John Boyega, of Star Wars fame, has signed on to star in Pacific Rim 2.
“I am very proud and happy to welcome John into a fantastic sandbox,” Guillermo del Toro added. “The Pacific Rim universe will be reinforced with him as a leading man as it continues to be a multicultural, multi-layered world. ‘The World saving the world’ was our goal and I couldn’t think of a better man for the job.”
Matt Mackenzie, the bass player for Tsunami Bomb and The Action Design, has a son named Frankie that has been diagnosed with brain cancer. A fundraising page has been set up for the family.
Drake’s Views is once again at the top of the Billboard charts. Dierks Bentley comes in at two, Beyoncé is at three. Thrice ended up selling about 22,000 copies in their first week, landing itself at #15 on the charts.
Views earned another 152,000 equivalent album units (down 19 percent) in the week ending June 2, according to Nielsen Music. More than half of that sum, 92,000 units, were comprised of streaming equivalent albums.
Katie J.M. Baker, writing for Buzzfeed:
A former Stanford swimmer who sexually assaulted an unconscious woman was sentenced to six months in jail because a longer sentence would have “a severe impact on him,” according to a judge. At his sentencing Thursday, his victim read him a letter describing the “severe impact” the assault had on her.
This is exceptional. Please read, please share.
Muhammad Ali has passed away. He was 74. From the Washington Post:
Muhammad Ali, the charismatic three-time heavyweight boxing champion of the world and Olympic gold medalist who transcended the world of sports to become a symbol of the antiwar movement of the 1960s and ultimately a global ambassador for cross-cultural understanding, died Friday night at a hospital in Phoenix, where he was living.
Dan, Sal, and Jer, formerly of Envy on the Coast, have released a second statement about the Envy on the Coast “reunion.”
From the official Presidential proclamation:
NOW, THEREFORE, I, BARACK OBAMA, President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim June 2016 as African-American Music Appreciation Month. I call upon public officials, educators, and all the people of the United States to observe this month with appropriate activities and programs that raise awareness and foster appreciation of music that is composed, arranged, or performed by African Americans.
Some behind-the-scenes photos from Blink-182’s new video for “Bored to Death” are up on Mark’s website.
Colin Stutz, writing for Billboard, on the removal of lyrics from Spotify:
In a statement Spotify said, “We can confirm our partnership with Musixmatch is ending. It was a great partnership and there is mutual respect between both companies as our business strategies move us each in different directions.”
Musixmatch, meanwhile, has a bit more to say about the split, suggesting it did not come amicably.
Speaking of The Ringer, here’s Lindsay Zoladz, writing about the idea of the “surprise album” release:
“Surprise” is pop music’s latest fetish commodity, a new but widely accepted virtue in an industry desperately trying to adapt to the demands (and attention spans) of the digital age. The album promotional cycle used to be pretty uniform: Announce the release date a few months prior, send a single to radio, and tour once the album comes out. But these tactics have now been replaced by, say, obtuse teasers that often feel like perfume ads directed by Terrence Malick and promotional hieroglyphs graffitied onto urban sidewalks (and which often, in the case of Arcade Fire and more recently Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes, result in apologies).
Turntable Kitchen have launched a Kickstarter for a new vinyl subscription service called Sounds Delicious. The idea is that you’ll get exclusive full-length cover albums by a variety of different artists:
We’ve asked some of indie music’s most exciting and well-respected artists to choose any full length album they love and cover it from front to back. We’ll produce their recordings on limited edition vinyl packaged in beautifully designed jackets. The records will be released exclusively through the Sounds Delicious subscription service and delivered to you every month.
Blink-182’s recent interview with Kerrang has been posted online by one nice Reddit fan. This is the good part of Reddit. The bad is this guy.
The Ringer, the new publication from Bill Simmons (formerly of Grantland/ESPN) has launched. I think it’s interesting that they’ve teamed with Medium to host and design the entire website. It leads to some confusing branding (is this on Medium, or is this its own thing), but all-in-all, I like it.
That header though.
It looks like PVRIS will be recording their new album in September or October of this year.
“We don’t get our first break until August and it’s not even 100% that we’ll get that, something might come up,” says Brian. “And then I think we’re supposed to record in September or October. That’ll be nice,” insists Lynn. “We’ve got a cool spot picked out and for me, writing is really relaxing. It’s nice downtime. It’s hanging out with Blake and these guys every day. I’m definitely more excited to do stuff in the future now because I know how much we can pull strings,” she grins as the bold get bolder.
Federico Viticci, writing for MacStories, on his history with mixtapes:
This went on for months. Listening to Luca’s CDs became a habit for me. I would listen as I perused his handwritten tracklists in the back of the CD covers. My mom would even ask me to “play Luca’s music”. I loaned a few of Luca’s CDs to my classmates. I believe that Luca kept doing it for a simple reason: he was (still is) a good friend and he thought it was cool that he could download music for free and burn an extra CD for me. Talking about new songs and old gems he included in his mixes was an excuse to catch a break between classes – no texting, no selfies, just two friends discussing songs on a mixtape.
Take the time to read this today.