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Given what we’ve witnessed in the last few years, It’s no secret that TikTok dance crazes have major pull in making musical hits. Doja Cat’s “Say So” gained significant ground as the background music of a popular routine before hitting the top slot on Billboard Hot 100 chart in 2020. The popular app also has an uncanny ability to bring songs back from mild obscurity thanks to highly-emulated dance videos, like Mariah Carey’s “Obsessed” and Fergie’s “London Bridge.”

TikTok’s choreography is clearly hip-hop inspired, which isn’t surprising given the high-energy nature of the songs used. But although dance is essentially one of the core elements of the genre, it’s more often than not lambasted as “corny,” lyrically evident by Terror Squad’s 2004 hit “Lean Back.” (“My n****s don’t dance, they just pull up their pants,” Fat Joe quips in the chorus.) Despite the naysayers, dance floor-ready songs have always been essential for success. The popularity of these dance crazes, specifically through social media’s lens, signals a generation-led shift in the market.

While the internet is not the end-all and be-all tool for cultural domination (especially given the popularity of fad dances like the Running Man or the PeeWee Herman since before the web’s inception), it’s surely the most effective way to create virality. TikTok’s dance-centered popularity has altered the course of the music industry, but it is in no way a new phenomenon. During the internet’s first dance craze boom in the mid-2000s, then-unknown hip-hop artists similarly used social media to set the internet ablaze, recognizing that by utilizing these growing sites and the contagiousness of rhythm, they would be able to get their work off the ground. Whether calculated or not, these dances created major cultural moments.

In 2006, the internet, dance, and Atlanta-bred hip-hop subgenre snap worked together to supply fans with easy-to-follow dance moves over a catchy, minimalist beat. Although snap music was called “laughable,” “goofy,” and “cheap-sounding” by The New York Times in 2006, its dance-heavy popularity during the mid-aughts was applauded for helping to reboot the digital singles market. (Nielsen Soundscan reports that in the U.S. alone, 582 million digital singles were sold in 2006, a 65 percent upswing from the previous year).

With MySpace’s supremacy, music-sharing sites like Soundclick, and the rising popularity of YouTube, you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t know the dances to snap-heavy tracks like Dem Franchize Boyz’s “Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It” or Yung Joc’s “It’s Goin’ Down.” As a result of this growing trend, artists like Harlem’s Webstar and Young B and Atlanta’s Soulja Boy got in on the fun, creating their own wildly-popular dances, the “Chicken Noodle Soup” and “Crank That (Soulja Boy).” Not only were these iconic moves central to the height of the Digital Age of dance crazes, but the virality of these songs also helped the artists grow. Dem Franchize Boyz and Yung Joc garnered top 10 hits, “Crank that” went No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100, and “Chicken Noodle Soup” was re-made in 2020 by BTS’ J-Hope and singer Becky G, proving its cultural and racial transcendence.

As we see with both then and now, the 1-2 punch of the right song and dance combination results in societal and chart supremacy, and companies have always taken notice. In 2008, The Wall Street Journal reported that major labels like Warner Music Group and Sony BMG “[were] scouring the country to find the next big set of steps,” as “the dance surge is also changing the way labels market their product” — perhaps at a detriment to the natural essence of dance trends. Does the premeditated approach taken by artists and labels in making the next big hit diminish dance fads’ originally organic nature?

The difference between the virality of K-Camp’s 2019 song “Lottery (Renegade)” and Drake’s No. 1 hit “Toosie Slide” should be obvious — one garnered natural popularity due to a rapid-speed dance challenge, while the other was self-orchestrated to sell. The “Renegade” dance, made by Georgia teen Jalaiah Harmon, created something far larger than the song itself; it was done by regular people and major celebrities alike, and Harmon performed it at the 2020 NBA All-Star Game. While ingenious (though not groundbreaking), the “leak” of the “Toosie Slide” routine before its actual release manufactured something that can’t always be forced: cultural moments. While Drake’s song and dance succeeded commercially, most crazes truly work best when they become inescapable staples of popular culture without much effort, like Drake’s own previous dance-driven effort, “In My Feelings,” which was driven by the inescapable Shiggy Challenge in 2018.

This is not to say that artists shouldn’t try their hand at creating dance challenges for their songs, however, forcing virality has seemingly adverse effects on the song’s overall staying power. A manufactured approach worked a bit for Unk with “2 Step” in 2007 and Megan Thee Stallion with “Body” in 2020, but it’s apparent that those song and dance combos did not match the commercial or chart success of their previous hits, “Walk It Out” and “Savage,” likely because their popularity didn’t come naturally.

