STEPHEN COLBERT

Alicia Keys Brought Big Christmas Energy To ‘The Late Show’ With Gorgeous Covers Of Holiday Classics

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Grammy-winning singer Alicia Keys is keeping her holiday spirit going. After performing at the annual Rockefeller Center Christmas Tree lighting ceremony in November, Keys released her first Christmas album, Santa Baby. The songwriter stopped by The Late Show with host Stephen Colbert to share the news of the project with a live performance of the title track.

Sporting a posh white floor-length faux fur and statuesque gold sequined body suit, Keys took the stage to belt out the classic tune. Playing into her signature R&B vocal delivery, Keys still managed to sprinkle in the cabaret stylings of the song’s originator, Eartha Kitt. Keys, a trained pianist, opted out of playing to focus on her vocal performance while house musicians handled the instrumentation.

She also delivered a bonus performance of “Please Come Home For Christmas.”

Before her performance, the musician sat down with Colbert to discuss why she dedicated to the record the album, to which she replied, “It was time.”

The pair also discussed her past collaboration with singer Brandi Carlile. Carlisle recently covered folk icon Joni Mitchell’s Blue album as a tribute to the singer. When asked if there’s an artist’s album she would love to cover, Keys answered, “I feel like if I were to pick one, it would probably have to be Songs In The Key Of Life.”

Keys has, on numerous occasions, expressed her admiration for revered musician Stevie Wonder. Keys continued, “I tell you what, it wouldn’t be easy though. It would not be easy. That would be hard because there’s nobody who can play like Stevie Wonder. Period. End of story. You can try as hard as you can, but you’re not going to get that cord exactly right. But that would be amazing.”

Watch Keys’ performances above and her interview below.

Santa Baby is out now via Alicia Keys Records. Get it here.

Run The Jewels Stage A Rebellious ‘Late Show’ Performance Of ‘A Few Words For The Firing Squad’

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When Run The Jewels dropped their fourth album in June 2020, they closed the album with the rambunctious “A Few Words For The Firing Squad.” It was a bold and fitting choice; the album was released at the height of several uprisings against police brutality, particularly against the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. The punishing track stressed their distrust of the system and commitment to fighting back by any means necessary.

It has been a couple of years and a whole heap of new problems has appeared to burden the average American citizen with worries about pox viruses, inflation, and the loss of bodily autonomy, but “A Few Words For The Firing Squad” remains as poignant and timely as ever. El-P and Killer Mike stopped by The Late Show with Stephen Colbert to remind viewers that there’s still a fight for justice going on even amidst the slog of daily life during a pandemic.

With a stripped-down that highlighted the lyrics and message in lieu of an elaborate light show, Mike and P rap their verses without a drum track. Only a lone saxophonist accompanies them, growing more urgent and frantic as their rhymes do. You can catch the boys performing the song — and others — on their tour with Rage Against The Machine.

Watch Run The Jewels perform “A Few Words For The Firing Squad” from their fourth album on The Late Show above.

Chance The Rapper Returns To ‘Colbert’ With An Artful Performance Of ‘Child Of God’

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Back in 2017, Chance The Rapper debuted his song “First World Problems” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, marking one of the Chicago MC’s most renowned live performances. To this day, he still hasn’t given the song an official release, but that hasn’t stopped fans from ripping and reuploading it due to its popularity in his catalog. Fortunately, they won’t have to do as much work now that he’s returned to Colbert, which he did last night with an artful rendition of his newly released single “Child Of God.”

Chance performs the song with an orchestra, blowing out the stripped-down, mellow production to include a passionate crescendo as he delivers the uplifting lyrics. Speaking of those lyrics, in true Chance The Rapper fashion, the song’s heartfelt text appears on the screen as it has in many of his recent music videos such as “The Heart And The Tongue.” It’s actually been a pretty flourishing trend among other independent rappers like Kota The Friend and Tobe Nwigwe, and it’s pretty cool that they’ve found a way to combine the best of both worlds, mashing up the lyrics videos that often accompany new single releases with their creative visuals. In addition, he highlighted Naila Opiangah, the emerging artist who created the painting in the background of the performance, by bringing her onstage with him at the end.

