William “Smokey” Robinson has been accused of sexual assault and misconduct by four former housekeepers. The Motown music luminary is facing a $50 million lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles superior court on May 6, from the four women, who are identified only as Jane Does 1, 2, 3 and 4.
The complaint also names Robinson’s wife, Frances Robinson, and lists a number alleged labor violations, including failure to pay minimum wage, failure to pay overtime, inaccurate wage statements, and hostile work environment.
According to The Post, the women claim they worked for Robinson between 2012 and 2024. Jane Doe 1 accused Robinson of painfully penetrating her and committing other unwanted sexual acts at least seven times upon calling her into the “blue bedroom” of his Chatsworth residence.
Jane Doe 2, who allegedly worked for the couple from May 2014 until February 2020, claims she was assaulted by the singer at least 23 different times, including in the laundry room and garage of his Chatsworth residence, where there no cameras. She called his advances “brutal,” “constant,” and “predictable.”
Jane Doe 3 claims she worked for them from February 2012 until April 2024 and was “sexually harassed, sexually assaulted and raped” by Robinson “at least 20 times.”
The fourth woman also says she served as Frances Robinson’s personal assistant, hairdresser, and cook, working for them for 18 years before resigning in 2024. Her account includes allegations of rape at Robinson’s Las Vegas and Bell Canyon homes.
The complaint also states that Frances Robinson failed to prevent her husband’s sexual assaults, “despite having full knowledge of his prior acts of sexual misconduct, having settled cases with other women that suffered and experienced similar sexual assaults perpetrated by him.”
Speaking at a Los Angeles news conference, the women’s attorney John Harris said: “We believe that Mr. Robinson is a serial and sick rapist, and must be stopped.” He added that while “no amount of money can compensate these women for what Mr. Robinson put them through,” the $50 million was warranted “based on the gravity of Mr. Robinson’s despicable and reprehensible misconduct.”
Man/Woman/Chainsaw have released a new song, ‘MadDog’. Like April’s ‘Adam & Steve’, the frantic, winding track was recorded with Geordie Greep producer Seth Evans and Margo Broom at RAK Studios. It “talks about losing a friend and watching them become everything you thought they wouldn’t,” according to the band’s Vera Leppänen. “We wrote the song as two parts, the pissed off bit and the sad/nostalgic bit, and recorded it with a quick turnaround which was fairly new to us.” Listen to it below.
Existential anxiety shimmers through Beach Bunny‘s new record, Tunnel Vision. “You think the world will act the same,” frontperson Lili Trifilio sings on highlight ‘Pixie Cut’, “Your aversion to anything new/ Makes you maladapt to change.” That the world is changing for the worse is a fact she acknowledges right from the album’s opening track, though the band – rounded out by bassist Anthony Vaccaro and drummer Jon Alvarado – conjure enough sticky hooks and buoyant melodies to steer the singer through the ensuing self-sabotage and perpetual uncertainty. While the songs on Tunnel Vision are easy on the ears, they didn’t come easily; Lili Trifilio experienced writer’s block in the early stages of the album, and it was the very act of writing about being stuck in her own head that helped open the floodgates. Her lyrics became more abstract and introspective, but no less relatable or urgently felt. The group – who have today announced the third annual Pool Party Festival in their hometown of Chicago – then recorded the LP in 2024 with longtime producer Sean O’Keefe, getting playful with the basic tenets of their pop-punk sound. “I’d give my brain a pixie cut/ If it’d make the voices all shut up,” Trifilio sings. If yours won’t shut up either, at least they can sing along.
We caught up with Beach Bunny’s Lili Trifilio to talk about the making of Tunnel Vision, playing the new songs live, nostalgia, and more.
How’s your day been so far? It’s noon there, right?
It’s been good. I actually just kinda woke up. We had a Canada show in Toronto yesterday, and we are now in Detroit, but we had to wake up at like 4:30 to cross the border and go through customs and stuff. So we did that, and then I was like, “I’m just gonna sleep in.”
Pool Kids have joined you on these dates, right?
