Tame Impala has announced a deluxe version of The Slow Rush.
The Kevin Parker-led group’s latest album, which was released in February 2020, will be available as an expanded box set on February 18, 2022. The collection includes the original record spread over two vinyl LPs, two 12-inch discs of remixes, and a seven-inch B-sides single.
Additionally, you’ll find various photos and artwork, as well as a Slow Rush-themed calendar for the year 2050, should the Earth make it that long.
Should you not want to splurge for the whole box set, the collection of remixes and B-sides will be available as a standalone digital release. That’ll be out February 18, as well.
Meanwhile, rumor has it that Tame Impala will be collaborating with the one-and-only Diana Ross. That’s according to the U.K. tabloid The Sun, which claims that the iconic singer will be collaborating with Parker and company on a song off her upcoming new album.
After Verzuz teased their next battle with silhouettes that fans quickly identified as Big Daddy Kane and KRS-One, it’s now confirmed. The two New York City hip hop icons will square off on October 17 at Barclays Center in NYC.
“One time for the Culture!!!” Kane wrote on Instagram with a poster for the event. “I hope you’re ready!!! This one is for Hip-Hop!!! Verzuz commented.
During the summer, the “Ain’t No Half Steppin'” rapper told HipHopDX that he wanted to go up against KRS, whose birth name is Kris Parker.
“KRS is a battle rapper, so it’s going to be me and him,” Kane said. “I think we should do the music for the fans but also do a few rounds of battle rap.
Kane is celebrating 35 years in hip hop after launching his career in 1986 as a member of The Juice Crew. He performed a tribute to his late friend, Biz Markie, on the BET Hip Hop Awards, which aired Tuesday night.
KRS-One also began his career in the ‘80s. He was a member of Boogie Down Productions, and began the Stop the Violence movement after his partner, Scott La Rock, was shot and killed in 1987. Tupac and Eminem are among the many rappers who praised him as one of their strongest influences.
Fat Joe and Ja Rule starred in the previous Verzuz, held on September 14 at Madison Square Garden in NYC, where Nelly, Ashanti, Jadakiss and Remy Ma were among the featured performers.
Tickets for the Big Daddy Kane/KRS-One battle are now on sale on the Barclays Center website. You can also watch on VerzuzTV.com.
BTS‘ partnership with UNICEF on its LOVE MYSELF campaign, designed to promote self-esteem among young people and end abuse and bullying, has been declared a success four years since it launched.
UNICEF announced that since the inception of the campaign in 2017, it’s raised $3.6 million to help UNICEF’s work, generated nearly five million tweets and inspired more than 50 million engagements.
Over the four years, BTS also addressed the United Nations General Assembly meeting multiple times. released an exclusive music video for the cause, and set up booths at their concert venues with information on how to protect yourself and others from bullying.
In a statement, the K-pop superstars said, “We started LOVE MYSELF as a way to reach young people and help improve their lives and rights…We hope that many people felt how the love received from others can become the power that allows them to love themselves.”
“We hope that the LOVE MYSELF message can continue to serve to invigorate everyone’s lives,” BTS added. “We will be honored if all seven of us can continue this campaign to return the amazing love that we have received, and give people the strength to come closer to LOVE MYSELF.”
“We hope to keep doing what we are doing…so we can help people find happiness and love,” they concluded.
Earlier this year, BTS and their label, BIGHIT Music, pledged more than $1 million to UNICEF and also announced they would donate proceeds from the sale of their LOVE YOURSELF album and related merchandise.
If you happen to be in Fox Creek neighborhood of Detroit, you can now mail a letter or package at a post office that’s named after the late Queen of Soul.
On Monday, the Fox Creek Station post office, located at at 12711 E. Jefferson Ave., was officially renamed the Aretha Franklin Post Office Building, Patch.com reports.
Legislation to have the post office named in Aretha Franklin‘s honor was introduced in the House of Representatives last year by Michigan congresswoman Brenda Lawrence, a close friend of Franklin’s. Former President Donald Trump signed it into law in January 2021.
Lawrence visited the post office Monday for a dedication ceremony celebrating the rechristening, along with Michigan’s two U.S. senators — Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow — and Franklin family members.
“This building will always stand as a reminder that we all deserve a little RESPECT,” Rep. Lawrence said. She also posted photos from the event on her Twitter feed.
Added Sen. Peters, “Aretha Franklin was not just the Queen of Soul — she was a Detroit icon whose legacy of music and activism will forever symbolize Detroit’s strength and resilience.”
