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Back in early 2018, shortly after Black Panther hit theaters, Chadwick Boseman played a prank on his fans. The staff of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon coaxed some unsuspecting moviegoers into a special room, where they were told they could record a video of them gushing about the actor and what his work meant to them, all while addressing the film’s poster. Each person was eventually interrupted by Boseman himself, who emerged from behind a red curtain, to joyful shocks and shrieks.

Boseman was like that. More than most actors, he really enjoyed interacting with fans, generously giving his time, letting them know he appreciated their love. Of course, in the last few months, clips like the Fallon video have taken on added meaning. After Boseman died in late August — suddenly, prematurely, at only 43 years old, of an illness he had somehow kept private, known only to family and close friends — they revealed someone worried he didn’t have much time left. They show someone devoting his life to goodness and decency.

Chadwick Boseman was a great actor, and the loss we face from his passing — further stressed by the new August Wilson adaptation Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom — is incalculable. He was also a great human being — a gregarious do-gooder who treated fans and colleagues alike as he wanted to be treated. And as a result, he was treated in kind.

It’s easy to paint Boseman as bigger-than-life. When Spike Lee needed someone to play the almost messianic slain soldier in his Vietnam War epic Da 5 Bloods, he turned to Chadwick Boseman. “This character is heroic; he’s a superhero,” Lee told The Atlantic. “Who do we cast? We cast Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and we cast T’Challa. Chad is a superhero.” (He was referring to Boseman’s turns in, respectively, 42, Get On Up, and Marshall.) In death, Boseman has become almost mythic. His hometown of Anderson, South Carolina was quick to start building a statue of him. The final tweet on his Twitter account, breaking the news of his passing in late August of 2020, stands as the most liked in history, pushing Barack Obama to a distant second.

Boseman earned that mystique. Upon his passing, untold stories of his kindness flooded the internet. Some of those good deeds he did in public. When he won the Best Hero for Black Panther at the MTV Movie Awards, he gave the trophy to James Shaw, Jr., who had stopped a near-shooting at a Tennessee Waffle House. “Receiving an award for playing a superhero is amazing,” he said, “but it’s even greater to acknowledge the heroes that we have in real life.”

But many of those deeds were private and didn’t come to the public eye until after his death. One such story involved him being approached by a young, aspiring actor. Boseman spoke with him for over a half-hour, giving him advice on how to navigate Hollywood as a black actor, even buying him plays that had inspired him at his age.

Boseman knew all too well about Hollywood’s long history of putting black actors in boxes, that only a few, if any, have ever been handed the keys to the city. As his star rose, he didn’t quiet down. He spoke up, as when he was promoting Marshall in 2017:

“There was a period of time where it was Sidney Poitier is the guy. And very often, people will come to me or some of the other guys that are doing well right now and they say, ‘They’re going to pass the torch to you.’ And I don’t think that’s right, because it’s possible for there to be a Chris Pine, or a Chris Evans and Chris O’Donnell and a Chris Hemsworth and all the other Chrises, but it can only be one of us at a time? That is part of what’s wrong.”

Boseman became famous for delivering impassioned speeches that encouraged others to try and effect change in the industry. When speaking at his alma mater, the historically black Howard University, in 2018, he described the difficulties he faced when he “dared to challenge the system that dared to relegate us to victims and stereotypes with no clear historical background, no hopes or talents.” At the 2019 SAG Awards, he didn’t hold back either:

“We all know what it’s like to be told that there is not a place for you to be featured, yet you are young, gifted, and black. We know what it’s like to be told there’s not a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for to be featured on … And that is what we went to work with everyday … we knew not that we would be around during award season or that it would make a billion dollars, but we knew that we had something special that we wanted to give the world.”

For Boseman it wasn’t enough to be famous, to be considered a great actor. Like those that preceded him, he wanted to help make it easier for other black performers to make a mark on the business and on the culture. He fought to make sure Black Panther wasn’t whitewashed, stricken of its blackness, its African-ness. Marvel pushed back when he insisted that T’Challa and his fellow Wakandans spoke with an accent inspired by Xhosa, one of the official languages of Zimbabwe and South Africa. They worried, he told The Hollywood Reporter, that that might be “too much for an audience to take.” But he held his ground. “It felt to me like a deal-breaker,” he said. “I was like, ‘No, this is such an important factor that if we lose this right now, what else are we gonna throw away for the sake of making people feel comfortable?”

