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Anybody who thought the vinyl resurgence was just a fad was mistaken: The industry has experienced a legitimate revival. As a result, music fans are interested in physical media in ways they may not have if the decades-old medium hasn’t made a comeback. That doesn’t mean everybody is listening to just their parents’ old music, though. That’s part of it, sure, thanks to rereleases that present classic albums in new ways. A vital part of the renewed vinyl wave, though, is new projects being released as records, of which there are plenty.
Whatever you might be into, each month brings a new slew of vinyl releases that has something for everybody. Some stand out above the rest, naturally, so check out some of our favorite vinyl releases of June below.
Phoebe Bridgers — Punisher
Dead Oceans
Bridgers recently told Uproxx of her new album, “I made the whole record knowing that people were going to hear it. […] I just had more fun. I wanted to sound like an adult wrote it.” The “blue with kind of swirly silver” vinyl edition of it is unfortunately/understandably sold out, but there’s nothing wrong with a classic black record.
Carly Rae Jepsen makes B-sides that are better than many artist’s A-sides, which she proved once again on Dedicated Side B. LPs signed by Jepsen herself are out of stock, but the still-wonderful non-signed edition isn’t.
The National — High Violet (10th Anniversary Reissue)
4AD
Matt Berninger told Uproxx of his band’s seminal album, “High Violet did feel like, ‘Oh, we can maybe be any kind of band.’ We were always trying to learn how to be a band at all. Every single thing we did, it was live or die. If we didn’t make some kind of a splash with that record, it did feel that we would die on the vine.”
Eric Clapton And B.B. King — Riding With The King (20th Anniversary Reissue)
Warner Records
In 2000, two of music history’s most beloved guitarists got together for a legendary meet-up of an album. On that record’s 20th anniversary, this vinyl reissue gets two new tracks recorded during the original sessions: The blues standard “Rollin’ And Tumblin’” and B.B. King’s “Let Me Love You.”
Bee Gees — Best Of Bee Gees, Main Course, Children Of The World, Here At Last…Bee Gees…Live, and Spirits Having Flown
Capitol
The Bee Gees have put out some masterful albums in their day, and now a handful of them are getting re-released on gorgeously colored vinyl that complements the album art. Each of the five records have been remastered from the original analog LP master tapes at Capitol Studios.
Neil Young blessed this year with Homegrown, a lost album recorded in 1974 and 1975 that Young has described as “the unheard bridge between Harvest and Comes A Time.” This is a rare chance to hear a (sort of) brand new Young album from a time many would consider a golden age for him, so why not do it on the predominant format of the time?
“The World Is Yours” has often been called one of the greatest rap songs ever, and now for the first time, it’s available as a 7-inch record. The flip side features the song’s instrumental, making this the perfect opportunity to try to re-create the song yourself, or just sit back and appreciate the musical bedrock Nas had to work with here.
Jorge Ben — Ben E Samba Bom, Sacundin Ben Samba, and Jorge Ben
Polysom
Jorge Ben has long been revered as one of the masters of Brazilian music, and now a new group of reissues honors his origins. Three of the artist’s early albums have fresh new vinyl editions, albums that helped catapult him to stardom and acclaim.
Get Ben E Samba Bomhere, get Sacundin Ben Sambahere, and get Jorge Benhere.
Future — Honest (Vinyl Me, Please Reissue)
Epic
The first vinyl release of Future’s Honest is a big one, as it was Vinyl Me, Please’s Hip-Hop Record Of The Month for June. The record is pressed on black vinyl with white and red splatter and comes with an exclusive “I’m Just Being Honest” stencil.
Jónsi, the mastermind behind Icelandic group Sigur Rós, is making a return to his solo career with a handful of singles after a decade-long hiatus. Along with music, this singer is also working on another project. Jónsi has teamed up with a collective of artists, researchers, farmers, formulators, and experts in the CBD field to unveil his own line of CBD tinctures.
Jónsi’s collaborative collective Vona, which means “hope” in Icelandic, helped the singer produce two variants of tinctures, Sleep and Wake. Stemming from high-grade hemp, both sets of tinctures are designed to aid consumers. According to Vona, Sleep assists with rest and dream cycles while Wake is meant to boost energy, alertness, and creativity.
