Let's check in on pharma exec Martin Shkreli! That guy probably hasn't done anything that would make people dislike him in a while, right? Ha, just kidding! The Shkrel Man, noted for gouging the price of an AIDS drug, funding Collect Records, and loving music, as usual, has some more tricks up his sleeve. Last time we heard from him—about a week ago—he had just bought the Wu-Tang Clan's one-of-one album for $2 million. Now, he's done an interview about the purchase and his general love of hip-hop with HipHopDX.

In the interview, he claims that he is in the process of trying to post bail for Bobby Shmurda and get the Brooklyn rapper out of jail: "I’m a big fan but also I’m an opportunist," Shkreli told HipHopDX. "You know that. I see an opportunity here. He’s a talented guy. Every concert I go to, people yell 'Free Shmurda.' He reminds me of me, quite frankly. The guy’s totally irreverent. He doesn’t give a damn what people think. Totally irreverent. Totally I don’t give a fuck. I love him. I just love that style. He’s from not far from where I’m from in Brooklyn. I’d love to help him out. I wish someone would have helped me out when I needed help."

But don't worry! Bobby Shmurda isn't the only rapper Shkreli has opinions about. He also weighs in on fellow Albanian Action Bronson, complains about RZA's comments to the press about his character following the album sale, and repeatedly mentions his love of DMX. Most importantly, Shkreli wants you to know that he is hip-hop to the core. This dude is real:

If Ace Hood can stand next to me in a music video and be like, “I fucks with this dude. This is my bankroll guy and I’ve got fucking suitcases of money." That’s my real life. I fucking travel around [Las Vegas] with fucking $2 million or $3 million in cash like Floyd Mayweather. It’s real. Whether you think I’m a herb or whatever, fine. But I’m the dude. I’m the guy. I’m not made up. Take it for what it’s worth. If you think that’s not going to do anything... 80 guys have tried to turn DMX’s career around. It’s never gonna happen, but I love that dude.

Exactly how real is Shkreli? Well, he also has some rap ambitions of his own:

I’ve written some rhymes. They’re alright. Teams or not, it still has to come from the [artist]. I think I’m a creative guy. I’ve got a pretty deep knowledge of Hip Hop. I’ve got a good vocabulary, a decent sense of humor and enough material to last a fucking lifetime. I’ve got enough material to write five autobiographies. At 32 years old, I’ve seen and done more shit than just about anyone. That should help. Sometimes it’s just that magic that makes one of these guys different from another. I’m not counting on that, that’s for sure. I’m counting on how I have a lot of money. Can I be the next Suge Knight or Puff Daddy or whatever in this game? Probably. Birdman? Probably. What does Birdman do? He fucking rubs his hands and fucking every now and then maybe he’ll say something. But he’ll try hard to look cool and bullshit.

Will we be getting a Shkreli rap album soon? It's hard to say, but in the mean time we can comfort ourselves with the knowledge that Shkreli said, "I’m the fucking biggest plug there is." Oh, and as for the Wu-Tang album? Real Hip-Hop Marty has a plan for that, too: "I’m not going to play it for no reason. If Taylor Swift wants to come over and suck my dick, I’ll play it for her."

Read the full interview, which is possibly the weirdest interview about music you'll ever read, over at HipHopDX.

Follow Kyle Kramer on Twitter.

Photo by Jimmy Hubbard

The return of Baroness has been one of 2015's biggest rock'n'roll stories. The saga of their journey back to the stage tugs at the heart strings—a band at the top of their game overcomes horrible trauma and a difficult lineup reshuffling to return with their most ambitious work to date—and fans have been desperate to find out just how much the band's sound will have changed (if at all) following their star-crossed hiatus. The answer, Purple, is nearly upon us, and Noisey is delighted to premiere the song "The Iron Bell" below.

"The Iron Bell" is all up-tempo swagger, grooving confidently atop big fat rock riffs and a jaunty beat. The vocal harmonies are pure heaven, and more than a little arena-ready in a Queens of the Stone Age kind of way. Baroness has finally gone full-blown, joyful rock on Purple—there's not a lick of heavy metal to be found on the whole damn album—and honestly? It makes sense that they'd reach for a lighter, more hopeful sound. After all, they're a band that's had far more than its fair share of darkness.

Purple is out December 18 via Abraxan Hymns.

This article was originally published on Noisey UK

The name “Halsey” didn’t mean much to many people twelve months ago. This time last year, the moniker used by American singer/songwriter Ashley Nicolette Frangipane was barely known outside of the fanbases she had cultivated herself through social media. By the end of 2014, her biggest accolade—as in, the kind you would see on a press release—was supporting yesterday’s indie wet wipes The Kooks.

Yet, back in August, Halsey’s debut concept album Badlands went straight to number two on the Billboard charts, selling close to 100,000 copies in one week—almost half of which were pre-orders. It probably would have gone number one had The Weeknd’s The Beauty Behind the Madness not been released the same day. By the time Halsey came to play her first shows in the UK this year at KOKO and O2 Academy (both of which sold out instantly) the venues were packed with thousands of fans—mostly teenage girls—who knew every single word to every single song she had ever released. Some even held up signs saying they’d flown in from mainland Europe just to see her. It’s the kind of adolescent-driven adoration you would typically see reserved for male artists like One Direction or Justin Bieber rather than a young woman, but Halsey speaks to teenage girls in ways they can’t. As a directly relatable figure, Halsey is their voice as well as their idol.

But it wasn’t until after Badlands was released that Halsey began to receive anything like the kind of print and radio attention that would typically precede a high-charting debut release from a new artist. Now, her name is pretty much impossible to avoid, and the mystery left behind is how she was able to elevate herself from a promising artist with a dedicated cult following to a global phenomenon in less than a year, with hardly any major media coverage or radio play. In the past, musicians used the internet to launch themselves into more traditional structures: record labels, publicists and, the end goal, a “team” who could take on most of the business side of the operation. This year, however, we saw the firm establishment of a certain type of star—hyperconnected personalities who strike today’s tone, form stronger bonds with fans than most of you have with your Netflix account, and have become adept at translating online love into IRL success all by themselves.

Don’t get me wrong, artists using the internet to help establish themselves is by no means a new thing. That’s how the likes of Grimes, Lil B, and PC Music have all come to be the considerable cultural forces they are today. Going back a little further in social media history, you could even include Lily Allen, Kate Nash, and Adele, who all built followings on MySpace. Panic! at the Disco struck gold after sending their demos to Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz over LiveJournal, and even Justin Bieber was initially discovered through posting covers on YouTube. Basically anyone who has forged a career in music after the turn of the millennium is indebted to the internet in some capacity, but 2015 saw the arrival of a new kind of music celebrity: one that isn’t just present online—but born, raised, and very much determined by it.

For Halsey, who built her following via Tumblr, the foundation of her fame is a secret language she has shared with her fans since the beginning—one that the New York Times described as “loaded with the knowingness of a cooler older sister who sneaks into the city from the suburbs.” Not even of legal drinking age when Badlands was released, her breakout single “New Americana” featured the tongue-in-cheek chorus: “We are the new Americana / High on legal marijuana / Raised on Biggie and Nirvana.” The point may be that there’s more to her generation than that, but she certainly knows how to lampoon it in a way that still communicates something relatable to her fans. It’s a real “nobody makes fun of my mother but me” move. And in turn, she's become the ideal poster girl for a particular cross-section of iGen that has gone largely underrepresented in the mainstream. We’re talking about the kids who pair sports gear with black lipstick, dye their undercuts pastel blue, have a Tumblr full of belfies and Bright Eyes lyrics, and equal fervour for My Chemical Romance and Kanye West. Until Halsey, perhaps the only visible icon they had was Hayley Williams—yet, being a teetotal Christian, she’s on a slightly different but equally influential page.

Halsey's voice is simultaneously vulnerable, strong, candid, vocal on issues that affect her (mental illness, sexuality, race) and unapologetic in all of the above. And by establishing her identity so loudly and independently, Halsey found herself in the driving seat when it did eventually come to working with a major label. “Being a pop-leaning, female artist, you’d think that I’d have my record company breathing down my neck and trying to control everything I’m doing,” she told the New York Times. “Actually, they’ve just kind of let me take the wheel.”

Of course there are plenty of artists who have enjoyed a similar rise to prominence without that extra monetised buffer. It was only at the end of last year that song streams and track download data was folded into how the charts were tabulated. This year we’ve seen the results of that change, and perhaps no genre has benefitted more from it than grime.