The Rapper has yet to announce a new album but it has been nearly three years since his last one, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if he did sometime this year. In the meantime, watch his performance on The Late Show above.

‘The Late Show’ Imagines A Hilarious Eminem Response To Rudy Giuliani’s Super Bowl Rant

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Ever since his official debut in 1999, Eminem has been a lightning rod for controversy. He’s mellowed out a lot since then, but it appears he still has the juice to get the establishment all riled up, 23 years later. While many folks agreed with Britney Spears regarding his performance during Dr. Dre’s Super Bowl halftime show, some more conservative viewers freaked out, with one coining the term “sexual anarchy” to describe the largely sexless performance.

One, Rudy Giuliani, went on a baffling tirade against Eminem specifically for kneeling after completing his set, presumably in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick’s 2016 protests against police brutality. Giuliani, popping up on a conservative talk radio show, seemed to equate Eminem’s action with a (nonexistent) rise in crime in Los Angeles, and said that the NFL “made a mockery out of law enforcement.” Yeah, I don’t know what world this guy thinks he lives in either… I kid. I know he’s just shilling to his paranoia-ridden base.

And while Eminem himself has yet to respond to the bad-faith, disingenuous rant, it looks like Stephen Colbert was more than happy to take over some of that workload on last night’s episode of The Late Show, employing a soundalike — similarly to when he lampooned Nicki Minaj’s “cousin’s swollen balls” tall tale — to imagine Eminem’s frankly hilarious response to Giuliani. Set to Em’s “Lose Yourself,” the song that the rapper performed at the Super Bowl (and one of his least offensive songs ever), the remixed track takes aim at Rudy’s many (many) missteps over the past couple of years, from his Borat embarrassment to his stumping for the failed January 6 coup.

Watch “Eminem’s” response to Rudy Giuliani’s Super Bowl halftime show rant above.

2 Chainz’s ‘Lost Kings’ Performance On ‘Colbert’ Pays Homage To Nipsey Hussle, Pop Smoke, And Young Dolph

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With 2 Chainz dropping his new album, Dope Don’t Sell Itself, today, the Atlanta rapper dropped by The Late Show for a stirring performance of “Lost Kings” featuring Lil Durk and Sleepy Rose. The song addresses America’s prevalent problem with gun violence — particularly when the victims are young Black men — while the performance was offered as a tribute to several of the rappers who were slain in the past few years, including Nipsey Hussle, Pop Smoke, and Young Dolph, photos of whom are projected behind the performers.

Along with last night’s performance, the rollout for Dope Don’t Sell Itself included the release of videos for “Million Dollars Worth Of Game” featuring 42 Dugg, “Pop Music” with Beatking and Moneybagg Yo, and the “Laffy Taffy”-sampling “Neighbors Know My Name,” as well as an eyebrow-raising freestyle over Pharcyde’s “Passin’ Me By” on the LA Leakers radio show. The album itself has already received rave reviews on Twitter, and features guest appearances from Lil Baby, Roddy Ricch, Stove God Cooks, Symba, Swae Lee, and more. Before the album’s release, 2 Chainz claimed that it would be his last trap-focused album and if that’s true, he’s bowing out at the top of his game.

Watch 2 Chainz’s “Lost Kings” performance on The Late Show above.
Some artists mentioned here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Killer Mike And Stephen Colbert Celebrate The 20-Year Anniversary Of The ‘Lord Of The Rings’ Films With A ‘Late Show’ Rap

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It’s pretty well known that Stephen Colbert is a huge nerd who absolutely loves the Lord Of The Rings film trilogy but not as well known is the apparent fact that so is renowned Atlanta rapper Killer Mike.

Wait, what?

Yep, that’s right. Killer Mike joined Stephen Colbert on last night’s episode of The Late Show to celebrate the film series’ 20th anniversary with an elf-laden rap video in which Colbert, dressed hilariously in an old-school hip-hop get-up that LL Cool J would have loved back in the ’80s, Late Show bandleader Jon Batiste, and Mike rampage through a Blockbuster-like video store set, putting down other film trilogies like Star Wars and The Godfather as vastly inferior.

