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You’d be forgiven for wondering where the real Vic Mensa was for the past few years. After the release of his critically hailed but commercially underperforming debut album The Autobiography, it may have seemed like the 2014 XXL Freshman had gone a little off the rails, appearing more often on TMZ than on streaming services’ curated playlists and veering off into his rock-centric side project 93Punx. He even got into a little hot water over his 2018 BET Hip-Hop Awards Cypher verse, calling out the recently deceased XXXTentacion as a domestic abuser.

But this New Music Friday, longtime Vic Mensa fans received a gift they’d been waiting on for years. V Tape, Vic’s first all-rap project since 2018’s Hooligans EP, finds the outspoken Chicago rapper running back to rap with a vengeance, showing flashes of the hungry young artist from 2013’s Innanetape, polished by years of experience and maturity. Featuring brazen tracks like “Vendetta” and “Dirt On My Name” alongside vulnerable confessionals such as “XGames” and “Rebirth,” Vic addresses, well, all the criticisms and missteps of the last few years, putting everything on front street with a newfound clarity and lightness that comes with age and surviving life’s storms. It’s his best work in years. Welcome back, Vic.

Watch Vic Mensa’s video for EP single “Machiavelli” featuring Eryn Allen Kane above.

V Tape is out now via Roc Nation Records. Get it here.

The Rundown is a weekly column that highlights some of the biggest, weirdest, and most notable events of the week in entertainment. The number of items could vary, as could the subject matter. It will not always make a ton of sense. Some items might not even be about entertainment, to be honest, or from this week. The important thing is that it’s Friday, and we are here to have some fun.

ITEM NUMBER ONE — I love it

Lovecraft Country is very good. That’s the first order of business here, in part because — as our Kimberly Ricci discussed in her review — it is true and worth noting as often as possible, and in part because I’m going to be doing some spoiling of this week’s episode in a second, and I’d like to give you every reasonable opportunity and motivation to go watch it before I do that. There are not a lot of shows on anywhere right now, let alone good ones. Get in there.

The series premiere introduced us to the main characters and sent them on a journey to Massachusetts, through various Jim Crow era sundown towns where they deal with racist shop owners and even more racist cops. It’s tense at times and ominous at others and just about as well-done as you can do any of it, which should not be a huge surprise, as it comes from producer Jordan Peele, a man who has pretty much nailed the “horrors of racial injustice crossed with the horrors of, like, horror” genre. The whole thing builds to a scary scene in the woods where the cops have the three main characters lying face down on the ground with guns pointed at them. Things look bleak and bad. There is no immediately obvious method of escape.

Until!

SURPRISE MONSTER ATTACK.

A couple of things worth touching on here:

• Please consider this your periodic reminder that nothing good has ever happened in the woods
• It is always fun to see bad guys get eaten by monsters

This last thing is the big one. There’s something so freeing about it, so cathartic. Is it nice to see a villain get brought to justice through the regular channels and found guilty by a jury of his peers before being locked away? Sure. Do I, in general, in real life, support the extrajudicial murder of bad people as a means of punishment for their actions? No, I do not. But do I absolutely love to see a villain get chomped in half or swallowed whole by a mythical hellbeast with teeth the size of steak knives? Ladies and gentlemen, I do.

I’m not sure I can even explain it. There’s something very clean about it all, something that eliminates the moral messiness by splattering a literal mess of organs across the screen. Like, I can’t be blamed for the gruesome death of the evil party here, and I don’t have to do a mental lambada about the dicey issues surrounding a fictional human getting bloody revenge on his enemies. It’s a monster! A soulless bloodthirsty demon! It’s supposed to do this! It’s not even making a moral judgment about anything. It’s just chomping the nearest meat-adjacent thing, which happens to be a blackhearted goon I wanted to see punished anyway. My hands are clean! Let’s not think too deeply about it!

It’s one of the many reasons a movie like Jurassic Park is so much fun. You can set the good guys on a mission of survival that gives the audience heart palpitations, but you can also just have a big old dinosaur eat a creep or two. Bingo bango, problem solved. One less issue on our heroes’ plates. More movies and television shows should adopt surprise monster attacks. The West Wing would have been way more fun if a pterodactyl swooped in a flew off with whoever was giving President Jed trouble some week. Just once. Just one pterodactyl attack out of nowhere to keep everyone honest. I say this as someone who, for a period of months a few years back, repeatedly advocated for a bear to maul Pete Campbell from Mad Men, despite the fact that he worked inside a skyscraper in Manhattan. I’m as consistent as I am completely out of control.