With most of its sales coming via digital downloads, hype generated by the YouTube channels of Link Up TV and GRM Daily, conversations generated by Twitter, grime and the internet are inextricably intertwined. It’s no wonder that Drake—“our most internet-conscious pop star” as Aimee Cliff put it—has become so obsessed with the genre. It is built on a do-it-yourself ethos that social media has essentially been able to elevate into a powerful tool for self-promotion and empowerment, making many traditional aspects of the music industry an unnecessary expense for lots of grime stars.

Living and creating under his own strict code of ethics for nearly fifteen years now, JME is basically the blueprint for this type of artist, a DIY veteran, a man who proudly operates without the involvement of any sort of team. As his Twitter bio puts it: “No label, No pr, No publisher, No manager, No pa, No stylist, No Instagram.” He barely even gives interviews. Still, in May this year, the independent release of his album Integrity> found itself wedged between commercial goliaths Taylor Swift and James Bay in the midweek UK Albums Chart, with absolutely no radio play or commercial backing. And heads turned pretty hard. How did he do it? It’s a question he answered on a guest verse for YouTube celebrity KSI in November: “Everyone’s baffled, ‘Who are they? Who are you?’ / How’s JJ got a lambo too? / It’s a simple equation fam / You get bare P’s if you get bare views.”

JME gets bare views. And he gets bare views because he’s forged an unbreakable bond with his followers. Within the first three minutes of this year’s album, JME didn't just string together random pieces of information into a hot 16, he made sure you know exactly where he shops (Lush), where he eats (Nando’s), what he eats (“No meat, no cheese, no milk, no eggs”), his dental hygiene routine (“Sensodyne Classic, Listerine Citrus / Cause I don’t wanna have no fluoride"). In doing so, he offered up an insight into who, uncompromisingly, he is, and what defines him. With specific codes of conduct, Halsey and JME are just as loyal and consistent to themselves as their followers are to them.

Of course, many of his fans are still grime fans who have followed him since day one, but he's also nurtured a much younger legion of admirers. His relationship with his fans is built on brutal honesty and sheer transparency. Or, as he'd put it: integrity. He happily discussed voting before the election with fans (his choice was not to), he relentlessly posts life updates on Twitter, he swapped shiny charizard Pokemon cards for vinyls of his album, and when he decided to sell some high quality, JME-crafted caps, he sold them at £105.78, because that is exactly how much it costs him to fill a tank of petrol (they sold out in 2 hours). He even imported and sold hoverboards in the UK to fans, before any shops did. In essence, he’s built an empire for himself based on all the idiosyncrasies that go hand in hand with enjoying the things in life that JME enjoys. “There’s no failure in what I’m doing,” he told GRM Daily in April, “everything I do is bigger than the last thing. So there’s no need to change.” Next year, he says, he plans to make a shoe, and then a book.

Without the red tape of a PR or marketing team he’s free to feed an internet fan base that lives for instant gratification. That’s why he double dropped totally different videos for “Test Me” and “The Very Best” on the same day. The first celebrating his first love: those hoverboards. The latter riffing on that Pokemon passion. It’s not hard to find a young kid who appreciates both, but you’d be hard pressed to find an MC who has personalised them as expertly as JME. This partly explains how the younger Adenuga—a dude so disinterested in the fame aspects of the music industry that he declined to flank Kanye West at this year’s BRIT Awards alongside the rest of UK grime because he was too hungry—ended up with a Top 20 record.

There is a term in robotics called the uncanny valley, about when robots look and move almost like real human beings, but not exactly, and that slight discrepancy automatically makes us feel uncomfortable—we’re not duped. You only need to cast an eye at the social media pages of big major label artists, to see the uncanny valley in full effect: social pages ran by specialists, posts constructed by a team of writers and fan activities—like meet and greet photos of Avril Lavigne safely standing just out of reach of her fans—dreamt up in marketing department brainstorm sessions. Just this week, Ed Sheeran made a statement announcing that he would be quitting all social media and closing down his online presence until his next album was ready, incase you ever needed a reminder that his Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are not for communicating with fans for anything other than sales, sales, and sales.

The essence of what makes JME and Halsey so appealing is how honestly they define themselves to their fans, shunning marketing tactics to promote qualities the weary internet obsessed music fan is desperate for: charisma, authenticity and transparency. Qualities that every major music label in the country is channeling copious amounts of cash into replicating, but too often resulting in nothing but robots. Because, at the end of the day, you can’t really fake this.

It's indicative of how we fall for artists in 2015, not always happy with simply falling in love with their music, but needing on some level to know and love every little thing about them. Fans want the album, yeah, but they also want Halsey to cut their hair, or trade Pokemon cards with JME, or speak to Halsey about tattoos. Of course, there is always going to be a downside to this. If you give fans everything, then they will always want everything. “I have blessed myself and cursed myself,” Halsey told the New York Times, “by building something that people are so attached to.” During the election, JME’s integrity came back to bite him when every politically opinionated Twitter user on the UK spectrum decide to flood his mentions with why he was a fool for not voting, or for slightly favouring the Green Party, or for anything at all really.

To some degree, you could say the same about UK rapper Little Simz, whose independence on every level has come to define her as an artist. Or Stormzy, who’s currently gunning for Christmas #1 off the back of an impulsive Twitter campaign after his YouTube freestyles (filmed in various London parks and estates) racked up views in the multi-millions. Then there’s Ryan Hemsworth, who’s at the forefront of a new wave of digital DIY artists and creating a community for them through his Soundcloud-based Secret Songs label. Plus everyman-cum-indie-pop-prodigy Alex G, whose Bandcamp is still a more solid home base for his output than any record label. These are all artists for whom the internet has allowed them to establish, craft and promote their art, and communicate with their fans, however, wherever and whenever they want. The only catch – perhaps the most fair and field-levelling one that the rise of digital technology has offered the industry as a whole – is that you actually need some semblance of a personality to succeed in this way, and that’s not something the internet can help you forge no matter what your press release says. Still, you can imagine every major label on the planet is going to be trying to make artists just like them in 2016.

Follow Emma Garland on Twitter.

Pusha T has made the week of his new release huge. Earlier this week, he dropped the new video for his song "Crutches, Crosses, Caskets" which was a fever dream of strangeness. Last night, he appeared on The Daily Show to play a new track titled "Sunshine" which features some of his best lyrics to date, making reference to Freddie Grey and many other recent tragedies that have occurred. Darkest Before Dawn comes out this Friday December 18. 

I am an adult male who has never seen any Star Wars movies. Please, before you throw your garbage at me, let me explain. Well, actually, I don’t have much of an explanation, I’ve just never seen them. But of course, since the franchise is such an iconic piece of popular culture, naturally, many, many Star Wars references have whizzed past me in my lifetime like an X-Wing Fighter (that's a thing from the movie that I know!). It's sort of impossible to go through life not learning anything about Star Wars. Besides the fact that the movie has generally been an omnipresent American institution over the last 40 years, mentioned in countless songs and TV shows, I have been been exposed to it in other, more specific ways, namely, working in a Toys R Us through the release of two prequels, watching Spaceballs once, and having friends with Star Wars tattoos.

So, here is my attempt at piecing together the plot of the movie from what I’ve picked up from pop culture references over the years...

Star Wars begins with some flying words saying “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away…” We see our main characters in a space bar. Luke Skywalker’s there, Han Solo is there, Chewbacca’s making his wookiee noises, those two nerd robots are bickering like an old married couple. Then we cut away to the Dark Side and oh man, it is dark as hell over there. The Imperial Death March plays and we see Darth Vader walking down a long spaceship hallway on the Death Star. There are some Storm Troopers following him and one of them hits their head on the ceiling. Vader has his cape in a twist about something. He orders his Troopers to invade the Jedis.

Some of the Storm Troopers capture Princess Leia and bring her to Jaba the Hutt and she says “Save me, Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope” and the close-up scene of her gold bikini has been worn out by virgins rewinding it so many times. Obi Wan hears her pleas somehow. So Obi Wan Kenobi’s like, “Gas up the Millennium Flacon and the X-Wing Fighter, you guys. Princess Leia needs help.” Han Solo is like, “I’ll fly us there as long as they don’t have snakes, which I am known for hating.” So him and Chewie start flying there and some bad guys try to attack them and Han Solo is all “Get off my plane!”

Eventually Princess Leia gets rescued but Obi Wan dies and becomes a blue ghost. So Luke Skywalker’s like, “Oh hell no, I’m gonna go fight this a-hole, to whom I bear no familial relation that I know of... yet.” But Yoda’s like, “A training sequence, there must be.” So Luke gets trained in the ways of the Jedi Knights. At the end of the training, Yoda says, "May the force be with you and I hope annoying people don't post this on Facebook every May for all eternity." He goes to the Death Star where the Jedis are fighting the Storm Troopers (this is what’s known as “a star war”). Boba Fett is there riding around on a jet pack, shooting everyone in the star war.

