The Ringer - The Best of 2018—So Far2018-06-30T07:00:01-04:00http://www.theringer.com/rss/stream/172709032018-06-30T07:00:01-04:002018-06-30T07:00:01-04:00The Best Comedy Specials of 2018—So Far
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<p>Hannah Gadsby’s ‘Nanette,’ John Mulaney’s ‘Kid Gorgeous,’ and more </p> <p id="jjqOCi">The comedy industry’s new boom time of podcasts and eye-popping deals for A-listers has now lasted nearly a decade, and it doesn’t look like the outflow of material will slow down anytime soon. This is due, in part, to the presence of Netflix, whose dominance in the field of stand-up comedy verges on monopoly. The streaming service accounts for four out of the five selections on this list of the best stand-up offerings of the year so far, with the sole exception being the product of an independent distribution designed to benefit a charity. Such an omnipresence might be cause for concern if the results of Netflix’s free-flowing spending didn’t result in such a strong and diverse set of offerings. The comedic highlights of 2018 so far range from a fourth-wall-breaking meditation on what stand-up can and can’t accomplish to a gloriously filthy riff on the indignities of motherhood. From New York to Sydney, these hours will make you think, cry, and most importantly, snort-laugh.</p>
<p id="Web6st"><strong>John Mulaney, </strong><em><strong>Kid Gorgeous at Radio City</strong></em><strong>: </strong>Unlike the other specials on this list, there’s no real hook to <em>Kid Gorgeous. </em>Mulaney’s third hour-long special isn’t pegged to a specific time in the performer’s life, nor does it zero in on a specific subject. Instead, <em>Kid Gorgeous </em>continues and elevates Mulaney’s <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/5/1/17305160/john-mulaney-kid-gorgeous-profile">now-familiar themes</a>: his strict father and devout Catholic upbringing, both terrifying in the moment and hilarious in retrospect; his wife and marriage, where he avoids the trap of sexist mockery by confronting its specter head-on; and the bits and pieces of everyday life he just happens to find funny. <em>Kid Gorgeous </em>does introduce a new dimension to Mulaney’s act in the form of an extended bit about the present political moment, though the now-iconic “horse in a hospital” routine never mentions the president by name. For the most part, however, <em>Kid Gorgeous </em>is a polished, whip-smart, joyful offering from a midcareer comic who’s made all three of those descriptors a signature. To be great, a special doesn’t necessarily have to be a game-changer—it just has to make you laugh.</p>
<p id="2iWRVs"><strong>Ali Wong, </strong><em><strong>Hard Knock Wife</strong></em><strong>:</strong><em> </em>It’s remarkable just how different Ali Wong’s debut special, <em>Baby Cobra</em>,<em> </em>and <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/5/13/17341300/ali-wong-hard-knock-wife-review">its follow-up</a>, <em>Hard Knock Wife</em>,<em> </em>actually are, given the incredibly rare quality that unites the two: during the tapings of both hours, Wong was heavily pregnant. In <em>Baby Cobra</em>,<em> </em>which transformed the San Francisco native from a virtual unknown into a cultural phenomenon, the pregnancy forms the crux of her act, a tirade about “trapping” her now husband and quitting stand-up to be a stay-at-home mom. In <em>Hard Knock Wife</em>,<em> </em>she doesn’t so much as mention her pregnancy, focusing instead on radically graphic descriptions of childbirth and early parenthood. Wong marries the razor-sharp timing of a classic, seasoned road comedian—one would never call her style experimental—with a substance that’s so new to the setup–punch line treatment that there’s a new transgressive thrill to be found in every joke. The only thing more hard-core than taping a stand-up special pregnant is taping a stand-up special pregnant and acting like it’s no big deal.</p>
<p id="MJvz5O"><strong>Hannah Gadsby, </strong><em><strong>Nanette</strong></em><strong>:</strong><em><strong> </strong></em>Australian performer Hannah Gadsby’s <em>Nanette </em>is the mic drop to end all mic drops—a cross between comedy special and one-woman show that’s actually a 69-minute Dear John letter to the entire enterprise of stand-up. Gadsby is a veteran (American viewers may recognize her from the wonderful dramedy series <em>Please Like Me</em>) experienced enough to know what she’s talking about when she tells the audience stand-up is no longer a sufficient vehicle for working through her trauma. A survivor of sexual assault and violent homophobia, Gadsby takes issue with her chosen art form’s incentive to channel her pain into a tightly wrapped package with easy resolutions. So she’s quitting while she’s ahead, going out with a blistering, emotional, and sometimes even silly mission statement delivered at the Sydney Opera House. This may be the first time many stateside audiences have heard of Gadsby, but it almost certainly won’t be the last. We’ll see her again, even if she’s not making cracks about her native Tasmania with a microphone in hand.</p>
<p id="cd7s2H"><strong>Cameron Esposito, </strong><em><strong>Rape Jokes</strong></em><strong>:</strong><em><strong> </strong></em>On paper, <em>Rape Jokes </em>and <em>Nanette </em>are almost eerily similar: both hours are the products of queer female comedians, and both unabashedly center themselves on the thorny and seemingly un-comedic subject of sexual assault and its aftermath. But Gadsby and Esposito—a Chicago-born, mullet-sporting entertainer known for her excellent Seeso series <em>Take My Wife</em>,<em> </em>cocreated with her spouse Rhea Butcher—come to very different conclusions about their chosen art forms. Where <em>Nanette </em>is all about stand-up’s limitations, <em>Rape Jokes </em>celebrates its potential as a way to emerge victorious from the trials of one’s past. (Esposito self-distributed the special <a href="https://www.cameronesposito.com/">on her website</a>, where fans can pay what they want with the proceeds to benefit RAINN.) Between more straightforwardly funny anecdotes like a story about nearly shitting herself on tour, Esposito takes on both her own experience with assault and the deeply flawed ways our culture reckons with it, maintaining her insouciance throughout. If a comic needs certain words to be funny, she smirks, “Then I am a better stand-up comic than you.” It’s braggadocio used for good.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="Z4yANJ"><strong>Chris Rock, </strong><em><strong>Tamborine</strong></em><strong>: </strong><em>Tamborine </em>is not the best of Rock’s specials, which is perhaps the inevitable consequence of the legend taking a nearly decade-long hiatus between new hours. It is, however, a Chris Rock special, and a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/2/14/17014062/chris-rock-tamborine-netflix">disarmingly personal one</a> at that, guaranteeing a level of expertise that places <em>Tamborine </em>among the best of the year. Rock applies his decades of hard-won skill to his own divorce, a painful and perspective-altering process that’s finally far enough in his past to serve as fodder for the comedian’s observational prowess. Rock frankly accounts for his own failings as a partner, largely avoiding the poorly aged misogyny of his earlier work in favor of making himself the butt of the joke. By the end, Rock positions himself as an advice columnist begging his audience to learn from his own mistakes, urging them to play backup in the metaphorical band of their relationship in the analogy that gives the special its name. <em>Tamborine </em>is the first of two specials Rock is <a href="https://www.cinemablend.com/television/1566409/how-much-money-netflix-is-paying-chris-rock-for-two-stand-up-specials">signed on</a> to deliver to Netflix, and more than any other entry in his oeuvre, it leaves one wondering where he’ll go next.</p>
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/6/30/17518456/best-comedy-specials-of-2018-so-farAlison Herman2018-06-29T08:55:24-04:002018-06-29T08:55:24-04:00The Best Performances of 2018—So Far
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<p>A salute to the men and women who entertained us most, from Paper Boi to Prince Harry to Beyoncé (duh) to NoHo Hank to Jennifer Garner on Instagram</p> <p id="6FhZIG"><em>In a cultural period defined by a glut of always-accessible content, it’s not rare for everything to bleed together and produce an overall reaction of, “OK, well I guess that’s a thing.” But some people still have the ability to rise above the never-ending stream to demand attention and inspire genuine emotion. So far this year, famous moms on Instagram have revealed new layers of their personalities, up-and-coming actors have finally hit their strides, legends have returned to remind us how they earned that title in the first place, and British men have won us over by … well, I guess by being super British.</em></p>
<p id="W0VAhU"><em>A handful of performances from the first six months of 2018 have been powerful enough to make us briefly forget the bad parts of this year, to elevate us to states of euphoria that, no matter how brief, have made sifting through all of the content worthwhile. Here are the 10 best performances of the year so far. —</em>Andrew Gruttadaro</p>
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<h3 id="yCZaII">Matthew Macfadyen</h3>
<p id="u4srB5">To begin: Hats off to whoever watched <em>Pride & Prejudice </em>and <em>Howards End</em> and thought, “There he is—that’s my sociopathic new parks director.” Matthew Macfadyen, king of the Joe Wright period piece and our Best Mr. Darcy to Date, has typically been stuck in very English roles, with the waistcoats and the restrained dialogue to match. No more. <em>Succession</em>, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/6/1/17416740/hbo-succession-rupert-murdoch-influence">the HBO drama about a Murdoch-like media empire</a>, puts Macfadyen in the role of Tom, future son-in-law, corporate cog, and one of several emotionally stunted 30-something men beating their chests at each other for the patriarch’s attention. As Tom, Macfadyen is breathtaking: ambitious, goofy, petty, unstable, with a bonus psychosexual war waged against <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/6/25/17496632/succession-hbo-cousin-greg">fellow interloper Cousin Greg</a>. The performance is a testament to Macfadyen’s range, and to the comedic powers of Truly Terrible People Who Have It Coming. If only the real world were so simple. —<em>Amanda Dobbins</em></p>
<h3 id="gdk7zw">Brian Tyree Henry</h3>
<p id="Pvg7KY">So much of <em>Atlanta </em>is unspoken. It is a show about a rising rapper that features exactly zero scenes of said rapper rapping. The central relationship of the show, between cousins Earn and Alfred, is directly addressed only sparingly—in terse, grunted sentences exchanged on a fraternity couch or in a rare but symbolic flashback. The characters’ narrative arcs are altered not by obvious impetuses during grand turning points, but by surreal, possibly imagined influences that manifest in quiet, nearly indecipherable ways. And so it fits that the most important, best actor on <em>Atlanta </em>in Season 2 was Brian Tyree Henry.</p>
