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Tomberlin graced 2018 with a lovely debut folk record, At Weddings, and now she is ready to follow that effort up. Before she drops another full-length album, though, Tomberlin will release a new EP, Projections, which is set for release on October 16 via Saddle Creek (and which is co-produced by (Sandy) Alex G). She previewed the release today with a new song, the jaunty “Wasted,” which is more instrumentally fleshed out than the material on At Weddings.

The single also got a Busy Philipps-directed video, and Tomberlin said of the visual and song:

“‘Wasted’ was the most fun song to record. I brought the song with the guitar part and knew I wanted drums, but wasn’t sure what kind of beat I wanted. Alex played this drum beat for me and was all ‘kinda left field but maybe this would be cool.’ It took the song to a whole new level. Sad song or summer banger? You tell me. The video was made with the help of Busy Philipps (who directed) and Marc Silverstein (who shot it), who are more like family then friends at this point. I was quarantined with them and their girls in South Carolina and we came up with the idea and shot it in about 4 days on an iPhone.”

Watch the “Wasted” video above, and find the Projections art and tracklist below.

1. “Hours”
2. “Wasted”
3. “Floor”
4. “Sin”
5. “Natural Light”

Projections is out 10/16 via Saddle Creek. Pre-order it here.

Cardi B’s “WAP” isn’t just a hit — it’s one of the biggest hits of all time, landing at No.1 on the Hot 100 and breaking all kinds of streaming records in the process. That’s in spite — or perhaps in part because — of backlash against the song from conservative commentators who derided the song’s subject matter and straightforward, uvula-related sex raps.

Of course, those concerns didn’t stop the promoters of a Trump 2020 boat party from co-opting the song in a promotional video. The video, which appears on the Instagram page @trumpsplans, plays the song over scenes from the party as a group of 20-somethings mug at the camera.

Naturally, Cardi caught wind of the video and expressed her disapproval. “Wasn’t Republican conservatives throwing a little fit bout this song?” she asked rhetorically. “Anyways this makes my ass itchy. I’m callin the FBI on this festivity. They are not quarantining.”

Considering the outsized response to “WAP,” both good and bad, it’s no surprise that it would be used by the partygoers, who all seem to be in the demographic of people the song’s been marketed to. But as Cardi points out, there’s some irony in using the song to promote a Trump party after Cardi herself has been outspoken about the former reality star’s political failings — and the way his supporters have constantly attacked her online since she first blew up with “Bodak Yellow.” Cardi, meanwhile, continues to do her part politically, interviewing Joe Biden recently and urging Alexandria Osasio-Cortez to run for President in 2024.

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

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.

If it ain’t broke, you aren’t supposed to try to fix it. As an axiom for living and creating, they don’t get much more versatile; it’s a statement that applies to pretty much everything. But just because something works, that doesn’t mean it can’t be improved. On his latest release, the roiling Rich Slave, veteran Memphis rapper Young Dolph aims for that narrow middle ground and for the most part sticks the landing, adding a few new dimensions to his working formula. The result is an intriguing listen that rounds out his boasts with subtle strains of Black history and timely rebellion.

It’s been two years since Dolph’s last proper full-length album, the chest-puffing Role Model. There are plenty of parallels between the two projects: The smirking, skew-eyed album titles; the confident formatting (14 tracks a piece, with judicious use of high-profile features keeping the focus firmly on Dolph); and the albums’ respective subject matter are near mirrors of each other, reflecting an artist with a strong sense of identity (he’s the self-declared King Of Memphis, after all).

But in those intervening years, Dolph also released Dum And Dummer with his Paper Route Empire protege Key Glock, who’s ironically a full decade younger than Young Dolph. Whereas Dolph is staid and confident, Glock brings the chaotic energy of youth and a fresh perspective to the proceedings. It’s said that both the student and the teacher benefit from the relationship; judging from Rich Slave’s revitalized, mesmeric vibe, it seems that saying was correct in this case. The title track and “Death Row” bear this out, as Dolph’s measured flow is accentuated with just a little more force and speed than usual.