So, yes, Lovecraft Country has me hooked so far. It’s a stunning visual accomplishment and a very cool bit of storytelling and a bunch of racist cops got mangled by a surprise monster attack in the woods. I can’t ask for very much more.

ITEM NUMBER TWO — Bahwuhbbuh bayyyeth

It is and quite possibly always will be the position of this column that Maya Rudolph’s voiceover work as Connie the Hormone Monster in Big Mouth, and specifically her pronunciation of the two word phrase “bubble bath,” is award-worthy. Any award. Emmy, Pulitzer, Peabody, Nobel, Presidential Medal of Freedom, one of those really tall plastic trophies they give to kids who win a soapbox derby, whatever. It just needs to be recognized by someone, somewhere. Preferably someone holding a trophy. Although I suppose I will settle for “a late-night host who has a very popular podcast.” Which brings us to Rudolph’s appearance on Conan O’Brien’s podcast.

Conan spent a solid chunk of the interview praising her voice work and digging into her process, because he is a professional. And he got the scoop on the “bubble bath” thing, a three-syllable phrase that she makes an entire meal out of, dragging the words out and hitting each B with a percussive puffed cheek breathiness that is fun but almost impossible to imitate. Listen to the queen, then read this explanation: “I remember sort of doing it and I remember sort of being egged on to… can you find more? Can you actually find more? And we were trying to make — I think maybe initially because she’s meant to be a hormone monster we were trying to make her voice a roller coaster. Just like a roller coaster of emotions. So it was sort of that low, high, low dipping stuff.”

Rudolph went on to explain the actual mouth work required to make the sounds in question. She says the phrase “should slowly bubble out of the back of your throat,” which sounds very unhealthy, like an acid reflux situation. Or, I suppose, you can read it to mean the voice comes from a deep, possibly possessed location in her soul, one that simmers and bubbles up when she accesses it, causing it to escape her lips almost involuntarily. This kind of makes sense, actually. Listen to her say it. Listen to it a hundred times. You could do worse on a Friday.

ITEM NUMBER THREE — Into the Bat-verse

Well guess what: Ben Affleck is playing Batman again. Kind of. He is kind of playing Batman again. Not in a full-on Bat movie, or in another one where his chin and Henry Cavill’s chin destroy a city. He’s appearing as Batman in the upcoming movie about The Flash, which sounds very Spider-verse-y.

The Flash movie, which is planned for release in summer 2022, will feature fast-moving hyper-hero Barry Allen, played by Ezra Miller, breaking the bonds of physics to crash into various parallel dimensions, where he’ll encounter slightly different versions of DC’s classic heroes.

Again, very Spider-verse-y. Which is fine. And which I point out mostly to remind everyone how good Into the Spider-verse is. And which leads us to the more interesting part of this, the part that doesn’t get the big splashy headlines like “AFFLECK TO RETURN AS BATMAN” but is fascinating to me.

Affleck won’t be the only Batman making a comeback; a few more of the alternate-dimension heroes who turn up in the Flash movie will be figures we’ve seen before. Michael Keaton’s Batman from the 1989 Tim Burton film is also set to appear in what [director Andy] Muschietti said was a “substantial” part.

I have no idea how this will or is supposed to work and, in the short term, I do not want to know. I want to live inside the possibilities. I want to imagine a 68-year-old Michael Keaton in the Batsuit just whupping on bad guys and quipping some Keaton-y quips. Michael Keaton rules. Ben Affleck is fine. I still think he should be focusing on my as-yet-unwritten sequel to The Accountant — The Accountant II: In The Red — but I can deal with this if it gets Michael Keaton back in the Batmobile for a few minutes. I’m not unreasonable.

ITEM NUMBER FOUR — Lord in heaven help me, I cannot stop looking at these pictures of Jim Belushi on his weed farm

Jim Belushi has a new reality show on Discovery. It’s called Growing Belushi and it takes place on his Oregon weed farm and, yes, this is where you’re probably discovering that longtime sitcom star Jim Belushi is now an Oregon weed magnate. The world is full of wonder and surprises, all the time. I say this not to poke fun at Belushi, who appears to be a full-on legitimate advocate for the healing powers of cannabis. He’s given a number of interviews about it all as the show gets rolling and in many of them he discusses his brother John and how legalized medical marijuana could have altered the tragic history there.