The singer, who has training in the field of aromatherapy and perfume, said in a statement that it’s possible to combine tinctures for varying results. “It’s like with music, a scent can move you and you don’t exactly know why, because it’s invisible,” Jónsi said. “It’s like pure alchemy. It’s an open platform for experimentation and discovery, and the more you mix together, the better results you’ll probably get.”
This isn’t the first time Jónsi has experimented in the field of CBD. Nearly a decade ago, the musician discovered CBD on a journey to aid his insomnia. In 2017, Jónsi developed a line of Sigurberry CBD gummies with CBD company Lord Jones.
Of all the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, Guardians of the Galaxy least fits the Disney “brand.” There are one-night-stand aliens, Star-Lord is shirtless in one scene, and, as IMDb points out, “Rocket, who is a raccoon, is briefly shown not wearing clothes while entering his prison cell after being showered, his folded prison uniform held over his groin.” My monocle popped out in comedic fashion halfway through that sentence. Also, Guardians and its sequel, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, were written and directed by James Gunn, who began his career with Troma Entertainment, the fine purveyors of anything-goes shlock like The Toxic Avenger and Class of Nuke ‘Em High 3: The Good, the Bad, and the Subhumanoid. But Gunn has learned to play nice with Disney and Marvel, even after he was briefly fired from Guardians, Vol. 3, although there is at least one line that had to be cut due to… implied violence against Uncle Jesse?
When asked on Twitter about studio notes, Gunn tweeted, “I like to create a filmmaking atmosphere where I listen to & consider every voice around me. So I truly consider the studio’s notes. I always try the notes out in the cut, no matter my initial distaste, to see if they actually might work. If I don’t like them, I take them out.” He added, “On two occasions – once in Slither & once in Guardians Vol 1, I took out something (two shots in Slither, one line in Vol 1) that I really didn’t want to. But I did that as a way to compromise, because the studios had been so good at letting me ‘get my way.’”
What was the Guardians line?
(in movie) Quill: I come from a planet of outlaws, Billy the Kid, Bonnie & Clyde, John Stamos.
Drax: Sounds like a place that I would like to visit.
Quill: Cool.
(cut) Drax: And kill many people there.
(in movie) Quill: I come from a planet of outlaws, Billy the Kid, Bonnie & Clyde, John Stamos. Drax: Sounds like a place that I would like to visit. Quill: Cool. (cut) Drax: And kill many people there.
Ozark‘s third season rose from the twisted ashes after lighting Jason Bateman’s Marty Byrde-bound world on fire, and if you’ve seen the season finale, you know that there was a substantial cliffhanger that demands followup. Can Marty possibly survive that hot (and bloody) mess? Will Wendy finally take the family and run? Will Julia Garner win another Emmy and then launch a Ruth Langmore-centered spinoff? At least a few of those questions should be answered with Season 4, which Netflix announced on Tuesday as a supersized affair.
This upcoming season will wrap up the Byrdes’ money-laundering madness in a total of fourteen episodes, rather than the ten episodes of previous seasons. However, the season will launch as two seven-part halves, so this sounds like we’re kinda getting five seasons? That’s a pleasing thought to fans who recognize that Ozark scratches a certain Breaking Bad itch reminiscent of the Walt-and-Jesse dynamic. Jason Bateman, who previously told fans to expect “three seasons, four seasons, five seasons, something like that” from this show, can now count himself as being on point. In a statement released by Netflix, Bateman promises that “[a] super sized season means super sized problems for the Byrdes.” Then he added, “I’m excited to end with a bang(s).”
I can’t wait, even though we’ll obviously have to wait. If this show doesn’t include a capsule episode where Ruth tosses so many people off a casino boat, then that will be an opportunity lost. Obviously, no one knows when the fourth season will shoot (more than likely, these halves will roll out over a few years), but here’s a tiny tease:
For most of us, pulling a bottle of “bourbon barbecue sauce” off the grocery store shelf is the easy play come 4th of July. Who cares that the first ingredient is high fructose corn syrup? It’s simple. Simple is good these days. Whereas gathering a basket full of ingredients and slowly simmering them down into a bespoke BBQ sauce is time and energy-consuming. “You’re telling me I’m going to spend a few hours cooking the sauce that I’m going to spend another few hours cooking my ribs in?”
