If you don’t know by now, Drake’s a big fan of Chrome Hearts. In the past week or so, the rapper’s been heavily teasing his Certified Lover Boy x Chrome Hearts collaboration on his IG story and it seems his wealthy influencer friends are getting dibs on the first batch. However, the working relationship between the hip-hop heavyweight and the luxury brand also includes a customized Rolls Royce that fans will be able to check out next month.
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A 2020 Rolls Royce Cullinan that was designed in collaboration with Drake and Chrome Hearts will be available for public viewing at The Institute of Contemporary Art Museum’s sculpture garden in Miami starting on May 1st until May 15th by appointment only. The car was customized by Masonry with the design done by Richard Stark with Drizzy adding some final touches.
An interactive website launch along with the announcement allowing fans to get a better look at the vehicle with Drake’s “What’s Next” soundtracking the virtual experience. It seems that this could’ve been the same Cullinan that he was seen in during the music video for the Scary Hours II single.
Meanwhile, fans are anticipating the release of Drake’s upcoming project. The last update he provided was in early March on SiriusXM’s Sound42 where he said that he’s currently working on it but assured fans it could be coming soon.
The wait is over. DJ Khaled will be officially dropping off his brand new album Khaled Khaled this coming Friday, and given how enthusiastic he’s been in the months leading up to it, expectations are admittedly high. With reported features from Migos, Roddy Ricch, Post Malone, H.E.R, Justin Timberlake, Lil Wayne, Lil Baby, Buju Banton, Nas, and many more, fans have been curious to see what the affable curator has pieced together for his twelfth studio album.
With the big drop only days away, Khaled has been heavy on the Instagram grind, sharing a glimpse at how he’s been spending the week so far. As it happens, Kanye West hit him up for an impromptu visit, during which the pair proceeded to preview their new music for one another — complete with some elaborate dance moves from Khaled and an unexpected breakfast feast.
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“True story, Kanye popped up at my house the other day at 8 AM!” writes Khaled, sharing a clip of their link-up. “I did not know he was coming! He played me his music and I played him Khaled Khaled. He also asked my chef [Melissa Zuniga] for some eggs and ketchup.” While it’s unclear as to who might be blessing the soulful banger, which actually sounds vaguely Kanye-inspired come to think of it, many have been quick to praise the luxurious instrumental as a promising sign of things to come.
Check out the video below, and sound off in the comments if you’re excited to see what DJ Khaled has been building for these past few months. Though it’s unlikely that Yeezy will make an appearance on Khaled Khaled, it’s still refreshing to see him actively connecting with his fellow artists, a promising sign that his own upcoming album might be on the horizon.
Over the last couple of months, genre-bending and soul adjacent artist Chiiild has been proving that the world really needs his forthcoming studio album. By dropping the hypnotic cut “Sleepwalking” as well as the beautiful R&B duet “Awake” with Mahalia, Chiiild has been steadily peeling back the sonic layers of the highly anticipated Hope For Sale.
Today, the Montreal artist has officially shared “Gone,” the third single from the upcoming album, and from early listens, it’s sounding like another step in the direction for the rising multi-genre artist.
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Accompanied by a crisp Zac Wolf-directed video, “Gone” focuses on learning from mistakes in order to overcome challenges that two people in a romantic relationship often make. As mentioned before, Chiiild’s new track marks the third official single from Hope For Sale, which is slated for release this summer. So far, “Gone,” “Awake,” and “Sleepwalking,” all occupy different soundscapes, so one can only assume all of the disparate styles that Chiiild will be exploring on his highly anticipated album.
Watch the gorgeous black-and-white visuals for Chiiild’s latest single “Gone” below and let us know if you’re excited for the Montreal artist’s forthcoming album.
Quotable Lyrics
I know that it can hurt sometimes I bet When all the words don’t come out right It happens And maybe we can learn from times like this And they can be gone
One of the hottest dance challenges on the internet right now is Young Thug and Gunna’s “Ski Challenge.” The lead single from Slime Language 2, “Ski” kicked off the rollout for Young Stoner Life’s second compilation project. The infectious challenge has influencers, artists, dancers, and just about everyone wanting to get involved, mimicking skiing motions after Wheezy’s producer tag sounds off. We’ve seen entries into the challenge from Drake, Diddy, Coi Leray, and plenty of others. This week, DaBaby got involved, but he put his own spin on things.