Yeah, they’re awesome.
I interviewed them when they released their self-titled album, and as I went back to remember when that was, I realized it came out the same day that Emotional Creature did.
Oh, really? I didn’t know that. [laughs] I’m gonna bring it up now. I hope they weren’t harboring any grudge there.
These shows must feel like a long time coming for people who keep going back to those records. I know that in terms of recording Tunnel Vision, a big goal was making sure you’d be able to translate these songs live. How has that approach been paying off so far?
I think we were all a little bit nervous to play new songs before they even came out. But luckily, Tunnel Vision in many ways is a rock record and is really guitar-focused, which I think feels like a safe spot for Beach Bunny. So it was really amazing now that it’s out to see the reception beforehand and people getting excited. Now it’s been out for three or four days, and people already know the words and stuff, which is really crazy. Beach Bunny fans are super awesome.
When it came to writing these new songs, you had a bit more downtime to reflect on yourself and the state of the world compared to Emotional Creature. How do you remember the time when songs for Tunnel Vision started flowing out of you?
That’s a great question. I would say that maybe the latter half of 2023, I felt like I was starting to get my groove back. I think I just needed to give myself a break and stop putting so much pressure on writing the music. So about half the record was written, I think, end of 2023, beginning of 2024. We were in the studio and had to take quite a significant break from doing studio things to go on tour, and then the summer was just very busy. During those times, I think being on the road inspired another handful of songs, which then got recorded in October. We picked through the best of all those batches and merged it together. Luckily, everything sounds cohesive.
I read that you wrote ‘Vertigo’ in an airplane and had to focus on making sure it stayed in your mind before you had a chance to demo it. Lyrics aside, do melodies tend to come and go for you, or do you have a process for capturing or organizing them?
In general, in the past, I would need to sit in bed and really figure out the chords. But I think just from doing this for like a decade now, I do get little spurts of inspiration, and I try to save them when it comes up. Whether that’s recording a little something in a voice memo or jotting down some lyrics that I’ll return back to. ‘Vertigo’ was one of the first times where that felt really natural and effortless. In many ways, it felt easy, and I think that was the first time since Emotional Creature that writing a song had felt easy. Once ‘Vertigo’ was unlocked in my brain, it felt like every other song in little moments was really a lot easier to capture.
One thing that adds to the urgency of these songs for me is a kind of nervy quiver in your voice that feels more prominent than on previous albums. Was that something you were conscious of while demoing or recording the songs?
It was probably more like a subconscious choice, honestly. When I was writing Emotional Creature, the influences I was pulling from are a lot of artists and songs that aren’t really in my regular rotation now. That was probably the same for Tunnel Vision, where the music I was listening to at the time had some interesting vocal techniques. You just get inspired by a lot of things and, maybe subconsciously, copy bits and pieces. With this record, I was also very inspired not just by bigger artists, but a lot of friends in my life who were putting out music, and they all have very distinct styles.
Do you mind shouting out some of them?
This band Charly Bliss is super awesome, and I was listening to their old stuff. My friend Hank Heaven, who makes more experimental country kind of stuff. Rafaella, who’s way more in the pop world. This band in Chicago, Football Head, has more pop-punk angles. Everybody was bringing something different to the table, butI think I was just more receptive to music, a little bit prior to and during the Tunnel Vision writing process. Whereas in late 2022, early 2023, after Emotional Creature – I was just in a big depressive episode, and I feel like I really wasn’t listening too much. I was listening to, like, podcasts.
I’m glad you mentioned Charly Bliss, because I think you both address nostalgia in an interesting way on your latest records. While there is a sense of nostalgia in some of the songs on Tunnel Vision, what struck me about ‘Clueless’ is how you question the things that nostalgia makes you believe. You talk about a memory being partial, but do you feel like you have a clearer perspective on that past now in any way?
