Kendrick Lamar

The 2022 Super Bowl Halftime Show Trailer Combines Hits By Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, And Mary J. Blige

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A few months ago, hip-hop fans’ dreams came true when it was announced that Eminem, Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige would all be performing together at the 2022 Super Bowl Halftime Show on February 13. Now, as the big day is less than a month away, Pepsi has shared a cinematic new teaser video for the performance.

“The Call,” a near-4-minute video helmed by Straight Outta Compton director F. Gary Gray, features each artist getting an important call, prompting them all to head to SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California for the big game. Through the cinematic clip, snippets of the legends’ iconic songs set the stage for the show, as the ad features “Rap God,” “The Next Episode,” “Family Affair,” “Humble,” “Still D.R.E.,” and “California Love.”

Gray says of the video in a statement (via The New York Post), “Each time I collaborate with Dre, it seems to mark an important moment in entertainment history, from projects like Friday, Set It Off, Straight Outta Compton, to now the Pepsi Super Bowl LVI Halftime Show. As a super fan, I consider it an honor and privilege to authentically build and create this moment with five of the most legendary artists in music history.”

Todd Kaplan, VP of Marketing at Pepsi, also said in a statement, “Now that we are just weeks away from the most anticipated Pepsi Super Bowl Halftime Show performance of all time, we’re bringing fans closer to the magic of what will certainly be a colossal moment in pop culture history.”

Watch “The Call” above.

Kendrick Lamar’s Upcoming Slave Intern Movie Was Absolutely Slammed By People On Twitter

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Earlier this week, Kendrick Lamar was announced as one of the creators of an upcoming film. It’s listed as a comedy and it has Kendrick’s longtime partner Dave Free as well as the creators of South Park, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, as collaborators of the film. So far so good? Well, here’s where things get sticky. The currently untitled film was described as follows: “a young Black man who is interning as a slave reenactor at a living history museum” … finds out that his white girlfriend’s ancestors owned his own ancestors.

This plot seemed to rub many the wrong way and it resulted in the film being absolutely torn apart on social media. One person wrote, “And it’s gonna be a… comedy? Oh this bad,” while another shared an image of Dr. Umar Johnson and wrote, “What is this plot?” A third person said, “This is easily, without hyperbole, the worst idea for a story I’ve ever heard.” Others pointed to how their recent requests from the rapper were for new music, his fifth album preferably, and not this kind of movie. “Mannn.. all we asked for was the J.Cole collab,” a user wrote.

The script for the upcoming film was written by MTV2’s Wonder Showzen creator Vernon Chatman, who also voiced a handful of characters on South Park. A director for the movie has not been selected yet.

You can see some more reactions to the upcoming film below.

Rap Caviar Launched Some ‘Rap Mount Rushmore’ Murals That Surely Won’t Be Controversial

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Let’s begin by thanking Spotify for the great utility of their plentiful playlists. For instance, in the Running section of the app, the pop playlists are broken down into ’00s pop, ’10s pop, and even ’90s pop — this one goes hard for those middle miles.

Anyway, it seems like their hip-hop curation team, Rap Caviar, has decided to break down their own genre in a similar way, by organizing it into decades. That seems fine, except, they also decided to tap into the ongoing greatest-of-all-time conversation by actually painting a “Rap Mount Rushmore” mural in various cities. They also chose to break their Rushmore down into just the 2010s, selecting Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Nicki Minaj, and J. Cole. Which is exactly where things might get a little messier.

First of all, I have great respect for Nicki Minaj and believe she’s an incredibly important MC, but her greatest sphere of influence was definitely waning around 2015. By the time Queen hit, she wasn’t very influential at all. So putting her on the mountain when other massive names like Future, Young Thug, Tyler The Creator, Travis Scott and even Kanye himself are all let off is pretty alarming for even a casual rap listener. She might be there due to the fact that she called out a similar Rushmore on Twitter for not including her, but hey, desire isn’t achievement.

The fact that there’s no southern rap (no, J. Cole doesn’t count) is another issue some might find contentious! Anyway, at least they got Kendrick right.

