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Moses Sumney recently released his adventurous new Grae album, which nobody would correctly categorize as “pop.” That doesn’t mean Sumney couldn’t handle pop well, though, as he has proven his chops in that department: Today, he shared a cover of Ariana Grande’s smash hit “Thank U, Next” as an Amazon Music exclusive.

Of course, Sumney put his own spin on the track, and it’s profoundly unlike the original. The track begins minimally, with Sumney’s heavily AutoTuned vocals over drums and a soulful bass line. He works plucked strings, synths, and other instrumentation into the mix as he works through the track, which ends up being a wildly and pleasingly different take on the source material.

As for Grande, she recently commemorated the two-year anniversary of Sweetener and ranked her favorite songs from the album. She also jokingly teased the title to her Thank U, Next follow-up, which will probably not be named “was holdin my tiddies up with the other arm thats cropped out.” Grande has had plenty to celebrate lately, as she recently passed Rihanna to become the most-streamed female artist in Spotify history. Rihanna responded by asking for new Rihanna music, saying, “now can rihanna pls drop her album so she can rightfully snatch this back and fill my ears again please or…”

Listen to Sumney cover “Thank U, Next” above.

After rising to fame on YouTube as a high schooler, 21-year-old Conan Gray signed a major-label deal with Republic and shared his heartfelt debut album Kid Krow in March. Gray has followed-up his album’s release with a tender visual alongside his lovelorn ballad, “Heather.”

Directed by Dillon Matthew and Gray himself, the video is an intimate visualization of the singer fluidly moving between feminine and masculine beauty standards. Gray opened up about his inspiration around the track, saying he penned the song as a reflection on a crush he had in high school who didn’t love him back:

“when i was in high school, i had a crush on the same one person all four years. but that one person did not love me back, instead my crush liked a girl named heather. heather was gentle and beautiful, inside and out. she was warm like a summer day, and had so many friends. she was soft and so easily lovable– everything i am not. the heather video is my way of becoming all of the things that i envy about heather. i would’ve done anything to be like her. wear the right pretty clothes and act the right effortless way. reject all the things that made me who i am. anything to be loved back by the person i loved. anything to be their first choice. the slow transformation throughout the video was made to represent the feminine and masculine traits i constantly switched between in order to become who i knew my crush would like. somebody soft and sweet. somebody like heather.”

Watch Gray’s “Heather” video above and revisit Uproxx’s interview with the singer here.

Kid Krow is out now via Republic. Get it here.

In 2017, Jay-Z paid homage to all the rappers who inspired him throughout his legendary career. He mentioned the “usuals” like Notorious BIG, Rakim, and Big Daddy Kane — but he also showed love to a slew of unheralded MCs like Showbiz & AG, Nice and Smooth, Digable Planets, Sean Price, and others, reflecting that he’ll always be a rap nerd at heart.

A month ago, rising Buffalo MC Che Noir told DJBooth that, “I treat every song like Jay-Z gon’ listen to it.” He may have already heard her work with 38 Spesh and Apollo Brown, including the recently released As God Intended. He’s lent support to the “underground” rap scene in myriad ways, from signing Griselda’s Westside Gunn and Benny The Butcher to Roc Nation management to recently making Mach Hommy’s Mach’s Hard Lemonade album a Tidal exclusive.

There are a million reasons to think that Jay-Z wouldn’t be tapped into the underground: he’s a busy family man with constant entrepreneurial exploits. He’s expressed a penchant for fine art, yachting, and other caviar class hobbies which would conceivably take time out from music discovery. His infamous “you only get half a bar” diss on “Takeover” implied that there are some MCs that aren’t selling enough to be on his radar.

But of course, he would’ve had to hear the obscure disses to know they weren’t worth his time. Jay-Z doesn’t miss a thing. The perception that people hold of Jay-Z being above and beyond the fray misunderstands the reality that before all of his other bonafides, he’s an MC at heart.

There’s a YouTube clip of pioneering DJ Mr. Magic promoting Jay-Z performing at a rap showcase in 1986, 10 years before his Reasonable Doubt debut. There’s also footage of him battling on a street corner in 1993. He used to rap with a swift, multi-syllabic style, then adjusted it to reflect changing times toward the mid-’90s. All these details paint the picture of someone with an immense passion for their craft. Anyone who’s listened to Jay-Z discuss his life knows that if he didn’t genuinely love rap, it would have been easy for him to leave it behind. He even noted that friends in his “other career” used to clown rappers because rap wasn’t a lucrative industry — but he stuck at it.

