Music

Chris Patrick Celebrates His Wins With A Rapid-Fire ‘Up Now’ Performance On ‘UPROXX Sessions’

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New Jersey rapper Chris Patrick may have a relatively unassuming nom de plume, but when he steps to the mic to perform his song “Up Now” for the latest episode of UPROXX Sessions, his star power becomes evident. Coolly switching from punchy, rapid-fire rhymes to crystal-clear crooning, he proves to be proficient at both rapping and singing, all while showing off quick-witted wordplay revealing a quirky worldview that complements his deceptive rap name.

“Sunroof down so the rays hit the melanin,” he smirks. “Spun through town tryna bathe in the element.”

Patrick might be flying under the radar now, but with co-signs from the likes of Black Thought and JID, the lanky East Orange MC’s time in the sun might not be metaphorical for very much longer (well, yeah, it still will be but it’ll mean something different). His 2020 album, From The Heart, Vol. 2 has drawn comparisons to early efforts from relatable rap everymen such as J. Cole and Saba, which bodes well for his earnest, down-to-earth approach. Working with Deante Hitchcock on Deante’s new EP and building his buzz with tracks like “Up Now” and “Gang Activity,” expect to see Chris Patrick to not only elevate to radar level but fly high as his career takes off in 2022.

Watch Chris Patrick perform “Up Now” above.

UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross, UPROXX Sessions is a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.

The Regrettes’ Video For ‘You’re So F*cking Pretty’ Captures An IRL Girl Crush

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Maybe you first got turned onto The Regrettes because none other than Olivia Rodrigo starred in their “Monday” video, but there’s plenty more reasons to stick around for this band. They’ve showcased a few with today’s new video, “You’re So F*cking Pretty,” a song and visual that captures an IRL girl crush. The band’s lead singer, Lydia Night, dances and mopes through a little house in the clip, which was directed by Serena Reynolds. “Lydia is the best and we just clicked,” Reynolds said of working on the project. “I love how we were able to collect so much beauty, frustration and sadness in the video to formulate this idea of a person we never visually see. I think the magic is that this “lover” really feels all encompassingly joyful in the end.”

Back when the band shared the song in December, Night reflected on what the song meant to her, noting that it’s the first time she wrote about a girl she had feelings for. “It’s the first time I’ve ever written directly about a girl I had a crush on, and it took me a while for me to even allow my brain to accept the fact that I’m bisexual,” she explained. “I always felt like I couldn’t validate my own feelings because I had never been in a relationship with a girl. But I had a pretty big crush on one of my friends a while ago and this song is an exaggeration of that, but it’s still coming from a very real place.”

“It was the first experience where I was like, ‘Oh, these are real feelings, this isn’t just a sexual attraction,’ and that helped me realize I wasn’t straight,” she continued, “This song means so much to me because it also represents the time we spent in Joshua Tree and opening up to my whole band about that experience and not feeling embarrassed or scared of talking about it. Writing this was important for me because it just validated my own sexuality.”

Check out the video up top.

Caleb Martin Credits J. Cole With Helping Him Make It Onto The Miami Heat

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J. Cole might be sitting pretty with his place on hip-hop Mount Rushmore, but his influence spreads beyond music, too. Cole has always been a very vocal fan of basketball, even going so far as to join a Rwandan team himself in order to play pro basketball in Africa.

Turns out his basketball influence extends to the states, too. Caleb Martin, who recently joined the Miami Heat, told The Charlotte Observer that the rapper was instrumental in getting him in position to be picked up by the team. Cole’s network with NBA contacts and private gym both helped Martin get in position to be signed to Miami.

“Yeah, that’s my man,” Caleb Martin told The Observer. “It shows that even though he’s accomplished a lot of things … and he’s got so many other things to worry about, he worries about his people. And it’s dope he considers me one of his people, that he takes into account and he knew my situation. He saw me working in the gym every day and you could just tell he appreciates guys who grinds like he does and so that’s a blessing for him to lend a hand out there and do what he could.”

Check out the whole profile right here.

Michael Jordan Grabbed Mary J Blige’s Backside At NBA All-Star And 50 Cent’s Got Jokes

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The NBA’s All-Star weekend is often a star-studded event, as both the league’s athletes and other entertainers get the chance to come together to enjoy the host city’s festivities as well as a low-stakes run of basketball games that allow for more socializing than the average in-season game. This year’s festivities were no different, as the league’s 75th anniversary brought out even bigger stars than usual, including retired players like Michael Jordan, who was honored as one of the 75 best players in league history.

