Brandon Lake won a Grammy this year for his collab with Jelly Roll, “Hard Fought Hallelujah.” The Christian artist says that Jelly is “trying to use his entire life to do good” after the country star was criticized for his backstage Grammys speech. In a new interview on Rolling Stone’s Nashville Now podcast, Lake says actions outweigh any words.
“I think that’s the problem: People are looking for a statement and not looking at our lives,” Lake says. “Jelly Roll isn’t perfect, just like I’m not perfect. But Jelly Roll is trying to use his entire life to advance the kingdom, to do good, to love people. And I know he’s doing that. He’s loved by this community not just because of the songs he written, but because of the things he’s done.”
Lake, who released the new duet with Lainey Wilson on Good Friday, “The Jesus I Know Now,” says he admires Jelly Roll for publicly admitting that he doesn’t have all the answers. According to Lake, Jelly Roll is more about “trying to let [his] life speak louder than just ‘here’s my statement.’ And that’s what I’m trying to do too. The things that maybe you only find out if you are really, really digging and are looking, of how I love my community and how I’m actually trying to be the answer, not say the answer.”
The Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, native is currently on his King of Hearts Tour, which showcases songs off his album of the same name, like “I Know a Name” and “Sevens.”
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“I would much rather be known for how I live than what I said on an interview,” Lake says on Nashville Now. Watch the full episode below.
Download and subscribe to Rolling Stone’s weekly country-music podcast, Nashville Now, hosted by senior music editor Joseph Hudak, on Apple Podcasts orSpotify (or wherever you get your podcasts). New episodes drop every Wednesday and feature interviews with artists and personalities like Vince Gill, Lainey Wilson, Hardy, Charley Crockett, Kings of Leon, the Black Crowes, Carly Pearce, Breland, Bryan Andrews, Noeline Hofmann, Devon Gilfillian, Gavin Adcock, Amanda Shires, Shooter Jennings, Margo Price, Ink, Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan, Halestorm, Dusty Slay, Lukas Nelson, Ashley Monroe, Old Crow Medicine Show’s Ketch Secor, Clever, and authors Marissa R. Moss, Josh Crutchmer, and Jonathan Bernstein.
Israel Abrams, a four-star recruit and the No. 2 quarterback in the 2027 signing class, has committed to Miami, he anounced Friday. Abrams is ranked as the No. 14 overall prospect in his class, per 247Sports, and that makes him the highest-ranked quarterback Mario Cristobal has landed at Miami.
Abrams, a rising senior at Montini Catholic in Arlington Heights, Ill., owns a 24-0 record as a starter in high school. Abrams has led the Broncos to back-to-back state championships — one at the Class 3A level and another at the Class 4A level.
This past season, Abrams completed 68.5% of his passes for 4,072 yards, 40 touchdowns and just six interceptions. He also rushed for 224 yards and 10 touchdowns. In the state title game, Abrams threw for 425 yards while totaling five touchdowns.
247Sports Director of Scouting Andrew Ivins compared Abrams to UCLA quarterback Nico Iamaleava while highlighting his “easy exit velocity with a rapid release.” Ivins also described Abrams as a “potential high-level distributor for a College Football Playoff hopeful.”
While it may not be surprising to see Miami doing well on the recruiting trail, this is a different tact for the program give how it has handled the quarterback position in recent years.
Miami steering away from high-profile transfers?
In each of the last three years, the Hurricanes have spent big on hired guns at the quarterback position. It was Cam Ward in 2024, Carson Beck led the team to the national title game last season, and Miami lured Darian Mensah away from Duke this offseason.
Thus far, it’s been tough to argue with the results. Ward and Beck put together a combined record of 23-6. The former went on to become the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft, which certainly doesn’t hurt recruiting, and the latter had the Hurricanes within one score of its first national championship since 2001.
The expectation is that the train will keep rolling with Mensah leading the offense. The Hurricanes have the seventh-best national title odds (+1300), per Fan Duel, and Mensah is projected to be a serious Heisman Trophy candidate.
So, does the commitment from Abrams signal a slight change in approach from Mario Cristobal and the Hurricanes? If Abrams plays up to his potential, it may be cheaper to keep him around for a few years rather than going big-game hunting in the portal every year, and that would provide more stability at the most important position on the field.
Then again, all it might take is the right player entering the transfer portal for Miami to stick with the plan that has worked so well for the team lately. If the Hurricanes do take another star transfer quarterback in 2027 (or perhaps 2028), they’ll have to weigh the risks of running off Abrams, the most highly-touted high school quarterback they’ve gotten since Cristobal arrived in 2022.
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A24’s new movie, “The Drama,” is being criticized by some gun safety advocates who say the studio should have done more to warn audiences about the dark plot at the center of the film.
