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Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez doesn’t constantly hurl barbs on Twitter, but when she does, oh boy. The congresswoman phenom out of New York has recently used her platform to criticize the U.S. practices in Israel/Palestine, and this week, the progressive socialist is coming for the Biden Administration. On Wednesday, she sharpened her tweeting stick to accuse Biden and Senate Democrats of “playing patty-cake w GOP Senators” due to grave consequences, including more planetary woes and allowing the wealthy to skate on income taxes. She added (to her fellow party members), “Mitch McConnell and the Koch brothers are not worth setting the planet on fire for.”

Not incidentally, ProPublica reported this week that billionaires including Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and Warren Buffett have been engaging in tax avoidance. That is, despite their nearly incomprehensible wealth, they’re paid little to no federal income tax for years.

AOC wasn’t done there. Earlier this week, she wasn’t impressed by VP Kamala Harris’ speech to “folks in the region” (that would be Guatemala and the surrounding area) who might be considering “making the dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border.” Harris urged them, “Do not come. Do not come.” AOC labeled this move as “disappointing to see. She added that “seeking asylum at any US border is a 100% legal method of arrival.” Then she accused the U.S. of helping to destabilize Latin America, which she said was akin to assisting in “set[ting] someone’s house on fire and then blam[ing] them for fleeing.”

The progressive firebrand isn’t afraid to criticize anyone, including members of her own party, which makes her barbs ever more potent.

Jensen McRae never expected her career to take off when she tweeted out a video of her impersonating Phoebe Bridgers singing about being vaccinated, but she ended up going viral. The song eventually became her track “Immune,” a clip of which was retweeted by Bridgers herself. Though McRae had already gained attention for her earlier music, the spoof cover gave her artistry a healthy boost, and now, the singer is gearing up for her debut project.

McRae returned Wednesday to officially announce her upcoming EP Who Hurt You, which arrives June 22. The project is set to feature her viral hit “Immune,” and a video to the track is slated for release next week. Who Hurt You will serve as an introduction to the 23-year-old’s sound, which expertly combines elements of dream pop and indie-folk with affecting lyricism.

Further describing her sound, McRae previously spoke with Uproxx about her musical influences. The singer noted how she hopes to serve as an inspiration with her politically conscious and honest music:

“I feel like the point of my music is to provide another example of Black womanhood and Black female existence in the world,” she shares when asked about the socially and politically conscious nature of her music. “I think even in my music where I talk about things that are not directly related to my demographic identity, it informs the work I do anyway. When I talk about mental health and unrequited love and adolescence, and in addition, political issues, I feel like my perspective as this person who is at the intersection of a few different marginalized identities comes through always.”

Check out McRae’s Who Hurt You cover art below.

Who Hurt You is out 6/22 via Human Re Sources. Pre-order it here.

Back in 2017, three years before the COVID-19 pandemic took a bite out of movie theater ticket sales, a disruptive little app known as MoviePass did the same. But instead of closing theater doors, MoviePass made an offer that many cineastes couldn’t refuse: For less than $10 per month, MoviePass members could see as many movies as they wanted in a real, live cinema.

From the beginning, the app was divisive: Movie theater chains like AMC hated it, while moviegoers either thought it sounded too good to be true or thought it sounded too good to be true and paid the $9.95 fee anyway. It didn’t take long for the cracks in the company’s business plan to start showing—and swallowing customers whole.

Fast forward to 2021: After several last-ditch efforts to redeem itself, including rebranding itself as MoviePass Ventures and unleashing Gotti on the world (an act that should be a crime in and of itself), MoviePass is no more. After shutting down its ticketing services in late 2019 and filing for bankruptcy in early 2020, MoviePass is dead. But the body has yet to be buried, as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wasn’t about to let its creators slink off into obscurity without answering for the mess of a company that they created. So the FTC filed a lawsuit alleging that MoviePass and its partners “took steps to block subscribers from using the service as advertised, while also failing to secure subscribers’ personal data.”

On Tuesday, The New York Times ran a feature on the FTC’s suit against MoviePass. While the parties appear to have reached a settlement in the matter, the details behind this scam of a company—and the lengths they went to to make sure that as many customers as possible did not get what they paid for—are pretty mind-boggling.