<div class="c-float-right"><aside id="DShS2R"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Best Albums of 2018—So Far ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/6/27/17508770/best-albums-of-2018-so-far-pusha-t-kacey-musgraves-snail-mail-kendrick-lamar"},{"title":"The Best Movies of 2018 — So Far","url":"https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/6/28/17511686/best-movies-of-2018-so-far"},{"title":"The Best TV of 2018—So Far","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/6/25/17494092/best-tv-of-2018-so-far"},{"title":"The Best TV of 2018—So Far","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/6/25/17494092/best-tv-of-2018-so-far"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="6pwANR">As Alfred/Paper Boi, Henry captured the character’s ennui and exasperation with nothing more than a roll of his eyes. Without verbally communicating his emotions this season, he played scared, tired, depressed, angry, hungry, lost, bewildered, betrayed, and finally accepting of his fate and responsibilities. All it took was a growl <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/3/30/17180086/atlanta-season-2-episode-5-barbershop-brian-tyree-henry">inside the car of a rogue barber</a>, a deadpan glare from the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/3/8/17092712/atlanta-season-two-episode-two-paper-boi-music">makeshift stage of a music streaming company</a>, or a <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/4/20/17260242/atlanta-season-2-episode-8-recap-woods-paper-boi">blood-stained smile in the middle of a convenience store</a>. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="hOfg87">Armie Hammer’s Tracksuits</h3>
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<blockquote class="instagram-media" data-instgrm-captioned="" data-instgrm-permalink="https://www.instagram.com/p/BeddyT5BJQL/" data-instgrm-version="8" style=" background:#FFF; border:0; border-radius:3px; box-shadow:0 0 1px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.5),0 1px 10px 0 rgba(0,0,0,0.15); margin: 1px; max-width:658px; padding:0; width:99.375%; width:-webkit-calc(100% - 2px); width:calc(100% - 2px);"><div style="padding:8px;"> <div style=" background:#F8F8F8; line-height:0; margin-top:40px; padding:55.18518518518518% 0; text-align:center; width:100%;"> <div style=" background:url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAACwAAAAsCAMAAAApWqozAAAABGdBTUEAALGPC/xhBQAAAAFzUkdCAK7OHOkAAAAMUExURczMzPf399fX1+bm5mzY9AMAAADiSURBVDjLvZXbEsMgCES5/P8/t9FuRVCRmU73JWlzosgSIIZURCjo/ad+EQJJB4Hv8BFt+IDpQoCx1wjOSBFhh2XssxEIYn3ulI/6MNReE07UIWJEv8UEOWDS88LY97kqyTliJKKtuYBbruAyVh5wOHiXmpi5we58Ek028czwyuQdLKPG1Bkb4NnM+VeAnfHqn1k4+GPT6uGQcvu2h2OVuIf/gWUFyy8OWEpdyZSa3aVCqpVoVvzZZ2VTnn2wU8qzVjDDetO90GSy9mVLqtgYSy231MxrY6I2gGqjrTY0L8fxCxfCBbhWrsYYAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC); display:block; height:44px; margin:0 auto -44px; position:relative; top:-22px; width:44px;"></div>
</div> <p style=" margin:8px 0 0 0; padding:0 4px;"> <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BeddyT5BJQL/" style=" color:#000; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px; text-decoration:none; word-wrap:break-word;" target="_blank">Just blending in to the environment #trackieandapint</a></p> <p style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px; margin-bottom:0; margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/armiehammer/" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Armie Hammer</a> (@armiehammer) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2018-01-27T16:56:19+00:00">Jan 27, 2018 at 8:56am PST</time></p>
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<p id="jdgpI6">A man travels to Italy, and he is changed there. He rides bikes; he learns about apricots; he is transformed artistically and emotionally by the people he meets. And then … he gets snubbed by the Oscars and refuses to change clothes for two weeks. As public tantrums go, <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BeqxvKQhonG/?hl=en&taken-by=armiehammer">putting on an Adidas tracksuit</a> and taking pictures throughout Europe is high-level stuff, and the Armie Hammer narrative is certainly more memorable than, say, 80 percent of the films that won Oscars this year? (When was the last time you thought about <em>The Shape of Water</em>?) It’s good to want things, and it’s good to be mad about not getting them by committing to athletic wear. —<em>Dobbins</em></p>
<h3 id="ExmfYM">Josh Brolin</h3>
<p id="gJC1oB">Before <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/4/27/17289858/avengers-infinity-war-review"><em>Infinity War</em></a><em> </em>came out, this was Thanos:</p>
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<p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://t.co/2cYO1f9W4h">pic.twitter.com/2cYO1f9W4h</a></p>— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) <a href="https://twitter.com/broderick/status/936175464686768130?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 30, 2017</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">God I love internet <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Thanos?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Thanos</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/InfinityWarTrailer?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#InfinityWarTrailer</a> <a href="https://t.co/UAv8LG0BIN">pic.twitter.com/UAv8LG0BIN</a></p>— jose maria chiu (@Chiu_Sketches) <a href="https://twitter.com/Chiu_Sketches/status/936000989013970945?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 29, 2017</a>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">guys I figured out how to make Thanos sexier <a href="https://t.co/Ejy8wwOnua">pic.twitter.com/Ejy8wwOnua</a></p>— Ryan Broderick (@broderick) <a href="https://twitter.com/broderick/status/936178654068998144?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 30, 2017</a>
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<p id="rkwlRy">My guy was <em>not </em>intimidating. It was basically impossible to focus on his plan to eliminate half of the universe’s population instead of that weird, striated alien goatee. And that was kind of a problem for Marvel: Thanos was supposed to be their villain to end all villains, the bringer of the apocalypse that the MCU had been building toward for more than a decade—not a <a href="http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/355/536/43b.jpg_large">dead ringer for Guy Fieri</a>. But with a mountain of memes to overcome, Josh Brolin was somehow successful in bringing Thanos to life. In <em>Infinity War</em>, Thanos is sufficiently daunting, weirdly empathetic, and nearly understandable. His population control plan <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/5/3/17313486/thanos-avengers-infinity-war-villain-marvel-movies">doesn’t hold up to scrutiny</a>, but in the moment you at least get a sense of where he’s coming from. In the grizzled, bass-laden voice that Brolin gave the swole purple dude, you feel his pain—the pain caused by loss, by sacrifice, and by taking on a thankless role that he believes is necessary. </p>
<p id="FGyvNV">Looking back at that Photoshop of Thanos with a strawberry doughnut and Homer Simpson’s face, I still don’t know how he did it. I still don’t know how Josh Brolin turned a ridiculous-looking alien into a viable character with humanity, and thus saved the biggest movie in Marvel’s history. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="UoCwLm">Beyoncé</h3>
<p id="uYZDwV">It’s the Captain Obvious choice, but also an undeniable one. <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/4/16/17242666/beyonce-coachella-exit-survey">Beyoncé’s Coachella performance</a>—a two-hour, 26-song set featuring an HBCU-style marching band, 100-plus dancers, and samples from Malcolm X and Nina Simone—was historic for the festival, and for the audience, and for the concept of live performance. For Beyoncé, it was just another day of making perfection seem interesting. As our greatest living pop star, she will always earn a spot on lists like these, but the thrill is in watching her figure out new ways to do it. Bonus points for getting anyone to care about Coachella in 2018. —<em>Dobbins</em></p>
<h3 id="LrVLaW">Anthony Carrigan (in <em>Barry</em>)</h3>
<p id="lbymms">On a show—that is supposed to be a comedy, mind you—in which a hitman is forced to brutally kill a bunch of people (killing his own soul and sense of self-worth in the process), you need someone to break the tension. That’s why NoHo Hank—a Chechen mobster with a cueball head who kicks off phone calls about hits with, “Are you seeing this beautiful morning?”—is such an essential part of <em>Barry</em>. Hank is the concierge of the Chechen mob world, a guy who’s devoted to injecting the seedy underworld of organized crime with a little bit of class and comfort—a guy who, surrounded by actual death and violence, is just really proud of his lipstick camera, and that idea he had about shipping a bullet (via DHL) to a target’s house just before he’s taken out. It’s adorable.</p>
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<p id="arPzi7">Played by Anthony Carrigan, Hank has been one of the funniest new characters of 2018. Carrigan is a remarkably efficient actor, making the most of his few lines per episode in <em>Barry</em>, stealing entire scenes with a glint of his eye or an <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOTtFj7aa8s">incorrect pronunciation of Bugs Bunny</a>. (“I suggest you take your money and, you know, fly like Bug Bunny in <em>Space Jam</em>.”) A lot of people died at the end of the first season of <em>Barry</em>; I am ecstatic to report that NoHo Hank was not one of them. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="pmDG7E">Prince Harry</h3>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">THE WAY PRINCE HARRY LOOKS AT MEGHAN AFTER HE SAYS “you look amazing” IM SOBBING THEY ARE SO IN LOVE <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/RoyalWedding?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#RoyalWedding</a> <a href="https://t.co/GTzlbNq1Ak">pic.twitter.com/GTzlbNq1Ak</a></p>— Sarah (@MissSarahLouise) <a href="https://twitter.com/MissSarahLouise/status/997796968595255297?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 19, 2018</a>
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<p id="nDRZDd">If I could quote the essential 2008 romantic comedy <em>27 Dresses</em>: “When the bride comes in and she makes her giant, grand entrance, I like to glance back at the poor bastard getting married. ’Cause even though I think he’s an idiot … I don’t know, he always looks really, really happy.” Prince Harry knew why 3 billion people were watching, and he cried the whole damn time. Romance! It’s alive in England. —<em>Dobbins</em></p>
<h3 id="8W5CvB">Jennifer Garner</h3>
<p id="7l16TA">Let me ask you a series of questions:</p>
<ul>
<li id="CjNWmY">Have <em>you </em>ever <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BiCW5qdBnZS/">set a video of honey harvesting to Yello’s “Oh Yeah”</a>?</li>
<li id="IBm3yn">Have <em>you </em>ever <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bie9w8khb16/">used the hashtag “#truefriendshelpyoupee”</a>?</li>
<li id="bOqHhS">Have <em>you </em>ever <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BkQ2ARjAlnP/">made a chocolate cake using a “kitchen thing”</a>?</li>
<li id="UkEwzM">Have <em>you </em>ever <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Bh4ua3Ah5ZM/">praised the gods for the gift of blood oranges</a>, which are pretty delicious, knowwhatimean?</li>
