cares about performing live, has announced his full Under A Blue Moon Tour. The tour gets going next January in Nashville and continues on through March.

Check out the full tour dates below and tickets are on sale now. Get them here.

01/12/2022 — Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works
01/13/2022 — Chattanooga, TN @ The Signal
01/15/2022 — Huntsville, AL @ Mars Music Hall
01/16/2022 — Birmingham, AL @ Iron City
01/17/2022 — Atlanta, GA @ The Eastern
01/18/2022 — Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz
01/20/2022 — Silver Spring, MD @ The Fillmore
01/21/2022 — Baltimore, MD @ Ram’s Head Live
01/23/2022 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore
01/24/2022 — New York, NY @ Webster Hall
01/25/2022 — Boston, MA @ House of Blues
01/28/2022 — Cincinnati, OH @ Bogart’s
01/29/2022 — Detroit, MI @ Majestic Theatre
01/30/2022 — Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room @ Old National
01/31/2022 — Chicago, IL @ House of Blues
02/02/2022 — Kansas City, MO @ Uptown Theater
02/03/2022 — St Louis, MO @ The Pageant
02/06/2022 — Denver, CO @ Ogden Theatre
02/08/2022 — Seattle, WA @ Showbox Market
02/10/2022 — Oakland, CA @ Fox Theatre
02/15/2022 — Los Angeles, CA @ The Novo
02/16/2022 — San Diego, CA @ Observatory North Park
02/17/2022 — Phoenix, AZ @ Van Buren
02/19/2022 — San Antonio, TX @ Aztec Theater
02/21/2022 — Dallas, TX @ HOB Dallas
02/24/2022 — New Orleans, LA @ The Fillmore
02/25/2022 — Mobile, AL @ Soul Kitchen
02/26/2022 — Jackson, MS @ Hal & Mal’s
03/01/2022 — Little Rock, AR @ Little Rock Hall
03/02/2022 — Memphis, TN @ Cannon Center

Folarin II is out now via MMG/Warner Records.

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

Ah, the delicious, creamy avocado. We love it, despite its fleeting ripeness and frustrating tendency to turn brown when you try to store it. From salads to guacamole to much-memed millennial avocado toast, the weird berry (that’s right—it’s a berry) with the signature green flesh is one of the more versatile fruits, but also one of the more fickle. Once an avocado is ready, you better cut it open within hours because it’s not going to last.

Once it’s cut, an avocado starts to oxidize, turning that green flesh a sickly brown color. It’s not harmful to eat, but it’s not particularly appetizing. The key to keeping the browning from happening is to keep the flesh from being exposed to oxygen.

Some people rub an unused avocado half with oil to keep oxidation at bay. Others swear by squeezing some lemon juice over it. Some say placing plastic wrap tightly over it with the pit still in it will keep it green.

But a YouTube video from Avocados from Mexico demonstrates a quick, easy, eco-friendly way to store half an avocado that doesn’t require anything but a container and some water.

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It almost seems too simple, but people swear it works. The avocado half won’t last forever, of course, but if you don’t eat an avocado half within three days, do you really deserve that avocado half? I don’t think so.

A few more fun facts about avocados: Avocados have more potassium than bananas, they are very high in fiber compared to other foods and they’re also high in heart-healthy fat, like olive oil. Also, did you know that you can’t grow a Hass avocado from a Hass avocado seed? Weird, right?

And if your mind is blown about the avocados-are-berries thing, I feel you. I won’t tell you that strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are not actually berries, but bananas, cucumbers and pumpkins are, because that would just be cruel. (It’s true, though. I’m sorry.)

Cheers! May your avocados be perfectly ripe, their pits small and their oxidation slow.

Before there are words, there is laughter. Babies make gigglefests look easy. They laugh at everything from traffic jams, to dogs and cats, to mommy and daddy tying their shoes. No punchline necessary. LOLs abound.

As sweet as it is, a mystery still remains. Exactly why do babies laugh?

Developmental psychologist Caspar Addyman aims to answer this question. And he takes his job very seriously, tirelessly conducting experiments to study human behavior. His subjects? Babies. His research? Laughter. That’s right. Someone spends all day listening to the innocent giggles of small children. Arguably the best job in the world, second to petting cats.

