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Leon Bridges, Sylvan Esso, Yola, Fleet Foxes and More Artists React to 2022 Grammy Nominations: Exclusive
Nominations for the 2022 Grammy Awards were announced on Tuesday (November 23rd). Lead nominee Jon Batiste is up for a whopping 11 Grammys, and Justin Bieber, Doja Cat, and H.E.R. aren’t far behind, with eight nominations each. Artists like Leon Bridges — who is up for Best Traditional R&B Performance with Robert Glasper, as well as for Best R&B Album — shared their exclusive reactions with Consequence by email. “It’s humbling to be nominated for two Grammy Awards, amongst all my peers in the music industry,” Bridges says. “Gold Diggers Sound was a labor of love, something healing that followed a difficult time in my life and was born out of nighttime R&B jam sessions with musicians and a producer I deeply respect and am inspired by. Advertisement Related Video “...
The Surprises, Snubs, and Changing Rules for This Year’s Grammy Nominations
On Tuesday morning, the Recording Academy revealed the full slate of nominations for the 64th Annual Grammy Awards. Over the past few tumultuous years, the Recording Academy has overseen changes in leadership and nominating procedures, with one more twist being announced just this morning before the nominations were unveiled: the Big Four general field categories (Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best New Artist) would grow from 8 to 10 nominees each. This is the second expansion in recent years, with only five nominees in those categories through 2018. The 10 nominees for Album of the Year include on-again-off-again rival superstars Kanye West and Taylor Swift. West, who was nominated for Album of the Year for each of his first three albums, has not been in the...
“I Feel More Alive”: How ACRAZE Achieved Chart-Topping Success Through Sacrifice
Imagine going from the opening slot at Exchange L.A.—performing to a near-empty venue—to headlining and selling out the following year. For 26-year-old DJ and dance music producer ACRAZE, this was reality. Before becoming the red-hot “Do It To It” artist we all know and love, his music production journey started on a much different path. In an exclusive interview with EDM.com, ACRAZE admits that growing up, he “was not very musically inclined.” But his interest was piqued during his senior year of high school, when he knew he wanted to become a DJ. ACRAZE then went on to release his first original production, “Pull Up,” in 2017 via 4B‘s MACA imprint. It’s now a far cry from what fans have come to know and expect ...
Grammys 2022 Nominations: As Usual, The Best New Artist Category Is a Head-Scratching One
The Recording Academy, aka the voting body responsible for the Grammy Awards, has been vocal this past year about the internal work of growth and change. They are trying to put on a new face — one that’s more inclusive, one that is more equitable, and one with more voices in the room. They did away with nomination committees, an antiquated system that filtered final say for nominations. With that in mind, many expected the 2022 Grammy Nominations to look a bit different — or at least a little different from past years. At the end of the day, though, the more some things change, the more they stay the same. The Grammys seem to be one of those things, but their Best New Artist category is especially confusing. Best New Artist is, consistently, a pretty baffling category. Maybe the best way t...
How Pedri Became European Football’s Brightest Hope
It was just after 11PM, on a hot and humid night in Tokyo, when Pedri’s season came to an end. The young footballer stood in the middle of the International Stadium Yokohama, having brought to a close a 12 month run, beginning with his breakthrough at Barcelona and ending in an Olympic silver medal, 72 games later. In that year, Pedri’s life had changed entirely. The 18-year-old had gone from playing for his local team in Spain’s Segunda Division to appearing alongside Lionel Messi every week. Since then, the accolades, like the matches, have kept coming. Most recently, Pedri completed a rare feat, winning both the Golden Boy award (for the world’s best player under the age of 21) in the same year he was nominated for the Ballon d’Or (for the world’s best player, full stop) in the same yea...
System of a Down’s 10 Best Songs
System of a Down are one of the most eclectic metal bands to achieve massive success. From 1998 through 2005, the Armenian-American group out of California put out a series of acclaimed albums, but then went silent as a recording act for 15 years. Despite the lack of new music (save for a couple of surprise new songs in 2020), System of a Down’s discography rivals that of any heavy group of the past quarter century. Singer Serj Tankian’s unmistakeable voice ranges from frenetic to operatic, while guitarist-singer Daron Malakian’s riffs are catchy and chaotic at the same time. Meanwhile, the rhythm section of bassist Shavo Odadjian and drummer John Dolmayan is as mighty and technically skilled as just about any in heavy metal. Combine those musical sensibilities with lyrics that are both so...