Kendrick Lamar Teams Up With South Park Creators To Produce New Comedy Show

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Grammy-winning rapper Kendrick Lamar, Dave Free and South Park co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker have signed on to produce an untitled, live-action comedy for Paramount Pictures. The live-action comedy was written by Vernon Chatman. Kendrick Lamar Set To Produce New Comedy Show For Paramount The film is about a young Black man who is […]

Kendrick Lamar And Dave Free Partner With The Creators Of ‘South Park’ On A New Comedy Film

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A couple of years ago, Kendrick Lamar and Dave Free mystified the world with the announcement of their new company, PgLang. Nobody seemed to know what PgLang was or what it’d do, but in the intervening years, we’ve seen glimpses. In 2021, the company collaborated with Calvin Klein on a new ad campaign and backed the release of Kendrick’s cousin Baby Keem’s debut album The Melodic Blue on Columbia Records. According to Deadline, though, they’ve now got bigger plans, expanding into the world of film with the creators of long-running animated comedy South Park.

Kendrick, Dave, Matt Stone, and Trey Parker have teamed up to produce the live-action comedy with Paramount Pictures. The premise is probably par for the course for the provocative South Park creators, following “a young Black man who is interning as a slave reenactor at a living history museum” who finds out that his white girlfriend’s ancestors owned his (does this make them many-times-removed relatives? Probably!). The script was written by Vernon Chatman, who created the MTV2 comedy Wonder Showzen and voices a handful of characters on South Park, but no director has signed on yet, despite production being scheduled for this spring. The film will have theatrical distribution, as well as streaming on Paramount+.

XXL Awards 2022 Nominees Revealed

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It’s officially awards season around here. The XXL Awards 2022 nominees have arrived. Continue reading…

Cordae Freestyles Over Kendrick Lamar’s ‘The Heart Part 4’ During A Trip To Paris

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A week from now, the world will be preparing to press play on Cordae’s sophomore album From A Birds Eye View. It’ll be the DMV rapper’s first full-length release since his 2019 Grammy-nominated debut The Lost Boy. To keep the anticipation and excitement high for his upcoming album, Cordae returns with a sick freestyle over Kendrick Lamar’s 2017 single, “The Heart Part 4.” Cordae drops his take of the song, aptly titled “FABEV Freestyle,” with an accompanying video that finds him enjoying a trip to Paris.

The freestyle itself is an introspective effort as Cordae reflects on his rise to fame in rap. He speaks about once being unsure if he would find success in hip-hop to working with Mos Def in the studio. It’s moments like these that Cordae is grateful for and ones that push him to continuously improve as an artist.

Cordae has yet to reveal to full tracklist for From A Birds Eye View. So far we know the project will be 14 songs and include previously released singles “Super,” “Sinister” with Lil Wayne, and “Gifted” with Roddy Ricch.

You can listen to the freestyle in the video above.

From A Birds Eye View is out 1/14 via Art@War/Atlantic. Pre-save it here.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Lil Durk Vouches For His ‘Broadway Girls’ Collaborator Morgan Wallen: ‘He Ain’t No Racist’

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Country star Morgan Wallen’s recent controversy regarding a certain racial slur didn’t deter him from collaborating with one of Chicago’s biggest rappers, Lil Durk, for a song that quickly rose on the charts, “Broadway Girls.” Apparently, now that he’s gotten a taste of rap collab success, Wallen wants to expand his pool of coworkers to include Kendrick Lamar — a sentiment with which Durk agrees 100 percent.

TMZ caught up to the Windy City drill rap pioneer recently, asking him about the controversy surrounding Wallen. Durk vouched for his collaborator, saying, “Nah, he ain’t no racist. That’s my boy. We had a long talk—he had his public situation, we had [a talk] behind closed doors, and I’ll vouch for him and he good.” When asked whether Wallen should be “uncanceled,” Durk was adamant that he never was. “He ain’t canceled,” he asserted. He also agrees that Kendrick should collaborate with Wallen.

The numbers certainly seem to bear out that sentiment (remember, kids, no one is ever really canceled, that’s just a buzzword and a red herring). Wallen topped several Billboard year-end charts despite the kerfuffle, and his fans even rented billboards to request forgiveness for him. If Kendrick did decide to accept Wallen’s collaboration invitation, it would almost certainly result in some impressive sales figures, if nothing else.

Watch Durk’s interview with TMZ above.