Editor’s Note: Welcome to V3 Weekend, a new Vanyaland series where we help you sort out your weekend entertainment with curated selections and recommendations across our three pillars of Music, Comedy, and Film/TV. It’s what you should know about, where you need to be, and where you’ll be going, with us riding shotgun along the way.
Music: Cousin Stizz’ Just For You & Lady Pills’ What I Want
Today (February 11) marks a banner day for Boston music, as two significant albums finally come to the surface: Cousin Stizz’ layered Just For You, and Lady Pills’ highly anticipated What I Want.
Stizz’ latest features 13 new tracks (boosted by singles “LBS,” “Say Dat,” “Lethal Weapon,” and “Blessings”) and marks the Dorchester rapper’s first new album since 2019’s Trying to Find My Next Thrill. But the significance runs deeper: “This the first one we did independently since 2016 and we did it during a pandemic,” Stizz writes on Instagram. “Shit was different for me but brought me back to my roots in a way… we back like we never left.” Fire it up below, and catch Stizz’ tour homecoming as he wraps his A Tour For You run at Roadrunner in Boston on April 22.
Meanwhile, Lady Pills, fresh off The Sinclair stage last night with Squirrel Flower, drops a 10-track album via Plastic Miracles. We’ve already swooned over lead single “My Weight“, a 2021 SOTY contender released after everyone compiled their SOTY lists, and the only thing that sucks about the video is that it’s been too cold to reenact the choreographed flash mob dance scene through the streets of Lower Allston.
Ella Boissonnault says that What I Want was written over an extended period of time and serves as “a collection of endings, grief, and trauma, but told through the lens of someone who gained the autonomy and confidence to push through anyway.” She adds: “I hope this record inspires the same for anyone who hears it… What I Want serves as a painter’s canvas or a room full of tools that the listener can do what they want within.” Hear the album live and in action a week from tonight, February 18, at Inman Square’s Lilypad, part of Lady Pills’ tour kickoff.
Get into both albums below; two distinct tastes, hip-hop and indie, linked together through one city’s pure adoration.
Comedy: Love’s A Joke at Laugh Boston
As Comedy Editor Jason Greenough notes in his weekly Mic’d Up column, it’s a busy weekend for heart-shaped laughs around the city, because, well let’s face it, Valentine’s Day weekend starts tonight, thanks to the Monday holiday. While Nick’s Comedy Stop has some much-needed Relationship Counseling on Saturday (February 12), Laugh Boston stacks the sweethearts sky high over multiple days and night with Love’s A Joke, kicking off tonight (February 11) and running through Monday (February 14).
Greenough writes: “Becoming as much of a tradition in its own right as the holiday itself, join a slew of top-notch comics like Al Ducharme, Bernadette Pauley, Vicky Kuperman, Tom Cotter and more as they explore all things surrounding love with their own hilarious twists.”
Get tickets and showtimes here, and hit laughboston.com for the latest venue info.
Film/TV: AMC’s Sunday Movie Marathon
Even before kickoff, usually the only good Super Bowl Sunday alternative to watching Da Big Game is the Puppy Bowl, but even that’s felt weird the last few years. It’s a bit of a tradition for television network to abandon all hope of viewership as everyone watches the Football’s Biggest Night (for the commercials, for the halftime show, for the…sport?), but AMC has clearly declared “two tears in a bucket, fuck it” and stacked a Sunday movie marathon lineup with enough championship rings of its own: A Bronx Tale (10:30 a.m.), Heat (1 p.m.), Casino (5 p.m.), and Scarface (10 p.m.)*.
Yeah sure, there are a lot of commercials, but at least none of them will star Colin Jost and Scarlett Johansson. And these showtimes are more stretched out than your belt by the third quarter. But the beauty of cable movie showings is that they’re just simply there for you when you need it most, providing comfort as you watch not to enjoy a full movie experience, but to take in (or wait for) certain scenes as they slowly play out.
Inevitably, you get pulled in. And then, like Sonny says in A Bronx Tale, “Now youse can’t leave.”
(*Note: Yeah we know Walking Dead is in there at 9 p.m., but meh, who gives a shit. Check in on the game during that and see how Joe Shiesty is doing. Go Bengals.)