Not only is Rihanna is a talented singer, humanitarian, and a national hero in her native Barbados, she’s also an incredibly savvy entrepreneur who has just raised a lot more money for one of her ventures. Rihanna’s Savage X Fenty lingerie brand — which emphasizes inclusivity, body positivity, and confidence — just raised $125 million in their Series C round of investing.
This comes shortly after Savage X Fenty opened its first retail location this month, at the Fashion Show Mall on the Las Vegas strip. As Forbes reports, opening physical locations is the big push in 2022 for the surging company, which plans to open four more stores in the first quarter of 2022, “in Culver City in Los Angeles (where the company is based), followed by the Galleria Mall in Houston, the King of Prussia Mall outside Philadelphia and Pentagon City’s Fashion Centre in Arlington, Virginia.”
This new round of funding was led by Neuberger Berman, but there were a number of other private investors in the mix as well, including Jay-Z’s Marcy Venture Partners VC firm. Savage X Fenty has now raised a total of $310 million in capital. Rihanna, meanwhile, has a reported net worth of over $1.7 billion (well over $1 billion of which comes from here Fenty Beauty cosmetics line), second only to Oprah as the wealthiest female in the entertainment industry.
Polo G’s Hall Of Fame is nearly nine months in the rearview, but that hasn’t stopped the Chicago product from continuing to release new content in support of the album. The latest is the video for the Moneybagg Yo collaboration “Start Up Again,” which finds the two rappers posted up in a gentlemen’s club hosting an NSFW twerk-off under the black lights as they throw cash and boast their prowess in both reciting their raps and getting derrieres to clap.
Polo’s nonstop support of his 2021 album has included videos for “Unapologetic,” “Heating Up,” “Fortnight,” and “Young N Dumb,” which all appeared on the updated deluxe edition of the album, Hall Of Fame 2.0. Polo’s relentless promotion paid off early as the original version debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, becoming his first album to do so. The deluxe edition, which was released in October, featured 14 new songs, including collaborations with Lil Baby, Lil Tjay, and NLE Choppa.
Meanwhile, Moneybagg Yo had a similarly successful 2021, dropping his own No.1 album, A Gangsta’s Pain. Moneybagg’s chart-topper was so successful that it actually returned to the top spot, producing a hit record with “Wockesha” and earning him a spot on Kanye’s upcoming Donda 2.
Long known as the label home of artists like Megan Thee Stallion, Young Thug, and Thug’s YSL Records imprint, 300 Entertainment has become a juggernaut in the music world. Now, after Warner Music Group acquired 300 in December of 2021, the label looks to expand its dominance into the worlds of film and television.
Today, the company announced the launch of its new endeavor, 300 Studios, as well as its first television project: A docuseries following Nascar driver Bubba Wallace entitled Race: Bubba Wallace. Set to debut on Netflix next month, the six-episode Race will follow the life and career of the only full-time Black driver in the NASCAR Cup Series, contextualizing his position in the wake of concurrent controversies. Wallace confronted the social tensions of race when a noose was discovered in his garage stall amid protests over the police killing of George Floyd. While it was later discovered that the “noose” in question was a pull tie for the garage door, the incident still drew parallels to the very recent, violent history of anti-Black bigotry in the US.
300 Entertainment CEO Kevin Liles, a 30-year veteran of the music business, said in the press release, “I have dedicated my career to telling the story of our culture and investing in the artists and creatives who have shaped it around the world. With 300 Studios, I look forward to incubating, developing, and producing content for all formats that tell the important and inspired stories from the next generation of cultural innovators.” The announcement also notes that the studio already has 20 projects in development, including films, TV series, and podcasts.
300 Entertainment is a Warner Music company. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
There’s a case to be made that Yellowjackets is the best new television show in a decade (we made it right here), but it wasn’t perfect. You know how the hit series could have been better? With Tori Amos and Nine Inch Nails, that’s how.
Jen Malone is the music supervisor for Yellowjackets (and Euphoria, and Atlanta, and The Umbrella Academy), and in an interview with Vulture, she discussed how she wanted to include Amos in the soundtrack for season one but couldn’t find the right spot.
“We tried it, and it just wasn’t — we want to do Tori proud with the scene that we put her music to and we just couldn’t find the right one,” she said. “She’s so influential, to not only myself. Little Earthquakes, when I was in high school, that record was everything. I remember the first time I heard that record. Thank God we have season two.”
Would “Winter” be too on the nose?
Malone also revealed that Nine Inch Nails, especially something from Pretty Hate Machine, “is going to be [on] the top of the list next season. There’s so much for Yellowjackets that I’m just very excited to dig into in season two. We haven’t even scratched the surface with the songs from that time period. To reintroduce these artists to a whole new audience has been very special for both shows.”
Misty is the Tori Amos-meets-Nine Inch Nails of people. I can’t explain it, but I know it’s true.
Fayetteville, Georgia producer OG Parker has been steadily growing in impact and esteem in the hip-hop world thanks to his hard-hitting beats for everyone from Migos to fast-rising newcomer DDG. His combination of trap and R&B has resulted in hits for the likes of Megan Thee Stallion, Ski Mask The Slump God, and more. On his latest single he reunites with PartyNextDoor, whose 2019 hit “Loyal” he produced, for “No Fuss,” a slow-burning, apologetic ballad addressing their wrongdoings toward a miffed lover.
“You caught me in a lie, I won’t deny it,” Party croons, admitting that “maybe the blame is on me / Might be moving too shady.” Nonetheless, though, they warn, “All the wrongs I’ve done, I feel empathy / But it’s wrong to hold on to this energy.” If anyone was worried that the Torontonian singer had moved on from his toxic ways on 2020’s Partymobile, it looks like they can rest assured that he’s still up to no good.
Party has been laying low since the release of his third album, although he did re-release his fan-favorite 2014 EPColours to streaming in 2021. Will his new collab with OG Parker signal the beginning of a new project rollout? We’ll see. Meanwhile, OG Parker continues to roll out his own freestanding singles, which could mean a new project from his this year as well.
Listen to OG Parker and PartyNextDoor’s “No Fuss” above.
While some of us are mostly invested in Kanye West as a musician, there are apparently many, many people who care a great deal — perhaps even too much — about his love life. Headlines about the controversial rapper/producer have revolved around his nascent relationship with actress Julia Fox lately, as Ye works to move on from his divorce from Kim Kardashian West.
Another thing people are truly interested in is Kanye’s passive-aggressive feud with Drake. While the two rappers apparently buried the hatchet at their Free Larry Hoover concert in LA last year, they’ve appeared to settle their differences in the past before something sets one or the other off and they go back to taking petty subliminal jabs at each other in their music.
Here’s where that particular Venn diagram of interests intersects: According to Page Six, Drake and Ye have yet another thing in common. They both dated Julia Fox. A source told Page Six that Drake DMed Fox shortly after her role in 2019’s Uncut Gems, and when her prior relationship with Peter Artemiev broke up, the two spent some time together in New York in 2020, leading to drinks, a workplace drop-in, and a flight to LA, where Drake allegedly bought a pair of Birkin bags for Fox.
Fox was shacking up with Drake in Toronto the COVID-19 pandemic finally prompted lockdown measures, which sent Fox back home to the US due to the imminent closure of the US/Canada border. Fox reunited with Artemiev before meeting Kanye on New Year’s Eve, and the rest, as they say, is history. Whether this revelation leads to another round of back-and-forth between Drake and Ye remains to be seen, but considering Kanye is supposed to release his next album, Donda 2, next month, there might not be much longer to wait to find out.
In 2021, Migos completed the rollout for Culture III, dropping videos for “Straightenin,” “Why Not,” “Roadrunner,” and “How We Coming” in addition to hosting their own three-day festival in Las Vegas and appearing on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series. Now that they’ve reestablished their grip on pop culture as a group, though, it looks like they’re making another go at dropping solo releases. The first is Quavo’s new single, “Shooters Inside My Crib,” which dropped with an exuberant, flex-filled video.
Made up of both documentary-style footage of Quavo and his Migos fam on tour and in the studio and performance shots of Quavo crooning in luxury hotels and restaurant kitchens, “Shooters Inside My Crib” finds the band’s de facto frontman reflecting on the grind and the eventual benefits thereof. Decked out in glittering chains with diamond-covered Yoda pendants and banging away on his piano at home, Quavo shares his thoughts on remaining patient and persistent until patience and persistence pay off. “I was patient, now my ice go glacier” he sings on the chorus. “I was trapping out the vacant ’til I got some paper.” With Quavo preparing to release the long-awaited follow-up to his solo debut Quavo Huncho, it looks like there will be more of the same on the way.
Watch Quavo’s “Shooters Inside My Crib” video above.
The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.
Things are looking up for Saba. On the Chicago rapper’s last album, Care For Me, he came to grips with the trauma of losing his cousin and Pivot Gang bandmate John Walt to street violence, and in the last two years, he’s seen another member of the crew, Squeak, fall victim as well. So, you’d be forgiven for being surprised that his first new effort in three years, Few Good Things, takes a completely opposite tack compared to its predecessor.
This was intentional, as I learned during a Zoom call with Saba to discuss the new project and all he’s done since Care For Me became a fan favorite. That album, he says, is “so personal that it’s like my fans and people who are fans of that album, they now have an emotional connection to those songs and those lyrics in that time period. So going into this album, there’s something that you have to accept as an artist and that’s that once people develop an emotional connection and it’s not just an objective connection to something, that’ll be your best album regardless of what you do.”
This is why he approached Few Good Things as an “anti-Care For Me.” Creative decisions that would work for one wouldn’t work for another, so Saba had to reverse the formula that made Care For Me such a success – a risky move which he acknowledged, accepting that fans’ reception of the new work could go the other way as well. “Every decision we made on [Care For Me], how do we make the opposite decision on this one while still being original and organic and authentic to who I am? Because Care For Me is such a part of me, but also Few Good Things is a fuller scope of who I am.”
As Saba points out, there were as many years between those two albums as there were between his initial breakout on Chance The Rapper’s Acid Rap mixtape and Care For Me. The same level of growth and evolution is evident, as well, although he sticks close to his roots as one of the products of Chicago’s Young Chicago Authors open mics. Those same open mics produced city standouts like Chance, Mick Jenkins, Noname, and the rest of Saba’s Pivot Gang crew Joseph Chilliams, Frsh Waters, MFnMelo, and John Walt. That sound – effortlessly complex, full of heady wordplay and surprising, off-kilter cadences – remains an anchor point for the 13 songs on Few Good Things, while Saba makes an effort to expand the sound beyond the muddled, rainy palette of his prior work.
For instance, on “Fearmonger,” produced by Pivot mainstays Daoud and Daedae, a bright bassline underpins a stripped-down instrumental as Saba meditates on the nature of the near-constant anxiety that comes with growing up at the lower end of the income spectrum – and seeing that course slowly reverse through his own precarious efforts. Not only does the song represent a hard left turn from the introspective material he’s best known for, but he also shared it as the first single from the album as an intentional bid to reset fans’ expectations ahead of time.
“We dropped ‘Fearmonger’ first because it’s the most sonically opposite of the entire Care For Me album,” he explains. “I wanted to scare people, I wanted them to not be sure how they felt about it and that to me is what pushes sonic boundaries, especially in hip-hop.” He offers an even wider perspective, pointing out that, “it’s a lot of monotony, it’s a lot of the same, so I think when I do a record like ‘Fearmonger,’ I want to put that out and push that because there’s an individualistic approach to the conception of that record. So, some fans might hear that and not understand how to listen to it but based on fan-hood and them wanting to like it — because fans want to like the music — some of them will listen until they do like it. And I think that’s how music’s meant to be listened to.”
Putting out a song called “Fearmonger” in the hopes of scaring people out of complacency – and doing so so completely fearlessly – is a bold move, but the rollout for this project is full of them. In addition to the album, Saba has shot a short film, also titled Few Good Things, hoping to capture the spirit of the music. He also betrays next to no apprehension about switching disciplines, instead displaying the same bold confidence with which he talks about juking fans’ expectations.
“I think the cool part of being able to play music, but music specifically that is lyric-based, is that we’re able to use our language to set scenes,” he explains. “We can make our language really visual, and I think that’s one of the elements that make telling personal stories, firsthand, telling things that are valuable to me, I think that’s one of the things that makes it unique. It makes people connect to it, but I think it’s always been, with our writing style, it’s always been really visual.” That skill, he says, is critical to making the leap into a visual medium. “When we started really locking in and working on this album, the director of this film, C.T. Robert, was really close,” he says.