Belushi mentions his brother several times — John’s wife, Judy, appears in the series, along with Aykroyd — and says he thinks Belushi’s drug use, and eventual overdose death in 1982, was partly caused by a traumatic brain injury he suffered while playing high school football.

“I saw my brother have a seizure in my house and we didn’t know what that was from,” he says. “It was from banging his head and getting his bell rung. That’s what I believe. If Johnny was a pothead, he’d be alive today.

So that’s fine. Good, even. But I cannot be expected to focus on that when there are pictures like the one at the top of this section just floating around the internet. Look at it! Look at the hat/cigar/smirk situation happening there! I want it as a mural on the side of a building that faces a busy highway. And it’s not the only absolutely brain-curving promotional image from the show. Look at this one!

And this one!

And THIS one!

I don’t know what it is exactly about these pictures that has taken over my entire brain, but rest assured, I will be staring at them until I figure it out. I will be thinking about this quote, too…

Belushi seems to have a special bond with his plants. He names them, talks to them, plays the harmonica to them. He even has a particular playlist that involves “baby-making music” in the morning, reggae around noon and blues and funk later in the day. “And then when I harvest them, I play gospel music for them to let them know that they’re going into the light to heal,” he said.

… but mostly, I will be staring at the pictures. I want to start living my entire life with “Jim Belushi on his weed farm” energy, which is not something I ever expected to type or think at any point in my life. And yet, here we are, with another reminder that the world is always about 20-25 percent weirder than you think it can possibly be.

ITEM NUMBER FIVE — The funniest thing The Crown could do

This is the new teaser for the upcoming fourth season The Crown. The big story here is the introduction of Gillian Anderson as Margaret Thatcher and Emma Corrin as Princess Diana, and you can see Diana in her wedding dress in the clip, which has set royal-watching types ablaze with excitement. I’m very happy for them. Everyone needs a few moments of joy right now, however you get them.

The teaser does bring up my favorite Crown-related issue, though, one that I’ve brought up when discussing other projects that are based on real-life events: There is nothing stopping them from taking a hard left this season and going full-on fan-fiction. How great would that be? Three seasons of painstaking historical accuracy and then, blammo, Jason Statham shows up in a tank and tells the Queen they’re under attack from, I don’t know, aliens from another galaxy. Or they can introduce The Joker out of nowhere. Let Olivia Colman defeat a supervillain in character as the Queen of England. The only thing limiting the possibilities is your own imagination, producers of The Crown.

I would enjoy this. I would enjoy this so much. Just for the anarchy of it all. The pure, unfiltered chaos that would rush forth from the British press when they get to, let’s say, episode six of the new season and Olivia Colman picks up a rocket launcher and blasts a spaceship out of the sky. Just turn the whole thing right onto its jewel-adorned head. Do it for me. And Olivia Colman. I think she would enjoy it, too. She seems very fun.

READER MAIL

If you have questions about television, movies, food, local news, weather, or whatever you want, shoot them to me on Twitter or at [email protected] (put “RUNDOWN” in the subject line). I am the first writer to ever answer reader mail in a column. Do not look up this last part.

From Levi:

As we’ve all seen, our lives have been completely changed with the pandemic. When do you think TV and movies will catch up to the pandemic, and feature characters living in a post-COVID world? Example: Detectives having to undergo 14 day quarantine because they might’ve came in contact with someone with symptoms? Or people wearing masks in tv shows? Or, fingers crossed, the rise of lucha libra wrestling?

Levi, this is an interesting question. I have two conflicting thoughts about it:

• This is probably inevitable and will start as soon as this spring, once shows start figuring out how to work in these conditions and tell stories that feel real and relevant
• I do not want it

I don’t know. Sometimes I like it when shows lean into current events to give the audience a look at the world from a new perspective. Lately, I… have not liked it. I don’t have the space in my brain for it. There’s enough going on in there right now, overloading the machinery and frying the motherboard as it tries to process a global pandemic that has been going on for almost six months now. I’m looking for an escape. I’m looking to shut things down for 30-60 minutes at a time, to have fun, to watch nice people goof around as though the world is not on fire. It’s one of the reasons I like Ted Lasso so much.