Luke finds Darth and breaks out his light saber. Luke hears Yoda in his head: “Use The Force.” There's a big light saber fight between the blue light saber and the red one. Vader gets a good shot in and chops Luke's hand off and drops the bomb on him that he’s his father all Maury Povich-like. And Luke is like, “Nooooooo!” Han Solo comes along and saves them and blows up the Death Star and then gets frozen in carbonite.

Then in the prequel, we learn that before all this happened, a character named Jar Jar Binks annoyed the shit out of everyone.

At the end of the movie, the camera pans out on George Lucas who sits at home counting his money.

The end.

How did I come to this conclusion, you may be asking? Good question. I first wrote out everything I think I know about the Star Wars movies. Here is all of the Star Wars knowledge stored in my brain in alphabetical order:

“A Long Time Ago, in a Galaxy Far, Far Away…”

This is how the whole series starts. Some yellow words flying backwards through space like Dance Dance Revolution. “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ...uh… some people fought in the Star Wars and uh… after these words finish scrolling, get ready for the Star Wars, baby, here we go!” Ten words in and I’m already confused. How does Star Wars take place in the past when everyone knows space travel movies take place in the future. You trippin’, Star Wars. OK, maybe it takes place a long time ago because this particular far, far away galaxy has a more advanced society than ours and were flying around in spaceships millenniums before we were even drawing on caves, right? BUT THEN WHY DO THEY SPEAK ENGLISH AND HAVE EARTHLING BODIES?

Admiral Ackbar

This is some Elephant Man-looking little dude and the most famous thing he does is say the line, “It’s a trap!” which became a meme people use when they get tricked or Rick Rolled or something. I don’t know what he is the admiral of or whether or not he has any other lines. I also don’t know what the trap is or who was getting trapped.

Anakin Skywalker

This is some little Jedi kid. He’s Luke Skywalker’s kid, I’m guessing. Wait, unless he was in a prequel, in which case he is Luke Skywalker’s dad. Wait, no, he can’t be Luke Skywalker’s dad because Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s dad which I know from the famous “Luke, I am your father” line. OK, so I’m gonna stick with my original theory which is that he is Luke Skywalker’s kid.

The Bar Scene

There is a scene in this movie where a bunch of aliens are hanging out at an intergalactic space bar, mixing it up. I know this because every time my friends and I end up at a sketchy bar they’ll say, “This looks like that bar scene in Star Wars” and I’ll be like “yeah haha hey do you think they have chicken fingers and Buck Hunter here or what?”

Boba Fett

Boba Fett is a bad dude. Like, a pretty high-ranking bad dude. He is the head of the bad guy army, possibly. Maybe he reports to head of the bad guys, Darth Vader. I’m relatively sure he’s got a jet pack and a gun and that he’s after Han Solo for some reason.

C3PO

C3PO is the neurotic robot nerd made of solid gold and his only friend is a beeping garbage disposal. Everytime I see him I think of that Star Wars auditions skit on SNL where he says “It’s Richard Dreyfuss! I told you I didn’t want to wear the damn mask!”

Chewbacca

Chewbacca’s a big ol’ bear man that everyone thinks they can do an impression of. He might be a wookiee on account of they’re both hairy. But for some reason I thought wookies were tiny. Maybe I’m thinking of the tribbles from Star Trek? That’s not one of the Star Wars sequels, right? Just kidding, I know it’s a prequel. Beam me up, Chewy!

The Dark Side

The Dark Side is where all the bad guys are at. Boba Fett is there. Darth Maul is over there, probably. Darth Vader is DEFINITELY there. He’s like, King Shit of that motherfucker. The Dark Side seems like a lonely place though because they’re always like “come over to the Dark Side.” Kinda makes you feel bad for the Dark Side people.

Darth Vader

Darth Vader is the meanest sonofabitch in this galaxy. Whenever he walks around he’s accompanied by the Imperial Death March song. He’s voiced by James Earl Jones but not played by him because I don’t think anyone would be scared of Darth Vader if he was shaped like kindly old James Earl Jones. Is James Earl Jones still alive, by the way? Hang on, lemme Google this shit… Yeah, OK, he is. Whew. Anyway, when Darth Vader takes off his helmet, he looks exactly like the head of a penis. I know this because one time when I was eight I was at a sleepover and my friend said in the middle of the night, “You know, Darth Vader looks exactly like the head of my penis.” Since he didn’t specify that he meant without his helmet, I spent many years wondering if I had a weird penis because it didn’t look like a shiny, smooth space helmet. Eventually I saw a photo of Vader without his helmet on and felt a somewhat better about my non-space helmet penis.

Darth Maul

Darth Maul is a bad guy and his most notable characteristics are his black and red face paint and his light saber which is special because it’s a double-sided light saber. He was a super popular Halloween character one year. I’m gonna take a guess that Darth Maul is Darth Vader’s son since they’re both bad guys with “Darth” in their names. Or maybe “Darth” is as common as “Mike” or “John” in the Star Wars realm.

The Death Star

via Flickr

This is a big huge space station where all the bad guys live. Darth Vader definitely lives in there. He keeps all his bad guy shit in there. But the Death Star gets blown up at some point, I know that. So I’m guessing that’s a win for the Jedis.

Droids

Droids are like, lil robots or whatever. I know there’s a line that goes, “These are not the droids you’re looking for.” So I’m guessing there are different kinds of droids and people go looking for them for some reason.

The Force

The Force is the power the Jedis have. It’s like magic, kind of. It lets you levitate stuff and be good at fighting. Jedis love that shit. They’re always talking about The Force. They’re usually saying things like “May the force be with you” and “the force is strong with this one” and uh… “may The Force be with you.” Did I say that one already? I did. OK well, that’s what The Force is. The funniest instance I ever saw involving The Force was this episode of MTV True Life where this dad was a super embarrassing Star Wars nerd and dragged his kid to a Star Wars convention. The segment ended with him trying to use the force to open the automatic door and failing. Here, this is it:

Han Solo

I’m like, 90 percent sure this is Harrison Ford’s character. I don’t know any of his lines but I think he’s like, a cocky fighter pilot so he probably says things like “hang onto your butts” and other smartalecky things like “I didn’t kill my wife!” I want to say that his co-pilot is Chewbacca. I feel like I’m always seeing those two together and they seem to have a real will-they-or-won’t-they Ross and Rachel thing going on. Things don’t end well for Han Solo though and I’m pretty sure he’s the character who gets frozen in carbonite at the end of one of the movies. I wonder how Chewy took that. Also, Han shot first, whatever the shit that means.

Hayden Christensen

That dude from the Shattered Glass movie is in one of the newer Star Wars movies though I don’t think people liked him very much.

Hoth

Hoth is a planet that is cold as hell. I know because of that one episode of the Clerks cartoon (which holds up way, way better than the majority of Kevin Smith’s catalog, anyway) where Jay says they could cut Silent Bob open and stay warm for the night. So I think that happened in the movie.

Light Sabers

These are laser swords. When I worked at Toys R Us, kids would take them out of the packages and beat the living shit out of each other with them, which was fine by us since then we could keep them in the back of the warehouse and beat the shit out of each other when we didn’t feel like working which was always. So not to brag but it’s safe to say I’m a Jedi Knight when it comes to beating the shit out of someone with a reshopped light saber.

Jabba the Hutt

This is the fat bastard who keeps Princess Leia captive. This leads me to believe that Princess Leia is maybe not the smartest character in the series since you’d have to be dumb as hell to get captured by a big, fat, slow-moving slug. Just run away when he offers you his space candy or whatever, dummy!

Jar Jar Binks

People HAAATE this mother fucker, I know that. He basically ruined the whole series. We had so many Jar Jar Binks figures left over at Toys R Us that we used to stack the boxes of them up and see who could bunny hop over them on a bike. None of us ever made it or even came close and there are several boxes of crushed Jar Jar Binks figures stuffed underneath a shipping dock out there somewhere.

Jedis

Jedis are the good guys. They are Knights. They dress like they ran through the laundry room at a resort and draped whatever towels and robes they could grab over themselves.

Lando Calrissian

Star Wars fans like to tell themselves that Star Wars is not a racist movie because Lando Calrissian is in it and he’s black and he drove the Millennium Falcon. I know this from that scene in Chasing Amy that devoted like, 15 minutes to this.

Luke Skywalker

Luke is the main good guy, played by Mark Hamill who went on to do… uh, other things. For some reason, I thought I remembered hearing that he is Princess Leia’s brother. Is that right? So I’m guessing there’s no sexual tension there unless it’s some weird incestuous thing like Back to the Future where Marty has to pretend to fuck his mom. Luke also gets his hand cut off at the end of one of them. The second one, I think.

