Madden 23 is officially released on Friday and it is expected to be a major moment in the franchise. Not only is this game an homage to the late, great John Madden, but it’s introducing a key new gameplay feature that is supposed to make Madden more fun to play than ever before. FieldSENSE is the big new addition in this year’s Madden, and it’s meant to give gamers more control than ever before.
To showcase this new feature, Madden 23 launched with a trailer featuring a star-studded cast of faces to represent the new game. The trailer featured Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson and Cowboys linebacker Michah Parsons, but it also had some celebrity faces like Cordae and Hit-Boy talking up the game’s new features alongside Twitch star Nickmercs and Amazon Prime Thursday Night Football reporter Taylor Rooks.
We’re currently in the process of playing as much of the game ourselves to give a full review of the Madden 23 experience, and while our full thoughts will be withheld until then, we can say that the FieldSENSE feature is meeting the hype early on. It’s the most control Madden has ever given the player and it’s a big step in the right direction for the franchise.
The latest installment of EA Sports’ mega-popular football video game franchise, Madden NFL 23, is just a couple days away from its August 19 release. The game has also turned into a music event in recent years, as the soundtrack has become a venue for premiering new music. Indeed, that’s the case again this year, as EA has announced this year’s soundtrack features a good handful of songs making their debut in the game.
The 39-song tracklist features 14 previously unreleased songs, including “Run It Up” by Bas, “Extra Credit” by Big K.R.I.T., “The Best (TUA Remix)” by Erica Banks, and “Get Some Money’ by Killer Mike. A couple of the new songs — Money Man, Babyface Ray, and Key Glock’s “No Limit” featuring Bleu, and Cordae and Hit-Boy’s “Checkmate” — will only be made available after the game’s launch.
On top of the soundtrack, Hit-Boy also created “33 exclusive beats for the game’s cinematics.” Beyond the new material, the Madden 23 soundtrack will also include familiar favorites from Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg, Nas, Tyler The Creator, and plenty of others.
Check out the full list of songs on the Madden 23 soundtrack below.
Aha Gazelle — “Tear It Down”
Bas — “Run It Up” *
Benny The Butcher — “Remember Me”
Big K.R.I.T. — “Extra Credit” *
Blackway, Aeph, Koko — “Impossible”
Boslen — “Levels”
Cam Wallace — “Energy!”
Charmaine — “Logic (Lucky Charm Freestyle)”
Coast Contra — “505”
Cordae — “Sinister” Feat. Lil Wayne
Cypress Hill — “Hit Em’”
Doechii — “Crazy”
Dreamville with Bas — “Lifestyle” Feat. A$AP Ferg
Earthgang — “Ghetto “Gods
Erica Banks — “The Best (TUA Remix)” *
Gizzle — “One Shot” Feat. BRE-Z *
IMRSQD — “Run It Up”
Joey Badass — “The Rev3nge”
Kendrick Lamar — “N95”
Killer Mike — “Get Some Money” *
King Green — “Cold” *
Kwesi Arthur — “Winning” Feat. Vic Mensa
Lord Afrixana — “Touchdown” *
Malachiii — “Hold Me”
Malachiii — “How To Be A Star” *
Marqus Clae — “Are You Ready” *
Nas — “Meet Joe Black”
Nigo — “Come On, Let’s Go” Feat. Tyler The Creator
OnCue — “Any Given Sunday”
Pap Chanel — “No Biggie” *
Pusha T — “Scrape It Off” Feat. Lil Uzi Vert and Don Toliver
Risqkae — “The Intro” Feat. Rti$ *
Robert Glasper — “Black Superhero” Feat. Killer Mike, BJ The Chicago Kid, and Big K.R.I.T.
Simon Said. and Jazzfeezy — “You Gotta Choose” Feat. Steve Samson *
Snoop Dogg — “Conflicted” Feat. Nas
Symba — “Go Get It” *
Symba — “Put Me In The Game” *
Trev Rich and Wallis Lane — “Whole Team” *
Ty Dolla Sign — “Champions” Feat. Wiz Khalifa
Money Man, Babyface Ray, and Key Glock — “No Limit” Feat. Bleu *^
Cordae and Hit-Boy — “Checkmate” *^
* exclusives and debuts
^ additional tracks with the start of the NFL season
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Coheed and Cambria’s frontman, Claudio Sanchez, surprisingly is not the kind of person to embrace being personable with others. In an interview with the Washington Post, Sanchez dove deep into how he has been using Twitch as a way to embrace being a little more open with fans of his band. It is a really interesting example of a star in a completely different industry using something like Twitch as practice for their main career.
