With the release of his highly anticipated third album Sincere just weeks away, Khalid follows up its singles “Please Don’t Fall In Love With Me” and “Adore U” with another introspective, dreamy track, “Ground (Cotton Candy Skies).”
Ahead of the song’s release, Khalid shared some of the background behind its creation, crediting it partly to psychedelics.
Ground is finally getting released tonight. Years ago, through moments of uncertainty, I really began to question what my purpose was as an artist. I started my own personal journey through psychedelics in 2021 and I’ll never forget the moment this song came to my mind. Just like the random mountain I climbed in Arizona, life is an uphill battle. As beautiful as the top may seem, I’m so happy to embrace the ground that I walk on. My 3rd album is only 2 weeks away (finally!) and this all feels like the biggest reset for me. I feel so reminiscent to how I did when I first started my career 8 years ago. I can’t wait for all of you to experience the album, so until then… hopefully this holds you over.
You can listen to “Ground (Cotton Candy Skies)” above.
Sincere is out 8/2 via Right Hand Music Group/RCA Records. Find more information here.
Last week, Cardi B teased an upcoming collaboration with New Orleans rising star Rob49, warning her fans not to expect another pop-friendly single. “I wanna let some of y’all also know that I cannot always do glittery, fun, female stuff all the time,” she said. “I’m a whole hood n****.”
Today, the song arrived, living up to her prior promise. “On Dat Money” is an assertive trap banger that finds Rob and Cardi trading demanding verses in which they vow to do the deed atop piles of cash. The video, which accompanied the release, finds the duo taking over a well-appointed mansion and filling it with strippers and cash as they perform their verses.
2023 turned out to be Rob49’s breakout year, resulting in his receiving huge co-signs from the likes of Lil Durk and Travis Scott (here he is talking about his Scott collaboration, “Topia Twins,” in an interview about his deluxe mixtape, 4GODII), and appearing in last year’s XXL Freshman Class. This year, he hit the road with Detroit rising star Skilla Baby for their joint Vultures Eat The Most tour. Meanwhile, Card B has been working on her second album, although she did tell fans that it might not be out until next year.
Watch to Rob49’s “On Dat Money” video featuring Cardi B above.
Three of African music’s hottest rising stars team up on “One Call,” the new single from Nigerian producer/DJ Spinall (pronounced spin-all), featuring Nigerian singer Omah Lay and South African breakout Tyla. Featuring a mellow and hypnotic Afrobeats instrumental, the song finds Omah and Tyla lyrically pining for a potential fling, telling them that they’ll only be “one call” away. With its reassuring chorus and cool blend of African sounds, it’s a slick party starter for a laid-back summer vibe.
“One Call” continues Tyla’s US takeover, which began last year with the arrival of her inescapable bop, “Water,” and rolled right into 2024 with the release of her self-titled debut album. In the months since, Tyla graced the Met Gala, signed on for special shows at Lollapalooza, and released her inner tiger at the 2024 BET Awards. And although she had to cancel her upcoming tour for medical reasons, moments like her Gap campaign with new song “Linen Moves,” Becky G collaboration “On My Body,” “Jump” video with Gunna and Skillibeng, and now, “One Call,” will likely keep her in the spotlight and building momentum until she recovers.
Meanwhile, Omah Lay continues to payoff the prediction made by Uproxx’s Wongo Okon in 2022, contributing to Afrobeats’ expansion in the US public eye.
Listen to Spinall’s “One Call” with Tyla and Omah Lay above.
You might not know it considering all that’s happened in the last few months, but Big Sean has a new album coming out. It’s called Better Me Than You and he announced its title and release date today with a trippy, psychedelic trailer after dropping the singles “Clarity” and “Precision” in March. However, it would have been easy to miss those, because almost as soon as they’d dropped, they were overshadowed by the tidal wave of Kendrick Lamar Drake disses that have entranced the hip-hop audience right up until last week, when “Not Like Us” hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 again.
