Music

Megan Thee Stallion Offers A Lesson About Bitcoin In A Video With Cash App

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In addition to being a Grammy-winning rapper, Megan The Stallion is also trying her hand as a financial advisor of sorts. Back in June, she gave away $1 million to teach “Investing For Hotties” through a partnership with Cash App. In an accompanying video, she went over concepts that included fractional shares and diversification while reminding viewers that “buying stocks isn’t only for the big players.” Now, for the next installment in her series with Cash App, Megan has shifted her attention to Bitcoin thanks to a brand new video that aims to teach people about the digital currency.

“Bitcoin is a new kind of money,” the Houston rapper begins as a shirtless man pours her tea. “While the cash in your wallet is issued and regulated by governments, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. Like a wild stallion, it can’t be controlled by anyone.” She goes on to explain why Bitcoin is so valuable, why its price changes, and how to purchase Bitcoin during the two-minute video.

The video comes after she became the first rapper to cover the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. She also earned her first platinum plaque, for her 2020 debut Good News.

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

Usher Says He’s ‘Happy’ T-Pain Spoke Out About Their Alleged Auto-Tune Conversation

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Toward the end of June, a clip from Netflix’s This Is Pop made its way to social media. in it, T-Pain detailed a past conversation he had with Usher where the Confessions singer allegedly told him that he “really f*cked up music for real singers” as a result of his auto-tune style.

T-Pain added that the conversation “started a four-year depression for me,” but he also insisted that he still has “love and respect” for Usher despite his comments. Nearly two months later, Usher offered a response to that conversation being made public during a profile with Billboard.

“I’m happy that T-Pain said something,” the singer said to Billboard’s Gail Mitchell. “I’m not sure if it was before or after our actual conversation, after I heard what was said. It was very hurtful to know that he had experienced that kind of hardship in life.” Responding to T-Pain’s claim that the conversation led to his depression, Usher said, “I wouldn’t wish that on any person.”

“Private conversations for me have always been intended to uplift,” Usher added. “But when or if people get pieces of it, they can always have some other interpretation. But we’ve spoken since and we’re good.”

The conversation with Billboard came after Usher launched his Las Vegas residency. He previously spoke about the string of shows and somewhat revealed what fans can expect when they attend.

“I want you to guess,” he said. “I want to keep you bubbling with anticipation until I have dropped the first record and you hear the first moment. When the lights go down and you feel the energy. I promise the classics and also new stuff.”

You can read Usher’s full profile with Billboard here.

Lil Durk Promises To No Longer Mention Dead Rappers In His Songs

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Lil Durk has faced a lot of turmoil in his career, especially in recent months. Last November, the Chicago native suffered the loss of rapper and close friend King Von who he affectionately referred to as “twin.” Months later, death would once again affect the rapper as his brother, DThang, was shot and killed outside a club in their hometown. While Durk was not directly involved in these situations, the rapper is taking steps to avoid conflict in the future as a result of his music.

The rapper took to Twitter to share an announcement with fans on Thursday.

“I’m not mentioning the dead in my songs no more or performing songs with they name in it,” he wrote before signing off on the message as Big Smurk. It arrives two days after Durk shared a couple of tweets that reflected on the people he recently lost in his life. “Why every time somebody die they love you but when you here they don’t care …… love me now not later,” he wrote in the first post. In a second tweet, he added, “Von left us Dthang left us and I was lost.”

His messages come after Durk and his girlfriend, India Cox, reportedly exchanged gunfire with an unspecified amount of individuals who broke into their Atlanta home. While Durk and Cox were listed as victims on a police report for the incident, neither were injured in the matter.

You can read his tweets in the posts above.

Kanye West’s Long-Rumored Giant Dong Made A Cameo On His Livestream And People Can’t Stop Talking About It

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While Kanye West has had his fair share of headline-making antics over the years, the rapper now has the internet talking for a very different reason. Kanye has been holed up in Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz stadium for some time in order to complete his long-awaited LP Donda. To celebrate the album’s impending release, Kanye began a 24-hour livestream from his tiny room. He appeared in his underwear at one point, confirming to the world a rumor that has been circulating for years: The rapper is quite endowed.

Talk of Kanye’s massive member has been floating around for a few years now. The rumor actually goes all the way back to the MySpace days, according to Jezebel, when the rapper allegedly had no problem sending a NSFW photo to any woman who inquired. Of course, a few of the photos circulated the internet like wildfire, where they were gawked at for weeks before eventually being deleted.

Kim Kardashian wasn’t shy in speaking about Kanye’s sizeable schlong, either. The rapper’s now-ex addressed Kanye’s anatomy on an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians, which went relatively under the radar at the time. A pregnant Kim had been undergoing an ultrasound to reveal the gender of her baby. The doctor mentioned they were trying to look to see if Kim’s child had a penis, to which she cheekily responded: “It would definitely take after the father, so you would see it.”

Little, errr, Big Kanye’s cameo may have been brief, but the internet definitely noticed — and definitely had a lot to say about it. People flocked to Twitter to discuss the dong, with some saying they were more impressed than others.