<li id="9JQPR5">Have <em>you </em>ever <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BfRRxOLnS40/">put on a giant, fake goatee and a full “Zero the Hero” costume</a>?</li>
<li id="0nmqe3">Have <em>you </em>ever <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BhW0w-nBvf9/">drunkenly unpacked your purse</a> in a video?</li>
<li id="qlISrt">Have <em>you </em>ever <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/BgoMziPhraK/">dressed up in full marching band regalia and played the saxophone for Reese Witherspoon’s birthday</a>? </li>
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<p id="IE3DNw">The answer to all of these questions should be no. Because you are not Jennifer Garner, who has submitted a perfect game of a performance on Instagram this year. —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<h3 id="QAYRvT">Hayley Atwell</h3>
<p id="jVZcck">There is a distinct pleasure in watching someone get the chance they’ve been waiting for. Hayley Atwell has spent the better part of a decade toiling away as Marvel’s Agent Carter, and while she certainly deserves the money, “bureaucrat love interest” does not demonstrate the full range of her talents. Cue the BBC One update of <em>Howards End</em>, directed by Hettie MacDonald and adapted by Kenneth Lonergan, with an exhilarating score by Nico Muhly. (This miniseries is fantastic; watch it.) It takes a certain mettle to step into a role so closely associated with Emma Thompson—but a sense of purpose is what defines both Margaret Schlegel and, in many ways, Atwell’s own screen presence. She is, in the words of my colleague Alison Herman, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/4/28/17284378/howards-end-starz-review">“electric.”</a> No wonder she gets the house. —<em>Dobbins</em></p>
<h3 id="bx6Ixa">Quincy Jones</h3>
<p id="Y7P1i3">Here is a Google Trends chart that shows the interest in Quincy Jones over the past 12 months:</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/urxBL2opQGZxAFPLE9NAkLRLQSc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/11618393/Screen_Shot_2018_06_28_at_2.42.21_PM.png">
</figure>
<p id="vB1K5G">My, oh my, what a noticeable spike! And what, you ask, happened in early February of this year to make “Quincy Jones” such a highly searched term? Did he produce a surprise Beyoncé album? Did he officiate his daughter Rashida Jones’s wedding? Did he and Will Smith record a dubstep version of the <em>Fresh Prince of Bel-Air </em>theme song? No. All Quincy Jones did to captivate an entire nation was give two interviews—two immediately legendary interviews. The first interview was with <a href="https://www.gq.com/story/quincy-jones-has-a-story"><em>GQ</em></a>’s Chris Heath, published on January 29. In it, Quincy Jones:</p>
<ul>
<li id="GKwr9K">Bragged that both Frank Sinatra and Miles Davis had made him eggs before</li>
<li id="q3O8Sq">Called Oprah a drama queen</li>
<li id="Q6wCyS">Said he had “22 girlfriends” located in cities all across the world, from Cape Town to Cairo to Stockholm</li>
<li id="O9BrHx">Alluded to turning down sex with Marilyn Monroe</li>
<li id="gOclyh">Delivered one of the most succinct, scathing reviews of Taylor Swift ever recorded: “We need more songs, man. Fucking songs, not hooks.”</li>
<li id="FvWZgM">Told a story about Prince trying to run over Michael Jackson</li>
<li id="ikTBGf">Talked about meeting Leni Riefenstahl, who Quincy had been a fan of “since <em>Triumph of the Will</em>.” In that same story, Quincy intimated that Hitler loved cocaine.</li>
</ul>
<p id="CG4y3A">The second interview, with <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2018/02/quincy-jones-in-conversation.html"><em>Vulture</em></a>’s David Marchese, came out nine days later and was somehow <em>more </em>incendiary than the <em>GQ </em>interview. In it, Quincy Jones:</p>
<ul>
<li id="HyHvpf">Affirmed that he knew the truth about who actually killed John F. Kennedy</li>
<li id="p8sEyu">Talked shit about the Beatles, specifically Ringo Starr</li>
<li id="6eLLPU">Said Paul Allen, the cofounder of Microsoft, was as good at guitar as Jimi Hendrix</li>
<li id="sg3pCo">Confessed that he used to date Ivanka Trump, who is “a fine motherfucker”</li>
<li id="17pAXM">Answered the question “Is U2 still making good music?” with “[<em>Shakes head</em>.]”</li>
<li id="reX7ZV">Unprompted, said that Marlon Brando would fuck anything—”a mailbox,” for example—and then continued on, saying that Brando had sex with James Baldwin, Richard Pryor, and Marvin Gaye.</li>
</ul>
<p id="rhwmZ7">It’s truly amazing what can happen when you let an old man with a trove of experiences run on uninterrupted. In an era of ultimate image control, interviews like this just don’t happen. There is more shade and dirt (and also insight) in both of these interviews than in all of the other celebrity profiles published in 2018 combined. Sure, Quincy Jones had to apologize after that last tidbit about Marlon Brando, but even the apology was good:</p>
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<p lang="und" dir="ltr"><a href="https://t.co/xCYAqJ6oD2">pic.twitter.com/xCYAqJ6oD2</a></p>— Quincy Jones (@QuincyDJones) <a href="https://twitter.com/QuincyDJones/status/966720607541800960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 22, 2018</a>
</blockquote>
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<p class="c-end-para" id="wmPwvw">Thank you, Quincy Jones, for your word vomit, but also for your ability to briefly bring people together this year with a mix of hilarity and outright shock. ((:0)) —<em>Gruttadaro</em></p>
<p id="8oYKKv"></p>
<p id="eO4xzI"></p>
https://www.theringer.com/pop-culture/2018/6/29/17516612/best-performances-of-2018-so-farAmanda DobbinsAndrew Gruttadaro2018-06-28T06:00:01-04:002018-06-28T06:00:01-04:00The Best Movies of 2018 — So Far
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/TBj7GCGIpcw0wM97vFiJXFaYPAM=/309x0:2976x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/60206163/best_movie_ringer.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Including ‘First Reformed,’ ‘Black Panther,’ ‘Zama,’ and yes, ‘Paddington 2’</p> <p id="COWTME">By this time last year, the movies had <em>Get Out</em>, <em>The Big Sick</em>, and <em>Baby Driver</em>, three utterly different films that went on to become eventual Oscar nominees, and also <em>Wonder Woman</em>, a milestone in the superhero movie subgenre that has come to dominate the known universe. 2018 has been different. There was, of course, <em>Black Panther</em> and <em>Avengers: Infinity War</em>, two projection-crushing, culture-choking event movies with little precedent. But there hasn’t been nearly as much in the way of traditional awards fare. The anxieties over the film industry’s middle class — and theatergoing in general — have become a matter of public debate. And high-budget bombs feel more possible than ever.</p>
<p id="Asqazo">But stress does not equal doom. The box office is actually up more than 8 percent, year over year, and the pride of attendance — as in, “I saw <em>Black Panther</em> in theaters four times!” — is animating what could be a unique new era for the movies, a time when an original story like <em>A Quiet Place</em> has as much of a chance to succeed as <em>Solo: A Star Wars Story</em>. And while TV grows into an unmanageable mass of unfinishable content, the compact execution of movies have given them more primacy in the cultural conversation than they’ve had in perhaps a decade. And that means more good ones. Through six months, here are the best.</p>
<h3 id="pjd3Nu"><em>First Reformed</em></h3>
<p id="gLs5pI">Pepto Bismol and grain whiskey, swirling together in a glass like a pinkish-brown smear on Degas’s palette. That’s the image I think of when I recall <em>First Reformed</em> — beautiful poison, a crisis, and the cure. In Paul Schrader’s still but furious portrait of a pastor grappling with the degradation of the world’s environment that mirrors the breakdown of his own faith, Ethan Hawke gives the performance of his career. And for Schrader, the singular author of man-going-mad-in-his-bedroom cinema, it is a worthy successor to <em>Taxi Driver</em> and <em>Light Sleeper</em>, among other masterworks. As the director holds the camera calmly on the now 47-year-old Hawke’s face — all divots, crevasses, and unresolved anguish — he pays tribute to the transcendental masters he worshipped as a young film critic. But when he takes the safety off, in the final 15 minutes, he does what he was born to do — thrash the still with the ecstatic and make something uncomfortably, purposefully wrenching. — <em>Sean Fennessey</em></p>
<h3 id="XV1v18"><em>Black Panther</em></h3>
<p id="xGKuaM">The mammoth box-office and think-piece omnipresence of Ryan Coogler’s <em>Black Panther </em>don’t fully obscure its aesthetic qualities, but it’s worth remembering that the guy is first and foremost a <em>filmmaker. </em>At its best, <em>Black Panther </em>marshals the same muscular, populist excitement of <em>Creed. </em>It’s there in the fleetly edited South Korean nightclub clash between Wakanda’s heroes and Andy Serkis’s mercenaries and in the solemn, violent cliffside clash between T’Challa and Killmonger (shades of <em>Rocky III </em>with Michael B. Jordan channeling Clubber Lang). The affecting intimacy of <em>Fruitvale Station</em>,<em> </em>meanwhile,<em> </em>emerges in a vision-quest-slash-flashback that so fully humanizes the story’s villain that the surrounding superhero clichés feel stretched to a breaking point. Not a perfect movie — or even the explosion of Marvel formula its biggest champions claim — but impressive all the same. — <em>Adam Nayman</em></p>
<h3 id="Jfb9Uk"><em>Zama</em></h3>
<p id="Bb1m1c">The Argentine director Lucrecia Martel is a master of hot and hazy atmosphere, and the 18th-century period piece <em>Zama</em> is her most humid and humorous movie to date. Posted by his government superiors to a Patagonian purgatory where his authority is purely ceremonial (and roundly mocked by the indigenous locals), hapless Spanish diplomat Don Diego de Zama (Daniel Giménez Cacho) sweats the days away awaiting a transfer that will never come. Martel’s gorgeous, hallucinatory images and palpable sense of stasis — a vague, waking trance state that’s transferred from Zama to the audience — nod to Herzog and Kubrick, but her eye (and ear) are distinctive in a way that transcends any previous influences. If there’s any justice, she’ll be cited as a master on their level by future would-be international auteurs. — <em>Nayman</em></p>
<h3 id="2nGAxg"><em>Annihilation</em></h3>
<p id="fvAKsq">I’m confident that this movie will be playing in revivals for the next 10, 20, 30 years, that overeager undergrads will be discovering it on streaming services for decades. We just need to keep talking about it. Alex Garland, who designed a meticulous, artisanally crafted dash of A.I. sci-fi in <em>Êx Machina</em>, scaled up his ambition with this quasi-adaptation of <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/5/30/16040198/jeff-vandermeer-new-book-borne-95e6ac07bea1">Jeff VanderMeer’s well-liked novel</a> about a group of women who breach an environmental disturbance of unknown origin. This movie’s got it all: The themes of the self’s relationship to its physical realm and our alien desires are explored with an eerily calm disposition. The scene with the screaming bear monster is horrifying. Though it’s unfaithful to the book, Garland’s movie is extraordinary, quavering with uncertainty and curiosity, as interested in the dance of primal forces and doubling as the nuts-and-bolts narrative components. Shorter version: If <em>Westworld</em> were good, it’d be <em>Annihilation</em>. Equal parts odd and scary, with one gale-force Kubrickian, hypno-psychedelic set piece near the end, Garland — if nothing else — goes for it. (I wish more filmmakers could go for it.) That it disappointed at the box office is hardly surprising. Time is kinder to movies like this. But don’t wait too long. — <em>Fennessey</em></p>