The movie, which is being released in North American theaters on Friday, follows soon-to-be newlyweds Emma (Zendaya) and Charlie (Robert Pattinson), who grapple with how to proceed with their upcoming nuptials after the bride-to-be confesses the “worst thing” she’s ever done: plan a school shooting as a teen.
While she didn’t go through with it — and the film does not show any actual gun violence — some scenes feature flashbacks of a younger Emma who appears fascinated with her father’s rifle and is seen filming a shooter’s confessional video while planning the massacre.
“With a subject this serious, especially in the U.S., that conversation cannot begin and end on screen,” March for Our Lives, a youth-driven organization first created by students who survived the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, wrote in an Instagram post on Thursday. “It has to carry through in how the film is presented.”
A24 did not respond to NBC News’ requests for comment.
Many moviegoers have yet to see “The Drama,” but people began weighing in online after the plot was revealed in a March TMZ article. The publication spoke with Tom Mauser, whose son Daniel was killed during the 1999 Columbine High School shooting. Mauser, who hadn’t seen the movie at the time of the interview, said he believes the plot “humanizes” shooters and “normalizes school shootings.”
Some criticism has also focused on the film’s marketing, which has been described as misleading.
The March premiere in Los Angeles had an after-party that featured a Champagne tower, tiered cake, red balloons and roses, and themed cocktails.
“The way this film has been marketed is deeply misaligned with the reality it engages,” March for Our Lives wrote in its post. “We expect better from A24 and the artists behind it.”
Mia Tretta, a gun violence survivor, also rebuked the film’s premise in a statement provided to NBC News through the nonprofit organization Everytown for Gun Safety.
“Hollywood is treating school shootings like ‘edgy twists’ to drive ticket sales, but for me, this isn’t a plot point,” said Tretta, who also serves as an adviser for the group Students Demand Action.
Fifty-nine percent of adults in the U.S., or someone they care about, have experienced gun violence in their lifetime, according to Everytown for Gun Safety. “More than 4,300 children and teens (0-19) are shot and killed every year and over 17,000 more are shot and wounded,” the organization said.
“It’s a reality I lived through when I was shot at my school at 15 years old, and again as a terrified student at Brown this past December,” Tretta said. “Using a planned massacre as a rom-com hook isn’t ‘starting a conversation,’ it’s exploiting a crisis. There are ways to show nuance without using trauma as a gimmick. Studios and stars have massive platforms and they should use them to give dimension to survivors, not perpetrators.”
Pop culture depictions of school shootings have often stoked controversy, with many viewers debating the line between storytelling and sensitivity. Some projects, like 2011’s “We Need to Talk About Kevin,” drew mostly positive reviews for tackling the subject head-on. Others have struggled to land — a reboot of “Heathers,” for example, was repeatedly postponed amid a string of mass shootings in 2018.
“The Drama” has so far generated a positive response: As of Friday, it had garnered an 81% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer, which compiles critics’ reviews.
Online, some Redditors have echoed gun safety advocates’ concerns when discussing whether they want to see the film after learning more about the plot.
Zendaya and Robert Pattinson at the Los Angeles after party for “The Drama” in March.Courtesy Saba Hamedy
“I’m glad the twist is getting leaked so people have an opportunity to avoid it,” one Reddit user wrote. “I don’t think shock-jocking mass shooting survivors is worth preserving a movie’s twist. I get that A24 wants to make money but it shouldn’t be at the expense of people who have experienced something traumatic.”
Others have come to the movie’s defense. “Art is art — it’s meant to be controversial,” another user wrote. “And these events are already kinda normalised aren’t they? That’s the problem?”
Writer-director Kristoffer Borgli appeared to anticipate a polarizing reaction, telling the audience at the L.A. premiere that it’s been “a challenge to put a genre on the movie.”
“You decide what it is for you,” he said before the film was screened. “You can laugh. You can cry. You can leave the theater if you want to.”
“What’s difficult about even talking about the movie is there are so many different genres. It is a romantic comedy in many ways, but it’s also a drama. … Everybody has their own kind of feelings leaving the theater, especially with the big twist,” she said. “There’s so many conversations that are had after you watch it. … I really hope people don’t spoil it for each other, so they are allowed to go into it unknowing and really experience the drama.”
March for Our Lives said it hopes the film does spark conversation.
“But,” the organization wrote in its Instagram post, “when something like a school shooting is treated lightly or played for irony, it raises a deeper question: what kind of conversation is this meant to start?”
Multiple people were rescued following a crash involving a charter bus in Hidalgo County early Friday morning. According to Hidalgo County Fire Rescue, crews were dispatched to a crash on Interstate 10. When crews arrived, they found a charter bus had flipped on the roadway. Fire and rescue officials say in a social media post that 30 people were extricated from the bus and transported to the hospital. Two others were airlifted from area. Hidalgo County Fire Rescue officials say no one died in the crash.
