Music

A Sexy Bathroom Photo Featuring Travis Barker, Kourtney Kardashian, MGK, And Megan Fox Has Consumed The Internet

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If there’s one thing people love to see on the internet, it’s the mashup between high and low culture that usually results from the glimpses we get behind-the-scenes of events like MTV’s VMAs and the Met Gala. This year, thanks to a pair of the show’s performers and their respective significant others, people on the internet got more than enough of both all in one photograph.

The photo in question captures Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker — who teamed up to perform their emo-rock revival anthem “Papercuts” at the VMAs — and their girlfriends, Kourtney Kardashian and Megan Fox, all holed up in what looks to be a public bathroom before the Met Gala. Barker and Kardashian are making out, as are MGK and Fox, and Twitter is having something of a meltdown. Maybe it’s the combination of the glamorous gals — Kardashian is, of course, a member of a family of models and moguls, while Fox is a veteran actress — carousing with the decidedly grungey-looking guys — Barker and Kelly are both tatted-up rockers with roots in the hip-hop world — that has folks so fascinated with the pairings.

Fox and Kelly had fans mesmerized with her red carpet look and his reported altercation with MMA fighter Conor McGregor last night before the show, while Barker and Kardashian have been headline fodder for months, especially with the news that she helped him overcome his fear of flying after a 2008 plane crash hospitalized him for 11 weeks.

Check out some of the reactions to their photo below.

Nicki Minaj Says She Pulled Out Of The VMAs Because She Caught COVID But She Still Won’t Get Vaccinated

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Over the course of the pandemic, two major threads of hip-hop artists have emerged: Those who have supported common-sense safety measures and efforts to combat the COVID-19 coronavirus’ spread, and those who have made light of its impacts and the efforts to slow its movement throwout vulnerable populations. Unfortunately, many of those who have cast aspersions on things like vaccines have massive platforms — which makes their reticence both disappointing and incredibly dangerous.

This afternoon, “Seeing Green” rapper Nicki Minaj addressed a fan account that noted that she hadn’t made a public appearance in over a year. “I have an infant with no nannies during COVID,” she explained. “Not risking his health to be seen.” Reasonable enough. However, the longer she addressed the conversation, the closer she toed the line, eventually revealing that she had caught COVID herself while preparing for the VMAs.

“I was prepping for vmas then i shot a video & guess who got COVID?” she wrote. “Do u know what it is not to be able to kiss or hold your tiny baby for over a week? A baby who is only used to his mama?” But then, she overshared, questioning the efficacy of the vaccine, saying Drake told her he caught the virus despite being vaccinated (which, is, you know, how vaccines work). She also claimed that she had the “exact same symptoms” as people who were vaccinated.

She then started sharing vaccine horror stories from fans and ones from her family. While stories of this kind have circulated since the three different vaccines were introduced, statistically, they are rarer than people actually dying from the vaccine, which is a number in the high six figures in the US alone. Nicki said that she was “doing her own research” and well… we all know what that means.

At least she told fans to continue to wear masks — unlike another rap veteran, Busta Rhymes, who went on an anti-mask rant a few months ago. Still, it’s pretty easy to interpret her reluctance as just another extension of the hesitation lots of Black folks have unfortunately had over the past year — a hesitation that’s getting 1,000 people a day killed. Just get the damn shot, y’all. Check out some reactions as well.

Drake’s Alternate ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Covers Offer Some More Straightforward Takes On The Theme

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When Drake first revealed the cheeky, emoji-laden cover concept for his new album Certified Lover Boy, many fans weren’t sure if he was joking. Despite reportedly being designed by renowned modern artist Damien Hirst, the cover — which featured a symmetrical pattern of pregnant woman emojis in different skin tones and shirt colors — was derided by fans as being lazy and ridiculous. It also spawned a jaw-dropping, eye-rolling run of similarly themed memes, including one from Lil Nas X changing the emojis’ genders to fit his Montero announcement, but none of that stopped the album from going No. 1 on Billboard‘s album chart, so I guess Drake gets the last laugh.

Except that Drake always seems to be in on the joke, which means he probably knew the troll-ish cover was likely to annoy his fans — if anything, that may have been its intent, considering how closely tied Drake’s rollout was to Kanye’s, which culminated a week earlier in the release of Donda. Today, Drake has been sharing some alternate cover designs on his Instagram, including their designers’ information. In addition to providing a peek at what some more straightforward takes on the album’s theme would have looked like, the trove also gives those fans who were miffed or turned off by the emoji cover to replace it with some less goofy options in their personal music libraries.

Included in the designs are works from veteran comics illustrator Milo Manara, photographer Luis Mora, and a gussied-up second pass of Hirst’s original. Check out Drake’s alternate Certified Lover Boy covers below.

