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It’s been 81 years since iconic Americana singer Woody Guthrie captured hearts with his indelible 1940 album Dust Bowl Ballads. To commemorate the famed musician, several contemporary artists breath new life into his classics with upcoming compilation album Home In This World: Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads. Waxahatchee shares her contribution to the LP today with her version of Guthrie’s “Talking Dust Bowl Blues.”

The Home In This World effort was endorsed by the Woody Guthrie Estate Curated and, along with Waxahatchee, includes a lineup of artists like Lee Ann Womack, John Paul White, and Colter Wall. The LP will be released in partnership with Kiss The Ground, a non-profit organization on a mission to “awaken people to the possibilities of regenerative agriculture and inspire participation in this movement through media, communications, education, immersive programming, and advocacy.”

The compilation project was curated by Grammy Award-winning music supervisor and producer Randall Poster, who feels Guthrie’s album is still relevant today:

“Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads is as relevant as ever. While profiteers exploit our natural resources, there is a growing sensitivity to the harsh farming practices that put our well-being at risk and a concerted movement toward regenerative agriculture that can reinvigorate the soil and push back on climate change. I asked some of my favorite artists to help render these songs, hoping that this collection will reinforce the enduring power and prescience of Guthrie’s music and reveal the power of song. I tried to think of these songs as the soundtrack to a movie, building a narrative, a story where the world wakes up to the climate threats and unite to combat it successfully. It’s a great movie.”

Listen to “Talking Dust Bowl Blues” above and find the Home In This World: Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads cover art and tracklist below.

1. “Dust Bowl Blues” — Shovels & Rope
2. “I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore” — Lost Dog Street Band
3. “Blowin’ Down This Road” — Watkins Family Hour
4. “Pretty Boy Floyd” — John Paul White
5. “Dusty Old Dust” — Lee Ann Womack
6. “Do Re Mi” — Colter Wall
7. “Talking Dust Bowl Blues” — Waxahatchee
8. “Tom Joad Part 1” — Chris Thile
9. “Tom Joad Part 2” — Lillie Mae
10. “The Great Dust Storm” — The Felice Brothers
11. “Dust Cain’t Kill Me” — The Secret Sisters
12. “Dust Bowl Refugee” — Swamp Dogg
13. “Dust Pneumonia Blues” — Mark Lanegan
14. “Vigilante Man” — Parker Millsap

Home In This World: Woody Guthrie’s Dust Bowl Ballads is out 9/10 via Elektra. Pre-order it here.

LAS VEGAS – Talen Horton-Tucker is in a pretty good mood. Sure, that’s probably the default setting for the Los Angeles Lakers youngster this summer on the heels of his putting pen to paper on a three-year contract extension worth around $32 million, but Horton-Tucker had a smile seemingly glued to his face as he met with basketball fans at the Las Vegas Summer League.

A Summer League alumnus in his own right — Horton-Tucker suited up for the Lakers in Las Vegas in 2019, several weeks after he was taken in the second round of the Draft — the 20-year-old wing calls it “great” to be able to sit down and watch basketball as a fan for the first time in a minute. Of course, his current situation isn’t all that bad, either. Horton-Tucker’s aforementioned big payday came as the Lakers have an eye on reloading ahead of a push for a championship next season, with the team making clear that he is an important part of whatever plans they have over the next three years.

He does exist at an interesting intersection: Teams like the Lakers want to win and win right away. At the same time, Horton-Tucker is so young, so early in his development as a basketball player that, conventional wisdom says, the absolute best thing for him is to play, make mistakes, and use them as learning opportunities.

While these are not always viewed as compatible, the good news for Horton-Tucker is he believes he is given the opportunity to do the latter.

“I feel like I’m given the opportunity to play through my mistakes,” he tells Dime. “And also, they’re also hard on me. I feel like they can see how good I can be, I feel like they want to push me to try and reach that level, so anything that they say, I’m always open to listen to it.”

A young player with a funky game and tools to help him make an impact on either end of the floor, Horton-Tucker says he’s in the midst of a constant conversations with the coaching staff about his role in Los Angeles. His two main focuses this offseason, on-ball defense and shooting, are things that generally lead to minutes aplenty for guys on LeBron James-led teams. But he’s not just boxed into that sort of role.