Instead of getting all wrapped up in winter clothing as Coi Leray did, DaBaby took this challenge to the airport, kayaking over to his private jet on a luggage cart with his boys. His security guard pushes the rapper, who holds a traffic cone and uses it as a paddle to the song’s beat. He may not be skiing, but he’s definitely rowing pretty efficiently. Does this still count as an entry into the “Ski Challenge” though? Considering the fact that YSL Records reposted the video to their official page on Instagram, we’re assuming it does.
Julius Erving had some pretty off-the-cuff things to say about LeBron James and his legacy this week. During a recent appearance on Posted Up with Chris Haynes, the NBA legend named his top two all-time NBA teams, combining some of the greatest players ever and creating a fantasy team. One blatant omission from Erving’s list was LeBron James, who is one of the best players to ever step on a basketball court.
On his first team, Dr. J named Oscar Robertson, Jerry West, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell, and Elgin Baylor as his starters. For his second All-NBA team, he listed off Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Karl Malone, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. He explained why he left out LeBron, saying, “He’s the guy who has led the charge in terms of super teams. When he put together a team in Miami, he put together a team in Cleveland as well, and he put together a team in Los Angeles. So, he can pick his own team. I ain’t going to pick his team.”
The comments have proven to be slightly controversial on social media, and 50 Cent even chimed in, explaining why he thinks Erving wasn’t thinking straight when he left off LeBron.
“Sounds like old hater shit to me,” he said, reposting a headline about Erving’s statement. “It takes a lot of work and talent to be @kingjames if that wasn’t true we would have 3 or 4 of him, we only got 1.”
Do you think Julius Erving’s critique of LeBron James is valid? Or was it “old hater shit” to keep him off the list?
As Jim Jones recently stated, the back-to-back losses of DMX and Robert “Black Rob” Ross were like a “double hurt,” and with Shock G’s untimely passing less than a full week after Black Rob’s, the past month has been an emotionally challenging period of time for the Hip-Hop community.
DMX was recently laid to rest over the weekend with a huge production that featured heartfelt performances from DMX’s daughter and Kanye West, and now it’s Black Rob’s turn to have his life publicly honored. According to HipHopDX, Bad Boy Records labelmate Mark Curry has revealed that Black Rob will be honored with his own Homegoing Celebration on Friday, April 30, and the event will officially be live-streamed on Diddy’s REVOLT TV network.
After the former Bad Boy rapper passed away at the age of 52 on Saturday, April 17, several Hip-Hop fans and select music industry figures criticized Diddy for “dragging his feet” and offering to help Black Rob too late. According to Curry, the rap mogul had already reached out to the late artist to offer assistance before his death, and now, it looks like Diddy is standing on his word and taking care of Black Rob’s funeral.
For those who are interested in tuning into Black Rob’s funeral ceremony, the Homegoing Celebration for Black Rob will be live-streamed on Friday, April 30 at 9 a.m. EST on REVOLT TV’s YouTube channel.
Being that he’s spent decades observing and contributing to hip-hop culture, it’s fair to say that Funkmaster Flex has earned the right to speak as an authority. We recently had the chance to catch up with the legendary radio host, a wide-ranging conversation that spanned across a variety of topics — naturally, freestyles were brought up, given that Flex has witnessed the best of the best putting in work on more than one occasion.
When asked about his favorite freestyle of all time, Flex wasted little time in providing an answer — one that was perhaps obvious in hindsight given how Earth-shattering it truly was. “Black Thought,” he declares, alluding to Thought’s epic-ten-minute freestyle that still resonates today.
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“He caught me off guard, man,” admits Flex. “I asked him to do a freestyle six months before he disappeared on me. And then he just rang my phone one day and said he was ready. When he got there, he was very relaxed and by himself and I didn’t expect — a couple of minutes in, I was like this guy is going for it. He going for — he’s trying to hurt this sh*t. Not only was it a one-take, but there wasn’t even a rehearsal he did in there. That was a real one-take. The first time we cut the mic on that’s what he did.”
“There was no rehearsal,” he continues. “We were talking about Mobb Deep and Wu-Tang Clan like before. He just said, ‘Hey, alright, man. I’m ready.’ And then I was like, ‘Oh, sh*t.’ That’s my favorite by far…I think to the people 30 and over he always was [that dude on the mic], but now the 30 and under saw him and appreciated him differently. I did. I appreciated him differently.”
