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Tag: pop culture

  • How Taylor Swift Writes About Being Taylor Swift

    How Taylor Swift Writes About Being Taylor Swift

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    Long before anyone heard a note, Taylor Swift’s new album caused controversy among the grammarians.

    The fuss was about the title, The Tortured Poets Department, and its conspicuously absent apostrophe. Should “poets” not have been possessive? If it had been, was the singular or plural more appropriate? Was this a mistake? Or by design? English teachers, grammar hobbyists, and the standards editor of The New York Times weighed in. There is, they said, no intrinsically correct answer—just one that differs based on the album title’s intended meaning. The Tortured Poet’s Department, for example, would imply a department belonging to a singular tortured poet, and perhaps her place of work or where one could go to find her. The Tortured Poets’ Department would suggest a similar situation, just with all the tortured poets. In omitting the apostrophe altogether, it’s the authors themselves who go under the microscope in The Tortured Poets Department—though perhaps the singular would have been most appropriate.

    Few pop stars make their authorial voices as central to their work as Taylor Swift. She broke out in country music, a genre in which storytelling is fundamental. She writes her own songs, which are personal and, increasingly, meta-textual, in the sense that she has begun to tell stories about fame and its inherent self-mythologizing. In the best parts of The Tortured Poets Department, Swift advances this work, writing about herself not just as Taylor Swift the person but as Taylor Swift the performance. “This town is fake, but you’re the real thing,” coos an industry insider to a young Swift in “Clara Bow,” the closing track of the double album’s first half. But the Swift who wrote the song knows that “the real thing” is itself a sham when the job is telling tales. The Tortured Poets Department is full of its own stories—of goodbyes and getaways and ghosting—but its central character is Taylor Swift—author. And it’s consumed by whether or not she is a reliable narrator.

    What does it mean to write your own life? On “How Did It End,” Swift processes a breakup through the need to explain it—to worried friends and eager gossipers alike—and sees the story become theirs before she’s even figured out the true answer for herself. “Come one, come all, it’s happening again,” she sings, announcing her own heartbreak. In the first verse, Swift’s use of “we” as she explores what went wrong seems to include just herself and her former partner. But by the second, the circle extends to friends, then cousins, then people around town. By the end, they’ve all drawn their conclusions—despite the fact that Swift herself is still asking the titular question.

    Perhaps less subtly, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart” underscores that what we see from Swift is often an illusion. “Lights, camera, bitch, smile—even if you want to die,” she sings, over poppy production that evokes the closing numbers of her blockbuster Eras Tour. This song is a statement about an emotionally turbulent period in her life, sure, and you feel for her, but it’s also about what it means to be a performer and a professional—and a good one. “Try and come for my job,” Swift says, tossed off, at the end of the track. If you read the separation of the personal and professional selves on the song as healthy, it’s really a song about competence. Swift is practically begging her audience to understand that she is vocationally required to put on a show.

    If some stories on The Tortured Poets Department are merely delusive, others are outright dangerous. On “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” the most eviscerating track of the album (and possibly of Swift’s career), she wonders if an ex who love bombed, then ghosted, her, was a secret assassin or an author writing a tell-all—with both possibilities presented as equally vicious. On “The Bolter,” having “the best stories” means having the scar tissue from a collection of bygone relationships. It’s a far cheerier song than “The Smallest Man Who Ever Lived,” but it still suggests that a collection of tales to share over brunch is not much of a consolation prize.

    The song “The Albatross,” an ethereal, if somewhat dozy, tune from the 2 a.m. release, draws a particularly poetic—and meta-textual—connection. In it, Swift references the English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” in which a sailor on a boat caught off course shoots an albatross that was flying overhead. The ship’s crew comes to view the bird as a curse, and forces the mariner to wear its corpse around his neck as a reminder of his bad deed.

    It’s an epic poem—626 lines long. In its time, it was criticized both for its wordiness and its inscrutability. Some scholars have argued it has no singular moral; others have said it has no moral at all.

    In Tortured Poets, Swift likewise asks a lot of her audience. The album begs a close read and rewards fourth, fifth, sixth, and 16th listens. Many songs have third verses, unusual for pop tune packaging. The double album runs over an Easter egg–packed two hours. Swift has more than enough fans who want to do this homework—and who feel rewarded by the excavation—to set streaming record after record. But for those outside her core fan base who don’t, it does become somewhat illegible. In the relatively lukewarm critical reception to the album, a main critique is its lack of concision. (Even as someone who enjoys the record, I tend to prefer its clear and declarative moments over its most intricate—I’ll take a line like “I hope it’s shitty in the Black Dog,” for instance, over the slant rhymes of “Fresh Out the Slammer.”) An album about the author’s own writing suggests some required reading to even make sense of the premise.

    The second half of the double album ends with “The Manuscript,” a piano ballad that reads a lot like the story of Swift recording the 10-minute version of “All Too Well,” and turning that story into a short film, which she did in 2021. One could read TTPD as a whole as a reference to Swift’s need to write to move past events in her life, but “The Manuscript” is the only song on the record that tells that story.

    And the years passed
    Like scenes of a show
    The Professor said to write what you know
    Lookin’ backwards
    Might be the only way to move forward

    The song ends with Swift shedding herself of the entire ordeal. “Now and then I reread the manuscript,” she sings. “But the story isn’t mine anymore.” Ending on that sentiment feels intentional. It’s possible to overthink these things—I’m reminded of a story the musician and author Michelle Zauner has told about meeting Swift at a Grammys after-party in 2023 and asking her a carefully-constructed question about parallels between her song “invisible string” and Ernest Hemingway’s writing.

    “OK, English major!” Swift said, then walked away.

    Maybe it’s not that deep. Or maybe Swift had had two cosmos and didn’t feel like chatting. But it’s also possible that history’s most personal pop star actually does want some veil of mystery between Taylor Swift and Taylor Swift. She has shared quite a lot over the years, and it’s possible to read TTPD as a reflection on what it means to have written your entire life into art and commerce. Sometimes, Swift seems to find that the answer is catharsis. But more often, it sounds like the real person is no match for the storybook version. The pen can heal, she seems to say. But it can also be the instrument of torture itself.

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    Nora Princiotti

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  • Why Conor Oberst Learned the Conor Oberst Songbook All Over Again

    Why Conor Oberst Learned the Conor Oberst Songbook All Over Again

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    On Thursday, Conor Oberst will complete his latest attempt to shake up the routines that develop when you’ve been making music for over 30 years. Every week throughout March and April, the prolific, Omaha-born songwriter assembled a new band, spent four days rehearsing with them, and then performed a distinct, career-spanning show with a set list filled with his lesser-known songs. Billed as “Conor Oberst and Friends,” the run was split into two locations: The first four installments happened at the Teragram Ballroom in Los Angeles, while the following New York appearances took place at the Bowery Ballroom.

    Oberst estimates he’s written about 500 songs in his lifetime, and at these eight shows, he’s played over 100 of them, plus a smattering of covers by the likes of the Replacements and Daniel Johnston. He’s had to relearn tracks he’s released both under his own name and as Bright Eyes, his pseudonymous solo endeavor that developed into a group with Mike Mogis and Nate Walcott. Some of his albums got more love than others (lots of I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning and his self-titled, full-length album from 2008; not so much Cassadaga or anything from Desaparecidos, unfortunately). Each assembled band had its own musical director and its own flavor, from the turn-of-the-millennium New York cool of Nick Zinner of Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to the rootsy approach of James Felice of the Felice Brothers, to the ramshackle, early Saddle Creek vibes of Maria Taylor of Azure Ray—all of which correlate to a sonic element of Oberst’s music.

    Oberst has been a key influence on younger artists including Hurray for the Riff Raff, Waxahatchee, and Phoebe Bridgers, his Better Oblivion Community Center partner who joined him for three songs at the third Los Angeles date. In turn, those artists’ fans have started discovering Oberst’s music, and these residencies were their first chance to see him attempt some of these rarer songs live.

    Just before the last Conor Oberst and Friends show, The Ringer spoke to him about how the whole thing came together and how he feels now that it’s almost done. This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

    Why did you decide to do this now?

    This guy Eric [Dimenstein], who’s been my booking agent for like 20 years, we’ve on and off talked about the idea, but the timing was never right. There’s always a record or something else to do. So, yeah, it kind of worked out timing-wise. And New York and L.A. are the most obvious spots, but they’re also two places where I have lived in my life and have a lot of friends, so there’s a lot of musicians and people to draw from, as far as the bands.

    Why did this idea intrigue you in the first place?

    It was honestly just trying something new. Sometimes when you go on tour, it’s great and you get really close with the people you’re with, but after a while, it becomes routine, unfortunately. I’m not really in a jam band, so you end up doing similar sets. You might change a couple songs a night, but for the most part, once you get the show up and running, that’s the show and that’s what you present in every town you go to. It seemed fun to just change that dynamic, where it’s just once a week, but every week I don’t really know what’s going to happen. That’s exciting because I’ve been doing this a long time. And then it’s just a chance to revisit a lot of past material and random songs I haven’t played in a long time.

    Each week, one of the people in the band acted as the musical director and helped pick the songs and organize the band. Even with Bright Eyes, besides Mike and Nate, we always had different people on tour with us, so I’m used to playing with a lot of different people, but I’m not used to doing it so consecutively and quickly. It’s the closest I feel like I’ve had to a real job for a long time. Because it’s rehearse Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, play the show Thursday, and then Friday and Saturday are my days off. But even those days, I have to try and listen to the next week’s songs and remember stuff.