Dolph’s also older, with a different set of priorities than in 2018. Just months before the release of Rich Slave, he talked about retiring from the rap game to spend more time with his kids, leaving the day-to-day business of recording and touring non-stop to his Paper Route employees Bino Brown, Glock, Jay Fizzle, and the best-named rapper in the game right now, Big Moochie Grape. That impulse — while short-lived — translates to his delivery on Rich Slave. While Dolph always sounds slightly bored with the trappings of wealth he’s accumulated over the past decade or so, here he actually counts the costs of making it in America.

Don’t get it twisted; he doesn’t suddenly turn into Killer Mike or Nas on the new project. He does, however, seem keen to reexamine his relationship to his wealth. Whereas before, it was all about grinding his way out of poverty, now he contrasts his relative comfort with the subtle stressors that pursue him. “Police pulled me over for nothin’, just because she racist,” he laments on “The Land.” “Two minutes later, it’s five police cars, they got me face down on the pavement / Just ’cause I’m a black man in America / That’s what give them permission to treat us terrible.”

That being said, the vast majority of the project’s runtime is dedicated to Dolph’s favorite things: Running up checks, having a lot of sex, and continuing to terrorize longtime rival Yo Gotti. On “I See $s,” he crows, “I f*cked this rapper baby mama by mistake / Ever since then that big head motherf*cker been hatin’ / How it feel to be a f*ck n****? Congratulations.” Some things never change. Meanwhile, Dolph again keeps the features on the project to a minimum, restricting guest appearances to Key Glock on “No Sense,” G Herbo on album closer “1 Scale,” and Megan Thee Stallion on fan-favorite hype single “RNB.”

Rich Slave may not quite be the mission statement it positions itself as from its opening skit, “Black Friday,” but what the skit does do is remind the listener that there’s always more to the experience of being Black in America than meets the eyes. In a conversation with an old head, Dolph chuckles at his debaucherous tales until he learns a tidbit of local history he didn’t know before — one that likely painted multiple aspects of his upbringing in Memphis without even knowing it. The history of cities like Memphis — truly, of the entire country — are rich, but incomplete and always looming over us no matter how many diamond chains we buy. Considering through that lens, the prospect of a Rich Slave is chilling — and a little bit triumphant.

Rich Slave is out now via Paper Route Empire. Get it here.

Former SNL cast member Maya Rudolph is on the Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast this week, where she took a moment to explain why she says “bubble bath” the way she does (so perfectly) on Netflix’s Big Mouth. In addition, Rudolph and Conan end up talking Prince for a good 15 minutes, prompted by Rudolph’s work in her Prince cover band, PrinceSS.

Over the course of the conversation, Conan — who described Prince as “the most perfect looking human being I have ever seen” — ended up telling a story that Maya Rudolph suggested was “maybe the best story ever about Prince’s mystique.” She is not wrong, either.

The story began at a charity concert that Conan was hosting, where Stevie Wonder was closing the show. “There was a rumor that maybe Prince might show up and play with Stevie Wonder,” Conan said. “So I am backstage and Stevie Wonder is on stage, and he is playing, and I’m suddenly aware — the way you are aware, like a sixth sense — of a presence.”

“I turned to my left,” Conan continued, “and Prince is there, backstage, and he is air-drumming along to the music. And it is the best air drumming I have ever seen. It is better than what the real drummer was doing with Stevie Wonder. It’s fantastic.”

“And so he saw me, and he said, ‘Hey.’ And I said, ‘Hey! Hey! How are you?’ And he said, ‘Good.’ And he’s still air-drumming, not missing a beat.”

“And then I said, ‘So, there’s a rumor that you’re going to go out and play with Stevie Wonder.”

“No, no. I’m not going to do that,” Prince told Conan. “I’m just here to watch.”

“Oh, so you’re not going to play?”

“No. I’m not going to play.”

“OK,” Conan said. And just then, Stevie Wonder starts to play “Superstition,” and Conan turns to Prince and said, “Yeah, people said you were going to go out and play.” And Prince looked at Conan again and said, “No man. I’m really not going out.”

“And as he said, ‘I’m not going out,’ his technician put that perfect paisley guitar around his neck and it was all mic’d up, and he looked at me and said, ‘Gotta go.’” And that’s when Prince walked out on stage and started playing “Superstition” along with Stevie Wonder.”

“And I’m like, ‘That f**er!’” Conan yelled.