Addyman’s baby laughter studies have inspired some other innovative and creative projects, such as the Shake, Rattle, and Roll (play specifically made for babies to make them laugh) or Imogen Heap’s Happy Song, which she collaborated with Addyman on. And though his research was making headlines a year ago, it’s once again going viral. Because his findings are simple, heartwarming and profound.

Collecting parents’ observations of their baby’s laughter—ages ranging from newborn to 2.5 years old—Addyman would ask when the baby’s first laugh was, if mommy or daddy was funnier and if certain toys inspired more chuckles than another. Through his worldwide studies, Addyman gained these insights:

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Peekaboo is the ultimate funny.

To no parent’s surprise, peekaboo is a never-ending barrel of laughs. But what about it is so funny? One of the reasons, according to Addyman, is that babies have no concept of time. So each time mommy or daddy magically disappears, it comes as a shock. Then when the beloved parent comes back, the surprise is a riot. But the fun doesn’t stop there. As babies develop a sense that a mom or dad will come back, the game evolves into delightful anticipation. That’s why even 2-year-olds still find peekaboo amusing.

Tickling is the second contender.

Though this one has the bonus of physical stimulus, the most important factor is the social context. Which is why receiving a tickle from a stranger is terrifying, where a tickle from mommy is welcomed and hilarious. Addyman says that tickling also developed from an even older communication ritual: “Tickling has deep evolutionary roots that come from being a mammal. It’s partly related to grooming, a vital function that is also pleasurable.” Tickling, like grooming, is a one-on-one trust-building experience.

When it comes to laughter, the more the merrier.

When a cartoon played to a group of preschoolers, they laughed eight times more than when that same cartoon played in front of a single preschooler, alone. This implied that laughter is primarily a social tool of communication. “It’s a genuine signal that you send when you’re in a relaxed and comfortable situation,” Addyman says in his interview with TED. He noted that even the preschoolers who watched the cartoon alone would often look toward the researchers during the funny bits. Laughter gives us a sense of belonging.

Freud was wrong.

Babies do not instinctively find joy in another’s pain. Addyman’s studies showed that babies were more likely to laugh at themselves falling over, versus someone else. Schadenfreude, therefore, seems to be a concept we learn in adulthood to cope with the harsh realities of life, rather than something we’re born with.

Mommy is no less funny than Daddy.

Both mom and dad seemed to score equal amounts of funny points. However, parents also reported that their sons laughed close to 50 times a day, whereas their daughters seemed to only chuckle around 37 times. The divide, Addyman says, could be due to how the behavior is “reinforced by the parents … If you think your boy baby is laughing more, you may try to make them laugh more.”

The key ingredient to laughter: LOVE.

“Happiness is greatest when we’re with our loved ones,” Addyman says. Human connection is far more impactful than a puppet or a toy. Hence the power of peekaboo. More than anything, a baby is looking for pure social interaction and undivided attention from their adult protectors. Their laughter is a way of having a heartfelt conversation.

Addyman admits that in a grown-up world, laughter might not come as easily. But he says the first step is to do what babies do: just be in the moment. “Babies laugh more than us because they take the time to look around,” he says. Addyman thinks that a baby’s pure, (literally) unadulterated laughter might be an expression of “flow,” a term created by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi to label that joyful state where you’re so fully immersed in the present moment, you can’t help but enter bliss. Considering how effortlessly a baby can reach joy, it seems he’s onto something.

Plus his own studies are far from over. Next Addyman plans to explore how a baby’s laughter plays a role in their learning process. There’s still so much to learn, and laugh at.

By the way, you can watch Addyman’s inspiring TEDxBratislava Talk on laughter via YouTube. It’s great for all ages.

Watching a loved one die is difficult, confusing, terrifying and heartbreaking. They transform before our eyes, unrecognizably. In turn, our faces are no longer familiar to them. The entire experience can leave us feeling powerless to help.

Hospice workers provide an incredible service to humanity by making this process less painful. And they do it with great kindness and compassion.

