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Madonna Wants To Work With Kendrick Lamar And ‘Worships’ Him ‘More Than Anything In Life’

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When Madonna dropped by 30 Rock to promote her upcoming remix album Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones (and make host Jimmy Fallon extremely uncomfortable), the pop music icon showed off her grill, played some word games with Fallon, and performed a classroom instruments version of her hit song “Music.” In another part of her interview, though, Fallon does get in some decent questions, including whether there are any artists that Madonna really wants to work with after nearly 40 years of popularity.

“There’s one artist that I worship more than anything in life and I would love to collaborate with,” she agrees, “and that’s Kendrick Lamar.” After a quick pause for applause, she elaborates, “His new record is history-making, mind-bogglingly brilliant.”

That new record is, of course, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, which Kendrick dropped in May this year after a five-year hiatus since his Pulitzer Prize-winning album, DAMN. The album had the biggest first week of 2022 and was accompanied by a short film for “We Cry Together” and The Big Steppers Tour.

Meanwhile, in addition to her own new project, Madonna is getting plenty of attention for her remix of Beyonce’s dance hit “Break My Soul” for which Beyonce sent Madonna a thankful note after the remix’s release.

You can check out Madonna’s Tonight Show interview (she mentions Kendrick at the 2-minute mark) above.

Megan Thee Stallion Announces ‘Traumazine,’ Her New Album

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Megan Thee Stallion
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Finally, after unveiling songs like “Plan B” and “Pressurelicious,” Megan Thee Stallion has announced her new album Traumazine, which she has been teasing for months. It arrives tomorrow, August 12, and features artists like Latto, Key Glock, Pooh Shiesty, and more.

The record was rumored to be named Traumazine after she posted the definition of the word “traumazine,” reading “the chemical released in the brain when it is forced to deal with painful emotions caused by traumatic events and experiences.” She announced that the LP was finished at the end of last month by sharing an Instagram story with the text: “So happy abt my album. It’s finished. It’s for the hotties. It’s honest. It’s me. It’s real.”

Check out the album art and tracklist below.

Traumazine
Megan Thee Stallion

1. “NDA”
2. “Ungrateful” feat. Key Glock
3. “Not Nice”
4. “Budget” feat. Latto
5. “Her”
6. “Gift & A Curse”
7. “Ms. Nasty”
8. “Who Me” feat. Pooh Shiesty
9. “Red Wine”
10. “Scary” feat. Rico Nasty
11. “Anxiety”
12. “Flip Flop”
13. “Consistency” feat. Jhene Aiko
14. “Star” feat. Lucky Daye
15. “Pressurelicious” feat. Future
16. “Plan B”
17. “Southside Royalty Freestyle” feat. Sauce Walka, Big Pokey & Lil Keke
18. “Sweetest Pie” feat. Dua Lipa

Traumazine arrives 8/12. Pre-order it here.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

ASAP Rocky’s Alleged Shooting Victim ASAP Relli Comes Forward And Plans To Sue

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ASAP Rocky
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In April, ASAP Rocky was arrested at LAX in connection with a November 2021 shooting and was subsequently released from jail after posting bail for $550,000. The following week, LAPD confiscated several guns from the home of ASAP Rocky.

Now, ASAP Relli — a talent manager, producer, and a member of the hip-hop collective ASAP Mob — has stepped forward as a victim of the shooting. Real name is Terell Ephron, he will be filing a civil lawsuit against Rocky, according to Rolling Stone. Attorneys Jamal Tooson and Brian Hurwitz claimed that Rocky lured Relli to central Hollywood and showed up with semi-automatic handgun. “After arriving at the location, a conversation ensued whereby without provocation, warning, or any justification, ASAP Rocky produced the handgun and intentionally fired multiple shots at Mr. Ephron,” they told Rolling Stone.

They also said that Relli has received “multiple death threats and irreparable harm to his career in the entertainment industry as a result of this incident.”

ASAP Rocky has an extensive history of legal issues in his native New York, where he spent time on Riker’s Island for selling drugs and has been involved in several fights that ended with him being charged with assault, but nothing involving guns.

Run The Jewels Stage A Rebellious ‘Late Show’ Performance Of ‘A Few Words For The Firing Squad’

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When Run The Jewels dropped their fourth album in June 2020, they closed the album with the rambunctious “A Few Words For The Firing Squad.” It was a bold and fitting choice; the album was released at the height of several uprisings against police brutality, particularly against the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The punishing track stressed their distrust of the system and commitment to fighting back by any means necessary.