But as the summer wears on and new lockdowns are issued, time is on our side. And god knows we’ve all had enough sourdough. That’s why we’re breaking down how to make your own bourbon barbecue sauce for the holiday weekend.
A few caveats before we get rolling. This is a nearly “from scratch” recipe. The only real corner cut here was not blanching, peeling, and dicing my own tomatoes. I used these canned beauties specifically. They’re only tomatoes and a pinch of salt that have been pasteurized. That’s it. Also, I’m using Four Roses Bourbon in this recipe because I have it on hand. You do not need to break the bank on the bourbon for this recipe. (Though I wouldn’t exactly recommend you using paint thinner, either.)
If you don’t have an abundance of time, you can speed this recipe up considerably by using standard tomato puree and then substituting the fresh onion, garlic, and dried chilis with onion and garlic powders and paprika. Also, this is basically a double recipe. I plan on using this BBQ sauce all summer — I’m putting its shelf life as four to six weeks when kept in the fridge.
Okay, let’s dive in and make some bourbon BBQ sauce.
First things first, peel the onion and garlic. I do a fairly fine dice on the onion and leave the garlic whole to be crushed later. I also do a rough chop on the two moritas (dried and smoked jalapenos).
I get a medium pot on the stove on medium-high heat with a good glug of olive oil (just enough to make an even layer across the bottom of the pot). Once hot, I add in the onion with a good pinch of salt.
Once the onions have been properly sweated and are translucent. I crush in the garlic cloves and add the chilis. I stir while those become fragrant.
Next, I add in the tomato paste and stir until it’s incorporated with the base.
Lastly, I add in the chopped tomatoes and a large pinch of salt.
Zach Johnston
I let that come up to a simmer and top with the lid slightly ajar. I let that simmer for about 20 to 30 minutes or until it smells very fragrant.
Once, everything has sort of melded in the base tomato sauce, I use an emersion blender to create a puree. If you don’t own an immersion blender you can pour it into your blender. If you do, remember that you either have to have a Vitamix or a Ninja, where the lid can’t blow off, or you need to hold the lid on, as the hot air creates immense pressure. You do not want your cabinets sprayed with BBQ sauce.
Zach Johnston
Once I have a smooth puree, I start adding the ingredients that are going to make this a BBQ sauce vs a modified marinara.
Quick interlude: As of now, you have a great sauce for the base of an Arrabiata or sugo salsiccia. So, if you wanted to, you could halve the sauce and reserve one-half for pasta making later. In that case, naturally, halve the rest of the ingredients for the BBQ sauce.
Back to the bourbon BBQ sauce — add in the bourbon, vinegar, maple syrup, molasses, and spices. Mix well and bring back to a bare simmer.
Zach Johnston
Replace the lid, making sure it’s ajar, and let simmer on low for a couple of hours or until it’s reduced by half. You’ll need to keep an eye on it and give the sauce a stir every 15 to 20 minutes to stop it burning on the bottom.
Also, taste-test the sauce after an hour or so. Does it need more salt? More sweetness? More Vinegar? Maple syrup is very light and will not have the same sugary bang as brown sugar. On this batch, I end up adding in a little more vinegar, molasses, and salt to accommodate my palate. Adjust your sauce according to yours.
Zach Johnston
The last, and sort of crucial step here, is to let the sauce cool and then run it through a sieve to get that smooth texture you want in a bbq sauce. Don’t do this while the sauce is hot, you’ll burn your skin.
Zach Johnston
You’ll need to slowly work the sauce through the sieve into another pot. Sort of just slowly press the sauce through as you stir it until you’re left with a spoonful of a thick paste, which you can throw away.
Zach Johnston
Part III: Storage
Zach Johnston
The last step is to get the sauce into some bottles. I’m using two 18-ounce plastic sauce bottles. I fill up both with a small bowlful left over.
The sauce is deep and unctuous. There’s a mild spice at the base with a hint of smoke (double the chilis if you want it hotter or smokier). There’s a clear tanginess that’s slightly sweet with a hint of bourbon shining through. The umami from the stewed tomato is the real star of the show with the spice, tang, sweet, and bourbon as supporting players.
I’m going to try it in a pulled pork sandwich later. I’ll let you know how it goes over on Instagram.
