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While the sports calendar has been wonky in 2020, sneaker releases have kept up, with everyone from Damian Lillard to Derrick Rose either releasing or announcing new concepts just in the past few weeks. The shoe companies haven’t slowed down either, and the latest and greatest innovation from adidas is its Futurenatural technology, which the company announced Thursday and hopes will “mirror an athlete’s speed and quick change of direction.”

Futurenatural will combine the midsole technology of Boosts with the light cushioning of Lightstrike with the goal of making adidas sneakers comfortable and responsive to acceleration and change of direction.

More specifically, adidas developed the Futurenatural concept by looking over foot scans of thousands of hoopers worldwide to develop a mold that more “closely represents the shape of the actual human foot.” The bottom of the shoe uses an “athlete data-informed traction pattern” to give better grip on the court for sudden cuts and movements.

As a hat tip to the biggest adidas athlete whose game mirrors these concepts on the court, James Harden will be the first NBA player to have the Futurenatural technology in his sneakers.

The Harden Vol. 5 will be the first sneaker to have Futurenatural integrated into it, adidas announced in a press release. The Harden 5 will go on sale in “early 2021.”

Ever since rappers started wearing heavy metal bands’ tour T-shirts, it was only a matter of time before someone found a way to finally bring the two genres back together. That someone has arrived and his name is Mario Judah. Born in 1999 and cutting an imposing, bulky figure, Judah hails from Atlanta — just like many of hip-hop’s most innovative genre-benders — and saw his profile rise significantly after the release of his song “Die Very Rough” — just four months after releasing his first song “Crush.” Now he’s receiving name-checks from some of hip-hop’s most influential figures including happy-go-lucky rapper Father, go-to video director Cole Bennett, and weird Twitter pioneer turned stand-up comic and part-time MC, Zack Fox.

With just those two songs, though, Judah perfectly embodied the platonic ideal of a rapper who does metal… or maybe a metal singer who somehow found his way to rap via the melodic, scene-inspired work of Juice WRLD and Trippie Redd. In the video for “Crush,” Judah, a husky giant with Fuschia hair, raccoon eye makeup, and a Tupac T-shirt, threatens to “crush all of my enemies” over a buzzing guitar riff with thundering 808s straight out of the gothic trap pioneered by Metro Boomin and Southside. The drums are the key to the thing, I think; where previous attempts to fuse the dark instincts of metal probably overly focused on incorporating DJ scratches and corny backward cap-wearing lead singers to the mix, Judah understands that the driver of hip-hop is the rhythm.

And what a rhythm it is. It’s trap, to be sure, but it’s also just similar enough to the backlines of bands like Pantera (a Mario Judah inspiration) that it could pass as a reasonable facsimile of the sound with the right temp adjustments. Judah sings with a throaty vibrato straight from his bowels, with just enough grit to evoke the “I’m possessed” disposition of its influences. The video is full of the horrorshow imagery that permeates the metal world as well; bloody skulls, plague masks, and a menacing Joker mask worn by an eerily posing figure brandishing a knife a la The Strangers make everything suitably creepy. The video has racked up nearly 800,000 views to date, but it was its follow-up that helped bring Judah to his current level of notoriety.

“Die Very Rough” has over 10 million views on YouTube since September — and continues racking them up by the thousands every day. This one is again a threatening display of murderous intent, with Genius contributors describing it as “a marvel of medieval rap” and comparing his flow to a Disney villain’s showstopping theme song. It’s an accurate summation of his approach: Throw Scar from The Lion King into a blender with Slipknot (substitute with Avenged Sevenfold if no Slipknot is available), throw in TM88’s drum kit along with a half-gallon of lean, and hit puree. Lyrically, Judah compares himself to a big dog and a lion, while the listener is “the prey that is hiding.” Finding the bridge point between the two poles — the hyperviolent bravado that marks their typical subject matter — and incorporating the most fun parts of each allows Judah to reside in a tenuous harmony directly in the middle. Whether or not he can keep it up for a full project is anyone’s guess, but we’ll soon have a chance to find out.