That’s why Black Panther resonated — because it didn’t soften the blow. And that’s why its impact could be felt immediately. The day after it hit theaters, Boseman was at an NBA game, where he gave Indiana Pacers star Victor Oladipo a Black Panther mask. Oladipo put it on and, in the guise of T’Challa himself, proceeded to perform a slam dunk. At that moment it felt like black culture was fully at the center of the culture. You could see it in videos of black moviegoers going to screenings in African garb. And you could see it in heartwarming videos of kids, who got to see themselves onscreen, who had a superhero who looked like them.

Boseman was the star of Black Panther, but he made sure it wasn’t the Chadwick Boseman Show. He surrounded himself with many great black actors from his generation: Letitia Wright, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Winston Duke, and more. There was the older guard, too: Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker — actors who paved the way for Boseman and for Black Panther. Boseman was a most generous actor. He didn’t hog the spotlight. He made room for others to shine alongside him, and he was at his best when he was playing against others who were as talented as he was. If he was making it, he was bringing everyone along with him.

That Boseman kept his illness under wraps, hiding his struggles with pancreatic cancer even as he made strenuous action films, was a natural extension of that generosity. On one hand, he apparently thought he could beat it and be ready for Black Panther 2. On the other, he wanted to be an example of strength, of grace and humility. In retrospect, you can see the signs. He cryptically alluded to his cancer battles to the press more than once.

Perhaps his malady motivated him to get in touch with younger fans fighting their own illnesses. After Boseman’s death, it was revealed that he’d visited terminally ill children in New Zealand. Then there was the time he broke down during a Black Panther interview, talking about two kids with whom he’d been in touch and who’d recently passed away from cancer. When Boseman himself passed on, a father of one of those children shared a video Boseman had sent them.

One of the most gutting examples of Boseman’s generosity was a video from 2019, when he presented Denzel Washington with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Boseman told a story: When he was young and not particularly moneyed, he was one of a number of students at Howard who received a generous grant to attend a midsummer acting program at Oxford University. Some of that money, he later learned, came from Denzel Washington.

“Imagine receiving the letter that your tuition for that summer was paid for and that your benefactor was none other than the dopest actor on the planet,” Boseman told the crowd. He then got very serious. And as the normally cucumber cool Washington visibly held back tears, Boseman paid tribute to an industry legend whose generosity changed his life.

“An offering from a sage and a king is more than silver and gold. It is a seed of hope, a bud of faith. There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington. And not just because of me, but my whole cast, that generation, stands on your shoulders. The daily battles won, the thousand territories gained, the many sacrifices you made for the culture on film sets of your career, the things you refused to compromise along the way, lay the blueprints for us to follow. So now let he who has watered be watered. Let he who has given be given to.”

No doubt Boseman was hoping one day he’d be holding back tears as a younger actor said something similar to him. Perhaps that Jimmy Fallon video, the one of him surprising fans, was his way of getting that honor prematurely — of seeing his own funeral, to hear what people said about him, much like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn perched in the church rafters. At the time, only a select few knew what it really meant to him to hear fans sing his praises to his face. But hopefully he knew, in his final moments, that he would be forever remembered as someone who not only gave but who inspired young actors to do the same.

As the split between James Harden and the Houston Rockets becomes more likely, a new story from Tim McMahon at ESPN highlights all the ways the franchise has been “complicit” in making Harden the “boss of the organization.”

Now, with Harden on the outs, the Rockets’ dysfunction and the way they have seemingly kowtowed to Harden is coming back to bite them.

McMahon describes how Harden would use the threat of a trade demand to get what he wanted and then leverage that control into complete manipulation of the team’s schedule and style during the season. This grated especially on Russell Westbrook, who has long led teammates through accountability and companionship rather than unearned superiority.

