FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Weekly Music News Round-Up: Here's Everything That Happened While You Were at SXSW

Other stuff happened this week outside of Austin. Promise!
image

Hey young world! It's Drew here, reporting live from the underground. In this set of circumstances, "The Underground" is "Any Place that is Not SXSW." It really seems like time froze this week and nothing happened other than buzz bands buzzed around and played 759 shows in three days, and everyone ran around Austin drinking and drugging and concert-watching and not-sleeping their way to self-induced madness. While that's awesome (shouts out to all of you who are currently in the same room as Usher), a bunch of other stuff happened

Advertisement

—First off, Lupe Fiasco (aka the common enemy of the Rap Internet) has announced he'll be taking the job of Creative Director at Higi, which is an app that tells you how healthy you are. Hopefully, Fiasco's tenure at Higi will not mirror his last name. Get it? Because his last name is Fiasco? Uh, anyways. Moving on.

—Justin Timberlake released a stream of his newest The 20/20 Experience on Monday, and lots of people have opinions on it, including us. What's really interesting is while these reviews are all extremely well-written and well argued, they're kinda rushed. I have no doubt that places like The Guardian and The New York Times got advance copies of the album (nothing is fair in the music industry, just trust me on this), but for most people really critiquing an album they haven't lived with for a while, it seems illogical. I blame this on the fact that for most of us, Justin Timberlake has been the most consistent pop presence in our lives besides, like, Jay-Z and Beyoncé. People have literally grown up with the dude, and it's kind of jarring to hear him sound anything less than overtly astounding. Though I haven't really developed a real opinion on the album, I feel like in twenty years it's gonna be the Timberlake album we go back to when we're like, "Man, I really wanna listen to some JT." Sometimes, chilled-out and not aggressively groundbreaking is best.

—Turns out that Taylor Swift (or, more likely, someone on her team) is kind of a douchebag. It's being reported that that a not inconsiderate amount of unopened mail addressed to the singer—who ~LoOoOoOoOoVes her fans—has been found at a dumpster behind a school. Which means that either Taylor Swift is a terrible person (no), somehow someone on her team accidentally dumped a bunch of fan mail in a school dumpster (also no), or maybe Taylor Swift, much like every other smart human, doesn't give a fuck about her mail.

—And finally, this is the week that Soulja Boy finally followed Noisey on Twitter.

Drew Millard will be in Brooklyn tonight. Tweet at him - @drewmillard