Freddie Gibbs’ irreverent sense of humor is well-known, but not always appreciated. His penchant for ribaldry got him banned from Instagram last year, but that hasn’t stopped him from participating in the discourse — he just moved to a not-so-secret fake account, which he admitted to Joe Rogan’s podcast earlier this year. Now, in a new profile in GQ, he confesses that he may have more accounts that he uses to mock other rappers, who he sees as competitors in the sport of rhyming.
“You’re never too old to learn,” he allows, explaining why he spends so much time online studying his peers. “N****s become irrelevant because they stop learning and being sponges to the game. I eat, sleep, and breathe this shit, every day. I’m looking at what everybody’s doing. I’m getting on fake Instagram pages leaving comments like, ‘That sh*t is wack.’ I’m doing all kinds of bullsh*t, taunting people.”
At 38 years old, Freddie Gibbs is experiencing the most successful year of his career, receiving a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Album for Alfredo, his collaborative album with veteran producer The Alchemist, and preparing to make his film debut. He didn’t win, but in typical Gibbs fashion, he was all jokes at the party he threw on Grammy night.
It was announced at the top of 2021 that Glastonbury will not be hosting a festival this year (for the second year in a row) due to the pandemic. So, while thousands of people won’t be taking to the festival grounds this summer, they can enjoy a newly announced livestream concert that organizers are hosting.
“Live At Worthy Farm” is a ticketed livestream event that is set for May 22. As the name suggests, the show will take place at Worthy Farm and will feature Coldplay, Gorillaz’s Damon Albarn, Haim, Idles, Wolf Alice, Jorja Smith, Kano, Michael Kiwanuka, DJ Honey Dijon, and other currently unannounced performers.
This news shouldn’t surprise fans who have been following Glastonbury’s goings-on in recent months. In January, festival founder Michael Eavis said he wanted to do something to mark the festival’s anniversary: I would like to do something smaller somewhere around the anniversary date of when we started, which was the 18th of September 1970. I would like to consider possibly doing something around that time.” In December, Emily Eavis also noted, “We’re actually looking into the possibility of streaming some things from here if we can’t run the full show next year. We really want to get busy with planning some gigs — even if they’re to be streamed!”
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Lil Nas X is good at the internet — and he should be. At just 21 years old, he was born into a world with social media, smartphones, and all the cultural byproducts inherent to both. He’s a representative member of the first generation to never know a world without PCs, MacBooks, iPhones, and DSPs.
Still, though, he’s better at playing the game than most, a fact best evidenced by the now-well-known circumstances of his rise to stardom. “Old Town Road” didn’t become a mega-hit by accident. Instead, Nas, disillusioned after the lukewarm reception of his debut mixtape Nasarati, shifted gears, putting all of his considerable knowledge and experience at social media trolling into making his country-fried joke song blow up.
Now, those computer troll instincts are again making him the center of attention. Someone less adept at manipulating the narrative and processing the invective he’s taken would crumble under the weight. But Nas, bred in the fires of Stan Twitter flame wars and well-versed in the weird humor of convoluted Reddit memes, has turned every slight against him into another chance to promote “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” and its ancillary products.
His gift mirrors that of another colorful and gifted troll who recently lived out his rise and fall in the burning spotlight of internet scrutiny. Tekashi 69 also blew up by playing on social media users’ attraction to controversy. Feeding the algorithms that shove outrage fodder in our faces 24/7, the New Yorker goaded opponents, leaned all the way into his role as a hip-hop heel, and kept up a steady stream of new material to capitalize on the trainwreck quality of his online persona.
Of course, we all know what that got him. While he continues trolling establishment rap media and other artists, the effect is beginning to show diminishing returns. The nonstop negativity he generates may have a sideshow quality, but eventually, there’s only so much you can gawk at the bearded lady before you get bored and look around for something else. In contrast, Lil Nas X is doing the opposite: Using his troll powers for good — or maybe for redemption.
After all, those skills were honed at the cost of childish jokes at the expense of marginalized groups back when Nas just ran a Nicki Minaj stan account. Like many of the Barbz online, he could be seen lashing out at just about any target. Yet, in light of his coming out as gay and knowing the angst that comes along with hiding your identity, his past behavior is understandable, if not acceptable. Hurt people hurt people.
