Month: January 2021

Standard release these days might call for new music to drop on Thursday night/Friday morning, but Smino has never been one to play by the rules. Besides, with a psychedelic song about martians and wordplay around MLK Drive, how could he sit on this one? Announcing a new song earlier today on social media just a few hours before it dropped, the St. Louis rapper included plenty of alien imagery in his preview posts. “MLK Dr.” @ MIDNITE, tell a fren” he wrote on Twitter, complete with alien and comet emojis:

His Instagram post basically shared the same info, with the caption: “MIDNIGHT. Drop if you ready drop if you want it . ” and the single’s cover artwork, along with a picture of someone, who we can only assume is Smino, in an alien mask.

Keeping in line with the funky and futuristic sound Smino has stuck with over the course of his first few projects, the lyrics get deep into double entendre like a line that references the title “I just seen a martian right off Martin Luther King.” Since the song is only a brief minute and thirty seconds, it is likely just a teaser for a longer project, so keep an eye out for more from Smino and listen to his latest above.

Thus far this offseason the Jaguars (Urban Meyer), Jets (Robert Saleh), Falcons (Arthur Smith), and Chargers (Brandon Staley) worked out deals with new head coaches, leaving the Texans, Lions, and Eagles as the teams still seeking a new head man. On Sunday night, right as the Chargers deal with Staley was announced, word emerged that the Lions too had settled on a hire, as they will reportedly hire Saints assistant Dan Campbell to take over in Detroit, per ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

Campbell was previously the interim head coach in Miami in 2015 before joining the Saints as their assistant head coach and tight ends coach in 2016. He’ll now take over a Lions team that, while talented, underachieved under the guidance of Matt Patricia who was let go after another dismal season.

With the Saints’ loss to the Bucs on Sunday night in what was very possibly Drew Brees’ final game, the Lions could move forward with their planned hire and that leaves the Texans and Eagles to find a new head coach. Surprisingly, Chiefs OC Eric Bienemy remains untethered to a head coaching vacancy, although it’s possible Houston makes a push for him in an effort to mend fences with Deshaun Watson, who most now believe will be out of a job. Bienemy was the most prominent Black coach on the market and that he continues to be passed over while less tenured white candidates get jobs is only furthering to illustrate the NFL’s issues with diversity in hiring practices.

The Los Angeles Chargers didn’t have to look too far to find their next head coach after firing Anthony Lynn following a disappointing 7-9 season. According to Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero of NFL Network, the Chargers will be hiring Rams defensive coordinator Brandon Staley to their head coaching position, swiping him away from their fellow SoFi Stadium tenants.

Staley was at the helm of what was one of the league’s best defenses with the Rams and will now be handed the keys to a Chargers team with some immense young talents on both sides of the ball. Justin Herbert emerged as a star in his rookie season and made the L.A. job among the most coveted in the NFL, and with Joey Bosa, Melvin Ingram, and Derwin James on defense, while he will no longer have Aaron Donald, Staley will have plenty of talent to build his defense around.

Despite the presence of what appears to be a preternatural quarterbacking talent in Herbert, it’s not surprising to see the Chargers turn to a defensive coach, as Lynn was an offensive coach and, typically, teams tend to seek out the opposite of what they previously had. Of all the job openings this offseason, the Chargers gig was, to many, the best one but it’s also the one with expectations to win immediately, which means ample pressure for Staley to deal with in Year 1.

Minutes prior to Sunday night’s Bucs-Saints game in New Orleans, Fox Sports’ Jay Glazerreported on the pregame show that Drew Brees would be retiring at the end of this season. The future first-ballot Hall of Famer has the most passing yards in NFL history with over 80,000 and is second in touchdowns and career completion percentage.

He will stroll into Canton in a few years, but the way the final game of his career — at least if Glazer is correct — went down will likely sting the legend for some time. Brees faced off with Tom Brady in a battle of aging quarterbacks, and despite Brady being the older gunslinger, it was his Bucs team that got the job done in a 30-20 victory aided by three rather brutal Brees interceptions.

The first one came on a shorted touch pass that fell into the waiting arms of Sean Murphy-Bunting, setting up a Bucs touchdown to take the lead.

His final two came in the fourth quarter of a tight ball game. The first was an apparent miscommunication with Alvin Kamara and also a ball forced into tight coverage that saw Devin White jump in front of the pass and pick it off to set up the game-sealing touchdown from Brady.

The final throw of Brees’ career, should he indeed hang them up, will be this tipped ball interception by Mike Edwards that officially ended any chance of a Saints comeback.

Brees finished the night 19-of-34 for 134 yards, one touchdown (the backshoulder toss to Tre’Quan Smith below) and the three picks.