A postal service press release announcing the building’s name change gave some background information about Aretha’s life and achievements. It noted that she was a child prodigy who sang gospel at Detroit’s New Bethel Baptist Church, where her father, Reverend C. L. Franklin, was a minister; that she “found acclaim and commercial success” after signing with Atlantic Records in 1966; and that she went on to become “a symbol of Black empowerment during the civil rights movement.”
Aretha died of cancer at her Detroit home on August 16, 2018, at the age of 76.
Today marks the one-year anniversary of Eddie Van Halen‘s death.
The legendary guitar virtuoso and Van Halen co-founder died October 6, 2020, following a battle with cancer. He was 65.
Eddie and his older brother, Alex, were born in The Netherlands before the Van Halen family moved to Pasadena, California, in 1962. The two were interested in music in an early age and played in several bands together before forming Van Halen in the early ’70s with Eddie on guitar and Alex on drums. They soon found vocalist David Lee Roth and bassist Michael Anthony, who comprised Van Halen’s “classic” lineup.
Though each member of Van Halen brought their own personality to the band, Eddie’s guitar playing was always the star of the show. He was particularly renowned for his finger-tapping technique, famously heard in the Van Halen instrumental “Eruption,” which is now considered to be among the greatest guitar solos of all time.
Van Halen’s classic lineup released six albums, from 1978’s self-titled debut to 1984’s 1984, and produced classic singles in “Runnin’ with the Devil,” “Ain’t Talkin’ ’bout Love,” “Dance the Night Away,” “Unchained,” “Panama,” and the number-one hit, “Jump.”
In between all that, Eddie married actress Valerie Bertinelli in 1981 — with whom he had a son, Wolfgang, in 1991 — and played the solo on Michael Jackson‘s hit “Beat It.”
Roth left Van Halen in 1985 and was replaced by Sammy Hagar, whose tenure fronting the band produced four-straight number-one albums. Hagar was then replaced by Gary Cherone for one more album before Van Halen disbanded in 1999.
During the group’s hiatus, Eddie underwent treatment for tongue cancer and separated from Bertinelli. The couple eventually divorced in 2007, and Eddie married his second wife, publicist Janie Liszewski, in 2009.
Van Halen reunited briefly in the mid-2000s with Hagar singing before reforming again in 2006, with Roth back and a then-teenage Wolfgang playing bass instead of Anthony. That lineup would produce a final Van Halen album, 2012’s A Different Kind of Truth, before playing their last tour together in 2015.
Following his father’s death, Wolfgang revealed that there had been plans for a so-called “Kitchen Sink” Van Halen reunion tour, which would potentially feature Anthony back along with all three of the band’s singers. However, those plans were put on hold due to Eddie’s declining health.
Wolfgang, meanwhile, is carrying on the family legacy with his solo band, Mammoth WVH. The project has already scored two number-one Billboard rock singles.
Alliance for Women in Media Foundation/Getty Images for Alliance for Women in Media Foundation
Taylor Swift thanked the fans — and her medical team — Tuesday night while accepting a Gracie Award, presented by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation.
Taylor received the Gracies’ Grand Award for her Disney+ documentary folklore: the long pond studio sessions, which came out last November and featured Taylor performing every song on her folklore album with collaborators Jack Antonoff and Aaron Dessner.
Olympic gymnast Simone Biles presented Taylor with the award virtually. In her acceptance speech, Taylor responded by saying, “I wanted to say, first of all, thank you Simone Biles for presenting this award to me. I absolutely adore you and that just really made my heart skip a beat.”
“Making this film really was a new experience for me in so many ways — it was in the middle of the pandemic when this was really the first time that most of the people who worked on it had left our houses,” Taylor continued. “So I want to, first of all, say thank you so much to our medical team, our COVID team, who tested everyone and made sure that we knew that we were in a safe space to create music again.”
Of course, Taylor then thanked her loyal fans for “caring about all of this.”
“Thank you for being the reason why we why we could come together in this way,” she added. “You made this album into what it is and you continue to just blow me away all the time.”
Folklore, released in July 2020, went on to win the Grammy for Album of the Year. Less than a month after the long pond studio sessions aired last year, Taylor surprised-released folklore‘s sister album, evermore.
Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner has shared more about the scary health issue that necessitated emergency heart surgery late last month.
