Kendrick Lamar
Courtesy PhotoKendrick Lamar and Dave Free are teaming up with South Park co-creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker to produce a comedy film for Paramount Pictures.
The yet-untitled, live-action comedy, written by Vernon Chatman, will “depict the past and present coming to a head when a young Black man, who is interning as a slave re-enactor at a living history museum, discovers that his white girlfriend’s ancestors once owned his,” according to a press statement.
The movie marks the first feature produced under Lamar and Free’s pgLang company, which they announced in 2020. They launched pgLang as a multilingual, artist-friendly service company that’s a record label, movie studio and publishing house combined. Lamar’s younger cousin and rapper Baby Keem became the first artist signed to the pgLang label service. Stone and Parker will be producing for their Park County banner.
Production is slated to kick off this spring. A director has not yet been attached to the film. Paramount Pictures will be responsible for theatrical distribution, home entertainment and television licensing rights on the project, and Paramount Plus will acquire the streaming rights.
“On behalf of Paramount Pictures and the wider ViacomCBS family, we look forward to ushering in the first theatrical collaboration from these creative visionaries, and galvanizing audiences worldwide around a powerful storytelling experience,” said Paramount Pictures president and CEO Brian Robbins in a statement.
The 13-time Grammy-winning MC announced this past summer that he will be leaving his longtime label Top Dawg Entertainment after 17 years and that he was working on his “final TDE album.” His last solo album, the critically acclaimed DAMN from 2017, topped the Billboard 200 with 603,000 album-equivalent units in its opening week. It also won five Grammys and earned him the 2018 Pulitzer Prize in Music. He curated Black Panther: The Album in 2018, which nabbed eight nominations at the Grammy Awards the following year, including best rap performance winner “King’s Dead.” Lamar gave a career-spanning live performance, his first in over two years, at the 2021 Day N Vegas music festival.
Fontaines D.C. have teamed up with Rosalía for their new collaboration, Where Is Gone?.
The song features on the Irish rock band's forthcoming album, Dopamine Chamber, which arrives on Friday (16.10.26). For guitarist Carlos O’Connell, working with the Spanish superstar is particularly special because of his own Spanish roots.
He explained: “I’ve admired Rosalía ever since her debut album, which I thought was absolutely beautiful.
“What excited me most was the way she continued to preserve Spain's musical traditions, something that felt spiritually connected to what we've been trying to achieve with Irish music. Having roots in both countries, it's been really special to witness. "She's an artist who has continued to amaze me at every point in her career.”
Frontman Grian Chatten has also described the collaboration with Rosalía as one of the most memorable achievements of his career.
He revealed that he felt "humbled" when she agreed to lend her voice to the band's album.
Speaking to NPR, Grian said: “I've always felt there's something almost like a single big idea that I'm personally trying to communicate to the world before I get old and die, if that makes sense. There's one thing I think I'll spend my life trying to express. I have a feeling she has a similar outlook. … I mean, she's an amazing arranger, composer and lyricist. It means so much that she wanted to sing on something we'd put together. It's definitely one of the highlights of my career.”
Rosalía's links to Irish rock music extend beyond Fontaines D.C. She also offered inspiration and helped develop the Spanish lyrics for U2's The Mirror Maker (Rosalía), a track from their forthcoming album, Carnaval de Luz.
During an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last week, she spoke about frontman Bono, saying: “I don't know him personally, but he sent me a text explaining that he was working on a new project and had written a song called The Mirror Maker."
Rosalía joked that Bono had invented a few words of his own.
She recalled telling him: “I wasn't sure what to make of it, but I told him he could create his own language if he wanted to.”
She described the opportunity to collaborate with the 66 year old music veteran as a real privilege.
She added: “Bono is a legend.
“It's amazing.”
Bono recently revealed that he was worried about seeming like a stalker when he reached out to Rosalía to ask whether he could name the song after her.