It’s probably also why I just pitched a bazooka-toting Queen of England battling aliens and/or The Joker. We’re all doing great out here!

AND NOW, THE NEWS

To England!

A British inventor who set out to create a more environmentally friendly ice cream truck broke a Guinness World Record when the food-dispensing vehicle was declared the world’s fastest.

Okay, first of all, hell yes. I am very much on-board with any story that introduces the concept of the world’s fastest ice cream truck in its opening sentence.

Second of all, HELL YES. Tell me everything about this at once.

Guinness said Edd China broke the record for the world’s fastest ice cream truck when he took it to a top speed of 73.921 mph at Elvington Airfield in Yorkshire, England.

Wait.

Hold on.

Hollllllllllld on.

The land speed record for an ice cream truck is only 74 miles an hour? That seems… low. I know ice cream trucks are not exactly aerodynamic missiles but… I mean, 74 miles an hour? I feel like we could break this as early as next month if we really put our minds to it. I bet you could find an old ice cream truck and outfit it with NOS and crack 80, no problem. This is suddenly very important to me. I want one of us to hold the record for the world’s fastest ice cream truck. I’m so consumed by it that I appear to have skipped right over the fact that the man who currently holds the record for the fastest ice cream truck is named Edd China.

This is madness.

The inventor said his ice cream truck originally had a Mercedes Sprinter diesel engine until he used his conversion kit to make it run on electricity.

China said he is hoping to make his conversion kit publicly available in the near future to allow ice cream trucks to continue their work without polluting the air.

You cannot imagine how much I want to live in a world where a fleet of environmentally safe ice cream trucks are screaming through the streets and drifting around hairpin turns while their drivers heave sprinkle-covered cones out the window in the general direction of delighted children who hurry out of their house to watch them zoom by like it’s a NASCAR race. In a way, it’s all I’ve ever wanted.

Iggy Azalea and Tinashe — two artists bouncing back after drawn-out bouts of label drama — linked up this week to release the new single “Dance Like Nobody’s Watching.” Over a funky, uptempo bassline, the two freshly independent artists share an empowering message of carefree self-reliance. The song’s message hits even harder in light of both Iggy and Tinashe’s struggles through the past few years and independent success once they secured their artistic freedom.

Iggy, who was initially signed to T.I.’s label Grand Hustle, saw her debut album released through Def Jam, debuting at No. in 2014 after her fourth single, “Fancy” with Charli XCX, saw massive success and peaked at No. 1 on the Hot 100. However, despite the album’s success, Azalea’s follow-up album, Digital Distortion, was pushed back several times while her contract was shuffled from one subsidiary of UMG to another. Eventually, she was able to secure a release from her deal (or was dropped), establishing her own record label and signing a distribution deal with Empire to release the defiant comeback album, In My Defense. “Dance Like Nobody’s Watching” will serve as the lead single for her upcoming third studio album End Of An Era.

Meanwhile, Tinashe released her own independent album, Songs For You, in November 2019 after being released from her 2013 RCA Records contract. Although her own debut album Aquarius was one of the most solid debuts for a new female artist in years, the label was unable to define her sound, pushing for more pop-oriented records while Tinashe herself wanted to pursue the original, moody R&B sounds that garnered her fans in the first place. While the partnership produced two more albums, Nightride and Joyride, her fans celebrated her release from the label as the return of her creative control was obvious in the reception to Songs For You.

Watch the lyric video for Iggy Azalea and Tinashe’s “Dance Like Nobody’s Watching” above.

Have mercy? Doesn’t sound like it’s happening with Operation Varsity Blues.

Back in May, Lori Loughlin and husband Mossimo Giannulli pleaded guilty in the college admissions scandal, but they surely did not want to end up with prison time as a part of that deal. It was fully on the table, however, given that they pleaded guilty to the federal crimes of wire and mail fraud. There will be fines, and at least for Giannulli (Lori’s sentencing will come later today), an actual sentence of time behind bars.