More from the ESPN story:

Houston’s casual culture appalled Westbrook. In Oklahoma City, despite the fact that he enjoyed the same sort of superstar privileges as Harden has had in Houston, the Thunder operated with the discipline of a military unit under Westbrook’s watch. The Rockets were a stark contrast, especially last season under D’Antoni, who was never known as a disciplinarian and who was a lame duck in the last year of his contract after extension negotiations infamously fizzled twice over the summer.

Westbrook didn’t tolerate tardiness. With the Rockets, scheduled departure times were treated as mere suggestions by Harden and others.

“Nothing ever starts on time,” a former Rockets staffer said. “The plane is always late. The bus is never on time. … It’s just an organized AAU team.”

The Rockets’ culture was not only compromised by Harden often being tardy or disorganized, but also his desire to make the Rockets’ schedule a rolling party across the country. Harden, according to this report, would impose an extra night or two onto Houston’s travel if that allowed the team to spend more time in a place like Phoenix or Los Angeles. If they were within a quick trip of Las Vegas, Harden would take a private flight to party there as well, the report shows.

Altogether, it certainly paints a picture of a place that a hard worker like Westbrook or Chris Paul could have struggled, and helps show why during several big moments along this franchise’s recent history, they have appeared unfocused.

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is tackling a reboot of the ’80s comedy classic Revenge of the Nerds, which is already taking great pains to avoid the more problematic moments from the original. The reboot for 20th Century will reportedly star The Lucas Brothers, who will also serve as writers for the project that plans to explore what the heck being a nerd even means today. Via Variety:

The upcoming version won’t be a remake of the 1984 comedy, which hasn’t aged all that well and has been criticized in recent years for depictions of rape. Instead, the contemporary reimagining will pontificate about today’s nerd culture and what even constitutes a geek in the 21st century.

The most problematic scene in question involves Robert Carradine’s Lewis wearing a Darth Vader costume to trick Julia Montgomery’s Betty into thinking he’s her boyfriend Stan who she thinks she’s about to have sex with. When she finds out it’s Lewis, she’s pleasantly surprised despite the act very clearly being sexual assault. Unfortunately, that kind of scene didn’t feel out of place in an ’80s sex comedy, but during a 2019 oral history of the movie, Revenge of the Nerds writer Steve Zacharias voiced his regrets and directly refers to the questionable encounter as “the rape scene.”

“I regret that,” Zacharias told GQ. “I’ve written a play for the musical and I eliminated the rape scene. I made it that Betty was thrown off the cheerleader squad because she flunked trigonometry and Lewis teaches her trigonometry and then before the rape scene he reveals who he is and she wants to have sex with him.”

Hopefully, MacFarlane has better luck after Fox Atomic pulled the plug on a Nerds reboot in 2006 that would’ve starred Adrian Brody. Yup, you read that right.

(Via Variety)

After making his television debut on The Tonight Show earlier this year, Jack Harlow returns to close out the year, way more successful and with his debut album in tow. In the months since his first appearance, Harlow was featured on XXL‘s 2020 Freshman cover, went No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the “What’s Poppin” remix, and appeared on the 2020 BET Hip-Hop Awards alongside Chika, Polo G, and Rapsody. Last night, he graced the set of Fallon’s show with a pair of pre-recorded performances forming a medley of album cut “Rendezvous” and single “Way Out.”

In the first half, Harlow performs the nostalgic “Rendezvous” from his childhood bedroom (or a passable likeness thereof), decorated with rap posters including the cover of his album, That’s What They All Say. In the second, the scene shifts to the floor of a circus tent, highlighting the parallel change in his situation from dreaming about rap stardom to joining the big show. As he raps “Way Out,” dancers contort and pose behind him, giving the performance the air of more elaborate staging and further underlining how impressive his come-up has been.

Watch Jack Harlow’s Tonight Show performance above.

That’s What They All Say is out now on Atlantic Records. Get it here.

This essay appears as part of the 2020 Uproxx Music Critics Poll.