The album art for Pop Smoke’s upcoming posthumous album, Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon, was recently revealed, and it was not warmly received. Fans accused Virgil Abloh of being lazy with the album cover and roasted the art. In an Instagram post, Abloh has explained his thought process behind the art.
Sharing the art in a post that is no longer on his Instagram, Abloh wrote, “the last conversation i had with @realpopsmoke was about what we were gonna do in the future. this album cover was one of like 5 things we talked about. he mentioned his story felt like the metaphor of a rose and thorns growing from concrete of of his hood in Canarsie, Brooklyn. in your memory I just finished it yesterday. as evident of the whole idea, the t-shirt insinuates it’s mandatory we put an and to this cycle of violence that plagues us, we need to shoot for the moon & aim for the stars. as heavy is it is we are celebrating your life the whole way thru. rest in peace young one.”
Artist Ryder Ripps shared a screenshot of the post and accused Abloh of poorly ripping him off, writing, “This man took the entire chrome rose concept from me, ruined it with careless graphic design and then wrote some bullsh*t about it. So sad that someone would care this little about art, design and the memory of a human who was so loved to wrap his name up in lies and theft.”
This is all a bit of a moot point now, though, as Smoke’s label said they would be making changes to the art used for the cover.
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.
“Do you see yourself unraveling?”
This question opens Sophie Payten’s second album under the recording moniker Gordi, as she takes a moment to herself in an airplane bathroom while traveling from her home in Australia to work in Europe. From the outside, it might have seemed like Payten had everything going for her, but really she was in a state of flux, having finally completed the exams that would allow her to become a doctor and finding herself transitioning out of a stale relationship and into something more true to her identity. In that instant of isolation, endings and beginnings began to come into focus.
This is the moment of time that launches Gordi’s excellent new record, an album that balances fierce intimacy with expansive ambition. It’s not an album about anything singularly, but encompasses the range of what occurred and who she has become in the three years between releases. She explores sexuality with new-found clarity, gives a lovely tribute to her recently deceased grandmother, and reckons with the idea of identity and the need to share her true self with those closest to her. The resulting piece feels like an honest, personal reckoning, where both the artist and listener can join each other on the journey and emerge as better versions of themselves on the other side.
Recorded with Bon Iver affiliates Chris Messina and Zach Hanson in the secluded town of Canowindra, the album reflects isolation and turns it into focus. Genre lines are blurred to the point where the straight-ahead indie rock of “Sandwiches” fits snuggly beside the cinematic pop of “Unready” and the atmospheric drama of “Volcanic.” Whatever preconceived notions Gordi had built with her early career are largely left in the dust. Just as the album takes on the project of a woman figuring out her own place in the world, Our Two Skins does exactly that with Gordi’s music.
Speaking with Uproxx via Zoom in late May, Payten discussed being a doctor during the pandemic, her relationship with her grandmother that inspired the record, and just what Pride means to her.
How does the world feel in Australia right now?
We’re still pretty deep in isolation. So as of early June, the restrictions are starting to be lifted. Some pubs, clubs, and restaurants are opening for 20 patrons at a time. You can now have up to 20 people in your home. I’ve never had 20 people in my home. I’m not sure that if I wanted to, I even could. People are back in the streets and stuff, and just generally seems less fearful. There’s toilet paper back on the shelves in the supermarket, which there wasn’t for a while. So yeah, it’s definitely not back to normal, but it’s starting to feel out of the depths of all that full-on isolation. Fortunately, in Australia, we just haven’t seen the numbers of infection that other places around the world have. And I guess that’s probably largely due to being an island and being able to shut our borders pretty soon after it all took off.
I know the medical profession was arming itself with everything it could, and there’s been all this talk of these big COVID centers opening and big respiratory facilities, and none of it has happened because the patients have not been coming into hospitals in the numbers that they expected. So, it’s been a largely manageable situation here in Australia. And I think probably much more of a toll than the actual health crisis has just been the social crisis and the economic crisis.
Were you doing medical work with COVID?
I’d quit my job, my medical job, on the 31st of January after working for a year as a doctor. And then I got back from tour in March and I called my old workplace and I was like, “I’m back if you need me, given everything looks like it’s going mental around the world.” And I put my name down with the government body that was organizing all the medical professionals to come and help in these COVID clinics. I had a call back from them and they were like, “You’ll be first on the list of people that will be called when these COVID clinics get set up. And we’ll put you in into one of those.”
