Unfoonk And Future Detail Their Trauma In The Haunting Video For ‘Running Out Of Patience’

Young Thug’s and YSL’s Slime Language 2 project was one of the more anticipated albums to arrive this year. While highlight members from that YSL cast showed out, including Young Thug, Gunna, and Lil Keed, there were also newer members who made a strong impression. One of them is Unfoonk, who recently released his debut project, My Struggle.

The effort gets a nice boost thanks to a video for “Running Out Of Patience” with Future. In it, the duo sits in a dimly lit house as they course through the traumatic moments that occurred in their lives.

Unfoonk’s new project received an attention boost thanks to “Real,” his collaboration with Young Thug — his biological brother — that served as a highlight effort on Slime Language 2. As for My Struggle, the project is equipped with 12 songs and additional features from Young Thug, Gunna, Lil Keed, FN DaDealer, G Herbo, and Lil Duke.

As for Future, the new video arrives shortly after he joined Hotboii in a visual for their “Nobody Special” collaboration. He also stood beside 42 Dugg to provide a controversial verse for “Maybach.”

You can press play on the “Running Out Of Patience” video above.

My Struggle is out now via YSL Records/300 Entertainment. Get it here.

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

IDK Launches A Music Business Program At Harvard For Students Of Color

Despite a pandemic that forced much of the world to stay indoors, DMV native IDK had a pretty impressive year in 2020. The rapper shared his IDK & Friends 2 which saw contributions from Rico Nasty, ASAP Ferg and Pnb Rock. He also graced the world with a number of singles that showed off his improving skills. With that being said, it looks like 2021 will be just as strong for IDK. With plenty of music on the way, the rapper has also launched a new program aimed at aiding college students of color.

IDK will lead a new music business program in partnership with Harvard. According to the Associated Press, the 10-day No Label Academy program begins on August 21 and lasts through August 31. It aims to give students a preview of the music industry to help them understand the value of having a job in it.

The rapper spoke about the new program in a post to Instagram. “We belong in the places where few of us exist,” he wrote. “I’m making sure the world sees that. Applications for my music business course catered to Black Indigenous People of Color @ Harvard are open. Apply now. It takes 5mins.”

The announcement comes after IDK shared, “Peloton,” the second single off his upcoming album USee4Yourself which arrives on July 9.

You can view the flyer for the No Label Academy program above.

USee4Yourself is out 7/9 via Clue No Clue/Warner Records. Pre-order it here.

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

Lil Baby Purchased An Entire Store Of Sneakers For Families In His Hometown

Lil Baby has often lent a helping hand to his community. The latest example came when the Atlanta native stopped by a Foot Locker store in his hometown to purchase the store’s entire collection of sneakers, planning to give them all away. The act was captured on video and it showed Lil Baby and a number of store employees walking out of the store with several bags of sneakers in hand. After the video made its rounds on social media, the rapper hopped on Instagram to explain his motivations behind the act and reveal other plans for the future.

Screenshot From REVOLT

“Buying shoes ain’t what I mean by saving [my] community or giving back!!” he wrote. “That was some sh*t I did cause I seen a lot of them had on flip flops. When I say save [my] community, I mean centers, programs, jobs. You can’t imagine the sh*t I don’t post…”

The good deed comes weeks after the rapper accompanied the family of the late George Floyd for a trip to The White House, where he spoke with President Joe Biden about passing the George Floyd Police Act bill. Prior to that, he launched The Bigger Picture initiative, which gifted 1,000 coats to residents of Birmingham, Alabama.

Saweetie Confirms A Release Date For ‘Pretty B*tch Music’ Through A Performance On ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’

It’s been a long wait for Saweetie’s official debut album Pretty B*tch Music, but at least it hasn’t been that grueling. That’s because the Bay Area act has released a number of tracks as she’s worked on finishing her opus. At long last, the project is complete, as its release date was revealed just moments before Saweetie’s performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!

The host of the late-night show gave a brief introduction to Saweetie before her performance of “Fast (Motion).” It was here that Kimmel revealed Pretty B*tch Music will be released on June 25. This gives fans less than a week to prepare themselves for the album’s arrival, which also lands on the same day of projects to be released by Tyler The Creator and Doja Cat.

As for the performance itself, Saweetie delivered a flashy set atop a rooftop that was riddled with flashing lights and a squad of backup dancers. Pretty B*tch Music will also arrive a little over two months after Saweetie’s most recent project, Pretty Summer Playlist: Season 1.

You can watch her performance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! above.