When Chloe and Halle Bailey were signed to Beyoncé’s Parkwood management company in 2015 after going viral with YouTube covers of her songs, many were quick to assume the Atlanta-born sisters would be stuck in the superstar’s shadow. There’s something to be said about how rising white female singers are embraced when taken under a legend’s wing. But when it comes to Black singers, like Chloe x Halle, there’s unsolicited tension forced on them, as if there is supposed to be some kind of competition with their music elders. Well, Chloe x Halle fought against that stereotype with admirable grace — and it’s all thanks to their sophomore album, June’s Ungodly Hour.

The duo made their debut with 2018’s The Kids Are Alright, which bloomed with a DIY approach (Chloe produced 11 of the 16 tracks) to their idea of alternative R&B. The album’s major theme is finding themselves through adolescence, and their humility led to onlookers infantilizing the singers. We clearly missed the warning on “Grown” (which also served as the theme song for ABC’s Grown-ish): “Watch out, world, I’m grown now / It’s about to go down.” Chloe x Halle simply aren’t cute, “around-the-way” girls who like to play acoustic guitar. They are young ladies (now 22 and 20 years of age, respectively) who are stepping into their womanhood, and Ungodly Hour laid down the path for them to strut.

The album is a major step-up from The Kids Are Alright, where the singers take notes from Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad formula and get naughty but not disingenuous. The first thing that stands out is the Parental Advisory sticker (OMG, they’re actually cursing?!), almost as if to tell naysayers: “We’ve arrived, bitches!”

“A lot of people think of us as little perfect angels that don’t have any problems, and that’s not true,” Chloe told Billboard earlier this month. “We really wanted to show the imperfect side of us on this project. We have fallen in love, fallen out of love, had our hearts broken. We’re still learning to love our insecurities. That’s what this album symbolizes for us: ‘Will you love me at the ungodly hour?’”

And we love every minute of that hour, which captures the multi-faceted nature of Black women. Yes, we might be scorned from time to time. But that’s not the stereotypical crown we like to carry. We can be beautifully vulnerable, so seethingly bitter as we pick up broken heart pieces, completely self-assured and independent to the point that it frightens people. The end result is pure sophistication, with Chloe refining her production skills while allowing new (but quite established) collaborators to help shape the duo’s vision.

Ungodly Hour opener “Forgive Me” fuses slinky R&B with a heavy trap bass as the ladies snarl at an ex-flame (“You must got me f*cked up”), and the album shows off harmonies as polished as Destiny’s Child on “Don’t Make It Harder On Me.” They display angelic charm on the empowering “Baby Girl” while being caught up as the other woman on the dramatic “Wonder What She Thinks of Me.” “Tipsy” is a devilish wink (“If you lose a life, that’s not on me”), they call upon millennial house gods Disclosure for the shimmering title track, and “Busy Boy” channels the sass of Y2K-era TLC. And of course, there is the standout “Do It”: with master songwriter Victoria Monét and hitmaker Scott Storch on the credits, the glittery single would’ve taken over the clubs if only it weren’t for the current state of the world. But it still became the duo’s biggest single to date, sliding onto the Hot 100 for their first entry, with a No. 63 peak.

Chloe x Halle used the ongoing pandemic to their advantage and rose as the Princesses Of Quarantine. Stationed in their Los Angeles home for most of the year, the sisters used their backyard, creative director Andrew Makadsi, and an incredible imagination to create some of 2020’s strongest at-home performances. With their now-infamous tennis court playing a supporting role, they held a dance battle against themselves at the BET Awards, dove under the sea way ahead of Halle’s debut as Ariel in 2021’s live-action The Little Mermaid on the TODAY show, paid homage to the Spice Girls at the GLAAD Awards, and embraced Afrofuturism for the MTV VMAs. With a year that has been heavily weighed down with grief, artists like Chloe x Halle have not only provided everlasting moments of joy but also showed just how flexible R&B remains by switching up their sound with each performance. Despite being burdened with questions on if they’ll ever go solo, the sisters firmly stand by each other’s side. Chloe’s smoldering vocals and Halle’s featherlight and jazzy tone, combined with both of their pristine ears for melodies, create soulful magic.