<h3 id="uPWfuJ">
<em>Incredibles 2</em> and <em>Paddington 2</em>
</h3>
<p id="IhD8mX">A rare subcategory: sequels to kids’ movies that no one asked for and everyone should see. <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/6/15/17466884/incredibles-2-and-brad-birds-super-powered-return-to-pixar">Brad Bird’s</a> 14-years-in-the-making Pixar story is the latest box-office sensation in a year full of them for Disney IP subsidiaries, but what makes it special is its whirling-dervish visual approach, <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/6/15/17467532/incredibles-2-brad-bird-pixar-action-sequences">a precise flurry of action sequences</a> that don’t interrupt but — unlike its contemporaries — complement the storytelling. The same could be said for <em>Paddington 2</em>, just replace “action” with “unbearably adorable and kind-hearted.” I haven’t seen the first<em> Paddington</em>, and won’t. I was guilted into seeking out the sequel by a cabal of Daddingtons and Pad Guys who have used the movie to neutralize their unruly children. Guess what? Consider me neutralized, too. I am helpless against the charms of an English bear who can’t stay out of trouble. Director Paul King, who worked in British series TV for years before shepherding the Expanded Paddington Universe, brings a sensitive, whimsical, genuinely fun spirit to a movie that, in the wrong hands, could be too treacly or too silly. His movie is neither. — <em>Fennessey</em></p>
<h3 id="bnTVRt"><em>The Rider</em></h3>
<p id="2EvTw1">The country-Western cliché about getting “back in the saddle” gets tested in Chloé Zhao’s superb sophomore feature, in which real-life rodeo rider Brady Jandreau plays a thinly fictionalized version of himself — a waylaid eight-second warrior weighing the severity of his injuries against the impulse (personal and economic) to keep at it. Zhao’s respect for an old-fashioned cowboy tradition — and the South Dakota community it comes out of — is balanced against a multi-leveled social, cultural, and gender-based critique; her rapturous widescreen visuals evince a similar reverence for classic Westerns mitigated by a bobbing, handheld documentary realism. The result of all these different approaches is seamless and beguiling — a modest American indie that feels major in retrospect. — <em>Nayman</em></p>
<h3 id="UgTiYz">
<em>A Quiet Place </em>and <em>Hereditary</em>
</h3>
<p id="PuH1GM">Just be quiet. That’s what we all want. Stop talking. Stop texting. Stop tweeting. Stop sharing your thoughts. Just sit there and be scared. That may be the text of just one of these two very different horror movies, but it is certainly the subtext of both. John Krasinski’s thriller has been think-pieced into an allegory for the white rage in Trump’s America, while Ari Aster’s dread-bound family drama has survived the spin cycle of “Scariest Movie in Years!” hype concern. (<a href="https://www.theringer.com/2018/6/8/17440424/hereditary-ari-aster-most-disturbing-horror-movie-in-years">We’re guilty over here.</a>) So of course there’s something fun about the inverse of the ginned-up promotion and media coverage inherent here — both of these movies want you to cope in silence. I can’t say the quiet bothers me much. I love to sit alone without speaking. Try it some time. — <em>Fennessey</em></p>
<h3 id="HzVDzN"><em>You Were Never Really Here</em></h3>
<p id="iy24hY">The harshest movie of 2018, an unflinching art film that splatters visions of PTSD, child abuse, and the unraveling of the American city with the whack of a ball peen hammer. Lynne Ramsay’s fourth film isn’t her best or most persuasive, but it is a sensory experience to behold, with a lead performance from a hulking Joaquin Phoenix — leading with his abdomen — that is monosyllabically triumphant even by his standards. I don’t know that I recommend this film as anything that resembles fun — or, even, necessarily, insightful — but it is a motherload of psychic and physical power, shot up close and without reserve. — <em>Fennessey</em></p>
<h3 id="sxVi6y"><em>Let the Sunshine In</em></h3>
<p id="u2C2KN">Juliette Binoche plays an artist whose romantic life is its own messy, abstract canvas in Claire Denis’s sublime Parisian comedy, a film whose apparent lightness is pleasurable but also deceptive. Confronting the totally ordinary and fully unadorable reality of midlife dating — a routine in which all the participants come with their share of unchecked baggage — Denis crafts a sexual picaresque that illustrates its heroine’s frustration without letting her off the hook. Playing a woman who keeps her emotions on the surface (perhaps because she fears she can no longer feel deeply about anything), Binoche is as good as she’s ever been, and no film in 2018 will match <em>Sunshine</em>’s<em> </em>amazing, inscrutable ending sequence, the precise meaning of which is worth talking and arguing about for hours; at a moment when most movies for grown-ups take pains to underline their themes and corner their own arguments, Denis nudges us to “be open.” — <em>Nayman</em></p>
<h3 id="rlD3LN"><em>Game Night</em></h3>
<p id="KoOYKl">It’s about time somebody satirized David Fincher’s severe thriller style, so <em>Game Night — </em>which, as its title suggests, is pretty much a comic rewrite of the 1997 movie where Michael Douglas’s choose-your-own-adventure diversion goes fatally awry — deserves points simply for going there. But beyond the shrewdness of its setup, in which a group of friends is yoked into an actual drug deal while assuming it’s all an elaborate role-playing routine, John Francis Daley and Jonathan Goldstein’s film scores high marks for its intricate scripting, excellent ensemble (including MVPs Rachel McAdams and Jesse Plemons, whose stone-faced cop is a foil for the ages), and sense of momentum. While most studio comedies peter out at the halfway mark, <em>Game Night </em>picks up speed and peaks pretty close to the end (like a good action movie should). — <em>Nayman</em></p>
<h3 id="ax0ul0">Honorable Mentions</h3>
<h4 id="Ee0wBw"><em>Set It Up</em></h4>
<p id="AHt9qW">I don’t really care about rom-coms or the fact Hollywood’s slow transformation into a wealthy boy-child’s toy chest has reduced the number of movie-star-laden stories about hapless aspirant white-collar millennials looking for love in all the wrong places. But I liked this movie! From Netflix! <a href="https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/4/20/17258960/netflix-movies-streaming-business">Of all places!</a> Veteran TV director Claire Scanlon and screenwriter Katie Silberman have made a movie that reminded me of <em>One Fine Day</em> and <em>Definitely, Maybe</em> — low-risk, low-reward, highly charming, highly consumable palette cleansers. People who watch a lot of movies need these movies, too — they’re the gasp of oxygen during the marathon of #content. The story is a trifle: Toiling assistants Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell scheme to get their bosses to fall in love so they can get some free time and a promotion. (Spoiler alert: They fall for one another in the process.) Deutch and Powell deserve a lot after this, and if Netflix wants to actually lean into the collapsed middle that Hollywood abandoned, this finally feels like a start. — <em>Fennessey</em></p>
<h4 id="5pmt7L"><em>Den of Thieves</em></h4>
<p class="c-end-para" id="SoF2Zh">“People with things to hide never have much to say,” says bad-guy cop “Big” Nick (Gerard Butler) in <em>Den of Thieves. </em>By that logic, because I can admit that I enjoyed Christian Gudegast’s two-hour-and-20-minute foray into Michael Mann<em> </em>cosplay, I can also explain why. There’s only ever going to be one <em>Heat</em>,<em> </em>and Gudegast knows this; his solution is to lean into the rip-offery so far that it comes out the other side as loving homage. (1995 was a big year for this guy, since he also throws some <em>Usual Suspects </em>shtick in there just for fun.) This is a Los Angeles–set heist movie featuring masked robbers, broad-daylight machine gun fights, a really serious 50 Cent performance, and a seriously hilarious Gerard Butler performance (if Denzel can get an Oscar for <em>Training Day </em>maybe GB can get … a Golden Globe? The Nobel Prize? Either is fine). <em>Den of Thieves</em> is a film of zero originality and minimal redeeming artistic or social value, but I’m glad they’re making a sequel. — <em>Nayman</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/movies/2018/6/28/17511686/best-movies-of-2018-so-farAdam NaymanSean Fennessey2018-06-27T05:50:01-04:002018-06-27T05:50:01-04:00The Best Albums of 2018—So Far
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/iZil4sPrVDuIIwjQ2p1R6DVC5CU=/171x0:2838x2000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/60194605/song_album_getty_fatpossomrecords_ringer.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Getty Images/Fat Possum Records/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Ten shining examples of good music—but only one from GOOD Music </p> <p id="31c2NI"><em>The year’s halfway point follows a strange month for music: </em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQhy9eE8MBg"><em>Nas album done</em></a><em>, and is boring, unfortunately; Kanye West produced five albums in the span of five weeks, including his eighth solo effort, which was disastrous; a Jay-Z and Beyoncé joint release was gazumped by 5 Seconds of Summer. Oh! And there’s a Drake album arriving at the end of June that no one seems all that excited about. </em></p>
<p id="KkDi9r"><em>It’s been quite a lot; enough to obfuscate the fact there was actually good and non-marginal music released this year that you’ve likely forgotten about. In fact, there has been so much good music that highlighting just 10 releases led to some omissions we feel truly terrible about—Tierra Whack is still amazing—but you’re still getting 10, so stop complaining.—</em>Micah Peters<em> </em></p>
<hr class="p-entry-hr" id="RYzebF">
<h3 id="OdrTXD">Kendrick Lamar, <em>Black Panther: The Album</em>
</h3>
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<p id="NGkI66">The thing about <em>Black Panther</em>—as Jamie Foxx <a href="https://twitter.com/brotalklive/status/1011039111682158599">inviting</a> Michael B. Jordan onstage at the BET Awards to awkwardly recite Killmonger’s dying words should tell you—is that it will <em>never</em> be over. The Catskill foothills will become beachfront property and the global elite will relocate to Earth-Two, and a dead-eyed Chadwick Boseman will still be doing the “Wakanda forever” salute. But you know all of this already. You also know that Kendrick Lamar managed to executive-produce a soundtrack for the movie that may survive into that future, that takes a central premise from the film—<em>other black cultures exist—</em>and does something truly memorable and interesting with it. For the record, Lamar had little to do with the best song on it. I’m talking about “Paramedic!” by Bay Area newcomers SOB X RBE which, four months later, I still can’t believe didn’t score a high-speed chase scene, or a training montage, <em>or something. </em>(Bonus: You should hurry up and enjoy SOB X RBE’s debut album, <em>Gangin</em>, since the members of the group are already recording solo records.) —<em>Peters</em> </p>
