For the first time since 1996, Sublime will release a brand-new album, Until the Sun Explodes, June 12, with Jakob Nowell — the late Bradley Nowell‘s son — on vocals alongside original members Eric Wilson on bass and Bud Gaugh on drums. Jakob, who originally imagined a more limited involvement with the band when he first signed on in 2023, tells Rolling Stone that he kept finding himself deeper and deeper in.
“It’s kind of like being a drug addict,” says Jakob, who got sober in 2017. “You’re like, ‘Oh, I drink, but I don’t do coke.’ And it’s like, ‘OK, I do blow, but I would never do blank.’ And then you just keep going. I was like, ‘Well, I’ll sing one of the songs, but I’ll never join the band. OK, I’ll join the band, but I’m not going to step on people’s toes and write a new record.'” He laughs. “And so I’m like, God, where am I? What am I doing?”
Even though the band’s upcoming LP is being released under the name Sublime — and uncannily channels an awful lot of the band’s sonic essence — Nowell doesn’t quite consider it the real thing. “The last true Sublime record will be [1996’s] self-titled, hands down, period,” says Nowell, who also records his own music under the name Jakobs Castle. “You can’t compete with mythology. This is the epilogue.”
The album pulls in guests including H.R. from Bad Brains, Pennywise guitarist Fletcher Dragge, and G Love, plus FIDLAR and Australian surf-rockers Skegss. The title track and lead single is out today, alongside a video filmed at spots around Long Beach that carry weight in the Sublime story, with pro skaters Christian Hosoi and Omar Hassan making appearances. The album’s opening track, “Ensenada,” already dominated Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart for two months straight last year, holding the Number One spot longer than any other song on that chart in 2025.
Gaugh, who only briefly played with Wilson in his now-defunct collaboration with Rome Ramirez, Sublime With Rome, says the album validated something he felt from the first rehearsal with Jakob. “From day one, it seemed way more natural than anything we had done previously,” he says. “The chemistry and the sound — it was all there. It really brought me back to the mid-Nineties with Brad.”
“He totally reminds me of a sober version of Brad,” adds Wilson.
Gaugh describes Jakob’s songs as a direct continuation of Bradley’s habit of writing about his daily life (including immortalizing his pet, Louie Dog) and events around him, including the L.A. riots. “Jake took that same recipe and started writing about things that were happening in his life, in our lives, right now,” Gaugh says. “That really impressed me — the way he caught onto that and followed that prescription.”
When it came time to write, Jakob, touring guitarist Zayno, and producer Jon Joseph built a comprehensive research document cataloguing every chord progression, lyrical theme, sonic texture, and stylistic boundary in the Sublime discography. They went as far as making Venn diagrams and spreadsheets, while debating what was and was not “canonical” to the band’s sound. “It sounds a little contrived,” Nowell admits, “but we didn’t do it out of a sense of, ‘Oh God, we need to do this or else.’ We were having a blast, dude.” The key, he says, was a two-phase approach: “We had to learn the book, and then burn the book.”
For all the geekiness, Nowell says the actual secret was chasing the “true process of Sublime — that fun, wild craziness in the moment, that sort of altered state of consciousness that you get from making music with your friends and staying up all goddamn night.” On the track “Evil Men,” he took that approach to an extreme, staying awake for days trying to reach a trance-like creative state before free-styling the song. “I don’t get high no more,” he says, “so I was like, fuck, I need to get into some kind of altered state to commune with the gods.”
Jakob thought about his father constantly throughout the making of the album “It’s all for him,” he says. “I wouldn’t be here doing this if not for him. And I’d prefer it would be him doing it.”
“If Bradley were here, we would have probably been writing material as Sublime and then had Jake come and guest on a few songs,” says Gaugh. “I am certain of that.”
The album arrives a month before the 30th anniversary of Sublime, and the band plan to play the whole album start to finish at their two Red Rocks shows in April. They’re also launching their own traveling festival this spring and sailing a branded cruise out of Miami in the fall.
Wilson never expected any of this. “I never thought I was gonna be 56 years old,” he says. “If I would’ve known that I was going to be 56, I’d probably take better care of myself.”
The three members disagree over whether this incarnation of Sublime will record again. Wilson wants to keep going and sees no reason to stop, and Gaugh is open to continuing. Nowell is reluctant. “I think it will be the only full record I make with Sublime,” he says. “Maybe in another 30 years we’ll make another one.”
Nowell has already started thinking about his next Jakobs Castle album, and he plans to scale back Sublime shows after this year. But he says this album solved a lot of issues for him “How do I feel about this death or being related to this mythological figure or living in a shadow — all of that just melted away into the studio, man. This Sublime record is the work that right now I’m the most proud of ever having made.”