Many people love to toss in the “R&B Is Dead!” card in the industry’s monopoly game every few months, but it’s growing more and more evident that those folks simply aren’t paying attention. R&B is the star of 2020 — and it’s the ladies who are running the game. Along with Chloe x Halle’s three Grammy nods for Ungodly Hour, their counterpart Jhené Aiko scored the ultimate Big Four accolade (Album Of The Year for Chilombo). Brandy’s B7 proved that women could slide into a comeback era with ease, and Summer Walker’s Over It is among the Top 20 of the Billboard 200 year-end album chart. Two years ago, Chloe x Halle proclaimed the R&B kids will always be alright — a statement that hasn’t let up since.

Of all the classic holiday songs, the one that rocks the most is by the father of rock and roll: Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run.” That makes it the perfect Christmas tune for Foo Fighters to cover, so that’s just what they’ve done as an Amazon Music-exclusive single. Dave Grohl and company delivered an appropriately amped-up version of the single, which has the band performing it at an aggressive, breakneck pace.

Grohl has been as active this holiday season as just about anybody. In addition to the Chuck Berry cover, he and Greg Kurstin are in the midst of a series of covers of songs by Jewish artists in honor of Hanukkah. Grohl previously described the series, “With all the mishegas of 2020, @GregKurstin & I were kibbitzing about how we could make Hannukah extra-special this year. Festival of Lights?! How about a festival of tasty LICKS! So hold on to your tuchuses… we’ve got something special coming for your shayna punims. L’chaim!!” So far, Grohl and Kurstin have busted out covers of tunes by Beastie Boys, Drake, Peaches, Bob Dylan, and Elastica, and there are still some performances yet to come.

Listen to Foo Fighters cover Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run” above.

In a move that would feel right at home in the dark superhero comedy, Barack Obama exploded heads on Tuesday when he revealed that he’s a fan of The Boys. While sitting down for an interview with Entertainment Weekly, the former president cited the show as one of his faves whenever he needed to take a break from writing his new book, The Promised Land. Obama enjoyed watching the creative team “turn superhero conventions on their heads to lay bare issues of race, capitalism, and the distorting effects of corporate power and mass media.”

While learning Obama likes to kick back with a raunchy episode of The Boys is a “holy sh*t” moment by itself, the team behind the show were understandably flipping out once they saw the news. Homelander actor Antony Starr seemed to particularly enjoy this latest bit of presidential trivia, and he had some fun imagining Obama watching the extremely NSFW Love Sausage scene from season two.

“Well well well… I wonder what he thought of mother’s milk vs the “snake”…?” Starr wrote on Instagram. “Somehow I can’t imagine him sipping wine and watching that #obama #obamawatchestheboys!? WTF #homelanderobamadreamteam”

Not content with geeking out over the news on Instagram, Starr took his excitement (and snark) to Twitter where he shared some more reactions to Obama’s love of The Boys.

Showrunner Eric Kripke also flipped out over Obama being a fan and was soon joined by stars Jack Quaid and Laz Alonso.

As for the other stars, Entertainment Weekly reports that Erin Moriarty, Aya Cash, and Jesse Usher all posted less permanent reactions in their Instagram Stories, and they’re definitely blown away that the 44th president has been streaming the show. “President Obama has spoken!!! GAME CHANGER!” Usher wrote.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

I have been watching Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad for years now, and I read nearly every interview, and I listen to nearly every podcast. In that time, I’ve rarely (if ever) heard anyone express anything more than appreciation for the opportunities, for the exceptional writing, and for the exceptional talent both in front of and behind the camera. Everyone who works on Better Call Saul and Breaking Bad speaks about what a dream job it is, and how much they love working for Vince Gilligan and Peter Gould, who are likewise nothing but complimentary of the people who work for them.

All of that can be 100 percent true, but so is this: it’s really hard work. We often hear about how meticulous Gilligan and Gould are, and we know that the writers spend six months in the writer’s room for every season, that every prop is considered, and that every line out of every actor’s mouth is important to the story. What we don’t often consider, however, is the human toll that level of exactitude can take.

It’s why it came almost as a welcome surprise when Bob Odenkirk — speaking, again, to Michael Rosenbaum on the Inside You podcast — talked at length about how challenging the work on Better Call Saul is, and how tense and stressful (especially) the first season was to shoot.

