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This week’s guest on Uproxx Sessions is Smrtdeath, a genre-bending rapper and singer from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, singing his defiant anthem, “Too Far Gone.” Mashing up emo and punk influences with hip-hop production sensibilities, Smrtdeath is part of an underground movement that doesn’t follow the conventional rules of popular music. Smrtdeath himself takes things a step further, refusing to abide by the conventions of fashion, as well, as seen on the cover of his November album, Somethjng’s Wrong (that’s not a typo).

On “Too Far Gone,” Smrtdeath addresses any potential criticisms of his lifestyle head-on: “Living on my time, give a fuck about what they say,” he snarls. “All of this advice but it’s coming from no pain.” On that same note, he’s previously spoken about the encouraging messaging behind his music. “You’ve got to remember that things can be better,” he said. “You will come out on the other side.”

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

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.

There’s no shortage of confidence on Lil Tjay’s latest full-length album, Destined 2 Win. The 22-year-old Bronx, New York native arrived with the assurance of an upperclassman on his swaggering debut, True 2 Myself, in 2018 and the scuffs and scrapes he’s taken since have done little to dull the sparkle in his eye as he guides the listener through 21 tracks displaying his wide-ranging abilities. However, you know how the saying goes: a Jack of all trades is a master of none, and that aphorism holds true despite the poise with which Tjay bears himself on his shape-shifting sophomore album.

There’s a lot to be said for the sort of confidence Tjay projects here. Some of us go 30 years or more without ever finding the level of intoxicating self-belief that allows him to write song titles like “Born 2 Be Great” without a hint of irony. Of course, self-belief and self-awareness seldom go hand-in-hand; whether that’s a boon to this album or a drawback depends on your point of view. I’m ambivalent; on one hand, I’m impressed by how deftly he dips into each stylistic tureen from which he draws his inspiration. On the other hand, I really wish that his own artistic voice would cut through the noise more distinctly, showing us who he is both as an artist and a person.

For instance, as Tjay metamorphoses, chameleonlike, between hood motivational speaker on propulsive tracks like “Hood Rich” and “Run It Up” and heartbroken, crooning lothario on “Irregular Love” and “Calling My Phone,” it gets increasingly difficult to pin down a unique worldview or dodge the sense that we’ve heard all this before. However, there’s an undeniable polish and panache to the proceedings that lends the sense that Tjay really put a lot of thought and effort into these songs to make them sound as catchy and captivating as possible.

When Tjay wants to party, “Move” and “Oh Well” provide plenty of the body-first, brain-second energy that makes such tracks work at their highest levels, then, when he tells us “Love Hurts,” he makes us believe him, worrying such juicy lyrical bones as “I see you postin’, that just put me on alert.” He’s certainly a product of his generation, pain-watching an ex’s social media and reacting in real-time, even as he admits “I know you feedin’ off of what I started first.”

Wearing his inspirations on his sleeve can bite him at times; his outright Drake impression on “Born 2 Be Great” is a microcosm of how much his flow treads in the footsteps of his forebears — ones who still have firm grasps on the pop culture zeitgeist. It also highlights just how little actual innovation he’s doing here. The singsong delivery he uses for most of the project has more-or-less been done to death and the beats, with their church bell chimes and menacing major chords, provide suitably ominous backdrops for his middling boasts and vague threats.

Through it all, his confidence carries, though. There’s a plainspoken earnestness that comes with that lack of self-critique or self-doubt. Few lines will stand out, but he sticks the landing on every one of them. By not taking huge swings, he rarely misses, offering a satisfying listen that doesn’t overstay its welcome, even if the back half of the album tends to drone. At 21 tracks, things could really drag, but instead, he brings the overall run time in at a crisp hour and five minutes, owing most of the dead weight to bonus tracks, which consist of older releases such as the Justin Bieber-sampling “None Of Your Love,” which was likely tacked-on to improve streaming metrics.

Although Destined 2 Win doesn’t offer many surprises or tremendous strides in character development for the burgeoning star, it does its job as a showcase for his burnished songwriting well enough to justify its existence. Eventually, Tjay’s young fan base will want more from him than empty flexes and generic “made it out the struggle” rhymes, and Destined doesn’t do quite enough to convince that he’ll be able to deliver when that time comes. His swagger is enough to coast on for now, with his charm as an artist and gift for imitation giving him a smooth surface to glide on while he figures himself out. Hopefully, no one scratches that surface before he does.

Destined 2 Win is out now on Columbia Records. Get it here.

The WNBA announced its full slate of uniforms for the upcoming year, which will be its 25th. Each of the league’s 12 teams will receive a trio of kits through Nike: the WNBA Nike Heroine Edition (home), the WNBA Nike Explorer Edition (away), and the WNBA Nike Rebel Edition (third).

There are a few fun twists that all of these will include, like all of them being numbered 1/144 to celebrate the 144 players who make up WNBA rosters. But at the end of the day, the important things with unis is that they look cool and tell a story, and fortunately for the players who will wear them on a nightly basis, that absolutely happened, as some of these threads are among the best sports uniforms that have been released.