    Are the bands practicing together beforehand without you, or is it really that week when you all start playing together for the first time?

    Maybe some of them were practicing on their own, but no, not really. Another thing was, I didn’t want any songs to repeat in New York or L.A. The ones we played in L.A., we could play in New York, but that was the rule: For the city, don’t repeat any songs. That’s a lot of songs. Once I figured out who was going to be the band leader for all the weeks, we had to get square with the set list because some people wanted to do the same song.

    Some negotiating had to happen.

    Yeah, exactly. But I’m a natural-born diplomat, so it’s fine.

    Were there songs that they would pitch that you were particularly excited about revisiting?

    Nick Zinner from Yeah Yeah Yeahs was last week. We made the Digital Ash [in a Digital Urn] record, and he was in the band for that tour. So I knew we were going to do a bunch of those songs, or I assumed that would be the case. He picked this song “True Blue,” which I wrote for my nephew when he was, like, 4 years old. It’s just the weirdest song for Nick to pick. He’s like a vampire, so I just think he’s going to pick the darkest ones, but he picked this. It just made me laugh. I was like, “You really want to do that one?” So there was stuff like that along the way that was surprising.

    Were there songs that you had never played live that came up?

    I don’t know about that, but there’s definitely ones where it had been years [since I had revisited them]. There were some covers that were brand new to me. I’m pretty sure I played all the songs of mine at some point in my life, but like I said, I’ve been doing this a long time, and I don’t have the greatest memory.

    Were there any songs where you were like, “I’m not doing that one?”

    I really shied away from the ones that I’ve played so much, like “First Day of My Life” and “Lua.” Those didn’t feel as exciting. I guess we did play “First Day” on Maria’s week. [Editor’s note: He also played “Lua” that night as a duet with Phoebe Bridgers.] I was definitely leaning a little bit away from the ones that we’ve done in the last couple years.

    Some of these songs are over 20 years old. When you revisit a song like that, do you still relate to the person who wrote it?

    To be honest, sometimes not really at all. But I do have memories connected with them. There’s this song that we’ve actually played quite a bit over the years called “Falling Out of Love at This Volume,” which is on the very first Bright Eyes record, and I was literally 15 years old when I wrote it. So yeah, I’m not at all the same person, but I do connect it with the memories of that time in my life. It’s not like doing a cover song. There’s an aspect of it I can relate to, but it’s a very distant memory. What I was feeling when I wrote it or whatever, that’s long gone.

    I’ve been a journalist for a while, and sometimes I’ll read articles I wrote when I was just starting, and I’m like, “What was that guy thinking?” And sometimes I’m like, “Oh yeah, that’s pretty smart, kid. Good job.”

    Right. This is actually weirdly connected to this whole thing in a way, which is Bright Eyes did this whole set of EPs that were companion pieces for all the records. I don’t know why I put myself through these fucking challenges, but we rerecorded a bunch of our old songs in new ways. I was very particular about which ones I wanted to sing, and they were the ones obviously that I still felt held up and that I felt some connection to, emotionally or mentally. You want that to be there or else it can feel like you’re just doing karaoke or something.

    Why do you put yourself through these complicated challenges?

    It’s like when people get older and they want to stave off early-onset dementia so they do a lot of crossword puzzles or something. I do shit like this, try to keep what brain cells I have left active.

    Have the shows felt different between L.A. and New York?

    New York, this has been really a real trip down memory lane because I lived in the East Village. I paid rent in New York for like 13 years, although I was on tour a lot of that time and in Omaha and stuff. I had probably five different apartments over the years, but they were all in the East Village. And now I got this apartment sublet thing for the month, so I’m really deep in. Obviously, some things have changed, but there’s ghosts everywhere. I can walk from the apartment to the practice space to the Bowery [Ballroom]. I don’t know if I’ve even gotten in a car here at all. It’s a trip because I have things I had forgotten about.

    I still live in L.A., and there we were just rehearsing at my house. So that was very comfortable and cool, but it was a little closer to my actual current life.

    As far as crowds and stuff, I don’t know, I don’t think they’re that different. All the crowds have been super gracious and nice and excited. We’ve made a point of not letting people know ahead of time what was up each week. Of course there are some diehards that are trying to go to every show, but a lot of people, they just pick the show and that’s what they got. I hope they had a good time though. I’m sure there’s some people that are like, “Aww, I wish I would’ve gone to that week.” But that’s the nature of the experiment.

    For these shows, are you reinterpreting songs in a different way than how you recorded them?

    Not really vastly reinterpreting, but we’ve extended a lot of parts. Like Miwi [La Lupa]’s week, we had a four-piece horn section, so there were parts that we extended to make room for that. Nick’s week, Lee Ranaldo [of Sonic Youth] was in the band, so you’ve got to make some time for him to solo and stuff. And then Nate Walcott’s week, which was the second week in L.A., was with Jeff Parker, the guitar player. It was all jazz musicians. I would say that week was the furthest from the way I would normally perform a song.

    How do you feel about playing live these days?

    You and me and everyone that follows music knows that it’s much harder to make a living off of record sales, so playing live is part of the job in that sense. I don’t have kids, but the guys in my band have kids and bills. It’s like, you got to keep making money. That’s the unromantic part about it, but there is truth to that. But I still like playing live. Honestly, I feel like when you’re on tour, you’re getting paid for all the bullshit you have to do, like check into the hotels and go to the airport and get on the bus and find food and do this and whatever. Actually being onstage performing music, for the most part, not always, that’s the best part of the day. Unless the show is total trash.

    Has this experience made you more or less excited to go on tour?

    It’s been so interesting and different, just because that stuff I’m talking about is gone. I don’t have to get on a bus or a plane or a hotel, but I have to rehearse all the time. The only thing I’ve been stressing on is just my voice holding up. People think, Well, it’s once a week; that should be easy. But the truth is, if you’re on tour, you’re singing maybe two hours a day. I’m singing eight hours a day for four days in a row [at rehearsals] and then doing the show. So I’ve been trying to be careful. I barely smoked cigarettes for these past couple months. I’m trying my best. Lots of tea, lots of Throat Coat, lots of Halls, whatever, all the tricks. From a physical standpoint, that’s the biggest difference. But on the other hand, you don’t have all the stress of travel. You’re in the same city and with your friends, so it’s great.

    Would you ever do this again?

    I don’t know. I guess it depends how long I live. Maybe it’ll sound fun in five years or something. One of our guitar techs and good friends, even when we’re having a shitty day, he’s like, “Beats sweeping the floor.” I’m like, “That’s true.” It has been a lot of work. I knew it was going to be a lot, but it’s been more than I thought it would be. I would have to be very rejuvenated to want to do this thing again.

    Eric Ducker is a writer and editor in Los Angeles.

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    Eric Ducker

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  • ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer, ‘Shogun’ Finale, and ‘X-Men ’97’

    ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ Trailer, ‘Shogun’ Finale, and ‘X-Men ’97’

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    Marvel Studios

    The Midnight Boys also chat about the festivities from Van’s birthday party

    The Midnight Boys are back to give you another jam-packed episode. First, they take a look at the latest Deadpool & Wolverine trailer (11:45). Then, they talk about the beautiful finale of Shogun (26:33) as well as the latest episode of X-Men ’97 (67:06). All before finally talking about some of the goings-on that happened at Van’s birthday party (82:03).

    Hosts: Charles Holmes, Van Lathan, Jomi Adeniran, and Steve Ahlman
    Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman
    Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal
    Social: Jomi Adeniran

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts

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    Charles Holmes

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  • Hall of Fame: Tony Stark, Iron Man

    Hall of Fame: Tony Stark, Iron Man

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    We have a plan: Attack! As Avengers: Endgame turns five, Mal and Jo induct Tony Stark into the House of R Hall of Fame. They look back at Tony’s most iconic moments, from his signature snark to his harrowing showdowns, and celebrate his lasting impact on the MCU.

    Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson
    Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman
    Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal
    Social: Jomi Adeniran

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher / Pandora / Google Podcasts

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    Mallory Rubin

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  • 15 most lovable stoner characters in the horror genre

    15 most lovable stoner characters in the horror genre

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    One of the greatest horror movie tropes of all time has got to be the mindless stoner who’s pretty much oblivious to everything going on around them. It’s a screenwriting tactic that’s worked for decades, and it doesn’t seem to be leaving the horror genre any time soon.

    We’ve compiled the 15 most lovable scary movie potheads from Chucky to Cabin Fever. All in celebration of those drug addicts that may or may not be gutted by the end of the film. Please enjoy.

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    Zach

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  • John Mellencamp not booed off stage for praising Joe Biden

    John Mellencamp not booed off stage for praising Joe Biden

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    Was John Mellencamp forced to leave the stage at his own concert for praising President Joe Biden? A viral Facebook post said this happened at a Toledo, Ohio, show.

    The April 16 post said, “Famous rock star BOOED off stage for praising Joe Biden,” and linked to a story that identified the “Pink Houses” singer as the star in question. The story also included a video of a March 17 incident.

    The Facebook post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

    Similar claims have been shared on Instagram and X.

    But Mellencamp, 72, was not booed off the stage for praising the president. Some audience members heckled him as he talked between songs, according to The Blade, a local newspaper. None of the news reviews of the concert mentioned praise for the president; neither did a viral video posted on TikTok.

