When TheShadeRoom reported on the possible romance, however, Ashanti quickly shut it down in an Instagram comment. “Aht aht Flo is my brother,” the 40-year-old singer wrote. “We’re family! Celebrating my sis @liltuneshi bday!!! Happy Birthday Bink!” The comment seems like a pretty clear shutdown, and fans appreciated Ashanti’s clarity on the situation. “@ashanti oh okay cuz can’t just anybody be with you. #purrrrr,” one commenter replied. “@ashanti said not today gone with yall bs,” said another.
Last night, Los Angeles hotspot The Nice Guy welcomed celebrities to a special event, which ended up being a pretty massive success. A bunch of the hottest names in the biz stopped by with luxury cars lining the street of the West Hollywood nightclub. Drake was there, partying alongside stars including Kylie and Kendall Jenner, Justin Bieber, Chris Brown, Tyga, Machine Gun Kelly, Megan Fox, Amber Rose, and more. Drake reportedly even tried to leave while he was still holding a drink from the club.
Kendall Jenner could be found behind the bar for parts of the night, serving shots of her brand new 818 Tequila. The night looked like a blast from the past, recalling some of the famous paparazzi-filled nights out from pre-COVID times. As the U.S. continues to serve doses of the numerous vaccines, we will surely start seeing activity get back to normal soon.
Check out some videos from the club night out below and let us know if you’re ready to head back to the bar.
Hardcore rapper ZillaKami has been putting in work for years as a member of the New York duo City Morgue, and this year, he’s finally gearing up to drop his debut solo album. Last year alone, the artist appeared on records with Denzel Curry, Trippie Redd, and DJ Scheme, and now, he’s using that momentum to drop some heat of his own.
Three weeks after dropping the banging solo single “CHAINS,” ZillaKami is back with another hard-hitting track, and this time around, the New York artist has enlisted Baby Pluto for a feature. ZillaKami and Lil Uzi Vert got on Instagram Live together earlier this year, and after Uzi offered praise for the rising rapper, he expressed interest in collaborating with him as well. Months later, ZillaKami has treated fans to the Lil Uzi Vert-assisted “BADASS.”
Anchored by an intense and repetitive guitar riff, “BADASS” is an aggressive, high-octane that finds ZillaKami ready for war. The City Morgue artist delivers an earworm of a hook and knocks out two electrifying verses, and Uzi comes through with quick, spirited verse of his own.
Check out ZillaKami and Lil Uzi Vert’s new single “BADASS” below. Who do you think went harder — Uzi or ZillaKami?
Quotable Lyrics
Cruisin’ in the whip, I got the stick, I’m booted up (Okay) Hoes up in the house and all they asses tooted up (Huh?) Cruisin’ through your block and all I see is fuckin’ dust (Huh?) Where do y’all reside? (Okay) Why ain’t y’all outside?
Not long after Yelawolf pledged to deliver an album a week all throughout the month of April, the Slumerican rapper has come through with the first of the bunch. For the occasion, he teamed up with frequent collaborator RiFF RAFF for the seven-track TURQUOiSE TORNADO, a project that features guest appearances from DJ Paul, Paul Wall, and more.
Though the infectious lead single “TiP TOE 4” found the pair hopping back in time for a melodic jaunt in the eighties — one delivered with surprising conviction, at that — there’s plenty of hard-hitting hip-hop to be found across the project. Early cut “HUMAN LAMBORGHiNI” finds Jody and Yela trading bars alongside Danny Swift Garcia, with all three parties putting in work over a sparse and eerie southern banger. In fact, the majority of TURQUOiSE TORNADO seems built around bangers and bars, a quality that should please many longtime fans.
By the time that Yela and RiFF RAFF’s latest closes out over some smoldering Ronny J production, it’s hard not to wish they had a few more tracks tucked away in the cut. It’s fair to say that Yela has gone two for two insofar as collaborative albums are concerned, having only recently wrapped up Blacksheep with Caskey. Should you be looking for some hard-hitting, low-stakes music with plenty of character, look no further than TURQUOiSE TORNADO. And for those who have checked it out already — sound off with your favorite songs below.