The project, according to Judah’s recent run of increasingly obstreperous promotional tweets, is to be titled Whole Lotta Red. But wait, isn’t that the title of the long-awaited Playboi Carti follow-up to 2018’s Die Lit that was supposed to have released this year? Yes. Yes, it is. That’s the genius. By tying his release to a higher-profile one impatient fans have kept near the top of social trends, Judah outs himself as a disciple of Young Thug’s eye-and-ear-grabbing promotional ethics. In 2016, Thugger trolled Lil Wayne with the title of his debut commercial mixtape, Barter 6, after Wayne repeatedly delayed the fifth installment of his Tha Carter album series. Capitalizing on the vacuum created by the album’s absence, Thug was able to supplant Weezy atop fans’ wish lists and assert himself as rap’s hot new star.

Judah’s employed the same strategy, threatening to drop Carti’s album himself after assigning a deadline of December 6. While he didn’t release a full project, he did share “Bih Yah,” his third standalone single which departed from his own established style by hijacking Carti’s signature squeaky-voiced, non-sequitur-spewing flow over a beat that could make a gamer prepare for a boss fight. He accompanied the track with yet another ultimatum: Either Carti puts out Whole Lotta Red on December 11 or Judah will. Since it seems unlikely the major label-constrained Carti will be able to meet his demands, Mario Judah just might get exactly what he wants: a cadre of ravenous fans eagerly awaiting his appearance on the proverbial Wrestlemania ramp. Bah Gawd, that’s Judah’s music, and this rap-rock disruptor has designs on taking over the game — even if he has to go through his own heroes to do it.

In the past year, a number of prominent hip-hop icons have revealed some weirdly anti-scientific and counterproductive thinking. GZA got dragged for subscribing to the Flat Earth conspiracy theory, while Ice Cube tweeted anti-Semitic memes and championed his Contract With Black America with the outgoing Trump administration. Truly 2020 has been a whole mess. But since we apparently couldn’t get out of this dumpster fire of a year without losing all of our faves, pioneering producer Pete Rock just had to make this contribution to the flames:

That’s right. Soul Brother Number One, Mr. “T.R.O.Y.” himself is an anti-vaxxer. Because of course, he is. Unfortunately for Pete, this is also the year hip-hop heads reached their limit with the genre’s legends espousing dumb thinking and conspiracy theories. Fed-up fans immediately got their engines revving to serve up a reality check for the skeptical soul sample master, explaining that vaccines keep people from getting sick — you know, like our teachers taught us in third grade.

It isn’t like Pete Rock is the only one. Nas has repeatedly expressed anti-vax views in his music but it rhymes, so most folks can just ignore it (nobody really listens to lyrics anyway). But social media is the one realm where these ideas can be challenged in real-time, so it’s no wonder Pete caught the wrath for misusing his platform — just like plenty of other stars have over the past few months. Let’s just hope he can learn from this mistake the easy way and not like Doja Cat, who mocked coronavirus only to come down with a bad case herself weeks later. We still need hip-hop’s elder statesmen around — but maybe they should stick to recalling hip-hop history for posterity and leave the science to the actual scientists.

It’s been a few years since we’ve had a new Radiohead album, but Thom Yorke dropped a solo effort, Anima, just last year. Jon Hopkins was a fan of that, and now he has shared his rendition of a highlight from that record, “Dawn Chorus.”

It’s a relatively straightforward recording, led by just Hopkins’ piano and some synth embellishments. Hopkins says of the song and his version of it, which he recorded in one take on a piano he’s had since childhood:

“I felt such bliss the first time I heard this piece — it seemed so mysterious and hypnotic, oblique but warm. I thought there was so much beauty in that chord sequence that there was room to explore it on the piano and see what grew from it. One day in early April when everything was particularly quiet and surreal outside, I went into my studio for the first time in weeks and ended up recording the whole thing in one take. I left it very raw and upfront, with just some sub bass and vocal drones in the background. The whole thing was done in a day and was a very cathartic experience.”

Hopkins is a couple years removed from his most recent album, as Singularity dropped in 2018.

Listen to Hopkins’ cover of “Dawn Chorus” above.

It remains to be seen whether the Houston Rockets will acquiesce to James Harden’s trade request any time soon, but if they do, one potential landing spot is the Brooklyn Nets. Harden reportedly wants to go to Brooklyn, where he would theoretically team up with Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving and create one heck of an offensive juggernaut.

A new report by Shams Charania of The Athletic, though, indicates that it might be hard for that to come to fruition. Charania reports that the Rockets — which have been clear that they want a whole lot back for Harden — aren’t particularly interested in a lot of what the Nets would offer up. The thing that would change that, though, is if they include one of their two stars.