Practically everything Sean’s done since has been compared to that, including his recent On The Radar freestyle, which so incensed some fans for allegedly dissing Kanye West, that they straight up leaked Better Me Than You online. However, Sean, who has made it a point to take things in stride and promote mental wellness, turned the added attention into an opportunity to promote a song with The Alchemist. He also released a new song, “Yes,” which you can check out below.
In the meantime, Sean’s big more active as a feature artist, as well, appearing on singles from both Jessie Reyez and Eminem.
Watch Big Sean’s album trailer for Better Me Than You below.
Better Me Than You is out August 9 via FF to Def Entertainment. You can pre-save it here.
Much has been made of the fact that the NBA is about to wrap up negotiations on a new, gigantic media rights deal that is not slated to include Turner. A longtime league television partner, Turner appears slated to be on the outside looking in, as ESPN, Amazon, and NBC have the inside track on being the NBA’s three TV partners.
There are two potential paths forward for Turner, assuming it wants to keep its relationship with the league going. One is to cut a late deal for a fourth rights package, although it is unclear what that looks like. The other involves their reported right to match one of the packages, and according to Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports, we have an idea of when that will happen.
TNT got the contracts Wednesday night, say my sources. So it will have approximately five days, until next Monday, to “match” either Amazon Prime Video’s $1.8 billion–per-year offer or NBC’s $2.5 billion–per-year bid. (Disney’s ABC/ESPN is expected to retain the NBA’s TV “A” package, including the NBA Finals, at a price of $2.8 billion per year.)
McCarthy went on to report that, if Turner matched, the more likely option would be that it matched Prime’s package. While that would be an easier lift financially, there has been reporting that the NBA could argue that Turner has to be able to match more than just the money that Amazon or NBC would throw their way. Regardless, it sounds like there should be some clarity on what’s coming next sooner rather than later.
The NBA spent the 2021-22 season celebrating its 75th anniversary, which included an incredible ceremony at the All-Star Game in Cleveland where most of the living members of its 75th anniversary team came together. As someone in attendance, I can tell you that it was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen, and every person I know who was there echoes that sentiment.
While all of us who went had a great time, it sure sounds like the players selected to the team had considerably more fun. Dwyane Wade appeared on the 7PM in Brooklyn podcast, which is hosted by Carmelo Anthony and The Kid Mero. Both Wade and Anthony made the team, and Wade admitted that “I didn’t even know how that moment really was gonna hit, even when we got named to the team.”
Melo and D-Wade said MJ started talking sh*t the second he walked through the door at NBA 75 pic.twitter.com/EEbguWQHJG
“But the moment when we walked in the room, when you actually saw Kareem, you actually saw Jerry West, and Magic, you’re like, ‘Oh, I’m on this team,’” Wade recalled.
Both guys discussed the amount of junk that everyone in the room talked to one another, with Wade saying that “everything changed” in one particular moment: When Michael Jordan entered the room. And apparently, Jordan immediately stated to size up the rest of the room and made clear that he was the alpha dog.
“You saw the clip with him and Magic that went viral, right?” Wade said. “That was right away. I was just sitting there, and I’m like, ‘I’m listening to Jordan and Magic talk sh*t.’”
“Really talk sh*t, though,” Anthony intervened.
I swear, I would pay $10,000 for a full video of just the conversations that happened before the ceremony took place.
Kanye West is being sued for copyright infringement over his 2021 album Donda again, according to Billboard. This time, the songs at issue are “Hurricane” and “Moon,” which rights management company Artist Revenue Advocates (ARA) claims illegally interpolate samples of a song called “MSD PT2.”
Intriguingly, ARA admits that Kanye credited the original songwriters — Khalil Abdul-Rahman Hazzard, Sam Barsh, Dan Seeff, and Josh Mease — in the liner notes, but only after the creators initially refused to grant him a license to use the song in the first place. While the lawsuit was prompted by ARA’s inability to collect fees for the past three years, lawyers for ARA wrote, “This lawsuit is about more than defendants’ failure to pay a fee. It is about the rights of artists, musicians, and songwriters to determine how their works are published and used. Intellectual property owners have a right to decide how their property is exploited and need to be able to prevent shameless infringers from simply stealing.”