Clemson, South Carolina rapper SOS LO is a newcomer on the rising Hip-Hop scene, but with collaborations alongside exciting artists such as Steezy Reezy, Glokkstar, and ZillaKami already under his belt, SOS LO is steadily learning the ropes of the rap game. Now, the artist is back with his first single of the year, which boasts major features from frequent collaborators Trippie Redd and Chris King.
Titled “Honorable Flex,” SOS LO’s new song finds him exchanging slick, fast-paced verses with Chris King while Trippie Redd takes care of the hook. Chris King’s wordplay is as sharp as ever, but SOS LO makes a decent effort to keep up with his featured artist’s gab. Trippie Redd‘s chorus is a full-out flex, as he delivers a garbled refrain about his impressive watch collection, but according to the Pegasus artist, he’s just referencing an “honorable flex.”
The unexpected collaboration is a bit peculiar, but it does have a lot of redeeming qualities, from Chris King’s rapid-paced lyricism to Trippie Redd’s catchy melody. Check out SOS LO, Trippie Redd, and Chris King’s “Honorable Flex” below and let us know what you think.
Quotable Lyrics
Diamonds hittin’ like it took a drop of LSD Keep the handheld with games like a PSP Too high sometimes I forget my beat When I’m skippin’ down the block don’t forget my heat
In June 2020, Blackpink debuted the video for “How You Like That,” which was then their first new song in a year, on YouTube. About 1.6 million people tuned in to watch the clip’s live premiere, which was a record for platform. Just a couple months later, that record was broken by BTS’ YouTube premiere of their “Dynamite” video, which is estimated to have had somewhere between 3 and 4 million people watching live. That is where the record stands today.
There’s one key factor those two videos have in common, both with each other and with every other video that has ever premiered on YouTube since the feature was introduced in June 2018: the countdown.
Every YouTube premiere is preceded by a colorful countdown that features vibrant, abstract animations and a clock ticking its way down to zero. Every countdown also includes the same song playing front and center, a two-minute instrumental track that stirs up anticipation with its nostalgic electronic synths, drum machine percussion, and orchestral string plucks. It comes across like a brighter cousin of Washed Out’s “Feel It All Around” (which is famous for the snippet of it that was used as the Portlandia theme song).
Commenters on YouTube re-uploads of the song agree, as they’ve shared a variety of feelings about the track. One person noted, “People in 2030/2040 will be like: This is soooo nostalgic!! Only real ones remember this.” Somebody else wrote, “This is honestly such a fitting song for YouTube Premiere countdowns, it just perfectly goes with your imagination running wild about what you’re about to see.” Another user painted a picture of the end of YouTube with “Space Walk” as the soundtrack: “I feel like this is something that would play in the final minutes of youtube before the site shuts down. Just this music and a few minutes to remember everything that has happened on this site over the decades before it all goes away.”
The song is beloved and has been heard millions (perhaps billions) of times at this point. Ed Sheeran’s “Shape Of You,” the most popular all-time song on Spotify, has nearly 3 billion spins, and it wouldn’t be surprising to learn that the YouTube premiere song — across every YouTube premiere ever, music video or otherwise — has been heard more times than that.
The odd thing, though, is that the story behind the YouTube premiere song and the identity of the person (or people, or something else) who made it is mostly a mystery.
Some answers about the track can be easily found: A quick Google search for “YouTube premiere song” reveals that the tune is called “Space Walk” and it’s credited to an artist named Silent Partner. Beyond that, it’s not immediately obvious where the song comes from. One thing we can tell is that the song wasn’t specifically made to be used for YouTube countdowns: The oldest uploads of the song on YouTube date back to early 2015, which pre-dates the premiere feature by over three years.
YouTube themselves offers a free download of the song as part of the audio library in their YouTube Studio, a set of back-end tools for video creators to freely use. The song’s listing there notes it was added to the platform in November 2014 and describes its genre as “ambient” and its mood as “bright.” Downloading the MP3 file of the song from YouTube and viewing its ID3 tags — metadata used by programs like iTunes (rest in peace) to indicate the file’s title, artist, and so on — doesn’t reveal much more info, aside from the fact that the album is listed as “YouTube Audio Library.”
As far as publicly available information about “Space Walk,” this seems to be the end of the road. However, we can learn a bit more more about Silent Partner, but not much more.