    While talking about his late grandmother, Mellencamp was interrupted by an audience member who shouted, “Play some music!” which appeared to upset Mellencamp. His expletive-laden response to the interruption received cheers and applause from the rest of the audience. When Mellencamp resumed talking, another person shouted “Authority Song!” urging him to play the 1980s hit song by that name.

    Mellencamp, now visibly upset, as the viral TikTok shows, threatened to end the show, and the audience can be heard urging him not to. Shortly after, he began performing his 1982 hit “Jack & Diane.” 

    But then he stopped abruptly and said, “You know what? Show is over,” and left the stage.

    Reviewers of the concert said Mellencamp later returned to complete the show. 

    “I do expect etiquette inside of the theater, the same way you would at a Broadway show,” he told The Washington Post in an April 10 story. “And if you want to come and scream and yell and get drunk, don’t come to my show.”

    There was booing and jeering during the exchange between Mellencamp and the hecklers, but they were directed at the hecklers, according to video of the incident and news reports.

    Mellencamp has had links to Democrats. He campaigned with Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign and performed at Obama’s 2009 inauguration and at the White House in 2010. He previously asked 2008 Republican presidential candidate John McCain to stop playing his song at campaign events. But we found no evidence that he mentioned politics or the president at his Toledo show.  

    We rate the claim that Mellencamp was booed off stage for praising Biden False.

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  • Confederacy Month, the New Drake Diss, and Stephen A.’s Apology

    Confederacy Month, the New Drake Diss, and Stephen A.’s Apology

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    Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay start the show by addressing the new theme song and reaction from our Thought Warriors (00:15). Then, they give their impressions of the bizarre new Drake-produced AI track (20:56), and the internet’s reaction to Stephen A. Smith’s comments on Donald Trump’s relatability (38:36). Later, they expand on the surprise that their birthday month falls during Confederate Heritage Month in Mississippi, and the reason behind its existence (1:18:34).

    Hosts: Van Lathan and Rachel Lindsay
    Producer: Ashleigh Smith

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher

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    Van Lathan

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  • Scenes From the Trump Trial, the NBA’s New Rights Deal, the Afterlife of the Alt-Weeklies, and Remembering Howie Schwab

    Scenes From the Trump Trial, the NBA’s New Rights Deal, the Afterlife of the Alt-Weeklies, and Remembering Howie Schwab

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    Bryan and David start the show by remembering Howie Schwab, who died over the weekend. They reflect on his legacy as a producer, researcher, and the final boss on Stump the Schwab (1:00). Then they discuss the Donald Trump trial, at which cameras were barred from the courtroom and Trump struggled to stay awake (9:41). Afterward, they get into upcoming bids for NBA rights (15:56). They then talk about the Summer Olympics, how much of it they’ll watch, and who will be featured (27:43). Later, during the Notebook Dump, they bring up the afterlife of the alt-weeklies (36:35).

    Plus, the Overworked Twitter Joke of the Week and David Shoemaker Guesses the Strained-Pun Headline.

    Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker
    Producer: Brian H. Waters

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher / RSS

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    Bryan Curtis

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  • Is ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ Taylor Swift’s Most Controversial Album Ever?

    Is ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ Taylor Swift’s Most Controversial Album Ever?

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    At midnight on Friday, Taylor Swift released her 11th album, The Tortured Poets Department—a collection of 16 raw and vulnerable songs, partially about the end of her long-term relationship with Joe Alwyn, but mostly about the emotionally frenetic period that came next, including a high-profile and fraught tryst with the 1975’s Matty Healy, all while Swift was embarking on her massive Eras Tour. Then at 2 a.m. on Friday, Swift dropped another album: TTPD: The Anthology, with 15 more songs. The entire collection, written and produced mostly with Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner, runs just over two hours. On the latest Every Single Album, Nora Princiotti and Nathan Hubbard discuss the entire project—their favorite songs, the tracks that didn’t land, her collaborations, and what could be coming next. In this excerpt, Princiotti and Hubbard discuss the midnight release, the huge 2 a.m. surprise, and their reactions to the 31-song album. You can listen to the full conversation here and subscribe for upcoming episodes discussing TTPD.

    Nora Princiotti: I think the thing that made me just feel a little bit, not glum, that’s too much—but where those feelings were coming from was this kernel of worry of, “Oh gosh, Taylor Swift album releases are like a holiday for me. It’s a high holy day on the calendar. Is this one not going to be fun or not going to be as fun?” And I am absolutely here to say to you that I had a really fucking good time.

    Nathan Hubbard: I agree. I thought the same way. And the reason, the pro case for releasing it so late is that all of the riffraff goes to sleep. The real ones are the ones who stay up. And that’s where the social platforms and just all of the back and forth is so much fun because it’s just this—

    Princiotti: The tweets were so good.

    Hubbard: Yes. Yes. As somebody who started at Twitter pre-IPO, whose heart has been broken into pieces, I’m going to write 31 songs about this, about the state of the platform. It served its purpose on Thursday night, early Friday morning. It was wonderful. And you know what? It makes you feel more connected to human beings. It makes you feel less alone. It’s a wonderful experience.

    Princiotti: No, people were getting their jokes off. It was so fun. It was also, it’s just silly that everyone’s up at 2 o’clock in the morning together. I am so happy to say that that experience, which really, since the sort of pandemic-era album, since Folklore, and through the rereleases to some degree but especially with Midnights, with this, the being up really late at night on the internet when everybody’s listening to Taylor Swift is incredibly fun, and it continued to be incredibly fun. So I think that’s a wonderful thing, and I’m very happy that it happened. Anything else in the way of just sort of a vibes check for you right now?

    Hubbard: Exhaustion. Look, Nora, this is her most controversial album since Reputation at least, if not ever. And it comes at a moment of unicorn-level fame and adoration. It comes at a moment where she has the biggest tour in the world; she’s still in the middle of it. Regardless of what critics and fans say, she now has the most streamed album of all time in the first day. She has probably the biggest relationship, most publicly facing relationship in the world right now. And it is kind of an unprecedented test …

    Princiotti: We’ll talk about Travis, don’t you worry.

    Hubbard: … of fame and fan base and critical reception and the music. It’s just this wonderful experiment, but I think what is most interesting about it is it’s not really what I expected, Nora.

    Princiotti: So talk to me about “most controversial,” what you mean by that. The reviews aren’t awesome.

    Hubbard: The reviews aren’t awesome. And I think the controversy starts for me within the fan base because this is a fan base that, much like this podcast, spent years trying to convince other people that this was not just a woman who wrote about breakups but an all-timer in the annals of musical history as a songwriter, as an artist, as a businessperson.

    And that defense gets—I mean, it’s the thing that you and I have struggled with, which is, “Hey, high fives everybody, we won. We were right. We bought Facebook stock early on, and it became the biggest company on the planet. We were in early on it. So now what is interesting about it?” And the fan base’s natural instinct, reflexive instinct is, “Taylor Swift is the best thing ever,” defense, defense, fight, fight, fight. And when she releases so much content, to me, that becomes white noise if you aren’t able to get into the nuance of talking about the actual reception to the art.

    There are a lot of people for whom Midnights was their favorite Taylor Swift album, but now, we’ve got a record that comes at the peak of everything when she’s clearly the best—

    Princiotti: There are a lot of people who didn’t feel that way about Midnights, but—

    Hubbard: There are. There definitely are. But she has been almost criticism-proof from the fan base over this intense period of escape velocity into a level of orbit that candidly has not really been seen before because of the confluence of technology and the internet and everything. So it’s sort of as we haven’t seen this before, and this is the first time that she’s put out music in that context.

    And I think I say “controversy” because when you read between the lines—and there were leaks of this album that came out, and there were fan base wars of the Swifties blaming the Ariana Grande fans for circulating it and MFing the record—it is clear that this is not everybody’s favorite album. And how they talk about it, how they support her and celebrate it while still receiving what I think in some corners is reasonable feedback and constructive criticism in others, is a social experiment in how to take shots at the biggest artist and biggest woman on the planet. How all of those things come together, I think, creates a lot of controversy: how you talk about it, how you criticize it, and how you celebrate it.

    Princiotti: Yeah, no, I mean, look, even definitionally, the most die-hard Taylor Swift fan on the planet, everybody’s got a favorite album. Everybody’s got, even if they wouldn’t phrase it that way, a least favorite album. We all love to rank them. We all have ones that we like better than others.

    I’ll get to how I feel about this one, and we will obviously talk through it. Talking to people over the weekend, I got a lot more, “OK, on second listen, on third listen, I’m getting more into it. Oh, this is interesting. I like this song.” Lot more of that than, “Holy crap, she’s done it again.” There’s a lot more talking yourself into this one.

    And to some degree, that’s because I think it is an album that sort of reveals itself in layers, and it rewards a close read, but it’s not an album that, at least in my group texts and from what I saw online and from how I processed it myself, went, “Oh, holy crap, this is an all-timer.”

    Hubbard: Right.

    Princiotti: That’s not how it struck people, even within the fan base, immediately. The thing that’s interesting to me though—and why I asked you about how you were framing the idea of it being controversial—is that I think the fact that it is so long and just the novelty and the Taylor Swift–iness of it being a double album release, to me, it ended up blunting a little bit of that because there was a moment when I felt like things were gearing up for, “Oh God, everybody’s going to be fighting, and it’s going to be knock-down, drag-out, ‘Taylor Swift is terrible.’ ‘Taylor Swift can’t write a song.’ ‘Taylor Swift is the greatest artist who’s ever lived.’”

