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Almighty So 2
At just 28, Chief Keef has churned out dozens of projects in nearly as many different styles. His influence can be felt from rap’s top rung like Playboi Carti and Lil Uzi Vert to the toasted digital landscapes of new-age acolytes like Xaviersobased and Devstacks. He’s one of the pioneers of the Chicago drill sound, and while there have been peaks and valleys—being a volume shooter often comes at the expense of a spotless track record—he’s never lost the thrilling “Lex Luger and Brick Squad dipped in the Chicago River” quality he’s been honing since the “Faneto” days. Even when he’d miss, the boldness of his experiments kept heads intrigued.
I’m totally fine with it 👍 don’t give a fuck anymore 👍
While Arab Strap always seemed out of step with overground indie-rock trends during their Y2k-era initial run, the Scottish duo’s second act couldn’t have been more perfectly timed—and not just because the current UK indie landscape is over-populated with melody-averse monologists sharing vivid slice-of-life vignettes with a painterly touch. Their first album in 16 years, As Days Get Dark, arrived in early 2021 in the thick of the pandemic, and its thematic concerns—from social media addiction to the porn habits that fill the void in sexless relationships—perfectly aligned with a moment when much of our communication became mediated through screens, and the chasm between virtual connectivity and IRL isolation was widening at a perilous pace. For a hyper-analytical songwriter like Aidan Moffat, all the subsequent cultural turmoil that COVID helped spawn is the gift that keeps on giving.
Aminé Launching New Best Day Ever Festival in Portland
Portland rapper Aminé has announced a new two-day music festival in his Oregon hometown. The Best Day Ever takes place at the city’s Edgefield Lawn on Saturday, August 10, and Sunday, August 11. Aminé will perform at the festival, as will Kaytranada, BadBadNotGood, Concrete Boys rapper Karrahbooo, Ravyn Lenae, Toro y Moi, Portland’s 3Way Heff, and Aminé’s touring DJ, MadisonLST. See the festival’s poster below.
Kendrick Lamar’s Drake Diss “Not Like Us” Debuts at No. 1 on Billboard Hot 100
For the second time in 2024, Kendrick Lamar has a No. 1 song. After “Like That,” his We Don’t Trust You collaboration with Future and Metro Boomin, summited the Billboard Hot 100 in April, Lamar’s new song “Not Like Us” is now the top track in the United States, Billboard reports. “Not Like Us” is Lamar’s fourth No. 1 song, following “Like That,” 2017’s “Humble.” and 2015’s “Bad Blood.”
Nilüfer Yanya Announces Fall 2024 Tour Dates
Hot on the heels of her new song, “Like I Say (I Runaway),” Nilüfer Yanya has announced a bunch of tour dates for the autumn. Yanya begins her tour in late September in Philadelphia. She’ll stay in North America until late October. The following month, she begins shows in Europe. See Yanya’s tour dates below.
Chief Keef, Jadasea, and More: This Week’s Pitchfork Selects Playlist
The staff of Pitchfork listens to a lot of new music. A lot of it. On any given day our writers, editors, and contributors go through an imposing number of new releases, giving recommendations to each other and discovering new favorites along the way. Each Monday, with our Pitchfork Selects playlist, we’re sharing what our writers are playing obsessively and highlighting some of the Pitchfork staff’s favorite new music. The playlist is a grab-bag of tracks: Its only guiding principle is that these are the songs you’d gladly send to a friend.
Childish Gambino Announces Massive 2024 Tour
Childish Gambino has announced a tour of North America, Europe, and Australasia, billed as the New World Tour. Donald Glover will take Amaarae and Willow along for select dates. The stint marks his first tour since 2019, and follows the release last night of Atavista, which he’s called “the finished version” of his 2020 record, 3.15.20. Find the tour dates below.
Childish Gambino Re-Releases 3.15.20 as New Album Atavista: Listen
Donald Glover has shared a Childish Gambino album that he described as “the finished version of ‘3.15.20’, the album i put out 4 years ago.” It’s called Atavista and it’s out now. The 11-track record includes the new song “Little Foot Big Foot,” featuring Young Nudy, which also comes with a black-and-white music video directed by Glover’s longtime collaborator Hiro Murai, starring Quinta Brunson, Monyett Crump, Rob Bynes, and others. Check it out below. Head here to see Childish Gambino’s upcoming tour dates.
Death Jokes
Amen Dunes’ music is persuasive, but it’s not always clear what it’s trying to persuade you of. Since the release of his confrontationally noisy debut album, DIA, 15 years ago, Damon McMahon has continually refined the remit of his sound—shaving away the haze, juicing the elements drawn from pop and classic rock—but kept the narratives relatively oblique. Listening to his last album, 2018’s Freedom, felt a little like trying to read a Great American Novel by holding it up to a reflecting pool: ideas about loss and familial ties cut through, even if entire sentences were tough to string together. It was a personal record, but rarely a clarifying one; you got the sense that McMahon would rather keep his lyrics obscure than boil down his ideas into something digestible.
I Am Toward You
For nearly 15 years, How to Dress Well has resisted simple pleasures. On Love Remains, Tom Krell’s 2010 breakthrough under the alias, he drowned R&B melodies in dense production, obscuring straightforward sounds with reverb, distortion, and disjointed lyrics about death and desire. Even at his most accessible, Krell’s approach to pop music has been outré. His two best albums, 2012’s Total Loss and 2014’s “What Is This Heart?”, twisted songs that Whitney Houston could’ve sung into skittery, ethereal gems, like imaginary Top 40 hits encountered in a dream. A skilled deconstructionist, he dismantles familiar forms and pop archetypes, repurposes their core parts, and uncovers labyrinths buried beneath.