Millennium Falcon

via Nerdist

This is the ship the good guys fly in, possibly piloted by Han Solo (Lando flew it at least once). When I was a kid, my friend had a huge model of it in his bedroom I and fell on it and crushed it while impersonating a sick dunk I saw on NBA Jam. He has not spoken to me since.

No Idea

Some evil guy, I guess.
 

Obi Wan Kenobi

Maaaaaan, I’m drawing a blank here. He’s some old-ass Jedi, right?. Maybe the head Jedi? No, Yoda is the head Jedi? So is the order of Jedis: Yoda, then Obi Wan, then the rest? Obi is a ghost at one point, right? Like, he’s glowing and blue? I know Princess Leia says at one point “Help me, Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.” But then he dies so he failed at saving her probly.

Pod Race

I know that this was the only cool thing about the Star Wars prequels. Again, big ups to that underrated Clerks cartoon for keeping me up to date about a movie series I’ve never seen.

Princess Amidala

This character is played by Natalie Portman and that’s about all I know. Not sure why she’s dressed up like some Japanese kabuki theater character.  

Princess Leia

Princess Leia is a princess of… something. She has side buns, a gold bikini, and every dude between the age of 30 and 50 wants to fuck her as evidenced by that Blink-182 sexual fantasy song and that one episode of Friends where David Schwimmer makes Jennifer Aniston dress up like her, because apparently a woman who looks like Jennifer Aniston is otherwise not sexually appealing to a dude with the face of David Schwimmer.

R2D2

This is the little Roomba-looking robot that hangs out with the Tin Man. I honestly have no idea what value a robot this small could bring to the table. Star Wars was written in the 70s though so R2D2 is probably just a glorified cell phone, with an alarm clock and a calculator that adds up big numbers and a button that makes a rap horn noise.

Rebels

The Rebels are the army extension of the bad guys. OR, wait. Maybe they are the misunderstood good guys who might seem bad but are really fighting on the side of good, kinda like Dennis Leary’s character in Demolition Man. (Yes, I have seen Demolition Man and not Star Wars. Many, many times, in fact.)

Samuel L. Jackson

I know Samuel L. is in one of the Star Wars movies. I don’t know who he played in it though but I bet he said “mother fucker” as his contract entitles him three “mother fuckers” and one “badass mother fucker“ per film.

Sith

Ahhh… jeez, this is getting tough. I’m drawing a blank here. There are so many groups that I’m starting to lose track. You got the Rebels, the Jedis, Slytherin, the Dark Side, and the Siths. The Siths probably lean on the bad side, along with the Rebels. Maybe Siths and Rebels are like an army/navy thing for the Dark Side.

Storm Troopers

This is Darth Vader’s army. They kind of look like him but have white uniforms. There’s one scene where one of them hits his head on the spaceship door and George Lucas left it in there.

Tauntaun

This is some animal that you can ride around and also slice up and use as a sleeping bag on Hoth.

This Tall-Ass Walking Thing (Not Sure What It’s Called)

No idea who uses these. Seems dumb as hell though. Just push 'em over.

Tractor Beam

I know this is a Star Wars thing, and was once included in a song by nerdcore rapper, MC Chris, who’ve I’ve heard is kind of a dick in person. Anyway, I’m gonna take a guess that a tractor beam is the thing that comes out of the light saber or some laser they use to shoot other fighter ships.

Wookiees

As mentioned above, wookiees are these big Harry and the Henderson-looking guys. I’m assuming some of them are females. Here’s what came up when I googled “female wookiees”:

Nice.
 

X-Wing Fighters

This is a fighter jet, smaller than the Millennium Falcon. I built one made out of Legos one time and the thing cost something like $80. George Lucas could probably buy himself a house on Lego money alone.

Yoda

Yoda is the Buddha of the Jedis. He is small and decrepit but he is wise and good at fighting. He talks backwards like this: “Too many characters, there are.” “Get out of the house once in a while, you must.”

That’s it. That’s everything I know about Star Wars without ever having seen it. I’m sure I got one or two things wrong. Feel free to tell me on Twitter. Live long and prosper, friends.
 

Unimpeachable queen of rap, Missy Elliott, bossed her way back to the top last month with "WTF (Where They From)" featuring Pharrell—her first release since 2005. Sure, Pharrell's verse might contain "a series of rhymes so Build-A-Rap basic that even an amateur with the merest shred of dignity would quickly delete it from his iPhone Notes," but the fact that doesn't deflate the rest of the song is testament to just how hard it bangs.

Last night, Missy performed the track on the season finale of The Voice in America including the same futuristic outfits, dance routines that would land most people with a massive bill from their chiropractor, and real life Pharrell—not just puppet Pharrell, who also makes an appearance. The entire thing is quite clearly mimed—welcome to 2015, close the door on your way out—but that doesn't detract from the sheer enormity of the production value they have put into what is essentially just a three minute performance of one song. I mean, I've seen smaller West End productions.

Watch below.

Image by Christopher Classens

One thing about hip-hop, man... it's real. It is a thing that exists. Sometimes hip-hop gets extra real, though, like last week when a dude at a Slim Jesus show decided he wasn't real hip-hop and snatched his microphone, or that one time KRS-One literally tossed PM Dawn off the stage for pretty much the same thing, or anytime, like, Immortal Technique does a thing. But how can you tell when hip-hop is real and when it isn't? How do we root out the scourge of fake hip-hop? Let's rip through rap history for clues. Here are 50 times hip-hop was real. Let's use their example to Bring the Game Back to Its Essence and maybe Kick Off Another Golden Age.
 

When kids in the Bronx discovered Kraftwerk

ZULU NATION!

Every time Rakim rapped, and you couldn’t hear him pause to breathe

How!?

Flavor Flav and Chuck D telling us 911 is a joke

Still true.

When Kool Moe Dee smashed a Kangol under his Jeep on the How Ya Like Me Now cover to get at LL

via Discogs

He didn't like it.

Snoop and Dre having nuthin but 40's in the fridge in the "Nuthin But a G Thang" video

Stay strapped at all costs.

Wu-Tang Clan actually turning out to not be anything to fuck with

via

The motherfuckin' ruckus was brought.

J Dilla's entire life

He lived and breathed it.

That one time Zev Love X from KMD bought a Doctor Doom mask

Hey!

When Kendrick Lamar told us we’re gonna be alright

"ALL MY LIFE I HAD TO FIGHT!"

When Ice Cube got fired on his day off in Friday

via

Craig. Craig!

Busta Rhymes hitting the Cha Cha

Drake who?
 

Rawkus Records, am I right?

TFW you fortified live.

When Outkast rescued me, you, your mama, and your cousin too

via

Why was there a desert in the forest, again?

The first four minutes of the movie Belly

Greatest rap video of all time.

Puff and J-Lo fleeing the scene of a 1998 nightclub shootout

via

Don't be fooled by the rocks that she got.

When Omarion and Marques Houston did it for Lil’ Saint

Gone too soon...

When Troy Ave brought New York back

It's still unclear what or where the city was brought back from.

Every time DJ Khaled needs “another one”

We changed a lot too.

Every time Jadakiss told us what color the whip was

"You can't stand Kiss / Coming through the hood in an Aston Vanquish the color of dandruff"

Every time Young Thug dresses himself, and it go motherfuckin viral

via

Thug stays dressed, haters stay pressed.

When Lil Flip came thru the garage sale

"Just hit the website and tell em Flip Gates sent you / We furniture and all, but we ain't touchin' dentures."

When 2pac told Yo! MTV Raps he beat up the director of Menace II Society and caught an assault charge

Greatest rap interviewee of all time.

When Ralph McDaniels interviewed the Roc-A-Fella Records camp backstage at Summer Jam 2001, but Jay Z just did sign language

"..."

Nas

Whose world?

Cam’ron resisting a carjacking, getting shot, driving himself to the hospital, and refusing to cooperate with police afterward

via

Stop snitching.

When Foxy Brown took 32 grams, chopped it in half, doubled it times three, divided the profit by four, subtracted by eight, and added the other two that Mega brought through

via

Affirmative.

Webbie getting baptized in a barrel on Easter Sunday in a white tee, jeans, bandana, and gold watch

Swerve on em.

The time Lil Kim was gone for a minute but then she came back with "The Jump Off"

East Coast, West Coast, worldwide.

When Boosie’s daughter told y’all her daddy was coming home

She ain't lie!

Every time a sitting President of the United States got mad at Kanye West

Like we always do at this time.

Future

Freebandz, Freebandz.

DMX constantly trying to find his dogs

Where were they, though?

When Lil B met Clams Casino

What you doin'? Bruh, I'm gangsta.

The time dude nearly died crashing his motorcycle tricking down the highway in Drag-On’s “Spit These Bars” video

Who left the footage in?