Donda has already been the subject multiple lawsuits for copyright infringement, as Bishop David Paul Moten filed suit in May 2022 over the use of one of his sermons on “Come To Life,” and a few months later, Boogie Down Productions filed suit in November 2022 over the song, “Life Of The Party,” which apparently interpolates “South Bronx” from Criminal Minded. That same year, Kanye was also sued for a song from Donda‘s follow-up, Donda 2, that sampled Marshall Jefferson’s “Move Your Body.”
We’ve all heard the statistic that “50% of marriages end in divorce” at least once in our adult lives. And considering that many of us probably know a few couples that have gotten divorced (including our own parents) we probably never gave its validity much of a second thought.
But romantics, rejoice! For this cynical statistic is, irrefutably, false. Recently comedian Alex Falcone took to TikTok to debunk this commonly believed myth.
In a now viral video, Falcone begins by saying that “first of all, it’s a dumb thing to measure,” because “until the 1970s, divorce law was very different. So really, it would have been a measurement of what percentage of couples are trapped in bad situations.”
What makes this a “dumb statistic,” Falcone continues, is that it doesn’t consider the duration of any marriage—from “the couple that held hands while the water came in on the Titanic counts exactly the same as someone who got hit by a bus on their honeymoon” to the “overachievers” who are “really good” at getting married and divorced over and over again.
Essentially, “if someone gets divorced five times, they get counted five times,” Falcone says. It’s easy to see how this can set the statistic askew very quickly.
But truly, the biggest Achilles’ heel of this truism is that it’s nearly impossible to truly “track every single marriage that’s ever happened” to accurately determine how they ended, be it divorce or death…not to mention track the ones that are still going strong.
Of course, you don’t have to take Falcone’s word for it. Experts have been debunking this myth for years (of course, they haven’t done it in nearly as entertaining a way as Falcone). According to the New York Times, the highest the divorce rate has ever been was 41%. Elsewhere there are estimates closer to 23%.
In 2021, the rate was just under 7%. Again, no tangible ways of getting an accurate assessment, but certainly nowhere near 50%.
So how did this myth come to be in the first place?
The prevailing theory leads back to post-World War II, when the Baby Boomer generation began marrying and starting families, during which there were projections that divorce rates would eventually get that high. So far, they never have.
Bottom line: statistics aren’t always reliable. This is an especially important thing for couples to remember so as to not invoke some kind of self-fulling prophecy. After all, we are far more well-equipped with knowledge and resources to help strengthen our relationships than ever before. So don’t give up on love just yet!
We don’t often get to hear people profess their love unless they’re newly dating or posting about a special occasion on social media. There’s often the old trope of men in long-term relationships or marriages complaining about their partners. It’s written into many movie scripts, painting a mundane and somewhat grim view of marriage.
But surely if men hated being married so much they wouldn’t keep asking women to promise to spend the rest of their lives with them. Turns out some men just needed to be asked the question in order to write beautiful prose about their partners. Luis Olivias asked men on the internet a simple question, “For the boys, go ahead and tell me about her.”
Well, the guys did not disappoint. Their responses to such a simple prompt are leaving some women an emotional mess. It was as if these men were sitting there waiting for someone to ask and then listen to them talk about how much they love their partners.
“She’s sleeping next to me with our beautiful 6 month old boy between us. She’s giving me life a life I never deserved, I am truly blessed,” one man writes.
“If there’s another lifetime, I would stand where I first saw her hoping to meet her again,” another says.
“She’s that moment of peace when you pass under a bridge during a thunderstorm. Only this moment never ends,” someone else shares.
Lui posted a simple prompt to TikTok that created a flood of love.
“I used to have nightmares, terrible nightmares. The first night I spent with her was the first night in a decade I went to sleep in peace.”
“She honestly felt like home, a feeling I never felt til I met her. There’s a calm surrender in her eyes that can bring you to your knees…everyone has their definition of perfect, mine is her.”
“She’s the peace I sought after spending my entire adult life up to this point at war. She’s the forgiveness I never gave myself.”