There was a two week period where I was like, “Okay, I’m getting ready to go into this and go back to work.” But then the numbers just went off a cliff in Australia and all my friends that are working in hospitals were like, “We have nothing to do, because not even the regular patients are coming in, let alone any COVID patients.” I actually still haven’t set foot back in a hospital.
I feel like it’s the best-case scenario for a doctor, to not be needed?
Yeah, 100%.
The psychological effects of isolation, that’s something so many are experiencing now. I found that the album features this juxtaposition between a need for privacy — be it a moment in an airplane bathroom or whether it’s the remote town that you recorded in, your childhood hometown — and then this need for being heard, for being bold in who you are and what you believe in. It feels like a journey on the album. What have you learned about these two states of being along the way?
Yeah, it is the real contrast of the record and something that I’ve had to do a lot of mental work to come to terms with, because the content of the record was really occurring at a time in my life when I was undergoing a lot of identity change, and entering a new relationship and these questions of sexuality. But I think that almost puts it a bit too simply, I’m not really a category person when it comes to sexuality, I’m much more of a spectrum person. And I think it was this lesson for me in life, you find a person for you and that person can take any shape or form.
And that whole experience was something so private, and imagining doing interviews about it and talking to strangers about those elements of my life, I was like, “No way in hell am I going to do that.” But then, I accidentally wrote an entire album about it and we got to the end of it, and I was like, “There’s no way that I’m going to be able to put this out and not talk about it.” So I needed to come to terms with that.
I think the queer community really lacks content about itself. There are not stacks and stacks of role models that you see on TV and film. This story that I’m telling of falling in love with someone at the age of 25, which gave me all these new questions about my identity, it’s one more little piece in the enormous puzzle that any queer person can look to and be like, “Okay, there’s a frame of reference for my life. So if something like that happens to me, I can at least be like, oh, look, that’s something that I can kind of compare to.” I think it’s the privacy of what happened to me versus that public, shared experience, and I feel like the latter outweighs my right to that privacy, because it’s an important story to tell.
That’s awesome. And I feel like the dichotomy comes across sonically, too, with songs like “Unready” and “Sandwiches,” they feel like these big deserved communal experiences. And then a lot of the songs feel more intimate, like a conversation almost directly between you and the listener. Does that play into the process, how a listener might experience a song, be it through headphones or through a performance?
Definitely. I remember asking Zach Hanson this question, “Do you like records that are record-player records or headphone records?” And I’ve always put records into those two categories. Obviously, there are some that do both. But my first record, I really think of as a headphone record. And coming into this album, I was like, “I want to make a record-player record,” but then the sonic details and stuff are so important to me that I was like, “Oh, maybe I want it to cross over into both of those lands and try and have a bite of each cherry.”
I wanted to make a couple of songs that you can listen to on your own. And I wanted to make a couple of songs that you listen to with others. The songs that you listen to on your own come more naturally to me, I feel like I’ll write those for the rest of the time. But I find that I have to be more careful with my sonic choices when I’m making songs like “Unready” or “Sandwiches,” because it’s not always my natural instincts. My natural instincts are those quieter moments like “Aeroplane Bathroom,” or something. And all of those songs, like “Aeroplane Bathroom,” “Volcanic,” “Radiator,” they all took the least amount of time because it felt very natural.
The reason I was first drawn to the album was “Sandwiches,” just hearing that song and how it addresses your grandmother’s death with such beauty and specificity. But she also serves as the general inspiration for the album, right?
Yeah. She was 95, and I grew up a hundred meters from her. I used to ride my bike down there and we were very, very close. She raised me as much as my parents did and we’d talk on the phone a lot as I got older. I’d been traveling all of 2018, doing these tours and writing a lot of this record, and then I came home in September of 2018. I went home to Canowindra where my parents live, where I grew up, basically because I’d run out of money. And I was waiting to start my medical job a few months later, but I needed something to tide me over, and so I went back to my old job at a rose nursery in Canowindra where you just stand there waiting all day.
Each afternoon I’d drive back, call into my grandmother’s, sit down and have a cup of tea with her, and then go home. And I was home for six weeks, and over the course of that time, she became unwell and it turned out to be the last six weeks of her life. She went into the hospital in Canowindra and it became apparent that she wasn’t going to come out of there or get better, and she passed in early October on the 6th.
