Did you catch Kehlani when she performed her collab with Kyle on Kimmel last week? If you’ve seen the video for that track, “Playinwitme,” you know it features both artists competing for the attention of the same girl. She’s also got a new song with Hayley Kiyoko, another young and out artist, called “What I Need”.

Kehlani has become known as a superstar feature in the pop world, working with everyone from Calvin Harris to Charlie Puth, so she’s been in the public eye a lot, and has been taking the opportunity to speak up about being bisexual and gender fluid in the industry. She even has a tattoo of the word “fluid” on her chest. She recently told Paper Magazine: 

I get a lot of, “'Why do you get your nails done? Why some days are you more masculine than you are feminine?' People either expect me to be a quote-unquote dyke or femme, and it’s weird to me. Especially when queer people do it to each other, because I think when you truly understand the humanness of queerness, there are no rules to this shit."

She also spoke in a conversation with The Fader about how new it is, even for her her, to be able to write songs that truly represent her point of view.

I've been making music about women my whole career, but I never felt the need to write "she," necessarily. It wasn't in the forefront of my mind. But now I've seen how people reacted to my song "Honey," or when I've used the correct pronouns and put women in my music videos. Just seeing how much people felt like they needed that representation or how much it inspired them definitely encouraged me to step into this new phase of making music. I'm more aware that this isn't just my truth: it's something I can empower youth with, rather than just serve myself. It's definitely a new process that I'm excited to explore.

Slacker and LXL are celebrating Pride this month by focusing on some of our favorite LGBTQ artists! Hit us up on our social handles and let us know who you want to see more of!

The CMT Music Awards were last night, with some great performances and some big wins – including Blake Shelton taking home two trophies for Male and Video of the Year for “I’ll Name The Dogs.” But to me, the most fun was had BETWEEN the performances and awards.

Just the opener got several laughs. Dustin Lynch, Jake Owen, and Jon Pardi dressed for a bridal shower? CHECK. Darius Rucker as the Queen of England? Yep. The guys in Midland taking over a party barge and kissing… each other? It’s all here, along with Florida Georgia Line dressed as Princes Harry and William, driven in a horse-drawn carriage by Trace Adkins. You’re not dreaming. It happened.

The show was hosted by Little Big Town, and for some reason one of Karen Fairchild’s costume changes included… pajamas. Seriously.

My favorite moment was when Carly Pearce won Breakthrough Video of the Year for “Every Little Thing,” a song she wrote about a breakup. Her shout to her ex at the end of this emotional acceptance speech was probably the best thing ever. On behalf of every woman who’s ever had her heart broken (which is like all of us, right?) I so hope he sees it.

Also amazing:  Darius Rucker, Charles Kelley (of Lady Antebellum), Jason Aldean, and Luke Bryan as “The Troublemakers” singing “Straight To Hell,” and Sam Hunt’s performance of “Downtown’s Dead” while walking from one bar to another in downtown Nashville, and finally walking to the stage in the middle of the street. I don’t know how they choreographed that, I don’t know how he could hear himself, and I have no idea how they kept that huge crowd of people out of the way, but it worked.

Well done, CMT. Let’s do it again next year.

Especially this new one I found.

My fascination with Japanese commercials dates back to the dawn of youtube, where it was the wild west of who knows what you could find. My favorite discoveries after hours of random kanji were the Japanese commercials. For me, these commercials were more than odd spectacles of nonsense, no, they were windows to a culture that fascinated me and had me applaud their guts to push a products using inventive methods.

Now, I can hear already… “Aidan, this is cool and all, but where is the metal?”

Well my delightful friend, I got you! Japanese noodle company Nissin has rolled out a really well done and also very metal commercial for their product. The commercial features a noodle-eating chicken devil, summoning noodle snake from the ground, and the eventual destruction of all.

Anime News Network breaks it down perfectly!

“According to the story in the magazine, the statue seen at the beginning is a being called "Akuma no Kimura." Hiyoko-chan participates in rituals to the demon to satisfy its desire for perfection and obtain what is missing to achieve that desire. The description goes on to say that the demon isn't really an external entity, but more of a representation of a demon-like thing that exists within human beings that cannot be destroyed.

The ad repeats the phrases "Sugu oishii, sugoku oishii" (immediately delicious, super delicious). This repetition is supposed represent that the phrase itself no longer has meaning outside of being a spell to access the subconscious. Eventually the phrase transforms into "jigoku oishii" (hellishly delicious). The change happens naturally to the point where the listener doesn't notice until both "delicious" and "hell" coexist.

After Hiyoko's transformation, he becomes a devil named "Caym," a reference to the apocryphal demon also known as Camio that has a bird-like appearance. The demon is well known in Japan because of artist M.L. Breton's depiction in Collin de Plancy's Infernal Dictionary.”

Soooo yeah, THAT IS SO METAL FOR A COMMERCIAL! All this lore in a ramen commercial really makes me wish Cannibal Corpse would make a cameo in a children cereal commercial or something. Actually, I need to make some calls to make that happen now.