Lil Nas X Reminded A Mom Who Complained About His ‘Industry Baby’ Video How YouTube Searches Work

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Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby” video continues to cause controversy for its explicit content but when one parent decided to complain about the video’s prominence on her YouTube search, Nas (who already tweeted out multiple disclaimers about this subject) had to remind them how search functions work. Other Twitter users joined in, pointing out that YouTube already has parental control functions to prevent small children from seeing inappropriate content — and while it’s far from a perfect feature, it’s probably well capable of keeping Nas’ gyrations aware from concerned parents, with just a little more effort than taking screenshots and posting angry messages on a completely different platform.

“This was the THIRD video that popped up when I searched ‘Baby videos’ on YouTube,” read the original complaint. Ordinarily, that’d be enough to garner some sympathy, but the next line kind of belied the bad faith argument the user was actually trying to make. “How much more proof do people need that they are after our kids???” Nas, who is pretty much the Shang-Chi of Twitter trolling, expertly reversed the argument with a sarcastic quote-tweet, highlighting that merely searching “baby videos” might not be the most effective method of finding quality kids’ programming.

“BREAKING NEWS,” he joked. “Local woman shocked that search results for ‘baby’ included videos with baby in the title.” Other users were quick to point out that YouTube has a wholly separate app, YouTube Kids, to circumvent exactly this concern. “Just say y’all not attentive parents and move on,” one jabbed.

Meanwhile, the phrasing of the bad faith questioning “that they are after our kids” — implying that evil gay people are out to brainwash children into … being gay, I guess? — echoed more conspiracy nonsense recently spouted by Louisiana rapper Boosie. However, true to form, Nas disarmed that line of reasoning just as deftly on last night’s MTV VMAs as he won the award for Video Of The Year for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” shouting out the so-called “gay agenda” in his cheeky acceptance speech. Check out more responses to YouTube’s parental control policies below.

https://twitter.com/smoke_nd_pearlz/status/1437417901313646594

Baby Keem Buys His Grandmother A House In The Reflective ‘First Order Of Business’ Video

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Just a few days removed from the release of his debut album, The Melodic Blue, Las Vegas rapper Baby Keem has released the music video for its latest single “First Order Of Business.” Opening on a shot of Keem sitting solo in a sparsely decorated living room, the rapper is asked what his favorite trait in a woman is. “Loyalty, off the top,” he answers. Then he reveals that his “first order of business” upon making his first million dollars went toward buying his grandmother a house. From there, the video actually portrays the event in question, as well as views of Keem cuddling with a female companion and racing a Porche through the desert.

The Melodic Blue dropped Friday after a lengthy building that increased expectations and excitement with each new single release. In a rollout as smooth as just about any seen for a hotly-tabbed new artist like Keem (a 2020 XXL Freshman with a blood relation to rap royalty), Keem dropped videos for “Durag Activity” featuring Travis Scott and “Family Ties” featuring his cousin Kendrick Lamar, then debuted the final pre-release single “Issues” on The Tonight Show before releasing a similarly-themed video the night the album came out.

Watch Baby Keem’s “First Order Of Business” video above.

The Melodic Blue is out now via Columbia Records. Get it here.

Drake’s ‘Certified Lover Boy’ Makes History By Having Nine Of The Top Ten Songs On The Hot 100 Chart

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Drake’s new album Certified Lover Boy is a truly unprecedented commercial success. Over the weekend, it was revealed the album debuted at No. 1 with the biggest week of the year so far, and now the album is dominating the Billboard Hot 100 chart in ways the music world has never seen. The top ten spots of the chart were revealed today, and of those ten, nine of them are songs from Certified Lover Boy. Drake is now the first artist to ever have nine top-ten songs in the same week.

Debuting at No. 1 is Drake’s “Way 2 Sexy” featuring Future and Young Thug. After that is “Girls Want Girls” featuring Lil Baby at No. 2, “Fair Trade” featuring Travis Scott at No. 3, “Champagne Poetry” at No. 4, “Knife Talk” featuring 21 Savage and Project Pat at No. 5, “In The Bible” featuring Lil Durk and Giveon at No. 7, “Papi’s Home” at No. 8, “TSU” at No. 9, and “Love All” featuring Jay-Z at No. 1o. The only non-Drake song in this week’s top ten is The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber’s “Stay.” Overall, all 21 songs from Certified Lover Boy debut in the top 40 of this week’s chart.

This list of records that this sets is extensive, even beyond the aforementioned accolades. Certified Lover Boy has more top-ten songs than any album in history; Michael Jackson’s Thriller, Bruce Springsteen’s Born In The USA, Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation 1814, and Drake’s own Scorpion all have seven top-ten songs on the Hot 100.

Furthermore, Drake and The Beatles are now the only two artists to ever dominate the entire top five spots of the chart. Drake’s total of five songs to debut at No. 1 ties Ariana Grande for the most ever. Drake has also extended his records for the most career top-ten songs (54), most top-40 hits (140), and total Hot 100 entries (258).