Understanding Jay’s passion for the craft makes it easier to contextualize his excitement to hear dope rap anywhere from a rap battle to an “underground” MC. His longtime engineer Guru told Complex that “Jay-Z has probably watched every SMACK DVD, Grind Time battle, freestyle, and every battle that has ever been on YouTube. If you ever battle in any situation that has any remote type of promotion, he’s seen it.”

The Battle rap scene is regarded by traditionalists as the purest form of rap, with no gimmicks, marketing, or “hook” to the festivities. For the most part, the best rapper prevails. Battlers have taken what used to be a street corner/barbershop affair and turned it into performance art, fusing poetic devices like wordplay, (extended) metaphor, imagery, and assonance with charismatic showmanship. The craftsmanship and veritable theory of battle-rap holds power for lyrics junkies like Drake, Lupe Fiasco, Joe Budden, Lloyd Banks — and Jay-Z.

His 2012 “y’all gon get this work” tweet, referencing Loaded Lux’s classic performance against Calicoe, is collectively regarded by the Battle rap culture as a watershed moment that helped boost the sport’s visibility. The battle scene is still on the fringes of pop culture, but battlers can be assured they have one high-powered spectator.

Guru also noted that “Jay watches these dudes freestyle on YouTube. Like, if you’re a battle MC from Philly, you may not have been in a battle but you just get on YouTube and start rapping, Jay watches those religiously. It’s just the weirdest thing in the world but he really loves it to the point where I’m like, ‘Yo, turn it off.’”

Rap commentator Taxstone once quipped that even mailmen can rap in Philly, reflecting a culturally shared sentiment that Philly is “home of the spitters.” It’s no surprise that when Jay-Z and the rest of the Roc brain trust wanted to expand their label, they opted to do so with a Philly crew. First, he sought Philly legends Major Figgas, but it didn’t work it. It did with State Property. The team of raw, gritty spitters led by Beanie Sigel and Freeway wasn’t a glove fit with a label that had previously been so flossy, but Jay-Z loved their hard-charging style and respected their pens.

Listen to the way he raves at their rhymes during their classic Hot 97 freestyle, or the way he subtly gives Freeway his approval by noting, “keep going,” on the classic “What We Do.” He probably could have sold more by signing artists that were more commercially palatable (though they had), but he may not have had more fun doing it. For someone who loved bars, and wanted to stay connected to that raw feel, it didn’t get much better than collaborating with prime State Property.

In a way, his proximity to Philly’s Meek Mill is a continuation of that dynamic — as was his signing of Griselda, a group of uncompromising spitters who bring your favorite crime flicks to life over immersive production. Their big 3, Conway, Westside Gunn, and Benny The Butcher have been rapping for over a decade but picked up steam in the mid-to-late 2010s with a sound that harkened to beloved acts like The Lox, State Property, and Wu-Tang.

Jay was all in the mix with those artists, which apparently made him a big fan of Griselda. Benny reflected on meeting Jay and being told that the rap vet “sees a lot of the old Roc-A-Fella in us.” That’s probably a big reason why he signed Westside Gunn and Benny. He’s served as an OG figure for the crew according to Benny, being “a guide,” and also letting Conway know that emotion is okay after overseeing a stirring performance of “The Cow.”

Mach Hommy is a former Griselda collaborator who doesn’t exactly harken to prime Roc-A-Fella, but he’s also garnered Jay-Z’s respect. One can look at Jay-Z’s prolonged admiration for Jay Electronica, who he actually did a collaboration album with, and figure that he has a love for Mach’s abstract, esoteric lyricism. The two took an ominous picture in November of 2019, which sparked rumors of a signing that never manifested. Still, Mach maintains proximity to the Roc, releasing his latest album exclusively on Tidal. Both Mach and Jay are so reclusive that there isn’t much public insight into their relationship, but it likely stemmed from mutual respect for bars.

Jay-Z, like Diddy, is a rap figure who accrued great wealth and commercial stature but has always shown love to the purest form of the art. Whether it was a simple tweet, signing State Property, or attempting to sign revered spitters like the late Sean Price, he’s always looked to make a way for those of his ilk. The lyricist fraternity is like the mafia. They were once the most dominant force in rap before modernization pushed them to the fringes. But luckily for many of them, Jay-Z is the Godfather of the scene, and he tries to make sure everybody eats.