All things considered, it’s no wonder that rappers were straight-up terrified to hop on a track with Black Thought. For more insight from Funkmaster Flex, be sure to check out our interview right here.
We’ve already reported on Atlanta rapper Omeretta’s response to being left off of the remix, which she previously previewed to her growing fanbase. She was one of the fan-favorite picks to tack onto the remix, but she was ultimately left out. In addition to people singing Omeretta’s praises following the addition of Megan Thee Stallion to the official remix, a number of folks have been backing up Mulatto too, who they believe would have made more sense on the song. In fact, Mulatto’s name was trending on Twitter on Tuesday afternoon with thousands thinking she could have shined on the track.
What do you think about the new remix? Does Megan sound right on the song or do you think Omeretta or Mulatto would have been a better feature? Let us know in the comments and check out what people are saying below.
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.
On his new album Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Mama, New Jersey rapper Topaz Jones tries to address some heavy questions. Five years removed from his solitary 2016 hit “Tropicana,” Jones pondered the implications of possibly having a platform with no substance; that isn’t to say that he didn’t have an interesting story to tell, he just had to figure out how to tell it.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said, “Now that I have a platform to tell my story, [I had] to really reckon with, well, ‘What is my story? What made me the person I am? What things about myself come from me directly? What things are passed down from my relatives? What’s my generational trauma?’ That was a whole lot of shit to balance out.”
Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Mama is the result of that introspection, and the method by which Jones ultimately resolved how to best answer those questions: A short film of the same name, detailing his upbringing in Montclair, New Jersey, combining magic realism, documentary, and even edutainment television to place his life in historical, familial, and cultural contexts.
The album, sprinkled with audio clips from the film in which his family members recount beloved anecdotes and dynastic legends, spins out of those ideas to verbally expound Jones’ thoughts on subjects like love, legacy, history, racism, hustling, and dreaming of a better life. Over the 13 whimsical, groovy, lush, and occasionally disorienting tracks, he doesn’t necessarily find all the answers, but then again, this was always more of a “finding yourself in the journey” proposition anyway.
Production-wise, Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Mama is something of a masterpiece. It’s rare that any artist puts so much thought into instrumentation and expansive genre exploration — especially with how much territory technology has opened up. Jones charts paths through spacey grooves on “Baba 70s,” “Gold,” and “Blue,” incites some hip-wiggling on the dancey “Amphetamines” and “Herringbone,” and stank faces his way through a thicket of throwback, funky hip-hop on “Who?” with Maxo and Phonte Coleman and album closer “Buggin’.”
The live instrumentation evokes smokey lounges, and darkened basement parties from the 1970s, only more timeless. Musically, the technique reinforces the lyrical links Jones traces throughout his family history and nostalgic narratives. The exquisite soundscapes could easily overwhelm a less adept lyricist, but Jones has clearly been using the time since his 2016 album Arcade to sharpen his pen game.
On “Buggin’,” Jones deftly details a twitchy tableau that could just as easily be a scene set in any hood in America, threading a neat metaphorical connection to insects throughout the narrative the way an auteur might draw the eye to a physical placeholder for a conceptual thought — as only befits a rapper turned director turned back to rapper, explaining his vision with dense wordplay and scintillating twists of the tongue.
Likewise, Topaz lets the syllables spill over each other in his verses on “Mirror,” a self-effacing reintroduction to both longtime listeners and potential new fans that highlights his polished gift for both setting a scene and impressing with dazzling displays of verbose wit. On “Herringbone,” he describes a family reunion in such charming, achingly familiar terms, you might be able to taste the collard greens and smell the macaroni baking in the oven.
Throughout the album, the rhymes sit so snugly within the pockets of the soulful beats that listening becomes nearly interactive; Topaz invites you in, and rewards your interest in every unexpected turn of phrase and tempo change. The tales he tells are personal but relatable; he could just as easily be telling any listener’s story, or that of a cousin, brother, or neighbor at a family reunion, recounting the events of the spell since the last get-together.
And that’s really the answer, told both through the film and the album. Our experiences are universal because the same things move us. The same things are important to us. We can put ourselves in Topaz’s shoes just as easily as he can put himself in ours; the same holds true across generations, geography, and any other line we can draw between ourselves and anyone else. Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Mama is a story about the stories we tell each other and ourselves, the ones that are told to us, and the ones that tell us who we are.
Don’t Go Tellin’ Your Momma is out now via New Funk Academy / Black Canopy. Get it here.