“Talking to the staff, we always have the conversation, me being able to do a lot of things on the floor,” Horton-Tucker says. “I try to use my tools to my advantage — my length defensively, then my creativity offensively, being able to make plays, not just for myself, but for others. Being able to improve my game the whole year is going to be important for me.”

An important element to making those sorts of improvements on the fly, Horton-Tucker believes, is the ability to keep a positive mind in the face of everything. Namely, he views any growth he experiences as part of these mistakes as a way to lay a foundation that should stick with him over his next decade-plus as a professional basketball player.

“I take it all on,” he says about being a young player in L.A.’s pressure-packed environment. “I feel like I’d rather have that in my career now than have it later, I feel like it prepares me for later on in my career.”

Los Angeles is a place where he can learn from the best. Despite all the turnover that has happened on the team’s roster during his two years, stalwarts like James and Anthony Davis give him the chance to learn from two of the best players on earth. A laundry list of veterans — Marc Gasol, Dwight Howard, Danny Green, Rajon Rondo, etc. — have been teammates of his at one point or another.

His first practice was as an observer because the start to his rookie year was delayed by a stress reaction in his foot (he does admit that it still “excited like the first day at school”), but he remembers the feeling of belonging out there when he suited up for the team for the first time in a game. From that very first moment to now, one bit of advice he’s received from all of these veterans has resonated.

“Pretty much all the guys tell me to take it all in, and try to have fun with it,” Horton-Tucker says. “Because when you’re not having fun, there’s no reason to do it anymore.”

Over the past couple days, there have been rumors of a third listening event for Kanye West’s upcoming album Donda, as somebody who claimed to work security for Chicago’s Soldier Field claimed the venue had a “major concert event” scheduled for August 26. It turns out those rumors were actually true: Today, West himself confirmed on Instagram that a Donda event will indeed by happening at the Chicago stadium on the 26th. The show is set to being at 9 p.m. CT, with tickets going on sale on August 20 at noon CT.

This news comes less than 24 hours after West shared an image on Instagram, of what appears to be a dove seen through a teal-tinted window. It’s not clear if the image was meant to tease anything related to Donda.

The idea behind these listening events was that Donda would be made available on streaming services shortly after them, but based on the fact that we’re coming up on the third Donda event, this has yet to be the case. Apple Music currently lists the expected release date for Donda as August 27, the day after the event. At this point, though, given that West has missed so many announced or expected release dates for Donda, any information of that sort should be taken with a grain of salt.

Now that’s she officially left The View, Meghan McCain is free to pursue more personal projects that are near and dear to heart. Namely, letting everyone know that she’s daughter of the late U.S. Senator John McCain in a new memoir/audiobook that is “imbued with an unmistakable Maverick spirit” just like her dad, John McCain. Has she mentioned him before?

Arriving exclusively on Audible, Bad Republican will (via a press release) invite listeners “inside the unwavering heart and ferocious mind of a young conservative woman who refuses to back down.” As well as addressing her early life, the audiobook will also reportedly tackle McCain’s time on The View where she was the constant target of ridicule thanks to her almost daily shouting matches with co-hosts Whoopi Goldberg and Joy Behar.

Here’s the official synopsis:

In the aptly titled Bad Republican, McCain tells of growing up the daughter of an American icon and of the final moments she spent by her father’s side; of her (mis)adventures on the New York dating scene before meeting her now-husband, Ben; of her views on cancel culture, internet trolls and life backstage as the sole Republican on America’s most-watched daytime talk show — and why she decided to leave; of the awkward phone call she received from Donald and Melania and where she thinks the Republican Party, and the country, goes from here; and of why a miscarriage and the birth of her daughter, Liberty, have left her so fired up about women’s rights.

Bad Republican premieres October 21 on Audible.

With the internet hyper-accelerating the average artist’s life cycle and “democratizing” the already overcrowded market to the point of a constant blur of white noise, it can get a little tricky for rising stars to separate themselves from the pack. Where in the past, there was a long lead time of artist development before artists were thrown into the deep end to sink or swim, nowadays, your make-or-break moment as a potential star can come just weeks after your initial breakthrough on the back of a viral hit. For the modern generation of rising rap stars, that moment is often their first festival performance, which has come to be the ultimate proving ground separating the future kings and queens from the one-hit-wonders.