Every time Mary J. Blige hits a two-step

Get it, auntie queen.

When Pimp C challenged Atlanta rappers’ dope prices

"Feelings is like booty holes. Anybody can have they own feelings."

When Papoose had the five boroughs in his hands in the “Touch It (Remix)” video

Streets mad delicious.

That one year everyone wore accessory aviation goggles

via

I had two pairs.
 

Nicki Minaj frying all our lookin asses

We deserved it.
 

Joe Budden scoring a hit no one realized was about jerking off

Pump what, now?
 

J. Cole scoring a hit everyone realized was about jerking off

Shouts out rap songs that double as condom instructionals. ("The J, the I, the M, the M, the Y, the J, the I, the M")

Whenever Angie Martinez rapped

Come back, Ang. The game needs you.

The movie BET always plays where Q-Tip goes to jail for killing Fat Joe

via

Spoiler alert: It's bad.

Redman taking MTV Cribs to the bando

Cribs never got realer.

The whole Dungeon Family LARPing on the cover of the Even in Darkness compilation

via

"To become forever more Excalibur."

Every time Trap God Gucci Mane blesses an artist, and they blow up afterward

via

Waka, Nicki, Thug, Future, Migos...

Beyonce’s “Upgrade U” verse being better than Jay’s

"Silk lined blazers, diamond cream facials / BBS cufflinks, six star pimp suites" 

Lil Wayne’s “Upgrade U” verse being better than both

"Bitch, holla, it is Lil Weezy / They cannot see me, they are like Stevie"

Jim Jones’s mother crafting a diss song, video, and commemorative t-shirt after an argument with her son’s fiance.

Eminem's mom did it first but with a fraction of the #BARZ and finesse.

T.I. and Tiny's animated Holiday Hustle Christmas Special

What is the North Pole but a cartel for toys?

Craig got the real live shit from front to back. Follow him on Twitter.

This article originally appeared on Noisey UK.

Most festivals in the United Kingdom take place in a fairly non-descript field. The farmer kicks the cows out by the truck-load, and in come thousands of pilled up revelers, stamping their Huarache-shaped mark on the countryside. So it’s a given, really, that festivals halfway across the world take place in far more gob-smacking settings. Take, for example, Hong Kong’s Clockenflap Festival. Over on the harbour-facing West Kowloon island, It’s the sort of place where you can watch New Order inflate the neon love balloon of ‘True Faith’ while, just across the water, the dancing electric tinsel of the Honkers skyline is stacked before you in all its pixel-perfect glory. New York has plenty-good real estate, but only Hong Kong is that densely packed that it turns into building Tetris. Here, the soft immersive wash of Blur’s The Magic Whip was born, and witnessing the place, it chimes quite perfectly. Just look at those skyscrapers above. Aren't they a beacon for the future of festivals in the East?

The thing is, though, whatever the delights of the backdrop, at street level, Hong Kong has never been interested in the rock festival as a thing. Bar a small expat scene, the culture of gig-going just isn’t established, much less of festival-going. So much so that when Clockenflap organizer Justin Sweeting first started, he had to put introductory section on his website for locals, like: ‘What is a festival?’ and ‘How should one behave at a festival?’. All the important questions for newbies to the scene.

Seven years on, he’s had The Libertines, A$AP Rocky and Angel Haze through his doors this year, but he says he has yet to break even, and convincing the authorities to let him do his business in the liberal-illiberal greylands of the post-handover island has been all uphill. I talked to Justin about what Clockenflap can tell us about what a festival is, and more importantly, what Hong Kong is.

Noisey: Hi Justin. Could you start by explaining to me why a festival in Hong Kong is such an obscure concept? 
Justin: In Hong Kong we don’t have a history of this sort of culture. It’s a wonderful city but it just doesn’t have a lot going on creatively. Being outdoors, in the middle of the day, sitting on the grass, watching an act you may not know – out here these are paradigm shifts, relatively speaking. 

Why do you think that is? 
For a long time, people in Hong Kong haven’t had a lot to complain about. Life’s been okay. In that kind of situation, it hasn’t really been possible to have sincere punk music or creative movements – we haven’t had much to rebel against. Of course, that’s changed in recent times. We’ve got something to be angry about, and it’s certainly healthy for the creative arts. 

Is there a culture of live music at least? What’s a local gig like?
Historically, what people came to expect of live music was very different from the West. Here, it was background music to dinner. It was mainly cover bands. In terms of ticketing, we had to convince people to understand what coming to a show is. Even outside the festival, we had to encourage people to come to shows that weren’t on the weekend. 

But it’s a famously commercially-liberal place, so I’m assuming it’s relatively easy to set yourself up. 
Not really. We’ve definitely had to roll with the punches, in terms of working with the authorities. We had to make Clockenflap free one year. In order to use that stunning bit of land we now have, we also had to make baby-steps with the authorities to play by the rules. The first year we got hold of that bit of land, they told us: by the way, you’re not going to be able to sell any tickets.

What did you end up doing? 
We had to make a decision: do we kill this now, or do we lower the bar as far as possible to get people into the festival so that they see what a festival actually is, and hopefully they’ll come back? Effectively we put on Hong Kong’s biggest ever free party. 

You say you don’t get any support from the government – has that changed much since the handover? Is the new regime turning the screws, culturally? 
I think one of the major issues is that there’s nowhere for things to ultimately escalate to. There’s no minister of culture. There’s not someone at policy level whose job it is to nurture and ensure the infrastructure’s in place.

So does the lack of festivals mean that Hong Kong might be a very commercial culture but it’s not necessarily an entrepreneurial one? 
No, I think it is very entrepreneurial, because if you look at it with pure business eyes, there’s no reason to do a festival – we’ve haven’t broken even in seven years. In Chinese eyes, if it doesn’t make money, you stop doing it.

Are there any big festivals on the Chinese mainland? 
There’s lots. In the hundreds, actually. But there aren’t many that are well-run or respected. It’s really hard doing a festival on the mainland. 

Why?
From the organiser’s side, all the cards are stacked against you. The ministry of culture say that you have to submit all the lyrics, all the setlists for approval. You have to be very careful about anything that has any involvement about Tibet. I know a lot of festival organisers, who, sometimes they just get a fax a couple of days before the event – "Your event is cancelled." That’s the end. No arguments. It’s very tough when the rules can change in an instant. 

Why did you start Clockenflap?
I was born and raised here, went to the UK for university, stayed on there to play in a band for a while. I was in a touring act called Six Ray Sun [they once supported The Cribs]. We had an indie deal. It got to the level where we’d tour the toilet circuit around the country. But after that plateaued, I came back, looked around me and I saw nothing had changed – the scene was still flatlining in Hong Kong. I was so burnt out on music in the UK, but here it was still innocent and pure. There was no expectation.

I guess though, there was also a sense of: “Well if it was going to happen, someone would have already done it by now.” 
Absolutely. And there were plenty of efforts. People had tried to make things happen. People had dipped their toes. Even now, plenty try but fail. If I walked downstairs, and announced: “We just worked on a festival”, 99% of people would think I was talking about a religious festival.

Who is going, then? Are your attendees just curious? Are they people with links to the West? 
There’s a large expat market, but this is the first year the majority of the festival-goers have been local Chinese. The thing with expats is that gig-going is sewn into their culture. For them, our marketing is like: “Look these are the dates, this is what’s happening.” They know the drill. But to be really successful long-term, we have to tap into the local market. 

Are the ones you get still very UK-centric? The old G ’n T public school crew of lore? 
I don’t think so. Whereas in past times, a lot of British and American expats would make up the majority, now it’s a lot of French. There’s a swing in that sense. The French are very supportive of the arts – you see that having an effect.

But do they still lord it? 
In terms of a lot of expats coming here and having a very well-paid job, now, in most cases, they’re not on big expat deals that make them much better-paid than the locals. They’re here more and more because they genuinely want to be here. Those days are gone, I’m afraid. 

That’s very sad. 
In one way.

That bastard goose bit me mere moments after this photograph was taken

I usually go totally overboard on year-end list-making because 1. lists are fun, and 2. before I started working here, I was freelance for a billion years, so I settled into the habit of making 4 (or more—the record is 7) year-end lists per annum. This past year marked my first as a part of Noisey's editorial staff, so that do-or-die freelance hustle that's kept the lights on for the past 12 years has been supplanted by a more daily grind and the freedom to cover just about anything I want (which, more often than not, entails no-fun black metal or obnoxious doom). It's a privilege that, trust me, I don't take lightly—despite the evidence to the contrary that you're about to read below.