    And then, I just think the fact that there’s so much to sort through and that the first two paragraphs of every story are, “Surprise, she had a whole second album ready,” it kind of blunts everything, which is probably for the better. But it’s an interesting dynamic where I feel like there’s so much. The context of how people talk about her on the internet and the inevitable backlash to being the biggest star on the planet, that felt so present. And I felt like a little bit of that got drowned in just the amount of content that’s here. Although maybe that’s because I had a podcast to prepare for in those two hours.

    Hubbard: Yeah. We had 35 hours to prepare for 31 songs; that’s a piece of it. The other piece of the controversy, for me, is, I think you’re right that in private, a lot of people are having these feelings. But in public, the way that the fan base has criticized has either been not at all or in the way that she viscerally strikes out against in multiple places on this record and chastises the fan base for overcontrolling her personal life … and for taking shots that are painful to her.

    Princiotti: Right. That’s the other big part of this: On this record, there is animosity—there’s clear animosity—from Taylor Swift to the people who adore her and who take it upon themselves to fight her battles, real or imagined.

    Hubbard: Correct. And then there is also the critical community that seems to be glomming on—and here, I’m talking about The New Yorker, New York Times, Paste magazine—that are glomming on to the fact that she’s a billionaire and on top of whatever mountain there is that exists of stardom and artistry, and that they’re the cooler-than-thou critics that can’t seem to shake that context and who are dismissing this work as a bit childish. Like, “How can she, at 34, with a billion dollars, still be singing about the same themes?”

    And I personally fall into a different place, and we’ll talk about it, but it is gratitude that we get such insight into the life of a unicorn. I mean, she tells us why she’s still framing the world a bit like this, like the girl in the bleachers from “You Belong With Me.” It’s right there in the pages of these lyrics. She grew up in an asylum. She was a precocious child, and sometimes that means you don’t grow up. She tells us that. But after six years of, as she referenced in “Bejeweled,” being in the basement, it’s helpful context around the profile of this antihero that we’ve been twittering about but who hasn’t actually given us that much insight behind the scenes into what’s been going on over those last six or seven years.

    Princiotti: In a while. I do think that there’s a distinction between some of the reflexive, “Well, she’s a billionaire. Why isn’t she grateful?” Which, I don’t even really begrudge people that response, I just don’t care. And a different version of it, which is a little bit more resonant to me, is, “For all that she has and all that she’s accomplished,”—and she did this with Apple Music as well; Spotify signs my paychecks, great service, use it every day—the fact that the logos are on every little piece of the rollout and the question of, “Why, when you have all this power, have all this ability, don’t you use some of it to not have to do this?” That, to me, is a much more fair question than, “When you have all you have, why are you still talking about your problems?”

    Hubbard: Right. The corporatization of this rollout was a little eh, for me.

    Princiotti: Yeah.

    Hubbard: And that, I understand it. And look, to frame it this way, she has fought forever—

    Princiotti: And it’s not new, by the way. I mean—

    Hubbard: It’s not.

    Princiotti: Taylor Swift’s face was on the side of UPS trucks for years. It’s just that it takes on a different—

    Hubbard: Diet Coke, Capital One commercials. I frame it this way. She’s fought for years to get control of her business. She now owns her art outright. There is a Taylor Swift touring logo on the posters. She is a businessman, to borrow from Jay-Z. And when you have achieved that, it’s not just enough to control it. The point of controlling it is when you are one of the largest consumer-facing brands on the planet, it’s to actually then go be the businessperson that you are and make the most of that control and that ownership because you get to make choices about how you market your art.

    There is something to the fact that she’s marketing her art with those partners, but it’s not lost on me: She put out the YouTube Shorts video [Friday] night, interestingly, at the same time that she released her music video. The YouTube Short is this cute video of Travis mauling her while she’s cooking. And it was sort of an interesting choice to release that at the same time that she put out a self-directed video where we’re supposed to believe she might make out with Post Malone. I was like, I might not have put out the wonderful, sort of behind-the-scenes moment of you and your boyfriend at the same time that is clearly a very real moment and then try to get me to believe that you’re going to make out with Post.

    Princiotti: I thought she and Post Malone had some chemistry.

    Hubbard: Well, we’ll talk about that, fine.

    Princiotti: I also love the tweets where it has her with the face tats and not with the face tats and it says Pre Malone, Post Malone.

    Hubbard: But she did the Spotify thing. She did the Apple playlist thing. She even put her music back on TikTok and created a TikTok experience. … She’s entitled now that she’s fought for this control and gone through everything that she has to get that control to now show us when you are the CEO, you get to make these kinds of decisions, and here’s how you actually market your art. I mean, it is—

    Princiotti: Yeah, I don’t think that she’s not entitled to any of this; she’s totally entitled to it.

    Hubbard: It’s just ick. Is it ick for you? Does it rise to that level?

    Princiotti: It’s not really quite ick. It’s on the ick spectrum. I’m just like, … you have earned all this power; it is yours to exercise however you want. I am a little bit questioning why the choice of how to exercise that is to slap a bunch of logos on everything.

    Hubbard: There are two things that it indicates. I mean, either number one, she didn’t want to step on a lot of music that’s being released by her peers this spring. And I think the campaign and the shortness of it could be a reflection of not stepping on Maggie [Rogers], who put out her record [last week]; of not stepping on Ariana; of Billie putting something up; Sabrina Carpenter putting up “Espresso,” which is now going into the stratosphere. She kind of contained the promotion.

    It also might have been quietly a reflex from the criticism that we ourselves gave her about the way she introduced this album onstage at the Grammys that sucked the air out of the room. And it was a pretty commercial moment in what was ostensibly a celebration of creativity. So there’s that piece, which was, maybe this was as much optically about staying in a lane so as not to step on some peers that she cares about.

    But secondly, it also might just be a reflection of our attention span and the ever-scrolling, move-on, TikTok-ization of people’s brains that she just feels like, “A week is all I can do, guys. A week is the only amount of time you’re really going to pay attention to me. So I’m going to show up with Travis at Coachella. We’re going to support Lana and Jack and everybody else and then Jungle,” Travis’s new favorite band. “And then we’re going to do a week of a few installations. I’m going to send you on a snipe hunt around the world on a crazy scavenger hunt. But that’s all we’re doing. And that’s for the crazies. The rest of it’s coming, and popular culture is going to break through and put this in front of you. And you’re either going to like it or you don’t.”

    This excerpt was edited for clarity.

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    Nora Princiotti

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  • ‘X-Men ’97’ Episodes 4-6 Deep Dive

    ‘X-Men ’97’ Episodes 4-6 Deep Dive

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    “The name’s Gambit, mon ami … remember it!” Mal and Jo are back to continue their X-Men ’97 deep dive by breaking down episodes 4-6. They discuss the stakes of the show (18:30) and explain why shame plays such a key role (56:40). Plus, they cover every romance and go over all that happened in the middle three episodes (78:37).

    Hosts: Mallory Rubin and Joanna Robinson
    Producer: Mike Wargon
    Additional Production: Arjuna Ramgopal
    Social: Jomi Adeniran

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher / Pandora / Google Podcasts

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    Mallory Rubin

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  • A Crazy Week in Bravoland! Plus, Our Most Robust Series of Recaps Ever.

    A Crazy Week in Bravoland! Plus, Our Most Robust Series of Recaps Ever.

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    Rachel Lindsay and Callie Curry kick off this week’s jumbo-sized Morally Corrupt with an in-depth guide to the seemingly endless stream of news coming from the Bravosphere this week (4:50). They then talk about the conclusion of the Real Housewives of Potomac Season 8 reunion (17:04). Later, Rachel and Callie dive into Season 2, Episode 4 of Summer House: Martha’s Vineyard (33:52), as well as Season 8, Episode 9 of Summer House (49:52). Finally, Rachel is joined by Jodi Walker to recap Season 1, Episode 5 of The Valley (1:10:31) and Season 11, Episode 12 of Vanderpump Rules (1:36:25).

    Host: Rachel Lindsay
    Guests: Callie Curry and Jodi Walker
    Producer: Devon Baroldi
    Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

    Subscribe: Spotify

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    Rachel Lindsay

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  • ‘Field of Dreams’ turns 35 and we’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight the cast then vs. now

    ‘Field of Dreams’ turns 35 and we’d be remiss if we didn’t highlight the cast then vs. now

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    Field of Dreams was released on April, 21st 1989. The film will celebrate its 35th anniversary this year. That’s over three decades of being the greatest baseball movie ever made. There, I said it. It’s got everything. Drama, fantasy, comedy, time-travel. My apologies to The Sandlot…I still love you.

    Maybe it’s because my dad and I both cherish baseball as a sport. When I was little he loaded up our minivan and took me and my stepbrother on a roadtrip from Pennsylvania all the way to Dyersville, Iowa just so we could hit balls at the real Field of Dreams. It’s an experience I’ll never forget.

    We wanted to revisit this movie and the iconic cast who made it what it is today. Please, enjoy!