I think this record in a lot of ways has helped me move through some of these emotions. But yeah, certainly nostalgia is something that affects me and affects my writing, and I think there’s a lot of yearning for simpler times in general on the record. While also being like: five years ago there were problems, ten years ago there were problems. There has not been a perfect time in human history to be a functioning person. There’s always gonna be stuff, whether that’s personal or in the world. I think sometimes it’s easy to romanticize the past until you actually, critically think about, “Well, when I was 19, what was my headspace?” And if I think about it that way, I’m actually really grateful right now to be 28 and feel a lot more confident in myself and feel like I have a better grip on who I am than in the past.
As introspective as some of these songs are, you also contextualize your feelings within the world around you. The two second-to-last songs, ‘Violence’ and ‘Just Around the Corner’, find you turning your gaze outward more. What was the thinking behind placing them together and towards the end of the record?
I think in a loose way, certainly sonically, we were also thinking about the tracks and how they would flow into each other. But from a more thematic perspective, because the record does focus a lot on my relationship with myself and mental health, it was important to me to recognize that nobody’s feeling things in a void. If you’re feeling anxiety or seeking control or feeling indecisive – a lot of these things I sing about on the record – it can expand to other things. Where is this anxiety or lack of control coming from? And I think in many ways, I reached at least a partial conclusion just from being in America and seeing all my friends and loved ones around me struggling, that part of the responsibility is also on what’s going on around you, and you can only control so much.
You released the closing track, ‘Cycles’, under your own name in 2019 as a single, but it gets at a lot of the same theme that pervade this record. What did it mean for you not just to revisit it as Beach Bunny, to place it alongside these songs and end the record with it?
I’m just so grateful that that song wasn’t tied to any prior contracts or anything. When I made it back in 2019, I was just stating my mind and not really caring too much about public perception. It was actually one of the first songs we recorded on this album, before it even developed into an album. I was like, “I really love this song. It would be awesome to have it full band so we could play it live one day and really give it what it needs.” The original is very demo-y, so I’m sure recording that with the band led to other songs on the record. Knowing that I could write a song about something maybe a little bit deeper or more abstract too, because a lot of Beach Bunny’s discography is romance and breakup songs, “me and another person.” I think ‘Cycles’ kind of opened my eyes to being like, “I could actually sing about anything. I could just sing about this quarter-life crisis I’m having and about how the state of the world is giving me anxiety, and maybe people will actually like that.” [laughs]
You also allow yourself to lean on the uncertainty as opposed to trying to force answers to this quarter-life crisis. But there is this one line on ‘Chasm’: “Presence is the essence of what I’ll become.” How do you make yourself work toward that ideal?
That’s a really good question. In the last couple years, I’ve gone on and off waves of meditation and leaning into mindfulness practices, which doesn’t always work. But I think what the record does – and what’s something I’m realizing in my own personal life I need to do more – is just talk about it and lean on community. I think a lot of those worries that people feel in their late twenties are, I’m realizing, very universal and relatable. If you can talk to someone experiencing the same thing as you, you might realize that you’re not alone, and it’s gonna be okay.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity and length.
Guerilla Toss are back with a new single, ‘Psychosis Is Just a Number’, which was produced by Pavement leader Stephen Malkmus. Jorge Elbrect mixed the track, which a press release describes as “a glittering no wave skronk anthem” – and it is, in fact, as skronky as it is anthemic. Check it out below.
Guerilla Toss released their excellent Sub Pop debut, Famously Alive, in 2022. They’re currently working on their next LP, which is expected to arrive later this year.
Meg Remy is back with news of the next U.S. Girls album. Scratch It, the follow-up to 2023’s Bless This Mess, will be released on June 20 via 4AD. The lead single, ‘Bookends’, a 12-minute epic Remy co-wrote with Edwin de Goeji, is a heavy one. It pays tribute to late friend and former Power Trip frontman Riley Gale, filtered through Remy’s reading of John Carey’s Eyewitness to History, a historical collection of over three hundred eyewitness accounts spanning twenty-four centuries that made Remy ponder the thought: “There is not a hierarchy to suffering, and death is the great equaliser.” Though it sounds heady, it’s hard not to be moved by the song. Check it out below.