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

Chloe Bailey’s Spicy Cover Of Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’ Leaves Fans Divided

Juneteenth honors the day the Emancipation Proclamation reached the state and thus marked all slaves as free. First celebrated in Texas, it’s expanded over the years. Indeed, this week President Joe Biden made it a federal holiday. On Friday night, just a day before the holiday, ABC held a Juneteenth TV special, Together We Triumph, that featured performances by Jimmie Allen, Chloe Bailey, and Leon Bridges. By the end of the night, it was clear that Chloe’s performance caught the most attention.

The singer took to the stage to share her cover of Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” during the Juneteenth TV special. Her performance came with a spicy dance routine that left people divided, with some deeming it unfit for the classic soul song. “Idc Chloe Bailey ATE,” one person wrote on Twitter. “Just at the wrong table though—baby it’s Nina Simone [looking eyes emoji].” Others, though, defended what she’d done.

“Y’all MUST do some research on Nina Simone before saying Chloe Bailey didn’t understand the assignment,” they wrote. “Nina Simone was literally a free-spirited woman.” They added, “Go watch the documentary of Nina on Hulu, then tweet lol.”

You can watch a clip of Chloe’s performance above and check out more reactions to it below.

Kamasi Washington’s Hopeful Epic, ‘Sun Kissed Child,’ Is Part Of The ‘Music For The Movement’ Series

Kamasi Washington has been racking up accolades for his psychedelic jazz-fusion for quite some time now, and his 2018 epic Heaven And Earth was the last formal release fans have gotten from the epic jazz powerhouse. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t been releasing one-off tracks and special projects in the meantime, like scoring Michelle Obama’s Becoming documentary, teaming with the likes of Terrace Martin and Denzel Curry to release the protest song, “Pig Feet,” and even forming the new band, Dinner Party, with 9th Wonder, Robert Glasper, and Martini.

Today he’s back with some more music of his own, though, sharing a hopeful new track off the Liberated EP that’s part of The Undefeated’s Music For the Movement series. This is volume 3 of that project, and includes contributions from other artists like Chloe Bailey, Common and Cordae, while artists like Tinashe have contributed to the project before. For Kamasi’s newest track, “Sun Kissed Child,” he had contributions from plenty of fellow artists, including vocalists Dwight Trible and Patrice Quinn, as well as drummer Ronald Bruner Jr., who is the older brother of Thundercat.

Hear the new song above and look out for more new music and hopefully more live performances coming from Kamasi very soon.

Jay-Z’s Roc-A-Fella Records Sues Co-Founder Dame Dash Over An Attempted NFT For ‘Reasonable Doubt’

More than 25 years ago, Jay-Z, Dame Dash, and Kareem “Biggs” Burke came together to form Roc-A-Fella Records. The label would eventually become the home of Jay-Z’s first album, Reasonable Doubt, which was released in 1995. The project is heralded as a hip-hop classic and one of the best efforts in Jay’s discography. Fast-forward to the present and Reasonable Doubt is now at the center of a lawsuit between Roc-A-Fella records and Dash.

According to TMZ and Page Six, Dash was sued by the company after he attempted to auction Reasonable Doubt as an NFT. Roc-A-Fella claims that Dash is unable to mint the album to sell because he does not own the rights. According to court documents filed by high-profile attorney Alex Spiro, Dash planned to sell the Reasonable Doubt NFT at a now-canceled auction and Roc-A-Fella’s current fear is that he will try to sell it again elsewhere.

“The sale of this irreplaceable asset must be stopped before it is too late, and Dash must be held accountable for his theft,” the court documents read. “Dash can’t sell what he doesn’t own. By attempting such a sale, Dash has converted a corporate asset and has breached his fiduciary duties. The court should stop Dash….and hold him accountable for his brazen theft.”

The lawsuit comes shortly after Jay-Z sued photographer Jonathan Mannion, who shot the cover for Reasonable Doubt, for using his name and image without consent.

Azealia Banks’ Historical Response To Candace Owen’s Inane Juneteenth Comment Is A Complete Shutdown

Love her or hate her, sometimes Azealia Banks is the only woman for the job at hand. Sometimes she’s off on her own planet, trying to discredit Megan Thee Stallion’s shooting claims, or literally boiling her dead cat, but sometimes she’s right on the money. And today’s job at hand? Speaking truth to Candace Owens, the insistently right-wing, Conservative pundit — who also happens to be a Black woman — who tends to make claims like using “they/them” pronouns is “poor grammar,” or declaring the recognition of Juneteenth as a national holiday an extension of “segregation.”