“We rehearse the sh*t out of [the show],” Odenkirk explained to Rosenbaum, adding that he, Rhea Seehorn, and Patrick Fabian all live in a house together, in part to make it easier to rehearse together even when they’re not on set (Michael Mando and Jonathan Banks often come by, as well). They begin rehearsal on a script as soon as they receive it, often up to two weeks in advance, in part because they have to shoot an entire 50-55 page script in 9 days. Seehorn and Odenkirk, in particular, also tend to have a ton of lines to memorize — one-to-two-page speeches, at times — and because every word matters, they have to memorize the scripts exactly as they are written. “We need to learn our lines because they matter. There may be some weird little thing buried in the middle of your lines that looks like nothing but a year later” it resurfaces in another episode.

Odenkirk went on to explain that he hit a wall in the first season, in part because he was in nearly every scene of every episode. “It was just a f**kload of words.” He explained that, in that first season, the producers kept extending his work hours, over and over, and he didn’t know until around the fifth or sixth episode that he had the authority to say no until they asked him to stay and work through the weekend. When he finally put his foot down and asked an assistant director if he was allowed to say no, the director said to him, “I think the crew [which was also overworked] would appreciate it if you said no.” He realized then that the whole crew probably thought he was an “a**hole” for making them work such long hours, though he had no idea at the time that he could control it.

After that, Odenkirk says, he got on top of it. Even still, by the end of that first season, he was completely exhausted. “I was all f**ked up. All f**ked up, and I didn’t even realize it. I got home,” he said, “and my wife and daughter had picked out an awesome f**king dog that I love so much and I just spent the next four months, all day, every day, hanging out with that dog. It saved me. I had no idea what dogs can do for you. She was like a medicine for the degree of stress and tension that I made my way through.”

As rewarding as it must be to make one of the best show on television, it is clearly challenging and exhausting. Someone give Odenkirk (and Rhea Seehorn) an Emmy already. They clearly deserve it.

Source: Inside You with MIchael Rosenbaum

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 lot of people hate Jack Harlow. Ever since his single “What’s Poppin?” began tearing up the airwaves and landing primo playlist placements, the 22-year-old rapper from Louisville, Kentucky has taken a lot of flak. Before the song’s success, critics were content to ignore the kid, and his 2019 mixtape Confetti was mostly passed over as conventional pop-rap fare, although DJ Booth’s Donna-Claire Chesman was warmer toward the lightweight, easygoing attempt at a breakout moment than most.

But for some reason, it’s “cool” to undercut Harlow, despite his proficiency at the technical aspects of rapping. He addresses as much on his debut album, That’s What They All Say, summing up the general disposition toward him on a song shouting out his NBA player buddy “Tyler Herro”: “The ones that hate me the most look just like me / You tell me what that means.” It may be a reductive, dismissive explanation, but even if it’s slightly insufficient, the pithy line belies a lot of broader questions under surface. Along with the project as a whole, it suggests that perhaps he’s owed some grace — and the opportunity to grow into the artistic promise he flashes on this breezy debut.

What is it about Jack Harlow that makes him so easy to hate? He’s funny, likable, and humble. As demonstrated on “What’s Poppin,” “Tyler Herro,” and the Big Sean-featuring “Way Out,” he rides the beat well, and while his storyline isn’t super compelling compared to what we’ve been conditioned to expect from the more critically hailed rappers of today, his punchlines are clever enough to induce a smirk and his music overall is inoffensive enough that you can let the songs ride out without scrambling for the skip button. He even exhibits the wherewithal to engage with the culture on a deeper level than you might expect from first glance, employing 1500 Or Nothin as executive producers and soliciting soulful sounds from the usually rowdy JetsonMadeIt — the beatmaker responsible for the tinkling keys and thunking drums of his breakout hit.

He smartly taps into a variety of subgenres across the project to showcase his versatility and willingness to immerse himself not just in hip-hop, but in the genres that inform the one he chooses to take part in. But the benefit of the doubt doesn’t come easy — especially in a year in which the highlights were the projects that delivered the expected levels of trauma porn and the truly innovative ones were largely overlooked. And while innovation isn’t the most distinctive characteristic of Harlow’s debut, it’s a good album, if it isn’t a great one. Maybe that’s why it seems perfectly calculated to piss off the aggressively predictable hipster rap criticism complex.