It’s certainly not a storybook finish for Brees, who looked to be emotional on the sidelines as the game came to an end and waved to the crowd that was in the Superdome on his way off of that field for one last time. He’ll forever be a Saints legend, certainly the best QB in franchise history and the leader of their lone championship run. This season saw the decline that so many older quarterbacks see, with diminished arm strength limiting what he could do to run a dynamic offense and, against the Bucs, the demands of having to sustain so many long drives to create scores tipped the wrong way.

We’ll have to wait for an official confirmation of Brees’ retirement from the man himself, but while the last game wasn’t how he would’ve wanted it, there are plenty of happier memories from an incredible career to look back on.

For the last two decades, Fox News has dominated the 24 hour news industry, and for a good reason: They know their audience — Republicans — and they know how to keep them angry. But it looks like they may lose their place atop the food chain: According to Forbes, the news network has lost 20 percent of their audience, a plummet so steep that they rank third, behind CNN and MSNBC, for the first time in 20 years.

As per Forbes:

Over the first full week of 2021 (Jan. 4 through Jan. 10), CNN ranked firstamong cable networks (roughly 2.8 million viewers per day; 4.2 million in primetime) followed by MSNBC (2.3 million per day ;3.8 million in primetime) and Fox News in third (1.7 million per day; 3.2 million in primetime).

Over the first two weeks of 2021, Fox averaged nearly 800,000 fewer total day viewers than MSNBC, and around 1 million fewer than CNN, according toMediate, and every day since Jan. 4, Fox has trailed both MSNBC and CNN in the crucial age 25-54 demographic.

There’s a good reason for their fall: They’ve enraged Donald Trump by not being sufficiently loyal, and so his die hard base has turned on them as well. Before he was permanently banned on Twitter and other social media sites, the outgoing Republican president had tweeted at them with increasing hostility, especially once they formally acknowledged that his rival, Joe Biden, had thwarted his hopes for re-election. Some of their regular viewers instead found solace in two even more pro-Trump networks: Newsmax and OAN, though both gotten into legal trouble after frequently airing baseless accusations about Dominion voting machines.

Mind you, Fox News’ relatively low turnout in the ratings isn’t only due to angry Trump supporters. CNN had its most-watched day on January 6, when a mob of the president’s supporters stormed the Capitol, leading to five deaths. Meanwhile, there’s still a chance Fox News may face even stiffer competition, should Trump ever get that threatened rival news station going — provided he has any money left after his many lenders finally come to collect.

(Via Forbes)

It’s been over a week since outgoing president Donald Trump was either permanently banned or had his access limited by the majority of social media services, and it really has made a difference. There’s less furious and scary tweets from the person who has the nuclear codes, while election misinformation has dropped a whopping 73 percent — thanks not only to his removal but the removal of tons of QAnon and other conspiracy theorists as well. But there’s one person who’s not happy: Donald Trump. And according to one of his spokespersons, he believes he now has no way of communicating with the general public.

“I can’t believe I’m writing this,” tweeted CNN’s Ana Cabrera. “Campaign spokesperson Hogan Gidley claims on Fox News President Trump can’t denounce Capitol attack more because he doesn’t have a platform. ‘(He) can’t say anything because the platforms have removed him,’ Gidley says.”

A couple things: First, he did denounce them, in a video released by the White House YouTube account during the week, and he even managed to do it while not also repeating baseless voter fraud allegations. Second, there are other ways the President on the United States can address the nation that don’t involve tweets. In fact, many people had some sound suggestions:

Others found even this hard to believe.

And others wondered how 40-plus presidents managed to address their people in pre-internet or even social media times.

The New Orleans Saints played host to their divisional rival Tampa Bay Buccaneers on Sunday night for a trip to Green Bay to play for the NFC Championship game. The big headline coming in was the battle of aging, legendary quarterbacks in Tom Brady and Drew Brees, with Brady leaning into the jokes on Twitter with a graphic showing the two aged out (albeit, making Brees look much worse) and playing on the History Channel.

Mere minutes before kickoff, though, we learned that it very well could be the last game of Brees’ historic career, as Jay Glazer reported on Fox’s pregame show that the future Hall of Famer will be retiring at the end of the season.

If that is indeed the case, Brees will finish his career with over 80,000 passing yards, 571 touchdowns, 243 interceptions, and a completion percentage over 67. He is first all-time in passing yards and second in touchdowns and career completion percentage, and will walk into Canton on the first ballot.

The question will be exactly how his career ends, whether in the Superdome on Sunday or in the future either in Green Bay or Tampa Bay, with the chance to double the number of Super Bowl rings in his career.