Netflix is preparing to release a French film called Cuties (Mignonnes) on September 9, and people are not pleased about how part of the film’s U.S.-based marketing (specifically, a poster) appeared to be sexualizing young girls. The film, which won a directing award at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival, holds an 82% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes and has been generally well received by critics for handling delicate subject matter (an 11-year-old girl joins a neighbor’s dance clique that runs counter to the protagonist’s family values) in a deft way.

As Deadline reports, a backlash occurred over the unquestionably different tone of the French and American posters promoting the movie. Here’s a peek at the two images: (1) The French poster kinda makes it look like the girls went shopping; (2) The U.S. version looks, well, like an invitation for a demographic that shouldn’t be courted.

Netflix has addressed the matter with an apology. “We’re deeply sorry for the inappropriate artwork that we used for Cuties,” the streamer tweeted. “It was not OK, nor was it representative of this French film which premiered at Sundance. We’ve now updated the pictures and description.”

Here is the film’s synopsis from the Sundance website:

Eleven-year-old Amy lives with her mom, Mariam, and younger brother, awaiting her father to rejoin the family from Senegal. Amy is fascinated by disobedient neighbor Angelica’s free-spirited dance clique, a group that stands in sharp contrast to stoic Mariam’s deeply held traditional values. Undeterred by the girls’ initial brutal dismissal and eager to escape her family’s simmering dysfunction, Amy, through an ignited awareness of her burgeoning femininity, propels the group to enthusiastically embrace an increasingly sensual dance routine, sparking the girls’ hope to twerk their way to stardom at a local dance contest.

With a keen eye for and an understanding of adolescent behavior, Maïmouna Doucouré — whose short film Maman(s) won the Short Film International Fiction Jury Award at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival — focuses tightly on her rowdy protagonists, crafting a spirited film that nimbly depicts the tweens’ youthful energy and vulnerabilities while exploring their fumbling eagerness to be identified as sexualized. Fathia Youssouf captivates as Amy, shifting like a chameleon between the different identities her character is juggling and deftly anchoring the film’s immensely watchable, vivacious young cast.

As one can gather, “twerk”-ing is involved in this movie, and Cuties definitely looks like a film that should have been marketed with the utmost care (in order to avoid the suggested appearance of impropriety). The poster with the booty-popping poses was not a great look, and Netflix has since updated the description on the film’s streaming page. The old description read, “Amy, 11, becomes fascinated with a twerking dance crew. Hoping to join them, she starts to explore her femininity, defying her family’s traditions.” In the updated version, the word “twerking” has disappeared:

Netflix’s trailer appears below. While the dancing could still be interpreted as suggestive, and there’s a scene where the dance group is wearing the same outfits from the posters while performing a routine, the trailer looks less salacious than the poster. However, the YouTube comments are predictably full of backlash.

In a shocking (yet not entirely shocking) development, former presidential advisor Steve Bannon has been arrested for multiple counts of fraud. The man who played a key role in Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and the early days of his administration, is accused of launching a fundraiser that was meant to help build the president’s border wall between the United States and Mexico, but instead, Bannon and his co-conspirators allegedly lined their own pockets. Via CNN:

The four men are indicted for allegedly using hundreds of thousands of dollars donated to an online crowdfunding campaign called We Build the Wall for personal expenses, among other things. Bannon and another defendant, Brian Kolfage, promised donors that the campaign, which ultimately raised more than $25 million, was “a volunteer organization” and that “100% of the funds raised…will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose,” according to the indictment unsealed Thursday.

However, folks on Twitter have been having a field day with the circumstances surrounding Bannon’s arrest. According to reports, the United States Postal Inspection Service slapped the cuffs on Bannon while he was on his boat in Connecticut, which is especially ironic given the president’s recent efforts to dismantle the postal service going into the 2020 election.

You can see the reactions below:

Despite the fact that Bannon isn’t the first person connected to the Trump campaign and/or administration who’s been indicted on federal charges, this recent scandal does have a uniquely 2020 flavor to it. In what other year could the architect of Donald Trump’s presidency get arrested by the exact government service Trump is trying to destroy? The odds are incredible, but this last tweet pretty much sums it up.

(Via CNN)

Dua Lipa announced the release date of her upcoming Club Future Nostalgia remix album earlier this month, and now she has unveiled more details about the project. Today, she shared the full tracklist, and there are some great names involved.

Interestingly, a lot of songs go beyond the scope of a traditional remix and lean into mash-up territory, as a lot of the tracks contain samples from other songs, by artists like Jamiroquai, Stevie Nicks, and Neneh Cherry. As far as the remixes, Mark Ronson, Yaeji, and Hot Chip’s Joe Goddard all chipped in. There are also features from Gwen Stefani and Blackpink.

Dua says of the album, “The last few months have been surreal. I’ve watched you all dance in your homes and on your Zoom parties to Future Nostalgia like you were in the club with me. It brought so much joy to my days spent at home, even though I would’ve much rather been playing these songs live for you all on the road. During this time, I decided to take the party up a notch with the incomparable The Blessed Madonna, who secretly helped me to craft the mixtape that would become Club Future Nostalgia. We invited some friends and legends to join in on the fun with us.”

Check out the Club Future Nostalgia tracklist below.

1. “Future Nostalgia” (Joe Goddard Remix)
2. “Cool” (Jayda G Remix)
3. “Good In Bed” (Gen Hoshino Remix and Zach Witness Remix)
Sample: Neneh Cherry – “Buffalo Stance”
Sample: Art Of Noise – “Moments In Love”
4. “Pretty Please” (Midland Refix)
5. “Pretty Please” (Masters At Work Remix)
Sample: Cajmere – “Coffee Pot” (Percolator mix)
6. “Boys Will Be Boys” (Zach Witness Remix)
Sample: Lyn Collins – “Think (About It)”
7. “Love Again” (Horse Meat Disco Remix)
8. “Break My Heart / Jamiroquai Cosmic Girl”
Sample: Jamiroquai – “Cosmic Girl” (Dimitri From Paris Dubwize Remix)
9. “Levitating (feat. Madonna and Missy Elliott)” (The Blessed Madonna Remix)
10. “Hallucinate” (Mr Fingers deep stripped mix)
Sample: Gwen Stefani – “Hollaback Girl”
Sample: Barbara Mason – “Another Man”
11. “Hallucinate” (Paul Woolford Extended Remix)
Sample: Larry Heard Presents Mr. White – “The Sun Can’t Compare”
12. “Love Is Religion” (The Blessed Madonna Remix)
13. “Don’t Start Now” (Yaeji Remix)
Sample: Gaz – “Sing Sing”
Sample: Fingers Inc & Robert Owens – “Bring Down The Walls”
14. “Physical (feat. Gwen Stefani)” (Mark Ronson Remix)
15. “Kiss And Make Up” (feat. BLACKPINK)
16. “That Kind Of Woman” (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
Sample: Stevie Nicks – “Stand Back” Acapella
17. “Break My Heart” (Moodymann Remix)

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

Longtime Today show weatherman Al Roker has had an eventful 2020. He loves working from home so much that, early on during the pandemic, his wife had to ask him to stop wearing sweatpants. Over the summer, he also released another book, this one a series of stories from his life called You Look So Much Better in Person. More recently, however, Al Roker has had to undergo shoulder replacement surgery, from which he is still recovering.

Before his surgery, however, Roker was making the publicity rounds to promote his book while sharing stories from his life (not unlike the story about the time he pooped his pants at the White House). On Justin Long’s Life Is Short podcast, he told a story about an incident early in his career when he was confronted with racism at work. In this case, the racist incident occurred live on air.

“I had an anchorman who was quote unquote “mugged” by an older homeless black guy,” Roker said on the podcast. “Everyone knew him, and he was fairly harmless. And [the anchorman] wasn’t really mugged. This guy came up and swatted him on the back of the head with a rolled-up newspaper, which is pretty much the same thing that most of us who worked with him wanted to do.”

“Anyway,” Roker continued, “he was married to his co-anchor. And they were about to introduce me live [to do the weather], and he’s about to start, and he says [to Roker], “I don’t know if you know this, but last night, one of ‘your people’ attacked me.’”

Roker was stunned into silence. “Time kind of stands still” after an objectively awful remark like that, Roker said. “And I wonder, do I go after him? Do I ignore him?

“So, I just looked at him, and I said, ‘Doug, why would a weatherman attack you?’”

Well played, Al Roker.

Not only was it a “brilliant deflection” to a racist remark, as Justin Long noted, but according to Roker, “the switchboard lit up. People were livid, and he was suspended and then eventually fired.”