<h3 id="w73yBJ">Kacey Musgraves, <em>Golden Hour</em>
</h3>
<p id="YmcvLu">Not since Willie Nelson has there been a country star I’d like to get high with as much as Kacey Musgraves. The magnificent <em>Golden Hour</em> is her psychedelic album (she told <a href="https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/magazine-feature/8265267/kacey-musgraves-interview-billboard-cover-story-2018"><em>Billboard</em></a> earlier this year that she thinks her experiences with mushrooms “made [her] music better”), not for the way it sounds so much as its warm, smiley vibe: It has the blissed-out perspective of someone who’s freshly awestruck at the ordinary glories of being alive. And in love: “Oh, what a world, and then there is you,” she croons on the kaleidoscopically sweet (and vocoder-assisted!) “Oh, What a World,” while the bouncy “Velvet Elvis” beams with gratitude for the kitsch of one’s own life. The true stunners, though, are the magnificent ballad “Space Cowboy” and the disco-lite “High Horse”—two double-entendres that wink at Musgraves’s reputation for being the weirdest girl in Nashville that turn out to be masterfully crafted crowd-pleasers. Mature, expertly confident songwriting: It’s a hell of a drug! —<em>Lindsay Zoladz</em></p>
<aside id="DrEHpO"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Outlandish Charm of Kacey Musgraves","url":"https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/3/30/17178148/kacey-musgraves-golden-hour"}]}'></div></aside><h3 id="ZftW7Q">Pusha-T, <em>Daytona</em>
</h3>
<p id="MPkYU6">Hell hath no fury like a Pusha diss. “Waving at rude boy—I’m waving at <em>you</em>, boy!” he sneers in the sputtering intro to “If You Know You Know,” the song that joyously announces his return. Throughout <em>Daytona</em>, there’s an elegance to his evisceration: Not only is he making fun of you, he’s also making fun of you for how long it takes for you to decode his knotty poetry and thus <em>realize</em> he was making fun of you in the first place. It’s simple: <em>If you know, you know!</em></p>
<p id="EOPJtK">The highlight of GOOD Music’s busy and otherwise <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/6/19/17478284/kanye-west-nas-nasir-good-music-kid-cudi-albums-pusha-t-daytona">MEH Summer</a>, <em>Daytona</em> does so much more with less. Pusha manages to say more in 21 minutes than most other rappers would on double albums, and Kanye West’s sample-haunted minimalist production lets Pusha’s signature off-kilter cadences shine. Of course, there’s nothing on <em>Daytona</em> as world-stoppingly direct as <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/6/26/17503414/best-songs-of-2018-so-far">“The Story of Adidon”</a>—which somehow makes “Adidon” doubly insulting. You <em>really</em> couldn’t tell what “Infrared” was about? Don’t make the man spell it out for you, boy. —<em>Zoladz</em></p>
<aside id="kL9Cue"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Pusha-T Finally Became a Star by Being a Scourge","url":"https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/5/30/17409070/pusha-t-story-of-adidon-drake-daytona-kanye-west"}]}'></div></aside><h3 id="sMBuhD">Snail Mail, <em>Lush</em>
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<p id="6mrmw1">Lindsey Jordan is 19 years old, but youth—and all of its confusing, mortifying <em>muchness</em>— isn’t necessarily what’s happening here. She doesn’t write about heartbreak as if it’s some grand, cinematic thing that happens in slow motion in front of a rapt audience, but rather as a lonely, ordinary hardship—something that can just, you know, happen. Even in the summertime, when there’s nothing to take your mind off of it: “Heatwave, nothing to do,” goes the languid opening to “Heat Wave.” “Woke up in my clothes having dreamt of you.” <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/6/12/17452366/snail-mail-lush-review">On <em>Lush</em></a>, Jordan is boldly personal and quietly distressing, sure—“I know myself and I know I’ll never love anyone else”—but above all, she’s sincere and occasionally funny, in that way people who don’t seem to be capable of telling a lie can be. “It just feels like the same party every weekend, doesn’t it?” —<em>Peters</em> </p>
<h3 id="LdX2fa">U.S. Girls, <em>In a Poem Unlimited</em>
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<p id="WibXLu">Meg Remy’s songs are cake, but the kind delivered to a prison in an old movie, with lock-picking supplies hidden in the batter—a sweetness with sharp, baked-in secrets that can set you free. “I’m embedded fully in the avant-garde and the difficult and the complex,” she told me in an <a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/2/12/17003518/u-s-girls-meg-remy-in-a-poem-unlimited-profile">interview</a> earlier this year. “[But] I wanted to work with the pop form sonically so that I could hide the weird shit and the dark messages within it.” And so her sumptuous record <em>In a Poem Unlimited</em> gives us tunes like the dark, groovy biblical parable “Pearly Gates,” the anthemic “M.A.H.” (as in, “mad as hell”) and “Rage of Plastics,” the slinkiest, most danceable song ever written about poisonous factory emissions. Remy has been plumbing these depths for more than a decade on her great lo-fi records as U.S. Girls, but <em>In a Poem Unlimited </em>is elevated by a perfect union with her backing band, the Toronto experimental-jazz collective the Cosmic Range. Catch them in concert if you can: Not only is this record great, but their kinetically sweaty live show is also one of the best things you’ll see all year. —<em>Zoladz</em></p>
<h3 id="nVlumd">Key!, <em>777</em>
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<p id="TL4fmO">There is always a tweet, though it’s not always one you can find. Some luminary once said that <em>Atlanta </em>was “basically a show about a nigga managing Key!” and it fits, thank you. The self-professed “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mF9kOkRCnyo">old ass</a>” Atlanta rapper, formerly of Two-9, has been around for the better part of a decade. He’s occasionally simmered—with standout verses on Father and Makonnen’s off-kilter “Wrist” and OG Maco’s deliriously fun “U Guessed It”—but he’s never quite reached a roiling boil until now, with the Kenny Beats–produced <em>777, </em>which has hardly any weak spots.<em> </em>In that framework, it feels like what could happen in Season 3. </p>
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<p id="Flqu5T"><em>The </em>song is probably “Love On Ice,” which is a departure from what I heard when I first came across Key!. “Guess Who,” which happened six years ago, was brash, repetitive, <em>hoardt</em>, and honestly? <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgbDxXJU3lA">Impossible to play anywhere</a>. Here, Key! is gooey on the inside, and hopeless, but pining away nonetheless, with oddball references: “Kristi Yamaguchi, your love got me goofy / Got me acting stupid, my heart Johnny Dang.” There are still plenty of face-melting slappers, of course, like “Hater” or “Dig It” (“OPEN UP THAT MOSH PIT”), but as ever, Key! is at his best when he’s self-deprecating. I’m partial to the album’s grand entrance “Demolition 1+2,” where he shouts—whines almost—“Back when Kim had broke my heart, and she knew it / I got way too high and almost blewwwww it.” —<em>Peters</em> </p>
<aside id="OFqksD"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Best Songs of 2018—So Far ","url":"https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/6/26/17503414/best-songs-of-2018-so-far"}]}'></div></aside><h3 id="Tm3nOA">Soccer Mommy, <em>Clean</em>
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<p id="QZNK9Y">“I guess I’m only what you wanted for a little while,” Sophie Allison sings at the end of the opening song on Soccer Mommy’s extraordinary record <em>Clean</em>. At first, she sounds confessionally broken, but as she repeats it in a kind of trance, the line sharpens into an insult, a barbed accusation toward someone who’s too afraid to feel as deeply as she does.<em> Clean</em> is a hypnotically catchy record of love and loss, indebted to ’90s forebears like Liz Phair and Lisa Germano, but spun through with Allison’s distinctly idiosyncratic point of view as a lyricist. She’s strikingly versatile: “Your Dog” is a shit-kicking feminist-punk anthem, “Last Girl” is a sweetly hummable ditty about jealousy, and lovestruck acoustic ballads like “Flaw” and “Scorpio Rising” are gripping enough to slow your heartbeat to a standstill. But maybe the most deeply felt love song here is “Cool,” an ode to a free-spirited girl who lives by her own rules and doesn’t give half a damn of what the boys think. “I wanna know her, like you,” Allison croons, “I wanna be that cool.” Plenty of her listeners will know the feeling. —<em>Zoladz</em></p>
<h3 id="07zgA4">Young Fathers, <em>Cocoa Sugar</em>
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<p id="Qb9CJt">The drums on <em>Cocoa Sugar</em>’s closer, “Picking You,” sound formal, like a procession at a funeral for notions you’ve recently been disabused of. It’s the bridge I haven’t stopped thinking about since March, though—“Good men are strange, bad men are obvious.” It feels like a simple truth Young Fathers have spent a lot of time and effort searching for.</p>
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<p id="oMR8pV">Backing up a little, the Scottish experimental rap trio was obviously trying to say <em>something</em> with their 2015 album. The title itself, <em>White Men Are Black Men Too, </em>was begging for commentary. But the album, meant to be confusing and discomfiting, was, well, a little too much of both those things to transcend regionality and build on the promise of their 2014 Mercury Prize–winning LP, <em>Dead</em>. Don’t misunderstand—<em>Cocoa Sugar </em>is prone to some truly strange moments, but this 2018 vintage of their homemade pop is much more accessible than past iterations. In fewer words, it’s the perfect time to buy in. —<em>Peters</em> </p>
<h3 id="GHGiYx">Serpentwithfeet, <em>Soil</em>
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<p id="Gg9PYb">After studying classical music in college, Baltimore-raised ex-church-choir-boy Josiah Wise applied to several music conservatories. He was rejected by all of them—which he now acknowledges was a pivotal moment in the development of his idiosyncratic alter ego Serpentwithfeet, and the strange, enchanting music he makes under that name. “I think ‘no’ is really important,” he <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/06/18/620364558/serpentwithfeet-crafts-his-own-language-for-queer-life">told</a> NPR recently, of that formative rejection. “I think ‘no’ is where the nutrients are. I love ‘yes,’ but I think no encourages us to find new resources. And most of the time we have to go internally for those resources.”</p>