“But this was him saying, in his own way, ‘I can’t ruin the surprise.’ And I thought, ‘That’s just perfect. Perfect. That’s who he was.’”

It’s exactly who Prince was.

Source: Conan Needs a Friend

Like father, like son.

Days after Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who played Jaime Lannister on HBO’s Game of Thrones, considered donating to a petition to remake the polarizing final season, his on-screen dad also weighed in. Charles Dance told Pop Culture that he continued watching Thrones after his character, patriarch Tywin, was “killed off in the lavatory, because I thought, it’s a fantastic television show, you know? I was very lucky to be part of it… There were storylines [where] I wanted to know what was going to happen to these people!” He wasn’t aware of the fan petition to “remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers (1.9 million signatures!), but now he is, and agrees with the sentiment:

“I know that the finale satisfied a lot of people. It also disappointed a lot of people, and I’m afraid I am in the latter camp… If there was a petition, I would sign it.”

Now, before you say “shots fired at showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss,” Dance added, “I think David and Dan raised the bar when it came to television screenplay writing. They are phenomenal. And for the whole thing to end up as a committee, I just thought, ‘Hmm, no.’ I would say I was somewhat underwhelmed.” I’m not sure what Dance is getting at there — Benioff and Weiss were credited as the sole writers for four of the six episodes in season eight, and the other two writers, Dave Hill and Bryan Cogman, had been working on the show for years — but “underwhelmed” is an apt word to use. Game of Thrones season eight wasn’t objectively terrible, especially compared to other final seasons of prestige shows, but it was disappointing. That being said, please don’t support the season eight remake. I beg of you. That’s what the prequel is for.

(Via Pop Culture)

Travis Scott and Kid Cudi united as The Scotts earlier this year for a self-titled single, and the endeavor was a success: “The Scotts” reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (the first chart-topper for Cudi). It turns out the two made more than one song together, as Scott says in a new GQ profile that he and Cudi have a collaborative album on the way.

The feature notes that Scott is “hesitant to offer details” about potential upcoming work with Cudi, but he did confirm that the two are working on a joint album. It seems they’ve made strong progress, too: When asked “what he and Cudi have in store for the project,” Scott said, “Man, a lot. Some fireness!”

The piece also describes Scott playing one of the new songs: “He hits play on one of the tracks. It doesn’t have a title yet, but it’s the craziest thing he’s played for me so far. ‘I know where I’m going / I know when it’s time,’ Cudi hauntingly croons over a smooth beat. Scott is doing a two-step in front of the soundboard before the beat morphs from a bouncy summer groove to a menacing riot that sends him thrashing about.”

Elsewhere, the story addresses a piece of music he wrote for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film Tenet, and the director described Scott’s contributions to the movie as essential, saying, “His voice became the final piece of a yearlong puzzle. His insights into the musical and narrative mechanism [composer] Ludwig Göransson and I were building were immediate, insightful, and profound.”

Read the full feature here.

Jake Paul is in some “trouble,” as Joe Rogan has heard, and he expressed as much on a recent podcast episode of the Joe Rogan Experience. That level of interest is about as far as it goes for Rogan, but his guest, comedian Tim Dillon, took the ball and ran with it. What results pretty much conveys Rogan’s state of mind as he moves from L.A. to Austin, Texas. In short, he’s happy to get away from the Hollywood scene, and he’s not exactly obsessed with discussing Paul, but he’ll go along for the ride.

To recap a little bit on the Jake Paul situation, the YouTuber recently saw his Calabasas mansion raided by the FBI shortly after local authorities in Scotsdale, Arizona, dropped charges against him in connection with a May “looting” incident at a mall. The feds ended up seizing weapons from Paul’s home, which pointed toward what the bureau later confirmed was an investigation into “allegations of criminal acts” related to Arizona events. It’s not looking fantastic for Paul if local authorities are working in conjunction with the feds, but he didn’t seem too concerned while brushing off the matter before allegedly holding a boxing match at his home.

For Dillon and Rogan, it’s all looking a lot like an L.A. thing (even though the mall incident took place in Arizona). “Was it an arsenal thing or because he was stealing from the mall?” Rogan asked of the FBI raid. In response, Dillon (jokingly) suggested that Paul should get “more weapons” and even some “Anthrax.” Dillon then reasoned, “When L.A. falls, these are the only f*cks that are gonna be able to do anything.”