HIDALGO COUNTY, N.M. —
Multiple people were rescued following a crash involving a charter bus in Hidalgo County early Friday morning.
According to Hidalgo County Fire Rescue, crews were dispatched to a crash on Interstate 10. When crews arrived, they found a charter bus had flipped on the roadway.
Fire and rescue officials say in a social media post that 30 people were extricated from the bus and transported to the hospital. Two others were airlifted from area.
Hidalgo County Fire Rescue officials say no one died in the crash.
There’s plenty of pain on Luke Grimes new Redbird album, but a song he wrote for his 18-month-old son Rigel adds a bit of sweet you might not expect if you only know him as a Yellowstone and Marshals character named Kayce Dutton.
The actor sat down with Taste of Country’s Adison Haager, co-host of the Dutton RulesPodcast. The full interview will drop on YouTube on Tuesday (April 7) but this story was too sweet to hold on to.
Redbird (released on April 3) dives deep into his personal story, including the 2022 death of his father.
This is his second album, following his self-titled project (2024).
Redbird includes an acoustic song called “Hummingbird” that is clearly inspired by fatherhood. “He loves music, like for real,” Grimes, says of his son, Rigel Randolph Grimes.
“This is not me like wishing, you know, like pushing something on him.”
The actor and his wife Bianca (married 2019) welcomed their first child in 2024 but don’t often share pictures or stories of their life as parents. They live privately in rural Montana, where people know him well enough to not care about his celebrity.
The not-quite-2-year-old has a Yoto Player, which is a music player for kids that comes with physical cards so they have a tangible thing to connect to. Those are customizable.
Luke Grimes’ Song About His Son
“So we put ‘Hummingbird’ on one and he loves it. He’ll just point and say, ‘Da da da da.’ He knows which card it is,” Grimes shares, smiling.
“Hummingbird, oh hummingbird / I want you to fly / High up as you wanna go / In the big blue sky,” he sings as he enters the first chorus.
“It’s very flattering in a way to have my son love the music and not just the song that’s for him. My first album, he just carries the sleeve around and asks to play it all the time. And it’s amazing. Like, it’s not lost on me how cool that is.”
Listen to “Hummingbird” below. Grimes shares that his son’s love for music is unusually strong, but that’s far from his only charming gift.
Range Music / MCA
Range Music / MCA
“Oh, man. He’s really funny. He’s hilarious. This kid is a comedian,” he tells ToC. Like, he’s just constantly trying to make us laugh. And when we do laugh, he just does that thing over and over.”
Like so many new parents, the Marshals star and his real-life wife are amazed by how quick their son changes and taken aback by his strong personality.
“I don’t know. It’s hard to put your finger on like what happens to you when you become a parent, because it’s not one thing. It’s all the things and it’s not all at once,” he shares later in the interview while talking about how fatherhood affects his acting.
“Like I definitely look back to before I had him though, I’m like I’m a very different person.”
In so many ways, Luke Grimes has grown up with Kayce Dutton. The songs on Redbird showcase his maturity and introduce him as much more than the tragic character we’ve watched on television for more than eight years.
‘Yellowstone’ Children: Where Are They Now?
The Yellowstone franchise has often relied on child actors to tell essential parts of the Dutton family story. Here is what’s become of eight of the most popular kid characters from Yellowstone, 1883 and 1923, including one who just popped up in a blockbuster horror movie.
The 6-foot-9, 250-pound forward proved tough enough to score through physical play. Rangy enough to space the floor and shoot from outside. Deft enough as a passer to find teammates, whether against constant double-teams coming for him as the top name on every scouting report or while running the entire offense from up top.
“You just want to affect winning in whatever way you can,” Boozer said.
The high-end NBA prospect did that all season for a team that won 35 games, reached No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 poll, claimed the top overall seed for March Madness and reached the Elite Eight. Now Boozer is the AP’s men’s college basketball national Player of the Year, only the fifth freshman to earn the honor and the second in a row for a Duke program that keeps adding to the longest list of winners in the country.
“It just goes to show more about what our team has done, just because I think that really helps awards like this, having great team success,” Boozer told the AP. “It’s really just not me.”
Boozer, named a unanimous first-team AP All-American last month, received 59 of 61 votes from AP Top 25 voters in results released Friday. BYU freshman AJ Dybantsa, another potential top NBA pick, received the other two votes after averaging an NCAA-best 25.5 points per game.
Son of longtime NBA player Carlos Boozer, also of Duke, Cameron Boozer averaged 22.5 points (ninth in Division I) and 10.2 rebounds (12th) per game while finishing tied for the national lead with 22 double-doubles. He also averaged 4.1 assists while posting efficient shooting numbers at 55.6% overall and 39.1% from 3-point range.
