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Music

Holy Fucking Shit What a Crazy Week in Music

Overnight mixtapes, award shows, and a bunch of other WTFs.

HOLY FUCKING SHIT. Sometimes, during the long winter season, nothing happens in music for months at a time. Musicians are all vacationing somewhere too expensive for all of our collective blood. Meanwhile, us music bloggers have to waste our valuable internet words trying to get you excited about some live YouTube video of Arcade Fire covering the Pee Wee’s Big Adventure theme or Mac DeMarco selling an old sock on Etsy or something. But this week. Holy shit. Like, HOLY FUCKING SHIT. Maybe it’s got something to do with it being Friday the 13th or Mercury being in retrograde or whatever but so much actual insane shit happened in the world of music in the last few days—even in the past 24 hours. A-list musicians dropping overnight material, unlikely musical pairings, and Beck. Let us recap said insanity, shall we?

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Miley Cyrus Recorded with Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace

A photo posted by Miley Cyrus (@mileycyrus) on Feb 12, 2015 at 6:35pm PST

We have long stood by our (often very unpopular) stance that Miley Cyrus is punk as fuck and last night she only reinforced our beliefs by Instagramming this photo with Against Me!’s Laura Jane Grace which is not something you expect to see while flipping through Instagram on your couch at 11 PM, even though her account is particularly unpredictable. They recorded together as part of Miley’s Happy Hippie project and not to brag, but being the Very Cool Music Industry VIPs that we are (and because Laura has an advice column on Noisey), we knew this was coming beforehand. And yet, somehow, nothing can prepare you for seeing these worlds colliding. No word on whether or not Miley’s only into the Disco Before the Breakdown material.

Taylor Swift’s New Video for “Style” Featuring Sexy Time, You Guys

It’s a well-documented fact that “Style” is the Noisey staff consensus favorite single on 1989, but, up until recently, there was no way to listen to it on the internet because Taylor Swift believes in quote-unquote buying quote-unquote albums. Fortunately, our long national nightmare has ended, and it has resolved itself into a slightly titillating feel-good dream, via the large amounts of flesh visible in this video. As we wrote in our year-end roundup about this song, “who doesn't prefer their life—not to mention their music—with a little bit of danger and a hint of sex?” Here is that hint, via shirtless dude and semi-shirtless Taylor and K-I-S-S-I-N-G, but, like, the sex kind of kissing, not the innocent Romeo and Juliet Love Story kind. Taylor Swift literally has lightning in her loins here. What a video!

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Kanye's Star-Studded Shoe Release Spectacular

It was a big week for Mr. Yeezus. On Thursday, the doomsday countdown for the Yeezy Supply finally hit zero and he presented the Yeezy Boosts to the world in New York City. There were a bunch of famous people in attendance—so this obviously means we should care about it immensely—including, but not limited to, Justin Bieber, Beyonce, Jay Z, Rihanna, Anna Wintour, and more. At the reveal, he unleashed a new song called “Wolves” that features Vic Mensa and Sia. You can find a shitty iPhone recording of it if you do this thing we in the biz all a “Google search.” Anyways, shortly thereafter, Kanye scooted uptown and performed a concert literally in the middle of the streets of Manhattan. He didn’t play any new music, but holy shit he brought out every single rapper who’s ever rapped. At one point, he stood on the stage with Big Sean, Pusha T, 2 Chainz, Travi$ Scott, and Waka Flocka Flame (who, funny enough, wasn’t even really rapping, just kind of standing there and looking sweet). Drake was standing in the crowd. Everyone was wearing new Yeezys. Then after the performance, which again, was in the middle of the streets of Manhattan, ‘Ye ventured a few blocks over and joined Diddy on stage at Madison Square Garden. Pretty good Thursday, eh? Kanye also made headlines earlier this week for maybe or maybe not being a dickhead at the Grammys, but we’ll get to that below.