As Daniel Victor wrote in The New York Times:

The company hoped that by subsidizing full-price tickets for millions of users, it could negotiate bulk prices from theaters and find other ways to make money from its users. That never happened, and executives, looking to cut costs, focused on trying to make its most active users less active, according to the F.T.C. complaint.

In one effort, the company invalidated the passwords of the 75,000 subscribers who used the service most often, while falsely claiming “we have detected suspicious activity or potential fraud” on their accounts, the F.T.C. said. Many of the people who tried to reset their passwords were unable to because of technical problems; the app would not accept their email address, they would not receive a password-reset email, or the email would link to a nonworking website, the F.T.C. said.

When users complained, customer service would take weeks to respond, the F.T.C. said. About half of the users successfully changed their password within a week, the F.T.C. said.

Sadly, that was just the beginning of the creative methods company executives came up with to ensure that MoviePass was not delivering on its promises—at least not to every customer. In some cases, they sent out emails to some of the most frequent moviegoers requesting proof of their physical movie tickets; if the user failed to provide this on more than one occasion, their account would be canceled.

The Times article also talked about a “trip wire” that the company created (but, of course, did not publicize) for members who went to the movies three or more times per month.

“The company grouped subscribers based on how often they used the service, then, once the group hit an unannounced limit, the people in the group would be unable to use the service, regulators said,” according to The New York Times. “The users often did not know they had been cut off until they arrived at the theater, expecting to use their subscriptions, they said.”

If only MoviePass executives put this much thought and ingenuity into making the company work instead of figuring out how to screw over the largest number of paid subscribers in the fewest possible steps. While the final details of the settlement have not yet been made public, one can only hope that part of it will require the responsible individuals to watch Gotti ten times in a row.

Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, the Chicago-based group of brothers (they’re all sons of the late jazz trumpeter Phil Cohran), is at the center of the second iteration of Jagjaguwar’s 25th-anniversary series. This year, the label will release a tribute album honoring the experimental-folk musician Richard Youngs and his pivotal 1998 album, Sapphie.

On the ensemble’s latest release, a breathier, spacious rework of Youngs’ “A Fullness Of Light In Your Soul,” singer Perfume Genius steps in for the vocal parts.

“I recorded this cover while deep in quarantine,” Perfume Genius said in a statement. “Working on [“A Fullness Of Light In Your Soul”] brought a really welcome energy, I went fully into song world and put reality on hold for a moment. It’s a big song, too, so I got to stay there for a while. Both the original and the arrangement by the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble have a truly hypnotic and almost mystical quality, while singing it I tried to stay hyper-present and thought of it like we were all casting one long spell.”

The collaboration arrives with a video featuring outsider folk-artist Lonnie Holley, walking through his studio and yard. Holley, 71, was born in Birmingham, Alabama, one of 27 children, at the end of the Jim Crow era. He is known for his recycled found-object sculptures and paintings, which have been featured in places like the Birmingham Museum of Art and the Smithsonian. Holley’s sprawling yard — and adjacent, abandoned lots near his home — became his canvases. In the mid-’80s, people began traveling to his immersive art installations until he was forced off of his property by the expansion of an airport.

The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble reimagined Youngs’ other songs and performed with guest vocalists including Moses Sumney (on “Soon It Will Be Fire”) and Sharon Van Etten (on “The Graze Of Days”). The full album, called This Is A Mindfulness Drill, arrives on June 25.

New to Sapphie? Listen to the original “A Fullness Of Light In Your Soul” below and compare it to Hypnotic Brass Ensemble and Perfume Genius’ new version above.

This Is A Mindfulness Drill is out 6/25 via Jagjaguwar. Pre-order it here.

Back when the Los Angeles Lakers traded for Anthony Davis, much was made about the jersey number situation involving The Brow and LeBron James. While Davis wore the number 23 in New Orleans, James had that number in L.A., and for some production-related purposes, James couldn’t switch his number to free that one up for his new teammate until after the 2019-20 season ended.

