TDE president Punch has some thoughts about “demonic influences” in Hip-Hop. On Sunday (August 27), the label exec hopped on Twitter to address the state of the music industry today. In his opinion, demonism has become more and more prevalent. “The demonic influence is getting more and more blatant in this thing,” he wrote. “The gradualism was numbing, now it’s just out loud.”
2cool2blog went on to share the post on its official Instagram account. Judging by the comment section, fans seem to agree. “It took this post for some of y’all to realize it’s demonic spiritual warfare running rampant through music right now??” one person commented. Another person added, “[target emoji]…but y’all still gon be in these comments defending your favorite artists and making excuses. smh open your eyes!”
Moreover, the multi-hyphenate is not a man who minces his words. After DJ Akademiks made some disparaging remarks about SZA, he wasted no time clapping back at him. “Man I’ve been so conflicted the [past] couple of days as to address this dude publicly or not,” he expressed. “I’m not playing no internet games… He have to answer for those disrespectful things he said about SZA,” he wrote in a now-deleted Twitter post. However, the social media personality seemingly feels no way about it.
“None of y’all are Suge Knight,” he says in a recent livestream. “You don’t strike fear in my heart. There is no, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to get me!’ I did content about the biggest killers in the world in Chicago. I’ve talked about the worst people you could imagine… I won’t be sitting here scared of an older n***a who claims he’s a ‘thug.’ Mr. Punch from TDE, you didn’t have to delete your tweet.” He added, “I’m not scared of you. I don’t know nobody that’s scared of you and I don’t know nobody that would think you be doing nothing. So please, pipe down, and rather than delete the tweet, don’t send the tweet. Because if you look at my tweet history, I leave them up for all to see.”
Reneé Rapp is seen as a “huge inspiration” by SZA.
The 25-year-old artist performed SZA’s Good Days in the BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge, accompanied by two acoustic guitarists and a harp player. SZA, 35, was deeply moved by the rendition.
She posted a short video of the moment on Instagram Stories and wrote: “Renee is a HUGE inspiration, energy, voice spirit.”
During her chat with the BBC, Renee shared her thoughts about the track. She said: “I mean, I love SZA. I mean, she was one of my favorite artists in high school. And she's remained one of my favorite artists to this day. I think she's amazing. She's also, I mean, she's an incredible songwriter, but I think because she has so much swag. People don't realize how good of a singer she is. She's a fantastic vocalist and is really, really, really articulate. And I don't cover a lot of songs anymore. So I wanted to cover something that was, like, slightly challenging and also really vocally impressive, and frankly, hard for me to do.”
Renee is currently in the middle of promoting her second album, Bite Me, and opened up about how much more enjoyable it was to create compared to her first project.
She explained: “I mean, I feel like everything was incredibly different. I stopped listening to people that don't make music, because if you don't make music, then why the hell am I listening to you. And I also think the biggest difference, I think I just got a lot better. I think I have just become a better songwriter. I think I understand how to make pop music now in a way that I didn't really before. And I was very sure about what this album was and thematically, what it needed.
“So I felt like I was quite like, headstrong in like, what was gonna work and what wasn't. Because, nobody knows something better than yourself. I think a lot of things were different. I also just, like, had a lot of fun making it, like, I made it with like, three people, mostly, like, it was always like, four of us in the studio all the time, and we got so close, and some of us were already so close. So it was also just like a mess. It was such a mess, like we were just tweaking every day. It was so fun. And I don't think I enjoyed making the first one as much.”