Tupac Shakur at the Club USA in New York City, New York, 1994.
Prosecutors Put Rap Lyrics on Trial. Maryland Is About to Shut It Down
“I’m Gucci. It’s a rap. F**k [can they do] about a rap?”
Those are the words of Lawrence Montague on a jail phone call, words that now sit at the center of a broader legal reckoning unfolding in Maryland over the use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal proceedings.
Maryland prosecutors introduced Montague’s rap verse, recorded using a jailhouse telephone and later posted to Instagram as evidence of his guilt for the killing of George Forrester. In December 2020, Maryland’s highest Court ruled in Montague vs. Maryland that rap lyrics can be admitted in court as evidence of a defendant’s guilt. The Court’s treatment of the genre as inherently violent reflects a deeply flawed and biased assumption, and Montague was ultimately convicted and sentenced to fifty years.
On appeal, the state’s highest court affirmed Montague’s conviction, finding that Montague’s lyrics made it more probable that he shot and killed Forrester. In doing so, the Court embraced the very kind of bias the legal system is supposed to guard against.
That ruling set a dangerous precedent, particularly for rap and hip-hop artists in America, and prompted Variety to publish our January 2021 opinion piece. What we didn’t realize at the time was that the article would help spark a national movement — now a united front of influential academics, defense and civil rights attorneys, and prominent music industry advocacy organizations including Songwriters of North America, the Black Music Action Coalition, The Recording Academy, and more. Together, we’ve partnered under a coalition known as Free Our Art, led by high-profile music executive Kevin Liles and co-chaired by me and Prophet. Over the past few years, the coalition has built a diverse and bipartisan group of allies, urging lawmakers to act. This week, in a full circle moment, Maryland became only the third state to pass a bill reconsidering how creative works are used in criminal trials. The bill now heads to the desk of Maryland Governor Wes Moore, who is widely expected to sign it into law.
When signed, Maryland’s Protecting Artists’ Creative Expression (PACE) Act will join California and Louisiana, which enacted similar laws in 2022 and 2023 following advocacy by BMAC, SONA and later Free Our Art. Critically, the legislation establishes clear standards for when creative works may be admitted as evidence in criminal proceedings.
This law addresses a growing concern among the music industry, legal scholars, and civil rights advocates, as rap lyrics have almost exclusively been used against Black and Brown artists in more than 820 cases since the 1980s. The PACE Act seeks to limit bias in the courtroom, reinforcing First Amendment protections that are frequently overlooked today. When signed into law, the legislation would limit the use of artistic expression as evidence to narrowly defined legal circumstances. Any creative expressions the government is looking to present as evidence must be presented to the judge before a jury trial even begins. These include instances where a defendant clearly intended the work to be taken literally, where it contains specific factual details tied to an alleged offense, where it is directly relevant to a disputed issue, and where its probative value outweighs any unfair prejudice.
Race has long shaped how rap lyrics are interpreted in the legal system. Courts have often misunderstood the history, purpose, and cultural significance of rap music in America, which emerged in the 1970s in the South Bronx as a response to poverty, unemployment, gang violence, isolation from mainstream America, and unfair treatment by government institutions. Courts are starting to correct the problem — overturning convictions where rap lyrics were wrongly used — but that’s not justice, that’s damage control. We need real protection on the front end. That’s why the PACE Act matters.
And the momentum is building: New York, Georgia, and Missouri legislatures are in discussions to pass laws to defend artistic freedom and draw the line.
Black artistry deserves the same legal protection as any other form of creative expression. Yet past rulings, including the Montague case in Maryland, have left Black artists exposed to bias rooted in misunderstanding — and too often, a refusal to engage with the culture itself. Research shows that rap, a predominantly Black genre, is more likely to be seen by jurors as more threatening, more dangerous, and grounded in reality. The result: Black expression is treated as evidence of criminality, while white artists in other genres such as country music exploring similar themes are afforded creative freedom. In court, slang, generic references, and race can unfairly prejudice juries far beyond their actual probative value.
Artists such as Tupac Shakur, Public Enemy, N.W.A, and Kendrick Lamar have long used hip-hop to tell stories and challenge injustice. That tradition is central to the genre and should not be mistaken for confession. Black artists deserve the opportunity to express fear and anger and process trauma and lived experiences without that expression being used against them in court. That distinction is exactly what this legislation seeks to protect.
With the PACE Act now moving through the final stages of approval, Maryland has an opportunity to correct a longstanding imbalance in the legal system. If signed into law, it will set a clear standard — one that other states should follow.
Dina LaPolt is an entertainment attorney, activist, and co-founder of the Songwriters of North America; and Willie “Prophet” Stiggers is the chairman and CEO of the Black Music Action Coalition. Special thanks to Loyola Law School student Kayla Ruff.