“I’m very grateful just that I’m even in those [NBA] conversations,” Boozer said. “I think a lot of people dream of being where I am. Sometimes you’ve got to take a step back and just remember that once upon a time, you were a kid dreaming to be here. So I think it’s very special.”
His coaches think the same of him.
“We’ve been fortunate enough the last two years to have two of the best freshmen to ever play in college basketball back to back,” Duke associate head coach and former Blue Devils player Chris Carrawell said. “And Cam is right up there.”
Boozer is Duke’s ninth AP winner, each coming from a different player. UCLA is the next closest with five winners, which includes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (1967, ’69) and Bill Walton (1972, ’73) as two-time selections.
“It just goes to show more about what our team has done, just because I think that really helps awards like this, having great team success. It’s really just not me.”
Cameron Boozer, on winning AP Player of the Year
UCLA, Ohio State and Duke rival North Carolina are the only other programs with as many as three different players to win the award.
Boozer arrived at Duke alongside twin brother Cayden after the two led Miami’s Columbus High to four straight state championships. By late February, the Blue Devils were starting a four-week reign atop the AP Top 25 that would carry into March Madness. Boozer, who said he looks at winning as a skill, routinely posted top performances in Duke’s biggest games, including during a rugged nonconference slate.
He matched a season high with 35 points in a November win against Arkansas. He followed with 29 points against defending national champion Florida. He also had big performances at Michigan State (18 points, 15 rebounds) and flirted with a triple-double (18 points, 10 rebounds, 7 assists) against Michigan.
Along the way, he pushed through bumps and shoves. He closed Sunday’s season-ending loss to UConn with 27 points and his right eye swollen from a first-half blow.
“There’s no agenda other than figuring out a way to win,” Wolverines coach Dusty May said. “I’ve seen him play a number of times this year where there’s six guys in the paint, and it’s not as if he’s jumping 40, 50 inches off the floor. His desire to rebound the ball, to set physical screens, to play to his advantages, is as impressive as any freshman that I can recall.”
The other challenge was managing the scrutiny that comes from expectations for greatness. A missed shot. A turnover. The 3-for-17 shooting while battling rising frustration and Virginia shot-blocker Ugonna Onyenso in the ACC title game.
“He does a great job of flushing it and not letting it dwell on him too much,” Cayden Boozer said. “That’s something he’s always been able to do since we were younger. Obviously I talk to him when he needs me to. And I sometimes just understood that, hey, he’s going through something, give him some space for a little bit and he’ll figure it out.”
Cameron Boozer said getting away for time alone and putting down the phone helps. He points to prayer and a recent effort to read more.
The rest of the time, though, he will throw himself into becoming a better player. There’s comfort in that routine, the results yet to fail him.
“I think just being prepared alleviates pressure,” Boozer said. “Being ready for a game, watching film, working out, knowing you put your time in, being confident in yourself — I think all that takes away a lot of the pressure that people talk about. At the end of the day, pressure really is what you put on yourself.”
A U.S. F-15E fighter jet was downed over Iran Friday, and one crew member from the plane was later rescued by American forces, U.S. officials confirmed to CBS News.
The F-15E is flown by a two-member crew and a search and rescue effort is ongoing, sources said.
Earlier Friday, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard claimed it shot down a U.S. fighter jet over the middle of the country.
Photos and video were circulating on social media, shared by Iranian state news outlets, suggesting at least one U.S. C-130 aircraft and two Black Hawk helicopters were spotted flying low over central and southwest Iran in what was described as a possible effort to locate and recover the crew.
CBS News reported earlier this week that the U.S. military had lost at least 16 MQ-9 Reaper drones over Iran since the war began, and three U.S. F-15 fighter jets were shot down over Kuwait in a “friendly fire incident” early in the conflict, but there were no casualties.
The downing of the jet Friday comes after repeated assertions by President Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and military commanders of U.S. air superiority that largely deprived Iran of attack capabilities and air defenses during the war.
“Now in our fifth week of the campaign, it is my operational assessment that we are making undeniable progress. We don’t see their navy sailing. We don’t see their aircraft flying, and their air and missile defense systems have largely been destroyed,” CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper said Thursday.
A local affiliate of Iran’s state TV channel said Friday a prize being offered for anyone able to “capture the enemy pilot or pilots alive and hand them over to the police.”
The Associated Press said the TV broadcast included a written message urging viewers to shoot at any U.S. aircraft seen flying overhead.
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (KRQE) – The 39th annual Run for the Zoo is coming May 3, from 7 a.m. – 12 p.m. The event is open to all ages and fitness levels. Run for the Zoo has events including a half marathon, 10K timed run, 5K timed run, 5K fitness run, and a one mile fun run/walk. […]