‘Bookends’ comes paired with a music video directed by Caity Arthur, who explained: “The video is ultimately about death and absolution — how death is one of the only certain things in life; the ‘great equalizer,’ nolens volens. However, it also subverts the traditional narrative of death as a despairing void, rather, portraying it as a euphoric transitory experience or new beginning through a hallucinatory ensemble cast, a 1960s pop-star performance, and sleight of hand magic. As the video progresses, the TV channels alternate through these scenes as Meg’s lyrics evoke death in its various forms.”
Remy and her band — Dillon Watson on guitar, Jack Lawrence (The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, Loretta Lynn) on bass, Domo Donoho on drums, Jo Schornikow and Tina Norwood on keys, and harmonica legend Charlie McCoy (Elvis, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison) — tracked the new album live off the floor with minimal overdubs. It folds together country, gospel, garage rock, soul, disco, and folk balladry, according to a press release.
Scratch It Cover Artwork:
Scratch It Tracklist:
1. Like James Said
2. Dear Patti
3. Firefly on the 4th of July
4. The Clearing
5. Walking Song
6. Bookends
7. Emptying the Jimador
8. Pay Streak
9. No Fruit
Texas slowcore outfit Teethe have announced a new album, Magic of the Sale. The follow-up to the band’s 2020 self-titled debut arrives August 8 via Winspear. Collaborators on the record include Wednesday’s Xandy Chelmis, MJ Lenderman, Charlie Martin of Hovvdy, Logan Hornyak of Melaina Kol, and more. The gorgeously pensive lead single and title track comes paired with a music video from director Ben Turok. Check it out and find the album cover, tracklist, and the band’s upcoming tour dates below.
Though it finds them expanding their sound, the band didn’t enlist an outsider producer or engineer for Magic of the Sale. Instead, Teethe’s Boone Patrello mixed the record over a period of four months. His bandmate Madeline Dowd, who painted the cover of their first album, also painted the new record’s cover art.
Magic of the Sale Cover Artwork:
Magic of the Sale Tracklist:
1. Tires & Bookmarks
2. Magic Of The Sale
3. Anywhere
4. Push You Forever
5. Holy Water
6. Iron Wine
7. China Day
8. Lead Letters
9. Ammo
10. Funny
11. Build & Crash
12. Hate Goodbyes
13. Make It Red
14. Matching Durags
Magic Of The Sale
1. Tires & Bookmarks
2. Magic Of The Sale
3. Anywhere
4. Push You Forever
5. Holy Water
6. Iron Wine
7. China Day
8. Lead Letters
9. Ammo
10. Funny
11. Build & Crash
12. Hate Goodbyes
13. Make It Red
14. Matching Durags
Teethe 2025 Tour Dates:
Sep 5 – Phoenix, AZ – Valley Bar
Sep 6 – Los Angeles, CA – Zebulon
Sep 7 – San Francisco, CA – Rickshaw Stop
Sep 9 – Portland, OR – Polaris Hall
Sep 10 – Seattle, WA – Barboza
Sep 12 – Boise, ID – Shrine Basement
Sep 13 – Salt Lake City, UT – Kilby Court
Sep 14 – Denver, CO – Globe Hall
Oct 16 – Houston, TX – White Oak Music Hall (Upstairs)
Oct 17 – Austin, TX – 29th Street Ballroom
Oct 18 – Denton, TX – Rubber Gloves
Nov 8 – London, UK – Pitchfork Music Festival
Dec 1 – Nashville – drkmttr
Dec 2 – Atlanta – Aisle 5
Dec 4 – Washington, DC – DC9
Dec 5 – Philadelphia – PhilaMOCA
Dec 7 – Boston – Brighton Music Hall
Dec 9 – Toronto – The Drake
Dec 10 – Lakewood – Mahalls
Dec 11 – Columbus – Ace of Cups
Dec 12 – Chicago – Schubas Tavern
Dec 13 – Milwaukee – X-Ray Arcade
Dec 14 – Minneapolis – 7th St Entry
Dec 16 – Oklahoma City – Resonant Head
Alex Garland’s and Ray Mendoza’s latest filmWarfare starring Will Poulter, Joseph Quinn, and many other great actors follows a dedicated platoon of Navy SEALs who embark on a highly risky mission in Ramadi, Iraq. It’s an epic film that locks you in from the get-go with phenomenal acting, superb cinematography and writing that delivers on each line.