As USA Today reports, U.S. District Judge Nathaniel Gorton handed Giannulli, who he described as guilty of a “breathtaking fraud,” five months in prison:

“I accept the… plea agreement negotiated by the government and Mr. Giannulli and I conclude that the agreed sentence… is sufficient but not greater than needed for punishment,” Gorton said. “There is no mystery about the outcome.”

Five months is most decidedly longer than the 14 days that Felicity Huffman received in September 2019, although that doesn’t account for any difference in offense level. In addition, the legal system was possibly feeling more generous with Huffman, given that she cooperated and struck a plea deal much earlier in the scandal’s timeline.

As mentioned above, Loughlin will appear before the court for her own sentencing on Friday afternoon. Prosecutors have recommended that she receive two months for her participation in a scheme to admit their two daughters into the University of Southern California while as faux recruits to the crew team. The prosecutors did concede that Loughlin was “less active” in the scheme than her husband, but we’ll see how strict or lenient the judge is feeling soon.

(Via USA Today)

There are 11 seasons of The X-Files, two movies, and that Simpsons episode, so the world isn’t lacking in Mulder and Scully content. But it’s still always nice to see David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson together, or in the case of the video below, “together.”

The X-Files duo — along with co-stars Mitch Pileggi (Skinner), Robert Patrick (Doggett), Annabeth Gish (Monica Reyes), unmistakable “Humbag” standout The Enigma; creator Chris Carter; writer Vince Gilligan; and director Michelle MacLaren, among others — virtually reunited to raise funds for the World Central Kitchen and provide lyrics to the show’s eerie and iconic theme song. (Anderson unfortunately doesn’t appear until the end.) There are few never-skip television theme songs; The X-Files had one of them.

Variety reports that “executive producer Frank Spotnitz’s desire to help the needy during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic saw him devise a challenge for The X-Files fans to write bespoke lyrics for the show’s instrumental theme tune. The winning tune was written by fans Jennifer Large and Rebecca McDonald.” The lyrics go:

Deep conspiracies
Unsolved mysteries
Spooky UFOs
Files that have been closed

It works much better with musical accompaniment, so crank that Mark Snow-composed instrumental (or better yet, the Pure Moods remix) and sing along.

(Via Variety)

Maluma is among the performers at this year’s MTV VMAs ceremony, and for his time in the spotlight (alongside CNCO), he wants to do something that used to be commonplace but isn’t anymore: Perform for a live audience. That’s not just wishful thinking, as he apparently has a plan to make that happen.

TMZ reports that the duo is casting “super fans” to join them for an outdoor performance at the VMAs, but precautions will be taken. The casting call notes that fans must live near New York City, bring a guest (as long as they live together), get a coronavirus test on August 23 before self-isolating with their guest until the day of the show, on August 30.

Aside from performing, Maluma also earned himself a nomination this year, as his J. Balvin collaboration “Queì Pena” is up for Best Latin. CNCO also has a pair of nominations, in Best Quarantine Performance and Best Choreography.

Meanwhile, DaBaby and Black Eyes Peas were recently added to the list of this year’s performers, so they’ll be joining Maluma, CNCO, Doja Cat, BTS, J Balvin, The Weeknd, Roddy Ricch at this year’s ceremony.

Find the full list of this year’s VMAs nominees here.

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

It’s been a busy week around the Association. The playoffs are in full swing, and the story lines have already started their usual twists and turns, as certain teams have surprised us, while others have been exactly who we expected them to be. Friday represents something of pivot point in many series, as a slate of Game 3s will reveal which teams have the upper hand in their respective matchups.

One such team is the Utah Jazz, which are currently tied 1-1 with the Denver Nuggets. In their opener earlier this week, the got a historic 57-point outburst from Donovan Mitchell, despite the losing effort, but were able to even the series in Game 2. They’ve had to do it all without Mike Conley in the lineup, who left the bubble last weekend to attend the birth of his son, Elijah.

On Wednesday, news emerged that Conley had returned to Orlando and was undergoing quarantine with the hopes of returning for Game 3 on Friday, and it now appears that he will be back in the starting lineup for his team when they tip off, according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.

Jordan Clarkson has stepped up big time for Utah in Conley’s absence, putting up 26 points, four rebounds, and three assists in their Game 2 win. But Conley was finally finding his way back to form in the eight seeding games after struggling before the hiatus. Prior to leaving Orlando, he was averaging 18 points and five assists per game, and his steady hand and postseason experience will add a needed dimension to the Jazz attack.