Julie is a hospice nurse in California. In her five years doing this, she has helped a lot of patients maintain a quality life in their final weeks and months before having a peaceful death. She’s also educated a lot of families about what to expect during the transition, in an attempt to make it a little less daunting. According to Julie, that’s the best part of the job.

Julie decided to share her expertise on TikTok, where her insights could reach a wider audience.

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“I knew I had a lot of interesting information about death and dying that most people don’t know about. I want to normalize death by educating people about it. I went home to visit my family, and my tween nieces were on TikTok making dance videos. I later went on TikTok to see their dances. This gave me the idea of starting my own TikTok about death and dying,” she told The Sun.

The idea caught on quickly. Julie soon racked up more than 400,000 followers, with millions of views for multiple videos. Clearly she had some valuable knowledge.

In one of her videos, she explains how many of the death processes we find morbid, are actually quite normal. Changes in breathing, skin color, fevers … all normal. Messy, but normal. Even the “death rattle,” despite its scary name, is very natural, as the brain is no longer able to tell the throat to swallow saliva. “Terminal secretions,” she calls it.

@hospicenursejulie #hospicenursejulie #nurse #learnontiktok #ForzaHorizon5GO #nursesoftiktok ♬ original sound – 💕 Hospice nurse Julie 💕

Julie also discusses the “rallying” phenomenon, where a terminal person seems to make a swift recovery—even regaining an appetite and bouncing back to a personality—before ultimately passing within a few days, or sooner. She explains that, where no one knows exactly why this happens, she always informs her patients and families so they’re not caught off guard. I cannot imagine the anguish people go through who do not know this.

@hospicenursejulie #hospicenursejulie #nurse #learnontiktok #nursesoftiktok ♬ original sound – 💕 Hospice nurse Julie 💕

One person asked, “Does knowing all of this in depth make death less scary for you?” To which Julie simply replied “Yes–I’m not scared at all.”

Natural death, Julie says, is not uncomfortable. Because many people die from accidents or diseases, we tend to equate death with suffering, but that does not have to be the case. In fact, Julie shares about people seeing angels, even loved ones who have passed. Often they manage to say “I love you” right before death.

@hospicenursejulie Reply to @spymylittleye #greenscreen #hospicenursejulie #angel #LevisMusicProject #nurse #learnontikrok ♬ original sound – 💕 Hospice nurse Julie 💕

Hospice care is undervalued, at best. And at worst, it can be demonized, as many buy into the myth that hospice companies make money off of killing patients (another notion Julie politely debunks). This is what makes her channel truly special. Julie makes death—the ultimate unknown—a little less frightening with the power of education and empathy. It’s something she does on a day-to-day basis. But now we all can benefit.

You can check out even more of Julie’s videos on TikTok, under her handle @hospicenursejuile

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.

When Dijon first announced the release of his debut LP, Absolutely, it came alongside a performance video of a mysteriously untitled song. In the clip, Dijon is in an antique living room that’s been converted into a makeshift studio space, littered with instruments, samplers, mixing boards, speakers, and a stable of other musicians around the room. Dijon sings empathetically, furiously coursing through the space to show each element of the song coming together. He looks to be on the edge of becoming unhinged, but somehow in total control as he weaves with rhythmic spontaneity through it all, as if he’s feeling every inch of sound being played from a guitar (played by Mk. Gee’s Mike Gordon), drums, piano, bass, and a slide guitar.

At seven minutes long, the improvisational performance (of what was later revealed to be album opener “Big Mike’s”) is nothing like the brief cuts on Absolutely, many of which clock in at under two minutes. But it’s a vast open window into the process of how the album’s songs were created: Off the cuff, in the moment, with a number of collaborators, and nothing like we’d seen from the Los Angeles-based artist in the past.

Before he went solo, Dijon was part of the neo-R&B duo Abhi//Dijon that he formed with producer Abhi Raju while the pair were at the University of Maryland. The group’s wavy beats were more akin to the traditional sense of the British neo-soul movement. Acts like Quadron and Nao come to mind in their structure, but it was that very structure that Dijon needed to break free from artistically. Listening to those tunes from 2015 and 2016, there’s no way to predict that the singer on those quasi chill-hop grooves would unfurl into the man behind the songs of Absolutely.

