INTERVIEWS
![Maro Music on Producing Tracks for Cyberpunk 2077 [Q&A]](https://www.wazupnaija.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/maro-music-on-producing-tracks-for-cyberpunk-2077-qa-1050x600.jpg)
![Maro Music on Producing Tracks for Cyberpunk 2077 [Q&A]](https://www.wazupnaija.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/maro-music-on-producing-tracks-for-cyberpunk-2077-qa-80x80.jpg)
Maro Music on Producing Tracks for Cyberpunk 2077 [Q&A]
Cyberpunk 2077 is an action role-playing video game developed and published by CD Projekt. The story takes place in Night City, an open world set in the Cyberpunk universe. Players assume the first-person perspective of a customizable mercenary known as V, who can acquire skills in hacking and machinery with options for melee and ranged combat. Cyberpunk 2077 was developed using the REDengine 4 by a team of around 500, exceeding the number that worked on the studio’s previous game The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). CD Projekt launched a new division in Wrocław, Poland, and partnered with Digital Scapes, Nvidia, QLOC, and Jali Research to aid the production. Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith was a consultant, and actor Keanu Reeves has a starring role. The original score was directed by ...
Showrunner of the Year Eric Kripke on The Boys: “We Should Always Be Punching Up”
Eric Kripke is anxious. It’s two days before Thanksgiving and the veteran showrunner is already hard at work on the third season of The Boys. He’s three episodes into scripting, things are moving, but something is gnawing at him from deep inside. “It’s become really fun and breezy to write again,” Kripke admits over Zoom. “That worries me. It’s feeling enjoyable. I should be in intense, deep introspection for this.” Kripke has every reason to be precarious. In less than a year, he’s given Amazon a critical and commercial smash, and they’re running with it. They gave the early green light for Season 3, and they’ve even commissioned a spinoff series. Opportunity is expanding right before Kripke’s eyes — and fast. Fortunately for him, Kripke thrives amidst this kind of aggressive expansion, s...
Andrew Watt on His Breakout Year, Producing Ozzy Osbourne and Miley Cyrus
Andrew Watt has learned to accept change. The Long Island-born, L.A.-based producer has had a monster year, even if his body yearns for its younger days. “I think my body just woke up and said you have to pee now!” Watt tells SPIN. “Before I turned 30, I’d work in the afternoon all through the night. Now, I’m up at 8:30 and laying down tracks by 10.” It’s certainly been a whirlwind year for Watt. At the top, he produced Ozzy Osbourne’s latest solo album, Ordinary Man, which featured a wide array of guests (like Watt’s pal Post Malone, Elton John, Slash and Tom Morello), along with a band that included Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Chad Smith and Guns N’ Roses’ Duff McKagan. Andrew Watt at the 2019 American Music Awards playing with Ozzy Osbourne CREDIT: Kevin Winter/Getty Images for dcp...
Anya Taylor-Joy on What’s She’s Streaming, Breaking Netflix, and Why She Loves Weirder Characters
Our Annual Report continues today with the announcement of Anya Taylor-Joy as our TV Performance of the Year. Stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles in the days and weeks to come about the best music, film, and TV of the year. If you’ve missed any part of our Annual Report, you can check out all the coverage here. Chess and Anya Taylor-Joy have had quite the year, thanks to The Queen’s Gambit. One month after its October 23rd debut on Netflix, Scott Frank and Allan Scott’s adaptation of Walter Tevis’ 1983 novel became the most-watched scripted miniseries in Netflix history. Not surprisingly, interest in chess skyrocketed with “How to play chess” peaking in Google searches and chess boards being wrapped everywhere throughout this holiday season. At the center of it all, ...
![VIVID on His New Single “Fade Away,” Working With Morgan Page, and More [Q&A]](https://www.wazupnaija.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/vivid-on-his-new-single-fade-away-working-with-morgan-page-and-more-qa-1050x600.jpg)
![VIVID on His New Single “Fade Away,” Working With Morgan Page, and More [Q&A]](https://www.wazupnaija.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/vivid-on-his-new-single-fade-away-working-with-morgan-page-and-more-qa-80x80.jpg)
VIVID on His New Single “Fade Away,” Working With Morgan Page, and More [Q&A]
We love a good full circle moment in a producer’s career, and that is exactly what VIVID has experienced after releasing his second collaboration with the fabled progressive house producer Morgan Page. The track is called “Fade Away,” and it’s the ultimate feel-good single that will help you remember the simpler times in life. It’s the perfect follow-up to the duo’s 2019 Armada Music smash “Fire & Gold.” “Fade Away” combines the high-energy style fans have come to know and love from VIVID and the melodic production that is signature of Page. The emotive vocal performance paired alongside the kinetic drop makes for a well-balanced single. If festivals were still thriving, this track would for sure be making its rounds...