Then the hobbits themselves show up. Yes, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, and Sean Astin show up as raptified versions of their mischievous film characters to continue the song along with Elijah Wood, who poses in front of a Benz with “Baggins” on the license plate. The music video even gets meta, as Wood disses the Pitch Perfect trilogy, prompting a quick interlude of that series’ star Anna Kendrick looking very confused and kind of disgusted.

Method Man shows up to replace Gandalf actor Ian McKellan, Killer Mike slates Back To The Future, Indiana Jones, The Mighty Ducks, Twilight (another Kendrick cameo!), and The Dark Knight trilogy. Andy Serkis — aka Gollum — plays the flute as Hugo Weaving raps in freaking Elvish. This video has everything. You should really check it out.

HER Brings Her Soaring Heartbreak Ballad ‘For Anyone’ To An Intimate Performance On ‘Colbert’

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It’s been a few months since Academy Award and multi-Grammy-winning artist HER released her swooning album Back Of My Mind. She’s currently on tour across the country supporting the album’s release, but she managed to stop by The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to share an intimate rendition of her emotive track “For Anyone.”

The performance opened with HER seated at a bedazzled piano and sporting her signature round glasses. Though she was joined by some backup singers and accompanying musicians, her room-filling vocals alone were enough to mesmerize as she sang of closing herself off to love after a particularly painful heartbreak.

Ahead of her performance on The Late Show, HER gave an interview with Vulture where she talked about how many people perceive her as an “industry plant,” a word that’s meant to call out nepotism, but is oftentimes used to discredit the hard work a woman has put in to get where she is in the music industry. “With social media, people think they know everything about success. People see my success now, and they don’t understand the sacrifices, the 15-hour days in the studio, the pressure from my parents to go to college,” she said.

HER went on to explain the work she put in to reach her level of credibility: “For me, I grinded it out kinda like a rapper: I dropped a mixtape, nobody knew who I was, it was a very slow build, and here we are now. The awards shows and all that stuff, that was surprising to me. But I realized, Oh my gosh, I’ve arrived, and in a different way. You don’t need some No. 1 radio single — even though I got that!”

Watch HER perform “For Anyone” on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert above.

Back Of My Mind is out now via RCA Records. Get it here.

Stephen Colbert Parodies Nicki Minaj’s Unlikely Vaccine Story With A Riff On ‘Super Bass’

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Nicki Minaj’s vaccine tall tale continued to inspire content as late-night host Stephen Colbert joined in on the fun on his show last night. A few days ago, Nicki tweeted she is unvaccinated because her cousin told her his friend had an unusual adverse reaction to a vaccine that caused his testes to swell up. Despite that horror story being debunked by Dr. Anthony Fauci, who pointed out there’s ‘no mechanistic reason’ for a vaccine to affect one’s sexual organs, Nicki has remained more or less steadfast.

However, the unintentional hilarity of the tweet’s “Caribbean auntie WhatsApp broadcast energy” prompted plenty of equally hilarious meme-ing at Nicki’s expense. Colbert, looking to one-up Twitter’s plethora of pranksters, hijacking Nicki’s one-time biggest hit, “Super Bass,” turn to playfully jab at the likely mythical cousin’s friend’s dilemma with “Super Balls.” The show was cold-opened with the video, to the audience’s delight.

Remixing Nicki’s colorful video with closeups of all kinds of balls (basketballs, beach balls, disco balls, ping pong balls, etc.), the lyrics are revamped to reflect fictional misfortune, referencing King-Kong, the moons of Mars, and James And The Giant Peach. Colbert also roasted Nicki’s narrative in his opening monologue, cracking, “Nicki Minaj is known for her extensive research on what anacondas want… if and when you’ve got buns, hun.” Taking the iffy provenance of her story to task, he snarked, “To be fair to Dr. Minaj, everyone knows there’s no source more reliable than your extended family’s acquaintances in another country. Her report comes straight from the New England Journal of My Cousin’s Friend in Trinidad. Check out this week’s study: ‘I Heard His Girlfriend Got Pregnant From a Hot Tub.’”

Watch Stephen Colbert air out Nicki Minaj above.