<p id="49R8Xv"><em>Soil</em>, the result of his digging, is a radically intimate record helmed by the tremulous power of his voice. It can be soft and tender in one moment (as on the sparse opening track “Whisper”) and, in the next, an instrument of bracing force: “I get to devote my life to him,” he intones on “Cherubim,” which has the elated feel of a self-penned hymn. <em>Soil</em> is a breathtaking ode to queer love, a warm, subterranean enclave from which to escape the pressures (and the emotional detachment) of the world above. —<em>Zoladz</em></p>
<h3 id="DdGFZa">Maxo Kream, <em>Punken</em>
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<p class="c-end-para" id="nCNC4d">“Roaches” details the helplessness of being across state lines and watching your family’s lives upended on the news—“I was up in Vegas at the Mayweather party / Then my momma called me ’bout Hurricane Harvey”—and is probably <em>Punken</em>’s largest selling point. It also cements Maxo Kream’s status as one of rap’s best storytellers. But what you <em>should</em> do is play “Astrodome, Pt. 2,” and notice how Maxo playfully leans into the expletives: “I’ma <em>slut</em>, I’ma <em>thot</em>, I got <em>hoes</em>, I got <em>bops.” </em>Then put your car stereo at max volume, roll your windows down, and loop it for a while. There! Your life is now perfect. —<em>Peters</em> </p>
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https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/6/27/17508770/best-albums-of-2018-so-far-pusha-t-kacey-musgraves-snail-mail-kendrick-lamarLindsay ZoladzMicah Peters2018-06-26T05:50:01-04:002018-06-26T05:50:01-04:00The Best Songs of 2018—So Far
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<p>Including Cardi B’s “Be Careful” and Mitski’s “Geyser.” (Not included: Drake.) </p> <p id="U02wUh"><em>In 2018, amid so much extra-musical tumult, it has gotten harder than ever in the pop-music realm to distinguish between Best and merely Biggest. Kanye West has spent several months now </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/6/19/17478284/kanye-west-nas-nasir-good-music-kid-cudi-albums-pusha-t-daytona"><em>desperately vying for our attention</em></a><em> via various time-honored antics—political provocations and lavishly sloppy album rollouts, mostly—but no one song has come close to outlasting that initial Wyoming-release-party rush. (Peace to </em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2kVtEdisM0A"><em>“Ghost Town.”</em></a><em>) Jay-Z and Beyoncé can </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/6/17/17472734/everything-is-love-beyonce-jay-z-surprise-album-review"><em>still stop time on a random Saturday</em></a><em> with a shock album drop, but no one moment cracks either artist’s top tier. (Peace to </em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbMqWXnpXcA"><em>“Apeshit.”</em></a><em>) And Drake can dominate both the charts and the Public Conversation all year, only to find himself violently upended by an ill-considered and disastrous feud with Pusha-T. (Peace to </em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpVfcZ0ZcFM"><em>“God’s Plan”</em></a><em> and </em><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9BwWKXjVaI"><em>“Nice for What,”</em></a><em> all but hidden from sight now that we know he is Hiding A Child.) On Friday, Drake will release a new album and likely dominate both the charts and the national discourse anew. He is guaranteed to reassert his status as the Biggest. But the Best is still for us to decide. </em></p>
<p id="QVNDQe"><em>The challenge, even here in June, is to determine which songs will outlast their respective hype cycles, still shining even when they’re no longer trending. A few rap superstars, both well-established (shout-out </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/4/16/17244870/kendrick-lamar-pulitzer-music"><em>Pulitzer winner Kendrick Lamar</em></a><em>) and newly minted (shout-out </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/4/8/17213368/cardi-b-invasion-of-privacy-pregnancy-snl-review"><em>future Pulitzer winner Cardi B</em></a><em>) sneak in there. But so does classic country gone disco and vintage indie-pop gone ferociously modern, and corporate pop gone inexplicably transcendent. There are rookies here, and wily veterans with the shrewd voraciousness of rookies. And there is, above all, a monumental diss track with a clickbait appeal so outlandish that Biggest and Best fused into one cruel and awe-inspiring monolith. It is meaner than Drake deserves, maybe. But for both better and worse, the wider world definitely deserved it. </em></p>
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<h3 id="82kSe7"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmwOMtkDxtk">Pusha-T, “The Story of Adidon”</a></h3>
<p id="0fM8R1">“The Story of Adidon” is a fit of rushed, dysfunctional rapping over a beat repurposed from late-career Jay-Z. Musically, it’s rickety, but “The Story of Adidon” is a diss track, and diss tracks don’t necessarily honor Top 40 conventions, “Back to Back” be damned. Pusha-T designed the song to humiliate Drake, and toward that end, “The Story of Adidon” was astoundingly effective. Pusha-T inaugurated summer 2018 with a genuinely shocking series of insults, plot twists, and bizarre revelations about his longtime nemesis, Drake. “The Story of Adidon” is the most brutal musical volley that a top-tier rapper has suffered in this decade. Indeed, the song sent Drake’s grand pop fortifications, once thought insurmountable, crashing down.</p>
<p id="Vhptd4">Pusha-T did that. “The Story of Adidon” is a diss track so calamitous that Drake is now forced to pretend that “The Story of Adidon” doesn’t exist, and that, in any case, <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2018/06/j-prince-says-drakes-pusha-t-diss-track-too-overwhelming.html">he’s prohibited from responding to the song</a>, which revealed the existence of Drake’s secret family. “You are hiding a child.” That’s the fun of this song—it’s not a summer jam, it’s a slo-mo jab gone viral. Drake may have bigger songs (see: “Nice for What” and “God’s Plan”), but he’s merely the butt of the song that launched this profoundly cruel summer.—<em>Justin Charity</em></p>
<h3 id="347lIR"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IYdZYZeQSI">Kendrick Lamar, “Opps [ft. Vince Staples & Yugen Blakrok]”</a></h3>
<p id="t0JZMN">The <em>Black Panther</em> LP, produced by Kendrick Lamar, is surprisingly divisive—I think it’s one of the decade’s best hip-hop soundtracks, but I know some people who swear Kendrick has dreary, wordy sensibilities that turn that soundtrack into a slog. But “Opps,” tho: Sounwave is doing Brodinski better than Brodinski. Vince Staples is doing Vince Staples better than Vince Staples. Yugen Blakrok, a black South African rapper, upstages Kendrick to climatic effect. The drums are crazed and exhilarating; the synths are dark and sharp. The <em>Black Panther</em> soundtrack is one of the year’s most captivating rap albums, and “Opps” is its agile, brawny fight song.—<em>Charity</em></p>
<h3 id="198h0h"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ouem6cFXJvA">Soccer Mommy, “Your Dog” </a></h3>
<p id="zysxs7">It took 49 years for someone to craft a suitable response to Iggy and the Stooges’ <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vwmU343eBu0">“I Wanna Be Your Dog,”</a> and it turns out all you had to do was add a negative, and an expletive. “I don’t wanna be your fuckin’ dog,” declares Sophie Allison in a deceptively mellow deadpan, amid sweetly scabrous ’90s indie-pop updated for the subtweet era. The grouchy chime of those guitars and ominous jolt of that bassline might get stuck in your head for hours at a time, but it’s Allison’s voice that pulls you through, the way she can channel both despair (“Forehead kisses break my knees and leave me crawling back to you”) and righteous fury (“I’m not a prop for you to use when you’re lonely or confused”) without so much as raising her voice. Run for cover if she decides to update “Search and Destroy” next. —<em>Rob Harvilla</em></p>
<h3 id="WmXCKH"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8zSRkr1nQNw">Cardi B, “Be Careful”</a></h3>
<p id="Xs1RK2">The ferocity, and the wit, and most of all the <em>depth</em> of Cardi B’s debut album, <em>Invasion of Privacy</em>, came as a lovely shock to even her most ardent admirers: Incredibly, the vicious swagger of her 2017 megahit <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEGccV-NOm8">“Bodak Yellow”</a> did not begin to hint at her range. And with apologies to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTlNMmZKwpA">“I Like It,”</a> the ecstatic Latin-trap summit with J. Balvin and Bad Bunny that might just dominate the summer of 2018, “Be Careful” is the record’s deepest, and wittiest, and most ferocious moment, and all the more so for how vulnerable she sounds. With no apologies to <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9BwWKXjVaI">Drake</a>, this bubbly beat is the only 2018 interpolation of Lauryn Hill’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE-bnWqLqxE">“Ex-Factor”</a> that we recognize, and Cardi verily glides over it, singing the hook with delicate ease and using her rapped verses to excoriate an unfaithful lover with a resolute goofiness (she rhymes <em>chasin’ culo </em>with <em>it’s cool though</em>) that only heightens the sting. Bonus points for <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m1Klc0KPNbU">her performance of this song on <em>Saturday Night Live</em></a>, wherein she finally publicly acknowledged her pregnancy. What a time. —<em>Harvilla</em></p>
<h3 id="NacVpT"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fjfo256p6s">Kacey Musgraves, “High Horse”</a></h3>
<p id="TCHHT2">Music critics with advance copies drove so much hype for this damn album. The hype was so obsessive and unrelenting that I thought the discourse was about to turn Kacey Musgraves into the next Carly Rae Jepsen—a retconned hipster darling who abruptly flunks out of the top song charts. But Kacey’s latest album, <em>Golden Hour</em>, is legitimately spectacular. The third single, “High Horse,” is the surest possible shot: There’s soft singing, slick talk, and smooth acoustic guitar paired with a cool disco rhythm. <em>I think we’ve seen enough, seen enough. </em>Rarely do impatience and contempt, together, sound so seductive. But Kacey Musgraves ain’t playing around. —<em>Charity</em></p>
<aside id="vTJAlT"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"The Best TV of 2018—So Far","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/6/25/17494092/best-tv-of-2018-so-far"}]}'></div></aside><h3 id="MJuZIl"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YNZlXfW6Ho">Ella Mai, “Boo’d Up”</a></h3>
<p id="Q5GCYC">This is one of those transcendent, multi-gen jams where an artist single-handedly solves all the common hand-wringing over the state of R&B in the 21st century. For my money, it’s the song of the summer. Don’t take my word for it. <a href="https://twitter.com/allureshae/status/1010561434483412993">Ask this dude.</a> (<a href="https://twitter.com/_kamoflawless/status/1011077913826025472">Don’t ask this dude</a>—oh, no, wait, <em>welp</em>, he’s sold, too.) —<em>Charity</em> </p>
<h3 id="ezLT3L"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGRzz0oqgUE">Janelle Monaé, “Make Me Feel”</a></h3>