Blackground Records Make Aaliyah And JoJo’s Music Available To Stream — But The Artists Won’t See Profits

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For years, fans have been begging for Aaliyah’s music to be released on streaming services. The late singer’s label, Blackground Records, finally announced that many of their artists’ music, including Aaliyah’s, will be made available to stream. While fans may be rejoicing about their ability to rock out to their favorite Aaliyah classics, not everyone can share the same excitement as several of the artists won’t see the profits.

Blackground Records announced on Thursday that they have officially inked a new deal with Empire, per a report from Billboard. The deal allows their artists’ music to hit streaming services for the first time ever. Aaliyah’s Estate, however, wasn’t happy with the decision. Hours before the news was announced, Aaliyah’s Estate issued a lengthy statement criticizing unnamed executives for coming forward to “leech off” the singer’s career. They called the deal an “unscrupulous endeavor to release Aaliyah’s music” without transparency or their approval.

R&B singer JoJo now finds herself in a similar position. The singer signed to Blackground Records when she was still a preteen. As explained in a recent Honda Backstage interview, JoJo says the label refused to release her music for years. Because of that, JoJo’s career fell off and she ended up taking matters into her own hands by suing Blackground Records and eventually re-recording her early albums.

JoJo reacted to the Blackground Records news shortly after it was announced. The singer took to social media to express her surprise about new deal. “Who would’ve thought…,” she tweeted.

Replying to a fans’ tweet, JoJo claimed she will not be awarded any profits from the streaming sales of her early albums. “never telling you what to do, but just so you know – a stream of the re-recorded 2018 version supports me and helps me continue to do what I love,” she wrote. “streaming the original unfortunately does not.”

JoJo is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Jorja Smith’s ‘All Of This’ Is An Afrobeat Breakup Anthem With GuiltyBeatz

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Since her breakout record Lost & Found in 2019, Jorja Smith has been quietly figuring out her next move. On this spring’s new EP, Be Right Back, she’s still expanding her sound and riding the line between pop, R&B, and hip-hop. That’s the blueprint for our new era of pop stars, but Smith also had the jumpstart of a co-sign from Drake on his 2017 project More Life to get her going, which never hurts. On today’s new video for “All Of This,” a song with the Ghanaian DJ and record producer GuiltyBeatz that’s inspired by Amapiano, a South African style of house music.

Leaning into the Afrobeat genre is a great next move for Smith, and the new single is a bit of a departure from her more straightforward EP. Jorja talked about meeting Guilty in Jamaica and how the song came about in a press release. “I met [Guilty] when I went over to Port Antonio in Jamaica for a writing camp in 2019,” she said. “He’s so wonderful to work with and when we initially started the song, it was more a fall to the floor type beat. He’s shared Amapiano playlists with me before and then during the first lockdown in 2020, he sent me a version of the song like it is now. We then finished writing the song remotely, exchanging messages over WhatsApp with his girlfriend Abby who is also a writer. It’s all about someone who doesn’t deserve you and thinking wow, you really had all of my once, ew.”

Check out the new track above.

Victoria Monét Returns With The Sunny ‘Coastin,’ Featuring Production From The Stereotypes

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After the release of her debut album, Jaguar last year, Victoria Monét has been laying low. As one of the go-to songwriters for pop stars like Ariana Grande, and a frequent collaborator with her on songs like “Monopoly,” the R&B star is just starting to get her career underway as a solo artist. After Jaguar came out last summer, she was focusing on becoming a mother. In an interview today she told Apple Music that being a mom has changed her perspective because “I have a little angel in my arms daily to remind me of the importance of life.”

Speaking of the importance of life, today, she’s back on the scene with a brand new song called “Coastin’,” that features production from The Stereotypes and channels all the best parts about summer. Talking further with Apple, Monét said she made the sunny new song during winter, and was channeling what she wanted to feel. “It was definitely a lot of fun and I actually made it in the winter time, so it was an interesting, nice way to escape into an, cause we were also still pretty quarantined and social distanced. So I was able to kind of jump into a summertime that I wish existed and just, I was really inspired by some old classics, one being “Tell Me” by Groove Theory. I just wanted that energy.”

Check out the funky new song above, and look more new music and the follow-up to Jaguar coming soon.

Hear Kanye West, Dr. Dre, And Snoop Dogg’s New Song ‘Glory’ In An Ad With Sha’Carri Richardson

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Kanye West may be notorious for failing to drop albums when he promises, but this time around may be different. Fans are waiting to hear the rapper’s latest album Donda, named after his late mother, which he is hosting a listening party for tonight on Apple Music. Though fans will still have to wait a few more hours the LP, a new Beats commercial offers a snippet of new music to hold his listeners over.