Behind just about every nasty troll comment is insecurity; Nas eventually came to terms with his and is now using his wicked sense of humor to thrash his detractors — people he can likely relate to on some level as a result of his prior experiences — with sarcastic wit and cleverly-planned rollouts that use their criticisms as free promotion.
So when his music video’s Luciferian lapdance prompted accusations of devil worship, Nas judo-flipped those complaints by pointing out the fire-and-brimstone recriminations that have been leveled at queer people for the past century — and that he’s not the first to use such imagery, highlighting the potential hidden agendas of those accusers. When his customized Nike Air Max collaboration with MSCHF was demeaned by Fox News, he smoothly noted the hypocrisy of freedom-of-speech advocates with a humorous knock on Chick-Fil-A’s proud support of anti-gay groups and legislation. The shoes sold out in 60 seconds, adding insult to injury for his haters.
By offering up this provocation, not only does Nas generate streams, views, and ultimately, dollar signs, he also provides an example that he didn’t have growing up: A gay, Black man standing up to the establishment — and winning. He’s laying a blueprint for the kid who feels that they can’t be themselves without facing persecution, who would otherwise turn into the bullies they feared through online trolling.
The anonymity the internet provides allows the opportunity for reinvention, but it also incentivizes our worst impulses. Clap backs get the most engagement, algorithms guide lost souls down dangerous roads of conspiracy theory and hatred, and outrage is more valuable than Bitcoin, DogeCoin, and Ethereum put together. What Lil Nas X has done with “Montero” and his so-called “Satan Shoes” has exposed these tendencies and silently invoke the query, “What are you going to do about it?”
By calling out the silliness of outrage culture, he’s also subtly calling out the absence of anything better — and challenging us to create that missing alternative. For every hell, there must be a heaven; if Lil Nas X’s fantastical video bothers you so much, maybe you need to find somewhere positive to put that energy. After all, you’re unlikely to see a pair of those Air Max 97s out in public and you won’t have to watch the “Montero” video unless you go to YouTube searching for it. That’s the thing about trolls; the more you feed them, the stronger they get. At least this one is trying to make the world a slightly better place.
Drake experienced a close call at his Toronto mansion on Tuesday evening. According to varying reports from multiple publications, a woman was arrested near his home following a failed attempt to broke into the rapper’s house. The Toronto Sun and New York Daily News report that the unnamed woman was put under arrest after a call was placed due to a disturbance she caused in the area. The Toronto Sun added that law enforcement sources told them she was armed with a knife and allegedly hit one of the security guards with a metal pipe. “The perpetrator did not get anywhere near Drake,” the insider claimed. “In fact, the intruder did not make it past the front gate.”
However, the reports that the woman was carrying a knife or caused any injury to individuals in the area were denied by both Global News and TMZ. The former confirmed that an arrest was made around 5 PM on Tuesday evening around Drake’ mansion, which is located around the Bayview and Lawrence avenues, but that they were notified by officers that there was no attempt to trespass on the rapper’s property nor were any injuries reported. It’s also unknown if Drake himself was home at the time of the incident.
The woman’s arrest comes weeks after Drake became the first artist in music history to have three songs debut within the top three positions of the Billboard Hot 100 thanks to his Scary Hours 2 project.
Among the many controversies that surround Lil Nas X’s new song and video “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” one of involves accusations of plagiarism. Some people noticed large similarities between his video and FKA Twigs’ 2019 video for “Cellophane.” Lil Nas admitted to TIME that he took inspiration from FKA Twigs’ video for his own. “I wanted to see some things people have done in music videos with the pole—and I felt like twigs did a really amazing job at that,” he said. “I wanted to do my own take on it.”
Despite it all, Lil Nas and FKA Twigs are on good terms, as the latter revealed in an Instagram post that they cleared the air about their respective videos. “Thank you @lilnasx for our gentle honest conversations and for acknowledging the inspiration cellophane gave you and your creative team in creating your iconic video!” she said. “I think what you have done is amazing and i fully support your expression and bravery in pushing culture forward for the queer community. legend status.”