But basketballs weren’t the only thing Jordan palmed over the weekend, which led to some pretty amusing memes from social media. When MJ encountered one of those celebrities, Mary J Blige — who’s fresh off her own big performance at the Super Bowl which included a surprise appearance from 50 Cent — their friendly hug apparently turned out a little more than that when cameras caught the hooper resting his hand on what looked to be the singer’s backside. Naturally, Twitter achieved liftoff from sheer reaction energy as fans noted the exchange and took great delight in pointing it out.

One of those fans was none other than 50 Cent, who never misses a chance to weigh in on a viral moment with a meme or two of his own, and in this case, he had the perfect gag, courtesy of his Starz drama series Power. Posting a pretty big spoiler for the recent season finale of Book II: Ghost (which stars Mary as Monique, the matriarch of a drug-dealing family that includes an NBA prospect basketball player, Zeke), 50 shared a fan’s screenshot with the comment “See just when we thought it was all f*cked up.” Of course, if you haven’t caught up on the show, you can click away, but if you’re not that pressed about the shocking ending — which, yeah, I hollered a bit when it aired — scroll on down to see 50’s reaction.

Baby Keem’s Artful ’16’ Video Is Both Eerie And Mundane

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If you haven’t been keeping up with Baby Keem, now’s the time to start. The young rapper was part of Kendrick Lamar’s launch of PgLang, Lamar’s own company and a departure from Top Dawg Entertainment. Kendrick’s next album will be his last on TDE, and it looks like he’ll be releasing his own music after that via Pglang. So far, Baby Keem has been one of the other exemplary artists involved with the label, and the fact that he’s Kendrick’s cousin hasn’t hurt his profile any. Today the rising rapper has released a new music video today, called “16.”

Keem is older than 16, though not by much, and the 21-year-old LA rapper is focused on his love life in the artful clip. Directed by Jonas Lindstroem, the stark visual runs through different locations, following Keem and the object of his affection through backdrops both eerie and mundane. Keem’s debut album, The Melodic Blue, dropped last fall, and his subsequent tour was a solid showing, too. It’s not clear if “16” is the beginning of a new album cycle for Keem, but if it is, this is definitely a great start. Check out the video above and keep an ear out for more new music coming from Keem this year.

Kehlani Shared The Second Single From ‘Blue Water Road,’ With the Black And White ‘Little Story’ Video

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Following up their second album, It Was Good Until It Wasn’t, from 2020, Kehlani is already prepping a new project, Blue Water Road. After sharing a trailer for the album back in September, the R&B star released the “Altar” video shortly after, but has been quiet on the subject of their own new music for the last few months, though they did collaborate with Young Bleu on “Beautiful Lies” and appeared in his video. They did confirm to fans that moving forward, Kehlani prefers “they/them” as a pronoun and identifies as gender neutral. “I don’t mind when people say ‘she’ at all, but something feels really affirming when people say ‘they,’ Kehlani said in an interview. “It feels like… you really see me.”

Today, Kehlani is back in album mode and shared another preview from Blue Water Road, this one called “Little Story.” In the black and white clip, Kehlani moves through a formal backstage setup, and into a more tumultuous position where she’s hanging upside down on monkey bars. After the song begins with a more fluid verse, she gets a little more staccato on the chorus, as the song opens up with heavier percussion and closes out with an epic swell of violins. Check it out above.

D Smoke Takes Over The Block In His Stone-Faced ‘Say Go’ Video

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After releasing the devastating 2021 album War & Wonders, Inglewood rapper D Smoke begins his 2022 campaign with the video for “Say Go,” the album’s chest-beating second single after after “Shame On You.” Over triumphant horns, D Smoke lays out his philosophy, warning haters that the entire block will slide on his say-so as he marches through the streets of his hometown with seemingly the whole city behind him.

Lending a humorous counterpoint to the stone-faced proceedings, comedian Lil Rel makes an appearance midway through the video to comment on the goings-on, criticizing some of the march’s members for such activities as keeping chicken on leashes. Just watch it, trust me.

In his interview discussing War & Wonders with Uproxx last year, the Rhythm+Flow winner further detailed his defiant philosophy as expressed on the album. “We’re in a different world than we were in when Black Habits came out,” he said. “With the world changing so fast, if we don’t take on an attitude of resistance, or an attitude of strength, or a willingness to fight if things don’t work for us, we will be on the losing end of that… This ain’t a time to shrink. It’s time to grow and get big in the midst of everything we’re experiencing in the world. Because when these things happen, everybody needs an advocate, and you’re your first advocate.”

Watch D Smoke’s “Say Go” video above.