Even his early solo releases — which included the excellent 2018 one-off track “Skin” and the How Do You Feel About Getting Married? EP in 2020 — don’t exhibit the freedom to lose control that defines Absolutely. Oftentimes, it feels like a sleeping lion was living inside of him and only now has it finally become unleashed. You hear it purr colorfully on “Big Mike’s,” but then it roars emphatically to a peak on “Many Times,” with Dijon’s same physically exerting delivery we see in that first video palpably coming through at different wavelengths throughout the album.

“I think this is the first time you can hear me trying to make music for everybody without it being a concession,” Dijon told NME. Which is a telling assertion and a statement worth pondering, just as much as a number of moments on the album. “Talk Down” opens with Gregory Coleman’s classic amen drum break as Dijon sings “Listening to Gillian Welch. Ooh, I can’t help myself / Look at me, so idle. That ain’t how you smile / Ooh, I like it when you, talk down, turn the radio down.” The track’s repetitive nature is enveloping, but it rings true to the intent of making music based on feel and it’s refreshing.

“Talk Down” and “Many Times” combine for less than five total minutes of music, a pattern that’s common on the album. The vocally-masterful display on “Did You See It?” runs parallel to a slide guitar, handsome keys, and clocks in at less than 75 seconds. But the short length of these tracks makes it seem like these were golden takes that just couldn’t be replicated and had to live that way.

Dijon also told NME that the resulting recordings “came from removing myself from isolation and being willing to ask for help for the first time.” And the spirit of collaboration is strong on Absolutely, with Mk. Gee’s Mike Gordon acting as nothing short of his right-hand man. His guitar is an essential piece to the album and manages to hold Dijon up at both solemn moments like “Rodeo Clown,” and triumphant ones like “Big Mike’s.” On “Noah’s Highlight Reel,” Noah Le Gros delivers a countryside yarn backed by Gordon, with Dijon closing the loop on the experimental vocals delivered by his friend from Wyoming. Guitar effects sound like woodwinds that fade out before “The Dress” mixes in and Dijon smoothly morphs into a yacht rock crooner that might appear on a Drake album. It’s a dynamic and unpredictable display of an artist just letting go.

Absolutely’s falling action comes across a bit disjointed, with the aptly-titled “End Of The Record” and “Credits!” closing it out. But it’s best when perceived as the bones of what you’ve just heard for the past half hour; like walking through a museum’s exhibit and then venturing into smaller rooms to see the charcoal study sketches that inspired the artist’s masterwork on canvas. But in this case, the studies often became the masterworks. What we hear on Absolutely were captured moments in time. And the promise of more on the horizon is in knowing that Dijon is an artist who is now “willing to ask for help” and has ultimately morphed into a newly-spirited creative being. The best might very well be yet to come.

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

The streaming services can’t help themselves. Everyone wants to make the next Game of Thrones, and that includes HBO, which is bringing the House of the Dragon prequel series to air in 2022. Depending on how you felt about that eighth season, you may or may not be into the idea of another GoT, but it will likely materialize, sooner or later. Perhaps we won’t witness that successor as a weekly “event” series (since binging is here to stay), but the TV powers that will keep trying their damndest. Netflix has given the feat a shot a few times already, first with puppets in The Dark Crystal, a stunning show that proved too expensive and labor-intensive to continue producing. Then came The Witcher, which already existed as a franchise before the first Netflix season and could eventually eclipse Thrones in popularity and longevity, along with the speed at which prequels and movies keep spinning into action.

Now here’s this: The Wheel Of Time stars Rosamund Pike in a sweeping, complex adaptation of Robert Jordan’s fantasy book series. Is it Thronesy enough? The show won’t match that title for everyone, but it might for you.

Actually, Amazon Prime currently boasts two contenders for “must-see epic fantasy series” on the way. One of them, Lord of the Rings, is due in fall 2022, but consider this: founder Jeff Bezos (who, yes, is not the most stellar human being, but many billionaires are not) reportedly straight-up declared that he wanted to knock everyone’s socks off with a new Thrones. The first candidate arrives this week, and The Wheel Of Time is every bit the sprawling story that successful fantasy epics should be made of. There’s even a “you know nothing” dropped into Episode 3 to make you think of Jon Snow’s chronic grumpy face. Yet there’s this consideration, too: The Wheel Of Time desperately wants to conjure up Westeros, and it cannot hide that intent.