The music industry is a business that thrives on trends — we know that. However, when it comes to dance crazes, in particular, it may be the best bet for artists and labels to allow these trends to take over organically instead of through calculation. The difference between a passing fad and a true cultural moment is largely determined by fans themselves, whether through the moment’s show-stopping relevancy or the evocation of a feeling largely associated with a specific time in their lives. While the age of COVID-19 seems like the prime time to drop a potentially chart-topping, dance-heavy, internet-shaking tune, releasing something for sake of profiting off of it exploits the trend instead of enhancing what makes it work in the first place.

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

Seven years ago, when Nipsey Hussle declared his Crenshaw mixtape would cost $100, the overall reaction online was skepticism. However, he had one true believer: Jay-Z, who commended his ambition while buying 100 copies of the album. Eventually, the album sold out, proving Nipsey right, and since then, a bond was forged between the two rappers-turned-moguls. Unfortunately, that connection never turned into a musical collaboration — until now.

Jay-Z and Nipsey will finally appear on a track together for the first time on the upcoming soundtrack from Judas And The Black Messiah. Directed by Shaka King and starring Daniel Kaluuya and LaKeith Stanfield, Judas recounts the downfall of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton as he’s betrayed by William O’Neal, an informant for the FBI.

In addition to the Jay-Z and Nipsey Hussle collaboration, “What It Feels Like,” the tracklist also includes contributions from ASAP Rocky, BJ THe Chicago Kid, Black Thought, Dom Kennedy, G Herbo, HER, Hit-Boy, JID, Lil Durk, Masego, Nas, Polo G, Pooh Shiesty, Rakim, Rapsody, Saba, Sir, Smino, and more. HER previously released “Fight For You” and performed the song on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert last week. Check out the tracklist below.

Judas And The Black Messiah will debut on HBO Max 2/12.

We’re not even three weeks into President Joe Biden’s administration, and already Tucker Carlson is suggesting that Donald Trump supporters might be the target of drone strikes simply for the sin of being MAGA. Carlson jumped to the wild conclusion on Tuesday night while playing a clip of MSNBC host Nicole Wallace as she addressed the domestic terror threat facing the country in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol building. As a former communications director for George W. Bush, Wallace vividly remembers the War on Terror following 9/11, and she knows Mitch McConnell remembers it, too, which is why she doesn’t understand why the Senate Minority Leader won’t vote to convict Trump. Wallace used drone strikes as an example of how the country attacked Islamic terrorism “at its roots,” and she’s puzzled by how McConnell is taking steps to stop domestic terrorism at its roots. And, no, she’s not talking about drone striking Americans. Wallace is talking about holding Trump accountable.

“How does Mitch McConnell—who understands that the way you root out terrorism, is to take on, in the case of Islamic terrorism, kill those who incite it—how does he not vote to convict someone that he said, on the floor of the Senate, incited an insurrection?” Wallace asked in the clip, which Carlson then used to accuse liberals of wanting to bomb Trump supporters. Via The Daily Beast:

“Maybe not the unity we were looking for,” he snarked, adding: “But things have changed. Supporters of Donald Trump, it turns out, were so dangerous that maybe they do deserve Hellfire missiles raining down on their homes.”

Even though it’s clear that Wallace was using a metaphor, Carlson encouraged his viewers to “save that tape” because it’s a “sign of the moment we’re in.”

(Via The Daily Beast)

Usually, when a musician is in the news for some reason, the amount of streams their music gets tends to go up, which makes sense. Naturally, then, following the Super Bowl, The Weeknd saw a substantial increase in plays.

Billboard reports that on Sunday, the day of The Weeknd’s halftime show, his overall song and album catalog sold 36,600 copies, which is an increase of 385 percent from the 7,500 sold on the day before, February 6. Breaking it down further, his song sales were up 454 percent over the same period, while his album sales shot up 138 percent. Of those total sales, 29 percent of them were from the halftime-closing song “Blinding Lights.”

All the songs that were performed had significant sales increases on February 7: “Blinding Lights” (10,000 sales; up 423 percent from the previous day), “Save Your Tears” (4,000; 245 percent), “Can’t Feel My Face” (3,500; 987 percent), “Earned It (Fifty Shades Of Grey)” (3,000; 1,240 percent), “Starboy” (2,500; 1,175 percent), “I Feel It Coming” (2,500; 1,021 percent), and “The Hills” (2,000; 771 percent).