It sounds a lot like what happened to a certain baseball announcer who aired homophobic thoughts this week. Roker, meanwhile, expanded on the incident recently with Yahoo News:

“It was one of those things — it happened, there’s no point in dwelling on it and I kept moving. Listen, there are people who have suffered far greater insults, slights and biases that it’s hard for them to move on because it affected their careers. Doug didn’t affect my career, so I was able to keep moving. But there are others that have had to suffer far greater things. It taught me there are degrees in ways in which you react. I think I reacted in the way it needed to be.”

Interestingly, however, the man who made the racist remark, the late Doug Adair, was a friend of Al Roker, who served as his best man when he married his co-anchor.

Source: Life is Short with Justin Long

Jessie Ware released her shimmering, disco-inspired record What’s Your Pleasure? earlier this year, but that’s not all the singer has been up to. Along with being an acclaimed musician, Ware is the host of food-centric podcast with her mother titled Table Manners. Each episode, Ware and her mom invites a different celebrity to try a homemade dish and chat about their relationship with food. In the podcast’s most recent episode, the two tapped “You’re Beautiful” musician James Blunt, and he shared a story about the time he got scurvy.

Recounting the story, Blunt said he was at a Bristol college in the ’90s studying engineering and sociology when he decided to take on the all-meat diet:

“On the engineering side, there were 170 men and only three girls. And then on the sociology side of things, there were 170 girls and only three boys. All the girls were vegetarian or vegans. So out of principle, I decided I’d become a carnivore and just lived on mince, some chicken, maybe some mayonnaise. And it took me about six to eight weeks to get very very unhealthy and see a doctor who then said, ‘I think you’ve got the symptoms of scurvy.’ [The doctor] said you are really lacking in vitamin C so I took it upon myself to drink a liter of orange juice every night — then I nearly developed acid reflux. So, as you can see, food is not necessarily my forte.”

Listen to Blunt’s full interview on Table Manners With Jessie Ware above.

What’s Your Pleasure? is out now via EMI. Get it here.

Selena Gomez has had a busy year so far. Not only did the singer release her comeback record Rare, but Gomez broke ground on her own beauty company and secured a brand new show on HBO Max. Titled Selena + Chef, Gomez’s new series invites famous chefs into her home kitchen to serve up some creative recipes. Along with featuring seasoned chefs, one of Gomez’s episodes had a cameo by a high-profile star.

In the fourth episode of Selena + Chef, Gomez worked with Korean American chef Roy Choi to learn how to cook his specialty Korean breakfast tacos. Gomez was so proud of the results, she interrupted the episode to show off the tacos to her “best friend,” Taylor Swift. Swift promptly answered the call and was impressed by Gomez’s dish. “If you don’t send me the recipe, we’re gonna have words,” Swift joked. “I want to be served that.”

Ahead of the show’s premiere, Gomez explained how her cooking show came to be: “I’ve always been very vocal about my love of food. I think I’ve been asked hundreds of times in interviews if I had another career, what would I do and I’ve answered that it would be fun to be a chef. I definitely don’t have formal training though! Like many of us while being home I find myself cooking more and experimenting in the kitchen.”

Watch a clip of Taylor Swift’s Selena + Chef cameo above.

See the full Selena + Chef episode on HBO Max here.

Griselda Records rappers Armani Caesar, Benny The Butcher, Conway The Machine, and Westside Gunn all took to Instagram Wednesday to honor their late producer, DJ Shay who recently passed away. DJ Shay, born Demetrius Chawton Robinson, was a Buffalo-based DJ and producer who worked closely with the local crew in the 2000s, producing and recording with Benny and Conway, calling them “the two best rappers in the world.” Gunn noted in his post that Shay had been diagnosed with COVID-19. He was 48 years old.

The official Griselda Records Instagram also posted a tribute to the late producer. “Your legacy & your impact will transcend the boundaries of time,” it reads. You were the earliest conduit to this thing of ours. LEGENDS NEVER DIE! You are immortalized in our hearts. Rest up King! We love you. And sending out the most sincere condolences to your family during these times.”

Meanwhile, each of Griselda’s main rappers’ posts reflect their personalities to a tee. Gunn’s is wordy and expansive, Conway’s is direct and to-the-point, and Benny’s is typically short and stoic. Keisha Plum, the Buffalo poet who often works with Griselda on their projects, also shared a post, as did teeh page for Benny’s separate label, Black Soprano Family, and fellow Buffalo standout Che Noir. You can see all their tributes below.