“The basketball uniform is an important representation of the brand of WNBA players and teams, and a point of pride for fans,” WNBA Commissioner Cathy Engelbert said in a statement. “In partnership with Nike, unveiling new and exciting adaptations of the WNBA uniforms is a dynamic way to build on the foundation of the league’s first 25 years.”

The Explorer edition threads feature some gems — I’m partial to the Chicago Sky’s pinstripe-inspired look and the palm tree on display on the Los Angeles Sparks’ unis. Don’t sleep on the Phoenix Mercury’s kits, either, as a good gradient should never go unrecognized.

The Rebel editions include some of the real showstoppers. For my money, the best of the bunch is the Indiana Fever’s jerseys that pay tribute to Stranger Things, and go down as one of the best individual uniforms in sports right now. The Sky’s are once again quite good, as are the ones for the Minnesota Lynx, which celebrate the First Avenue concert venue in Minneapolis, as are the Washington Mystics’ 19th Amendment-inspired jerseys.

Usually these kinds of widespread uniform releases feature a few major misses, but Nike and the WNBA went 24-for-24 here. The Rebel edition threads dropped on April 8, while the Explorer editions come out April 14.

Lil Nas X and “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” have been everywhere lately, and now, that includes the Game Boy Advance, Nintendo’s handheld video game console that was discontinued over a decade ago.

A Twitter user known as pynnion shared a 36-second video of some of the “Montero” video playing on a Game Boy Advance system and wrote, “My mom took my phone so I’m watching the call me by your name music video on my gameboy @LilNasX.” The rapper was amazed by what he saw, as he shared the post and tweeted, “how is this real.”

As pynnion noted, this was achieved by using specialized software to convert the original video into a file format the Game Boy Advance can read and then putting the converted file on a “flash cart,” which is essentially a blank Game Boy Advance game cartridge that users can load their own game files onto. Presumably, the video format used is the same one Nintendo used back when they used to make Game Boy Advance Video cartridges that contained movies and episodes of TV shows. Somebody else did this recently when they converted Tenet for Game Boy Advance playback.

Watch “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” playing on a Game Boy Advance above.

While Elon Musk has spent the past few months making headlines with his ongoing love affair with cryptocurrency, the Tesla CEO has opened an entirely different can of (genetically altered) worms. Thanks to a tweet from his Neuralink business partner Max Hodak, Musk is now being looked at as the potential creator of a new… Jurassic Park? According to Hodak, the pair’s brain-implant technology could theoretically be used to engineer “super exotic” species including dinosaurs.

“We could probably build jurassic park if we wanted to” Hodak tweeted. “Wouldn’t be genetically authentic dinosaurs but . maybe 15 years of breeding + engineering to get super exotic novel species.”

Hodak wrote a follow-up tweet arguing that that their technology could be used to conserve and protect current species, but the applications should go beyond that.

But before everyone gets excited about riding dinos past the Dogecoin machine at Elon Musk Park, CNET threw cold water on Hodak’s claims:

It’s pretty much impossible to resurrect a dinosaur. The science of bringing dinosaurs back from the dead isn’t really as sound as Hodak makes it seem though. Even humanity would have a tough time building a Jurassic Park in the next 15 years. First, we’d need some DNA from the prehistoric tyrants and unlike in the film Jurassic Park, where the DNA is retrieved from mosquitoes in amber and fused with frog DNA, that information has completely degraded.

However, CNET does suggest that, theoretically, the wooly mammoth could be a “target for de-extinction,” but that doesn’t sound as sexy as, “Hey, we’re making a freaking Tyrannosaurus over here.”

(Via CNET)

It’s been a year since Yaeji released her debut full-length project, the mixtape What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던. To mark the occasion, Yaeji has dropped a new video for “When In Summer, I Forget About The Winter,” a bonus track that appears on some editions of the project.

According to press materials, the clip “takes the viewer through a collage of memories from Yaeji’s personal documentation of her journey alongside the making and release of What We Drew.” Indeed, the clip does come across like a video diary, featuring phone-shot slices of Yaeji’s life.

Yaeji previously said of the song, “When In Summer, I Forget About The Winter’ was a track I wrote maybe close to 3 years ago. I was probably a different person back then, but the song still resonates with me now. It was included as a bonus track in the Korean and Japanese CDs of What We Drew 우리가 그려왔던, but we’re finally sharing it with everyone.”

Yaeji also previously told Apple Music of What We Drew, “My language for producing music is way more diverse now and allows me to create different-sounding music. […] Every track is a bit different. I really hope it brings a little bit of positivity.”

Watch the “When In Summer, I Forget About The Winter” video above.

Along with their delicious ice cream, popular artisan brand Jeni’s is known for creating flavor collaborations with big-name musicians. Back in 2019, Jeni’s teamed up with Tyler The Creator to create two exclusive flavors. The rapper’s ice cream flew off the shelves at the time, but Jeni’s wasn’t prepared for just how popular their new collaboration with Dolly Parton would be.