In fact, the festival performance — and the fact that there are so many festivals that cater to hip-hop, not to mention so many facets of it — is both a gift and a curse. Rather than plugging away for months, years — heck, decades — at a rap career, refining your performance skills in half-empty dive bars and 300-cap theaters, you can play for many times that number at even the smallest stages at festivals like Rolling Loud or Day N Vegas, even in the least desirable time slots, getting the kind of exposure that it used to take a whole regional tour to acquire. Now that you’ve got a viral hit, this is your chance to capitalize on the curiosity of fans at your stage and prove you have enough material to fill a solo set and pitch your real product: Your personality, your energy, and your unique story.

However, this can be a double-edged sword. While a standout set can earn you fans for life — or at least, for the duration of the ride home from the festival venue — a lackluster one can torpedo any forward momentum you’ve managed to earn for yourself. While streaming numbers can be faked and industry relationships can be leveraged to “get on,” you can’t fake a live reaction. This is why so many of the artists that draw so much attention early in their careers can seemingly fade over time. Plus, bad sets tend to stack up on one another; the first bad set leads to skepticism for the next, and so on, meaning each new performance can bring back diminishing returns. Also, if fans don’t see your name moving up the lineup and getting bigger, they can assume it’s because you have very little to offer with your live show.

We’ve seen these principles in practice over and over again but for the most extreme example, we can look at someone like DaBaby, whose raucous festival performances played a huge part in his building such a dedicated fanbase so quickly. Even before he blew up in 2019 with “Walker Texas Ranger,” when he was still going by Baby Jesus (yikes), Jonathan Kirk was an expert at drawing attention, walking around festivals in a huge diaper, and delivering energetic performances that endeared him to fans early in his career. When he finally got that name thing sorted out, it seemed like he blew up right away, right? None of that success would have been possible had he not positioned himself for it with his stellar performances early on.

DaBaby also helped make the downsides to a bad performance more clear this year, ironically at Rolling Loud, the hip-hop-centric festival of which he’d become a fixture over the past two years. Thanks to livestreams of festivals, performances both good and bad can be broadcast to even more viewers at a time, making the stakes more precarious than ever. Even as DaBaby delivered his usual action-packed set, his between-song call-to-action to fans came across as less-than-enlightened and has drawn plenty of complaints of insensitivity and hate, marring his public reputation seemingly overnight (his repeated doubling down didn’t help). Bringing out Tory Lanez as a publicity stunt further disrupted any positive perceptions his performance may have picked up, sparking the viral moment he wanted, but bringing the opposite response he likely expected.

Kirk’s woes, though, are extreme. Some other examples might be the way newer rappers like Polo G, JID, or Guapdad 4000 were able to convert new fans after a festival season, growing their followings to the point of intense fervor. I personally watched Kyle unexpectedly pull in hundreds of curious observers on the big stage at Coachella a couple of years ago, overhearing conversations to the effect of “Who’s that?” “I don’t know but I like him!” Aminé packed out a tent at that same Coachella, the spillover crowd sparking increased interest from passerby and growing it by the second. By the same token, at the most recent Rolling Loud, breakout sensation Coi Leray mystified attendees who realized they didn’t know any of her catalog past “No More Parties,” but seemed to be engaged by her enthusiastic performance, even if they didn’t quite show it on the livestream.

Even the choice of the festival to perform at makes a huge difference for a rising artist. A Camp Flog Gnaw set can attract one sort of fans (Tyler fans are hella loyal) while something like Soundset can benefit a more heady-sounding rapper. Back in the day, I knew if an artist was on Paid Dues or Rock The Bells, they were my kind of artist — and that was where I saw groups like TDE and Slaughterhouse make their bones. Since then, a good festival show has only become more important to any artist’s strategy. It’s a shame so many are tossed into that fire without getting the practice they need to deliver an impressive set. In the future, maybe artists, their labels, and their managers will realize that importance and dedicate more resources to ensuring they are ready to take on that challenge.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

After two weeks of basketball that began in California and Utah, the NBA’s Summer League slate wrapped up on Tuesday in Las Vegas. Contrary to past years, there was a full slate of games on the final day and the league ran through the tape as a result. While there are many angles by which to attack the consumption of Summer League action, a lot of attention is paid to the rookie class, and that is even more true when discussing the Lottery picks.