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    Zach Nading

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  • Apple Gets Into the Franchise Business, the Penultimate Episode of ‘Shogun,’ and ‘Ripley’ Episodes 4 and 5

    Apple Gets Into the Franchise Business, the Penultimate Episode of ‘Shogun,’ and ‘Ripley’ Episodes 4 and 5

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    Chris and Andy talk about the news that Apple TV will be making a For All Mankind spinoff called Star City, and adapting another one of Mick Herron’s novels (author of Slow Horses) for a show starring Emma Thompson (1:00). Then, they talk about an article in Harper’s that looks at the role private equity firms have played in the TV industry over the past decade (13:38), before discussing the penultimate episode of Shogun (29:07) and Episodes 4 and 5 of Ripley (59:09).

    Read the Harper’s piece here.

    Hosts: Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald
    Producer: Kaya McMullen

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher / RSS

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    Chris Ryan

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  • End of the Warriors, Knicks’ Ceiling, Zion, and Lillard’s Future With Frank Isola. Plus, Comedian Dan Soder.

    End of the Warriors, Knicks’ Ceiling, Zion, and Lillard’s Future With Frank Isola. Plus, Comedian Dan Soder.

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    Russillo opens the show with his thoughts on the play-in games and the end of the Warriors dynasty (0:34). Then, Frank Isola joins to explain what went wrong for Golden State, share which eliminated team needs to hit the reset button, and discuss the Knicks’ ceiling (18:44). Next, comedian Dan Soder comes on to share why he chose comedy and details how jokes are created (55:13). Plus, Ceruti and Kyle join for Life Advice (89:51). How do we kick the bad player out of our pick-up games?

    Check us out on Youtube for exclusive clips, live streams, and more at https://www.youtube.com/@RyenRussilloPodcast

    The Ringer is committed to responsible gaming. Please check out rg-help.com to find out more, or listen to the end of the episode for additional details.

    Host: Ryen Russillo
    Guests: Frank Isola and Dan Soder
    Producers: Steve Ceruti, Kyle Crichton, and Mike Wargon

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / RSS

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    Ryen Russillo

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  • The Stanley Cup marketing wizard’s next project is Heydude shoes

    The Stanley Cup marketing wizard’s next project is Heydude shoes

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    Terence Reilly might not be a household name, but he played a big part in making a product that is likely already in your house into a national phenomenon.

    Reilly is credited with making the Stanley Cup a must-have item. Now he’s leaving Stanley and will try to work his magic on another brand, which already has a fairly high level of consumer appeal: Heydude shoes.

    It’s a return of sorts for Reilly. Crocs owns the Heydude brand and that’s where Stanley recruited him from originally. His marketing leadership on the rubber clog shoes made them a must-have for Generation Z and others for a while, with a strong rub from social influencers. He will serve as president of Heydude, replacing Rick Blackshaw, who left the company earlier this week.

    “We are thrilled to be welcoming back Terence to the Crocs, Inc. family,” said Andrew Rees, CEO at Crocs in a statement. “Terence has had tremendous success in creating and executing brand-building playbooks at both Stanley and Crocs by leveraging iconic product, scaling awareness, driving brand relevance and ultimately building communities. … I am confident he is the right person to lead the Heydude Brand into its next phase of growth.”

    Heydude shoes—which are lightweight and comfortable, but are hardly fashionable—have a following with some teens, but the brand hasn’t broken out like Crocs had hoped it would when it acquired it in 2021. Sales increased 6% last year, less than half of the increase Crocs saw.

    Rees, on an earnings call in February, admitted the company had oversaturated the market with Heydude shoes in late 2022 and early 2023. Despite that, brand awareness only reached 32%, which Rees called “low by any global brand standards”.

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    Chris Morris

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  • Into the Tubi-Verse

    Into the Tubi-Verse

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    In May 2015, Netflix’s movie library was approaching 5,000 titles. A dramatic contraction ensued soon thereafter: By 2017, that number had nearly halved. The library is now about a third smaller than it was at peak size. There are plenty of reasons for this change, but the two primary ones are that the long-tail value of “as much cinematic and television history as you can afford to host” wasn’t tremendous and that Netflix gradually realized that it’s more specifically in the business of production and curation.

    Evidently, it was right on both counts. Netflix is the giant of its industry and has grown only more dominant over time. It has hundreds of millions of paying subscribers, exclusive rights to many of its most valuable properties, and the power and reach to turn Suits into a sensation. To understand the gold standard of the modern entertainment media industry, look no further: Netflix leads the way in scale, interface, and accessibility.

    But we are not here today to discuss the peak of success, exemplified by a so-called “frictionless” entertainment product. Consider, instead, an entity that has taken the opposite path in most ways: Tubi, a platform that costs no money, is cluttered with obscure advertisements, produces unwatchable trash, offers a library of roughly 200,000 movies and TV episodes, and—with a crude algorithm and limited search function—is extremely difficult to navigate. Tubi is many times the size of Netflix in terms of offerings, but it’s not even 10 percent as utilized in terms of streaming hours. In general, people would rather pay a premium to be aggressively catered to than bother with something so unwieldy and unrefined.

    Tubi is, however, growing in popularity. Launched in 2014, it has progressed from a vague slush pile—something akin to the discount DVD bin at Walmart circa 2002—into more of a stimulating, treasure-laden maze for real heads seeking a hit of cinematic surprise that more carefully manicured collections can’t offer. Last year, the company announced that it had about 74 million monthly active users. It has surpassed more costly options like Paramount+ and Peacock and isn’t far behind Disney+. “These FAST channels are kind of having a moment,” says J.D. Connor, a professor of cinematic arts at the University of Southern California. “Tubi has positioned itself as explicitly the Gen Z version of these [free streamers]. They’re adamant that this is not a kind of play for the cheap old people who just want to watch old shows that they’re familiar with. And their recent rebrand reeks of a marketing firm that told them, ‘This is the Gen Z appeal” … They were absolutely willing to spend time and money on a rebrand that would make it clear that this is a younger demographic project.”

    Tubi appeals to more than just zoomers, though, and there’s significant overlap between its users and those who pay for Netflix, Hulu, Max, Peacock, or any of the other formidable paid-subscription streaming entities. Since 83 percent of Americans pay for at least one streaming service, how couldn’t there be? Despite their very real and regular investments elsewhere, they still hold space for Tubi—because something about its delights is so singular.

    Part of it is certainly how it approximates the foregone experience of combing through an oversized video store, or trawling the depths of cable broadcasting, and finding in that morass of mediocrity a gem of screen history and vision. Some things feel better when you have to work for them—though, if you don’t want to work too hard, know that Tubi is currently streaming Barry Lyndon, A Fistful of Dynamite, La Belle Noiseuse, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, Blue Velvet, Raging Bull, Red River, The Great Escape, The Apartment, The Night of the Hunter, and Thief, among probably dozens more stone-cold classics that you’ll have to get on your own digital hands and knees to locate. Floating in this bloated pool of chum is genuine gold, some of the best movies ever made. Tubi has several masterworks by Japanese auteur Yasujiro Ozu. Tubi has Ingmar Bergman. And, if you scroll just two rows down after searching “Ingmar Bergman,” you’ll find a ridiculous-looking 2017 comedy called Obamaland Part 1: Rise of the Trumpublikans. Like many great thrift stores, Tubi is disorganized.

    It would be wrong to argue that Tubi’s primary appeal is that it has good movies. Instead, its primary appeal is that it has lots of movies, and its budget-minded anti-curation approach to arranging them enhances a sense of odyssey. “When you’ve got the rights to that many titles, it’s not about frictionlessness,” Connor says. “It’s about strangeness and happenstance. You do have to go look for things.”

    Offerings more pleasurable than fantastic cinema, for many Tubi heads, are the curious misses. Not total failures, per se; not terrible movies—though there are plenty of those on Tubi—but the pictures just a few shades shy of any kind of remembrance. They’re all here at one point or another. Like 1994’s Wolf, an uneven Jack Nicholson vehicle that can’t quite achieve its aspirational balance of contemporary publishing-industry satire and mythic werewolf saga but occasionally achieves unreasonable amounts of beauty. Hart’s War is a 2002 World War II character drama with Colin Farrell and Terrence Howard about American racism traveling with the troops to Germany. It’s a movie that seems, at times, to approach greatness but ends without memorable incident. Rush is a grimy cop thriller with an original soundtrack by Eric Clapton. It was the movie that debuted one of his biggest hits, “Tears in Heaven,” but it wasn’t one of the dozen or so movies from 1991 that stuck to any canon. Not a classic, not compellingly bad, not a cult favorite. Just a movie that once came out and now has nowhere to go but here.

    Same for the forgotten Brannigan of 1975, one of John Wayne’s last movies. In it, Wayne plays a Chicago cop of questionable ethics, sent to England to extradite a roaming gangster. AARP John Wayne is turgid, lazily reciting the screenplay’s fish-out-of-water wit, but he’s still his eminently watchable self. Then there’s Crazy Joe (1974), a mobster tale with an especially cartoonish Peter Boyle, who, deep Tubi crawlers will learn, was a real movie star before he was the mean grandpa on Everybody Loves Raymond. So was the sourly cherubic Rod Steiger, who’s all over the service; both are conventionally unattractive men, skilled at playing unpleasant characters—once a formula for A-list success. Tubi remembers that.