In a statement posted to the band’s website, Faulkner explains that he felt something was off during Priest’s performance of “Painkiller” during their set at September’s Louder than Life festival.
“As I watch footage from the Louder than Life Festival in Kentucky, I can see in my face the confusion and anguish I was feeling whilst playing ‘Painkiller’ as my aorta ruptured and started to spill blood into my chest cavity,” Faulkner writes. “I was having what my doctor called an aortic aneurysm and complete aortic dissection.”
Indeed, if you look at fan-shot footage of the performance, it does appear that Faulkner grabs his chest towards the end of the song.
Faulkner was immediately rushed to the local Rudd Heart & Lung Center — which, luckily, was only four miles away — where he underwent over 10 hours of open heart surgery.
“It could have all ended so differently,” Faulkner muses. “We only had an hours set that night due to Metallica‘s performance after us — and it does cross my mind if it was a full set, would I have played until total collapse…? If it hadn’t happened in such a high adrenaline situation would my body have been able to keep going long enough to reach the hospital…?”
“We can always drive ourselves crazy with these things but I’m still alive thankfully,” he adds.
Faulkner is now on the road to recovery, and notes that several parts of his chest were “replaced with mechanical components.”
“I’m literally made of metal now,” he says.
Due to Faulkner’s surgery, Judas Priest postponed the remainder of their 2021 U.S. tour.
The film, a companion piece to the singer’s latest album of the same name, recently had a sold-out limited theatrical run in IMAX theaters. It features the Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross-produced album as its soundtrack and follows the story of the young and pregnant Queen Lila, played by Halsey.
Directed by Colin Tilley and written and produced by Halsey, the film is described as an “evocative, horror-tinged fairytale” that “explores the labyrinth of sexuality and birth.”
If I Can’t Have Love, I Want Power hits HBO Max on October 7.
Shakira says she has no regrets about performing at the 2020 Super Bowl halftime show with Jennifer Lopez, which was mired in controversy after several high-profile acts declined the opportunity to perform.
Rihanna, Cardi B and others refused to perform at the Super Bowl, saying they stood in solidarity with former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, who claims the NFL blacklisted him because he knelt during the national anthem in protest of police brutality.
But Shakira told Cosmopolitan that she and her halftime show partner saw the opportunity in performing on one of the nation’s biggest stages.
“J.Lo, as a Latina born in the U.S., and me, as a Latin American woman in the U.S., had a huge responsibility and opportunity to represent all different minorities through our performance,” she said. “In my case, I also wanted to pay homage to my Middle Eastern culture. I feel that we did it.”
The “Hips Don’t Lie” singer continued, “I really thought it was a great opportunity to make a strong statement about what an important part of the American fabric the Latino community is.”
“There was a lot of work behind it, a lot of stress,” Shakira admitted, adding, “But it was one of the highlights of my career.”
Lopez previously defended her decision to perform at the Super Bowl when speaking to Variety.
“I think it’s important in this day and age for two Latin women to be standing on that stage — when Latinos are being treated a certain way in this country, or looked at a certain way — to show that we have a really specific and beautiful culture and worth and value, and we bring something to this country that’s necessary,” Lopez said, noting that their performance was “a celebration.”
Christopher Polk/NBC/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images
We are officially one step closer to hearing The Weeknd‘s new album. The “Blinding Lights” singer confirmed that he’s finished recording his fifth studio album, which might be called The Dawn Is Coming.
Speaking on his Apple Music 1 show Memento Mori, the singer teased, “I hope you had a great summer. Some exciting features coming out in the fall — before the album drops.”
In the one-and-a-half-minute clip, the Canadian star explained, “A lot has been going down, a lot of moving pieces.”
Some of those “moving pieces” include “shooting videos” and “working on pre-productions,” among other things — like moving into a new house and “taking time to myself so I don’t completely lose my mind.”
However, the biggest reveal came at the end of his update, with the singer confirming, “Some Dawn updates — album is complete. Only thing that’s missing is a couple of characters who are key to the narrative.”
Those characters include “some people that are near and dear to me, some people who inspired my life as a child, and some who inspire me now.”
While not much else was said about the forthcoming album — like a release date — the singer promised that fans won’t be waiting in the dark for too long because he has “more to come in the following months.”
The Weeknd most recent album, After Hours, came out in March 2020, and spun off the smash hits “Save Your Tears,” “Heartless,” “In Your Eyes,” and “Blinding Lights.”
In support of his new album, The Weeknd released the promotional track “Take My Breath” on August 6.