To that end, it is time to take stock of the 14 players selected in the 2021 Lottery.

Cade Cunningham

It would be fair to say that Cunningham wasn’t utterly dominant in Las Vegas, but he certainly didn’t take much off the table. The No. 1 pick averaged 18.7 points and 5.7 rebounds per game across three appearances, and Cunningham converted a blistering 50 percent of his 8.7 three-point attempts per game. This wasn’t the friendliest style of play for Cunningham, who thrives on team defense and isn’t a hyper-athlete, but he did more than enough to impress before the Pistons shut him down for the final two games.

Jalen Green

A hamstring issue forced Green into an early exit from Vegas, but he was tremendous during his three-game performance. Green showed his full arsenal of offensive creation, and he was difficult to stop in a Summer League setting. The only time he was at all flummoxed was against the Pistons, who blitzed him, and Green looked the part of a top-tier prospect. He averaged 20.3 points per game, shot 51 percent from the floor, and left quite an impression.

Evan Mobley

Vegas was a mixed bag for Mobley, who also played only three games. He posted solid counting stats (11.3 points, 7.7 rebounds) but shot just 35 percent from the floor and 12.5 percent from three-point range. Mobley did make some considerable flash plays defensively, though, and it has to be noted that Cleveland inexplicably arrived in the desert without a single point guard to run their offense — Isaac Okoro, who is decidedly not a point guard, was the team’s primary initiator. This was never going to be the best showcase for Mobley, all things considered, but it wasn’t a disaster by any means.

Scottie Barnes

Barnes didn’t answer his biggest question in Vegas, making 27 percent of his threes on modest volume. However, he checked a lot of boxes while averaging 15.5 points, 6.8 rebounds, 3.2 assists, two blocks, and one steal per game. He was impressive defensively, competing at a sky-high level and flashing his communication and recovery tools, and Barnes made the plays that came to him on the offensive end. It would’ve been unrealistic to expect much more than he put on film.

Jalen Suggs

The first of two top picks for Orlando, Suggs looked good before suffering a sprained thumb. That injury kept him out of the final two games, but Suggs averaged 15.3 points and 6.3 rebounds per game while getting to the rim and operating in impressive fashion on both ends. His competitiveness shined in Vegas and he made enough highlight plays to turn heads.

Josh Giddey

Giddey hurt his ankle almost immediately during the Thunder’s opening game and played five minutes during Summer League. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get to see more of him, as Giddey’s passing and ability to control a game would have been fun to watch in this setting.

Jonathan Kuminga

Kuminga was extremely impressive in Summer League. He scored 18 points in his only appearance in California, then averaged 17.2 points, 6.2 rebounds, and 1.5 steals in four games in Vegas. The knock on Kuminga was with his efficiency, as he shot only 37.3 percent from the floor, but the highlight plays were there. Beyond that, he played with physicality and seemed to be quite comfortable. He remains quite raw, but Kuminga’s tools stand out in a big way.

Franz Wagner

Like Mobley, Wagner’s talents were never going to rise to the surface in Las Vegas. With that said, he still struggled. He shot 15 percent from three-point range, averaged only eight points per game and struggled to make an offensive impact. His calling card of team defense doesn’t translate to Summer League, so that isn’t a real concern, but questions about his offensive appeal in the early going won’t be answered by what he was able to do in his first professional action.

Davion Mitchell

Mitchell looked good in the California Classic, averaging 16 points per game, and that carried over to Vegas as a key part of the title-winning squad from Sacramento. His on-ball defense drew the usual rave reviews, and the intensity in which he pressures opposing ball-handlers is truly fun to watch. Offensively, his three-point shooting was strong, albeit on modest volume, but his package inside the arc wasn’t quite as impressive and his mysterious free throw issues persisted. Overall, Mitchell was still an effective player and he showed the skills that made him a Lottery pick.