The day after the performance, The Weeknd took a moment to hop on social media and reflect on his career-defining moment, writing, “still buzzing from last night. i couldn’t stop smiling the whole performance. thank you [Pepsi, the NFL, and Roc Nation] for believing in me to bring a fresh new take on the halftime show. XO we did it !”

In his final appearance as Drunk Uncle on SNL (May 20, 2017), Bobby Moynihan wore a red “Make America Drunk Again” hat. Donald Trump must have enjoyed that, as he didn’t realize that you’re not supposed to agree with the racist, sexist, hot take-spewing alcoholic. Moynihan, who currently stars on Mr. Mayor, told the Daily Beast‘s the Last Laugh podcast about doing Drunk Uncle in the episode that the former-president hosted.

“I remember thinking, this is one of the only things in the show that’s actually really bad-mouthing him and pointing out how racist and terrible he is. And he walked up to me afterwards and I’m like, oh no. And he shook my hand. And he was like, ‘Thank you so much. That was so nice to hear such nice things being said.’ And I was like, you moron,” Moynihan recounted. In the Weekend Update segment, Trump’s “number one fan” Drunk Uncle points out the things they have in common (“We both love white Russians”), screams “her name is Bruce” in reference to Caitlyn Jenner, and confuses Michael Che with Ben Carson. “It’s like I’m running for president, y’know?” Oh, we know.

Moynihan continued, “I was saying he’s just like me, I love him. And he was just like, thank you. And I was like, no, you idiot, I thought you were going to be mad and you’re not. And now I’m mad that you’re not mad.” The former-cast member doesn’t think Trump was the worst host during his time on the show, but “he was just delusional… The vibe felt like a bratty, rich child.” You can listen to the podcast here.

And as always, R.I.P. Ass Dan.

(Via the Daily Beast)

Jacob Ainsley Chansley, the MAGA rioter also known as the “QAnon Shaman,” recently reached a month-long realization that his hero, Donald Trump, wasn’t all that and doesn’t really care about his supporters. The former president incited MAGAs toward the January 6 insurrection and then simply decided (after a “we love you, go home” video) to pretend those rioters who are now sitting behind bars don’t exist. Well, Shaman Guy has had a rude awakening. He’s repeatedly freaked out about a lack of organic food options in jail, and he seems honest-to-god surprised at not being pardoned. That’s a ridiculous expectation to those of us at home, yep, but QAnon Shaman’s lawyer, Albert Watkins, visited with Chris Cuomo on Monday night to reveal more about his client’s state of mind.

“I am deeply disappointed in former President Trump,” read the QAnon Shaman’s initial statement through his lawyer. “He was not honorable. He let a lot of peaceful people down. I have to leave judging him up to other people. I deeply regret and am sorry that I entered the Capitol building on January 6, 2021. I should not have been there.”

QAnon Shaman’s lawyer continued, stating that Trump did the unforgivable to his followers: “What he said day in, day out, that we all permitted, included untruths… out and out lies.” The statement appears at around the 4:00 minute mark in this video clip.

We’ve heard before that the guy feels duped, but the QAnon Shaman is reportedly attempting to undergo an “unwinding process” that Watkins says is aimed at shaking his loyalty toward Trump after believing years of lies. “You make it sound like he’s being deprogrammed from a cult…” stated Cuomo. And Watkins replied, “Well, I’ve likened the entire thing to 1978 and Jim Jones down in Guyana.” He added, “This is very real for these people.”

Well, QAnon Shaman is going nowhere fast, given that he’s been transferred to a few prisons and has been charged with civil disorder, obstruction, and disorderly conduct while awaiting trial. Meanwhile, Trump’s impeachment trial attorneys are attempting to characterize his incitement of the insurrection as “metaphorical” while defending their client, who’s hanging out at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida while his followers, including the QAnon Shaman, wonder where their guy has gone.

It’s not uncommon for a Cardi B song to take off on social media, especially TikTok. This has led to accusations that Cardi makes music that panders to users of these platforms to take advantage that the popularity a viral dance can provide. Now, Cardi has set the record straight.

On Twitter yesterday, Cardi wrote in regards to her new single “Up,” “Dont try to play me like I just started this sh*t cause of tiktok .My last 4 videos I gave choreography & at award shows as well .Please me , press ,wap & up was my last videos.EAT IT UP ! It wasn’t me who started the wap challenge.I didn’t even knew how to the dance that’s why I never did the challenge in the first place .How ya mad that these female rappers songs becoming tiktok challenges because people genuinely wants to dance to it.”

