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Streaming has rapidly become the dominant way many people consume music over the course of the past half-decade but one of the most storied catalogs in all of hip-hop has been absent from DSPs as a result of a decades-long copyright battle. However, that may be changing soon as a result of the recent sale of Tommy Boy Music to music rights company Reservoir for $100 million, which prompted the question of what would happen to the music of De La Soul. Variety reports that Reservoir has already reached out to the iconic rap trio to “bring the catalog and the music back to the fans.”

The status of De La Soul’s catalog on DSPs has been uncertain since 2019, when Questlove led a call to boycott Tommy Boy’s proposed streaming plan over the unfavorable splits the band would have received. After Jay-Z and Tidal made the decision not to host the catalog, Tommy Boy’s streaming plan fell through, once again leaving the future of the catalog in limbo. To date, the only two De La albums available to stream are 2004’s The Grind Date, released under Sanctuary Records, and their crowdfunded 2016 album And The Anonymous Nobody. That leaves six albums, including their groundbreaking debut 3 Feet High And Rising, out of rotation.

For younger fans who might not know the impact the band has had on rap culture, this is kind of a travesty. However, as a testament to De La’s profound importance to the pop culture landscape — and a possible introduction to them for those younger fans — the band was recently featured in an episode of Teen Titans Go! on Cartoon Network, using their musical powers to defeat an animated monster octopus. Maybe one day soon, those Teen Titans fans will be able to check out “Me Myself & I” and “Stakes Is High” on Spotify.

With The Flash solo movie well into production, and Michael Keaton locked in to reprise his role as Batman after 30 years, director Andy Muschietti is finally teasing a look at what Keaton’s return will look like. Muschietti shared a blood-stained photo of the Batsuit on Instagram, and judging by the replies, fans are loving that The Flash movie is clearly sticking close to a previous design from the Tim Burton films.

While news of Keaton’s potential return broke back last year, the actor’s involvement was never set in stone until very recently. Just weeks before The Flash began filming in London, Keaton got candid in an interview and revealed that he might pass on coming back as Batman if the COVID rates didn’t improve. Via Deadline:

“I keep my eye more on the Covid situation in the UK than anything. That will determine everything, and so that’s why I’m living outside the city here on 17 acres, staying away from everybody, because the Covid thing has got me really concerned. So, that’s my first thing about all projects. I look at it and go, is this thing going to kill me, literally? And you know, if it doesn’t, then we talk.”

Whatever moves were made to address Keaton’s justified concerns worked because, less than a month later, he officially signed on to The Flash. However, he may not be the only Dark Knight on set. Ben Affleck’s Batman will reportedly have a presence in the Ezra Miller film, which will also see the debut of the DCEU’s Supergirl, played by The Young and the Restless actress Sarah Calle.

(Via Andy Muschietti on Instagram)

When a musician gets interviewed, they are usually asked about their new or upcoming projects, maybe also about some of their personal interests and other goings-on. That’s typically the case when it’s a professional journalist asking the questions, but in a new interview, Ed Sheeran faced different types of questions courtesy of some curious kids.

In a BBC Radio 1 segment called “Kids Ask Difficult Questions,” Sheeran faced queries from some filter-less children. A lot of the questions were actually innocuous, but the one that seemed to have Sheeran the most taken aback was, “How much money do you have?” After giving a laugh and an uncomfortable “uhh,” Sheeran explained his wealth (without getting into specifics):

“I’ve been very fortunate to be able to do what I love as a job for a long time. I’ve done alright and I would say I have… more than I would ever need, I think. I like doing a lot of stuff for charities, keeping it local. Yeah, I feel like that’s where to put the energy. That’s kind of a long-winded answer, but I didn’t want to just come out… you can Google it and it’s, like, not…”

Sheeran was then asked if figures available online are close to being accurate and he responded, “Well, the thing is, I think people think when they see that amount, they go, ‘Oh, he’s got that in the bank.’ And I feel like no one in the world… Jeff Bezos hasn’t got that in the bank at that one time. Jeff Bezos probably has a very, very impressive bank, but I feel like, you know, it’s all tied up in… stuff.