<p id="mqmYrY">Don’t let the personal revelations of Janelle Monáe’s promo tour for her third full-length, <em>Dirty Computer</em>—“I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker,” she <a href="https://www.rollingstone.com/music/features/cover-story-janelle-monae-prince-new-lp-her-sexuality-w519523">told <em>Rolling Stone</em></a>, addressing long-gestating rumors about her sexuality—distract you from the fact it’s her best pure pop album yet. The salacious bubblegum smack of “Make Me Feel,” with its tongue-clicking minimalism and hyper-melodic maximalism, marks her as a worthy descendant of Prince and Janet Jackson at their MTV-dominating primes. The singular bombast of that pre-chorus—gigantic and glittery and ever-so-slightly unhinged—is how you tell the difference between mere imitation and righteous evolution. Still, by all means enjoy the song’s video, which costars <a href="https://www.thecut.com/2018/04/janelle-monae-pansexual-relationship-with-tessa-thompson.html">her rumored paramour Tessa Thompson</a> and reveals Monaé to be a free-ass motherfucker indeed. —<em>Harvilla</em></p>
<h3 id="NxvM30"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zdFZJf-B90">Mitski, “Geyser” </a></h3>
<p id="SvS0nI">Mitski Miyawaki, who <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2016/6/16/16038068/mitski-puberty-2-freedom-to-be-fucked-up-75cdf38b9ae5">broke out in 2016</a> with the ginormous alt-rock power ballad <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_hDHm9MD0I">“Your Best American Girl,”</a> does not do small gestures, no matter how gentle her voice might first appear, no matter how modest a track’s runtime. Her best songs are jarring cocktails of intimacy and enormity, like a nuclear warhead whispering directly into your ear. “Geyser,” the first single from her August album <em>Be the Cowboy</em>, packs a summer-movie blockbuster trilogy’s worth of catharsis into a mere 2:24, its hushed beginnings—“You’re my number one / You’re the one I want,” she moans over churchly organ suffused with lust and longing—soon blossoming into as massive a chorus as 2018 could withstand. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zdFZJf-B90">In the song’s video</a>, Mitski thrashes on the beach, crawling on all fours and digging into the sand as though she’s trying to bury her own head there. But there’s no escape from a song this gripping and gargantuan. —<em>Harvilla</em></p>
<h3 id="e1F73V"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3mJkSqZbX4">Zedd + Maren Morris + Grey, “The Middle” </a></h3>
<p id="P9o94M">There is no shame if you resisted the gravitational pull of this song for months. It started life in January as <a href="https://corporate.target.com/article/2018/01/2018-grammys">a Grammys-hijacking Target ad</a>. It combines the talents of a medium-cool EDM guy (that’d be Zedd), a young country flamethrower making an unabashed crossover play (that’d be Maren Morris), and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/22/arts/music/diary-of-a-song-the-middle-zedd-maren-morris-grey.html">a raucous house party’s worth of other songwriters and producers</a> (including the brotherly duo Grey) in a shrewd but nakedly calculated way. Also, conveniently for those intent on dismissing the result as craven, anodyne, algorithm-worshipping fluff, it is called “The Middle.” But the fizzy majesty of that hook—“I’m losing my mind just a little,” Morris wails—is undeniable and cuts through all its feeble Spotify-core contenders like a scythe. “The Middle” seizes on every element on the periodic table in a defiantly uncool way, but the result is a blast of pure oxygen. As industry machinations go, this is as graceful, and as inexplicably organic, as it gets. —<em>Harvilla</em></p>
<h3 id="E70E96"><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmDXIUIFMkA">Rick Ross, “Capone Suite [ft. Smif-N-Wessun]”</a></h3>
<p id="e30uYD">Rick Ross is the only good post-peak rapper. Jay-Z tries; Gucci Mane has semi-retired to <a href="https://twitter.com/yoyotrav/status/1010211164146536448">“a lagoon, dawg.”</a> Rick Ross is the last great, mainstream sample-monger standing. “Capone Suite” is little bit Camp Lo, a lotta bit Earth, Wind & Fire, and a pretty neat triangulation of old-school blacksploitation and contemporary hip-hop. I love trap drums as much as anyone, but “Capone Suite” is a nice throwback to, oh, just a decade ago—when samples were a hip-hop producer’s crown jewels. Of course, there’s some strong trap records on the <em>Superfly</em> soundtrack, too—as with our own list, there’s a little something for everyone. —<em>Charity</em></p>
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https://www.theringer.com/music/2018/6/26/17503414/best-songs-of-2018-so-farRob HarvillaJustin Charity2018-06-25T08:11:39-04:002018-06-25T08:11:39-04:00The Best TV of 2018—So Far
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<figcaption>FX/BBC America/AMC/Ringer illustration</figcaption>
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<p>Including ‘The Good Fight,’ ‘The Terror,’ and, yes, ‘Killing Eve’</p> <p id="VzsY72"><em>In the absence of a grand unifier like </em>Game of Thrones<em>, the television ecosystem in 2018 has seen smaller series flourish, established players hit their stride, and unlikely concepts work against all odds. Prestige arbiters like HBO and FX have excelled as usual, but so have Syfy, CBS All Access, and YouTube Red. Explorers explored, assassins assassinated, Vanderpumps … Vanderpumped. In other words, there’s not much that unifies 2018’s strongest series to date except that they’re great, which is as a diverse and flexible medium like television should be. Even narrowing the list down to 10 involved some painful omissions (sorry, </em>The Americans<em>), but what’s left ranges from reality to extraterrestrial, pitch black to effervescently light. Summer is traditionally a down time for the small screen, but there’s plenty to catch up on before the fall kicks into gear. Start with these highlights of the year in TV so far.</em></p>
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<cite>CBS All Access</cite>
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<h3 id="BiAtlO"><em>The Good Fight</em></h3>
<p id="atTSDJ">CBS doomed the most relevant show on television to permanent obscurity by stranding it on the network’s All Access streaming service. With the phenomenal second season of <em>The Good Fight </em>complete and ready to binge, however, I can think of few better uses for a weeklong free trial than marathoning the only show to successfully capture the <em>feeling</em> — not just the substance — of these strange times our nation is in. Married <em>Good Wife </em>creators Robert and Michelle King have channeled all their rage, despair, and, yes, amusement at the Trump administration into the goings-on at historically black Chicago law firm Reddick Boseman. The result is a second season that’s sharp and angry, but also <em>funny, </em>dreaming up fiction that’s just as strange as truth. Christine Baranski’s typically unflappable Diane Lockhart becomes an avatar for liberal disorientation: microdosing hallucinogens, toting a gun in her purse, watching the pee tape, running afoul of ICE. She manages to come out the other side with her resolve strengthened rather than broken, capping off a season that’s cynical, enjoyable, and just the teensiest bit inspirational. — <em>Alison Herman</em></p>
<h3 id="vlav7C"><em>The Terror</em></h3>
<p id="dCZvrM"><em>The Terror</em> is another entry in the long-standing <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/3/23/17152350/the-terror-amc-best-human-vs-nature-movies-television">Humans vs. the Elements genre</a>, adapting the real-life British nautical expedition gone wrong with the supernatural twist provided by Dan Simmons’s fictionalized historical novel. And while there is a seemingly tangible threat looming in the Arctic’s harsh, alien landscape — the Tuunbaq, a creature of Inuit mythology hunting these men for months without end — the real, ahem, terror comes from the hearts of men.</p>
<div class="c-float-left"><aside id="2Dd4KP"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"An Encyclopedic Guide to the “Humans vs. the Elements” Genre in Film and TV","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/3/23/17152350/the-terror-amc-best-human-vs-nature-movies-television"}]}'></div></aside></div>
<p id="3W7ZMz">David Kajganich’s series<em> </em>is a slow burn, letting its explorers (spoiler) gradually succumb to starvation and lead poisoning, their suffering further aggrandized by the strictures of the British Royal Navy’s hierarchy. (The captain, in his ill-fated hubris, is the reason the men get trapped in the ice to begin with.) It is exceptionally bleak television, but there is an ethereal beauty to seeing what happens when mankind is trapped at the very edge of the world, stripped of every impulse but survival. <em>The Terror</em> is <a href="https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/live-feed/terror-renewed-world-war-ii-themed-second-season-at-amc-1122368">returning for another season</a> on AMC — obviously not following these men, who are super dead — with an “uncanny specter” following a Japanese American community during World War II. Sign me up. — <em>Miles Surrey</em></p>
<h3 id="cdUdeR"><em>Billions</em></h3>
<div class="c-float-right"><div id="lUR6IC"><iframe src="https://open.spotify.com/embed-podcast/episode/058o1Z4qcJcdPXdkSsAeLp" style="border: 0; width: 100%; height: 232px;" allowfullscreen="" allow="encrypted-media"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="q7nDFn">Somewhere along the road, the feud between bootstrapped hedge fund baron Bobby “Axe” Axelrod (Damian Lewis) and blue-blood U.S. Attorney Charles “Chuck” Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) transformed into one of the finest ensemble dramas on TV. Over three seasons, <em>Billions </em>has deepened its bench into a force formidable enough to match, if not overshadow, its leads. After assisting the show in its <a href="https://www.theringer.com/2017/3/27/16036734/billions-showtime-season-2-paul-giamatti-damian-lewis-b764cc031708">ascension from good to great</a> in Volume 2, nonbinary finance whiz Taylor (Asia Kate Dillon) completed their transformation from valued deputy to full-blown antagonist this year, as did Chuck’s respected protegé Kate Sacker (Condola Rashad). Villains like Russian oligarch Grigor Andalov (John Malkovich) and Jeff Sessions stand-in Jock Jeffcoat (Clancy Brown) gave the show momentum after Chuck and Axe forged an uneasy truce. Even the <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/5/21/17375626/ari-spyros-billions-showtime-most-hateable-character-on-tv">truly loathable</a> Ari Spyros (Stephen Kunken) turned into a valued utility player, the scapegoat to whom the viewer can always point and say, “Sure, I’m rooting for a bunch of objectively awful people, but at least they’re not <em>that </em>guy.” It all adds up to the rare hour-long show deep enough to <em>earn </em>those 58 minutes a week — and fun enough to look forward to each Sunday night. — <em>Herman</em></p>
<h3 id="XYNM2S"><em>The Expanse</em></h3>
<p id="mATcPj">In May, the Syfy series was canceled despite great reviews — mostly because of an antiquated distribution deal between Syfy and the show’s production company, Alcon Entertainment. Then the internet sprang into action: For a show centered on space exploration, <em>Expanse</em>-heads literally <a href="https://i.imgur.com/6g7BiKH.jpg">sent a spaceship model into space</a>, among other things. Amazon, with its new focus on securing its own version of <em>Game of Thrones</em>, should be an <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/5/22/17380238/the-expanse-amazon-season-4">ideal new home</a> for the series.</p>