Somebody replied, “there’s a difference between becoming a challenge and forcing a challenge on people, that’s what the people mean,” to which Cardi responded, “I never forced a challenge. I never offer MONEY or prices for no challenge .I never even posted hey guys do a challenge for my song .People do it cause they want to sooo miss me wit that sh*t .I pay ya to show me when I told some1 ‘ hey do a challenge for my song.’”

She later added, “Thankful for all my fans ,artist ,influencer,tiktoker,people that critic music videos and songs ,and the GP for showing me love .I’m extremely happy and satisfied. Ladies that’s in my field keep doing what you doing they going to hate always.Give them a reason too. People that don’t like you always going to find a reason to hate you .Let ‘WINNING ‘ be the reason.”

She has hopped on other TikTok challenges, though, as she shared her own contribution to the “Silhouette Challenge.”

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

It’s not surprising to see the world’s greatest artists pass their creative genes onto their offspring, and it appears that’s what Kanye West has done with his daughter North. Aside from his musical talents, Kanye is also a gifted visual artist: Some works from his teenage years popped up on Antiques Roadshow last year and showed his ability to work in different styles and mediums. Now, North is proving that she’s quite the painter herself.

Yesterday, Kim Kardashian took to Instagram to share a painting that 7-year-old North made, which depicts a mountain scene with trees and vegetation in the foreground. The landscape looks so good, especially for an artist so young, that it led to Bob Ross comparisons and for the late artist to become a trending topic on Twitter.

There was some skepticism, though, that North actually painted this herself. This led to one TikTok user to share a video in which she claims her mother is North’s art teacher. The user shared a photo of themselves as a 7-year-old and a similar painting they had created at the time, saying, “My mom taught me how to paint this and she taught North how to paint the same one two weeks ago. She’s been an art teacher for 30 years and everyone that comes through her classes goes through this exact same painting when they’re starting out.”

Check out some reactions to North’s painting below.

The recently-released documentary Framing Britney Spears examines the pop star’s life, the #FreeBritney movement, and the rampant misogyny she’s faced throughout her career. Late-night show hosts, in particular, were brutal to the pop star (“The Britney doc is also a sad reminder that not too long ago we had to pretend that jay leno was funny,” reads one emblematic tweet), with the exception of one: Craig Ferguson.

In 2007, The Late Late Show host explained why he refused to mock Spears’ public breakdown. “Tonight, no Britney Spears jokes, and here’s why,” he began. “The kind of weekend she had, she was checking in and out of rehab, she was shaving her head, getting tattoos, that’s what she was doing this weekend. This Sunday, I was 15 years sober. So I looked at her weekend, and I looked at my own weekend, and I thought, ‘You know, I’d rather have my weekend.’ But what she’s going through reminds me of what I was doing. It’s an anniversary, you start to think about it, and it reminds me of where I was 15 years ago, when I was living like that.” Ferguson refrained from diagnosing Spears, but “she clearly needs help.” He also said that he felt “uncomfortable about making fun” of celebrities like Spears and Anna Nicole Smith, who had recently passed away, when we should be “attacking the powerful people, the politicians and the Trumps and the blowhards.” (Ferguson was really ahead of his time by singling out Trump.)

Ferguson discussed his monologue, which has gone viral since Framing Britney Spears premiered, in 2019 with the Los Angeles Times. “I wanted to put myself in the position of what Ms. Spears had been in that weekend, [to show] that I understood, that I identified with her discomfort,” he said. “And I because I had done that, other people identified with me too. It feels odd to talk about, because I don’t want to aggrandize myself. I didn’t mean to do it. It just felt right at the time. But it has definitely stuck.”

You can watch the full monologue above, or an excerpt below.

The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson is deeply missed.

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.

A particular scene from True Detective’s second season is stuck in Sun June vocalist Laura Colwell’s mind as she describes her band’s sound. The scene in question opens with a forlorn woman perched atop a stool on a bar’s dusty stage. The woman croons a lonely tune with her guitar’s weeping chords before the camera slowly pans to the main characters’ conversation. That’s where Colwell imagines their sophomore album Somewhere would fit: crammed in the corner of a dive bar, setting a somber atmosphere for a serious exchange of words.

But casting their album as a mere extra accompanying a monologue from Vince Vaughn is selling themselves short. On the contrary, Sun June’s Somewhere is fit for the spotlight. Throughout eleven gripping tracks, the Austin, Texas five-piece find poetry in the monotony and grief of life’s most dramatic moments.