Ziaire Williams

The question marks are still question marks. Williams shot 38 percent from the floor and 20 percent from three in Vegas, and he wasn’t able to do much beyond pull-up jumpers. Granted, he does have the pedigree and potential to make those shots consistently, but when it wasn’t working, there wasn’t a natural counter for Williams. The Grizzlies definitely know they are making a future bet, though, and the raw tools are scintillating.

James Bouknight

Vegas was basically what was expected for Bouknight. He scored at a high level (16.8 points per game) on solid efficiency, and he had 28 percent usage. He didn’t shoot it incredibly well the entire trip, but his three-point shooting (37.5 percent) exceeded his college baseline. Defensively, it was a bit of an adventure, but the Hornets have to feel okay with that what they saw, especially through the lens of what they projected in selecting Bouknight.

Joshua Primo

Because he played two games in Utah before coming to Vegas, Primo only saw the court twice at the league’s marquee summer showcase. Primo’s efficiency (33 percent shooting in Vegas and 36 percent overall) left a lot to be desired, but that might overstate how much he actually struggled. He’s extremely young, which is worth noting, and Primo was asked to do a lot more in his early days with the Spurs than he was in college. You have to look beyond the inefficiency, but there were some encouraging signs for a player who is considered a long-term project.

Chris Duarte

Duarte was very good in Las Vegas. He shot 48.3 percent from three-point range on the way to 18.2 points per game, and Duarte was well-rounded with four rebounds and 3.8 assists per contest. Given that he’s 24 years old, it wasn’t a shock to see Duarte playing an under control style that seemed to display confidence. However, it would’ve been more concerning if he struggled, and he definitely did not.

Moses Moody

The Warriors have to feel pretty good right now. Granted, it is wise to avoid overreacting to Summer League, but both Kuminga and Moody looked the part. Moody is actually a player that might translate better to the structure of the regular season, particularly on defense and with his off-ball movement. Still, he averaged 16 points per game on reasonable efficiency. Without knowing that he fell to No. 14 overall, Moody would’ve had the feel of a selection in the top half of the Lottery.

Chet Hanks, the son of Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, has certainly had his fair share of viral moments this past year. Between ranting about the COVID vaccine, declaring this summer as “White Boy Summer,” and sliding into Adele’s DMs, the oftentimes cringe-worthy and controversial celebrity has surprising still found the time to work on his music (yes, he’s also a rapper). His work has certainly paid off as Soulja Boy just named Hanks the newest addition to his SODMG Records label.

Soulja and Hanks broke the news in a joint video posted to Instagram. Soulja said Hanks is the first rapper signed to SODMG this year, and they apparently have big plans. “It’s going down,” Soulja Boy said in the announcement. “We about to make history.”

Of course, Hanks isn’t alone when it comes to viral moments this year. His now-business partner Soulja has also been making headlines recently. Just last week, the rapper went viral when someone on Instagram shared a video accusing him of buying fake jewelry at the mall. Soulja wasn’t happy about the accusations, so he invited the user to join him on Instagram Live. The conversation quickly became heated, with Soulja continuously insisting the jewelry was genuine. “That mothaf*cka $35,000. The Rollie $30,000. Everything over there real,” Soulja said. “They sell real ice in the mall, clout chasin’ ass p*ssy ass.”

There’s an age-old adage in the customer service world: Underpromise, overdeliver. Unfortunately, it seems that T-Pain hadn’t heard of that one before agreeing to work with some of the artists whose Instagram DMs went unanswered in the time he didn’t realize they were being filed away to the “requests” folder. The inimitable hook master posted a list of the upcoming features he’s got in the works to Twitter, and it’s safe to say his workload may have gotten a little out of hand.

Included in the list are some of Pain’s fellow producers like DJ Carnage and Murda Beats, rising stars like Erica Banks and Yung Bleu, longtime veterans Big Tigga and Tech N9ne, and even his feature-killer heir apparent, Ty Dolla Sign. Explaining why it might be taking him a little longer to get through his to-do list, he wrote, “I wanna start this thread off by saying I’m definitely not complaining about this but I don’t think we know what kind of pressure we put on others. This isn’t for the fans.”