The film has gained a lot of critical acclaim since its release with a rating of 92% on Rotten Tomatoes. It will likely do well during award season.
Here are some of the best quotes from Warfare.
“Downstairs. Keep it f*cking secure.” — Sam
“Peeking with serious intent to probe.” — Elliott
“We have enemy on our building and all surrounding buildings.” — Jake
“Has anyone looked at you?” “I’m f*cked up.” — Jake and Erik
“You gotta get ready, man. This is gonna hurt.” — Ray
“That’s that new guy energy.” — Erik
“Coming to you or you coming to us?” — Erik
“We have severely wounded.” “Who’s severely wounded?” “Not you.” — Ray and Sam
“How’s it going?” “It’s going well.” — Tommy and Ray
Sinners premiered in U.S. theaters on April 18th, and has dominated the box office ever since. It opened with $55.8 million and followed up with $45.7 million in its second weekend, outperforming major franchise films and becoming the first R-rated horror movie in 35 years to earn an A CinemaScore.
The Story
Set in 1932 Mississippi, Sinners follows twin brothers Smoke and Stack Moore (both played by Michael B. Jordan), WWI veterans and former Chicago bootleggers, who return home to open a juke joint. Their cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), a gifted blues guitarist, joins them. But their music stirs something ancient—vampires led by the enigmatic Remmick (Jack O’Connell), who see the juke joint as a gateway to power. As the night unfolds, the brothers and their community must confront supernatural horrors and their own haunted pasts.
Cast
Michael B. Jordan as Smoke / Stack Moore
Miles Caton as Sammie Moore
Hailee Steinfeld as Mary
Jack O’Connell as Remmick
Wunmi Mosaku as Annie
Jayme Lawson as Pearline
Delroy Lindo as Delta Slim
Omar Benson Miller as Cornbread
Li Jun Li as Grace Chow
Saul Williams as Jedidiah Moore
What Makes Sinners So Special?
This isn’t just a vampire flick. Sinners blends horror, historical drama, and musical storytelling into something deeply original. The film explores themes of racial trauma, ancestral spirituality, and the power of music. The blues soundtrack, composed by Ludwig Göransson, is integral to the story, with Sammie’s guitar playing serving as both a weapon and a spiritual bridge .
As of now, there’s no official word on a sequel. The film’s ending is both tragic and poetic, offering closure while leaving room for more. Given its critical and commercial success, a follow-up seems likely — but whether it continues the Moore family saga or explores new characters remains to be seen.
Is Sinners Based on a Book?
No, Sinners is an original screenplay by Ryan Coogler. Not based on any book. It marks his return to original storytelling after Black Panther and Creed, and is inspired by his love for blues music and African American spiritual traditions.
Final Verdict
Sinners is a great watch. It’s a horror film with heart, a musical with bite, and a historical drama that resonates with audiences. Whether you’re a fan of Coogler’s previous work or just looking for something fresh and powerful, Sinners delivers.
Jenny Hval has been performing onstage for about three decades now: cutting her teeth as a teenager playing in goth bands, making waves with her first two albums under the name Rockettothesky, and, after several successful solo albums landed her a deal with 4AD in 2021, releasing another two records with her husband Håvard Volden as Lost Girls. On the penultimate track of her new album Iris Silver Mist, the Norwegian singer-songwriter ruminates on all those years, “a whole life/ on my dead case/ In and out of spotlights/ washing over me.” The follow-up to 2022’s Classic Objects, named after a fragrance made by Maruice Roucel for the French perfumerie Serge Lutens, doesn’t dwell on Hval’s love of perfume but draws on it as a means of interrogating her relationship with performance. Though ISM has evocative properties for Hval, she was more directly inspired by a comment she came across online that it “would be what the ghost in Hamlet could wear.” It resonated with her, she said, “because it was how I thought of myself as an artist — a ghost from a time when music mattered, still hammering away — and my record, which to me was sounding ghostly and was invaded by hazy, smoky and powdery textures.” Vaporous and haunted, Iris Silver Mist is also gripping and sensuous enough to convince you that it still matters, here and now.