Beats debuted a lively ad for their earbuds starring track and field sprinter Sha’Carri Richardson. The commercial features a one-minute preview of Kanye’s new track “Glory,” which was produced by Dr. Dre and features Snoop Dogg. Press material state the song will not appear on Kanye’s Donda album, but it does give fans an idea of the style of music the rapper has been working on lately. As of now, “Glory” has yet to receive an official release date but does drum up anticipation for his Donda LP.

This isn’t the first time Kanye has shared a new song for a Beats commercial. Back in July, Richardson starred in another ad for Beats’ earbuds that featured Kanye’s unreleased song “No Child Left Behind.”

Hear a snippet of Kanye, Dre, and Snoop Dogg’s “Glory” in the Beat commercial above.

Rappers Are Really Bad At Retiring

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Logic is back — and we never even had a chance to miss him. Just a year removed from the declaration of his retirement, the Maryland rapper turned video game streamer (technically) bounced back last week with the release of his return mixtape, Bobby Tarantino III. Though technically, he did work out some of his itches to rhyme earlier this year with Planetory Destruction, the thinly-disguised, Kool Keith-like endeavor he dropped as Doctor Destruction, and the YS Collection Vol. 1, a collection of older songs cut from the Young Sinatra mixtape series that he was able to clear after a decade.

And look, we understand. When you have a long-lasting love for a thing that has been your whole life — literally, your job, your hobby, and your semi-living arrangement — for over a decade, it’s hard to let go. Logic is hardly the first rapper to have gone through separation anxiety upon realizing that retirement would upend his entire way of being. It was Jay-Z who first coined the bar, “Can’t leave rap alone, the game needs me,” nearly 20 years ago on “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” from his career-defining album The Blueprint. Yet, just two albums later, Jay had decided to gracefully bow out with The Black Album, only to return two years later with Kingdom Come.

Rappers, it seems, have a hard time committing to retirement in general. While they love to announce that they’re stepping away from the hustle of the rap game and hanging up their mics for good, they’re rarely able to stay on the wagon for very long. Here’s a short list of the rappers who have retired only to unretire shortly thereafter when they realized that while the game may not actually need them, they most certainly need the game.

The Game

The Compton rapper said he was done with the rap game with his 2019 album Born 2 Rap (a threat he’d already made once before), but it looks like he may have taken the title pretty literally. His manager Wack 100 recently told AllHipHop that Game’s been back in the studio working on a new album titled 30 For 30. He also dropped the single “A.I. With The Braids” in November of 2020, implying more material on the way, which would bring his total collection of projects to 30, including studio albums, mixtapes, compilations, and independent releases.

Jay-Z

The most infamous rap retiree on the list, Jay-Z famously delivered his swan song, The Black Album, in 2004, accompanying the farewell project with a massive show at Madison Square Garden, a documentary titled Fade To Black recording the creation of the album, and a press tour that saw him collecting his flowers ahead of his final curtain. However, it didn’t take long for him to feel the hunger again. After remixing a number of his songs for the Linkin Park mashup album Collision Course, Jay began popping up on other artists’ songs to find his sea legs before dropping the uneven (but still criminally underrated) Kingdom Come, garnering plenty of both fanfare and criticism, as the brevity of his retirement made it seem more like a gimmick to sell records.

Nicki Minaj

Midway through 2019, Nicki decided that she was finished with the rap game, deciding to trade in her lucrative career for the family life, despite a number of recent examples of women in music who have apparently been able to do both, such as Beyonce and Teyana Taylor. However, it took her all of a day to begin backtracking, posting on social media that she was “still right here” before making her unofficial return in February 2020 with “Yikes.” Although that song didn’t make much of a splash, she renewed her cultural ubiquity with appearances on Doja Cat’s “Say So” and Tekashi 69’s “Trollz,” and recently began teasing a new album after re-releasing her breakout mixtape Beam Me Up Scotty to DSPs for the first time.

Young Dolph

March 2020 was an eventful month for the Memphis mogul, who recanted just 15 days after making his initial retirement announcement by teasing the upcoming release of his album Rich Slave. Then, he followed up the release of his joint project with protege Key Glock, Dum And Dummer 2, with another retirement in March of this year before coming out and admitting straight up in a July interview that he can’t commit to it. “I can’t do it, real talk,” he said. “I’m the spokesperson for all of the street n****s.” His most recent release wound up dropping the same day as Logic’s own comeback, with the Paper Route Empire compilation album Paper Route Illuminati.

Meanwhile, even more rappers, from Denzel Curry to NLE Choppa to T.I., have announced their own intentions to walk away from the rap game after releasing a few more projects. T.I. is said to be working on Kill The King, his final album, while Denzel Curry said that he had three more releases planned before punching the clock for good. NLE Choppa wants to switch to selling natural health products, Chika and Noname are over the poor treatment they feel they’ve received at the hands of the industry, and even DaBaby gave himself a five-year limit — although recent events may have forced him to unwillingly accelerate those plans.

Time will tell whether any of those names manage to stick to it, or transition into other outlets for their creative faculties. But as long as rappers’ retirement announcements make headlines, it seems that they’ll keep making announcements — even if they can only stay retired for a few months at a time.

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