The Rockets don’t have an urgency to move Harden and the franchise expects a mammoth package for the six-time All-NBA first team performer: along the lines of a young star and tremendous draft assets. Sources said the Rockets have no interest in a Nets offer, unless it would include either Kevin Durant or Kyrie Irving.

Now, this would almost certainly be a non-starter from Brooklyn’s point of view, because breaking up the Durant-Irving pairing before the former ever got a chance to take the floor seems completely out of the realm of possibility. This does, however, hammer home that Houston is negotiating from a place of strength for now, as Harden is under contract for two more years and they are under no obligation to make a move. Whether this changes as the year begins and the market for his services does something the Rockets don’t expect is one thing, but if they are steadfast that a deal centered around guys like Caris LeVert and Jarrett Allen and a whole lot of picks isn’t enough, it seems hard to imagine that Harden will get to Brooklyn via a trade between the two teams.

After Phoebe Bridgers declared on Twitter that Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the “best phoebe bridge,” the singer tapped her to direct a visual alongside her Punisher track “Savior Complex.” Following up the cinematic black-and-white visual, Bridgers shares some behind-the-scenes footage of the shoot where she talks working with the acclaimed director and jokes about how she hopes they get married so that they can have the “exact same name.”

The “Savior Complex” visual was shot in Europe, which meant that Bridgers had to learn how to drive on the left side of the road. It was also the first time she’s ever filmed a video somewhere other than LA, “so this is definitely a change of scenery,” she noted.

Speaking about meeting Waller-Bridge, the singer described her as an “angel.” She added: “I hope we get to get married so that we can have the exact same name.”

Elsewhere in the behind-the-scenes footage, Bridgers also described working with the director:

“So I had sent Phoebe the whole record in an email and and I was like, ‘I’d love to pick this, this, or this song’ and none of them were ‘Savior Complex.’ And she was like, ‘No. We’re going to do ‘Savior Complex.’ […] Phoebe called me and was like, ‘Okay bare with me. You’re fired as the leading lady of this music video. I have a better leading lady.’ And then she sent me a picture of a Chihuahua. So that’s how the news was delivered.”

Watch the “Savior Complex” behind-the-scenes footage above.

Punisher is out now via Dead Oceans. Get it here.

During a discussion on whether he consciously writes “Nolan-esque” characters like Leonardo DiCaprio’s Cobb in Inception or Robert Pattinson’s Neil in Tenet, Christopher Nolan waded into the claims that Tom Hardy based his version of Bane on The Dark Knight Rises director. While Nolan denies that he intentionally tries to infuse himself into his characters, he is aware that it can happen without him even knowing it. Especially when actors like Hardy get involved. Here’s what Nolan told the Happy Sad Confused podcast after admitting that he’s been “teased” about the Bane connection in the past. Via Comic Book:

I think there is a slightly mischievous tendency on the part of actors to see in the filmmakers where as a writer, particularly writer/directors, were able to put a bit of themselves into something and then build on that. Tom Hardy maintains that Bane is somehow based on me, but in Tom’s mind there’s some very complex interweaving of impulses and influences that somehow I have a voice in. I think it’s certainly not conscious on my part.

Setting aside whether or not The Dark Knight Rises version of Bane is a send-up of Nolan’s real life personality, the director did reveal the secret to Hardy’s iconic performance: it’s all in the eyebrow. According to Nolan, while working out the costume design for Bane’s mask, Hardy had one simple request: “He sort of put his finger up to his temple and his eyebrow and said ‘Can you give me this to play with? Let people see this,’” the director recalled. “Sure enough you see there in the film, this kind of Brando-esque brow, expressing all kinds of just monstrous things.”

(Via Happy Sad Confused)

There are new music rollouts and then there is a Westside Boogie new music rollout, which twists the “bonkers” knob all the way up, then yanks it right off. On the way to his latest release, the Compton rapper has been building a hysterical, WWE-worthy backstory, complete with bullying fans and capping it off with a kidnapping, all in the interest of getting listeners involved in the recording process.

Earlier this week, Boogie posted a screenshot of his DMs to Instagram, excerpting an exchange with a fan using the handle @fortknoxlive. “We been waiting long enough…” menaces Mr. Knox. “If you don’t drop something THIS WEEK we gonna have a problem.” While Boogie dismisses the overly familiar messaging, fans in the comments echoed the sentiment, hungry for new tunes since it’s been over a year since a Boogie solo release — 2019’s Everything’s For Sale.