It was a Saturday morning and my mom and dad and I drove into the town, into the hospital, and we were there with all of my father’s siblings, all her children, and we were all around the bed and all taking turns to be beside her. And a few hours into the morning, it was midday and my mom and I were like, “Oh, we should go and get some food for everyone because no one’s going to want to leave here and no one’s really eaten.” So we went down to the supermarket and grabbed some basic supplies and we start making sandwiches; it’s in the little kitchenette next to her room. We were just making them and passing them around to everyone. And people were coming out for a little breather and having something to eat.
Then my auntie called out, “She’s just gone.” We put our sandwiches down and went in and sat around the bed and were all grieving, and I read this prayer out that my other auntie had and we just all sat with her for as long as we could. And like that first line of the song, it’s a nice memory of just holding her hand and thinking, “This is the last time I’m going to really get to do this and feel her skin and smell the way she smelled,” and all of those really sensory things that are so immediate, that you lose just like that.
I tried to write this song so many times and I didn’t want it to be this tragic funeral song or something, and I think that’s why I needed a bit of space. So I didn’t really write it for like five months, but it was a celebration of a really long and wonderful life. It was a total tragedy that we lost her because she was so, so loved, but it was the course of a life and it was a beautiful, natural end. And her passing made me want to come back and feel connected to the place and connected to her, so that’s why I decided to make the record back home.
And it meant a lot to you to be able to let her know about your identity before she passed away, too?
Yeah, it did. She was incredibly accepting, probably a lot more accepting than other people of her generation. She was born in 1923 and yet she was able to accept all of those things and said so to me. We had a really lovely phone conversation just before I arrived home where she said, “I love you and nothing’s ever going to change that,” and then that happened. I got home, and she died six weeks later.
I’m so glad it happened because if it hadn’t, there would have been something really missing for me. And in my own life, it was the end of this chapter, which was the record. The start of it was the start of all this stuff, and then the end of it was her passing and her acceptance of it. And it’s all incredibly intimate and personal, but it’s a really beautiful story.
It really is! Thank you for sharing it. In America, June is Pride Month, and it’s fitting that this is coming out here at the end of June. What does that concept of Pride mean to you?
It has changed a whole lot in the last few years. And on the one hand, there’s this really wonderful Australian comedian named Hannah Gadsby who had this show called Nanette, which was this smash hit across the globe. She’s a queer person and grew up in Tasmania in Australia where homosexuality I think was illegal until 1996 or something outrageous. And she talks about Pride and the queer community and the queer flag, the rainbow flag. And she’s like, “I didn’t really identify with the big parade and dancing on a float. The rainbow flag is hideous and I don’t like those colors,” and all this sort of stuff, which I think is, to a degree, something I identify with, because that very, almost traditional form of Pride is something that I haven’t really experienced, but that going into this experience, what I thought Pride was.
I thought it was dancing on a float and I thought it was waving a rainbow flag and a very simplified version of this month or this one festival that happens, but I’ve really learned through this experience that it’s a state of mind and it’s something that you have to, and should, exercise every day. And it was a big part of me coming to terms with everything that had happened in my life, because on the one hand, you have the shame and embarrassment and all those feelings that come to any queer person when they go through this sort of journey in their life, and that’s on one scale.
And then on the other one is your sense of pride in yourself, but also being proud of the person that you’re with and being proud of that relationship and being proud enough that you would put it on display for the world to look, and I think that that’s now what Pride means to me. It’s like being so proud of the relationship that I’m in and of my partner and of myself in being open to that. That’s something that I’m proud of, for other people to look at me and think or feel whatever they want. None of the fear of judgment will outweigh that sense of pride.
Our Two Skins is out now on Jagjaguwar. Get it here.
As Hamilton‘s longest-tenured original cast member – playing the duel role of both Hercules Mulligan and James Madison – Okieriete Onaodowan was there that night in December of 2016 when then Vice President-elect Mike Pence arrived for a show. For Onaodowan, it wasn’t just that Pence was there. Yes, the headlines that night were that a number of people in the crowd booed Pence. But for Onaodowan, he couldn’t stop thinking about the people there who cheered for Pence. As in, why in the world are you at Hamilton in the first place if you’re cheering Mike Pence? When I asked Onaodowan what was going through his mind that night as he performed for this particular crowd, the word he said was “rage.” And he repeated it six times.