In the week since Nas’s offhand reference to Doja Cat in his new single “Ultra Black,” fans who perceived the line as a slight against the younger rapper have wondered whether she’ll offer a response in the form of a record of her own. While she did sarcastically remark on the lyric during a recent Instagram Live session, some still want to see her drop a bar or two about it in a song. During another Live, it seemed they might get their wish, but in typical Doja Cat fashion, the “Like That” rapper used the opportunity for more good-natured trolling instead.

“The song that I have coming out is called ‘Nas,’” she quipped. “But only if you abbreviate it. It’s three words.” She points out that the title was actually coincidental, commenting, “It’s funny, because that was before the fact. If you know what I’m talking about, you know what I’m talking about.” The song in question is the previously teased “N****s Ain’t Sh*t,” which went viral on TikTok after she played a snippet during a pre-scandal Live.

Nas’ new single riled some communities on social media — and amused others — when he referred to Doja Cat’s recent chat room controversies on “Ultra Black.” “We goin’ ultra black, unapologetically black,” he cracks. “The opposite of Doja Cat.” The line perpetuates a social media narrative that Doja Cat is “anti-Black” because of an old song on which she used a slur to come to grips with her complicated feelings about being mixed. The song’s title, “Dindu Nuffin,” is a slur used online to make light of Black people’s fraught relationship with the police, while the song itself resurfaced as Doja was being accused of participating in racist chats. However, Doja has since apologized for the track and denied visiting chat rooms frequented by white supremacists.

Check out Doja’s “N.A.S.” tease above.

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.

With as many rap reality competitions as there have been, you might think the hip-hop world is littered with their products. Even a cursory glimpse at the Billboard charts, streaming playlists, and most popular Instagram pages would disabuse you of that notion. For all its love of spectacle and drama, the rap game has traditionally been unkind to even the winners of most reality shows that purport to boast the next big things in rap. Going all the way back to the first, Dr. Dre and Eminem’s Showtime series The Next Episode, competition winners like Spitfiya, Da Band, Astro, Shamrock, Rece Steele, and the handful of 106 & Park seven-week champions have come and gone, some eking out modest careers behind-the-scenes or under the radar, but most getting lost in the shuffle.

So it may come as a surprise that the show with perhaps the cheesiest gimmick yet would produce the first bonafide rap superstar, Mulatto. With all due respect to D Smoke, the inaugural winner of Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow, it’s the former teen queen of Lifetime and Jermaine Dupri’s The Rap Game who glowed up to become honest-to-goodness rap royalty. In the past two weeks, the 21-year-old from Atlanta, Georgia completed an immaculate rollout of her major label debut, Queen Of Da Souf, with a perfectly promoted lead single featuring one of the godfather’s of the city’s sound, Gucci Mane. Then, in the weeks since “Muwop” was released, she was featured in both the most-watched music video of the last decade and on XXL‘s hotly-contested highly coveted Freshman Class cover.

In 2016, as the first season finale of The Rap Game revealed her as its inaugural champion, it might not have seemed possible to anyone watching. But in Mulatto’s mind, it was only a matter of time. Not only did she eventually turn down the deal offered at the end of the show’s first run — to which she alludes on Queen Of Da Souf standout “No Hook” — she committed herself to a four-year independent grind that eventually paid dividends with the arrival of her noteworthy major debut. Filled with swaggering, smart lines and speaker knocking beats, Queen Of Da Souf isn’t just the culmination of all that hard work, it’s also a validation of every move she’s made since first featuring on Lifetime under the moniker Miss Mulatto.

“From the jump, I was like, ‘I know I’m here to say,’” she evangelizes over the phone. “‘Nobody can convince me otherwise. I know what God put me on this earth to do, and I know my purpose.’ I don’t believe in that blackballing or burning bridges. You keep it real and you work hard and you pray hard, it’s going to happen to you, and I’m living proof of that.” However, she also knew why she had to turn down the proffered deal in order to achieve her vision of her own success. “It wasn’t something that I was comfortable doing yet,” she recalls. “I was 16 when we filmed the show, I was 17 by the time it aired. I’m a baby at 17. I don’t want to get myself into no record deal to where I don’t even fully understand the terms, or be locked down for years to come.”