Amidst the interview though, Sanchez did drop one really interesting tidbit about his game of choice, Fortnite. Sanchez has seen other stars of music, such as Ariana Grande, get virtual Twitch concerts and while he’s not demanding that Epic Games put his band into Fortnite, he thinks Coheed and Cambria could put on a pretty unique show.
“I don’t know if we’re at that place where ‘Fortnite’ would be like, ‘Yeah, let’s throw a Coheed and Cambria concert,’” said Sanchez. “That being said, I think we do have all the assets to create something pretty interesting with ‘The Amory Wars,’ the ‘Vaxis’ story, characters, music. There’s something there I think we have that others might not.”
While Fortnite has never publicly considered Coheed and Cambria, that is something they may want to reconsider because they have a hardcore fanbase that would absolutely turn out for a virtual concert. It would also be an opportunity for Epic Games to break out into doing something a little different with their in-game concerts. So far they’ve mainly focused on showing huge megastars like Grande, but maybe with a little variety, we could have a chance at an entire music festival being hosted in-game.
As for Sanchez, anyone interested in catching him on Twitch needs to do it while he’s actually live. He doesn’t keep VODs or upload his streams to YouTube so it really is one of those “had to be there” moments whenever he does something.
What comes to mind when you think of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles? The Statue of Liberty, pizza, maybe the Manhattan skyline? All of these are defining traits of New York City, which doubles as the home to our favorite fictional group of reptiles. The Turtles have always embodied New York in a way that few other fictional characters in pop culture do.
With Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder’s Revenge coming out, the publishers over at Dotemu knew early on they wanted one of the game’s many themes to be the Turtles’ love for the city. They also wanted tie something in that paid tribute to the era when the Ninja Turtles were at their peak. So, they looked around and quickly realized who they wanted to partner with the Wu-Tang Clan — specifically Ghostface Killah and Raekwon.
“We knew that, for the soundtrack of the Turtles, we wanted to have guests,” Dotemu’s Adrien Marie tells UPROXX. “We wanted to have big guest stars because it makes sense for the project and we wanted to raise the bar. Adding to what we have already been doing, we have a lot of different artists and guest stars, but we wanted to go further into mainstream music … we also were thinking about the fact that TMNT and hip-hop makes sense. A deep part of our perception is that it’s very anchored in there, it’s in the TMNT DNA, to have something hip-hop, and so we were thinking about hip-hop artists. And it’s New York, so we didn’t want to have any West Coast artists. So, our thought process was that we need to have East Coast hip-hop artists from the ’90s and the Wu-Tang Clan was at the top of the list.”
Of course, the Wu-Tang Clan was formed in Staten Island. There are few people in music that better represent New York than them, so having Ghostface Killah and Raekown involved in the game was an obvious decision. So much of Shredder’s Revenge is about capturing the original spirit of the Turtles that many people grew up with in the ’80s and ’90s. From having a new rendition of the original theme song playing in the opening cinematic, to the entire game’s style, it’s a trip down memory lane for everyone involved.
So how exactly did Dotemu and the developers over at Tribute Games involve them? The spoiler-free answer is that it does play in the game and it’s one of the best moments of the entire game, but there are some secrets to the song that we don’t want to reveal without a spoiler warning.
A disclaimer: If you plan on playing Shredder’s Revenge then be warned that the following few paragraphs will have spoilers for both the game and music.
The track that Ghostface Killah and Raekwon made plays during the boss fight with Shredder towards the end of the game. It’s a really cool moment, because Shredder joins in a little earlier than expected. It’s a fun fight and the best thing to do is blast the music and enjoy the moment to its fullest, but there’s a fun little secret that Marie told us about what the song is supposed to represent.
“So, the idea was to have a rap battle,” Marie says. “Cyrille [Lambert] wanted the first part to be Shredder’s, which is why the first part of the song is from the point of view of Shredder, and then the other side of the track is the reverse. It’s when, after all of the menacing lyrics from Shredder, you have the Turtles fighting back. This is why the second part of the track is the Turtles saying, ‘No, this is this is our fight and we’re going to win.’ Based on that, Cyrille worked with Kid Katana records, and Tee Lopes, the composer of the soundtrack of the game, Tee created a beat, then Raekown and Ghostface recorded their parts.”
The song is a delight, it’s reminiscent of the infamous “Go Ninja” scene from the second movie. If they ever decide to make another Ninja Turtles movie, please let them do a battle rap scene and bring back the Wu-Tang Clan to make a cameo.
Cowabunga, motherf*ckers! Wu-Tang Clan and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles together at last?! You gotta figure the Turtles still owe us after having to weather the ’90s storm of the Vanilla Ice x TMNT“Go Ninja Go” collab. The dawn is now upon us as Ghostface Killah and Raekwon have officially penned a new track for theTeenage Mutant Ninja Turtled: Shredder’s Revenge video game and it’s awesome, dude.