This weekend, Hamilton will finally be available for home consumption through Disney+. It’s a recording from 2016, with the original cast members at (as Onaodowan says) at the height of their powers. Filmed mostly in front of a live audience (some shots had to be done earlier that day), this is the first time people will have full access to what was, even still this year before Broadway shut down, one of the most difficult tickets to obtain. Onaodowan still holds out hope that people who see this show can still learn something from it, even though, no, it sure didn’t do anything to change Mike Pence. And Onaodowan explains, in the wake of George Floyd’s death and this national moment, what Hamilton means to him today.
I don’t know if anyone’s ever told you this, but getting tickets to Hamilton was not easy.
[Laughs] No one has ever told me that before.
They should really let the people performing know this stuff.
I never knew.
We went in December of 2016 and you were one of the last original cast members still there. You were getting a lot of applause, like an athlete on a retirement tour.
That’s a great analogy. That’s what it kind of felt like. It was like that, in his final season, and I want to do a backflip somewhere like, “Yep, I’m done. We’re out.”
So obviously a lot of people wanted to see this, and it’s important for people to see this. And they moved up the date. But should something like this had happened earlier? Or does this feel like the right time?
I feel like what we’re experiencing is like eight things converging at once. It’s like, every week, for me, I think the significance of this dropping has changed. For a while it was COVID, and after George Floyd was murdered, the meaning, again, changed why it’s released early as opposed to later. And with where we are right now, I think it’s important for people to get this message: the message of it’s your duty stand up and say, “This is what America should be.”
Not only that, you should work tirelessly to make sure that happens through legislation, through writing, through understanding the laws and making sure laws are passed. That’s basically what Hamilton did. The first number, you see him stand on a box and you see Burr push him out the way. And then he uses his words to break down what he’s saying and break down the crazy madness of what he’s saying and tell the people, “This is not it. This is not what your country should look like. This is not how the people who lead you should sound.”
That sounds eerily reminiscent of what protesters are doing right now, of all shades and colors in response to the murder of George Floyd. That message, I think, is vital for people to come home to after a long day of their Twitter feed and Instagram feed and seeing all this madness and hearing the things that that man in the White House says and does. To put on entertainment and also get some medicine – also get some empowerment and also get a message that says, “It is now we have to do this. You have to speak up.”
You mentioned the man in the White House. Where you still there when Mike Pence came to Hamilton?
Yes, I was.
What were you thinking that whole night? I mean, I can imagine…
Rage. Just rage. Just rage, rage, rage, rage. Because in the beginning of the show, he entered and there were a lot of people cheering as well. There’s a Venn diagram of people who love Hamilton and people who love the man in the White House. It was just hard as an artist to think what I’m doing is promoting this message, in black and brown skin, telling our founding fathers’ story, and yet there were still people in there who are celebrating the arrival of Pence. It’s complicated and it’s hard. It’s really, really hard to know sometimes you may put art out, but it’s not necessarily interpreted the way that it’s intended. It’s actually not stopped me from still putting it out. It was a very tough and difficult show.
It shouldn’t stop you. You said it’s difficult to wrap your mind around it…
It’s hard.
But how did you? Because the entire message of what you’re trying to say is the polar opposite of what this man represents.
You just do it. Exactly. And it’s hard to then perform for people that you saw cheering him, and now are in the front row looking at you. It’s like, “Yeah, dance for me.” But the whole point is you do it. How do you do it? You do it, like anyone who’s done anything that’s hard to any degree. Your purpose, your spirit and your will should take over. And my love and the intention behind creating the art, I will just focus on. I will have those feelings of apprehension and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, I know at my core why I’m doing it. You focus on that, focus on what got you there and what will keep you going.
The people cheering wasn’t really in the press much. Because obviously the President made a big deal about people booing. But I imagine sitting that it might have been difficult to put on a show for those people who stand against everything with what the show means.
