The best new hip-hop this week includes albums, videos, and songs from Megan Thee Stallion, Migos, Polo G, and more.

Friday saw the releases of Megan Thee Stallion’s “Thot Sh*t,” IDK’s “Peloton,” Doja Cat’s “Need To Know,” Polo G’s “No Return,” Migos’s “Modern Day,” Guapdad 4000’s “How Many (Remix),” and Gucci Mane and Pooh Shiesty’s “Like 34 & 8” along with the releases listed below.

Here is the best of hip-hop this week ending March 19, 2021.

Albums/EPs/Mixtapes

Bobby Sessions — Manifest

Bobby’s debut album comes after the buzz-building RVLTN mixtapes, a Grammy win (for co-writing on Megan Thee Stallion’s “Savage” remix with Beyonce), and a number of high-profile song placements including one on the Coming 2 America soundtrack. It’s well worth the wait

Guapdad 4000 — 1176 (Deluxe Edition)

Adding six new tracks to his autobiographical, Illmind-produced album, in cluding the Rick Ross-featuring remix to “How Many,” Guapdad gets back to the lively party jams that have made him a favorite among those in the know.

Larry June — Orange Print

The title for Orange Print calls back to one of June’s breakout EPs, 2016’s Orange Season with Cookin Soul, but the rhymes are all of-and-in-the-moment luxury lifestyle raps as Larry continues his run of authentic, consistent, down-to-earth flexes.

Lil Gotit — Top Chef Gotit

Executive produced by Gunna, Lil Gotit’s newest project puts his slippery flow on full display, bringing along Atlanta favorites like Young Thug, Yak Gotti, and Gotit’s brother Lil Keed for the ride.

Kidd Kenn — Problem Child [EP]

18-year-old upstart Kidd Kenn drops his unabashed new EP just in time to make it a Pride Month anthem as the breakthrough artists continues to rack up attention and accolades, including from fellow queer icon Lil Nas X.

Migos — Culture III

The long-awaited group return is 18 tracks of vintage Migos flows sprinkled with enervating guest appearances from longtime collaborators like Cardi B and Drake.

Pi’erre Bourne — The Life Of Pi’erre 5

The producer contines his foray into solo artistry, with Lil Uzi Vert and Playboi Carti providing support via energetic features.

Polo G — Hall Of Fame

Chicago’s latest rising star spent two albums exorcising his demons, and now he’s enjoying the fruits of his labor. Polo stretches his creative muscles over 18 tracks that range from thumping drill to melodic trap ballads.

Skyzoo — All The Brilliant Things

It is long past the time to give Brooklyn native Skyzoo his flowers as one of the most consistent, creative, and compelling rappers to ever pick up a microphone. Here’s your chance to join the bandwagon.

Singles/Videos

DreamDoll — “Tryouts”

DreamDoll has long been on the threshold of superstardom and makes a bid for the coveted club crossover here.

Fredo Bang — “Trust Issues (Remix)” Feat. NLE Choppa

Two of the South’s most promising rising stars connect on a ruminative trap anthem.

French Montana — “FWMGAB”

Interpolating another New York anthem, Peter Gunz and Lord Tariq’s “Uptown,” French Montana puts on for their shared borough with a triumphant banger.

Larry June — “Still Cookin”

So laid-back, he’s practically parallel to the earth, Larry June defines cool on this swaggering knocker.

Nana — “Running”

Not a traditional music video, per se, but Nana is a South LA artist who deserves a lot more attention after releasing his masterful album Save Yourself late last year.

Rob Stone — “I Love It” Feat. Rubi Rose

Rubi Rose provides a colorful assist to the San Diego rapper’s latest club-rocking single, along with adding some eye candy to its video.

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

Netflix Geeked Week has given us plenty of new shows to be excited about, but some of us have been particularly excited for Friday’s Summer Games Fest crossover. That event came and gone, and there are plenty of new titles on the way based on video game IP.

Of course, with so many new shows coming at us left and right, it was easy to miss out on a title or two. So we’ve got you covered with a list of shows Netflix is making based on video games and what to expect on the streaming service in the months ahead.

The Witcher Season 2

The Witcher came out to huge success as a Netflix TV show. Obviously the game series is beloved by fans all over the world and the TV show only made that love increase for many newcomers to the franchise. With so many fans it became a no brainer to create a second season for the show. We can’t wait to see what they have in store for us next!

Resident Evil

A live action Resident Evil is on the way as well. While that by itself is pretty cool, we’re having a hard time not being excited by the casting choice of Lance Reddick as Albert Wesker. The Wesker role is incredibly important to any kind of Resident Evil property and Reddick seems like the perfect casting choice for this role. If anyone is going to do the character justice it’s him.

Castlevania

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen a Castlevania show, but this is a new spin off series not related to the show that just had a finale earlier this year. They didn’t give us too much info, but we do know it’s set during the French Revolution. Guess we’ll just have to wait for more details!

Far Cry: Blood Dragon

Far Cry: Blood Dragon was one of the weirder Far Cry games. Set in a neon art style, Blood Dragon had a comedic tone to it in both writing and structure. So it was a little surprising to see that was the Far Cry game that they’re making an animated TV show about. It certainly looks interesting and has a bit of a comic book feel to it, so we’re looking forward to more details about how this one will work.

Cuphead

Cuphead was made to be a cartoon and that’s exactly what we’re getting. A Cuphead cartoon makes too much sense and it has Wayne Brady has the skeevy and smooth talking King Dice. What’s not to love here?

Splinter Cell

It’s been a long time since we heard anything from Splinter Cell, with the last game coming out in 2013, but an animated TV show for the series appears to be on the way. This is cool news for Splinter Cell fans, but it’s definitely going to fuel speculation about when we might get another game. Maybe if the TV show does well a new title is on the way as well?

Arcane (League of Legends)

For a long time there was no bigger game out there than League of Legends. While the popularity of the series may not be what it once was, the characters from the franchise are still beloved. So it’s certainly cool to see a show set in the universe, which gives us an opportunity to further explore the lore of the LoL world.

Most of what we saw on Friday was just teasers, but the sheer number of shows on the way means there’s plenty for gaming fans to get excited about in the coming months. It wasn’t long ago that even getting an animated short about a game was considered a big accomplishment, but now gaming has become a logical resource for animated TV, movies and even live-action programs in the streaming universe. Netflix seems determined to make it the go-to streaming platform for gamers, and this slew of titles certainly looks to be a strong start.

The theatrical version of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s In The Heights is finally in theaters and streaming on HBO Max, which means fans can now spot all the differences between the stage production and what Anthony Ramos brings to the screen. But eagle-eyed viewers can also spot a sly reference to an extremely popular Miranda production that came along later: Hamilton.

In an interview with The Wrap, director Jon M. Chu described how he worked with Miranda to very subtly tie the two New York-based musicals together with a scene involving Jimmy Smits. His character Kevin Rosario calls the Stanford admissions office for his daughter, hoping to pay her tuition in time. When he’s put on hold, a very familiar song from the Hamilton soundtrack plays. Fans of the musical will recognize “You’ll Be Back” almost immediately, even without Jonathan Groff’s King George singing the lyrics.

As Chu detailed to The Wrap, the inclusion was actually Miranda’s idea as the two worked together to bring the play to life on the silver screen.

“That was indeed a Lin idea, and we wanted to make it a Muzak version,” Chu told TheWrap. “It’s all part of the ‘Lin-ematic Universe.”

It’s a fun little easter egg for sure, and one that doesn’t distract from the film itself while making Hamilton superfans feel like they’re in on the fun. It’s yet another connection between the two projects, though Miranda and Ramos are much more recognizable connecting ties in the grand scheme of things. There’s actually another minor appearance from a Hamilton alum in the film, though you’ll have to see it for yourself in theaters or on HBO Max to catch that added connection, too.

[via The Wrap]

If you live for sneakers, skateboarding, Supreme drops, and all things hip-hop, you have late ‘80s and early ‘90s New York street culture to thank for that. And you’re probably going to love All The Streets Are Silent, a feature-length documentary debut from Jeremy Elkin that explores this still influential period of American youth culture. For the documentary, Elkin reached out to the kids (and Kids) who grew up in the scene — who better to document that golden age of style and music than the people who lived it?

Premiering today at New York’s Tribeca Film Festival as a documentary select, “All The Streets Are Silent” takes you on a deep dive into the streets of New York City, back to the days when skate culture and hip-hop were still rebellious expressions of street youth and not global commodities with rabid fan bases dominated by hype.

The film, which is narrated by Zoo York cofounder and Uproxx Style editor Eli Morgan Gesner uses archival footage and covers notable figures and locales of the era, including Harold Hunter, Club Mars, Supreme, and DJ Stretch Armstrong. The stars of the counterculture are in full effect but at its heart, All The Streets Are Silent is an examination of being a kid in New York City during a special time in pop culture. With guests like Rosario Dawson, Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, DJ Clark Kent, the late Keith Hufnagel, and Yuki Watanabe, “All The Streets Are Silent” offers an exploration of race, society, fashion, and street culture in a culturally significant era in New York City history wrapped in a Paris is Burning meets Kids aesthetic that oozes cool.

Elkin took this project seriously, in addition to linking up with Gesner, he also tapped the legendary Large Professor, the producer that brought us Tribe Called Quest’s “Keep it Rollin” to do the soundtrack. It doesn’t get more vintage New York than that. Check out the trailer for All The Streets Are Silent above and stream it on-demand until June 23rd for $15 here.

Sherlock Holmes is the greatest detective in history. Anyone that’s read the books, watched the movies, or seen one of the TV shows knows the genius of the fictional British detective. There’s no mystery he can’t solve, but one thing we don’t see enough of in Holmes fiction is an exploration of his emotions as a character beyond a witty detective. The trailer for Sherlock Holmes Chapter One appears to do exactly that.

It shows a young Holmes down on himself trying to just get through the day. He has a hard time getting out of bed, taking a step forward, and then, we’re thrown into some of the possible action we’ll get to see in the game. Towards the end of the trailer, a despondent Sherlock Holmes at his knees in front of the grave of Violet Holmes. That is the mystery he must solve this go around.

This version of Holmes appears to be young, perhaps even one that hasn’t gotten into detective works yet. It’s a Holmes game that fans are likely going to love, and since we see a grave, we can only imagine a murder mystery is involved. Let’s all grab our pipes and our detective caps, because we have a mystery to solve.

Honestly, it’s surprising that we don’t get more games about Sherlock Holmes. With the popularity of the detective, he’s the perfect protagonist for mystery-style games. There are also so many different game styles developers can pick from. Holmes can be a physical brawler, he can be puzzle solving, or he could just be a virtual novel. The variety of choices at disposal when it comes to him are great, and hopefully, Sherlock Holmes Chapter One is an entry point into a more broad Holmes gaming universe.

Stephen A Smith has never been shy about the fact that he doesn’t follow some sports as closely as others. Sure, Smith is right in his wheelhouse talking about the NBA or the NFL, and he loves to break down boxing matches, but there are plenty of sports out there, and despite the fact that it seems like he’s away for 27 hours every day, Smith’s focus isn’t always on a handful of them.

An example: Smith isn’t exactly on top of all the goings on in the world of soccer, but with ESPN broadcasting this summer’s European Championship, he’s diving in head first. In a segment on his ESPN+ show Stephen A’s World, Smith expressed that he is ready to pick a side for Euro 2020, so long as they fit five criteria:

Those criteria were, in order: 1. Must have star power, 2. Rabid fan base, 3. Past success is not a must, 4. No ugly uniforms!, 5. Old school coach. He goes into all of them a bit in the video, and then, he calls upon ESPN soccer analyst Taylor Twellman to help walk him through things. The full segment with Twellman starts at the 13:09 mark right here, but for those of you who do not have ESPN+, Twellman walks him through a trio of teams — France, Belgium, and England — before Smith ultimately decided on the French.

“I already broke down Belgium, I mean, you broke down Belgium and I told you why I didn’t want them,” Smith said. “You just told me England reminds me of the Cowboys, I damn sure ain’t rooting for them. Which leaves me with no other choice but France. I’ma have to roll with France, Taylor. I’ma have to run with France.”

Twellman then explained that France is “100 percent” going to win Euros and he would be “shocked” if they do not win the whole thing, which, anything can happen in a knockout tournament but it is extremely possible he’s correct. Anyway, Stephen A, if you are reading this and are open to picking someone else, please consider my beloved Italians, which trounced Turkey, 3-0, in the opener of Euro 2020 on Friday.

The ShackBurger is one of the best cheeseburgers in the fast-food game. It’s very simple: toasted bun, smash patty, American cheese, lettuce, tomato, sauce. That’s it. Of course, those ingredients and how they’re prepared are what make the burger special. And meat and cheese are the centerpieces among those ingredients. Will this dish hold up without the beef and dairy?

Today, we’re going to see if we can make our own ShackBurger, but with vegan ingredients. And since we’re clearly being healthy, we get to double up! Maybe in the process, we’ll build the vegan burger Shake Shack has always longed to make. Yes, we know that Shake Shack serves the ‘Shroom Burger, but that’s just vegetarian. We want to go all the way and see if this works 100 percent animal-free.

To accomplish our vegan feat, we’re using Beyond Meat’s new Beyond Burgers (which have been reformatted to be juicier and meatier). We’re also using a vegan cheddar that’s specifically designed for melting on top of cheeseburgers. In fact, it almost melted too well. (We’ll get to that.)

Okay, let’s make a vegan double ShackBurger!

Vegan Shack Burger

Ingredients:

• 2 1/4-lb. Beyond Meat Beyond Burger patty
• 2 slices vegan cheddar
• 1 leaf butter lettuce
• 2 slices tomato
• 1/2 cup vegan mayo
• 1 heaping tablespoon ketchup
• 1 heaping tablespoon yellow mustard
• Pinch of onion powder
• Pinch of paprika
• Small pinch of cayenne pepper
• Dill pickle juice
• Olive oil
• Salt

This is pretty straightforward. I’m using Beyond Meat, obviously, Simply V Burger Slices, and Hellman’s Vegan Mayo to supplement any animal-based foods. That mayo from Hellman’s is indistinguishable from the egg-based version, and I say that as someone who likes mayo.

I forgot that ShackBurgers use Roma tomatoes. So, I got the wrong ones. Sorry.

As for the Shack Sauce, I used the copycat recipe from Binging with Babish and Alvin Cailin. It feels right and tasted pretty spot on.

Other than that, we’re just making good ol’ burgers on the stovetop.

What You’ll Need:

• Skillet w/ lid
• Heavy spatula
• Cutting board
• Kitchen knife
• Small mixing bowl
• Spoon
• White paper

Method:

• Prep your veg first by picking a nice lettuce leaf and washing it, slice the tomato, and ready two slices of cheese.
• Next, make the Shack Sauce by combining the mayo, ketchup, mustard, onion powder, paprika, cayenne, and pickle brine. Stir with a spoon until fully emulsified.
• Add a very thin layer of olive oil to a skillet on medium-high heat. As soon as it’s heated, place the bun, cut side down, in the pan to toast.
• Once toasted, set the bun aside.
• Use the paper the Beyond Burger comes in to lay the burger patty in the hot skillet. Hit the patty with a pinch of salt. Use the spatula to gently smash the burger patty a bit (maybe make it half as thin as it was). It’ll bounce back a little as you “smash.”
• Once the patty starts taking on a Maillard sear around the edges, use the spatula to flip the burger patty.
• Place a slice of vegan cheddar over the patty, lower the heat all the way to its lowest setting, and place a lid over the skillet.
• About a minute later, remove the lid from the skillet. The cheese should be melted and gooey and the burger will be cooked through. (Note: My cheese melted very quickly — think 30 seconds — and got very gooey. So know your vegan cheese’s melting point).
• Stack and place the burger on the bottom bun. Top with two slices of tomato and the lettuce leaf.
• Sauce the top bun and place it on top of the burger and wrap it in white paper to serve.

Bottom Line:

Wrapping this up in paper really helped save my hands from a gooey, burgery mess. It also helped hold in all the burger and cheesy goodness.

Overall, this was damn close. The meat didn’t quite “smash” as much as I wanted, or as much as the loose “meat” Beyond Meat does. Still, this was clearly meatier and juicier — little pools of beet-red juice came to the surface of the patty during the cook.

The sauce was spot on and the lettuce and tomato were a nice, simple accompaniment. The lettuce was fresh and soft. The tomato was bright and refreshing.

This was simple, delicious, and definitely a vegan burger I’m going to make again. The meatier Beyond Meat was really hard to ignore as a damn close substitute to the real thing. This was 100 percent meaty from the first bite to last. And the gooey cheese and burger juices started to mingle in the white paper near the end, creating an almost glaze or reduced sauce that helped further flavor the last few bites of the burger. A big win and a perfect weekend project for a one-or-two-day-per-week vegan!

E3 2021 is going to be one of the weirdest E3’s ever. After canceling the event in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic, they’re back in 2021 with a virtual event. While this may be new and different, being more of a virtual event may be what E3 looks like in the future once things settle back into normalcy.

After all, it allows developers to put together their presentations in video formats instead of trying to cram everything into a keynote speech in a packed theater. We’ll have to wait and see what that means for the future, but right now we know it will mean a much more remote-focused expo than in recent years. And one of the most telling indications that this year isn’t going to be the same as normal is that E3 even has a trailer for its own event.

Ordinarily, E3 just happens and they let word of mouth dictate everything but perhaps this trailer is in response to the direct competition they’re facing from Summer Game Fest this time around. The trailer itself is about what we would expect from an event that’s, well, mostly about watching trailers. It shows some of their partners for the event, a few major video game titles, and some notable names.

And while it does create a little bit of excitement about what’s coming, there are no real teasers as to what kinds of games we’re going to see at this year’s E3. All of that will have to wait for, presumably, the real trailers we’ll see this weekend.

The Los Angeles Clippers frontcourt just got a little more thin. The team announced that Serge Ibaka, who has been dealing with back issues for lengthy spells of this season, required surgery that will end his postseason. While these sorts of procedures on someone’s back can be tricky, the team did say that Ibaka is expected to make a full recovery.

Ibaka came to the Clippers this offseason on a two-year deal that includes a player option for the 2021-22 campaign. He was a productive member of the team’s rotation, starting 39 of the 41 games in which he appeared and averaging 11.1 points, 6.7 rebounds, and 1.1 blocks in 23.3 minutes per game.

But back in March, Ibaka hurt his back, an injury that lingered throughout the remainder of the season. The team had hoped he’d be able to contribute during the playoffs, but after playing in the team’s final two regular season tilts and first two postseason contests, playing through the injury became untenable, and Ibaka was shut down. He kept getting updated on a game-to-game basis, with the team formally shutting him down on Friday.

The Clippers do still have options in the frontcourt, with Ivica Zubac and DeMarcus Cousins the headliners in their non-small ball lineups, but losing Ibaka for the remainder of the playoffs is a gigantic blow for a team that is currently in a 2-0 hole to the Utah Jazz in the conference semifinals.

In the later stages of life in quarantine, I found myself unconsciously doing my best to optimize my life. This happened in all kinds of ways, and none of them really got me anywhere. I tried in vain to pare down things in my Netflix queue, for example, until I was mostly left with a few dozen multi-season hour-long dramas and documentaries I couldn’t leave on in the background while I cleaned or cooked.

I made a feeble attempt to finally read some of the books with too-stiff bindings I had on neglected shelves, dove into learning a language to use traveling overseas when all this is over (merci, chouette verte), and finally used up all those toiletries collected in drawers from work trips. Nothing ever quite felt finished, though, which left me with an unsatisfied feeling that hasn’t really gone away. By the winter months in Boston, I found myself trying to best optimize trips from one room in my apartment to another, as if there wasn’t time to just go back and walk 10 feet to the thing I forgot in the bedroom the first time.