“Every song that got done, he got immediately. We talked. We had full conversations, pretty much every time anything new got added to the mix, where we broke down family stuff. We broke down the lyrics. We broke down everything so that it was really open, in terms of the writing of the film, while also the writing of the album was happening simultaneously.” However, he’s still not sure how he feels about the movie or the album, yet, because they’re not out there in the world where viewers and listeners can consume them – his one concession to the artistic anxiety he’s been able to somehow escape throughout the process.
“I think I’ll experience that the day of the screening, the day it’s public, the day everybody is able to see it,” he says, “because that’s the day that it’s going to feel like, ‘Alright. This is real. This is tangible. We’ve released this.’ I’m so used to having things months and months and months in advance that it almost is imaginary until it’s released. This album, even Few Good Things, it’s been music that has been done for months and months and months. So, to finally be releasing it next week now, it’s just a crazy, crazy, crazy feeling.”
As far as what he wants those fans and consumers to take away from the concept of Few Good Things, he offers a few examples of the things that have become important to him and sustained him through the tough times that aren’t even all that far in the rearview. “One thing that I got from these last couple of years is time,” he observes. “I got a lot of my time back, and in having that time, you’re able to realize how valuable just that is. Just being able to spend your time how you want and not having to make choices based on necessity and survival and all of this other shit, but just how would you spend your day if you could spend your day how you wanted to spend it and that’s what true wealth equates to.”
Few Good Things is out 2/4 via Pivot Gang, LLC. You can pre-save here.
Chris Brown is being sued by a woman who says he drugged and raped her on a yacht, according to Rolling Stone, which obtained a copy of the lawsuit. The woman, a choreographer, dancer, model, and recording artist, is asking for $20 million; the lawsuit says that the incident took place on December 30 near Diddy’s Star Island home, where the boat was docked.
The woman, identified only as Jane Doe, says a friend invited her and another woman to the yacht, where Brown expressed an interest in helping her with her music career. She says after Brown made her two drinks, she became “disoriented, physically unstable, and started to fall in and out of sleep.” Brown allegedly led her to a bedroom, blocked her attempts to leave, undressed her, and raped her. The next day, he also allegedly told her to take a Plan B pill.
In a statement, Jane Doe’s attorney, Ariel E. Mitchell of Vrabeck Adams & Company, said, “My partner [George Vrabeck] and I want to ensure all parties are held accountable so that we may begin to eradicate this behavior from our society.”
Brown appeared to address the accusation on his Instagram Story, writing, “I hope y’all see this pattern of [cap]. Whenever I’m releasing music or projects, ‘THEY’ try to pull some real bullsh*t.” Brown was previously accused of rape in Paris in 2019, however, the case was dropped due to lack of evidence.
Euphoria is one of the hottest shows on TV right now, but it’s also been a goldmine for music fans in recent weeks. Aside from Dominic Fike appearing in the show, the series has yielded some enticing original new music, like Lana Del Rey’s “Watercolor Eyes” and Tove Lo’s “How Long.” Now, James Blake and Labrinth (the show’s composer) are joining the party, too, as they’ve debuted their new Euphoria collaboration, “Pick Me Up.” The tune skews more towards Blake’s softer side, as it’s a piano- and string-driven track that sees him flexing his falsetto.
Speaking of collaborations, Blake recently penned a lengthy Instagram post in which he reflects on working with Dave on his 2021 album We’re All Alone In This Together. He wrote in part, “I woke up today thinking about the craziest experience I had, when @santandave flew to LA and played me the beginnings of ‘We’re all alone in this together’. I told him I’d never heard anything like it. He asked me if I’d work on it with him and I said I didn’t know if I could make it any better, but I’d love to help him arrive at what he [envisioned]. It seemed so clear to him what he wanted that the best idea would be to get out of the way. I mean what do you even say when someone comes to you with a song like ‘three rivers’? [head exploding emoji] the level of penmanship was a shock to the system to be honest. Also I felt blessed just to hear his story, the story of his mother, and the way he was writing about immigration in the UK. It was illuminating.”