That wherewithal and prescient industry savvy is why, on “Muwop,” Gucci Mane laments, “I tried to sign Mulatto, but she was signed already.” Mulatto, already forthcoming, bubbly, and warm during our interview, turns up even more when discussing the song’s origin. “The producer came to Atlanta and we had locked in,” she reminisces. “He was cooking from scratch. And he had started doing the dun, dun, dun, dudadundun [the key lead from Gucci’s 2006 anthem ‘Freaky Gurl‘]. When he started doing that on the keys, I looked over. I said, ‘No, you not. You not going to go there. Because if we going to go there, we going to go there. Don’t play with me.’” She says the decision was made to put a gender twist on the hook and the session ended with a promise to deliver the song to Gucci personally.

“Maybe like a couple weeks later, maybe two weeks later, they had just sent me an audio file,” she says, “And I’m thinking it’s the mixed version of ‘Muwop’ or something. Man, I’m listening to the song, it’s a whole Gucci verse on the end. And I just stood up screaming. Literally, I called my whole team on FaceTime. I’m like, ‘Y’all’s got to be playing with me right now.’ And then the fact he had said my name in the song… Imagine hearing your favorite rapper say that about you. Cloud nine, cloud nine.” The rapper floats back down to earth, though, on songs like “My Body,” which demonstrates her surprising ability to switch up her flow and seamlessly add melody, despite being known for her crisp rhythmic delivery.

“The thing is, I actually got a lot of melodic songs,” she teases. “But the people just gravitate towards the rapping, the ratchetness. I have melodic songs in the vault, or whatever, but I don’t want to cross over too early. I love to rap. I always want people to know me as a rapper first, before I get into that versatility. But I just feel like right now, it’s time for that. On this project, I definitely wanted to throw in just a little bit of singing stuff. It’s still majority rapping, but just to show my versatility coming out the gate as a new artist. Even though I’ve been rapping since 10 years old. On the industry scene, I’m a new artist. Just showcasing, hey, now I’m here to stay. The range is crazy.”

Meanwhile, that versatility extends beyond the playful flirtation of songs like “Muwop,” “My Body,” and party-ready anthems like the City Girls-featuring “In N Out” or the 21 Savage duet “Pull Up.” On “No Hook,” she lowers her stance like a tiger ready to pounce, going for broke on the moody keys and reflecting on the more controversial aspects of her come-up. When asked if the line “I love my OG, but he ain’t show me how to treat shit” was a reference to The Rap Game‘s Jermaine Dupri (who shared a few problematic comments about female rappers last year), she doesn’t shy away from addressing the potential drama. “I was being real vulnerable,” she admits. It’s a real shock to hear, as the song’s fierce disposition seems to belie that position.

“I did touch on the outcome of The Rap Game, and I said something like, ‘I would take it back if I could,’” she confesses before stunning again. “That was hyperbole. I’m definitely grateful for the platform, but it was just kind of just being dramatic about the fact that people won’t let me grow up. You get judged for basically believing in yourself. People think that it was me being cocky or ungrateful and unappreciative of the opportunity when it was just me wanting more for myself. That’s it.”

She also addresses some of the murmurs regarding her controversial moniker. Acknowledging that she has heard the valid complaints, she emphasizes that she’s not using her name “promoting the fact that I’m mixed. It’s not about me comparing my ‘struggles of being mixed’ to any other skin tone, any other race, anything like that. It’s just simply me explaining my story. I did experience a different type of upbringing having two completely different cultures. One side of my family cooked this way, talked this way, celebrate this way, traditions is this way, and then one of the sides is different, and as a kid, I was just confused and kind of had to find my way in my identity. It’s just about an experience, and flipping that negative into something positive.”

It’s important to her that people know that she is just as intentional in all of her artistic choices. “In my most recent music video, which has been the biggest video of my career, I personally cast all brown skin and dark skin females for the lead roles,” she declares. Something that these casting directors and some other artists would never do… I do so much for the Black community. Half of the trolls on Instagram, Twitter, wherever they at, don’t do half of the stuff that I do. So I feel like it’s not even their place to even speak to me about that topic.” She nods to the accusations that she uses “pretty privilege” or “light skinned privilege,” saying, “It definitely is a thing, but as far as maneuvering, I’m going to use it to my advantage — hate it or love it.”