Now that I only had to make one sole, solitary, all-encompassing year-end list and no editor to rein me in, I was originally inclined to throw caution to the wind and just list every record I enjoyed this year. Since I highly doubt you want to read through several hundred lines of type, though, I managed to whittle it down to a spare 50. Yes, 50.

I've been lucky enough to cover a wide range of fantastic music this year, and the links below lead to my writing on the various bands that populate this absurdly long (but obviously, objectively correct) list. I had to make a few painful cuts, like the year's two best country albums (Whitey Morgan's Sonic Ranch, and Angaleena Presley's American Middle Class) but these are the metal-oriented albums I had the best time listening to this year. So much for not going overboard…

KIM KELLY'S TOP 10 (MOSTLY) METAL ALBUMS OF 2015

1. Misthyrming - Söngvar elds og óreiðu

Icelandic black metal perfection.

2. Cloud Rat - Qlipthoth

The future of grind.

3. Vastum - Hole Below

An album that perfectly articulated death metal's messy, hairy, ugly humanity.

4. Mgla - Exercises in Futility

The pinnacle of orthodox black metal in 2015.

5. Death Karma - The History Of Death & Burial Rituals Part I

A truly morbid triumph of black/death.

6. Chrch  - Unanswered Hymns

Cosmic, crushing doom that elevates and amazes; the first time I saw them, I knew I was witnessing something special. 

7. Yellow Eyes - Sick with Bloom

The future of American black metal.

8. Genocide Shrines - Manipura Imperial Deathevokovil (Scriptures Of Reversed Puraana Dharmurder)

Sri Lankan death metal supremacy.

9. Cosmic Church - Vigilia

Criminally underlooked, astonishingly great melodic Finnish black metal.

10. Disemballerina - Poison Gown

The most beautiful thing you'll ever hear.

MY OTHER 40 FAVORITE METAL (AND OCCASIONALLY NOT METAL) ALBUMS OF 2015 IN MOSTLY ARBITRARY ORDER BECAUSE I LOVE THEM ALL VERY MUCH

Abyssion / Photo courtesy of Svart Records

Spectral Wound - Terra Nullius

Black Cilice - Mysteries

Abyssion - Luonnon harmonia ja vihreä liekki

False - Untitled

Eye of Nix - Moros

Leila Abdul-Rauf - Insomnia

Obsequiae - Aria of Vernal Tombs

Khemmis - Absolution

Bell Witch - Four Phantoms

Ares Kingdom - The Unburiable Dead
 

Christian Mistress / Photo by Marit Schmidt

Locrian - Infinite Dissolution

Pyramids - A Northern Meadow

Christian Mistress - To Your Death

Ethereal Shroud - They Became the Falling Ash

Gloam - Hex of Nine Heads

Tribulation - The Children of the Night

Revenge - Behold.Total.Rejection

Nachtlieder - The Female of the Species

Tovarish - This Terrible Burden

Vattnet Viskar - Settler
 

RAM / Photo courtesy of Metal Blade

Macabre Omen - Gods of War - At War

Chaos Echoes - Transient

Abominor - Opus: Decay

Sivyg Yar - Burial Shrouds

Lluvia - Eternidad Solemne

Magic Circle - Journey Blind

Tyranny - Aeons in Tectonic Internment

Nightfell - Darkness Evermore

RAM - Svbversvm

Skepticism - Ordeal
 

Devouring Star / Photo courtesy of Daemon Worship

Thou & The Body - You, Whom I Have Always Hated

Blood Incantation - Interdimensional Extinction

Dark Buddha Rising - Inversum

Napalm Death - Apex Predator - Easy Meat

Devouring Star - Through Lung and Heart

Cult of Occult - Five Degrees of Insanity

Cruciamentum - Charnal Passages

Primitive Man - Home Is Where the Hatred Is

Corrupted - Loss

Saturnine - Mors Vocat

Not all of these artists are on Spotify, but I made a little introductory playlist of the ones that are; check it out, and go buy all of these records!

Kim Kelly is an editor at Noisey, and wishes she'd kept the bloody thing to 15 at this point. She's on Twitter. 

Photo via Magnet School

Magnet School is a band from Austin, TX that plays progressive, forward thinking shoegaze. "So Long To The Heavens" is a dream, taking the listener into a lake of vibration. In the wake of a whole bunch of bands gazing it up, Magnet School focuses on the aggressive side of the sound, building themselves into a heavier version of The Catherine Wheel or Swervedriver. The track keeps building on top of itself, guitars getting more complex and intricate as the song progresses. The band has found that perfect sweet spot in between the heaviness and softness great guitar music should strive for. It's what space rock should be, always looking forward and never backward. 

Their upcoming record The Art of Telling The Truth is out on January 29 via Shifting Sounds. 

Photo by Angela Owens

If you happen to be craving something fast, mean, and ugly to close out your Tuesday with, allow me to direct you to the bottom half of this post, wherein you'll find the perfect antidote to your end-of-day doldrums. Fucking Invincible features members of Dropdead and Daughters and hails from DIY noisy aggro music mecca Providence; with a resume like that, it's no surprise that their music careens toward hardcore and powerviolence, or that it (duh) fucking rules.

The band's latest album, I Hate Myself And Want You To Die is out December 18 via Atomic Action Records on December 18th; preorders for the EP are available here, and you cna stream the whole fucking thing below.

Catch Fucking Invincible on fucking tour next year:

2/26 Cambridge, MA @ Democracy Center
2/27 New York City, NY @ ABC No Rio
2/27 Brooklyn, NY @ Acheron
2/28 Providence, RI @ Aurora
3/01 Worcester, MA
3/02 Belchertown, MA @ Cold Spring Hollow
3/03 Montreal, QC @ Casa Del Poppolo
3/04 Toronto, ON @ Coalition
3/05 Detroit, MI @ Berserker Fest
3/06 Chicago, IL @ Mousetrap
3/07 St. Louis, MO
3/08 Louisville, KY @ Spinelli's Downtown
3/09 Greensboro, NC
3/10 Richmond, VA @ Gallery 5 *
3/11 Baltimore, MD @ Sidebar *
3/12 Philadelphia, PA @ Lava Space *
3/13 New London, CT @ The Savage Patch

* w/ Die Choking

In the parlance of Australian suburbia, goon is cheap, boxed wine that comes in a plastic ‘goon’ bag. Even by Australian standards it’s not considered the most sophisticated of beverages. But young Brisbane newcomers Goon Sax seem to have no problem with goon; they named themselves after the 4-litre bags of wine and they feature in their new video for “Boyfriend”.

Fresh from high school, Louis Forster, son of the always debonair Robert Forster of Aussie pop legends the Go-Betweens, James Harrison and Riley Jones, create pop music in the vein of the Pastels, the Apartments and early Housemartins.

Their video for “Boyfriend” drips with a self-deprecating but self-aware cool. “I need a boyfriend/ Or just anything real” sings Forster deadpanly before pouring cups of tea and cutting hair.

Harrison says that the track was the third the band wrote from their forthcoming Up To Anything that's to be released on Melbourne label Chapter Music. 

“It was written in 10 minutes in Louis' bedroom in March 2014. Two years later we've made a video for it! The video was shot on a Tuesday night at a university studio in Brisbane, with the help of camera wizard Alfie Brimblecombe, who also features as the boyfriend. The idea for the video was fuelled by Louis' lifelong dream to perform on Top Of The Pops. Although you may not see it, the video features last minute haircuts, costume changes, November heat, accidental colour co-ordination and failed attempts to make things float with helium. The result is a literal depiction of the lyrics paired with white studio sheen.”

'Up to Anything' will be relesed in 2016 on Chapter Music.

Last night Azealia Banks was reportedly arrested after allegedly striking a female security guard outside a nightclub in the meatpacking district in New York. It has been reported that Banks attacked the guard with punches, according to a source that spoke to the New York Post, spitting in a security guard's face and "biting her in the boob." 

Police say she was arrested on a misdemeanor charge of third-degree assualt and held at a police station.

Apparently, Banks also used racial slurs aimed at the security guards after they wouldn't let her to a downstairs section of the party because she didn't have the right stamp. Once she did have the stamp she is said to have pulled some classic don't-you-know-who-I-am moves, shouting at security guards that she's on the Rihanna album. So hey, at least we know something about the Rihanna album. 

This tweet shows Banks leaving Manhattan Criminal Court. She seems super remorseful and bummed about the whole situation wink emoji.

Azealia Banks leaving Central Booking/Criminal Court. pic.twitter.com/APE11OLT1S

— Azealia Banks Web (@AzealiaBanksWeb) December 17, 2015

Banks is already being investigated by the LAPD after a similar incident was caught on camera in Los Angeles last month. So far she has not made any statement.