In 2020, by the way, Sheeran’s net worth was estimated to be £200 million, or about $280 million.

That wasn’t the only question Sheeran answered. For example, he was asked about his occasional acting, and he revealed that his appearance in the movie Yesterday only happened because Coldplay’s Chris Martin and Harry Styles both passed on the role.

The video is an entertaining watch, so check it out above.

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

Chocolate bars vary wildly — from the plastic-y mess that is a Hersey’s to a refined, 70% dark cacao bar you have to pay $12 for at specialty shops. Somewhere along that spectrum is a bar that’s readily available on grocery store shelves but also takes the craft of chocolate-making very seriously. It’s easily recognizable and competitive with the bespoke bars suddenly crowding the marketplace. It’s called Lindt Excellence.

Lindt started off back in the mid-1800s as a small Swiss chocolatier in Zürich. It goes without saying that getting cocoa back then was a dire situation involving Indigenous colonial genocide and slavery. In fact, child labor and slavery are still rife in the cocoa trade (along with deeply ingrained colonialism). But Lindt and other major companies are aware of these practices and are working towards a more sustainable and equitable world — sourcing from farmers directly and creating a rigorous “supplier code of conduct,” among other actions. Lindt is also one of the few companies that control their own supply chains, monitored by a third party for transparency. (Alas, industry-wise, there’s still a long way to go.)

Today, we’re taste-testing 15 Lindt Excellence chocolate bars and ranking them. This is an exercise that’s based purely on taste. We’re nosing the chocolate, letting the chocolate slightly melt on the tongue, then chewing it to get the full taste profile. After that, they’re ranked by which ones actually taste the best.

Part 1: The Taste

Taste 1:

Tasting Notes:

There’s a light note of honey on the nose with mild cocoa. The taste is creamy and really leans into a buttery caramel. A touch of vanilla lurks under the caramel on this silky bite.

Taste 2:

Tasting Notes:

This is straight-up burnt cocoa nibs next to very dry roast espresso beans. There are hints of very dried-out raisins and prunes with a whisper of black licorice.

Taste 3:

Tasting Notes:

The nose hits you with a drip coffee cut with caramel syrup. The taste is 100 percent salted caramel with a nice crunch next to mildly bitter dark chocolate plus a touch of vanilla.

Taste 4:

Tasting Notes:

There’s a honey-vanilla vibe on the nose. The taste is creamy milk chocolate and classic. It takes you straight back to your childhood. The end has a touch of almost wet raisins.

Taste 5:

Tasting Notes:

The opens with those burnt espresso beans and cocoa nibs again. The taste has this peaty, almost smoky, vibe. Yet… it’s creamy.

Taste 6:

Tasting Notes:

This is subtle. There’s a dark cocoa laced coffee taste with a pump of vanilla syrup thrown in. The end has this mild touch of florals, kind of like a vanilla blossom.

Taste 7:

Tasting Notes:

This is a light mocha latte from top to bottom. The taste leans into the chocolate syrup mixed into whole-fat milk and few shots of espresso with the faintest hints of red fruit and vanilla in the background.

Taste 8:

Tasting Notes:

You can see the orange zest in the chocolate. It definitely dominates with an orange oil vibe that’s almost more bitter than sweet. The crunchiness of the orange peels is a little off-putting but does settle into an orange blossom by the end with a final whisper of vanilla.

Taste 9:

Tasting Notes:

Woah. There’s a nutty/vanilla/rich cocoa dance happening on the nose and palate on this bite. The chocolate is pure velvet with a mild Americano coffee bitterness leading back to dry walnuts, vanilla oils, and creamy dark chocolate.

Taste 10:

Tasting Notes:

This opens with floral honey next to vanilla pods and smells… silky. Is that a smell? It’s in my notes!