Titled “We Ain’t Came To Lose,” the track is bona fide motivation for the sticks in the beat-em-up-style game. Ghostface comes in hot right off the bat, spitting, “Nice to meet ya, now I’m here to beat ya / With full force, mess up ya facial features. Hasta la vista, I’m sonnin’ all y’all, Little Caesar’s / All y’all stuff ya face with is pizza, pizza.”
It’s clear how natural this marriage of timeless city dwellers is before Ghost drops easily the best line in the track with, “My stomach cringes from all o’ ya fake ninjas,” to drive the point home. Raekwon The Chef is on the hook, repeating, “We ain’t came to lose,” like a mantra, leaving any shred of Vanilla Ice’s memory in the dust.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtled: Shredder’s Revenge is due out on June 16 via Tribute Games and Dotemu and will be available on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, and Linux. Peep the audio of “We Ain’t Came To Lose” above.
Every year, there are always at least a couple Grammy nominations that stick out. This year, one of those was in the Best Arrangement, Instrumental Or A Cappella category: Nominated was an arrangement of “Meta Knight’s Revenge,” a song from the 1996 Super Nintendo game Kirby Super Star, as arranged by Charlie Rosen and Jake Silverman and performed by The 8-Bit Big Band featuring Button Masher (Silverman’s performing name).
Video game songs aren’t nominated that often so what happened last night was big: “Meta Knight’s Revenge” (which appears on The 8-Bit Big Band’s 2021 album Backwards Compatible) actually won the award.
This is a huge moment in Nintendo history and in video game history more broadly; Eurogamer notes this is only the second time a song originally from a video game has taken home a Grammy, following Christopher Tin’s 2010 win for Best Instrumental Arrangement With Vocalist(s), for a song composed for Civilization 4. Previously, Journey composer Austin Wintory got a nomination in the Best Score Soundtrack For Visual Media category in 2013 but didn’t win.
So, that means this Kirby win is the first time a song from a Nintendo game has ever won a Grammy. This news arrives with especially good timing, as it quickly follows the March 25 release of the latest Kirby game, Kirby And The Forgotten Land for Nintendo Switch.
Rosen shared an excited reaction on the social media pages for The 8-Bit Big Band, posting a photo of himself and Silverman with their trophies and writing, “HOLY SH*T WE WON THE GRAMMY!!LONG LIVE VIDEO GAME MUSIC!! Thank you to everybody who’s ever listened to [The 8-Bit Big Band], the 100s of artists who have contributed their time/talent/musicianship, and of course HUGE thanks to my co-arranger on Meta Knights Revenge the one and only [Jake Silverman] !! MUCH LOVE, [Charlie Rosen].”
Rosen also posted this pretty terrific Kirby graphic a few days ago:
Watch The 8-Bit Big Band and Button Masher perform “Meta Knight’s Revenge” above. Also check out where Kirby Super Star (and another SNES Kirby game) ranks on our list of the 100 best Super Nintendo games (according to over 200,000 players) here.
The Las Vegas-themed experience (since the Grammys will be in Vegas for the first time this year) goes down virtually from March 30 to April 3 and will feature “artist avatar meet & greets, chats, mini games, prizes,” and a performance from Camilo, making him the first Laton artist to perform on Roblox.
Camilo says of the performance, “When Roblox approached me, I immediately got very excited because this was the first time in my life that I would be doing something like this. I’m also grateful that I’ll be able to bring this unique experience to La Tribu, especially during Grammy Week. I was already incredibly honored to be one of this year’s nominees, and to perform in a completely new way in the Metaverse, brings it to a whole new level. I can’t wait!”
Camilo is among this year’s Grammy nominees, as Mis Manos is up for Best Latin Pop Album.
Panos A. Panay, Co-President of the Recording Academy, also noted, “We are thrilled to partner with Roblox for our first-ever official Grammy Week experience in the Metaverse. We are always looking to innovate and reach music lovers wherever they are, and there is no better partner for us to accomplish this than Roblox. Online gaming platforms are quickly becoming one of the most important music discovery channels for tens of millions of fans. As an Academy, it’s our priority to continue broadening where and how our members connect with audiences around the world. Plus, my 8-year-old twin daughters think this is amazing.”
Jon Vlassopulos — vice president, global head of music of Roblox — also said, “The Grammy Awards are iconic and we’re delighted to bring the hottest music show of the year to fans across the globe. We’re thrilled to be featuring Camilo, our first Latin virtual concert performer on Roblox, giving the community new music and genres to discover.”
Find the full list of 2022 Grammy nominations here.