However, Boogie’s next post shows the plot thickening as a simple chore becomes a scene right out of a thriller. As the Compton rapper takes out the trash, a van pulls up and the occupant shoves him into the back before driving away.

In the latest post, the kidnapper is revealed to be @fortknoxlive himself, who ties Boogie to a chair in his garage to force him to record — and release — some new music. Across the bottom of the screen is a phone number for fans to text song ideas to help get him free.

As far as album promotion goes, this one is pretty immaculate. By incorporating fans’ ideas, Boogie gives them ownership of the project and helps make the experience more interactive — more investment equals a bigger payoff for both sides. And coming up with such a hilarious, narrative marketing scheme shows how invested he is himself — and gives us an entertaining and unique way to build hype for the new project. Let’s hope he’s got another few chapters of this thing plotted out because he’s raising the bar and I, for one, am all in. Even Boogie’s label boss, Eminem, is down.

If you too are impatient for new Boogie tunes, check out his features with Courtney Bell, Guapdad 4000, Reason, and LVRN’s Christmas album to hold you over.

As fictional chess prodigy Beth Harmon in Netflix’s The Queen’s Gambit, Anya Taylor-Joy gives a powerhouse performance. Every steely stare, lowering of eyes, and crossing of arms is in the furtherance of battle, and it’s a damn intimidating sight to witness. Beth’s addicted to many things, including winning, and it’s a blast to watch her knock chess bozos out of the way on her way to becoming a straight-up master.

Every bit of Godless director Scott Frank’s limited series feels like a choreographed (yet grueling) dance, from Beth’s maneuverings all the way down to every costuming and set detail. Both aspects almost feel like additional characters on the show, and that’s why this featurette (which dives into those parts of the production) turns out to be a lot more interesting than most “extras” offered up by studios. Seeing Anya Taylor-Joy speak in an enormous blonde wig (that would look at home on Dolly Parton) doesn’t hurt, either. I wonder where that decision to have her do so came from, but it’s probably best not to dwell on it too much. Instead, we should focus on the actual wigs discussed in this featurette, along with the additional insight about Beth’s inner circle and those who impacted her most during her underdog rise to world champion.

This isn’t an extra episode, but it’s the closest thing we’ll see to one, and that’s definitely for the best. I don’t want to know if Beth succumbed once again to pills and alcohol after becoming a champion. I don’t want to hear that she ended up marrying Benny (and having his hat-babies) and eventually fell out with Jolene. Speaking of which Moses Ingram’s character gets a fair chunk of time here to talk about Jolene’s formative relationship with Beth. I’m so happy that the narrative went back to their enduring friendship, which is quite unlike the fleeting army of chess dudes who attempted to woo Beth. This featurette preserves everything about The Queen’s Gambit and immortalizes the process of zeroing in on what it costs to become a champion.

The Queen’s Gambit is available for streaming on Netflix.

Classic rock revivalists Greta Van Fleet generated plenty of positive attention with their debut album, 2018’s Anthem Of The Peaceful Army. Now the gears are turning on their next album, The Battle At Garden’s Gate, which is set to drop in 2021. Today, they’ve shared a preview of it with a new video for “Age Of Machine.”

The clip for the Zeppelin-esque song shows off artistic imagery, including the destruction of a marble statue. Press materials note that the clip is intentionally open-ended: “The video addresses the crumbling beauty around us, but leaves the final significance to the viewer — whether that narrative be focused on climate, industrialism, intimacy, self confidence, tradition, humanity itself, or otherwise. The only clear concept in the video is that the band chooses life.”

The band recently told Rolling Stone of the song, “Self-liberation, or this idea of letting go, or transcending. Is there an afterlife? I think I would rather cease to exist. Taking a big sleep or something. Your body goes back to Earth, and there grows a tree, and the tree gives off oxygen. That’s just it: We’re tripping the light fantastic. We’re cosmic.”

They also said of the album, “There are definitely Biblical references. Not just in the title, but throughout the entire album… This is a world with the ancient civilizations in it, just like our own parallel universe, really. It’s an analogy. Each song is a theme. A magnification of different cultures and civilizations inside of this world searching for some kind of salvation or enlightenment.”

Watch the “Age Of Machine” video above.

The Battle At Garden’s Gate is out 4/16/2021 via Republic. Pre-order it here.