He continued in the thread, “I literally can’t keep up with the ppl that aren’t on this list that hit me every day to add work to my crazy workload. This is the list of features I actually HAVENT done yet that I’ve gotten since the whole ‘situation’ a while back and I’ve promised to deliver. This is just features that I actually WANT to do. I’ve talked to these ppl personally and accepted the job. If you ask me for a feature at this point, just know that this list is in the order that the requests were received so there’s no way to get to the top of the list.”

Finally, he made note of the personal sacrifice he’s made to keep up with his promise to make up for lost time: “I Love y’all but Gaaaaaaaahdaaaaaaamn I’ve pushed my own album back 3 times because I’m making sure everybody else is good. I’m gettin to it I swear.” He also pointed out that he cares about quality over quantity and won’t just “blurt out random words” like other, derivative artists he recently delivered a derisive rant about. After taking on such a monumental challenge, we can only hope that Pain finds a work balance that lets him get enough rest, put out his own projects, and learn to take on new projects one at a time.

Check out the full thread below.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Back in May, the Fox and Friends co-hosts (Steve Doocy, Ainsley Earhardt, and Brian Kilmeade) all made sure to let their audience know (while apparently distancing themselves from Tucker Carlson) that they’d all been vaccinated against COVID-19. Since that day, however, Kilmeade’s been rather grumbly about the idea of virus-related mandates, and that’s not resting well with people who recognize how dangerous it is to air misinformation on a cable news network.

On Wednesday morning, Earhardt actually led the charge on that end. She noted how Texas Governor Greg Abbott tested positive, which led to her (inaccurate) assertion that heading to the hospital to take Regeneron after infection is “basically still getting vaccinated.” Following that heaping helping of misinformation, Kilmeade interjected (while complaining, “You can’t go to anything unless you have your vaccination card”) that it’s possible to get a fake vaccine card for “a dollar.” The casual manner in which he inserted this suggestion (in what could be interpreted as a wink-wink, nod-nod) to millions of Fox News viewers is, well, irresponsible as heck, as pointed out on Twitter.

Then there’s the little fact that encouraging someone to use a fake vaccine card is a crime (possibly even a felony), and NYC Mayor Bill DeBlasio noticed.

Also yup, Kilmeade should probably take his own previous advice to not take medical advice from a talking head, even the one sitting next to him.

There might not be a single game in the world bigger than Epic Games’ Fortnite. The cartoonish Battle Royale might be best known for dancing and silly memes, but it’s also a pretty fun game in its own right. It is constantly updating, adding in new content, and has never been afraid to change everything, including the map.

Fortnite is also well-known for doing crossovers with other IPs. They’ve allowed people to play as superstar athletes like LeBron James, watch Ariana Grande put on a concert in the game, and even teamed up with superheroes. What’s even more fun about this is that, when these people are added to their game, they become part of the Fortnite universe. This means that all of these IPs are connected together in some strange way and it’s an example of how the devs at Epic aren’t afraid to get weird with their crossovers.

It’s also why the developers of last summer’s hit game, Among Us, are really unhappy with them right now. Fortnite recently added a new limited-time mode called “Impostors” where players will be able to hunt down someone that is betraying the group through sabotage. Find the impostor and you win, but if the impostor is a good enough at lying, they can escape the group unharmed. The concept alone isn’t unique — Call of Duty recently announced a similar mode of their own — but that’s not why the developers of Among Us are upset. They’re upset because it looks like Fortnite did a lot more than be “inspired” by Among Us to create this new impostor mode.

Naming your mode “Impostors” is one thing, but the maps are so close to one another it’s hard to not see why the developers of Among Us would be so irritated. Even worse is that with Fortnite and Among Us history of crossovers, this could have been a really cool opportunity for the two developers to work together. Among Us Community Director Victoria Tran even said as much in a tweet.

It’s pretty clear that the developers of Among Us have no problem with others taking inspiration from their success and making their own games. The concept of someone sabotaging the group and everyone else trying to discover them is not a unique one. The party game Werewolf, also known as Mafia, has been doing it for years. However, if you’re going to make a mode like this, maybe don’t name it after the main villains of the game you’re clearly taking inspiration from while also barely changing the maps, especially when that game has never shied away from crossovers.