The duo kept their numbers the same during the 2020-21 campaign, but according to a new report by Tim Cato and Shams Charania of The Athletic, things are changing up a bit heading into next year. While Davis will continue to wear the number 3, James will switch to 6, which he wore during his tenure with the Miami Heat.

Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James is changing his jersey number from No. 23 to No. 6 next season, sources tell The Athletic’s Shams Charania and Tim Cato. Anthony Davis is expected to remain No. 3.

The change is expected to come after Space Jam.

It’s unclear whether Space Jam: A New Legacy plays a role in any of this, although based on the new trailer that dropped on Wednesday, James does wear No. 6 in the movie. He also famously once said that he believes 23 should be retired league-wide in honor of Michael Jordan.

Young Nudy’s new album Dr. Ev4l is out now on RCA Records and as he continues to roll out the release, his new video for “Soul Keeper” highlights what fans can expect from the project overall: airy beats and a non-stop flow from Nudy. It’s simple but effective, as Nudy raps in a penthouse overlooking the city and in the street with his crew backing him up.

Nudy’s other standouts from the project include “2Face” with G Herbo and 21 Savage on “Child’s Play.” The album is his second major-label realease after debut project Anyways dropped just ahead of the coronavirus pandemic’s shutdown of live touring in 2020.

Nudy’s back catalog recently made headlines when a video of partying students causing a floor to collapse while Nudy’s “EA” played in the background went viral. One of the students created a GoFundMe campaign to help pay for repairs, explaining that the owner of the Airbnb where the party was held was home during the party and approved of the students’ graduation celebration. “Call y’all spam Young Nudy ina comments,” the student requested. “He gotta kno what his music doin to people.”

Watch Young Nudy’s “Soul Keeper” video above.

Dr. Ev4l is out now on PDE and RCA Records. Stream it here.

Tegan And Sara aren’t shy about sharing stories of their teenage antics. The sister duo even documented them in their memoir High School, which is set to be adapted into a TV series. Along with forming their musical tastes, their teenage years were a time when the two experimented with psychedelics. Now, in a segment on Comedy Central, Tegan And Sara recount one particular night at an acid-fueled rave in the ’90s that didn’t quite go as expected.

Sitting down on Comedy Central’s series Tales From The Trip, Tegan And Sara told the story of lying to their parents to go to a rave. Describing the night, Sara recalled the feeling of joy and connection to those around her. But her feelings shifted once the lights turned on:

“I remember this intense feeling of joy and feeling so connected to these people. The connection and love and vibe that we felt from going to these spaces. They were full of alternative people, and people experimenting with gender, sexuality, and embracing all these different kinds of music within the same space, it was very liberating. There was this heightened sense that I was with exactly the people I was supposed to be with and we all took on the same shape and size. All those things I worried about when I was not stoned, they evaporated and we became this one big blob. […] I was having a blast right up until the moment they turned the lights on. Everybody looks amazing, and then they turn those fluorescent lights on and everyone looked like a zombie movie. The magical, warm space was just a sh*tty warehouse and there was just slush and dirt and water.”

After leaving the rave, the two were caught lying by their parents. As punishment, they were forced to finish a paper route on no sleep while it was freezing, an experience that would have been insufferable if they weren’t still tripping.

Watch Tegan And Sara tell the story of their rave experience above on Comedy Central’s Tales From The Trip.

Tegan And Sara is a Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Later this week, Orenda Fink and Maria Taylor are slated to release Remedy, the first full-length Azure Ray album in a decade. Despite the time away, Remedy picks up right where Fink and Taylor left off ten years ago, without missing a beat.

To celebrate the new album, Fink and Taylor sat down to talk The Beach Boys, sleeping outside a 24 Hour Fitness, and their first South By Southwest festival in the latest Indie Mixtape 20 Q&A.

What are four words you would use to describe your music?

contemplative, ethereal, cathartic, confessional.

It’s 2050 and the world hasn’t ended and people are still listening to your music. How would you like it to be remembered?

As a salve for the soul.

What’s your favorite city in the world to perform?

There’s something very romantic about performing in Vienna, but all shows where the crowd is polite and attentive get gold stars.

Who’s the person who has most inspired your work, and why?