But rather than simply using it to her own advantage, she often shares alike with other rising artists, collaborating with fellow emerging star Saweetie and “pretty bitch rap” legend Trina on the remix to her breakout single “Bitch From Da Souf,” with R&B group Good Girl on “Thirsty,” with Omeretta The Great and LightSkinKeisha on “Baddest,” and with a plethora of rising female rappers including Chinese Kitty, Dreamdoll, Dreezy, and Young MA on Hitmaka’s “Thot Box” remix. She also lent her voice to the unconventional Saucy Santana on “Up & Down” from his Pretty Little Gangsta mixtape — a show of support for an artist who was recently the victim of a homophobic attack.

“Santana is a whole mood,” she says of the flamboyant Floridian entertainer. “I love everything about him. That’s my dog. We friends outside the music, that’s my dog outside of music.” The video for the track, she says, was, “so fun because we both so ratchet. You know, strip clubs, that’s the Atlanta culture. It was so fun. We both had a ball.” But the video that may have truly benefitted her most and reflected her own willingness to share her platform was Cardi B’s “WAP.” Appearing in a cameo appearance at the end of the video alongside Megan Thee Stallion, Normani, Rosalía, Rubi Rose, and Sukihana, Mulatto instantly landed on thousands of potential fans’ radars — just after the release of her debut major label single and ahead of being profiled in XXL.

Her phone didn’t just blow up, she gushes. “It beyond blew up. Everybody was DM-ing me, commenting, texting me, calling me everything. Congratulated me and just telling me how proud they is. And it was hard to keep that a secret!” Then, just after that, she received the next huge co-sign, teeing up Queen Of Da Souf for even more exposure. “That’s something that I’ve been waiting my whole career,” she divulges. “Every year I be tuned into the Freshmen List trying to just wait my turn patiently. And if you would have told me last year that I had it this year, I wouldn’t have believed you. That was a big goal of mine. Even on set and stuff, I’m talking to the staff, I’m like, ‘I don’t think y’all know how happy I am just being here.’ I was so ecstatic.”

With the rollout for Queen Of Da Souf sticking the landing and the album already generating positive buzz online, Mulatto has plenty of reasons to be ecstatic. Thanks to the support of a “24-7 team” courtesy of RCA, Mulatto already “knew that the reaction off of this project was going to be crazy because it’s everywhere.” While declaring herself royalty and claiming her crown on her first mainstream project is a tall order to pull off, she’s not sweating it, because she was groomed for this, and has already made it so much further than so many who came before her. “It’s a lot riding on the project, but I know I’m going to deliver, especially with a title like Queen Of Da South. It’s up.”

Queen Of Da Souf is out now via RCA Records. Get it here.

Joe Rogan recently got blasted by Bill Burr for describing people who wear masks during the pandemic as “bitches.” However, Rogan adopted an entirely different tone during his latest The Joe Rogan Experience episode with comedian Nikki Glaser. The pair got real about men who cry, and at one point, Glaser admitted that she was thrilled about the direction that the conversation was taking because “so many men who listen to you… so many men don’t cry, Joe.”

That declaration came shortly after Rogan got candid about his own emotions.

“I definitely cry,” Rogan admitted. “I cry a lot for like things that make me happy.”

“Really? That’s cute,” Glaser responded.

“I’m not scared of emotions.” Then he added, “I’m scared of weakness. I don’t like weakness.”

The definition of weakness, in Rogan’s mind, includes his conclusion that “it’s weak to not wanna cry.” He stressed that it’s important to allow oneself “to feel the full spectrum of life.” Even the most horrible things exist, and Joe doesn’t want to be “delusional” by pretending that bad things exist and, in turn, not allowing himself to cry. So yes, he cries when he misses people, too. And Rogan reminded everyone that he cried once on his podcast while discussing The Innocence Project (including a particularly tragic case of wrongful conviction) with guest and attorney Josh Dubin.

Meanwhile, Glaser confessed that she is often afraid to cry and needs to explicitly give herself “license” to let those emotions out. However, she added, “I’m seriously turned on by men crying. I love it. Can I really put that out there?” And then she got explicit about what she once did for a boyfriend who cried. Enjoy!

You can watch the full episode here: