Today, LiL Lotus released the deluxe version of his sophomore album nosebleeder. It features acoustic versions of standout tracks including "blame me for everything" with Mod Sun, as well as a cover of Lil Uzi Vert's "Grab the Wheel."
Since his debut EP Bodybag in 2017, LiL Lotus has gradually shifted away from the alternative hip-hop sound he started with. Signed to Epitaph Records, he now mixes elements of pop-punk, metal, and Y2K alt rock.
We met up with the Texas-born musician for a photo shoot and to talk about the album.
Tell me about this Lil Uzi Vert cover. How did you put that together?
I always loved Uzi and that song, and I always felt the lyrics hella. They’re super sad when you really listen behind all the flexing, so I wanted to make a sad version of it.
You teamed up with Mod Sun for the track “blame me for everything.” What was it like to work with him and make that song?
Mod’s always been the homie and super fun to hang with, so the process of the song just came naturally and we just goofed off and caught up while making it. So happy on how it came out.
You’ve shifted from an alt hip-hop sound to rock. What do you love about pop-punk?
I’d say this album is less pop-punk than error boy, but as far as rock goes, it’s definitely my roots and where I feel most at home. Emotionally it’s very fulfilling, 'cause it’s powerful enough to get my point across.
Do you have a favorite tattoo?
Probably the angel on my face. It’s not the craziest design, but the baby angel that cut off his own head just symbolizes me, so I’m very attached to it.
You grew up in Texas. What do you miss about living there?
Well, I have my family there and I miss them, but as far as Texas itself goes, I’d say the food. No one does it like Texas. I don't care what anyone says (at least out towards the east coast).
Is there someone you listen to that might surprise people?
Hmm, I listen to a lot of music. Mk.gee, Yuele, Këkht Aräkh are some of the people I’m really into right now.
What are you planning for the spring and summer?
I’ve already started this new album, which I’m so stoked on. Really, just more music and getting healthy, oh, and more shows. Maybe get into this TikTok bullshit, who knows?
For more from LiL Lotus, follow him on Instagram and TikTok.
Jon Batiste Rocks The Ship On His “Uneasy Tour”
“We can win, we can win, we can win, we can win.” – Jon Batiste
UPDATE 3/22/2024 - Jon Batiste Hits Radio City Music Hall, NYC Sat, Sept 7th 8pm - TICKETS ON SALE: Fri, Mar 22@10am EDT
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Fresh from his incandescent performance of "It Never Went Away" at the 96th Academy Awards, the highly acclaimed, multi-talented Jon Batiste heated things up, then tore them down at NYC’s Beacon Theater on Tuesday, March 19th.
The 5-time Grammy and Oscar-winning musician and former bandleader for "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” is in the middle of his first North American headlining tour to promote his latest album, World Music Radio. Jon Batiste’s “Uneasy Tour: Purifying the Airwaves for the People” kicked off on February 16 in Portland, Oregon, will span the US and Canada, and culminate at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday, September 7.
Batiste aims to create unique experiences even in smaller venues. As he recently told USA Today: "We are designing these performances to be catalysts to bring people together, raise awareness for things I care about, and inspire change in this country, and the world."
These are fine days for Batiste. Last year, he was nominated in six categories for the 2024 Grammy Awards. His nods included Album of the Year for World Music Radio, Record of the Year for “Worship.” His other nominations include Best Jazz Performance for “Movement 18′ (Heroes).” Best Pop Duo/Group Performance for his appearance on Lana Del Rey’s “Candy Necklace,” and Song of the Year for “Butterfly,” (also nominated for Best American Roots Performance).
Sadly, “Butterfly” didn’t win the Grammy but it sure was a winner with the audience.
Jon Batiste - Butterfly | Deezer Sessions, Pariswww.youtube.com
Batiste transfixed the crowd with this heartwarming song of childhood. Almost a lullaby, it’s incantatory. There’s a repeated set of triplets – Oh-oh-oh, whoa-whoa-whoa, oh-oh-oh . . . that Batiste urged the audience to sing together, saying:
“Everybody put your lights in the air. It represents the soul light.”
All around the Beacon Theatre people’s phone lights flickered as they sang along.
“Light that’s been with you since you were a child – Since the day you were born. You can never-ever lose it. All of us have it.”
“We can win, we can win, we can win, we can win.”
“Now you see I composed this melody, this healing melody . . . And the more you sing it with friends and family and complete strangers – The more the healing properties take effect – So sing with me this lullaby, this butterfly-healing-melody – first composed for my beautiful wife, Suleika.”
And, as the audience continued, Batiste was joined onstage at the Beacon Theatre by Suleika Jaouad, the author of the New York Times bestseller Between Two Kingdoms – a chronicle of survivorship (Penguin Random House 2021).
Diagnosed with a rare form of acute myeloid leukemia in 2011, Jaouad was given only a 35% chance of surviving. She survived and has written and spoken extensively about these medical challenges. At the end of 2021, Jaouad announced the recurrence of her cancer.
Batiste and Jaouad have been a couple for a decade, but they officially tied the knot in February of 2022 a day before she underwent a second bone marrow transplant.
In the recent Netflix documentary American Symphony, a doctor advises Jaouad that although she’s technically in remission, chemotherapy might have to continue for the rest of her life.
American Symphony | Official Trailer | Netflixwww.youtube.com
As the audience sang to the couple, showering them with love, There were tears, laughter, joy, and smiles. This was no sentimental wallowing – Batiste achieves what he’s set out to do: encouraging people to seek peace and happiness.
Batiste is worth the attention he’s receiving – as anyone who saw him at the Beacon last night will attest. For the better part of the two-and-a-half-hour show, Batiste was playing and singing – dancing wild and free. Over the course of the evening, he demonstrated his mastery of the piano, melodica, drums, synth, and more.
Truth to tell, when you take an outstanding composer, voice, band, and a packed-out, loving audience then meld it with Batiste’s positive message about the power of humankind to effect change, you leave the venue with the feeling you can change the world.
And who knows? Maybe you can.
Want to catch Jon Batiste in the act? The singer will make stops in Seattle, Denver, Chicago, Nashville, Atlanta, Toronto, New Haven, New York, Dallas, and more, on the 23-date run of shows.
Head to Ticketmaster, but be quick about it – many shows are sold out!
And be sure to catch "American Symphony" on Netflix
Sinéad O’Connor – Banshee, Bold One, A Way Of Happening, A Mouth
...Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry... W.H. Auden
UPDATE: Thursday, 21st January 2024
On Wednesday, March 20th, 2024, “Sinéad & Shane at Carnegie Hall,” was held in honor of O’Connor and Shane MacGowan who both died last year. A standout of the evening was Sinéad's daughter, Roisin Waters, 28, rendition of “Nothing Compares 2 U.”
Waters urged the audience to sing along before launching into her mother’s classic 1990 hit.
Sinéad O'Connor's Daughter Covers Nothing Compares 2 U in Emotional Tributewww.youtube.com
UPDATE: Wednesday, 10th January 2024
The official verdict’s been announced: Irish singer Sinéad O’Connor died of natural causes, according to a report in the New York Times. The powerhouse performer was found dead in her London apartment in July 2023. No other details have been released.
Born in Dublin, Ireland, O’Connor was no stranger to controversy, and she courted a great deal of it during her time in the limelight – circa l987-95. American Songwriter describes a famous altercation: “One of the many ways she asserted her integrity was when she refused to have the national anthem play before her show at Performing Arts Center in Saratoga, New York, in 1990 – much to the dismay of Frank Sinatra.” O’Connor told reporters she had nothing against America or its national anthem; in fact, she had nothing against any national anthem – she just didn’t believe they had anything to do with music or politics.
The aging Sinatra – another brash singer with strong opinions – had a few words for O’Connor, allegedly telling an audience of his own, “This must be one stupid broad. I’d kick her ass if she were a guy. She must beat her kids to stay in shape. ” It’s easy to guess what the Italian-American Catholic from Hoboken must have thought when, in one of O’Connor’s career-defining moments, she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II during a 1992 appearance on Saturday Night Live.
“Fight the real enemy,” Sinéad said.
Sinead O'Connor - War (SNL 1992)www.youtube.com
Her career never really recovered from that incident, but O’Connor chose to look at things from her own unique perspective. In her 2021 memoirRememberings, she wrote: That’s not how I feel about it. I feel that having a number-one record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.” However one chooses to interpret the aftermath of the Papal picture-tearing, one thing is clear.
Sinéad was right. She wasright about the Catholic Church and its systemic sexual abuse. She was right about the veil of secrecy thrown over the subject, right about the ways in which the perpetrators were protected and the victims demonized. Having been abused herself, Sinead knew steps had to be taken to stop abuse and punish abusers.
Was Sinéad drastic, headstrong, not deferential enough? Tough. She realized – like Ol’ BlueEyes – that it’s better to ask forgiveness than permission. And, in the end, neither of them was interested in being forgiven. Understood, yes – but not forgiven.
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UPDATE: Wednesday, 9th August 2023
On Tuesday, August 8th, Sinéad O'Connor was buried in Bray, Co Wicklow, Ireland.
The Gardai [Irish Police] asked "that people gather, if they would like to say a last goodbye to Sinéad from 10.30am on Tuesday morning along the Bray Seafront.” Thousands of mourners lined the streets of Irish singer Sinéad O'Connor's former home of Bray for her funeral.
On Monday, August 7, a larger-than-life installation paying tribute to the late singer appeared on an Irish hillside in Bray, the town where her funeral was held.
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UPDATE: Thursday, 27th July 2023
You’ve heard the news by now...Irish Singer and Musician Sinéad O’Connor is dead at the age of 56.
On Thursday, a Scotland Yard spokesperson confirmed to PEOPLE that "a 56-year-old woman was found ‘unresponsive’ and pronounced dead" at a home in South East London a day prior. “The death is not being treated as suspicious," the spokesperson said.
There’s no medical cause of death given for O’Connor. According to London Inner South Coroner’s Court, an autopsy is now set to be carried out, and may not be available for several weeks.
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Born in Ireland in 1966, O’Connor tasted worldwide fame in 1990 with her cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U.” For many, that remains her best-known song. For others, it’s only one glittering example of the passion and intensity she brought to her music. Her talent was undeniable. So, it turned out, were the demons that haunted her, that drove her from country to country, rock to folk to reggae, religion to belief system to religion.
Sinéad O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U (Live in Europe 1990)www.youtube.com
For a while, music served as a means of expressing and assuaging her turmoil, rage, and her pain. Those first two incandescent albums, The Lion and The Cobra (1987) and I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990), are her essential artistic legacy, along with the earth-shattering “Fire on Babylon,” a 13-minute love/hate song to her mother, Ireland, our great spinning planet.
Sinéad O'Connor - Fire on Babylon- Live - Pinkpop 1995www.youtube.com
In these majestic works, O’Connor wrestles with, mocks, implores, supplicates, and embodies her demons, and her struggle is nothing less than exhilarating. And, yes, inspiring.
Controversy followed her. When she pointed an accusatory finger at the Catholic Church’s systemic and shameful sexual abuse of children, she suffered the fate of so many truthtellers before her and was pilloried. Familial and institutional abuse (at the hands of her mother and during her time in Ireland’s infamous Magdalene Laundries); the widespread sexism of the music industry; the profoundly disrupting “benefits” of fame – all took a toll on her career and on her well-being.
She’d be the first to admit her lifelong battle with mental health issues. That’s why the news of her death, sad as it is, is not entirely unexpected. She’d been drawn to suicidal ideation on more than one occasion; her seventeen-year-old son Shane killed himself last year. I won’t be surprised if the cause of her death is ultimately revealed as suicide. The price exacted by mental illness – and by society’s unwillingness to acknowledge its existence – is truly staggering.
Sinead O'Connor Photo by Sebastian Silva (EPA/Shutterstock)
In the autumn of 1987, the “Troy” video completely blasted MTV’s bland, quotidian fare. Who was this raw, rare, unconventional figure? Just what was Sinead’s torrent of gorgeous, angry, apocalyptic sound all about? Where did it come from? And where will it take the world?
Sinead O'Connor - Troy (Official Music Video)www.youtube.com
W. H Auden’s poem “In Memory of W. B. Yeats” contains these lines:
...Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.
One hopes the hurt has ended. O’Connor’s poetry survives, a way of happening, a mouth.
We at Popdust adore Sinead. She's been a beacon through the hard times, the tough days. This one’s for...the Mighty Kevin.