This article was originally published on Noisey UK 

Picture this: October 2014. The smoky, narrow, dimly lit, 650-person capacity room at London's Hoxton bar is over-packed with teenagers and grown-men alike. Charli XCX, after a considerably successful year, is performing an encore at her Toronto concert of the smash hit, “Fancy.” What gets the crowd going—more than the irresistible hook of the chorus, more than the thought of a Clueless-themed music video—is a chant led by Charli. “Let’s try something right now, you ready? It goes ‘pussy, pussy, power, power!’” Everyone in the crowd recites the chant right back, screaming in perfect unison, dripping in sweat, and excited by the prospect of this blunt cheer. A couple months later, on the cusp of 2015, Charli releases her second album, Sucker. Skip to track eight and you will hear “Body of my Own”—a sleek, slippery song playing out as an ode to masturbation. Charli sings with a snarl and a wink about getting high alone in the dark, admitting that “I can make it feel just like I’m hanging on / yeah I can do it better when I’m all alone.” Pussy power, indeed.

Fast forward to almost exactly a year since Sucker, and there has been an extreme influx of self-love pop anthems released this year. Don’t get it wrong, though; self-love by women is not by any means a new concept. There have been plenty of songs about self-pleasure and confidence over past years. The 1984 release of Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop” polarized between controversy and celebratory dancing, “Beautiful” by Christina Aguilera expressed a new kind of powerful vulnerability and prompted a memorable Mean Girls scene, while two releases by Britney Spears walked both paths: “Touch of my Hand” and “Stronger,” the former being a sly self-pleasure tune, the latter a self-empowering anthem (featuring an astonishing music video, in which Britney does some tricks with a chair). Not to mention girl groups such as Destiny’s Child, TLC, and the Spice Girls, whose hits of independence and girl power have inspired many.

However, 2015 is clearly the year of self-love for women. This year there have probably been enough think pieces deconstructing the true psychological meaning of selfies, and whether or not self-love is narcissistic to fill a futile self-help book. But the reality is, women are dominating the music scene with anthems of self-love and respect—and audiences are now receptive to it.

“Feeling Myself” – Beyoncé and Nicki Minaj

Although this track is technically featured on Nicki Minaj’s excellent LP, The Pinkprint, it serves as somewhat of an epilogue to Beyoncé’s colossus self-titled album, full of tracks about self-empowerment. Bey sings the “feeling myself” hook in between Nicki’s classically clever and unapologetic verses, in which she alludes to her material pleasures (Chanel bags and Maybachs), self-pleasures (“feelin’ myself / jack rabbit”) and even guilty pleasures (“Lemme get a number two with some Mac sauce). Equally as important to the song is the exquisite music video, in which said hamburgers are shared between Bey and Nicki in the truest form of friendship and self-love possible. The closing lines are killer too: “We dope girls, we flawless, we the poster girls for all of this.” No one really needs a reminder that Beyoncé and Nicki are in the reign of pop music as we know it, but that’s what makes their shameless self-empowerment so empowering for others.

“You Don’t Know” - Junglepussy

Nothing screams self-love like Shayna McHale’s, a.k.a. Junglepussy’s discography. The New York-based rapper’s 2014 mixtape, Satisfaction Guaranteed and recent album, Pregnant with Success boast a variety of self-assured, confident hits. “Don't watch TV, watch JP. I'm better than porn / Above the clouds, you can't get to the level I'm on” she flaunts on single, “You Don’t Know.” McHale’s irresistible bravado has put her on the map as a force to be reckoned with, all the while demonstrating the power of loving yourself. (Read out interview with JP here.)

“Happy” – Marina and the Diamonds

When Marina Diamandis is asked during an interview about which song off her recent album Froot stands out for her, she responds with “Happy.” The song is as simple as the title suggests; the first track off of Marina Diamandis’s album, “Happy” begins fragile, with quiet piano chords accompanying Marina’s clear, yet uncertain voice. By the chorus she has her big “Aha” moment of self-discovery: “I’ve found what I’ve been looking for in myself,” she declares, as the song builds up with layers of backing vocals, guitar and percussion additions—a perfect pop metaphor. “I think ‘Happy’ could still be relevant in 50 years, or 50 years ago. It’s a universal topic,” she says. Too true, Marina. (Read our interview with Marina here.)

“Bo$$” - Fifth Harmony

Never has a pop culture reference to Michelle Obama been so damn catchy. A hit single off of the X-Factor alumni’s 2015 album, Reflection, Bo$$ has the five members of Fifth Harmony spitting lines about swiping cards with hard-earned money, being a Maybach as opposed to a Volvo, and spelling out “confident” for all of those who can’t comprehend the concept of female self-empowerment, a la Gwen Stefani’s "Hollaback Girl." Their “I deserve better/’Give it to me I’m worth it’” attitude is part of the reason they are so appealing to many (the other factor being the compelling saxophone riff).

“Yoga” – Janelle Monae

Monae is no stranger to self-empowerment in her songs. “Q.U.E.E.N.” from her 2013 album, Electric Lady and “Venus Fly,” a song she features on by Grimes, both express self-assured, confident personalities that shine in her song “Yoga.” The song lyrics contain clever yoga euphemisms along a smooth, bouncy beat, and Monae explains that she is her “own private dancer.” Her unique take on the spiritual power of the body and mind translates to the themes of body-positivity and self-confidence.

“Love Myself” - Hailee Steinfeld

Hailee Steinfeld’s “Love Myself” essentially encapsulates all the self-love and empowerment messages conveyed by female artists this year. The actress-turned-pop star tells it like it is: “(I love me) Gonna love myself, no I don’t need anybody else.” The pop banger has caused some people to read into the physical implications of Steinfeld’s lyrics. In an interview earlier this year with Noisey, Hailee addressed the speculation about references to masturbation in the songs: “I think for me the song just has a really strong self-empowerment message, and whether you take that as something physical or not, it basically means the same thing.” Hailee leaves it up to the listener’s interpretation, but if you don’t love yourself already, she will convince you.

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It’s clear that self-love isn’t necessarily a trend but a common feeling that is being exposed—and accepted—now more than ever. As 2015 comes to a close, while we are left with an incredible amount of self-empowering content made by women, Justin Bieber’s “Love Yourself” is climbing the charts. Bieber says, “You should go and love yourself” as if it’s a command or a snarky suggestion. The ladies are one step ahead of you, Justin.

Hannah Ziegler is a writer based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter.

There seems to be a hell of a lot of people excited about a film right now, and if it isn't Star Wars then its probably Quentin Tarantino's forthcoming post-Civil War Western, The Hateful Eight. Starring Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Samuel L Jackson, Tim Roth and more, the film is set for release in January and comes with a hype new score from the don of orchestral film scores, Ennio Morricone.

Morricone and Tarantino met up at London's Abbey Road during the week, alongside the film's actors, to conduct the Czech National Orchestra in a live rendition of the The Hateful Eight score. Just hours after the performance, the soundtrack was nominated for Golden Globe for Best Original Score. Hence the photo above of Tarantino fist-pumping like a man who just received brilliant news, and Morricone alongside him, preferring to eyeball the camera with a lingering stare of someone who has been nominated for more Golden Globes than he cares to remember.

Various songs have been filtering out during the week, but to celebrate Friday's release of the soundtrack, we have an exclusive premiere of "Neve No. 2" from the film. Have a listen below, feel the tension, and pre-order the album here.

Photo courtesy of Lionize

In addition to pursuing their sacred mission of single-handedly keeping rock'n'roll alive, Clutch is also amazingly loyal; there's a reason that nearly every time they headline a tour, they're joined by one (or more) of a small rotating cast of support bands. That's how I ended up meeting Lionize several years back at a chilly, drafty barn of a venue in upstate New York; they're frequent Clutch tourmates, and so are Corrosion of Conformity, the band I was slinging merch for that night.

Back then, there was a more pronounced funk bent to Lionize's music, but as their new self-produced Alpha EP shows, over time, the DC four-piece have thrown their lot in with more straightforward rock'n'roll, peppered with a little funk, a little 70s psychedelia, a little soul, and a whole lot of groove. Their bio namechecks Deep Purple, Bad Brains, and Parliament Funkadelic—and their time with Clutch has also had an obvious impact—but Lionize throws a few curveballs, too. 

Alpha is out January 8 via the band's own imprint, Wheaton's Finest Music—stream it below:

Move over Adele! Michael Jackson's Thriller, the best album of all time, Jackson's magnum opus with Quincy Jones, has sold a lot of copies: It's sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, and, now, in America, it's become the first album to top the 30 million mark. Recording Industry Association of America, i.e. the guys who hand out the gold and platinum plaques, announced yesterday that the album is the first in the organization's history to reach the platinum mark 30 times over.