Probably a cross between Elliot Smith and Bill Callahan. Classic songwriting, poetic lyrics, dark as f*ck.

Where did you eat the best meal of your life?

Hmmm.. it’s either La Copine in the high desert, or Gus’s Fried Chicken in Memphis.

What album do you know every word to?

Sophtware Slump by Granddaddy.

What was the best concert you’ve ever attended?

Nina Simone at Chastain Park in Atlanta.

What is the best outfit for performing and why?

All black, all the time.

Who’s your favorite person to follow on Twitter and/or Instagram?

Cheapoldhouses, yourcheapdreamhome, circa houses — all house porn basically.

What’s your most frequently played song in the van on tour?

“Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya” by Dr. John. Whenever I hear that first line, “They call me.. Dr. John…” makes me feel like all is right with the world…

What’s the last thing you Googled?

How many fully vaccinated people have contracted covid-19

What album makes for the perfect gift?

Azure Ray – Remedy (haha) OR Beach Boys – Pet Sounds

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve ever crashed while on tour?

A house boat? The parking lot of a 24 hour fitness? I mean… there were just so many weird places but I shoved most of them out of my memory 😉

What’s the story behind your first or favorite tattoo?

Our first band, Little Red Rocket, played at one of the first South by Southwest festivals. We all got tattoos of a little red rocket on our forearms. We had such a bond with our band members and those days were so light and free and fun. I love that I still have the tattoo to represent those times. Don’t ask Orenda what happened to hers. LOL. I’m still mad at her 😉

What artists keep you from flipping the channel on the radio?

Anything from the ’80s.

What’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for you?

Hmmm…that’s a toughy. I’m blown away all the time by the kind hearts and generosity of all of my friends and family.

What’s one piece of advice you’d go back in time to give to your 18-year-old self?

I would hand myself a hair straightener and steal my hair cutting scissors. AND remind myself to not hold back and always give everything all you got.

What’s the last show you went to?

The last show I went to was our own show. Azure Ray played a daytime Sunday showcase with our friends and label mates, “Radnor and Lee.” The whole world shut down a couple of weeks later.

What movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?

Wait…things just come on the tv still? I had no idea;)

What would you cook if Obama were coming to your house for dinner?

There’s only one thing I feel confident enough to cook for Obama. My grandmama’s Basta. It’s shell pasta with a very thick (almost stew like) sauce that’s flavored with slow cooked beef and Italian sausage. I hope he’s not vegetarian!

Remedy is out June 11. Pre-order it here.

Swizz Beatz, Timbaland, and D-Nice made a major impact on the music landscape in 2020, and now their efforts are being recognized: The three will be receiving the ASCAP Voice Of The Culture Award during the 2021 ASCAP Rhythm & Soul Music Awards, for their inventive and uniting virtual music events — namely Verzuz and Club Quarantine — during the COVID-19 lockdowns.

The award celebrates the most-performed R&B/hip-hop, rap, and gospel songs from the previous year. The virtual celebration will be held on June 22 through June 24 via social media. Registration for the virtual chats and other events is available at the ASCAP Experience website.

Timbaland and Swizz Beatz’s Verzuz was the virtual singing competition series that gained instant claim on Instagram Live by pitting musical legends from all genres against each other, including Gladys Knight vs. Patti LaBelle, Erykah Badu vs. Jill Scott, Earth, Wind & Fire vs. the Isley Brothers, Snoop Dogg vs. DMX, and more. The two Grammy-winning producers and label founders created must-see spectacles that brought millions of isolated people together over music.

Similarly, the legendary DJ Derrick “D-Nice” Jones, turned his Instagram Live broadcasts into a virtual dance party with Club Quarantine. D-Nice’s DJ sets were praised as a much-needed respite by millions during the 2020 lockdowns. Even A-listers like Will Smith, Oprah, Michelle Obama, and Diddy tuned in for D-Nice’s heavy rotation of funk, disco, hip-hop, and R&B. D-Nice teamed up with Issa Rae’s Raedio to co-curate the official playlist of the Joe Biden and Kamala Harris inauguration. His full-length studio album is set to arrive later this year.