Brody Dalle on the Distillers’ Return, New Music and ‘Baby It’s COVID Outside’
The Distillers may very well be one of the most important punk bands from the first half of the 2000s. In four years, they released three albums (each more successful than the last), captured a unique sound that molded classic, straightforward punk rock with the attitude and emotion of the decade, and turned frontwoman Brody Dalle into one of the era’s most identifiable vocalists. As part of a heavily male-dominated scene, Dalle and her bandmates showed millions of then-teenaged millennials that ladies too could pierce their lips, spike their hair, and rock just as hard as men without needing the mainstream commercial appeal of a No Doubt or Garbage. Then the band pretty much immediately fell apart and before breaking up in 2006. Dalle went on to form Spinnerette with guitarist Tony “Bradl...
Matt Cameron’s New Project Aims to Make Up for a Lost Year
Matt Cameron expected to be on the road with Pearl Jam for most of 2020. In March, the band released Gigaton, their first new album in seven years, and they planned several U.S. legs and a European run that would have kept them busy for the rest of the year. Those plans, obviously, changed. But instead of retreating after Pearl Jam’s short-circuited year, Cameron went back to work on his own material. First, he got cracking on his second solo album; then he dusted off another project that had been in the works for a few years. While recording Gigaton, Cameron had bounced a few loose ideas off of his pals, including Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins and the Melvins’ Buzz Osborne and Steven McDonald. When Hawkins threw some vocals on a few cuts and made some other suggestion...
Composers of the Year Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross: “It’s Been an Intimidating Journey”
“You’re naming us Best Composers of All Time, right,” Trent Reznor asks over the phone. His partner-in-crime Atticus Ross laughs on another line. He’s joking, of course, but he’s also not exactly out of his element. While all-time might be a stretch — at least, for now — the two are certainly in contention for the last decade. After all, it’s been a wild 10 years for Reznor and Ross, one that began with a deafening bang. That big bang arrived at the 83rd Academy Awards in 2011, when Reznor and Ross triumphed over the likes of Hans Zimmer and Alexandre Desplat to win Best Original Score for David Fincher’s The Social Network. Their debut score wound up being an opening salvo as Hollywood came calling — and fast. Since then, they’ve amassed an eclectic resume that most composers spend decade...
Marcus Haney on Photo Book Documenting Last Innocent Decade of Concerts
The cover of James Marcus Haney’s new photo book, Fantatics, doesn’t feature a massive arena crowd or rowdy mosh pit — any of the obvious concert imagery one might expect. Instead, it shows two people mid-kiss: eyes largely closed, mouths agape, seemingly transfixed amid a sea of strangers. Haney has “no idea” who they are. “I took one photograph of them, and I don’t think they even registered that a photograph was taken,” he tells SPIN with a laugh. “I hope they are together and married with kids or something. If they see themselves on a bookshelf somewhere, I hope that’s a good thing.” In this case, the image illuminated Haney’s purpose for the book: documenting the personal — and often intimate — side of the concert experience from 2010 through the early pandemic. “Right from the b...
Johnny Brennan on the Origins of the First Jerky Boys Album in 20 Years: “It’s a Whole Different Game Today”
Something about being kept away from typical entertainment outlets this year led to a surge in nostalgia content. Pop culture reunions grew from one-off virtual gatherings to fully-scripted streamable events. That made it somewhat fortuitous that 2020 happened to be the year Johnny Brennan decided to return with his classic prank project The Jerky Boys. Brennan recently released the first Jerky Boys album in 20 years, a long-demanded effort that’s been met with the warmest of welcomes by fans. All the favorites like Sol, Frank, and the rest are back, alongside new characters ringing up everyone from Social Security scammers to iRobot customer service reps to college admissions offices. Speaking with Brennan over the phone — where he does his best work, after all — the comedian and voice ac...
Minari’s Steven Yeun on His Performance of the Year: “I Just Want to Keep Playing My Part”
Two things you need to know about Steven Yeun: He calls comparisons “comps”, and he has a better understanding of who he is as an actor and cultural figure than many other stars his age. Of course, it helps that he’s taken the long road to stardom, breaking out in a big way as zombie apocalypse survivor Glenn for six years on The Walking Dead, before moving on to roles in films by some of our most idiosyncratic, interesting filmmakers working today: Bong Joon-ho (Okja), Boots Riley (Sorry to Bother You), and Lee Chang-dong (Burning), to name a few. His latest, A24’s soul-stirring family drama Minari, feels like a turning point of sorts, both in the gripping complexity of his performance and the film culture that’s finally taken due notice of him. In Lee Isaac Chung’s thoughtful melodrama, ...
Slash on Eddie Van Halen: “Any Instrument He Had Chosen to Play Would Have Been Phenomenal”
There have been countless tributes to the great Eddie Van Halen since his passing on October 6th. One of the millions of fans mourning his death is fellow guitar legend Slash. Van Halen released their groundbreaking self-titled debut in 1978, and by the time Guns N’ Roses formed in 1985, one can easily argue that Van Halen were the biggest hard-rock band on the planet — until GN’R took that title with their own masterful debut, Appetite for Destruction. We recently caught up with Slash to discuss the new Guns N’ Roses pinball machines, as well as his new custom collection with Gibson Guitars. While speaking with the GN’R axeman, we asked him for his thoughts on Eddie Van Halen, specifically what it was about the Van Halen legend’s playing that made him such an iconic guitarist. Slash graci...