Silent Partner seems to be a Kevin MacLeod-type of artist. For those not familiar, MacLeod has made thousands of songs available under Creative Commons licenses so creators can use them for various purposes, and indeed they have. His work has become popular because of that fact and because he works in a variety of genres. In his vast library, there is bound to be at least one song that is suitable for any sort of project. If you’ve spent time on the internet, it’s almost a guarantee that you’ve heard his work.
Similarly, Silent Partner has “about 1,383” songs available in the YouTube audio library (which seems like too specific a figure to preface with “about”) and they’re listed under genres spanning from electronic to hip-hop to classical. All of the songs were added to the platform between September 2013 and November 2014.
Outside of the YouTube audio library, Silent Partner has a mostly silent web presence. There’s a SoundCloud account that has a bit over 2,100 followers and a YouTube channel with around 500 subscribers, both of which have uploads of some songs from the YouTube audio library. It seems that is the entirety of Silent Partner’s online footprint.
The most recent upload on the YouTube channel, a song called “Get Back,” was posted on July 3, 2016. The latest post on SoundCloud is from May 15, 2018, although the two most recent uploads before that are from 2017 and 2015.
The closest thing we have to any biographical info about Silent Partner comes from the About section of their YouTube page, which reads simply and appropriately, “…silently here…” It’s not clear if Silent Partner is an individual person, a band, a collective of artists releasing music under one overarching label, or something else entirely.
The only other “statements” we seem to have from Silent Partner are their handful of SoundCloud comments, which are mostly brief responses to positive feedback about their music and telling inquiring creators they are allowed use Silent Partner songs in their projects.
What we can gather from SoundCloud, though, is that it seems Silent Partner has an interest in Buddhism and/or meditation: The four accounts they follow on SoundCloud are Khyentse Foundation (which provides “support for institutions and individuals engaged in all traditions of Buddhist practice and study“), Samye Institute (a “place where students from all corners of the globe explore how to work with their minds in order to realize the liberating wisdom and compassion of the Buddha”), Tergar Meditation Community (which “supports individuals, practice groups, and meditation communities around the world in learning to live with awareness, compassion, and wisdom”), and Study Buddhism (which uploads podcasts about Buddhism). Most of Silent Partner’s liked tracks on SoundCloud are also about similar topics.
All of these biographical discoveries come with the assumption that these accounts are actually affiliated with whoever is behind Silent Partner. All of the uploads on both SoundCloud and YouTube were posted after the songs were made available on the YouTube audio library, so it’s completely possible that somebody who has nothing to do with Silent Partner downloaded a bunch of their MP3s and re-shared them to pose as Silent Partner. It’s not like a potential imposter would have had an established Silent Partner web presence with which to compete.
Beyond YouTube and SoundCloud, the only other online resource that seems to have info about Silent Partner is IMDb. On the site, Silent Partner has a few dozen credits spread across TV shows, movies, and other projects from between 2007 and 2021. Meanwhile, fans of various other creative endeavors have taken to the comments of Silent Partner uploads to share where they came across their music, like one person who heard a Silent Partner song in a video from mega-popular YouTube personality Miranda Sings (aka Colleen Ballinger), or others who discovered Silent Partner through Thunderf00t, who has nearly a million YouTube subscribers.
Despite a greatly appreciated effort, a YouTube representative was unable to provide Uproxx with more information about Silent Partner or how “Space Walk” was chosen as the YouTube premiere song. SoundCloud direct messages sent to Silent Partner by Uproxx have also gone unanswered. Last year, an attempt by a BuzzFeed journalist to get in touch with Silent Partner via the comments section of a SoundCloud upload was also not fruitful. It’s not just us who wants to know more about Silent Partner but can’t get a hold of them.
Somebody out there made this music, but for some reason, they’ve opted to not come forward and claim their deserved praise. Maybe anonymously enjoying the success of “Space Walk” is enough for them. Maybe they’re somehow unaware of the impact their compositions have had. Maybe Silent Partner is no longer with us.