“She’s the brightest light in every room she walks in. Every night I think I can’t possibly love her more and then I wake up and I do.”
That’s a lot of love to take in, so take a breath because these men were not even remotely finished expressing their absolute Shakespearean level of love for their partners. Women peeked in on the conversation expecting something other than the tear-jerking gushing of men in love.
“All these men in love, I’m crying tears of happiness to see this amount of love still exist,” a woman says.
@Lui I was full snot bubble crying and had to share. WHATS THE OPPOSITE OF A TRIGGER WARNING?! This is that, it’s a 🌻GLIMMER WARNING🌻 #wholesome
The original post, which is only two still pictures, has over 81K comments, over 1 million likes and over 99K shares. It’s truly a post where you can get lost in the comment section forgetting all concept of time.
Hopefully these men share their beautiful sentiments with the women in their lives so they’re aware of how loved they are.
If you’ve ever had a baby that seems allergic to sleep, you know what a sleep-deprived nightmare it can be. How can it be so hard to get a baby to sleep when they’re clearly tired and sleep is a necessity? Isn’t it a natural instinct to sleep when you’re exhausted? Is there some trick to it that you’re somehow missing?
These questions plague countless parents, but sleep therapist Chrissy Lawler says getting a baby to sleep can be done quickly and easily if you stick to a few key principles.
Lawler, a Certified Pediatric Sleep Consultant and mother of four, shared her secrets for getting babies to sleep in 30 seconds to two minutes with Good Morning America. Her advice might help some desperate, exhausted parents find some relief.
“I am all about empowering women and parents and families to get good sleep because it benefits everybody’s mental health and happiness,” Lawler begins. She says “it’s so easy if you get the timing right” to get a baby to drift off quickly.
Here are Lawler’s tips:
1. Start putting them to sleep before they’re overtired
“The way that we deal with adult sleep troubles is the exact opposite of how we deal with baby sleep issues,” Lawler says. “So in the adult sleep space, the more tired you are, the better you’ll sleep, and as a result, the biggest mistake that parents make in trying to get their babies to sleep well is assuming if I can get my baby good and tired, then they’ll sleep better.” She says it’s a mistake to think that what will work for us will work for a baby. “But really, with babies, sleep begets sleep,” she says. “The more they sleep, the better they sleep, the more they will sleep.”
Lawler says babies offer subtle cues that they’re starting to get tired, such as getting red around the eyes and eyebrows, gazing off into space, subtle yawning or very early signs of fussing. By the time they are full-on showing classic tired baby symptoms, it will be harder to get them to sleep.
2. If the baby is a newborn, wrap them in a snug swaddle
The swaddle is a classic newborn sleep tool for a reason. “A good snug swaddle is everything,” Lawler says. “We want to focus on doing all of the things that can help them get calm. A good snug swaddle is the first step.” She demonstrates how to do a snug swaddle in the video:
A sleep therapist shares her secrets to putting a baby to sleep in 30 seconds l GMA Good Morning America/YouTube
Babies prefer to be on their side to go to sleep, says Lawler, and many like to have something to suck on like a pacifier. But after that, bouncing or swinging motions and making “Shhh Shhh” sounds are key. “You’re not telling them to shush, you’re making a loud whooshing sound like what they used to hear in the womb,” she says.
4. Gently stroke their eyebrows
“One of my other favorite interventions that you can do is a very subtle eyebrow stroke to just help their eyes close naturally,” Lawler says.”You can do this while you’re holding the passy in place and then they can just drift off to sleep.”
Lawler demonstrates how she gently strokes the baby right between the eyebrows to encourage them to close their eyes and drift off, and it’s as simple as it sounds.
5. Transfer them to their side before rolling them onto their back
Getting a baby to sleep in your arms is one thing, but transferring them into the crib without waking them up is another. Lawler also shares a trick for that—laying them on their side first. Babies have a startle reflex when you lay them on their back, but if you start them on their side and then gently roll them over onto their back, you can help avoid it.
“Parents, you are the expert for your baby,” says Lawler, “and you can take what you love and leave the rest.”
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