1. Lay down
In several interviews, including one in the lead-up to her new album, Jenny Hval has talked about Kate Bush’s ‘Cloudbusting’ as one of her earliest musical inspirations. Watching the music video in which Bush plays a young boy, she found herself crying uncontrollably. “It’s child and adult at once, and both sexes – it was everything,” she has said. In Hval’s own music, her childish, playful inclinations, especially around lyrics and melody, undercut the heady experimentalism and theory that often frame it. ‘Lay down’ opens the album by interrogating Hval’s role as an artist and performer, and though it starts with the hope of being a child – or allowing her audience to experience music as she did when she was one – she then casts herself as “guardian of the in-between,” which feels more accurate. so long as “in-between” does not preclude both at once. The song itself, soft yet hearty, couldn’t be a gentler invitation to the soundworld of Iris Silver Mist.
2. To be a rose
A strong lead single, ‘To be a rose’ stands out in the context of the album first by coming into contrast with ‘Lay down’: this won’t be a record of hazy associations, it suggests, but something visceral and corporeal. Accented by brass and thumping percussion, the Gertrude Stein-indebted track curiously identifies cigarette smoke as a constant presence in a life of permeable boundaries, where the unparalleled innocence of discovering music as a child is juxtaposed with “long inhales and long exhales performed in choreography” by her mother. It feels not just real but present in the room, which grounds her role as a guide: “Follow me, flower instead,” she sings, her soaring voice leading the charge.
3. I want to start at the beginning
Naturally, the beginning is harder to articulate, the words not quite stringing along into coherent sentences. A whispered dream compared to the guiding light of the previous song, ‘I want to start at the beginning’ is more jarring for the strange absurdity of its longing: the singer situates us outside of her local burger place – back to a time when local felt more real than liminal – and fantasizes about the qualities of a burger that somehow matches her longing: “Juicy, warm, voluptuous, with muscle and fat, texture and resistance, animalic, toxic, tough or tender, burnt, loved… real.” The “I used to be that” that then qualifies the string of adjectives leaves quite a burn, if still raising more questions than it answers.
4. All night long
Drifting through a pandemic haze, laced with fingerpicked guitar and swaying synths, the song reckons with the role of a performing artist in the absence of live music. Yet the more it stretches on, the more the thing that’s disappearing appears as something tangible, historic, or temporary: “I’m lost in absentia/ Dancing on my grave,” she sings, having already suffused the music with the word ghost. “Just a living matter moving through light and shadow.” Moving in between. Moving, still.
5. Heiner Muller
Here the record briefly folds in on itself, an esoteric glimpse of the artist’s mind removed from performance. In referencing her text about a text from the titular dramatist, Hval lands on a lovely simile about meaning sneaking in and out “like a shy kid shoplifting in a department store.” Child and adult at once, artist and performer – reticent even in her rebelliousness, pure impulse, or desperation.
6. You died
The shuffling drum beat and synth chords barely held the song together, which speaks to the almost missing from its title. We quickly infer that the subject in question is in fact a pet, whose smell of aliveness – the first and, for a moment, most important sign of it – prompts a meditation on the impermanence and sheer thinness of human existence. The synths squiggling out of the line “I lean over you like a god” are a delightful touch.
7. Spirit mist
An ominous interlude that finds space for field recordings before an arpeggiated synth washes all those ghost sounds away, picking up speed to bleed into the next track.
