Pop

Beyoncé Joins Ronald Isley On ‘Make Me Say It Again, Girl,’ A Modern Rework Of An Isley Brothers Classic

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Beyoncé’s Renaissance came after a long break between projects, as it was her first solo album since 2016’s Lemonade (although she did drop The Lion King: The Gift in 2019 and her and Jay-Z’s Everything Is Love the year before). Now that she’s back in the swing of things, though, the music isn’t stopping. Along with Renaissance, Beyoncé shared a surprise “Break My Soul” remix EP followed by a standalone “Queens Remix” version of the song with Madonna.

Today, she returns with even more new material: Beyoncé joined Ronald Isley for a new duet rendition of “Make Me Say It Again Girl, Pts. 1 & 2,” originally from the 1975 Isley Brothers album The Heat Is On. The new version is titled “Make Me Say It Again, Girl” and will appear on a new Isley Brothers album that’s set to drop later this year.

On the Renaissance front, the era has been going swimmingly for Beyoncé. The album debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, while “Break My Soul” rose to the top of the Hot 100 following the album’s release. It hasn’t been stumble-free, though, as she’s changed the album due to issues with samples and lyrics.

Listen to “Make Me Say It Again, Girl” above.

Megan Thee Stallion’s ‘Traumazine’ Features Latto, Future, Dua Lipa, And Rico Nasty

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Megan Thee Stallion is moving fast with the Traumazine release. The “Plan B” rapper just shared the name of her new album earlier this week in a wicked morbid teaser clip. It’s due out on August 12 and the tracklist announcement for Traumazine shows that Megan Thee Stallion has made a lot of phone calls to gather a group of guests that includes Future, Latto, Rico Nasty, Dua Lipa, and more.

Yes, “Plan B” is among the 18 tracks on Traumazine, as is the recently released “Pressurelicious” featuring Future. Latto is featured on “Budget,” while Dua Lipa appears on the album-closing single, “Sweetest Pie.” Also appearing alongside Megan Thee Stallion on Traumazine are Pooh Shiesty, Key Glock, Jhene Aiko, Lucky Daye, and Sauce Walka, Big Pokey & Lil Keke on the “Southside Royalty Freestyle.”

Check out the complete tracklist along with the album artwork for Megan Thee Stallion’s Traumazine below.

Traumazine
Megan Thee Stallion

1. “NDA”
2. “Ungrateful” feat. Key Glock
3. “Not Nice”
4. “Budget” feat. Latto
5. “Her”
6. “Gift & A Curse”
7. “Ms. Nasty”
8. “Who Me” feat. Pooh Shiesty
9. “Red Wine”
10. “Scary” feat. Rico Nasty
11. “Anxiety”
12. “Flip Flop”
13. “Consistency” feat. Jhene Aiko
14. “Star” feat. Lucky Daye
15. “Pressurelicious” feat. Future
16. “Plan B”
17. “Southside Royalty Freestyle” feat. Sauce Walka, Big Pokey & Lil Keke
18. “Sweetest Pie” feat. Dua Lipa

Traumazine arrives 8/12. Pre-order it here.

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

Madonna Wants To Work With Kendrick Lamar And ‘Worships’ Him ‘More Than Anything In Life’

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When Madonna dropped by 30 Rock to promote her upcoming remix album Finally Enough Love: 50 Number Ones (and make host Jimmy Fallon extremely uncomfortable), the pop music icon showed off her grill, played some word games with Fallon, and performed a classroom instruments version of her hit song “Music.” In another part of her interview, though, Fallon does get in some decent questions, including whether there are any artists that Madonna really wants to work with after nearly 40 years of popularity.

“There’s one artist that I worship more than anything in life and I would love to collaborate with,” she agrees, “and that’s Kendrick Lamar.” After a quick pause for applause, she elaborates, “His new record is history-making, mind-bogglingly brilliant.”

That new record is, of course, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, which Kendrick dropped in May this year after a five-year hiatus since his Pulitzer Prize-winning album, DAMN. The album had the biggest first week of 2022 and was accompanied by a short film for “We Cry Together” and The Big Steppers Tour.

Meanwhile, in addition to her own new project, Madonna is getting plenty of attention for her remix of Beyonce’s dance hit “Break My Soul” for which Beyonce sent Madonna a thankful note after the remix’s release.

You can check out Madonna’s Tonight Show interview (she mentions Kendrick at the 2-minute mark) above.

Lil Nas X Is Pumped About ‘Old Town Road’ Hitting 1 Billion YouTube Views, His First Video To Do So

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For Lil Nas X, it all started with “Old Town Road,” his earth-shattering 2019 hit. Now, the song’s classic music video has entered rare territory, having just reached 1 billion views on YouTube (it’s at exactly 1,000,153,128 as of this post). According to data from kworb.net, the clip is just the 322nd music video to ever top a billion plays on the platform.

Nas had a celebratory reaction to the news, tweeting a photo of a woman at a party with a shirt reading “Old B*tches Winning” and writing, “WE DID IT!”

The official video isn’t the only “Old Town Road” clip with a high view count: The “Official Movie” has about 648 million plays and the audio of the Billy Ray Cyrus remix has about 580 million views of its own. In total, all the “Old Town Road” videos on Lil Nas X’s YouTube channel have about 2.4 billion views.

Just how uncommon is it for a music video to hit a billion views on YouTube? Well, let’s look at some data (which may not be completely accurate but is good enough for the purposes of this thought exercise). Per a July post from Earthweb, there are about 800 million total videos on YouTube. In 2019, Digital Music News noted that videos in the music category made up 5 percent of total YouTube videos in 2018. 5 percent of 800 million is 40 million. Not all of those 40 million are music videos, though, so let’s say (based on absolutely nothing) that just 1 percent of those 40 million videos are music videos, so 400,000. Of those, only 322 have hit a billion views, which is about 0.08 percent (or 8 percent of 1 percent).

Revisit the “Old Town Road” video below.

Beyoncé Sent Madonna A Thankful Note After Their ‘Break My Soul’ Remix

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So far, Beyoncé has offered plenty of ways to enjoy “Break My Soul,” whether it’s via the original version, one of the four remixes from the EP, or the Madonna-featuring “Queens Remix” of the song. After the latter version came out, Madonna got a nice gift from Beyoncé.

Yesterday, Madonna took to her Instagram Story to show off a note from Beyoncé, accompanied by some flowers. The message reads, “Thank you, Queen. I’m so grateful for you. You have opened so many doors for so many women. You are masterpiece genius. Thank you for allowing me to sing in your song and thank you for naming the remix!!!! Love always and forever, B.”

Madonna wrote on the post, “thank you!! from one [queen] to another [queen]. I love the Re-Mix! @beyonce.” She also shared another photo showing off the massive bouquet of white flowers.

As for the part of Beyoncé’s message about “allowing me to sing in your song” despite this being a remix of her own song, that’s a nod to the remix sampling Madonna’s “Vogue.”

The “Queens Remix,” true to its name, shouts out a number of prominent female musicians past and present, some of whom offered reactions to the nods.

Check out Madonna’s posts below.

Madonna Beyonce Instagram Story
@madonna/Instagram
Madonna Beyonce Instagram Story
@madonna/Instagram