Though COVID-19 cases are higher than they’ve ever been, a number of venues across the country continue to hold music events, with often maskless people crammed into tight spaces. One recent example came Saturday in Houston, when Trey Songz and Fabolous visited Club Spire for the event “The Black Affair.” According to Houston Fire Marshall’s office, not only was the club packed, it way exceeded the maximum capacity of the venue.

Fire Chief Samuel Pena said it was, on top of being a super-spreader event, a fire hazard. “If there was an emergency, a fire or something that would have occurred inside, we would have had a massive loss of life because [of] the means of entry,” he said, adding that “the exits were blocked.” According to ABC13, in addition to the club’s overcapacity, about 200 people were waiting outside the venue with the hopes of getting in.

The event occurred just days after Meek Mill and Bow Wow faced criticism for performing at a packed-out show in Houston as well. Video showed a room filled with maskless partygoers, which made the rounds on social media.

Trey Songz and Fabolous now join names like Mulatto, DaBaby, and Chase Rice as artists who have faced criticism by holding packed events during the pandemic.

You can read fans’ thoughts on their event below.

(via ABC13)

Meek Mill and Trey Songz are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Chiefs being in the AFC Championship game would typically come as no surprise, as they entered Sunday as more than a touchdown favorite against the Browns and opened up a 19-3 lead in the first half.

However, after Cleveland pulled to within five points early in the fourth quarter after Patrick Mahomes had been ruled out for the rest of the game with a concussion, things seemed very much trending in the direction of the Browns — particularly after backup Chad Henne threw a rather disastrous interception in the end zone with eight minutes to play. However, the Chiefs defense, which was terrific for much of the game, managed to get the stop the team desperately needed, and gave Chad Henne the football back with four minutes to play and the Browns having just one timeout (thanks to very questionable choices from head coach Kevin Stefanski).

Henne, who had some bright spots and the low of the interception, did what he needed to do against a Cleveland defense that was selling out against the run. Andy Reid trusted his veteran backup to throw the ball in key spots and even on a 3rd-and-14 when the world expected a draw or screen to simply chew up clock and then punt the ball. Instead, Henne was able to take off and get it to 4th and inches on a wild scramble absolutely no one saw coming, and on 4th and inches, he found Tyreek Hill on a quick out for the first down to put the game on ice.

Mahomes never returned to the field, but was watching from the locker room or wherever he had been taken after being diagnosed with a concussion, and the superstar QB’s reaction to seeing his backup will Kansas City to the AFC Championship was perfect.

Mahomes’ status for next week will be determined by how he progresses through the league’s protocol this coming week, but the final drive by the Chiefs will only bolster their belief that, even without their all-everything quarterback they can have a chance against the Bills even with Henne under center.

The Kansas City Chiefs never trailed on Sunday against the Cleveland Browns, but in the fourth quarter it felt an awful lot like they were in peril after Patrick Mahomes was ruled out with a concussion and Cleveland had cut it to a 5-point game.

Longtime veteran backup Chad Henne, at 35 years old, was tasked with trying to keep the Chiefs’ title defense dreams alive. After throwing an absolute arm punt to give the Browns the ball back with eight minutes to play, the Kansas City defense got the stop they needed after a rather inexplicable set of playcalls and decisions from the Browns that took four minutes off of the clock in just seven plays before they even got near midfield. On 4th and 9, Cleveland punted and the Chiefs needed two first downs to seal the victory.

They got the first on a swing pass to Darrell Williams, taking advantage of the Browns aggressively covering their receivers and tight ends to get him into space. On a 3rd and 14 after taking a sack on the ensuing possession, Henne needed to create a miracle and almost did exactly that as he took off for 13.8 yards on the most improbable scramble of the season.

No one in the stadium or anywhere else was anticipating Henne breaking out the wheels on that play and it worked to the Chiefs advantage when he broke the pocket. On 4th and inches, Cleveland seemed to simply want to avoid jumping offsides, and with the game on the line, Andy Reid once again trusted Henne to throw the ball, working a simple out route to Tyreek Hill who got the first and then sat it down to ice the game.

It was, objectively, the right call to go for it in that situation, as it ended the game, and with the Browns so on edge for a run and not to jump offsides, it was a brilliant play choice to get Hill in space and force Cleveland to make a perfect play, which they could not. It’s a rather incredible win for the Chiefs, who will now host the Bills and Mahomes’ status is very much up in the air after he was knocked out in the third quarter and was quickly ruled out with a concussion.

For the Browns, it’s a gutting loss and they had ample opportunity to win. From the end of half fumble through the end zone (that in the end turned out to be the difference) to the horrific clock and timeout management from Kevin Stefanski in the final quarter to simply not getting it done on a drive where they should’ve had all the confidence in the world. In a game where quarterbacks were the talk of every pregame show, it was one absolutely no one mentioned before hand that came up huge and got Kansas City the win.