    It remembers the ostracized, as well. At times, it looks like a clearinghouse for canceled filmmakers. There is an abundance of the less-esteemed Woody Allen and Roman Polanski movies, and tons of Mel Gibson. While other services might be considering whether or not to prominently feature bigots or sex criminals in their fare, Tubi lacks sensitivity readers in its curation—or anything else that would be an enemy of affordability and volume. The service puts you in the sometimes uncomfortable position of deciding whether these exiled men should retain their grip on posterity. That’s definitely more incidental than purposeful, though—the controlling idea here is a business built around the remainders market, the movie version of books that distributors are not sure whether to try to resell or just pulp and recycle. “Tubi is part of Fox [since its acquisition in 2020], which is a super strange company now,” Connor says. “It doesn’t have its movie studio, and it doesn’t have the giant Fox catalog—that’s why The Simpsons are over on Disney+. What it basically has is its linear network, which lives and dies by the NFL, and its declining cable channels. … And then they’ve got Tubi.”

    The result is less of a house style and more of an endless churn of cinematic penny stocks. It’s intellectual property arbitrage, an audiovisual flea market of which none of its organizers really understand the breadth and abnormality. The company’s philosophy seems to be that if you build a “video store the size of today,” people will come, and they will sort it out for themselves.

    What Tubi does ostensibly pay a little more intentionality to is its original programming offerings. Since 2021, it’s released a new movie of its own roughly once per week. Most of them are bad, and obviously so from the titles alone: Titanic 666, Most Wanted Santa, Deadly Cheer Mom, Twisted House Sitter, Terror Train, Pastacolypse, The Lurking Fear. It’s mostly horror and thriller shlock, junk food for people who just need their screens to produce colors and noise. Only a handful of them even have blue text on Wikipedia—the rest are if-a-tree-falls-in-a-forest fare, movies that could easily be ignored by their no-name casts for the rest of their lives and never get asked about. Their production quality is well below that of Lifetime or Hallmark. As one social media post put it: “Tubi outta control I just seen me at the gas station in one of the movies.” There is a growing audience for these outrageously bad selections, predicated on a gleeful embrace of the awful. An extremely optimistic view on this trend: Many powerful art movements begin with hard, formal limitations, and the resulting absurdities of Tubi’s anemic production crunch for originals—curving bullets, casually slain children, galling continuity errors—might one day look like the seeds of a bold, new visual language.

    This slop runs a wide range demographically, but specific attention has been paid to the works made by, and starring, Black Americans. Most of these more memorable, viral hits—like All I Want Is You 2—are not actually produced by Tubi, just hosted there, but they’ve come to characterize the platform in a colloquial sense, regardless. “Is this a kind of populist creativity finding a way into the world or just a business exploiting an underserved audience to pump out cheap ‘content’?” asks Niela Orr in The New York Times. “Are these movies furthering Black representation in their own oddball ways or embarrassing us with lowbrow clichés?” Modern urban literature legend Quan Millz, known for titles like This Hoe Got Roaches in Her Crib and Pregnant by My Granddaddy’s Boyfriend, inspires similar questions, and he sees in this section of Tubi an entrepreneurial opening: In 2023, he started a GoFundMe to finance an adaptation of his book Old THOT Next Door made specifically for Tubi. Whether or not the artistic confluence is ever formalized, it’s clear that at least the shadow of a distinct Tubi style has emerged, intentionally or not. (To date, the page has raised $482.)

    A slightly more expensive instance of Tubi’s productions was 2022’s Corrective Measures, starring Michael Rooker (Yondu, from the Guardians of the Galaxy movies), Tom Cavanagh (Ed in NBC’s Ed from 2000 to 2004), and Bruce Willis (in one of his last movies after being diagnosed with aphasia). It is depressing to see Willis so lacking his signature stoic pizzazz, and also to behold this movie in general. There is a special anomie one feels when watching someone really go for it in a broken context, as Cavanagh and Rooker do. The latter gives his dialogue more energy than its writers did, leaning into lines like “you fucking fuckface fucker.” Cavanagh plays someone named Gordon Tweedy, or “the Conductor,” who nearly breaks out of what’s supposed to be the world’s most secure prison by channeling electricity through his body. Though he gives it admirable effort, Cavanagh cannot perform his way through the small special-effects budget in this moment. And the so-called über-prison looks an awful lot like an abandoned elementary school.

    Tragically low quality might not always be Tubi’s trademark, though. Especially if it keeps doing shrewd things, like the recent decision to be the American distributor for the BBC series Boarders. The show, a charming and insightful coming-of-age story about Black students in England’s predominantly white prep school system, has received praise from Variety, Time, and The Guardian, and in America it will be labeled a Tubi Original. Acquiring the series is, obviously, a lot less expensive than making it, but to many, it will look like the Tubi machine is getting sleeker. Tubi’s exclusives also include a lot of low-effort Vice and TMZ programming, true crime documentaries, and an animated series called The Freak Brothers, featuring the voices of Pete Davidson, Woody Harrelson, and John Goodman in a Rip Van Winkle affair about three siblings who really like to smoke weed and get into modern high jinks, just as they did back in the ’60s. In addition, they’ve got broadcast rights to the NBA’s farm system, the G League; random short-form documentaries about many classic rock albums, such as Steely Dan’s Aja and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds; cartoons about all of the Old Testament and New Testament; full HBO telecasts of old boxing matches; and hundreds of live TV channels.

    In aggregate, these channels are like if the C-tier of a cable TV subscription was free. A lot of it is retro: 24-hour sports highlights from yore; channels that play only Johnny Carson, The Carol Burnett Show, Baywatch, Mystery Science Theater 3000, and The Rifleman. There are game shows galore, and talk shows, and home improvement shows. Plus various local versions of Fox from throughout the country. You can watch the news live from Bakersfield, Detroit, or D.C. Why not?! And, as always, there are diamonds in the rough—turn to the Warner Bros. “At the Movies” channel and you can catch Stanley Kubrick and Akira Kurosawa back-to-back.

    “There was this moment when we thought that streaming was going to make the long tail valuable. That was the sort of utopian moment at the beginning of all of this,” Connor says. “And then we got rid of that idea. There was just not enough oomph in the long tail to make it profitable. The assumption was: Maybe only certain things held an audience. But what the fast channels suggest, again, is that the long tail does have value. And if you’re good at it, it is a decent business in a world where inflation is persistent.”

    It’s especially good business when it’s free. At the moment, there’s no way to pay for Tubi, and no (legal) way around its frequently recurring ads. And, yes, because the service is less than premium, the ads can get repetitive. “The Mazda CX-30 commercial is the bane of my existence. I hate it,” says a user on r/TubiTV. Whether this is a flaw or part of its eccentricity is up to you.

    What isn’t up for debate is that Tubi offers the widest range of possibilities of any streaming service out there right now. One person’s ironic Blaxploitation revival hub is another’s Criterion Lite, which is still another’s midnight-on-TBS-in-1997 reenactment machine, and still someone else’s best place to watch mediocre stuff from the ’60s and ’70s before diving into the world’s biggest archive of made-for-TV crap. The more that people realize how broad and stimulating its offerings are, the more likely Tubi is to impact the future of streaming. It might not be on purpose, but Tubi has built a kingdom of accessibility and weirdness that could start to make its competitors look overly staid and unnecessarily expensive. Netflix wants to bring you the perfect show in the perfect amount of time. But what if, in a world where the totality of all media ever is theoretically within reach, there’s more joy to be found in the hard work of manually navigating a catalog that’s as vast as it is beguiling?

    John Wilmes is a writer and professor in Chicago. Follow him on Twitter at @johnwilmeswords.

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    John Wilmes

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  • 10 Most Memorable Dystopian Movies

    10 Most Memorable Dystopian Movies

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    Inspired by the release of ‘Civil War,’ Adam Nayman reflects on some of the most iconic dystopian movies

    With the release of Alex Garland’s Civil War, Ringer contributor Adam Nayman looks back at some of the most memorable movies that depict a dystopian future.

    Written by: Adam Nayman
    Produced by: Chia Hao Tat

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    Adam Nayman

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  • ‘Magnolia’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

    ‘Magnolia’ With Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey

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    ‌It’s raining frogs in the studio as Bill Simmons, Chris Ryan, and Sean Fennessey rewatch the 1999 film Magnolia, starring Tom Cruise, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Julianne Moore and directed by Paul Thomas Anderson.

    ‌Producer: Craig Horlbeck

    Subscribe: Spotify / Apple Podcasts / Stitcher / RSS

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    Bill Simmons

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  • 19 Burning Questions About Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and Rap’s Civil War

    19 Burning Questions About Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and Rap’s Civil War

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    You knew deep down it was real. When the rough version of Drake’s “Push Ups” leaked online Saturday afternoon, the big question at first was: Was it actually AI? If it was, it would mean someone random had just penned a pretty competent diss track aimed at Kendrick Lamar, Metro Boomin, and a half dozen other rap luminaries. If it wasn’t, it would mean that Aubrey had finally taken the gloves off and was ready to chip a nail. Sure, there were a few lines anyone steeped in Drake lore could’ve gotten off. But AI could never get that specific in its barbs, and AI certainly could never replicate that patented Drake sigh.

    A few hours later, Drake confirmed as much by releasing the full, finished track. He swapped out the beat—the rough cut evoked Tupac’s classic “Hit ’Em Up,” while the final paid homage to Biggie’s “What’s Beef?”—and cut a few lines aimed at Rozay (though the Teflon Don didn’t forget; more on that later). But it was all there: the response the rap world had been waiting on since Kendrick Lamar poked the Canadian bear three weeks ago on “Like That.”