Is there anything better than jamming out to some of your favorite songs in Beat Saber? The VR rhythm game that features players slashing away at floating blocks is one of the best games in the always growing VR landscape. Beat Saber is so popular that some of the biggest musical artists in the world such as Lady Gaga and Billie Eilish have collaborated with the game to get music packs of their own in the game.
On Tuesday, we saw another example of a major collaboration happening with world famous band Fall Out Boy adding a music pack of their own to Beat Saber. Some of the songs include hits like “Centuries” and “Irresistible” among others.
Centuries Thnks fr th Mmrs This Ain’t A Scene, It’s An Arms Race Immortals I Don’t Care My Songs Know What You Did In The Dark (Light Em Up) Dance, Dance Irresistible pic.twitter.com/VwBMQI2TFJ
Pete Wentz was excited about the band’s collaboration with Beat Saber saying in a statement, “Our shows are flat out filled with pyro – it’s rock n roll.” said Wentz. “That’s why our first VR collab had to have a TON of it… this will be the biggest rock show that Beat Saber has ever seen. Turn it up!”
One of the best parts of playing Beat Saber is how energetic it can feel jamming out to music while hitting each block. Fall Out Boy is perfect for a game like this thanks to how uptempo some of their music can be. We can’t wait to start jamming out when the music pack drops on March 31.
Juice WRLD was a well-known gamer in his life; fans know he was tapped in with Faze Clan, regularly expressed his love for games, and even paid homage to classic games with his music throughout his career, including on the Twisted Metal-inspired cover of his Death Race For Love album. Likewise, the gaming community reciprocated his love, with streamers regularly playing his music and expressing their grief for his death in 2018. Now, it appears the late rapper could receive one of the ultimate honors, being put into one of the most popular modern games as a player skin.
Juice’s former manager, Peter Jideonwo, posted a video to social media that has since circulated on Twitter via hip-hop-focused accounts saying that he is currently in talks with Epic Games, the publisher of the popular shooter game Fortnite, to get the rapper into the game. “(We) really need Juice WRLD in Fortnite,” he said. “We’ve been trying our hardest, and that’s also a work in progress… It would be cool because everyone in Fortnite loves Juice and ‘Come And Go’ was a huge hit in Fortnite. I think it fits. So if y’all wanna go hit up Epic Games and Fortnite, y’all should definitely do that too.”
Juice WRLD’s former manager shares they’re in conversation with Fortnite about getting Juice in the game pic.twitter.com/Yc9bB90wQR
A photo of a purported player skin representing Juice WRLD has been circulating since, with fans speculating that the rapper could be joining the game soon, but apparently, the photo in question is just fan-made concept art. Should Juice join the game, he’ll be the third rapper after Travis Scott and Anderson .Paak, who was added as part of the duo Silk Sonic alongside his groupmate Bruno Mars. Last year, the game also added LeBron James as a playable skin.
this is NOT the official juice wrld fortnite skin. this was a concept art made back in 2021 by a youtuber. juice wrld’s team hasn’t even had the meeting with epic yet to start discussing a skin and or whatever else they have in mind. so we won’t see anything for awhile yet. pic.twitter.com/1lyEiawnGl
Meanwhile, another rapper was recently added to a different popular shooter; Snoop Dogg, who previously collaborated with Call Of Duty to provide his voice, will be added to three of the franchise’s current games as an operator with special equipment.
Snoop Dogg’s love of gaming is well-documented; last year, he hosted a Super Bowl XBox tournament alongside Saweetie, this year, he joined the gamer crew FaZe Clan, and he’s a well-known streamer on Twitch, bringing his unique personality and wisecracks to the masses. He’s even been in a few games, perhaps most notably in Def Jam: Fight For NY as that game’s surprising final boss. Now, gamers can play with Snoop Dogg in another popular game, although this time in a different genre.
Today, Activision announced that Snoop will join its immensely popular shooter series, Call Of Duty, as a playable character in three of the franchise’s current offerings: Call Of Duty: Mobile, Call Of Duty: Vanguard, and Call Of Duty: Warzone. To acquire the character in the console versions, players can look for him on April 19 at 10 am PT. The character includes “a full Operator progression track,” along with alternate outfits. The mobile version will be available via Lucky Draw on April 1. Naturally, Snoop will be voicing himself, as he did in Call Of Duty: Ghosts
“The D O Double G is back in Call of Duty and this time I’m in the freakin’ game!” Snoop said in the press release. “Excited to be working with the COD team to bring some fly features for you all to enjoy. It’s dope….. y’all can play as me and get these sick items that have Snoop written all over them. Check it out.”
See photos of Snoop in action courtesy of Activision below.
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