The Rubicon music festival was originally scheduled to take place in the Slovakian city of Bratislava next weekend, but this week organizers announced that the whole event had been scrapped. The news follows a public outcry about the festival’s planned headliner, Kanye West.
Brian Baker is in a million Columbus bands including the “avant-garage” act DANA, whose new album Clean Living is very much worth your time. Among Baker’s many projects is a solo endeavor called Brain Damage in which he steers his usual punk and indie stylings in a slightly more synth-heavy direction. A new Brian Damage tape called All Hell Broke Loose is coming in August, and Baker is previewing this week with lead single “Futuro House.” It’s a richly layered and highly catchy lo-fi pop song with plenty of guitars to go along with those keyboards. Check it out below, and stick around for the DANA album too.
Drake is spending the weekend headlining the Wireless Festival at London’s Finsbury Park, promising three entirely different sets over three nights. Things kicked off Friday with an R&B-focused set that concluded with special guest Lauryn Hill, fresh off her 3 a.m. Essence Festival performance; she sang “Ex-Factor” before Drake’s performance of the “Ex-Factor”-sampling “Nice For What.” He also flew around the crowd while Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” played. There were also appearances from PARTYNEXTDOOR (his longtime collaborator, with whom he released the album $OME $EXY $ONGS 4 U this year), Bryson Tiller, GIVĒON, Mario, and Bobby V.
In May Field Music performed their first show as a Doors tribute band. After some backlash from fans, the British art-rock duo shared a statement as to what inspired the new project called the Fire Doors.
Yesterday JoJo Siwa — who recently pivoted from being a self-proclaimed queer icon to a trad girlfriend to her Big Brother (UK) costar Chris Hughes — released a cover of Kim Carnes’ 1981 hit “Bette Davis Eyes.” Now the legendary singer-songwriter is seemingly throwing shade.
Jeff Lynne’s ELO have been on The Over And Out Tour since last year. The run got extended with a few more UK dates to happen this month, but it hasn’t been going as planned.
Drake recently returned with “What Did I Miss?,” a track that reflected frankly on his beef with Kendrick Lamar. Last night the rapper performed at the Wireless Festival in the UK and brought out Lauryn Hill.
I do not say this lightly, but I think we may have a song of the summer contender. Today, the German-South African artist Tyla, who has raised awareness to the glory of amapiano, dropped a new single called “Is It.” And, oh man, is it a summer bop.
It’s been a busy year for Kid Cudi. Back in May he testified against Sean “Diddy” Combs in the music mogul’s sex trafficking and racketeering case, with Cudi confirming that his car exploded in his driveway in 2012 shortly after Combs threatened to blow it up. Maybe we’ll hear more about that in Cudi’s recently-announced memoir, which is coming out next month. But on a much lighter note, Cudi also got married a couple of weeks ago, and today he’s announced a new album called Free that’ll be out next month too.