<p id="jLrXuD">But all the cancellation-revival hoopla has overshadowed the third season, and that’s a shame: <em>The Expanse</em> has continued to find exciting new gears as it propels its plot forward, and has never been better. Long-simmering conflicts between different factions of the solar system — humans living on Earth, Mars, and those around the asteroid belt — have been put on hold as humanity forms a unified front against the mysterious protomolecule. (The protomolecule is to <em>The Expanse</em> what the White Walkers are to <em>Game of Thrones</em>.) Also, there’s a wormhole now. You <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/4/11/17221780/the-expanse-season-3-science-fiction">won’t find better small-screen sci-fi</a> anywhere else. — <em>Surrey</em></p>
<aside id="Ur1EO1"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"All’s Right With the Universe Once More: ‘The Expanse’ Is (Probably) Coming Back","url":"https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/5/22/17380238/the-expanse-amazon-season-4"}]}'></div></aside><h3 id="CXz6HK"><em>American Crime Story: The Assassination of Gianni Versace</em></h3>
<p id="xRvcUi">No series this year has a closer relationship between its form and its function than <em>The Assassination of Gianni Versace</em>, the second volume of Ryan Murphy’s FX anthology drama, <em>American Crime Story. </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/1/17/16901630/assassination-of-gianni-versace-tom-rob-smith">Written entirely by Tom Rob Smith</a>, the nine-episode season tracks the murders of the world-famous designer and four other victims by Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), a gay man who envied Versace’s lifestyle but lacked any of the positive qualities that earned it. <em>Assassination </em>disarms the audience by starting where many assumed it would end, with Cunanan shooting Versace on the steps of his South Beach mansion. Smith then moves backward in time and broader in focus than the celebrity who serves as its Trojan horse, giving the three other gay men who died at Cunanan’s hands their own extended eulogies. <em>Assassination </em>is one of the more damning portrayals of cultural and internalized homophobia ever dramatized; by withholding an origin story for Andrew until the very end, the show throws the spotlight not just on his victims, but on the society that created him. No wonder it <a href="https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2018/03/why-the-assassination-of-gianni-versace-is-the-yea.html">didn’t become</a> a smash hit. — <em>Herman</em></p>
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<cite>BBC America</cite>
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<h3 id="QEnfK2"><em>Killing Eve</em></h3>
<p id="DiVk94"><em>Killing Eve</em> is one of the biggest <a href="https://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/2018/05/killing-eve-season-one-success-for-bbc-america-sandra-oh-phoebe-waller-bridge-and-jodie-comer">word-of-mouth sensations</a> in recent TV history — heck, it was the passion of my esteemed colleagues that convinced me to begin a binge a few weeks into its run. <em>Killing Eve</em> is a delicious blend of espionage, stylish costumes, vacation-worthy European trysts, sexual tension via continental pas de deux, and acclaimed thespian Fiona Shaw saying very silly things while very deadpan. Along with a standout performance in the otherwise underwhelming Han Solo movie, series creator <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/4/5/17201866/killing-eve-phoebe-waller-bridge">Phoebe Waller-Bridge</a> is (deservedly) having herself a moment. Television with great performances and subversive functions that doesn’t take itself too seriously — if you’re reading this and haven’t watched <em>Killing Eve</em> yet, what are you waiting for? — <em>Surrey</em></p>
<h3 id="zZoor3">
<em>Atlanta</em>: “Robbin’ Season”</h3>
<p id="VCHVqg">The first season of <em>Atlanta </em>anointed creator-star Donald Glover as the unexpected Chosen One of Peak TV, and virtually every member of his supporting cast and crew — actors Zazie Beetz, Brian Tyree Henry, and Lakeith Stanfield; writer Stefani Robinson; director Hiro Murai — as up-and-coming stars. After an 18-month wait, Season 2 had to deal with the sky-high expectations that come with breakout, unequivocal success, and miraculously, it lived up to them. A brutal cold open featuring armed robbery reminded the audience that <em>Atlanta </em>is a place for neither fan service nor compromise. A haunting, audacious experiment in “Teddy Perkins” united all of <em>Atlanta</em>’s defining concerns (race, fame, class, music, the price of success) and channeled them into a séance with the ghosts of entertainers past. And <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/5/11/17343740/atlanta-finale-crabs-in-a-barrel">most surprisingly</a>, an eventful finale advanced the relationship between ascendant rapper Alfred “Paper Boi” Miles (Henry) and his hapless cousin-cum-manager Earn into a complete season-long arc. <em>Atlanta </em>loves a detour, but it leaves us on a plane to bigger and better destinations. — <em>Herman</em></p>
<h3 id="F7dE0d"><em>Cobra Kai</em></h3>
<p id="6eRYV2">In the nostalgia-obsessed days of 2018, the piece of pop culture that found the best balance between knowing callbacks and relevant updates to its narrative was … a <em>Karate Kid </em>follow-up on YouTube Red?! Allow me to spread the good word on my lord and savior <a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/5/8/17329490/cobra-kai-karate-kid-youtube-red-johnny-lawrence-miguel-diaz-daniel-larusso"><em>Cobra Kai</em></a>.</p>
<p id="qSL00L">William Zabka and Ralph Macchio might not make their way to the Emmys stage in September, but <em>Cobra Kai</em> is the gold standard for how to turn a nostalgic cash grab into a compelling series. Its best asset is time: Zabka’s and Macchio’s characters are — respectfully — extremely washed middle-aged men, and the show uses that to its advantage, asking new questions about familiar characters at a different stage of their lives. How much does the karate-laden memories of their youth affect who they are today? Should karate have such a transcendent influence on anybody? It’s obviously quite extrapolated, but that’s the point. <em>Cobra Kai</em> is knowingly cheesy, and sometimes, that’s exactly what a show calls for. — <em>Surrey</em></p>
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<cite>HBO</cite>
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<h3 id="trBh86"><em>Barry</em></h3>
<p id="uk8FNp">Bill Hader’s starring vehicle hinges on a premise that screams “gimmick”: a hitman signs up for acting class; hilarity ensues. Despite Hader’s <em>SNL </em>pedigree (and his cocreator Alec Berg’s <a href="https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0073688/">decorated CV</a>), then, the superb season that followed qualifies as a surprise. Hader plays the titular mercenary, an Afghanistan vet struggling to reintegrate, with genuine emotion. For Barry, acting isn’t a fun hobby; it’s a way of tapping into the soul he thought he’d lost, though he soon learns neither performing nor redemption is as easy as reciting a few lines of Shakespeare. <em>Barry </em><a href="https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/3/25/17158296/barry-hbo-episode-one">avoids the predictable traps</a> of fish-out-of-water comedy and replaces them with an acutely observed story about broken people trying, and usually failing, to connect. Make no mistake, though: It’s also <em>hilarious, </em>a tonal tightrope that wouldn’t work without a phenomenal supporting cast. On either side of the acting–criminal underworld divide, convivial gangster NoHo Hank (Anthony Carrigan) and self-anointed acting guru Gene Cousineau (Henry Winkler) provide enough cheery obliviousness to offset Barry’s existential despair. <em>Barry </em>makes comedy not out of its central juxtaposition, but in spite of it. — <em>Herman</em></p>
<h3 id="k8r7J3"><em>Vanderpump Rules</em></h3>
<p id="IUib7G"><em>Vanderpump Rules</em> is hypothetically about the Los Angeles restaurants owned by <em>Real Housewives of Beverly Hills</em> castmember Lisa Vanderpump — restaurants <a href="https://jezebel.com/i-cant-get-over-how-bad-it-was-a-lisa-vanderpump-resta-1688222144">where truly awful pasta is apparently served</a>. But over six seasons and over 100 episodes, it’s proved to be about so much more. It’s about the deeply flawed humans who took jobs as restaurant employees in L.A. in hopes of supporting themselves on the path to becoming famous as models or actors or musicians — and it’s also about how they’ve dealt with the truly hilarious twist of fate that’s seen them instead become famous for working in a restaurant.</p>
<p id="2IURAZ">But I can assure you, it is most certainly <em>not</em> about the pasta.</p>
<div id="Mu7D3C"><div style="left: 0; width: 100%; height: 0; position: relative; padding-bottom: 56.2493%;"><iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/VnkHk9Wvp6E?rel=0" style="border: 0; top: 0; left: 0; width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute;" allowfullscreen="" scrolling="no"></iframe></div></div>
<p id="md7DHi">The man yelling about something besides pasta is DJ James — the self-proclaimed “White Kanye,” and the person he’s yelling at is Lala, his onetime hookup turned friend turned musical protégée turned unrequited love interest. Their relationship has become strained as James resorts to increasingly upsetting tactics to convince Lala that her non-James love life is misguided — and James’s emotional transformation over the course of this non-pasta-related conversation mirrors the ever-fluctuating state of their friendship.</p>
<p id="yvAPVd">JAMES: [<em>Apoplectic with rage at Lala for once again bringing up the pasta.</em>] Oh my god, why is it about the damn pasta, get over the damn pasta! Read between the fucking lines!</p>
<p id="gAp4qd">JAMES: [<em>Exasperated that after previously clarifying the pasta was not his primary concern, he is still discussing the pasta</em>.] It ain’t about the pasta!</p>
<p id="IwEqnM">JAMES: [<em>Desperately trying to get Lala to grasp that their conversation was about something besides the pasta, now frustrated with his own inability to convince her the conversation is not about the pasta.</em>] It’s not about the pasta!</p>
<p id="4jIdG1">JAMES: [<em>Plaintive, wondering how he could have become so emotionally attached to somebody who could have thought this conversation was about the pasta.</em>] It’s not about the pasta …</p>
<p id="gtE2ra">JAMES: [<em>Later, no longer concerned with Lala’s misinterpretation of the conversation, completely confident that he had been right the whole time.</em>] It’s not about the pasta.</p>
<p class="c-end-para" id="8wpRGE">Rumors flew that “pasta” was a code word for cocaine, but <a href="https://theoutline.com/post/3092/vanderpump-rules-pasta-cocaine?zd=2&zi=4f4vinsq">that has been denied</a>. This conversation was really all about not the pasta. <em>— Rodger Sherman</em></p>
https://www.theringer.com/tv/2018/6/25/17494092/best-tv-of-2018-so-farAlison HermanMiles SurreyRodger Sherman