Romanticism
Time comes for us all, but Hana Vu is taking it harder than most. “There’s no song in my heart like I thought there was when I was young,” she wallows on the first song of her second album, Romanticism. It’s the kind of lament that a more restrained songwriter might make with melancholic resignation, but Vu doesn’t do quiet emotions: She bellows the line as if she’s been mortally wounded or awoken to find the sun stricken from the sky. She’s not just getting older—the very fabric of her being is slipping through her fingers, and she’s wrecked.
Shakira’s New Tax Probe Shelved by Spanish Court at Prosecutors’ Recommendation
A recent, second tax probe into an alleged case of tax fraud by Shakira—not to be confused with the Colombian singer’s tax fraud trial over 14.5 million euros in taxes owed between 2012 and 2014, which reached a deal in November 2023—has been shelved after recommendations by prosecutors, reports The Associated Press. Shakira was under investigation for the alleged evasion of 6.7 million euros (approximately $7.2 million) in taxes on her 2018 income through an offshore company. She denied wrongdoing.
Watch Vampire Weekend Play “Gen-X Cops” and “Capricorn” on SNL
Vampire Weekend were the musical guest on last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, hosted by Maya Rudolph. It was the first time the indie-rock band has played the NBC show in 11 years and its fourth time overall. Joined by producer Ariel Rechtshaid on guitar, Vampire Weekend broke out a piano solo during “Gen-X Cops” and played “Capricorn” with some help from a string section, both of which appear on their latest album, Only God Was Above Us. Rudolph also revived her sketch parodying Beyoncé on Hot Ones. Watch the band’s performances, that sketch, and their SNL promo video together with Kenan Thompson, below.
Long Season
The prospect of making an album with only one gargantuan song was one of those tossed-off comments that seemed like a joke. But when Shinji Sato put forth the idea, he was following a trajectory that defined his life: dream big, and see it through to completion. Long Season, the 1996 magnum opus of Japanese rock band Fishmans, was a radical proposition: take an existing track—the group’s six-minute single “Season”—and turn it into a dreamlike suite that elevates their gentle psych-pop to symphonic proportions. “When we made [Something in the Air], I hated having each song separated from the next,” Sato said of their previous full-length. “Why not just make it one song?”
Pitchfork’s Guide to Primavera Sound Barcelona 2024
Staged amid the crown jewels of European architecture and culture, Primavera Sound routinely adds a monster festival lineup to the long list of reasons to throw it all in for a week in Barcelona. Here, we highlight some hidden treasures to be found beneath headliners Pulp, SZA, and Lana Del Rey, including restorative jazz, apocalyptic folk, and dystopian club bacchanals. Plus, we pay tribute to the festival’s de facto house band, Shellac, who were scheduled to return before the death of frontman Steve Albini.
I Saw the TV Glow (Original Soundtrack)
Art and youth form unshakeable bonds in I Saw the TV Glow, director Jane Schoenbrun’s melancholy and claustrophobic document of suburban outsiderdom. Schoenbrun has spoken in interviews about how, as a child, they opted to process their identity through fiction rather than “actually look in the mirror and figure out who I was.” With I Saw the TV Glow, they put a surreal spin on the way beloved cultural objects give us an outlet for hard-to-express feelings. At the heart of the film—the director’s first since their acclaimed loner internet horror We’re All Going to the World’s Fair—are two teenage characters obsessed with the mysteries and mythos of The Pink Opaque, a weekly half-hour monster-of-the-week TV show in the campily terrifying vein of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or The X-Files. Watching the show, the characters find an outlet for their feelings of isolation—and as the borders between their physical existence and the world of The Pink Opaque melt, they eventually come to wonder if their memories of the series might be more real than reality.
Tems Announces 2024 Tour and New Album Release Date
Last month, Tems announced the title of her debut album, Born in the Wild. She’s now revealed that the full-length is out June 7 (via RCA/Since ’93). Find a trailer for the LP below. Along with the album news, Tems has announced her Born in the Wild World...
Ice Spice Shares Video for New Song “Gimmie a Light”: Watch
Ice Spice has shared the music video for the new song “Gimmie a Light.” The track, produced by close collaborator RiotUSA, samples Sean Paul’s early 2000s Dutty Rock hit “Gimme the Light.” Find the new video below. “Gimmie a Light,” according to a press release,...
The Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson Will Enter Conservatorship, Judge Rules
A judge has granted permission for Brian Wilson’s family to place the Beach Boys star in a conservatorship, The Associated Press reports. The decision follows a filing, in February, by Wilson’s daughters, which cited a “major neurocognitive disorder” as the reason for their proposal; doctors confirmed in court that he is taking medication for dementia.
Menomena Are Just as Surprised by Their Return as You Are
When all three members of Menomena join me over Zoom from their respective homes—keyboardist-guitarist Brent Knopf and bassist-saxophonist Justin Harris in Portland, Oregon, drummer Danny Seim in, as fate would have it, Portland, Kentucky—everyone is all smiles, cracking jokes and oozing warmth. It’d be an understatement to call the sight uplifting. After Menomena released four inspired, unpredictable art-rock albums in the 2000s, Knopf left the band in January 2011 to pursue other projects. Something was a little off, a working friendship soured, but the two-piece Menomena still released another album, 2012’s Moms, and ended the ensuing tour with a hometown show in 2014. Then things went quiet.
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