No one is immune to grief, especially given the events that plagued our country last year. Nearly everyone is experiencing a sliding scale of anguish — and that’s something Colwell knows all too well. “I definitely am just always dealing with grief in some way,” she tells me over the phone from Austin. As we speak, the remainder of her band (including her partner and songwriting companion Stephen Salisbury) is spread out all across the US. Most of Sun June’s songs delicately explore how grief presents itself in various ways — grieving an old life, isolation, sobriety, the loss of a friend, or even something as simple as a carefree day that’s finally come to its inevitable end.

Songs like “Everything I Had” deal with the particular grief that arises from unwilling change. As people living in the transient city of Austin, Sun June are used to seeing transformation. Friends are constantly moving to or away from the city and, as someone who has settled there, this has made Colwell feel uneasy. “Seeing others around you thriving and you’re feeling out of place is also part of that feeling,” she says. As heard on the remainder of their tracks, the production on “Everything I Had” mirrors its theme of reluctant change. After Colwell croons of missing her former life, her band breaks into a cascade of arpeggio synths and descending keys, evoking a poignant sense of longing that’s further explored throughout each verse.

While change can be difficult, it’s oftentimes for the better. But even with this knowledge, it’s hard not to fantasize about how different life would be if one never learned from their mistakes. On their song “Bad Girl,” Colwell examines the missteps of her youth through a nostalgic lens. “I have a terrible memory and I repeat my mistakes a lot. So maybe I’ve been starting to learn that, no, I don’t have to keep repeating the same old dumb mistakes,” she says. Throughout the song’s lyrics, Colwell looks back on her naive slip-ups with rose-tinted glasses. She daydreams about the act of trashing an apartment without thinking of the consequences and chuckles at the time she irresponsibly spent her last dollar on a pack of cigarettes. “All the moments of your life are not something you necessarily want back, but you do miss it,” she says. “You’re grieving a part of you.”

Colwell’s youthful regrets aren’t universal, but Sun June’s poetic lyrics leave just enough mystery for listeners to insert themselves into. Colwell even admits to covering her prose with a purposeful veil of ambiguity, which not only helps listeners find Sun June’s songs relatable, but also acts as a way for Colwell to examine her emotions from an outside perspective. “Sometimes you reverse engineer yourself: you write a song and have no idea why you wrote it,” she says. “And then you realize when you put it all into the spotlight that, ‘Oh, okay. This is what’s going on with me, good to know.’ It’s hard to know what really makes sense or matters. We all get caught up in this fantasy of life sometimes, and it’s easy to lose yourself in it.”

For Sun June, the “fantasy of life” can be as simple as romanticizing a usually monotonous moment. Colwell believes this is best explored on their wistful track “Karen O.”

“We get into our heads sometimes, with mourning the loss of a part of you,” she says. “I think it’s really easy to fall into that spiral of feeling bad about yourself. [Karen O] also picks these random moments that are just kind of melodramatic. Like, climbing the stairs of your apartment. That’s so melodramatic — it’s like the end of a movie. No one actually lives that way, but it’s fun to get caught up in the fantasy of every minute detail meaning more than it really should.”

Somewhere does grapple with melodrama and grief, but not all of their tracks are forlorn. Each song is touched with a playfulness that arises from the band’s close-knit chemistry. “We’re all just tightly wound, and yet at the same time, very easy going and like to have a good time,” Colwell says, excitedly explaining how each member of the band equally contributes to a given song. Colwell and Salisbury begin to write music separately before reworking each other’s recordings. Leaning on the mantra “melodies are king,” their lead guitarist Michael is then passed the demo to flesh out lush tones. The rest of the group offers their edits at band practice, which results in a truly collaborative process.

Before starting Somewhere’s songwriting stage, the band collectively decided on a sonic theme for the record. After some deliberation, they eventually agreed on a universe where their album lives: a futuristic prom set in Albuquerque in a time where global warming has lapsed to a point of climate cooling. If their album as a whole is a prom dance, then, according to Colwell, the dreamy track “Once In A While” would be the night’s slow song. “It is a heady song, but also full of heartbreak and drunken stupor — which is all of what prom was,” Colwell says, continuing to set the scene. “The ball is spinning. And you’re in a hypnotic state when everything around you is just falling apart.”

Little did they know it at the time, but Somewhere is being released at a time when everything does feel like it’s falling apart. Nevertheless, it has arrived at the perfect moment. From start to finish, listening to Somewhere is therapeutic. It’s a lesson in patience, both with yourself and with the world, and it’s a thoughtful reminder that sometimes romanticizing the most monotonous moments is also a beautiful study in staying present.

Somewhere is out now via Run For Cover/Kneed Scales. Get it here.