It’s complicated. When Hillary came, people booed. People cheered and people also booed. I feel like I was able to see why Targets are on fire in that moment. It’s because people really do have a different definition of what this country needs, and it couldn’t be more representative in that room. But you do it anyway because there is a chance – and it’s the difference between people who hold faith in their heart and hold resentment – is there is a part of me that still hopes it’s like, “Well, we don’t know. All the data says this, but maybe Pence may turn around and do something different at the end.” That was one of the things. I was like, “I just have to focus on that today. I just have to focus on that instead, and hope and hope and hope.”
I want to believe in the humanity of people that might still be in there and think, “Well, maybe he’ll learn a lesson from this.” And it just never seems to happens. I’m very pessimistic about these things. I mean, but this is hindsight. In the moment, that’s what I believed. It was tough, at least we got through it. History has shown us that was correct, it did not change his mind. My job is to perform. That’s it. Just to perform, regardless who’s out there, people out there or not. He was out there and it’s like, “I still have to do the thing.”
Now, have you seen what’s going to be on Disney+? What a weird question to ask you. “Have you seen Hamilton?”
[Laughs] That is weird. We had an opportunity to see the link. But Disney’s, to keep it super tight, we literally had 24 hours, just 24 hours to watch it and I wasn’t able to see all of it. I saw half of the show and, from what I saw, it’s just remarkable, again, to see it. In theater, we can never truly see what we make because when we step out, it’s going to change. Your understudy’s on, so everyone’s performance is different. It was lovely to see, to really see our show. I’ve seen versions of the show, but it was remarkable just to really see what everyone actually saw. And for me, it was just exciting to see the homeys do their thing because we’re normally backstage when someone’s on stage, or we’re onstage when someone’s having a moment. It was great to look and just to see what I’ve been hearing, to be able to look and see them in the moment and not just have to listen backstage or catch a glimpse from the sides. That was special.
Were you given a heads up before that performance? Like, “This is going to be the performance of record, basically, for the rest of eternity”?
Yeah, we shot it over like three days. So, yeah, we had a heads up. There was a lot of prep. There was a lot of talking. At the end of the week, some of the footage you see is, we shot it, and then actually performed that night. Some footage from that night, some footage is from a Monday where we had cameras on stage. It was a whole thing. And we had five days total of shooting, three days of actual performances, and then two days of catching things here and there. So yeah, we were prepped and we were ready and we were told, but it was beautiful because at that point, it was so ingrained in our bodies. It was just kind of perfect. We were cooking with gas. We were comfortable. I feel we gave one of the best shows because it was just right in the pocket.
What does Hamilton mean right now for this moment? Not as much it’s great people are going to see it, but for you, specifically something in it?
I know what you’re saying. For me specifically, it’s the message of Hamilton saying this is not what America should be, and that is what means most to me. That at the core of this character, everything starts because he says, “I don’t think this is the way this country should look,” and the whole show is just following a man who’s determined to change it. I think that is something vital that every protester, every human, any person who watched George Floyd with a knee on his neck, for 8 minutes and 46 seconds, needs to say: “I need to do this, and it can only change if I have the resolve and the will Alexander Hamilton had, and I am dedicated to creating the country that I believe is true and just.” That’s what it means to me.
‘Hamilton’ begins streaming via Disney+ on July 3rd. You can contact Mike Ryan directly on Twitter.
Late last week, 2K Sports announced that three individuals will grace three different covers of NBA 2K21. We learned the first of these on Tuesday morning, when 2K announced that Portland Trail Blazers star Damian Lillard will be on the cover for copies of the game on current generation consoles.
Lillard also announced the news on his Twitter account, saying that he used to play 2K on his Sega Dreamcast and that making it onto the cover is “a dream come true.”
In a statement to ESPN, Lillard said that, “This is a special moment for me in my NBA career. I’ve been a fan of NBA 2K for years and love how they represent all aspects of basketball culture. I’m an avid 2K player, so I’m honored to join the other NBA greats who have been on the cover. I’m grateful to all my fans and can’t wait for everyone to experience the game later this year.”
Gamers got their first look at 2K21 during a recent Sony PlayStation livestream, when New Orleans Pelicans standout Zion Williamson helped debut a collection of gameplay clips. The remaining two covers for this year’s 2K game are expected to be announced on Wednesday and Thursday of this week, and while there is no word on pricing or the game’s official release date, the trailer with Lillard revealed that preorders for NBA 2K21 will begin on July 2.
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