It has been a couple of years and a whole heap of new problems has appeared to burden the average American citizen with worries about pox viruses, inflation, and the loss of bodily autonomy, but “A Few Words For The Firing Squad” remains as poignant and timely as ever. El-P and Killer Mike stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to remind viewers that there’s still a fight for justice going on even amidst the slog of daily life during a pandemic.

With a stripped-down that highlighted the lyrics and message in lieu of an elaborate light show, Mike and P rap their verses without a drum track. Only a lone saxophonist accompanies them, growing more urgent and frantic as their rhymes do. You can catch the boys performing the song — and others — on their tour with Rage Against The Machine.

Watch Run The Jewels perform “A Few Words For The Firing Squad” from their fourth album on The Late Show above.

Lil Nas X Is Pumped About ‘Old Town Road’ Hitting 1 Billion YouTube Views, His First Video To Do So

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Lil Nas X iHeartRadio Z100 Jingle Ball 2021
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For Lil Nas X, it all started with “Old Town Road,” his earth-shattering 2019 hit. Now, the song’s classic music video has entered rare territory, having just reached 1 billion views on YouTube (it’s at exactly 1,000,153,128 as of this post). According to data from kworb.net, the clip is just the 322nd music video to ever top a billion plays on the platform.

Nas had a celebratory reaction to the news, tweeting a photo of a woman at a party with a shirt reading “Old B*tches Winning” and writing, “WE DID IT!”

The official video isn’t the only “Old Town Road” clip with a high view count: The “Official Movie” has about 648 million plays and the audio of the Billy Ray Cyrus remix has about 580 million views of its own. In total, all the “Old Town Road” videos on Lil Nas X’s YouTube channel have about 2.4 billion views.

Just how uncommon is it for a music video to hit a billion views on YouTube? Well, let’s look at some data (which may not be completely accurate but is good enough for the purposes of this thought exercise). Per a July post from Earthweb, there are about 800 million total videos on YouTube. In 2019, Digital Music News noted that videos in the music category made up 5 percent of total YouTube videos in 2018. 5 percent of 800 million is 40 million. Not all of those 40 million are music videos, though, so let’s say (based on absolutely nothing) that just 1 percent of those 40 million videos are music videos, so 400,000. Of those, only 322 have hit a billion views, which is about 0.08 percent (or 8 percent of 1 percent).

Revisit the “Old Town Road” video below.

City Girls’s JT Is Brought To Tears In The Upcoming Episode Of Revolt’s ‘Caresha Please’

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City Girls, comprised of JT and Yung Miami, are a truly dynamic duo. They possess the charisma, popularity, talent and work ethic to go as far as they see fit because both members bring a lot to the table. Over the last few months, we’ve seen Miami pursue a new solo venture in her Revolt show Caresha Please, with memorable interviews featuring her boyfriend Diddy as well as Kevin Gates. This week’s episode, releasing on Thursday, August 11, will include her partner-in-rap JT and the enigmatic Saucy Santana. Though they all have fun-loving personalities, the trailer for the episode shows JT getting emotional.

The official Revolt Twitter account shared a nearly minute-long clip ahead of the episode where Santana can be heard telling JT how talented she is and questioning why she won’t “do nothing,” though it’s unclear whether these are his personal thoughts or the thoughts of some fans. As Saucy Santana says this, JT is shown wiping tears from her face.

As the clip continues, Yung Miami says “Oh, I’m not thinking ‘I’m gon’ do this sh*t without JT.’ People love us as a group and we’re stronger as a group. We’re stronger together.” JT replies with “Why the f*ck are y’all doing that?” which comes off as if the conversation was about people wondering if the duo might break up. It’s a natural thought to have when a member of a group begins to do their own thing, especially as music history has shown that very thing has led to the demise of many a group. However, these thoughts may be a bit premature.

The trailer also shows the three laughing with one another and JT doing her best Yung Miami impression, so whoever has questions about the City Girls’ future will simply have to wait until Thursday for the full discussion.

Check out the promotional clip above.

Cardi B And Offset Manifest Their Homeowner Dreams In A Cute Photoshoot

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After disabling her Twitter account earlier this year, Cardi B returned to social media a few weeks later with a more restrained approach, seemingly only interacting with fan accounts’ positive posts and only posting the occasional promo or cute baby pic. Now, it seems she’s taken to sharing affirmations, tweeting out a relatively straightforward photo in casual clothes with the caption, “Took a picture in this house I want to buy ….to remind myself to go harder …watch me get it.”

Her husband Offset, who has traditionally been way less online than she has over the years, even dusted off his account to help her manifest her goal. “Damn you really want this house,” he replied with a quote tweet. “Don’t worry we gone get it !!”