"RIAA has awarded Gold & Platinum records on behalf of the music business for nearly 60 years, but this is the first time an artist has crossed the 30X multi-Platinum plateau," RIAA chairman and CEO Cary Sherman said in a statement, according to Billboard. "We are honored to celebrate the unique status of Thriller in Gold & Platinum history. What an exceptional achievement and testament to Thriller's enduring spot in our hearts and musical history."

Thriller was released in 1982, and you may remember it as the album with the music video where Michael Jackson wears the red jacket with the zippers and does the Halloween classic zombie Thriller dance. Weirdly enough, I just had a dream about that video last night! Anyway, you might say that when it comes to any previous platinum certification accomplishment, Thriller has now "Beat It" ("Beat It" is a title of a song on the album, which hopefully you know considering that fully 10 percent of the country has bought this album at some point). Anyway, let's all play "Wanna Be Startin' Something" today and celebrate!

Follow Kyle Kramer on Twitter.

The results are in, and this year's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees have just been announced by the esteemed and often hilariously out-of-touch organization. The Class of 2016 will include: Deep Purple (you think they'll play "Smoke on the Water" at the induction ceremony?), NWA (straight outta Compton and straight into the Hall of Fame), Cheap Trick (who can finally stop begging to be wanted), the aggressively lame soft rock stylings of Chicago, and Steve Miller, whose eponymous band is best known for juxtaposing the phrases "space cowboy" and "gangster of love" but who, upon reflection, has a serious stable of dad rock bangers.

NWA's induction is the most interesting aspect of this year's results, which are otherwise focused squarely on white dudes who fall within the yawning grey abyss between quasi-lame and pretty sweet. They'll be joining Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, Run-D.M.C., Beastie Boys and Public Enemy as the institution's sole representatives of hip-hop, a small but highly influential group whose impact on the cultural landscape is undeniable, but whose inclusion as hip hop artists inevitably kicks up hot debate every year. Keep in mind, Tupac Shakur becomes eligible for the ballot in 2017—next year's debate will sure be fun to observe as the parameters around what constitutes "rock'n'roll" continue to blur.

Our condolences to Yes, Janet Jackson, The Cars, Nine Inch Nails, The Spinners, Chaka Khan, Chic, The Smiths, The J.B.'s, and Los Lobos. Better luck next year!

Here are some other bands that Noisey would like to suggest for the 2017 ballot.

Between 1999 and 2007, The Starting Line were pop-punk staples. From their ubiquitous Say Anything-themed video for "Best of Me" to "Bedroom Talk," the go-to sex anthem for awkward nerds everywhere, to "Up & Go," which soundtracked the trailer for gender-bending teen comedy She's The Man starring Amanda Bynes, The Starting Line were there to support you throughout the emotional rollercoaster scientifically known as puberty. Now, the band are back with their first release in eight years, and it slays.

We're premiering the title track from their new three-track seven-inch Anyways, to be released on February 5 via Downtown Records. Produced by Will Yip (Tigers Jaw / Title Fight / The Wonder Years), it's the band's first studio release since their 2007 studio album, Direction, and you'll be pleased to know that it's an absolute banger that retains their old sensibilities without sounding at all dated. 

"It's still punk rock," frontman Kenny Vasoli said of the new material when profiled by Philly Voice earlier this year. "We're always going to sound like The Starting Line. I feel like I've stepped back far enough that I can really identify with what I liked about pop-punk and what I appreciate about it now." 

Listen below and pre-order Anyways on iTunes.

Follow Emma on Twitter.

This is continued from Part One: A Day in the Life of Martin Shkreli

Martin Shkreli sits alone on the cold cement floor of his cell, bouncing a ball against the wall. Bouncing. Bouncing. Bouncing. In between each bounce, a thought, an idea, a scheme.

The guard taps on the steel bars separating him from the world like a caged animal. “Shkreli! Yard time, on your feet.”

Martin Shkreli steps into the bright, outdoor yard, populated by hardened criminals, thugs, and cold-blooded killers. He walks directly to the bench press, sits down, and puffs up his chest. “Gotta throw up a flag,” he thinks. “Hope this works.” He takes off his shirt, exposing his pale, boyish upper body, and flexes to accentuate the large Thursday dove tattoo on his left pectoral. The gangs take notice instantly and become enraged. He lays back under the bar and starts his set. After a wobbly, but impressive two reps, he rises to find himself surrounded by four Latin Kings.

“What the fuck you think you doin’, you Tobey Maguire-in-Spiderman-3-when-he-does-his-hair-like-Bright-Eyes-lookin’ motha fucka?” one barks.

“Oh hello, boys,” says Martin. “No problems here. Just enjoying some early morning calisthenics. It’s no David Barton Gym, where I can listen to Alexisonfire’s self-titled album through my Bluetooth Bose headphones. But it will have to do, eh?” The Kings do not take kindly to this and start moving in.

Just as things are getting heated, Martin is saved. The Emos have stepped in. Five members of the Emo gang step up, flexing their Underoath tattoos and pushing the strands of stringy hair out of their eyes. “He’s one of ours, Rico,” one says. “Back off.”

“You gonna risk it for this Alternative Press-circa-2003-cover-boy little bitch?”

“You been on the inside too long, Rico. You ain’t heard,” says an Emo. “This ain’t no normal Emo. This is Martin Shkreli.” The Kings recognize the name. It has echoed through the halls only in whispers. The Kings recoil in fear.

“Thanks, boys,” Shkreli tells the Emos, patting them on the backs and shoulders like he has seen friends do on TV. “Now I need your help with something else. I’m looking for an inmate in here. Maybe you know where I can find him.” He wrings his hands and his lips form a sinister, Grinch-like grin. The sky suddenly turns grey above him and the yard becomes dark. “His name is Bobby Shmurda.”

***

Bobby Shmurda is doing the Shmoney dance with another inmate when Martin Shkreli sheepishly approaches. Bobby had a reputation around the yard of being able to procure things from the outside. And Bobby had heard of Martin's reputation as being the guy who once told the press he planned to bail Bobby out, but somehow ended up in prison himself.

“I understand you’re a man who knows how to get things,” Martin says, making loose attempts at dabbing.

Bobby looks intrigued. “I’ve been known to locate certain things from time to time.”

“Good, then we are both businessmen. I owned a very cool indie record label on the outside which made me very, very popular on Tinder. With women. Anyway, what I need from you is a Clearaudio Goldfinger,” Martin says.

“A what?” asks Bobby.

“It’s a 16-karat gold needle for a turntable. Sharp as hell. The best there is. The only thing I’ll listen to Brand New’s Deja Entendu with,” Martin explains.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

“Oh and one more thing,” Martin says. “I need a poster…”

***

Bobby Shmurda woke up to the sound of the prison alarm ringing through the halls.

“What do you mean he just wasn’t here?” the prison warden shouts furiously, standing in Martin’s empty cell, its walls covered in silkscreened posters from The Starting Line tours and photos of Martin with various celebrities at charity events. Martin had become the warden’s prized inmate over the years, helping him cook the prison’s books by raising the price of the infirmary’s drugs by 4,000 percent. And, save for the time Martin locked himself in his office and played his rare, $2 million Wu-Tang record over the prison’s speakers, he had been a model prisoner. “Go get that friend of his.”

A guard returns, shoving Bobby in by the collar. “I see you two together all the time, Shkreli and Shmurda,” the warden says to Bobby. “You’re as thick as thieves, you are. He must’ve said something. So where is he?”

“I have no idea,” Bobby says.

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Bout a week agooooooo.”

“This is a damn conspiracy!” says the warden, rifling through the contraband around Martin’s cell: a Pono player full of high-quality Finch songs, hooch he’d made out of rare flavors of Mountain Dew, a one-of-a-kind Gucci Mane bobblehead, and a some rare Drive-Thru Records LPs. “And you’re all in on it!” He throws a personalized Taking Back Sunday guitar pick at Bobby. “You are!” He throws another at a guard. “And you! ...And her.” He gestures to the poster of Taylor Swift hanging on the cell wall. “How about you, girlie? You know where lil Marty went?” He throws a pick at her and it goes straight through to the other side. He rips down the poster revealing a tunnel, only two feet high but 100 feet long.

“Oh my god.”

In 2015, Martin Shkreli escaped from prison. All they found of him was a youth large-sized navy blazer, some Bed Head sculpting cream, and his Clearaudio needle, worn down to the nub. Martin dug himself out and hoverboarded to freedom through 500 miles of shit-smelling foulness to freedom. Five hundred yards. That’s the length of ten bars hosting emo nights.

“Get busy Shkrelin’ or get busy dyin’.” That’s goddamn right.

Dan Ozzi is a Noisey editor and fan fiction enthusiast. Follow him on Twitter - @danozzi