The taste delivers on that silkiness with vanilla and floral dark chocolate with almost no bitterness. Instead, there’s a touch of that cream that forms on top of a well-made espresso.

Taste 11:

Tasting Notes:

This feels classic with a balance of vanilla, bitter yet creamy cocoa, and dried red fruit. The salt is there with a very slight crunch but helps bring out the raisin and vanilla and keeps the bitterness of the chocolate in check. It’s really balanced.

Taste 12:

Tasting Notes:

Damn! This is sweet. Like Jolly-Rancher-candy sweet. There’s barely a note of dark chocolate under all that cherry Jolly Rancher sweetness.

Taste 13:

Tasting Notes:

This has that dark-roasted espresso bean vibe up top. That leads towards a mildly smoky and almost earthy cocoa note — kind of like the nibs right out of the pod from the tree. The end has a touch of walnut that’s slightly woody leading toward black licorice.

Taste 14:

Tasting Notes:

Earthy cocoa with a mildly smoky edge eventually leads towards an Ancho chili flake spice. It’s very mild. As the dark chocolate softens, there’s this soft vanilla stout vibe with a real creaminess that leads back to the subtle buzz of that chili.

Taste 15:

Tasting Notes:

There’s a dark coffee and earthy cocoa on the nose. This leads towards soft black licorice next to a touch of buttery caramel cut by a fleck of orange zest.

Part 2: The Ranking

15. Pomegranate — Taste 12

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This bar is made from 48 percent dark milk chocolate. The chocolate is cut with pomegranate concentrate and apple puree to add the sweet fruit flavor.

Bottom Line:

This was just too sweet. Yes, even for a chocolate bar. Its only saving grace was that it didn’t taste fake. The fruit felt like real fruit juice but with way too much sugar added.

14. 100% Cocoa Dark Chocolate — Taste 13

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This is the pure, uncut dope, baby! It’s 100 percent cocoa that’s turned into chocolate by only using cocoa butter and cocoa powder with 100 percent pure cocoa mass (the mash of the fresh bean).

Bottom Line:

This felt way more like eating raw cocoa nibs off the tree than eating chocolate. That’s not a bad thing, per se. But this really feels way more like cooking chocolate than a straight eating one. Though, I could see this working as a counterpoint to a funky old whisky.

13. 99% Cocoa Dark Chocolate — Taste 2

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This is the same as the above with one extra ingredient. Demerara sugar is added to smooth out that earthy cocoa nib vibe … barely.

Bottom Line:

I could barely tell this apart from the 100 percent. It looks exactly the same. Maybe the touch of dried fruit stood out and hinted at sweetness a tiny bit more? Either way, it still felt like something I’d cook with.

12. Milk Chocolate 45% Cocoa — Taste 1

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This is the entry point for milk chocolate from the brand. It’s cut with plenty of sugar, milk fats, and cocoa, creating a classic, creamy milk chocolate.

Bottom Line:

This was a little overly sweet and leaned way more into caramel than expected. That being said, I bet this would make a killer hot chocolate.

11. Intense Orange Dark Chocolate — Taste 8

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This starts off with 48 percent dark chocolate. It’s then bespeckled with dried chunks of orange rind and flesh.

Bottom Line:

This was fine. It’s very orange forward (I think I’ll try it with an old fashioned later). But the dried orange bits were a bit much. They did provide texture but I’m not 100 percent sure that texture was necessary.

10. 90% Cocoa — Taste 5

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This bar is 90 percent cocoa. The last ten percent is made up of sugar and vanilla.

Bottom Line:

This is my cut-off percentage for dark chocolate that’s good to eat. That small dose of sugar and vanilla really makes this palatable. It’s not what I’d reach for every time I want chocolate, but I certainly wouldn’t turn it down.

9. 50% Dark Cocoa — Taste 7

Average Price: $18.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This is a mix of cocoa powder and butter mixed with equal doses of vanilla, milk chocolate, milk fat, and sugars.