So, who or what is Silent Partner? That question has two answers. One is that Silent Partner is the artist behind “Space Walk,” one of the most-heard pieces of music of the past few years. The other is that we don’t know who they are and perhaps never will, making the answer to this question one of the premier unsolved musical mysteries of our time.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
BROCKHAMPTON has officially returned with ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINE, their first album since 2019’s Ginger. And while the project is looking like a strong early outing from the sprawling collective, it’s hard not to immediately gravitate toward “BANKROLL,” a collaboration with A$AP Rocky and A$AP Ferg.
Off the bat, it’s clear that “BANKROLL” will be an energetic affair. Ferg sets it off over the smooth up-tempo banger, his animated cadence as dynamic as his delivery is explosive. Alas, Rocky opts not to provide a verse, reserving his presence for the pre-chorus; whether simple presence is enough is up to you. Merlyn Woods steps in next, matching Ferg’s pace with a concisely rendered verse before Jabari Manwa closes things out with a melodic parting statement.
Check out the track now, and should you like what you hear be sure to check out BROCKHAMPTON’s brand new album ROADRUNNER: NEW LIGHT, NEW MACHINEand sound off below.
QUOTABLE LYRICS
Talkin’ with Diddy, I made me a milli’ in about a day or two Filled with lust, wanted to hear what Hype Williams talkin’ ’bout Bitches that I wanna bust We supposed to be talking about video treatments and such But I’m busy lovin’ on the IG, smut
Former Ruff Ryders leader DMX’s manager has stepped up to simmer down the Internet. Steve Rifkind has come forward to address the Internet going into a frenzy over #RIPDMX causing mass confusion and sadness. DMX’s Manager Speaks After #RIPDMX Despite the Internet working fans into hysteria, the latest reports claim X’s family is still pulling […]
As the world continues to pray for DMX’s recovery, another misinformation scare happened on Thursday night after comedian Luenell falsely claimed that the legendary rapper had been taken off of life support. The news was quickly corrected by DMX’s manager Steve Rifkind, who released a video statement confirming that the rapper remained on life support and was still alive.
We’re all anxious to find out the latest updates on DMX’s condition, and last night’s scare prompted many to share premature “RIP DMX” messages on social media, which actually ended up trending for a few hours on Twitter. Alabama rapper Yung Bleu posted his own message on Instagram, praying that the rumors weren’t true and revealing that he was recently in contact with Dark Man X to collaborate on Bleu’s upcoming album.
Prince Williams/Getty Images
Posting a log of their DMs on Instagram, Yung Bleu wrote, “HOPE ITS NOT TRUE ! I Hope I don’t GOT one of THE LAST DMX FEATUREs. I was gonna suprise [sic] the world with it on my album f*ck. I don’t no if the news true but I’m praying for you Og. F*ck the music! I’m praying for you as the person as the father as the legend!”
The post was deleted after DMX’s manager released a statement confirming the rapper was still alive. Many are criticizing Yung Bleu for the timing of this message, calling him out for allegedly clout-chasing on the situation. “Weird way to try and get hype for your single,” wrote a commenter after the messages were reposted by DJ Akademiks.
Do you think it was corny for Yung Bleu to announce the song now?
If you know, you know. $NOT has been buzzing hard for the last few years, becoming a viral underground sensation and recruiting fans to join his growing base. The 23-year-old rapper worked extensively with prolific videographer Cole Bennett last year on two music videos, dropping them back-to-back and earning lots of praise in the process. With his hoodie tied tightly over his face, the Florida-based rapper has become one of the rappers to watch for this year.
For weeks, he’s been hyping up the release of his next video “Whipski” with Lil Skies, which he worked on with Cole Bennett again. The video is finally out and it’s every bit as entertaining as you would have expected.
$NOT and Skies start off the video as auto repair shop employees before they attack their boss and take a van for a joyride. The whip breaks down though and their manager ends up catching up to them but there’s a problem– he’s wielding a flamethrower. The man burns their car before getting struck by a passing vehicle. A UFO then flies by before two alien girls offer them a ride. We’ll let you find out how it ends.
Check out the new video for $NOT and Lil Skies’s new song “Whipski” below.
Quotable Lyrics:
Black Panthеr, I’m the Killmonger I’m the real monster, AMG with the Dodge Charger I just want me a bad b*tch for the summer Always on my bummer, I’m a real lover How can I recover? I’ma have to suffer F*ck that, grab the gat, I’m a gunner