Twitter Reacts to LeBron James and Isaiah Stewart Altercation
Sunday’s NBA game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Detroit Pistons resulted in a bloody altercation that saw Isaiah Stewart elbowed in the face LeBron James. James and Stewart both received technical fouls and ejections, while Russell Westbrook only received a technical foul. James was also suspended for a game without pay for the first time ever due to his contact play against Pistons star, Isaiah Stewart. This marks just the second time in James’ career where he was ejected. The first was back in 2017 when he made comments to a referee. The altercation in the game occurred with 9:18 remaining in the third quarter as Lakers were trailing behind Detroit 78-66. The loose ball foul has gained a lot of attention on social media, causing Twitter users to chime in with their own opinions ...
Inside the ‘House of Gucci’, with Jared Leto and Adam Driver
This week marks the long-awaited release of House of Gucci, the Ridley Scott-directed and co-produced film that tells the story of one of the darkest chapters for the Gucci family. The movie is based on Sara Gay Forden’s book The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour and Greed, and tells of Maurizio Gucci’s rise to the pinnacle of the family company, before the fashion empire begins to crumble and Maurizio himself is murdered. As well as Adam Driver (who plays Maurizio), the cast includes Lady Gaga as Patrizia Reggiani, Jared Leto as Paolo Gucci and Al Pacino as Aldo Gucci. Leto — who plays family outsider Paolo — is a frequent collaborator of the house. Earlier this month, he walked for Gucci in its “Love Parade” show in Los Angeles, continuing his relationship w...
Why Disney+’s Hawkeye Takes Place at Christmas
The upcoming Disney+ series Hawkeye is set apart from other MCU adventures by a number of factors, but here’s a big one: It’s officially a holiday story. The series begins in the days before Christmas, with O.G. Avenger Clint Barton (Jeremy Renner) trying to spend some time with his family — until, of course, things go sideways. This marks the first major MCU project to be set at Christmas since Iron Man 3, and as part of an extended interview with Consequence, head writer Jonathan Igla (Mad Men) explained that the series being set at Christmas was something that came out of early conversations in the writers’ room, as they established a structure for the season where each episode represents one day in the week leading up to Christmas. As Igla says, “I love the compressed time frame and th...
The Timeless Power of Bush (or Bushx, Depending on How Canadian You Are)
The things we treasure when we’re young are often the most formative. For me, it was a black Sanyo cassette/radio combination with one speaker and an appetite for D batteries. This little radio provided access to the world that would smother my overactive and chaotic mind: all request radio, an hour block of programming on one of the few FM stations it could pick up. You had to know the phone number by heart to get in on time, as people would rush to call in and request the banal songs they would hear on an endless loop the rest of the day anyway. Not me though, I was focused on a singular task: making mixtapes from songs I was able to record off the radio. There was a song I was chasing that I had heard in passing on numerous occasions, but hadn’t managed to time the pause/record button j...
Ghostbusters: Afterlife Went Too Far With Its Most Unsettling Cameo
[Editor’s note: The following contains spoilers for Ghostbusters: Afterlife.] Jason Reitman‘s Ghostbusters: Afterlife is packed with callbacks to the original 1980s films, not just drawing upon the iconography established by Reitman’s father but also bringing back much of the original cast, including Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, and Ernie Hudson. It also chose to pay tribute to the fourth member of the Ghostbusting team, actor and filmmaker Harold Ramis — but went too far in doing so. As Egon Spengler, Ramis was one of the original film’s most memorable characters, and Ramis also had a long and fruitful career as a director of films including Caddyshack and Groundhog Day; he died in 2014 at the age of 69 after an illness, and Afterlife is dedicated to his memory. Which is fitting, given that ...
In Conversation With Bugha, The World’s Best ‘Fortnite’ Player
Make no mistake: playing video games professionally is harder than it sounds. As esports becomes an ever-larger part of contemporary culture, it has also become an increasingly competitive environment, in which it’s hard to rise to the top. But two years ago, Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf managed it. At the age of just 16, he won the first-ever Fortnite World Cup, after playing six matches against 99 other players. Alongside the $3 million USD prize fund, the victory immediately propelled him into stardom: he appeared on national television, amassed 5 million Instagram followers, and an audience just shy of the same figure on Twitch. Now, he hopes to translate his fame into a broader success, by growing his brand and developing partnerships with resonant brands. Joining HYPEBEAST in conversation,...
