Post Malone is fresh off the release of his new single “Motley Crew,” as well as an accompanying NASCAR-themed video. To commemorate the occasion, Malone has teamed up with Siberia Hills for a new designer merch capsule. Interested parties should act fast, though, as the collection won’t be available forever.
The capsule is only available for ten days and features, as press materials put it, “car-fueled graphics accented by macabre details and Siberia’s signature spiritual edge.” Items in the collection range in price from $21 to $142 and features expected items like shirts and hats, as well as offerings like an air freshener, a car-shaped keychain/bottle opener, a license plate frame, and more.
Siberia Hills notes of the collection, “We always want to make clothing that lasts longer, and that’s unique from others. Fabric choice on this was important from the terry for hoodies & sweats to the jersey cotton and wash process on shirts. All fits are unique to Siberia — cargo sweatpants, double layered long sleeves (with contrast lightweight striped sleeves), single stitched terry shorts, and a variety of accessories we’ve always wanted to do.”
After yesterday’s leadoff, West Coaster rap-crooner Blxst and North Carolina’s Toosii accept the baton for the next leg of the 2021 XXL Freshman Cypher. Once again, their bumping backdrop is provided by Internet Money’s Nick Mira, giving the two rappers an exotic-sounding beat to flex over. Blxst’s verse is a boastful affair in which he offers “two places I won’t go back, of course, / That’s ‘broke’ and that’s ‘forth,’” while Toosii offers an extended verse from his previously teased “Ms. Parker” snippet.
All in all, their part of the Cypher is calm, straightforward, and surprisingly short, with Blxst obviously bringing a bit more effort than Toosii. It marks an intriguing departure from the proceedings yesterday, where Coi Leray’s antics captured the attention of fans on Twitter — and not in a good way. While her cohorts DDG, Lakeyah, and Morray acquitted themselves well — Lakeyah especially impressed a number of fans with her technical proficiency and witty wordplay — Coi Leray delivered an odd, unserious verse/hook/ad-lib combo, giving up after only a handful of bars to twerk instead. Responses weren’t kind, as many questioned her inclusion in this year’s Freshman class, as well as her rap skills in general.
Watch the latest installment of the 2021 XXL Freshman Cypher above.
Cardi B has been one of rap’s more outspoken artists on the subject of the cultural and industry double standards that revolve around hip-hop. Most recently, she commented about this disparity on Twitter, remarking on how female rappers must confront higher standards in presentation only to receive a higher proportion of disrespect than their male counterparts. In a new interview with NME, she receives a co-sign from one of her fellow women in Latto.
When asked about Cardi’s comments, the Atlanta star said, “I definitely agree with that. If you don’t agree with that, you’re ignorant; it’s flat out in our face every day. Females have to have dancers, we just have to do the whole nine just to be on the same playing field as a male rapper who gets up there and talks about whatever he wants to, in his white tee and his little two same moves he’s doing on stage. And he’s straight but we just overanalyze and over critique. It makes us appreciate our success more because for female rappers this stuff doesn’t happen overnight. Period.”
TMZ reports that a judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Cardi B for allegedly threatening a blogger after the blogger made disparaging comments about the rapper online. The blogger, Latasha K, filed the suit against Cardi in response to Cardi suing her for defamation over the comments, claiming that Cardi’s response prompted death threats from the rapper’s fans.
The judge said that Latasha failed to produce any evidence that [Cardi] herself threatened [Latasha] or made her believe that she was going to harm her. Instead, [Latasha] has only made allegations that others who may be associated with [Cardi] made these threats … and has failed to demonstrate here that the threats … were directed by [Cardi].”
Meanwhile, Complex detailed the tiff between the two media personalities, which began in 2019 when Cardi sued two bloggers, Latasha and Starmarie Ebony Jones, for making videos full of outlandish claims about Cardi. Among them were accusations of drug abuse they said would cause her daughter Kulture to be born with “intellectual disabilities.” Cardi gave both bloggers the opportunity to back down and remove the videos but when they refused, she sued them for defamation, warning them of the impending suit on social media.