To which Rogan responded, “It’s not a bad idea.” From there, Dillon and Rogan both admitted that they feel out of place in L.A., and one can’t really blame them, even if jokes about Anthrax probably aren’t the wisest idea.

Watch the relevant clip between Rogan and Dillon below.

Oftentimes, artists release multiple editions of their albums. In the case of Taylor Swift’s Folklore, she dropped a deluxe, physical-only edition of the release, and it features a bonus track, “The Lakes.” In the near-month since the album came out, that song has not been available on streaming platforms, since, again, it was only available on the physical release of the album. Now, though, Swift has made the deluxe edition of Folklore available for streaming, so now fans don’t need to dig out their CDs or vinyl records to hear “The Lakes.”

Swift also shared a lyric video for the song, and it’s a simple visual, showing just a looping, slowly panning shot of flowers and brush as the words are displayed on the bottom-right of the screen.

Aaron Dessner previously said of the track (one of the handful on Folklore that Jack Antonoff produced/co-wrote instead of him), “That’s a Jack song. It’s a beautiful kind of garden, or like you’re lost in a beautiful garden. There’s a kind of Greek poetry to it. Tragic poetry, I guess.”

The song arrives shortly after Swift shared an Easter egg-revealing video for “Cardigan.”

Listen to “The Lakes” above, and read our review of Folklore here.

President Donald Trump said on Monday that he plans to pardon a “very, very important person” today, leading to much speculation about who those VVIP (not as catchy as MVP, tbh) could be. Did I say “much speculation”? I meant, “Everyone thinks it’s the same person.” We know it’s not National Security advisor Michael Flynn and whistleblower Edward Snowden, as Trump personally ruled them out, and his previous pardons include far-right stooge Dinesh D’Souza and former-United States Army First Lieutenant Michael Behenna, who was convicted of war crimes. So, who could it be?

If you finally (blissfully) forgot about Tiger King, I’m sorry.

Back in April, Trump was asked whether he would pardon Joe Exotic, the Tiger King subject who is serving a 22-year sentence in prison for “various crimes of animal abuse and attempted murder for hire.” Trump replied, “I don’t know. I know nothing about it. He has 22 years for what? What did he do?” It’s the most honest thing he’s said at president. Exotic, real name Joseph Allen Maldonado-Passage, later wrote a letter asking to be pardoned. “Let’s hope President Trump will… make this right and grant me a pardon,” it reads. “Keep my story alive and be my voice. Keep asking for that pardon.”

We’ll see if he got his wish today (UPDATE: he didn’t; it was Susan B. Anthony).

Quite the third-act twist for the Nicolas Cage movie.

(Via Reuters)

Everybody loves Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl, but a fan named Pat Finnerty may love the rocker more than just about anybody. Throughout the pandemic, Finnerty — a musician from Scranton, Pennsylvania — he hosted livestreams in which he challenged himself to learn all the parts of classics songs by Billy Joel, Huey Lewis, and Peter Gabriel in under an hour. This past weekend, though, he got even more ambitious. His goal was to record Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing” and get Grohl to join him and sing Sting’s classic “I want my MTV” lyric.

He actually did it.

Nine hours into the livestream event on Saturday, Finnerty managed to replace his cardboard cutout of Grohl with the man himself. Actor Andrew Sikking joined the broadcast, and Grohl, who was at a dinner party with friends, emerged on screen and asked, “What the f*ck are you guys doing?” Finnerty then explained himself and the journey he took to get to this point. The two chatted for a few minutes, then Grohl fulfilled his destiny and sang the line. He also hopped behind a drum set and started to play the song with Finnerty before they got distracted and chatted for about 20 minutes.

Finnerty spoke about the moment with Rolling Stone, saying, “Grohl was as cool as I knew he would be. I’ve always wanted to host a talk show and corona has kind of given me one. I want it to grow so that I could do cooler sh*t, because I have ridiculous ideas that I think will all work. […] The messages that I’ve been getting all day were, ‘It’s so inspiring what you did, because you set a goal and you achieved it.’ Like, I’m this f*cking nobody and I got to Grohl in nine hours because I believed in it.”