Bottom Line:

I didn’t realize that this isn’t available in the U.S., sorry. Anyway, this is sort of a bridge between the saccharine milk chocolate and the bitter dark chocolate without being the best of either. It’s fine and tasty. But you’re kind of left wanting either the milk chocolate or dark chocolate next time.

8. Caramel with a Touch of Sea Salt — Taste 3

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This bar starts off with 47 percent dark chocolate. It’s then cut with buttery caramel, caramelized sugar, and sea salt.

Bottom Line:

This had a nice crunch to it, creating a textural balance to the sweet, butter, and cocoa. While this was a little on the sweet side for me, I can definitely see this working wonders as a hot chocolate base, casual snack, or whisky pairing chocolate.

7. 78% Cocoa Dark Chocolate — Taste 6

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This bar mixes 78 percent dark chocolate and just kisses it with demerara sugar.

Bottom Line:

This was subtle and pretty damn tasty. There wasn’t a surprising flavor note that jumped out but that didn’t really matter.

6. 85% Cocoa Dark Chocolate — Taste 15

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This bar leans into the cocoa with 85 percent in the base. Then raw sugar and vanilla are mixed into a mild chocolate base, creating this silky bar.

Bottom Line:

This is the very approachable dark chocolate. The addition of vanilla and raw sugar takes just enough of the edge off the bitterness to make this very enjoyable.

5. Dark Chocolate with a Touch of Sea Salt — Taste 11

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This, again, starts off with 47 percent dark chocolate. That base is amped up with sugar, milk fat, vanilla, and a fleck or two of sea salt.

Bottom Line:

This is where hairs start to get split. The very light crunch of sea salt really helps the chocolate shine in this bar. It’s hard not to love this on its own but this crumbled over a rich bourbon vanilla ice cream rules.

4. Milk Chocolate 55% Cocoa — Taste 4

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This 55 percent cocoa milk chocolate bar balances the bitter cocoa with the creamy milk chocolate. The only additions to the chocolate are milk fats and sugars, which keep it simple while letting the ingredients shine.

Bottom Line:

This is the perfect example of less is more. It’s creamy yet slightly bitter, striking a great balance that’ll please both the sweet-toothed among us and those looking for something with a little bite.

3. Chili Dark Chocolate — Taste 14

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This bar has a 47 percent dark chocolate base that’s cut with butterfat. The chili is added through an extract and aroma, not chili bits (like the orange above).

Bottom Line:

This is really subtle. The chili slowly builds over time, creating a warmth that counterpoints the dark aspects of the chocolate really well. This is also a great addition to a chili pot to add that x-factor.

2. 70% Cocoa Smooth Blend Dark Chocolate — Taste 10

Average Price: $3.99

The Chocolate Bar:

This 70 percent dark chocolate bar is just touched by sugar and vanilla to create an easy-to-love bar. The “smooth blend” refers to the blend of cocoa beans used in the mix, sourced from Ecuador, Madagascar, Ghana, and the Caribbean islands.

Bottom Line:

This was both interesting and delicious. That floral honey note next to the pure silky nature of the bar was hard to beat. There was just the right amount of bitterness but not because it was overly sweetened. It was more a build of flavor notes that paid off in a dark chocolate prize at the end.

1. Milk Chocolate 65% Cocoa — Taste 9

Average Price: $6.35

The Chocolate Bar:

This is 65 percent cocoa cut with heavy cream, butterfat, and sugar. It’s a simple mix that has just the right balance.

Bottom Line:

This felt like the perfect bridge between the worlds of creamy and sweet milk chocolate and bitter and stark dark chocolate. Neither is overpowering yet both are very present. You’re not losing anything from either the milk chocolate or dark chocolate to make room for one or the other.

It’s just really balanced, nuanced, and delicious.

Part 3: Final Thoughts

I wasn’t expecting too much here. That being said, I am surprised a bar of milk chocolate made the top seed, given my disposition to all things dark chocolate. Still, this is comfort food and I was comforted — for the most part.

I’ll probably never go back to the pomegranate bar. It’s just too sickly sweet. The rest, however, all seem to have their place. Even the 90 percent-plus bars are clearly great candidates for cooking and baking. Now it’s time for a savory cheesesteak to cleanse my palate.

Netflix’s animated series We The People drops in exactly one month, and today, one of the stars set to be highlighted in the series, HER, has shared her musical contribution to its soundtrack, “Change.” Opening with a mean bass riff, the song describes parts of the political process and advocates for education and participation, acclaiming the power of one person to make a difference. “One day, I’ll be a leader,” she sings. “Believe in ‘We the people.’”

The singer has been lauded in recent months for the string of socially conscious hits she’s released in the past year, which includes the Golden Globe-nominated “Fight For You” from the Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack and the Grammy-winning “I Can’t Breathe,” released in response to the murder of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin.

We The People, streaming July 4, is produced by Barack and Michelle Obama and Black-ish creator Kenya Barris and aims to inspire viewers to become more engaged with their community and government. A description from Netflix reads:

Combining music and animation to educate a new generation of young Americans about the power of the people, We the People is a series of 10 animated music videos that covers a range of basic U.S. civics lessons in not-so-basic ways. Set to original songs performed by artists such as H.E.R., Janelle Monáe, Brandi Carlile, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Adam Lambert, Cordae, Bebe Rexha, KYLE, Andra Day, and poet Amanda Gorman, with a groundbreaking mix of animated styles — each episode of We the People is an exuberant call to action for everyone to rethink civics as a living, breathing thing and to reframe their understanding of what government and citizenship mean in a modern world.

Listen to “Change” above. We The People starts streaming 7/4 on Netflix.

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.

Rostam is no stranger to the process of making an album. After writing three LPs with Vampire Weekend and producing standout records for Clairo, Haim, and The Walkmen’s Hamilton Leithauser, Rostam has songwriting down to a science. He even explored his musical roots on his 2017 debut solo album Half-Light, a record that was over a decade in the making. But for his sophomore solo LP Changephobia, the process was different.

For one, Changephobia was finished during a time of intense isolation. The world came to a screeching halt with COVID lockdown, which was enacted when the album was nearly complete. The unexpected period of stagnation allowed Rostam to privately focus on finishing touches and confront grim global events unfolding around him.

But the world wasn’t the only thing changing at the time. “What I can definitely say is that I feel like in the last five years, I’ve grown a lot as a person,” he said over a Zoom call from the same studio where he had written, recorded, and produced the album. “I’ve had time to grow and I think that growth has come from self-awareness. The concept of Changephobia to me is a lot about reminding yourself to be aware of what you’re feeling.”

Rostam aimed to translate his personal evolution to a sonic one. He intentionally traded in soothing strings heard on his debut effort for languid brass instruments, experimenting with a jazzier side to his sound. In this way, Rostam’s breezy Changephobia copes with change in multiple forms. It examines that which we can’t control, like the uncertainty of the future, speaks to necessary changes, like addressing the impending doom of climate change, and takes the future in stride.

Most of the music’s lyrical content centers around anecdotes from Rostam’s personal life, but their ambiguity achieves a sense of universality. Rostam delicately sings of the frustration that arises from communication barriers, the intimacy of sharing the back of a cab with someone to the airport, and the cathartic freedom of a cross-country road trip. Songs like “Kinney” showcase his masterful production work, combining arrhythmic chords to feel like a warm embrace. While Rostam deliberately took his music in a different direction on Changephobia, some of the album features callbacks to his Half-Light days. The layered hand drums heard on “Bio18” are reminiscent of the intoxicating track “Wood” and evoke a drowsy daydream.

We spoke about the concept of change over Zoom exactly a month before the Changephobia’s release. Check out a condensed and edited version of our conversation below, where Rostam talks about the intersection of politics and music, how making a solo album lends itself to creative freedom, and his vision for the next generation.

On Half-Light, some of the music you had been working on for upwards of eleven years. How was the Changephobia process different?

The process was a lot shorter. It probably took about three years to write and record this album. And I would say, maybe like 85 percent of it was done before the quarantine, but I really needed that time to finish the album. So I think it’s fair to say I took a solid nine months finishing the album. I had like eight and a half songs written, but I didn’t have any of the production finalized. And I wrote like, one, one and a half, maybe two songs worth of lyrics during quarantine. But such a huge percentage of this album was conceived in the two and a half years prior to the quarantine that I don’t want people to think of it as a quarantine project. But to answer your question, yes, it happened quickly. Most of it happened before the quarantine. But certainly, it wasn’t the kind of long gestation period that Half-Light took.

Can you talk a little bit about your album title Changephobia? What were some things that you were trying to change? And how was that scary for you?

No one’s ever put it that way. I think that’s a good way to put it. On some level, I wanted to change the sound that I was known for. What I was known for. So that was a component of it. This idea of personal growth in musical evolution. How could I evolve musically? And what would that mean? One of the rules that I made for myself going into making this album was no strings because I used so much cello, so much violin, viola on Half-Light. And that was sort of the project of Half-Light was to make this album that integrated strings with songs in a way that I thought maybe hadn’t been done before. So then, with this record, I really wanted to push myself to be inspired by the jazz that I loved. And saxophone music of a certain era, specifically Bebop, which is from the ’50s. And so that’s one component, this idea of musical change. And then there’s another component, which is life changes. And I think that’s something that’s more reflected in the lyrics in several songs. I didn’t really realize this until I was finishing the album, but a lot of the songs deal with the concept of change lyrically, whether they have the word change in them or not.

I was reading up on some interviews that you’ve done recently, something that you said really stood out to me, which is you’ve learned in your production work that being a good producer is equal parts challenging and supporting an artist. Did you have anyone doing that for you on your record, both challenging and supporting you in this project?

Certainly there are people that I trust. But I think part of the fun of making an album as Rostam is that I can get lost in the process. I can work on the production for as long as I want and I can work on the songwriting for as long as I want. I’m the only person who needs to be happy with it. Maybe one day I’ll want to involve other people. For the sequence of the record, I worked with Emily Lazar, my mastering engineer who has mastered nine albums with me in my career, which is pretty crazy. Outside of Emily, who had notes on the sequence and I took her advice, I was the only producer on this album. And there were a couple people that helped with some of the songwriting, there’s certainly musicians, there’s friends that I send things to and ask them to send me ideas to integrate into the finished product. There’s a little bit of that but it’s mostly me.

So you were the one both challenging and supporting yourself, then?

Yes, I guess I had to, I guess I had to be. And I want to make records like that sometimes. That’s why it’s important to me to make records as Rostam because I don’t get to do it any other way.

You said you wrote this album basically in the last three years. Obviously, a lot has happened in the world in the last three years. Do you inject politics into your music at all, or do you try to shy away from that conversation?

I’m someone who believes that all music is inherently political. So I think that if you say your music is not political, or you say you as a person are apolitical, I think you’re probably lying. It might be because I grew up in Washington, DC, and everybody’s watching all these Sunday morning talk shows there in a way the rest of America does care about as much. Certainly not on the West Coast. In DC, everybody’s glued to the TV on Sunday morning. They’re watching Meet The Press and This Week. So I always have politics on my mind and I believe things have inherent politics, whether it’s art, music, advertising, television, or film. Everything has its own inherent politics. So that’s definitely on my mind when I’m making music. But it’s also not something that it doesn’t motivate me to make artistic decisions. On a conscious level. I think it’s a subconscious level it motivates me.

I totally agree with what you’re saying about how all music is inherently political. That’s something I’ve been thinking about in the past year as a lot of artists have made explicitly political music. There’s a certain kind of person who responds to that with, “Oh, I missed when politics was left out of music. I liked you before you brought politics into music.”

Yeah. Like, “Leave the politics out of your music.” You kind of want to be like, have you heard the music? What exactly are you listening to?

I know for a specific song, [“These Kids We Knew”], you wrote it while you were actually under the weather with COVID. What that experience was like and how sick were you?

I was actually sitting in this chair in my studio. I had a fever that lasted about four days. And on the fourth day, the fever started to break. And I got sir crazy from being in the same room, so I came to my studio and I sat down. I didn’t expect anything that I was doing to be for an album or even to be released. I found myself in a fever state and I was trying to pass the time. But I found myself writing this song. The song’s about global warming, but in a way, it’s about COVID too, because I think those things are linked together.

“These Kids We Knew” seems like it touches on the legacies we’re passing on to the younger generation, how they don’t feel represented, and how they’re the ones who will have to deal more with the lasting impacts of climate change. Although there is still a lot of progressivism and social activism in their generation, it really makes me think of how I wouldn’t trade anything to be a teenager right now.

To me, that song is about three generations, and I’m in the middle generation. I think there’s an older generation that holds power over us. And then the next decade, our generation is going to enter that age bracket where we have political power. And there’s the younger generation that sees a dark future ahead, where the effects of global warming are catastrophic. The older generation may never live to see that future. So in the song, what I imagine is the youngest generation taking the oldest generation hostage and trying them in court, but on the sidewalks. So it’s kind of a dark concept for what maybe has to happen. Or it’s a cautionary tale, depending on how you look at it.

Sort of forcing the older generation to reckon with the choices that they made.

Yeah, and to reckon with the destruction to the environment. I think a lot of what was on my mind was this Republican idea of, let’s rape the environment in order to further the economy and the short term effect is the economy goes up the long term effect is devastation. […] It’s terrible. But there’s gonna have to be dramatic change, and soon, and I think it’s coming.

Changephobia is out now via Matsor Projects. Get it here.

The world of cryptocurrency had a stimulating evening last night thanks to Elon Musk. Over the past few weeks, the Tesla CEO has a hot/cold relationship with Bitcoin that appeared to be heading towards a break-up after he announced that his electric car company would no longer accept crypto as payment, which caused crypto prices to plummet. Well, now, Musk is at again, and this time, he’s not being subtle about ending things with crypto.

On Thursday evening, Musk tweeted an old internet breakup meme along with #Bitcoin and a broken heart:

Once again, this caused Bitcoin prices to fall by Friday morning. Via CNBC:

Bitcoin fell over 4.5% to a price of $36,852 at around 9:34 a.m. ET Friday, according to data from Coin Metrics. Other digital coins followed suit, with No. 2 cryptocurrency ether dipping more than 5% to $2,656.06 and dogecoin — Musk’s favored crypto — sinking almost 7% to around 36 cents.

However, while some cryptocurrencies saw their prices fall, a sticky situation developed overnight as semen-themed coins saw their prices explode in the wake of Musk’s break-up tweets. Specifically, coins with the word “cum” in their name. For example, “cumrocket” is looking pretty good right now:

As for what caused a run on ejaculatory coins (Cuminu also saw its prices spring up), according to Benzinga, traders latched onto a different Musk tweet from Thursday night and quickly started guzzling up the provocatively named cryptos.

So in a nutshell, Elon Musk tweeted the words “Canada, United States, Mexico,” and it immediately caused a reaction in semen-themed coins because crypto is weird as hell. That’s our expert analysis at this point: wildest sh*t on the internet.

(Via CNBC)

Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia era has been going on for quite some time now. It was way back in October 2019 that “Don’t Start Now” was released as the album’s lead single. It’s been nearly two years since then, but Lipa is still fully in Future Nostalgia mode, as today, she has shared a new video for “Love Again.”

While the song itself is unquestionably disco-influenced pop, Lipa goes full country for the video. The visual begins with a mysteriously floating cowboy hat that eventually finds its way onto Lipa’s head. In the clip, she rides a mechanical bull in a ballroom, does some line-dancing, gets done up in rodeo clown paint, and otherwise gets totally on board with the cowboy lifestyle.

Lipa previously said of the song, “A relationship hadn’t worked out for me, and I wrote this when I felt like there was no light. It was a song for me, to give myself a little cuddle, and was about being hopeful that I would fall in love again. We already had these beautiful strings, then [producer and songwriter] Clarence Coffee Jr. had the genius idea of adding in a sample of ‘Your Woman’ by White Town. That really gave the song the push it needed, because we definitely needed a more dancey element. I wrote it at a difficult time, but sometimes songs help you get out of certain situations. It’s like cheap therapy, and I think this is my favorite song on the record.”

Watch the “Love Again” video above.

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

Jensen Ackles is reteaming with Supernatural creator and original showrunner Erik Kripke for The Boys‘ third season, and so far, the physical reveals have been significant. Ackles previously teased a fresh-out-of-quarantine photo, which revealed a heavily unkempt beard. At the time, it wasn’t clear whether Ackles simply decided to not shave for much of the pandemic, or if his Soldier Boy character wouldn’t be as clean-shaven as in the comics. Kripke later confirmed that the mountain-man look was definitely real for the show, which is interesting because Soldier Boy leads the Payback (The Avengers parody) group and is a twist on the sometimes-bearded Captain America.

Well, Ackles is doing more besides maintaining that beard to embody Soldier Boy. He’s also pumping iron like a madman like a Supe, too, and he posted a video of his progress in the jacked-arms department. Since he’s a former CW guy, Ackles also tagged CW actors Stephen Amell (Arrow) and Grant Gust (The Flash) while writing, “I’m beginning to understand the struggle… Or maybe I’m just too old for this crap.”

No pain, no gain, right? Between Chris Hemsworth (jacked arms) and The Rock (jacked legs), we are simply buried in pumped-up dudes this week. And Ackles is adding extra grumbling to the mix, which makes his Supe reveal super charming, not to mention relatable. Working out is not fun, man.

Meanwhile, we also know that the sheer volume of fake blood will already be higher in Season 3, but Kripke reteaming with Ackles makes one wonder if we’ll see more Supernatural action on the show. Jeffrey Dean Morgan, perhaps? He’ll be done with The Walking Dead relatively soon, and he won’t be doing the Batman thing, so Morgan might room in his schedule. Make it happen.

The Boys Season 3 has been shooting for several months. Hopefully, we’ll see a late 2021 release.

Ask Rep. Adam Kinzinger what he thinks of former president Donald Trump and his answer is pretty simple: He’s a “loser.” That’s exactly what the Republican Congressman told Anderson Cooper while appearing on Anderson Cooper 360 on Thursday night, as HuffPost noted.

In making the point that there’s no reason people should be talking about Trump anymore, Kinzinger referenced a “press release” (if it can be called that) that the former president issued earlier this week from Mar-a-Lago. Though it was mostly aimed at former congresswoman Barbara Comstock, who recently joked that very few of her Republican colleagues would likely “join a search party” if Trump disappeared, #45 decided to share a list of other people he thinks are “losers” for not worshipping the ground he walks/stomps on—and Kinzinger was among them. While chatting with Cooper, Kinzinger weaponized Trump’s favorite insult to respond to the Florida Man’s criticisms in a perfectly measured and literal way.

“[Trump] called people like Barbara Comstock a loser and he called me a loser. I’ve never lost an election. He has. He’s the only loser in that mix, and we’re trying to grab onto him as if he’s somehow the ticket to the future, and he is instead obsessed with the fact that he lost again at something. And instead of, in his post-presidency, taking on, I don’t know, some issue that he cares about or some thing that we see former presidents do, he’s down there obsessing about the fact that he’s a loser. I’m sorry you’re a loser, but you lost.”

Point made. Though one might want to tell Kinzinger that the main issue Donald Trump cares about is finding new people to brand “losers.” You can watch part of the clip below.

(Via HuffPost)