She also took a moment to address sex workers, Andrew Thomas Huang, who previously spoke about the similarities in the music videos, and Kelly Yvonne as they all played a role in creating her video.
“I want to thank @andrewthomashuang and @kelyvon for helping me create cellophane but also and most importantly i would like to thank sex workers and strippers for providing the physical language to make both videos possible,” FKA Twigs said. She then shared some news with her followers. “i have been working with @swarmhive to help support this community and i know all donations to the swarm hardship fund will be welcome during this difficult time.” SWARM (Sex Worker Advocacy and Resistance Movement) is a grassroots sex-worker-led collective “fighting criminalisation, supporting sex workers & engaging in solidarity across issues of justice,” as it reads in their Instagram bio.
There’s growing tension between executives and staff members at YouTube’s headquarters, and at the center of it all is YG’s track “Meet The Flockers.” The song can be found on his beloved debut album, My Krazy Life, which he released back in 2014. On it, the Compton rapper speaks about breaking into the home of a Chinese family, which he says is a perfect target for a robbery. “You find a house and scope it out/ Find a Chinese neighborhood ’cause they don’t believe in bank accounts,” he raps. It’s comments like these that have caused some YouTube staffers to ask that it be removed.
So far YouTube’s executives have decided against removing the video from the platform. In an email sent to their staff members, which was shared by Bloomberg, the administrators explained their decision. “We find this video to be highly offensive and understand it is painful for many to watch, including many in Trust & Safety and especially given the ongoing violence against the Asian community,” they said. “While we debated this decision at length amongst our policy experts, we made the difficult decision to leave the video up to enforce our policy consistently and avoid setting a precedent that may lead to us having to remove a lot of other music on YouTube.”
The Weeknd has spent much of March celebrating some big anniversaries. There was the ten-year of his debut mixtape, House Of Balloons, which helped him break into the R&B world. Last March, The Weeknd released his most recent album, After Hours, to widespread acclaim. Finally, back on this date in 2018, he dropped the only EP of his career, My Dear Melancholy. To celebrate the latter, The Weeknd dropped a new video for one of the EP’s tracks, “Try Me.” It’s a fairly simple one that finds the Canadian singer lip-synching the lyrics to the song into the front-facing camera of his phone while he sits in the backseat of a car.
The video comes after The Weeknd teased that new music would arrive soon, albeit in a unique way. “new song living in NFT space. coming soon…,” he wrote in a post on Twitter. Whenever it arrives, the singer will join the likes of Ja Rule and Grimes as artists who have taken advantage of the NFT space. He also hinted at more releases as a part of his After Hours era. This was news he also delivered on Twitter, where he wrote, “p.s. this chapter isn’t quite done yet,” adding, “still tying some loose ends.”
Last summer, Young Dolph delivered his seventh album Rich Slave, a 16-track effort that increased to 24 when its deluxe reissue arrived at the beginning of 2021, and which bore contributions from Key Glock, Megan Thee Stallion, G Herbo, and Kenny Muney. The album debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard 200, making it the highest-charting release of his career. Dolph continued to impress with Dum & Dummer 2, his joint album with fellow Memphis rapper Key Glock, which dropped last week. Unfortunately for fans of Dolph, the new project marks an end to his career, as he took to Instagram to announce his retirement from hip-hop.
“I hope y’all enjoying the new mixtape, it’s my last project putting out,” he revealed in the post’s caption. “I wasn’t gonna tell y’all but i thought y’all should know im done with music. ENJOY.”
While the timing of the news may be unexpected, it’s not the first time that Dolph has announced his retirement. In March 2020, he called it quits from the rap game in order to spend more time with his family. “I’m done doing music so I can go kick it with my son,” he said at the time. “Key Glock is already poised to be the new torchbearer.” The retirement didn’t last long, as he quickly returned to begin the rollout for Rich Slave, which arrived five months later.
Dum & Dummer 2 is out now via Paper Route Empire. Get it here.
Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Lil Nas X has pretty much had the entertainment world in the palm of his hands since he released his video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” last week. Think pieces from all over were written, but the singer is taking it all in stride, trolling his critics in response. Things worsened when he unveiled the footwear line “Satan Shoes” mere days after the song arrived, but even a lawsuit from Nike didn’t faze him.