8. I don’t know what free is
Though still enchantingly melodic – and gothic – here Hval’s questioning is at its most literal: “I tried to ask ‘What is a performance?’/ What is to write?/ And who is telling it?” Yet the more she strays from a straight answer, the more oblique her poetry becomes, the more fully-fleshed and well, moving, the song sounds; percussive and electronic elements merely hinted at earlier in the record get to bloom in odd directions. And we go back to the beginning, to the maternal, pleading for salvation: “Exhale me with your cigarette smoke/ Like you gave me life, now set me free.” She may not know what it is, but you can sense it in the air.
9. The artist is absent
Riffing on Marina Abramović’s The Artist Is Present, Hval sings the titular words yet writes, in the provided lyric sheet, “The artist is absence.” That’s a bigger hole to fill, yet Hval rises to the occasion by summoning a driving breakbeat that anchors one of her clubbiest and most infectious songs to date, one that cuts itself short of catharsis by ending well before the 90-second mark. It raises the stakes for the album’s final stretch – the encore, if you will.
10. Huffing my arm
Another sequence of interludes, transcribed as: Illegible words, ghost words, ghosts discussing ghost stuff. Tie it to the title: the artist-ghost preparing for the finale, putting on perfume, murmuring in innocent ecstasy.
11. The gift
It is clear by now what the gift is: the stage may be “obviously, literally falling apart,” “a stage without a show,” yet somehow now that it is being dismantled, the artist is literally giving it to us. “Imagine that empty room/ How calm it is, after the storm/ When the world is new,” Hval sings over a sticky dance beat, the opposite of stillness.
12. A ballad
Over delicately woven piano, the vulnerability of Hval’s voice supersedes any kind of conceptual framework. A heavenly choir joins in the background, as if to affirm that some part of her gift manages to seep through the atmosphere; that even as a couple is kissing by the exit doors, they will leave with a sensation firmly imprinted in their memory. “I couldn’t tell you why I keep singing, only how,” she sings, zeroing in on the practical minutiae of performance. But the most piercing line comes later: “It’s so dumb and so me/ To think this means anything/ But it must be better to die in sound than to die dead, right?” Maybe the audience will simply stare back; maybe they will nod, or better yet, remember.
13. I want the end to sound like this
Which is to say: voiceless, serene, optimistic, outstretched, even playful in its ghostliness. An approximation, but real nonetheless.
André 3000 has surprise-dropped a new project called 7 piano sketches. The seven-track instrumental record, released in conjunction with his piano-themed look at last night’s Met Gala, serves as the follow-up to his flute album New Blue Sun. Check it out below.
As André 3000 warned on Instagram, the project features “no bars.” He went on:
These piano sketches are improvisations. To conjure them up, I spread my fingers out on the keys and randomly but with purpose move them around until I find something that feels good or interesting. If it feels really good I will try to repeat it. I cannot name which notes, keys or chords that I’m playing. I simply like the sound and mechanics of piano playing. Some of my favorite piano music composers and players that inspire me are Thelonious Monk, McCoy Tyner, Philip Glass, Stephen Sondheim, Joni Mitchell and Vince Guaraldi.
These piano pieces weren’t recorded with the intention of presenting them in any formal way to the public. They were personal, at home recordings. I would sometimes text them to my family and friends.
Pardon the sound quality, they were all recorded with my iPhone sitting directly on the piano or my laptop microphone with the exception of “Blueberries.” (recorded in studio)
Most of these were recorded in Texas. The house my son and I were renting had no furniture at all. Only a piano, our beds and tv screens.
This collection of songs was recorded almost a decade before New Blue Sun. The original title for it was The Best Worst Rap Album In History and here is an excerpt from the original liner notes.
“It’s jokingly the worst rap album in history because there are no lyrics on it at all. It’s the best because it’s the free-est emotionally and best I’ve felt personally. It’s the best because it’s like a palette cleanser for me.”
At the 2025 Met Gala, André 3000 wore a bespoke piano by Burberry on his back The outfit, which mirrors 7 piano sketches‘ cover art, was made in collaboration with benji bixby and styled by Law Roach.
Last year, a documentary about the making of 2023’s New Blue Sun was released, featuring a previously unreleased track from the album’s recording sessions. André 3000 also appeared on songs by the likes of Kamasi Washington and Shabaka.