While his “Tyer Herro” opening quip does come pretty close to hitting the nail on the head, he doesn’t seem all that interested in pulling on that particular thread. Maybe he should have. If nothing else, it’d make his detractors a little less comfortable in their smug superiority to question why a collection of fun, not entirely wholesome party raps — the entire basis of the genre, to be sure — are somehow less worthy than the stern-faced, crime-riddled tales of damaged childhoods and neighborhood degradation that mark the critical faves. It’s probably not quite Jack’s place to bring it up, but hip-hop should have room for lighthearted boasts as much as it does grimdark narratives of midday shootouts and omnipresent paranoia presented by “opps.”

But maybe a conversation about white folks’ place in hip-hop isn’t the one he wants to have so he steers clear, content to rest in his relatively cozy position in the continuum of white boy rappers, confident in the knowledge that a reevaluation is likely no further than an FX sitcom away. Maybe he remembers how previous generations of critics praised the Beasties to the high heavens, despite them being no deeper than a swell soundtrack to a Friday night fraternity party, or how they similarly dismissed Mac Miller, only to hail his breakout mixtape K.I.D.S. a decade later with 20/20 hindsight. Yesterday’s frat rapper is the next decade’s misunderstood genius, only it’s not quite sophisticated enough to give one that credit in the moment.

Yet Harlow shows flashes of those forebearers here, with a twist of something like sophistication on tracks like “Same Guy,” which brings in a gospel choir — an eye-opening choice for an artist as young as he is. Static Major appears along with Bryson Tiller on “Love Is Dro,” paying homage to an artist decades removed from Harlow’s rise to stardom, while “Baxter Avenue” is earnest and biographical, even if it isn’t rife with exciting elements like drug sales and home invasions. Complaints that he doesn’t quite dig deeper than empty flexes about materialistic purchases and his sexual prowess apply just as much to the hustler rappers that dominate year-end lists. If there are any shortcomings to That’s What They All Say, they are in his somewhat tasteless choices of guest artists — Chris Brown and Tory Lanez are disappointing inclusions after a year that highlighted the importance of protecting Black women. While Jack would likely still be thrashed whether he condemned them or enabled them, neither contribute enough to their respective appearances that he absolutely needs them here.

However, Harlow holds his own alongside Big Sean, Bryson Tiller, EST Gee, and Lil Baby, proving to be personable enough to justify the buzz and the breakout and demonstrating good artistic instincts that could flourish into the same sort of musical experimentation that defined the last few Miller projects, given time and leeway. If nothing else, That’s What They All Say is a solid request for those elements to the equation, an argument for Harlow’s inclusion into the cool white boy discussion, and a reason to ease up on the verbal abuse. Give the kid a chance and he might just surprise you.

That’s What They All Say is out now on Atlantic Records. Get it here.

Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

It’s been over a year since Roddy Ricch released his acclaimed and successful debut album, Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial. In that time, the album’s track “The Box” went on to become a surprise hit, spending eleven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Such is the staying power of the song that Roddy was able to extend its run one more time, performing it as the musical guest on last night’s episode of The Late Late Show With James Corden.

Noting that the Compton rapper had received six Grammy nominations for the 2021 awards for “The Box” and “Rockstar” with DaBaby, Corden conducted his interview with Roddy via a giant screen on his set. The two discussed Roddy’s “first Christmas in charge,” leading to a minor meltdown from the host when Roddy revealed he somehow got his hands on “eight PS5s.” Corden also gave Roddy the opportunity to elaborate on his hometown gift giveaway, in which Roddy took over the Compton airport to give away thousands of toys.

Then Roddy launched into his pre-recorded performance, which included a live band, a stripped-down performance in a living room set, and silhouettes of his boys dancing to the song on the wall. Roddy previously performed the song on The Tonight Show and at the 2020 BET Awards.

Watch Roddy’s Late Late Show appearance above.