Cardi B is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
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.
In the week leading up to the release of his latest, self-titled album, Vince Staples, Long Beach native Vince Staples appeared on Apple Music’s Radio 1 show to premiere the single “Are You With That?” for host Zane Lowe. In describing the record’s new, more mainstream-friendly sound, Vince said this: “I was just having a lot of conversations with a lot of people around me… and people always say, ‘Oh, you used to always say these stories and this and that, and I don’t notice much about these specific things. Why don’t you put it into the music?’ And it’ll be stuff that has been in songs for years. And then I realized the backdrop wasn’t right for certain things I was saying or vice versa.”
To translate: Civilians missed the pungent reality of Vince’s detailed storytelling and trenchant, hard-won observations because they couldn’t get past the admittedly sometimes bonkers beats he shared them over. Now, Vince Staples is way too good of a rapper with way too much authenticity behind his rhymes to be getting overlooked this way — a flag I’ve been waving since first hearing him tearing up Common’s “Kingdom” back in 2014 — so it was one of those problems that needed correction, despite being a much better problem to have than the ones he describes in his music.
Vince is currently at a place in his career where this approach makes all the sense in the world. I’ve had conversations about his music similar to the ones he described to Apple Music, where fans of all ages and affiliations would argue that they just couldn’t get past those alarming beats — even those who were inclined to see past his galling comments about the ‘90s being overrated or his profuse praise for Millennial whipping boys like Bow Wow and Ray J. Rap, for all the noise its greatest proponents make about the importance of lyrical innovation, is prefaced by the beats that rappers choose to rhyme on, making the production every bit as important as the bars themselves.
To that end, he’s recruited longtime friend and frequent collaborator Kenny Beats to recalibrate the abrasive soundscapes that scared away potential listeners who warily approached his music after finding that they loved his incorrigible online personality. Rather than the bombast of a “Blue Suede” or the mid-apocalyptic futurism of his work on Big Fish Theory, listeners are now confronted with the easygoing haze of “Are You With That?” The subject matter is no less harrowing but now, the spoonful of honey helps mask the flavor of the bitter medicine with which Vince laces each of his stony-eyed recollections — which even he sometimes seems to feel ambivalent about.
We saw a little bit of this with FM!, the bouncy collection of summery bangers from 2019 that saw Vince leaning a bit toward the territory of radio friendliness, but here, he finally wholeheartedly embraces the role of an artist — something he always claimed he wasn’t. Now that he sees value in sharing the sometimes grim stories that have made up his oeuvre in a more accessible fashion, Kenny’s beats make his responsibilities a much lighter lift. It’s easier to sink into the fatalism of “Sundown Town” when the song sounds almost like a PBR&B standard made for lounging on a lazy summer day.
Likewise, “Take Me Home” would be right at home on a YouTube lo-fi station, even with its sobering depiction of gangbanging activities and their deleterious effect on his relationships. And the mellow mood of the top-down cruising anthem “Taking Trips,” camouflages the paranoid tension sizzling just below the surface without undercutting it. Instead, chill-inducing lines like “Can’t even hit the beach without my heat, it’s in my trunks” hit harder because of the relaxed atmosphere — just like an outbreak of gunshots on a warm summer day, right when you least expect it.
Clocking in at a truly breezy 22 minutes and with two interludes among its 10 tracks, it’s an even quicker listen than FM! — yet, due to its comforting sonic palette, it feels more cozy than disappointing, prompting repeat playthroughs to try and catch the witty wordplay and cushy vibes of Kenny Beats’ production. Vince Staples is just one of two planned projects this year, marking an uptick in productivity for the young rapper and as functions as something of a checkpoint delineating the break between Vince Staples, the defiant upstart, and Vince Staples, the potential star.
Vince Staples is out now via Blacksmith Recordings/Motown Records. Get it here.
Tinashe looks like she’s having the time of her life in the video for “Bouncin,” a simple but exuberant affair in which she sticks to her strengths — namely, performing elaborate choreography as she flirts with her male co-star. In this video, the twist is the addition of some small trampolines for Tinashe and her dance team, which allow for some theme-appropriate moves that bring a new dimension to the usual kinetic direction of Tinashe’s visuals.