It certainly seems the couple is in a better place than they were earlier in their marriage. While the first year or so after their nuptials were fraught with fights, accusations of infidelity, and multiple(!) divorce threats, these days, they’ve been putting on pretty public displays of affection, from Offset cracking fond jokes about Cardi’s cooking to Cardi giving a seductive pole dance to Offset while on vacation. They even have plans to record an album together. They might not be the next Bey-Z (yet), but if ‘Set’s been spending his days in marital bliss, it’s probably no wonder Quavo and Takeoff are out being single (and recording singles) without him.

Halle Bailey Reveals How She Got Through The Racist Backlash Against Her ‘Little Mermaid’ Casting

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When young R&B star Halle Bailey was announced as the star of Disney’s upcoming live-action remake of the beloved animated 1989 classic The Little Mermaid, not everyone was as enthused about the update to the Disney Renaissance favorite as her co-stars. To put it plainly, the subset of genre fans who always complain loudly whenever a minor change is made to a character’s skin color or gender really came for Halle, denouncing her casting as a case of “race-swapping” gone overboard — despite the fact that the main character Ariel’s race is in no way important to the story of her trading her voice for legs.

And unfortunately, due to the ever-pervasive nature of social media, those complaints made their way back to the actress herself. However, she was undeterred by the criticism, as she told Variety in a long-form feature published today. This was thanks mainly to her grandparents, who encouraged her in the face of the racist #NotMyAriel movement.

“It was an inspiring and beautiful thing to hear their words of encouragement,” she said, “telling me, ‘You don’t understand what this is doing for us, for our community, for all the little Black and brown girls who are going to see themselves in you.’” Their words helped put things into perspective for her: “What that would have done for me, how that would have changed my confidence, my belief in myself, everything,” she explained. “Things that seem so small to everyone else, it’s so big to us.”

Elsewhere in the feature, Halle recounted how the time spent away from her sister Chloe while filming during 2020, the height of COVID lockdowns, affected her. “She couldn’t visit me; everything was on lockdown,” she said. “It was that agony, that pain of being pulled away from something that’s like your arm, so I was pulling from that.”

The Little Mermaid is set for release on May 23, 2023.

Normani Shuts Down Haters Saying She’s Not ‘Motivated’ Or ‘Hungry Anymore’: ‘Just Shut The F*ck Up’

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Normani SiriusXM's Morning Mash Up 2022
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Even without a debut album out, Normani has established herself as a star; She has two top-10 singles to her name with the Khalid collaboration “Love Lies” and the Sam Smith link-up “Dancing With A Stranger.” As for that debut album, though, fans are still waiting. Some have even turned on Normani, believing that her success has led to a loss of drive in the singer. Per Normani’s passionate response to recent tweets making those allegations, that just isn’t true.

As Newsweek notes, a tweet from a user who has since set their profile to private read, “No idea where Normani’s motivation (no pun intended) has gone but I just [don’t] see the same passion from her as I used to. Before [y’all] start, [it’s] not depression so [don’t] even go THERE!” Another user wrote in response to the tweet, “What happens when you’ve gotten comfortable and you’re not HUNGRY anymore.”

Normani herself replied to the latter tweet yesterday (August 9), writing, “just shut the f*ck up.”

UK fashion illustrator and designer Hayden Williams responded to Normani’s tweet, “It’s so interesting that people that have no clue what it’s like to be in the music industry & the complexities that can come with that, but will dish out unwanted & rude opinions all the time smh.” Normani shared that and added, “on top of real life sh*t going on in my personal life.”

50 Cent’s Son Has A Role In His Upcoming Horror Movie, ‘Skill House’

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When Uproxx interviewed 50 Cent about his sprawling Power universe earlier this year, he was charmingly abashed about the level of explicit content in his shows, expressing some concern for younger viewers who might end up accidentally watching “soft pornography.” However, when it comes to his upcoming horror film, Skill House, he’s apparently a bit more liberal.

Despite the fact that a scene from the movie was supposedly so gnarly that a cameraperson fainted on set (I remain skeptical; maybe craft services didn’t have any vegan options or something), it looks like 50 Cent doesn’t mind exposing one younger viewer to the carnage: His son, Sire Jackson, who apparently has been hanging around the set, according to some photos 50 posted on Instagram. In the first, Sire sits with director Josh Stolberg, perhaps listening intently to some stage direction. However, in the second, which proud papa 50 clearly shot sometime later, Sire’s slumped on the couch, seemingly out for the count after a long day of shooting.

It remains to be seen whether Sire has an on-camera role in the film or was just learning the inner workings of the film industry, but I wouldn’t put it past Mr. Cent to be getting his kids in on the ground floor as soon as possible. Meanwhile, Skill House, which also stars TikToker Bryce Hall and UFC veteran Paige VanZant, is set for release in 2023.