Jay-Z’s Drake Feature Earns His First Top-10 Hit Since Beyonce’s ‘Drunk In Love’

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Drake’s new album Certified Lover Boy, which unsurprisingly debuted at No.1 on the Billboard 200, also holds the historical distinction of making him the first artist to have nine top-ten songs on the Hot 100 chart in the same week. However, Drake isn’t the only one to benefit from this achievement; Billboard also reports that Jay-Z, who appears on “Love All,” also collects another career milestone: His 22nd career top-10 hit.

Jay-Z and Mariah Carey — who were both recently the subjects of a (refuted) rumor about them falling out — now share the distinction of being the only artists with top 10 hits in the ’90s, ’00s, ’10s, and ’20s. it’s also Jay’s first top-10 since appearing on his wife Beyonce’s 2013 hit “Drunk In Love,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100. Incidentally, he actually would have had his 23rd top-10 hit had his feature on Kanye West’s Donda been credited as such — since his name doesn’t appear on the official tracklisting for “Jail,” he apparently had to wait a week for his latest feature to count. Jay was among an array of artists who appeared on both albums, drawing a fair amount of attention and prompting a Twitter trending topic thanks to his close proximity to both.

The Weeknd And Swedish House Mafia Seemingly Confirm A Collaboration After A Hint At The VMAs

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Last night’s VMAs yielded a bunch of headlines, but one story that flew perhaps a little under the radar is what appears to be an upcoming collaboration between The Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia.

The latter group had some time on stage during last night’s proceedings, and at the end of their performance, The Weeknd’s voice singing “like a moth to a flame” is audible as the text “to be continued” was displayed on stage.

Sure enough, after the performance, both The Weeknd and Swedish House Mafia shared the same teaser clip on social media and tagged each other in their posts, essentially confirming that the pair have some sort of collaborative endeavor on the way.

Beyond that, neither artist has offered any more info about what’s going on here.

This comes after a long time away from Swedish House Mafia, as the group previously broke up but is now reunited. Their most recent album is 2012’s Until Now. As for The Weeknd, he’s apparently in the home stretch of making his new album, as he recently said, “I’m finishing the new album right now. It should be done by the end of this month and we’re just kind of figuring out when to put it out. It’s been really cool because I’m working on this album this summer simultaneously with the writer’s room for the new TV show. So, I’ve been kind of going back and forth from finishing the album and pending up the show that we’re going to start shooting soon. It’s been quite a summer.”

A Lil Baby Fan Got Knocked Out By Security After Climbing Onstage During His Show

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Over the weekend, Lil Baby‘s concert in Charlotte got a little more lively than the show’s attendees anticipated when one fan climbed onstage to try to greet the rising star. You could probably guess how the exchange ended even without reading the headline: One of the stage security guards descended on the overly enthusiastic concertgoer with a flying elbow, knocking him down and proceeding to drag him away. Although the fan’s intentions seemed friendly enough — it looks like he just wanted a handshake — he got a different kind of pound as the confused rapper can be heard wondering, “What the f*ck you doing?”

@uproxx

its the all the damns in the background for me 😩😭#fyp #lilbaby #concerts #failarmy

♬ original sound – UPROXX Music

And look, it’s understandable; we’ve all been cooped up with very little to do for quite some time. However, rarely ever has a fan climbing onstage unbidden yielded anything less than a painful result for them. No matter how bored you’ve been, there’s no reason to believe that the rules have changed, even if the lines between stars and their admirers have blurred a bunch in the “always online” social media era.

Meanwhile, Lil Baby can probably just feel relieved that security handled the situation and that it wasn’t a case of fans throwing things onstage. Another infant-monikered rapper had to dodge a “funky-ass Adidas” at Rolling Loud — although that became the least of DaBaby’s worries considering what followed.

Check out the video above.

Jay-Z’s Music Is Now Available In Instagram Stories Thanks To Angie Martinez

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In recent years, music licensing issues have received greater spotlight due to the use of popular music on social content creation platforms like Instagram, TikTok, and Twitch. Usually, it’s in the form of takedown requests, which can affect recorded streams and recently knocked out thousands of TikTok videos using a lofi song that sampled the Steven Universe theme song, but occasionally, users complain that they simply can’t find music from certain artists in the first place. Jay-Z was one of those artists until recently — and apparently, we have longtime radio personality/hip-hop journalist Angie Martinez to thank.

It would have been easy to miss the inclusion of Jay’s back catalog for use on Instagram Stories — and even less likely anyone would have know who to thank — without No Skips host Brandon “Jinx Jenkins, who posted a tweet notifying his followers about the change over the weekend. “fyi: we can use jigga’s music on instagram stories now,” he wrote. “thank @angiemartinez for that!” Martinez herself responded a few hours later, confirming her involvement. “haaa! not really sure how u knew that,” she marveled. “too many great ig stories to be had. you’re all welcome.”

Jay’s music has long been the subject of copyright snags thanks to his former ownership of Tidal. It was only relatively recently that Jay made his music available outside of Tidal, and he still keeps some content Tidal exclusive. However, it looks like even Jay won’t stand in the way of progress for too long, giving fans another avenue to enjoy — and discover, for those younger fans who weren’t around for his mid-2000s rap reign — his classic cuts.