There was one other piece of criticism: Some said the new video bore similarities to FKA Twigs’ 2019 video for “Cellophane,” namely the part where he descends to hell on a stripper pole. However, the director of FKA Twigs’ video, Andrew Thomas Huang, wasn’t so quick to accuse the “Old Town Road” singer of theft.
I’m a fan of @LilNasX. “Old Town Road” is iconic. Sharing collaborators is common. Seeing the “Cellophane” choreographer collab with Lil Nas X is awesome (love a Satan dance). Sharing aesthetics and paying homage is part of the creative process. Collective consciousness exists.
“I’m a fan of @LilNasX. “Old Town Road” is iconic,” Huang wrote over Twitter. “Sharing collaborators is common. Seeing the ‘Cellophane’ choreographer collab with Lil Nas X is awesome (love a Satan dance). Sharing aesthetics and paying homage is part of the creative process. Collective consciousness exists.” He added, “Images are also expensive to make. Years of work went into the creation of ‘Cellophane,’ from physical training to the emotional labor of unpacking Twigs’ life to construct images told her story of trauma and recovery. ‘Cellophane’ was a confession in the most vulnerable sense.”
Images are also expensive to make. Years of work went into the creation of “Cellophane,” from physical training to the emotional labor of unpacking Twigs’ life to construct images told her story of trauma and recovery. “Cellophane” was a confession in the most vulnerable sense.
Huang then discussed the work that was put into the “Cellophane” video. “Images are also expensive to make. Years of work went into the creation of ‘Cellophane,’ from physical training to the emotional labor of unpacking Twigs’ life to construct images told her story of trauma and recovery. ‘Cellophane’ was a confession in the most vulnerable sense,” he said. “When an artist is in a position of power (amplified with the help of major record labels, social media, PR, etc) and repurposes someone’s labor and ideas to serve their brand image, they cause harm by displacing the efforts of the artists who did the original leg work.”
Intentional or not, copying other artists’ work happens. Making music videos is a labor of love. The demand for content pushed by major labels renders our work disposable and pits artists against each other.
Huang then shifted his attention to major records labels like Columbia, to which Lil Nas is signed, and asked that they do a better job of enforcing artistic integrity with their creatives. “I urge the music community, particularly major record labels like @ColumbiaRecords to respect directors, uphold artistic accountability and honor the ingenuity of artists dedicating their blood sweat and tears to imagine better futures amidst a broken industry,” he said, adding, “We can do better.”
Ever since Megan Thee Stallion declared the warmer months of 2019 “Hot Girl Summer,” all sorts of public figures have rushed to lay claim to the beach season with their own campaigns — she even updated it to “quarantine summer” herself last year. Saweetie once declared December “Icy Girl Winter” and has already put in a bid to name summer 2021 “Pretty B*tch Summer” after her upcoming debut album, Pretty B*tch Music.
But one celebrity’s option has put off more people than its beguiled; Chet Hanks, of over-the-top patois and “being Tom Hanks’ son” fame, said he felt a “White Boy Summer” is in the works with him and Jack Harlow, and some folks on Twitter aren’t having it. Included among those opting out of Hanks’ fantasy summer is Dionne Warwick. The new queen of Black Twitter was mystified upon being informed of Chet Hanks’ crusade, wondering “What foolishness did I just see?” and predicting instead, “I will be having a Black Woman Summer.”
Ms. Warwick isn’t the only one who seems undone by Hanks’ tomfoolery. For the past few days, Twitter has been alight with posts roasting Tom’s offspring. The jokes range from imagining Jon B and Jack Harlow’s responses to being pulled into the discussion to wondering just how Chet Hanks turned out the way he has with an Oscar-winning father and all the privilege in the world (I think the answer’s in the question). In any case, it looks like “White Boy Summer” is probably not becoming a thing, insomuch as it already was for the last 400 summers or so, and it’s been terrible for everybody else.
Check out more responses to Chet Hanks below.
I want to hate Chet Hanks but he’s absolutely one of the funniest people alive https://t.co/sBTWaEz7YK
(@1992_rp)