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The Big Annual Music-Related Meme Show

Hey, remember one sentence ago when we said we'd talk about the Grammys? Okay, now let’s talk about the Grammys. There were a swath of stories that emerged from “music’s biggest night,” but the primary one was that Kanye West ran on stage and almost interrupted Beck after he won Album of the Year but then oh wait no Kanye didn’t because it was a joke about interrupting Taylor Swift but then Kanye went on E!’s post-Grammys show and said that it wasn’t a joke and Beck needs to “respect the artistry” and give his award to Beyonce. This then inspired a shitload of thinkpieces about whether what Kanye did was appropriate or not, and music critics across the world tried to figure out if they actually do understand how the voting system works. But, hey, on top of that, the Grammys were also pretty entertaining. They were about six hours too long, but at least there was a funny meme that surfaced of Paul McCartney dancing poorly and Taylor Swift dressed up like a rocket ship.

Drake Dropped a New Mixtape

Not to be outdone by Kanye dropping a shoe that looks like an UGG on crack and a song that sounds like a song on crack, Drake a.k.a. Young Angel a.k.a. Skinny Pillow a.k.a. Big Baby Goose Down released an entire album—or, wait, was it a mixtape?—or a digital album?—or a digitalbumixtapeplayalisticadillakmuzik? Whatever. It exists, and it was available on Livemixtapes and Soundcloud for like 30 minutes, and then it was available on iTunes for $12.99. We bought it, because despite the fact that Drake is a multi-millionaire rap star and we can barely afford to get our car washed by a high school glee club, we believe in Supporting the Artist.

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Kendrick Lamar Released “Blacker the Berry," A Certified Slapper, as Approved by the Associated Slappers of America

On Monday, while everyone was still seeing if there was anything to scrape off the bottom of the barrel of Grammys minutiae, Kendrick Lamar effectively put all Grammy discussions into perspective by dropping this banger. You know how some songs take a few listens to grow on you but some songs just punch you in the gut right away? Well, this was a motherfucker of a gut-punch, as evidenced by the fact that hip-hop stations were literally playing this song every 20 minutes. Kendrick is prooooooobably gonna drop the album of the year soon.

Happy Birthday, Gucci Mane

This week was Gucci Mane’s birthday. He is currently serving out a 39-month sentence in Terre Haute Penitentiary in Indiana after pleading guilty to possession of a firearm while on probation. If you’d like to write to him, do so at:

Radric Davis #65556019
Terre Haute USP
PO BOX 33
Terre Haute, Indiana 47808

Florence + the Machine Released Her First Music Video in Three Years

Florence plus the Machine has decided to do something other than play music festivals. The British singer released a new song and video, and it’s the most Florence plus the Machine song and video you could expect. It’s big, orchestral, dynamic, and other words that are similar to these words. In the clip, there is a lot of female empowerment. There is a lot of interpretive dancing. There is a lot of shade thrown at men. Personally, we’d rather watch Tayor Swift’s video for “Style” for this type of jam, but hey, we’re enjoying this, and it’s nice to have Florence back.

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The Fucking President Used a Selfie Stick

We realize this isn't music-related but the fucking President of the United States of America used a selfie stick and said "YOLO" on some Disney Princess quiz-themed website. Jesus Christ.

Beck Happened

Beck, huh? Crazy.

Pitchfork Announced Their Festival Lineup

Popular academia website Pitchfork released their lineup for this year’s festival, which is a good thing too because we’d gone almost two full days without a festival lineup announcement. Lotsa good stuff on there and we gave them all numerical ratings. It’s what Pitchfork would have wanted. See you in Chicago, yeah?

This Vine

Just look at it.

Lil Wayne

Hit sent. #FWA

— Lil Wayne WEEZY F (@LilTunechi) February 13, 2015

Looks like there’s some big trouble in some Little Waynesworld (that joke is a reference to the Kurt Russell vehicle Big Trouble in Little China). Last week, Lil Wayne—who has expressed deep frustrations with his label Cash Money’s unwillingness to release his music to the public—tweeted that he was putting the finishing touches on a project called The Free Weezy Album. Earlier today, rap blogs started posting some dumb looking cover art and claimed that The Free Weezy Album would be dropping today. Mack Maine, the President of Wayne’s label, tweeted, “Take that cover down and stop lying to the people…@LilTunechi not dropping anything tonight…enjoy @drake mixtape….we workin.” This contradicts what Wayne tweeted earlier today, which was simply, “Hit sent. #FWA.” As always, it’s Weezy F. Baby, and the F stands for “Fucked By His Label.”