John Mayer
Joseph Okpako/WireImageJohn Mayer announced on Tuesday that he’ll be releasing his eighth studio album, titled Sob Rock, on July 16th. The singer and guitarist released the news on Twitter, along with the album’s cover art. Rolling Stone has reached out to representatives for Mayer for further details.
Sob Rock will mark Mayer’s first studio album since 2017’s The Search for Everything. Since 2015, he has been performing as part of the Grateful Dead supergroup Dead & Company, who recently announced a set of 2021 tour dates kicking off in August. (The band had originally planned to tour in 2020, but postponed the live dates due to the pandemic.) Dead & Co. will also be resuming their annual Playing in the Sand residency in January 2022, performing for three nights at the Riviera Cancun in Mexico.
As a solo artist, Mayer joined Maren Morris onstage at this year’s Grammy Awards to play guitar for her song “The Bones.”
VULTURES 2 will go down as the worst Kanye West album. It was an absolute mess in terms of its rollout. The album went over its scheduled release date by months. When it did finally arrive, the mixes were an absolute mess. Kanye West corrected them in real time. He also tweaked the tracklist, and added songs once the extremely negative feedback came rolling in. "530" is a rare bright spot on the album, though. Kanye West gets personal and delivers one of his best lyrical performances in ages over a smooth vocal chop. And now we have a music video for it.
One might assume a track as heartfelt as "530" would get a heartfelt video. Kanye West has given fans some of the most iconic and memorable hip hop visuals of the 21st century. It would stand to reason that he could whip something up for the new single that was tonally appropriate. Well, West did what he does best, and defied expectations. The music video for "530" doesn't feature Kanye West or his VULTURES collaborator, Ty Dolla $ign. It doesn't feature any human beings, actually. Instead, the video is centered around puppets and people wearing cartoon masks.
The video doesn't follow a straightforward narrative. It strings together a bunch of low quality videos of these puppets and masked people seemingly doing random activities. One scenario sees a man walking the street with a bag in hand. Another sees a female puppet get an injection into her nose. There's a very unnerving quality to the visuals here, like a Twilight Zone episode conceived by, well, Kanye West. It's a bold visual direction to take things. Lyrically, "530" is about the rapper's ex-wife, Kim Kardashian. It also touches on the way Kardashian is raising their children, and the fears West has about their futures.
The most interesting aspect of "530," barring the striking visuals, is that it received a music video this long after VULTURES 2 was released. Kanye West has not done promo for the album, and everything we have heard from him has seemingly been in preparation for his next solo release, BULLY. The rapper had seemed as though he closed the chapter on VULTURES. Now, we don't really know what to think.