Now, let’s talk about why — if you are looking for your new Thrones — you should give this series a whirl, while being a little more chill than the show’s own dreams.

– The source material already exists and will last for eons: If you aren’t yet familiar with the story, then you can at least rest assured that there’s no George R.R. Martin-type scenario where the source material’s author keeps promising to finish another book, and then the show decides to stop waiting and blows past author intent in a way that many found to be (to put this kindly) unsatisfying. That sort of thing hurts when you’re so invested and loved a show so much, and then it careens into an ash-filled city and some unassuming fellow in the corner wins the game, despite all the maneuvering. Opening yourself up to yet a similar epic saga takes some trust. I get it.

Here, Robert Jordan’s popular fantasy book series includes over a dozen novels with hundreds of characters, and fans of these characters have wanted to see the story’s settings spring to life from the printed page for decades (the first book published in 1990). That’s enough for Amazon to have already greenlit a second season, and it’s likely that the existing fanbase should keep this thing afloat for the show to lay extensive groundwork and move past the “worldbuilding” stage of the initial episodes. There’s an abundance of content potential, which showrunner Rafe Judkins would like to mine for eight seasons (*cough* like Thrones).

– The epic nature of the story is undeniable: Anything that I write here would not adequately speak to the sheer volume of what this show’s sorting out, and I’ve seen six episodes that barely scratch the story’s surface. This first season follows Rosamund Pike’s quest as Moiraine, a member of the Aes Sedai, a group of ladies (and only ladies) who possess immense magical powers. This is a story where reincarnation is the sh*t — hence The Wheel Of Time title, which isn’t exactly a “time is a flat circle” thing — and that includes Moiraine’s assertion that the Dragon Reborn, who will be the key to humanity’s fate is among a group of young adults. That person, whoever it might be, has quite a job ahead of them against evil forces. There are battles and showdowns and a quest, and yes, all epic and rendered against beautifully vast landscapes with plenty of adult themes and graphic violence to shake your home theater system.

– Rosamund Pike: That’s a big enough point here to stand on its own. She’s the biggest name, and granted, she’s not playing a sociopath here. Yes, that’s unfortunate because “deranged” is what she does best, but it’s nice to see her stretch her wings. She’s much more restrained than usual in this role, but it’s swell to have her around as an anchoring presence amid a cast of largely unknowns (shoutout to Daniel Henney, who holds down the Lan Mandragora role, which bears some passing similarities to Jorah Mormont). I do, however, wonder why producers somehow did not slide Sean Bean into this show. That would make for some nice crossover potential.

– It’s all about finding your new Thrones: Sometimes it’s easy to forget, especially when a show was such a cultural juggernaut, that the way Thrones hit was highly specific to individual taste, and different aspects of the show landed differently with different people. What I’m saying is this: Thrones managed to appeal for a myriad of reasons, including the colorful characters, morphing motives, magical storylines, the tantalizing (although sometimes disappointing) reveal of villains, the maneuverings of power, and the game itself, and so on. That leads me to believe that the search for the next Game of Thrones is a search in vain. This should be more about viewers’ search for their own next Thrones. And for a decent amount of people, The Wheel Of Time will fit that bill. Some people will still prefer The Witcher or wait for Lord of the Rings or some other streaming show to come in the future.

– Don’t overthink it, man: It’s easy to get tripped up during the first few The Wheel Of Time episodes while attempting to make sense of dozens of characters. And it’s easy to not care too much about the out-of-the-gate battle scenes without having established emotional stakes in these characters, but the tapestry does begin to fall into place. So, if you’re looking for another Thrones, keeping an open mind (even if you haven’t read a show’s source material, and there’s a huge time investment if you actually want to read Jordan’s books now) is key. You’ll hopefully find what you’re looking for, but first, you’ll have to give it a shot.

Amazon Prime’s ‘The Wheel Of Time’ debuts on Friday, Nov. 19.