Juneteenth was, rather famously, the day that African-Americans in Texas were liberated after they were purposely kept ignorant of Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and remained in slavery for more than two years after the practice was outlawed. But Owens is, for some reason, against making it clear that Black Americans weren’t really free on the 4th of July back in 1776 and recognizing Juneteenth as a federal holiday, like the Senate just unanimously agreed to do. So, Banks broke down for her just what a day in the life for a Black woman in America would’ve been like back then.

“According to this logic, on July 4, 1776, you would still be enslaved,” Banks wrote as the caption on a screenshot post of Owens’ tweet. “Most likely on the verge of starvation due to all of America’s food supply having been prioritized for the war, while you hand sew American flags and struggle to wet nurse some depressed 24-year-old white widow’s sickly child until your nipples are chapped and dry. Whereafter, you will be whipped by her 80-year-old uncle for your own malnourishment and inability to produce milk, then sent to toil over a wood-burning stove — blistering your hands while [being] forced to make a peasantly meal of biscuits and gravy.

You will be watched closely by her irate, sunburned and whisky soaked 80 year old uncle to be sure you do not sneak a single biscuit or fingerful of roux to yourself. after you’ve watched everyone eat, you will be sent to do the cleaning up. Your last task will be brushing the stressed and balding white widows hair to prepare for her sleeping bonnet, a deep rest in her comfortable canopy bed. Next your final descent down the stairs and out the back door where you proudly sleep on a bed bug infested pile of hay in a 6×4 cabin you share with 4 other slaves. Happy Independence Day @realcandaceowens.”

What else is there to say?

John Legend Addresses The Apparently Fabricated DMs Of Chrissy Teigen’s Supposed Bullying

A lot of attention is focused on Chrissy Teigen these days in light of her recent apology for old tweets and inappropriate direct messages. Now it appears another supposed victim of Teigen’s bullying has been outed as a faker.

Designer Michael Costello recently shared supposed screenshots of a 2014 conversation in which Teigen treated him aggressively, but Business Insider notes that there are multiple inconsistencies in the images as it relates to Twitter’s visual formatting. So, it would seem that Costello’s screenshots were fabricated.

This got a response from John Legend, who wrote in a series of tweets today, “Chrissy apologized for her public tweets, but after her apology, Mr Costello fabricated a DM exchange between them. This exchange was made up, completely fake, never happened. […] Honestly I don’t know why anyone would fake DMs to insert themselves in this narrative, but that’s what happened. I encourage everyone who breathlessly spread this lie to keep that same energy when they correct the record.”

This comes after Legend showed support for Teigen by sharing a line from her apology letter: “We are all more than our worst moments.” That quote kicks off the conclusion of Teigen’s message, which goes on to read, “I won’t ask for your forgiveness, only your patience and tolerance. I ask that you allow me, as I promise to allow you, to own past mistakes and be given the opportunity to seek self improvement and change. Phew. A lot, I know. Thanks for listening.”

Find Legend’s tweets below.

@johnlegend/Twitter

Trevor Noah Dove Deep Into How Spotify Treats Non-Major Artists On ‘The Daily Show’

For years now, streaming services like Spotify have faced criticism about how much they pay the artists whose music they depend on. It’s a nuanced situation, so on The Daily Show last night, Trevor Noah broke it down and spoke about how hard it is on make money on Spotify as a non-major artist.

After sharing a compilation of news clips that charted the music industry’s shift from CDs to digital downloads to streaming, Noah got into it, starting by calling streaming “the best thing to happen to the music industry since the government created LSD.” He then noted, though, that while streaming services have “arguably saved music,” they’re “not exactly sharing the wealth.”

Noah shared more video clips, ones illustrating how little artists get paid when their songs get streamed. Then, Noah got into Spotify specifically, giving them credit for providing smaller artists with valuable exposure. He went on to point out, though, that regardless of who subscribers listen to, a hefty portion of their money still goes to major artists. As Noah put it, “Even if you are way too cool to listen to the top ten artists on Spotify, they still get most of your money. And the bands that you do listen to get almost none of it.”

Noah concluded by noting, “For now, maybe the most important things for artists to do is get the word out to their fans.” Then, he introduced Aloe Blacc, who has been vocal about issues with streaming music since he earned just $4,000 from streaming for Avicii’s international hit “Wake Me Up,” which he co-wrote. For The Daily Show, Blacc wrote and performed a new version of his “I Need A Dollar,” with lyrics modified to directly address Spotify and streaming problems.

Watch the whole segment above or find just Blacc’s performance below.