    It’s admittedly not the nuclear detonation Joe Budden promised, but “Push Ups (Drop and Give Me 50)” makes it clear that Drake is up for the fight that rap fans have been waiting on for a generation. He landed disses about Kendrick’s height and former label situation, threw some petty shade at Future and Metro, and then chucked a few grenades at the Weeknd and his team. But if you’ve been anywhere near your For You page this weekend, then you know there’s so much more. (J. Cole behind enemy lines? Nose jobs? Dockers? French Montana? Ja Morant?!) Let’s take a look at the fallout and figure out where things sit—and more importantly, where they could go from here. First up …

    How did we get here?

    Chances are, if you’re reading this, it’s too late for me to explain. But it’s worth recapping how rap’s cold war erupted into a full-blown civil war (and on the weekend Alex Garland released Civil War, naturally). My colleague Justin Charity already ran through a timeline of the Drake-Kendrick feud, which for a decade resulted in little more than subliminal shots and KTT2 fanfic. But the simmering beef was tossed into the fire in March thanks to two unlikely provocateurs: Future and Metro Boomin. The former had seemingly taken offense to a For All the Dogs track that most fans had assumed was a tribute to Drake’s one-time collaborator. (Turns out rapping about how your buddy only sleeps with taken women is not a compliment, though you could forgive us for assuming the man behind “Fuck Russell” would consider it a good thing.) In the case of Metro, the superproducer behind a handful of Drake’s biggest hits started poking Aubrey late last year over award shows, of all things. Back then, Drake responded with some of his typical tough-guy posturing, but then tweets were deleted and everyone put it on the back burner.

    But never underestimate the pettiness of two men who name albums stuff like WE DON’T TRUST YOU and WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU. The former came out last month and contains “Like That,” which includes the Archduke Ferdinand moment of this war. On the surface, Kendrick Lamar’s guest verse on “Like That” isn’t a diss on the level of, say, “Takeover” or “The Bridge Is Over.” But it took direct aim at Drake and J. Cole—seemingly for the sin of implying on For All the Dogs’ “First Person Shooter” that the two of them and Kendrick make up rap’s Big Three. (Like all good rap beefs, this one seems to be built on the smallest of slights; shout-out to the mic on LL Cool J’s arm.) “Like That” is light on specifics and heavy on old-school rap-battle bragging. (Fitting for the Rodney-O & Joe Cooley–sampling beat.) But what it lacks in pointedness, it makes up for with audaciousness: Here was Kendrick finally taking shots at an artist who’s been too big to fail for too long.

    But beyond giving Rap Twitter enough fodder for a few lifetimes, “Like That” did a few other things:

    • It hit no. 1 on the Hot 100 and worked its way into club rotation—virtually unheard of for a diss track, though not unlike Drake’s casual Meek Mill evisceration, “Back to Back.”
    • It gave everyone else clearance to pile on Drake. And boy, did they.

    So does everyone hate Drake now?

    The list of assumed Aubrey allies who pumped up “Like That” is shocking: Rick Ross! Travis Scott! LeBron James! But this is what years of subliminal disses and bad vibes will get you. Last Friday, Future and Metro released WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU, and while there was no one seismic “Like That” moment, the 25-track album was littered with guests taking shots at Drake. The Weeknd made fun of him for having leaks in his camp and having “shooters making TikToks.” (Over an Isley Brothers sample!) Rihanna’s babies’ father showed up to brag about securing the very thing Drake’s always coveted. And maybe most damningly, J. Cole showed up on the Disc 1 closer, “Red Leather.” Jermaine didn’t diss his tour mate, and it’s unclear when he actually recorded the verse. But given what transpired a week earlier—when Cole released a tepid diss song about Kendrick, then apologized two nights later, saying he was confused and misled—the Dreamville head’s mere presence felt like Future and Metro were holding an enemy combatant hostage. Which, let’s hope not, because we already know Cole is the type to break under questioning.

    So, J. Cole actually apologized? That wasn’t just some strange dream I had?

    As my buddy Jeff Weiss said: Apologizing is a sign that Cole is a mature, thoughtful human. And it’s also the reason we never want to hear his music again.

    A reminder that any time you have Jadakiss asking “why?” you’re not in a good place.

    OK, so what we came here for: Drake finally responded? Is it any good?

    For weeks, the most we had heard from Drake was him making trigger fingers at the giant Travis Scott facsimile he brought on tour for “SICKO MODE” performances. (Anytime you’re screaming at a floating animatronic head you paid for, you are officially Down Bad.) But Drake broke his relative silence on Saturday with “Push Ups (Drop and Give Me 50).”

    And honestly, it’s fairly impressive, especially when you consider the initial wave of AI rumors—and especially when considering “Like That” has Drake on the defensive for one of the few times in his career. A self-described “20 v. 1,” “Push Ups” takes on almost everyone who had dared come at him in recent weeks. (A$AP Rocky seemingly goes ignored, which says more about Rocky than Drake.) The barbs at Future are mild (“Your first no. 1, I had to put it in your hand” … OK, and?), and Drake swats Metro Boomin away like an annoying gnat with a MIDI controller. (Giving the producer only the tossed-off diss “Shut your ho ass up and make some drums” feels like the modern-day equivalent of Jay-Z giving his lesser rivals only half a bar on “Takeover.”) But the shots at Rick Ross, the Weeknd, and Kendrick are more pointed—and all work to varying degrees. Let’s take those in reverse order.

    Did Drake respond to Kendrick like he needed to?

    Kendrick is admittedly a tough person to diss. He’s a critically beloved, Pulitzer-winning artist who keeps his business to himself (unless he’s having double-album-long therapy sessions). Sure, he’s prone to theater-kid dramatics—the “alien voice/jazz beat” jokes were flying all weekend—but his track record is mostly unimpeachable. (That’s something J. Cole learned the hard way when he tried to lightly critique Kendrick’s catalog on “7 Minute Drill.”) But on “Push Ups” Drake did about as well as you could reasonably expect, especially assuming this is simply his opening salvo.

    The easiest, most obvious jokes come at the expense of the famously short Kendrick’s height. (Most notably, “How the fuck you big steppin’ with a size seven men’s on?”—a pretty great punch line, if I do say so myself.) Those have caused a lot of moralizing, as though Drake should be above schoolyard-bully-style insults. But it ignores the reality that rap beef has always revolved around—and often been at its best when it leans into—childish name-calling. (Let’s never forget that “Ether”—widely considered one of the best diss tracks ever, to the point that the title has been a go-to verb in these kinds of battles—includes a reference to “Gay-Z and Cock-A-Fella Records.”)

    But some of the other lines land pretty hard. For Drake—one of the biggest pop stars in history—to mock Kendrick for doing songs with Maroon 5 and Taylor Swift seems like a silly proposition on the surface. But it works because (1) Drake has never stooped to those specific levels of pandering, (2) Drake isn’t a Pulitzer-winning artist who’s staked his reputation on high art, and (3) the bars are, simply put, pretty good. (“You better make it witty!”) The Prince/Michael Jackson lines—a response to Kendrick on “Like That,” which was a response to Drake on “First Person Shooter,” if you’re updating your flow chart at home—are inspired. (“What’s a prince to a king? He a son” is an entendre that would make my colleague and noted Kendrick lover Cole Cuchna at Dissect proud. Lest you forget, Jackson’s son is literally named Prince.) And of course, there’s the Whitney/Bodyguard line, which is a reference to not only the diamond-selling singer and her most famous movie role, but also seemingly an allusion to Kendrick’s partner, Whitney Alford. Assuming it is a double entendre—and there’s little reason to doubt that it is—it’s impossible not to recall that Whitney Houston’s character slept with her bodyguard. We have no evidence that anything happened in Kendrick’s life to evoke that line, and I’m struggling to find a suggestion of something happening outside of “Push Ups,” but Drake’s too savvy not to understand what he was doing.


    But wait—hasn’t Drake gotten in trouble for mentioning significant others before?

    You’d figure he’d know better by now! In 2018, after years of subliminals fired at him by Pusha T, Drake responded with “Duppy Freestyle.” Amid a bunch of lukewarm shots about Pusha lying about his drug-dealing prowess, Drake made one of the worst mistakes of his career. “I told you keep playin’ with my name / And I’ma let it ring on you like Virginia Williams,” he rapped, invoking Pusha’s then fiancée, now wife, and giving Push carte blanche to respond however he thought appropriate. Within days, we had “The Story of Adidon” and “you are hiding a child,” bullying Drake into being a father publicly. It’s a blemish that no number of no. 1 records can ever fully erase.

    Is Drake hiding another child?

    You know that somewhere, Pusha T and his private investigator are waiting to get tagged into this mess, but at the moment, we can only assume that Drake’s not playing border control yet again. We can also assume, however, that of everything Drake said about Kendrick, this will be the line that truly lights the fuse on this powder keg.

    What about this Top Dawg business on “Push Ups”?

    If there’s fault to be found with Drake’s response, it’s that the central premise falls apart under light scrutiny. The “drop and give me 50” hook is a slick reference to infamous shit talker Curtis Jackson. But it’s also a callback to a video on Kendrick’s burner Instagram of him doing push-ups. On yet another level, the implication is that Kendrick is splitting as much as 50 percent of his profits with Top Dawg Entertainment, the label he was signed to for 17 years. It’s a fairly clever conceit—“The way you doin’ splits, bitch, your pants might rip” is a little bit of a groaner, but that’s what you sign up for with Drake—however, it ignores reality. First, Kendrick famously left TDE in 2022 to start a new venture named pgLang (distributed by Columbia Records, which also makes the Interscope lines in “Push Ups” feel dated at best). Second, up through Scorpion, Drake was signed to Young Money, an imprint of Cash Money. The parent label, of course, is run by Birdman, and it was once sued by Lil Wayne for $51 million for violating his contract and withholding vast amounts of money. As Pusha once rapped—directly to Drake—“The M’s count different when Baby divide the pie.”