There’s something to be said for efficiency, sure, but even through all of that I wouldn’t really say I got very much done. All that optimizing felt like preparation for something that never really came, not that the preparing ever felt like progress in the first place. For all the time spent in relative isolation, on the other side of two jabs of Pfizer and a return of warmer months and I honestly can’t say much felt accomplished in the long year or so that came before. That includes with video games, a thing I get paid to write about and found myself struggling to enjoy for nearly all of 2020 and beyond.

While games like Animal Crossing were soothing escapes from the reality of lockdown for millions, like many of the games I’ve written about, my time playing them ended almost immediately after the post went live. It’s not the games were bad, but that they were far from the comforting time-wasters many found them to be. And while my backlog of games to play and write about only grew, so too did the dread of trying to get through those titles and have something worthwhile to say about them. Unless they were about death, I probably didn’t get very far into them.

And then there’s Outriders, a game that is very much not my typical play and has very much helped me undo many of the bad habits I picked up over the last year. I’ve played a lot of games throughout the pandemic, but there hasn’t been one that’s quite grabbed me the way Outriders has in recent weeks. And I think part of it is because the game lets me lean into my worst pandemic instincts in a way that’s ultimately as harmless as it is disposable. Which is, you know, a feature of playing video games in the first place.

Loot shooters are all about optimizing, either in your builds or finding the best guns and mods tailored to your gameplay and using them as best you can. It’s the digital version of what I’ve spent my days off doing, but somehow, Outriders makes it feel less like work and more like the escape gaming is supposed to be for so many. After a bit of contemplation about which class to pick, I leapt at the Trickster, stumbled into one of the better solo builds out there, and started working my way through the game’s plot and building up my world tier.

One of the interesting feats the game manages is not being too depressing despite its storyline. Set after the complete collapse of Earth and the death of untold billions of humans, the last refugees of Earth are put in cryosleep and travel to an apparently habitable planet that is far from what it seems. There’s a lot of death, a dwindling human population pitted against itself due to tragic circumstances, and of course, space aliens. Or maybe humans are the aliens, come to think of it.

The lore the game builds amid all of that, however, is really interesting and well-planned. Sidequests aren’t necessarily essential but offer more chances to build out the story, eschewing simple fetch quests to introduce new characters and creatures in a way that actually scales well when playing with others or at a higher difficulty level. Playing through the surprisingly substantial main story, simply put, was a joy.

That joy has come with some considerable issues, though none that completely broke the experience on an Xbox Series X. I managed to avoid the glitch that robbed you of all your armor and left you naked, for example. And server and connectivity issues made linking up with a friend to play something of an obstacle at the beginning of sessions. The game is best played with friends, though, and even dropping into strangers’ games to finish a mission and get some gear felt extremely productive when it all worked like it should.

But as I got through the game, maxed out my level, and started tweaking the way loot shooters tend to make you tweak, I realized I had stopped worrying about all of the other things I wasn’t doing while working on the task at hand. While Outriders had a launch that disappointed many and is still drawing frustration online, those bumps in its first few months have been far from deal-breakers for me. In fact, I kept coming back to sink more time into its world knowing that it may all be incredibly temporary. Fixing a game is hard, and there’s no guarantee that people playing games that initially disappoint
will ever see a title’s potential realized. But that equation never really needed to be computed for me here, another thing that rarely happens with games these days.

I’m in the grinding phase of Outriders now. The main story is done, I’m replaying side quests to farm materials to incrementally upgrade my gear and hopefully find legendary drops to tweak my abilities. After all this time, I’m honestly not even sure if I’m very good at the game. And there are still bugs and glitches to deal with and no real long-term content roadmap in place.

But I really hope there’s more in store for a universe that still feels full of potential. So many titles these days feel half-baked on launch day, but the story and gameplay of Outriders makes me optimistic there’s more to work with here. It could have been any loot shooter that did it for me but after finally finding a game that helped me put my brain back to (mostly) normal again, I wouldn’t mind a few more new things to do on Enoch.