DudeAsInCool

Nearly a full decade after Guru's death in 2010, Gang Starr are returning. DJ Premier teased a new Gang Starr album earlier this week with some help from Nas, and now, he's officially shared their first new song in 16 years. That new song, "Family And Loyalty," has a posthumous verse from Guru and a … More »View the full article

When Alex Lahey was a young boy, her father took her into the city to see a marching band. And today, the Australian rocker and Artist To Watch, who recently released her sophomore full-length The Best Of Luck Club, covered My Chemical Romance's "Welcome To The Black Parade" for the Australian … More »View the full article

Drake has a lot of famous people's faces tattooed onto his famous person body -- Denzel Washington, Aaliyah, Sade, Rihanna. And if he has anything to say about it (I would assume he does), fellow Canadian famous person Céline Dion might be joining that list. "You're very iconic. We love you. I'm like a year … More »View the full article

Dave took home the 2019 Mercury Prize, the annual award to recognize the best album released in the UK. His debut album, Psychodrama, came out back in March. During his acceptance speech, he brought his mother up on stage. He also thanked his brother, who was convicted of murder and is currently serving a life … More »View the full article

Sleigh Bells have recorded a cover of the traditional folk song "Where Did You Sleep Last Night?" -- also sometimes called "In The Pines" or "My Girl" -- for the upcoming thriller The Rhythm Section. The movie, which was directed by Reed Morano, is about a woman (Blake Lively) who hunts down those responsible for … More »View the full article

Here you can see the bottom speaker and USB-C port, and you can also see that the screen wraps really far around the sides. [credit: Huawei ] Huawei has officially taken the wraps off its next flagship smartphone release, the Mate 30 Pro. This phone is interesting not just as the latest device from the world's second-biggest smartphone manufacturer (after Samsung) but also because this is the first big Huawei launch after the Trump administration's executive order banning US companies from doing business with Huawei. As a result, the Mate 30 Pro is an Android phone that doesn't have any Google apps! The company is not even allowed to use the word "Android," which is a Google trademark. It's Huawei's ecosystem or bust. At the end of a lengthy presentation on the Mate 30, Huawei CEO Richard Yu acknowledged the phone would not be coming with Google's apps and services. Instead, he highlighted "Huawei Mobile Services" as a replacement. Huawei has been using its own app ecosystem in China for some time, as Google Play is not available there, and now this ecosystem will have to come to Europe and the other places Huawei does business. Does anyone want to buy a phone without Google Play, Gmail, Google Maps, and YouTube? How many of your go-to apps will stop working without Google Play Services? It's a scary proposition for consumers. Huawei apparently doesn't think this plan is going to work either, as it's expecting a $10 billion drop in its consumer devices business this year, thanks to the export ban. Read 9 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

The young British rapper Slowthai, aka Tyron Kaymone Frampton, has taken his country by storm with incendiary political rhetoric and equally fiery live shows. His album Nothing Great About Britain is up for the Mercury Prize, handed out annually to the UK and Ireland's best album, and at the ceremony tonight he left … More »View the full article

DaBaby has had a huge year. The Charlotte, NC rapper kicked off 2019 with a low-budget video for "Walker Texas Ranger," which led us to name him the year's funniest, scariest rapper because of his goofy songs and videos and the more complicated, real-life violent situations he's been involved in. He released his … More »View the full article

After lying dormant for six years, Cursive are suddenly a highly prolific recording project again. The indie-rock lifers followed up last year's comeback album Vitriola with a new single called "Barricades" last week, and today they're sharing yet another new track. More »View the full article

Last year, less than a month after narrowly avoiding being required to register as a sex offender, the rapper and controversy magnet Tekashi 6ix9ine (born Daniel Hernandez) found himself in legal trouble all over again. Arrested on firearm and racketeering charges and facing a possible life sentence, 6ix9ine More »View the full article

Enlarge / A Vizio TV seen at CES in 2011. (credit: Ethan Miller | Getty Images) Modern TV, coming to you over the Internet instead of through cable or over the air, has a modern problem: all of your Internet-connected streaming devices are watching you back and feeding your data to advertisers. Two independent sets of researchers this week released papers that measure the extent of the surveillance your TV is conducting on you. They also sort out who exactly is benefiting from the massive amounts of consumer data that is taken with or without consumer knowledge. The first study (PDF), conducted by researchers at Princeton and the University of Chicago, looked specifically at Roku and Amazon set-top devices. A review of more than 2,000 channels across the two platforms found trackers on 69% of Roku channels and 89% of Amazon Fire TV channels. The most prevalent tracker, Google's doubleclick.net, showed up in 975 of the top 1,000 Roku channels, with Google analytics trackers showing up in 360, the researchers found. Over on the Amazon side of things, perhaps unsurprisingly, Amazon trackers were the most prevalent, showing up in 687 of 1,000 channels. Doubleclick trackers were found on 307 channels, and Facebook trackers were on 196. Read 13 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Over the past year or so, Georgia has released a handful of singles, including "About Work The Dancefloor," "Mellow," and "Started Out," and today the London producer is announcing that her sophomore album, the follow-up to her 2015 debut, will be out early next year. It's called … More »View the full article

Apple's Craig Federighi unveils iOS 13 at WWDC 2019. (credit: Ron Amadeo / Ars Technica) Apple has begun pushing iOS 13 and watchOS 6 to supported iPhones and Apple Watches. Both updates bring substantial changes—especially iOS 13—and mark the beginning of a new annual update cycle. While it may take some time, most users should see iOS 13 become available in the Settings apps on their iPhones or iPod touches by the end of the day today. The watchOS update will pop up in the Watch app on iPhones that are connected to an Apple Watch. Also launching today is a new service called Apple Arcade, a $4.99/month subscription service that gives users access to 100 or more mobile games. None of the games are microtransaction-driven titles. They are all premium titles, and many are from prestigious designers and studios like Zach Gage (SpellTower, Really Bad Chess), Snowman (Alto's Odyssey), Dinosaur Polo Club (Mini Metro), The Gentlebros (Cat Quest), and more. Apple has added a dedicated tab in the App Store for Arcade. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

The new Roku Express with its remote. [credit: Roku ] Ahead of the holiday season, Roku made some minor updates to its media-streamer lineup as well as its Roku software as a whole. You won't find any totally new Roku devices this year, but you'll find an updated, $29 Roku Express player that's smaller and uses less power as well as an updated, $99 Roku Ultra set-top box with a new remote that has customizable shortcut buttons. Roku Express remains the company's most affordable streaming device at $29. The new version is 10% smaller than its predecessor and comes with an adhesive strip so you can attach it to the back of your TV. But more exciting are the updates to its internals—the new Express runs on less power than the previous model, and it can draw power from your TV if you plug it into one of the TV's USB ports. That means you don't need to plug this device into a wall outlet or other power source in order to use it—just plug it into both a USB port and your TV's HDMI port to start streaming. On the other end of the spectrum is the Roku Ultra, the company's top-tier streaming device that costs $99. The new version will remain at that price point, but it has a faster quad-core processor and more memory, which should help the device launch channels faster than the previous model. Instead of overhauling the Ultra's design, Roku focused more on performance in hopes that it could remove as much lag and slowness as possible so users can get to their content faster. This will purportedly come in handy with content that cord-cutters gravitate toward, like live news and sports coming from any number of free and subscription services. Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments View the full article

Over 300 LPs, including many that are "highly collectible or rarely seen," will be available at London's World of Echo record store View the full article