Parton worked with the ice cream brand to craft the flavor Strawberry Pretzel Pie, which was limited to only 10,000 pints. The flavor was released online and in stores on Thursday, and it was so popular that Jeni’s website immediately crashed upon its release, leading to both confusion and disappointment from die-hard Parton fans.

On Thursday morning, Jeni’s tweeted an announcement that the ice cream drop was coming in five minutes.

But so many people were trying to purchased a coveted pint, that the website crashed when the flavor was supposed to launch. “Did y’all just break our website?” Jeni’s wrote just a few minutes later.

People weren’t just trying to buy the pint online, however. Dolly fans flooded their local Jeni’s Ice Cream stores to try to snag a scoop, and lines formed around the block at several locations.

Though some fans were frustrated that they weren’t able to get their hands on a pint of Parton’s ice cream, they can rest assured knowing the money went to a good cause. Proceeds from Parton’s ice cream flavor are being donated to her Imagination Library charity, an organization which gifts books to young children.

It’s been nearly two years since the most recent season of Stranger Things, but production is underway on season four. David Harbour, who plays not-dead Chief Jim Hopper, took a break during filming to record an Instagram Live video for his followers, including Millie Bobby Brown, who called out her co-star for being on social media.

“I haven’t done Instagram Live in a little while. I think I can only be here for like three and a half minutes because I think I have to go to set fairly soon,” the Emmy-nominated actor said. “I’m here, shooting season four of our television show. I don’t think I’m supposed to be showing you these things. Who wants to hear spoilers for season four? Let me just read directly from the script.” Harbour didn’t go that far, but people did notice how beaten up and bruised he looked. Either the actor had a loooooooooooooong night (I bet Winona Ryder could drink him under the table), or Hopper’s in for a rough season.

David then broke out in laughter when he noticed Millie was watching his Live. “Oh sh*t!” he said. “Millie! Oh, no. Millie, don’t tell Netflix, don’t tell Netflix that I’m doing Instagram Live from set. I’m just gonna read your sections of the script, Millie. I’m just gonna tell everybody what happens to Eleven this season.”

Bobby Brown instructed Harbour to “get off of Live and go back to work!” He then joked, “I’m getting fired.” If Hopper is played by Ron Perlman next season, you’ll know why.

Stranger Things return in 2022.

(Via E! Online)

Aaron Rodgers has done a nice job as the host of Jeopardy! The future Hall of Fame quarterback is doing his best to honor the legacy of Alex Trebek while simultaneously making very clear that he’d love to be able to step behind the podium full-time some day, even if that means hosting the show while he’s still in the midst of his NFL career.

One skill that Trebek had down that Rodgers seems to have in his bag is the ability to navigate choppy waters when things get weird on the show. He did this on his first episode when he got roasted during Final Jeopardy, and later in the week, a misunderstanding the contestants had about the way a question was written led to one of the more awkward moments we’ve seen on Jeopardy! in some time.

The category: History Potpourri. The dollar amount: $1,600. The question: “In 2015 Congress authorized payments of $4.44 million to each of these people, $10,000 for each day of their captivity.” All three of the contestants took this as the United States giving money to people in an attempt to wrong a right from the country’s history. Instead, this happened.

There is a big ol’ conversation regarding the many bad things that have happened in the past in the U.S. which have never been and need to be addressed (ex: all of the things the contestants said) that is appropriate in the aftermath of this clip. Jeopardy! doesn’t (rightfully) fancy itself as one of those places to have that conversation, so Rodgers deftly moved right on to the next question.

Netflix continues to delve deeper into the true crime realm with new selections every month, from the ongoing Unsolved Mysteries revival that’s ragingly popular like the original (with the ghost of Robert Stack still looming in the background) to bingeworthy limited series like Murder Among The Mormons and Joe Berlinger’s haunting Crime Scene anthology series, which digs into places-as-characters while giving the deep-dive treatment to venues where crimes occurred. Now, the streamer is taking on the case of serial killer David Berkowitz, a.k.a. “Son of Sam,” who was arrested and convicted after a stream of murders in the late 1970s.

New Yorkers felt a sense of relief after Berkowitz could no longer stalk the streets, but journalist Maury Terry (author of Ultimate Evil) didn’t rest easy. He felt convinced that Berkowitz had a partner, at the very least, and this limited documentary series will dive down the rabbit hole with him. From the synopsis:

Terry, convinced Berkowitz had not acted alone, would go on to spend decades attempting to prove that the web of darkness behind the murders went deeper than anyone imagined – and his pursuit of that elusive truth would eventually cost him everything. Filmmaker Joshua Zeman (CROPSEY, MURDER MOUNTAIN) draws on archival news footage, conversations with the people closest to the investigation, and Terry’s own words and case files to tell a cautionary tale of a man who went down a rabbit hole and never came out. But was Maury Terry just chasing ghosts – or are the true Sons of Sam still out there…

The Sons Of Sam: A Descent Into Darkness streams on May 5.