The video arrived just five days after the song premiered on New Music Friday, following a rollout strategy that has gotten rarer and rarer in the streaming era. It’s Tinashe’s second video of the year after the clip for “Pasadena” featuring Compton rapper Buddy and appears to be building up to her new, independently released fifth album, which fans believe will be titled 333 after Tinashe shared a teaser about the album on social media.
That speculation was reinforced by Tinashe’s announcement of the 333 Tour which will start in September and include 22 stops, concluding with a live stream on Moment House in late October. 333 will be Tinashashe’s first album since 2019’s Songs For You, which she also released independently after leaving RCA Records in 2018.
The ’90s — specifically, the year 1990 — was a great time to be Robert Matthew Van Winkle, who is better known as Vanilla Ice. His major label debut album, To The Extreme, was No. 1, as was his career-defining single “Ice Ice Baby.” He hasn’t experienced a high level of commercial success with his music since then, though, so it’s understandable that he looks back on the time fondly. He took it to the extreme recently, though, by declaring that no decade since the ’90s has been as good because computers have “ruined the world.”
In a new TMZ video, the person behind the camera asked Ice why everybody is “so infatuated with the ’90s.” With no hesitation, Ice responded, “Because it was the greatest decade ever before computers ruined the world. You have to realize that in 2004, the iPhone came out, right? What’s happened in pop culture since 2004 to ’21? Nothing! It’s the lost generation. Pop culture’s dead! So [it was] the last generation where pop culture was alive where you had fashion that actually mimicked the music.”
Although the rapper continues to perform live, his most recent album was 2011’s W.T.F. (Wisdom, Tenacity And Focus). He also makes occasional movie appearances, like in the 2020’s The Wrong Missy and 2017’s Sandy Wexler.
With a resume that features collaborations with a number of artists across many genres, Ty Dolla Sign has solidified himself as one of the guest verse kings in the music industry. It’s a title that eventually pushed him to name his third album Featuring Ty Dolla Sign. With a long list of guest appearances that highlight his ability to find chemistry with whoever he shares a song with, Ty submits another example by standing beside Dwn2earth for a remix of his 2020 track, “Don’t Play With Me.” The original song is housed on Atlantis, a project Dwn2earth released last year, and the new update also comes with a new video featuring the duo.
In the visual, Ty and Dwn2earth bring their talents to a strip club where they spend most of the night throwing money into the sky. While they’re certainly enjoying their time there, the duo also takes a moment to issue a stern warning to the special woman in their respective lives. They ask that she moves cautiously and carefully consider her choices as anything that they deem disrespectful will not be tolerated.
The video arrives after Ty joined DVSN and Mac Miller on “I Believed It.” Ty and DVSN then promised a joint album for fans in the near future after releasing the song. As for Dwn2earth, he’s been fairly quiet since dropping Atlantis last summer.
You can watch the video for “Don’t Play With Me” above.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
T-Pain is certainly one of the most unique acts to come about in the last two decades. The singer used auto-tune in a way that no one had before, which helped him stand out in his early days, and by the late 2000s he was one of the most popular artists around. So when it comes to originally, T-Pain knows a thing or two. Perhaps that explains why he unleashed such a passionate rant towards the unoriginality he’s witnessed in the industry during a recent livestream on Twitch.
“Stop doing that!” he yelled while speaking about rising artists who copy others. “Do something else, you’re not original! Give me some original sh*t!” He continued, “Stop! Just f*cking do something else! God damn it! Do some different music! We have all the sh*t you’re doing. Lil Uzi Vert is already doing it. Lil Baby is already doing it. DaBaby is already doing it. It’s literally two n****s with Baby in their names that’s already doing all the music you want! Do something else! That’s it!”
The singer concluded his rant with one final request. “Stop sending me this bullsh*t!” he said. “And then get mad when I don’t like it. Jesus god-damn tap-dancing Christ!”
You can watch the full rant in the video above.
Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