    The lesson here: Let the rapper who is not in an exploitative contract cast the first stone.

    OK, but what about the Weeknd? Where does a singer fit into this?

    In hindsight, one of the strangest quirks of 21st-century pop music is that two of the three biggest stars in the business come from Toronto. That should make them natural allies, if not friends—aren’t Canadians supposed to be nice?—but Drake and the Weeknd have been anything but. They collaborated in 2011 on Take Care’s “Crew Love,” which began life as a solo Weeknd song before Abel gifted it to Drake. (While possibly gifting him much more.) But from there, a rift began: The Weeknd signed with Republic instead of OVO (a move no one can fault him for when you look at his career next to, say, PartyNextDoor’s); rumors surfaced about Drake dating the Weeknd’s ex Bella Hadid; and despite some one-off collaborations and show appearances, they never seemed to like each other very much. (The Weeknd appears to be as much of a fan of the hiding-a-child line as we are at The Ringer.)

    So all things told, it wasn’t a complete shock when the Weeknd popped up on WE STILL DON’T TRUST YOU last Friday, gleefully crooning not-so-veiled Drake disses on “All to Myself.” (It’s worth pausing again to highlight “they shooters making TikToks,” an honestly inspired slight that pretty much sums up the Drake experience.) But Aubrey responded in kind on “Push Ups.” He fires a few shots at the Weeknd’s manager, Cash, claiming that he used to be a “blunt runner” for Chubbs, Drake’s head of security. (Update your flow chart—we are deep into Canadian music politics.) And more pointedly, he implies the Weeknd is showering men with gifts in exchange for gifts. It doesn’t matter that Drake may be evolved enough to admit he gets his nails done. You know what they say: It’s not a real rap beef until someone gets homophobic.

    OK, but what about Rick Ross? I thought he and Drake were friends?

    This may have been the most surprising development of the past three weeks. After a handful of classic collabs between them over a dozen or so years, it turns out that Rick Ross and Drake just don’t like each other. In the wake of “Like That,” Rozay posted an IG story of him bumping Kendrick’s diss. So when it came time for “Push Ups,” Drake made it clear he couldn’t overlook: He made allusions to Ross’s time as a correctional officer, his age, and in the leaked early demo version of “Push Ups,” Ross’s relationship with Diddy, who is currently the subject of a sex trafficking investigation and several sexual misconduct and abuse lawsuits. That line didn’t make the final version of “Push Ups,” but Ross obviously didn’t take it lightly.

    Why is the Rick Ross response the first track in this sprawling beef that feels like a true diss song?

    This was something first pointed out by the former host of The Ringer’s NO SKIPS podcast and esteemed rap journalist Brandon “Jinx” Jenkins: “Champagne Moments”—which Ross apparently recorded Saturday in the hours after “Push Ups” dropped—captured the spirit that most rap fans were looking for in this melee.

    Maybe it was the fact that the song was spread through sketchy MP3 sites and Dat Piff’s YouTube channel. Or maybe it was the pure vitriol. But if you wanted real beef, you’ve finally got it. Over the course of three verses, the Boss of All Bosses mocks Drake for leaks in his camp, using ghostwriters (an old reliable), and getting put on only because of Lil Wayne, all while repeatedly calling Aubrey a “white boy.” (It’s complicated.) It’s the type of directness and specificity that “Like That” lacked—but it also, like any great Rick Ross song, sounds luxurious. The most damning bits of “Champagne Moments,” however, come during the spoken word outro, when Ross [deep breath] says Drake is wearing funny clothes at his shows to hide the fact his six-pack is gone, that he also wears Dockers with no underwear (???), and that he had a nose job “to make [his] nose smaller than [his] father nose,” all because he was ashamed of his race. (Like I said, it’s complicated.)

    Wait, Drake had a nose job?!?!

    Before you go Googling “Drake nose job,” just know that Drake and his mother have been texting about it, and they seem to think it’s silly (and possibly racist).

    I’m cackling at the thought of Drake having to explain who Rick Ross is to his mom the same way I would have to with mine. But bringing Sandi into this hasn’t stopped Rozay from doubling down.

    Maybe the actual lesson is don’t ask Rick Ross to do push-ups, because that’s light work for him.

    So where does French Montana fit into this massive beef?

    As is typically the case with French, on the fringes. During that lengthy outro, Ross said he got involved only because Drake had sent a cease-and-desist order to French Montana’s team to have a verse of his removed from February’s Mac & Cheese 5. Well, the C&D worked because it doesn’t appear on French’s mixtape. But we now have a Streisand-effect situation on our hands because the verse is online and people are paying attention. And boy …

    Uh … so which rapper’s wife is Drake alluding to sleeping with?

    The speculation is that Drake is alluding to Kim Kardashian, Kanye’s ex-wife. And while we have no firm evidence that happened, Kim’s voice does appear prominently on last year’s “Search & Rescue.” (It’s complicated, messy, and petty—the only big three Drake really cares about.)

    Is Kanye going to get involved now?

    Let’s just hope we can get J. Prince on the line before someone (read: Kanye) does something even more foolish. We shudder to think what disses his brain would come up with.

    And you said something about Ja Morant?

    Of all the (alleged) targets on “Push Ups,” the most unexpected isn’t even a rapper or singer. Ja Morant—the NBA All-Star who has been suspended by the league twice for flashing guns on IG Live—seemingly caught a stray from Drake. Not that it was entirely undeserved, because …

    It would seem Ja took time away from shoulder rehab to insert himself in the biggest rap feud of the decade.

    Toward the end of “Push Ups,” Drake addresses the “hooper that be bustin’ out the griddy,” seemingly a reference to Ja’s preferred means of celebration. But Drake also references that “little heartbroken Twitter shit,” possibly an acknowledgment of the rumors that he went on a date with Ja’s ex Brooklyn Nikole. (One day, we’ll have a conversation about how women get used as pawns in these kinds of battles. But for now, I’ll just highlight how this puts Drake’s song in the lineage of another Jay-Z diss track, “Super Ugly”—the “me and the boy AI” song. Not exactly a proud lineage with that one.)

    If Drake and Ja can’t settle this one on (proverbial) wax, maybe they can take it to the hardwood. At least then, maybe J. Cole can prove himself useful.

    Is this all a lose-lose for Drake?

    Quite possibly! While “Push Ups” wasn’t exactly nuclear, it was still effective—and easily the best song to come out of the battle so far. And yet it feels like Round 1 of this battle is a draw, at best. Despite being light on specifics, Kendrick’s “Like That” verse did more damage than Drake’s four-minute, tea-spilling response. The most memorable lines to come out of Saturday may have been from Ross’s monologue about Dockers and cosmetic surgery. And Future and Metro have dropped two of the three best albums of the year in less than a month. You have to assume Kendrick has something else lined up—Drake alluded to as much in the original leaked version of “Push Ups,” suggesting that K.Dot’s song was recorded four years ago—and at this point, you have to assume someone else will jump into this Royal Rumble. (Cut to Pusha in the corner rubbing his hands together like Birdman.) “Push Ups” showed Drake can play effective defense—and he needed to after the embarrassment of “Adidon” six years ago—but if this was his best shot, Kendrick may not need to even say much in response to walk away the winner. (Though if we’re to believe this ScHoolboy Q tweet, we may find out if that’s the case soon.)

    But who do you think is going to win?

    Well, the easy answer is DJ Akademiks’s engagement. But none of these tracks are likely to change anyone’s mind. The Drake haters have already deemed the response trash, Aubrey’s Angels have already declared this the next “Hit ’Em Up,” and A$AP Rocky can’t even get a crumb of a response, but is still Rihanna’s partner. Maybe the actual winner is us because rap hasn’t been this fun in years. (For this writer, since the first time I heard the phrase “you are hiding a child,” if I’m being honest.) Just sit back and enjoy, because as Rick Ross promised, we’re only in the first quarter.

    OK, one last question: Could they all still make up?

    J. Cole’s response to this whole mess is admirable on a personal level, but embarrassing on a competitive level. Yet his apology also highlights a few realities of the situation: (1) Aside from Metro, these are all men hovering around the age of 40, and (2) no one has said anything they can’t take back yet. (Well, maybe aside from Ricky.) “I’m a better rapper than you” or “you’re short” or “your last album wasn’t that great” isn’t exactly a lethal blow. And even when it does get extremely personal, there’s precedent for rappers burying the hatchet—it took a few years, but eventually Nas and Jay-Z became collaborators. For my money, I expect we’ll see Drake, Kendrick, and Cole playing nice on a song (produced by Metro) at some point in the distant future. (Hopefully not with Future, though—Nayvadius is too cool for that shit.)

    But you know, even if this alleged Big Three won’t get on a track together, we always have AI to make that collaboration a (virtual) reality. By that time, it’ll probably even be able to get the Drake sigh right. It may even give us an answer to what J. Cole was thinking.

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    Justin Sayles

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  • Horrifying and dark sh*t we’re actually glad we grew up with

    Horrifying and dark sh*t we’re actually glad we grew up with

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    Zach Nading

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