Saweetie Cancels ‘Icy Season’ To Work On Her Album, Which Should Be Out By Summer

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Saweetie fans have been patiently waiting for her debut album, Pretty Bitch Music, for what might seem like forever after she delayed the album multiple times despite having huge hits in “My Type,” “Tap In,” and “Best Friend.” To hold them over, she initially planned to release an EP, Icy Season, in the first quarter of 2022, but now it seems even that plan has changed — but for a good reason. In a new interview with Billboard, the Bay Area rapper explained that she nixed the EP to lock in on finishing the album, which she now says should be out by summer.

She also explains why putting out her debut album has at times seemed such a halting, laborious process. “Sometimes our hit song is bigger than us and we’re just thrown into the game,” she says. “When you get signed, the label wants a hit. They want a return on their investment, which I understand. But it’s important for artists to understand themselves before they start seeking for hits. Because if you don’t know yourself, you don’t know your music.” She also doesn’t want to rush the process, as she feels she did with 2018’s High Maintenance and 2019’s Icy, and doesn’t “want to be safe anymore. Now it’s time to experiment.”

Considering she’s reportedly got a song in Tagalog, as well as Latin collab according to Billboard, it sounds like she’s expanding what the expectations of her album should be. Hopefully, she’s able to meet her own self-imposed deadline and live up to the potential she’s shown over the past few years.

Kim Kardashian Requests To Have Her Divorce From Kanye West Expedited By The Court

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Kanye West may very well be hoping to reconcile with Kim Kardashian but his soon-to-be ex-wife’s latest appeal to the court strikes the odds of that happening down from “highly unlikely” to “probably impossible.” Rolling Stone reports that on Wednesday, Kardashian filed a request to have their divorce expedited, citing Kanye’s social media antics over the past few weeks and cutting down his insistence on delaying finalizing the divorce to protect his assets.

“I very much desire to be divorced,” the statement reads. “I have asked Kanye to keep our divorce private, but he has not done so. Kanye has been putting out a lot of misinformation regarding our private family matters and co-parenting on social media which has created emotional distress. I believe that the court terminating our marital status will help Kanye to accept that our marital relationship is over and to move forward on a better path which will assist us in peacefully co-parenting our children.”

She also says that his claims that he needs to protect his assets lack “a scintilla of evidence,” and that their finances are safely separate. Her lawyers added, “No additional conditions are necessary to ‘protect Mr. West’s property interests because there is nothing to protect. There is no community property. There are no jointly titled assets. Ms. Kardashian’s assets, all titled in her name or in the name of her revocable and irrevocable trusts and entities, are her separate property, as agreed by the parties in their prenuptial agreement. The same is true for Mr. West’s assets. Mr. West does not deny any of this in his responsive papers.”

“While I wish our marriage would have succeeded, I have come to the realization that there is no way to repair our marriage,” Kim’s statement concludes. “Kanye does not agree but at least it appears that he has come to the realization that I want to end our marriage, even if he does not. I ask that the court restore me to the status of a single person so that I can begin the healing process and so that our family can begin the healing process and move forward in this new chapter in our lives.”

Lil Durk Reveals Kanye West’s Plan For A Joint Project While Shutting Down A Pete Davidson Rumor

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When Lil Durk announced his original 7220 release date was the same as Kanye West’s projected release date for Donda 2, many fans took it as a sign that Durk was challenging his fellow Chicagoan in the same way Kanye once challenged 50 Cent over a shared release date. However, February 22 has come and gone without a new album from either rapper; Durk instead released his “AHHH HA” video and announced he’d pushed by his album’s release, while Kanye only put out the first four tracks from Donda 2 through his stem player site.

Still, once a rumor has begun to spread, it’s hard to stop fans from speculating over something they consider at least possible (Twitter is the ultimate game of Telephone), so it wasn’t long before they began to posit nefarious motives for Durk’s date change. When one fan account suggested that Durk had acquired a feature from Pete Davidson for his album — which would antagonize Kanye, as Davidson is dating the rapper’s ex-wife Kim Kardashian, something Kanye has repeatedly expressed his displeasure over — Durk stepped in to shut down the speculation.

“This a lie I don’t even play like that,” he wrote on Instagram, before revealing an even more intriguing proposition. “Plus Ye want to do a album together.”

The two Windy City rappers have certainly had opportunities to build chemistry. Durk, who recreated several of Kanye’s music videos in his own “Kanye Krazy” video last year, featured on the track “Jonah” from West’s original Donda with newcomer Vory after nearly missing out due to a missed flight. Meanwhile, both rappers are well-versed in the joint project format; Kanye famously helped kick off the trend with Watch The Throne with Jay-Z, while last year, Durk carried the torch alongside Lil Baby with Voice Of The Heroes.