Month: February 2021

For the second time in as many months, Diddy has filed a lawsuit against Sean John. According to AllHipHop, the hip-hop mogul sued the brand and its owner, Global Brands Group, for $25 million after he claims they falsely attributed a quote to him while promoting an upcoming line with women’s clothing retailer Missguided. The publication reports that the lawsuit also accuses Sean John of using Diddy’s image, likeness, and persona without his consent for the new line.

Sean John was created and launched by Diddy in 1998. He continued to own the brand before he sold it to GBG in 2016. In the lawsuit, he says at no point did he endorse the upcoming collaboration between Sean John and Missguided.

“[Diddy] does not challenge [Sean John/GBG’s] right to use the Sean John trademark,” his lawyer Johnathan D. Davis said. “But rather [Sean John/GBG’s] decision to leverage a fabricated quote they created and then falsely attributed to Mr. Combs, and to use Mr. Combs’s name and other monikers to create the false and misleading impression that Mr. Combs is the decision-maker behind the designs and creation of the GBG Collection.”

Davis added, “[Sean John, GBG and Missguided] are using the Unapproved Material, which contains false or misleading representations of fact, to promote and sell the items in the GBG Collection because they understand that associating it with Mr. Combs will significantly increase sales and profits.”

The new lawsuit comes after Diddy sued Sean John last month over the trademark for the phrase “Vote Or Die,” which he created with his e non-profit Citizens Change. He claims Sean John and GBG illegally used and trademarked it while selling merchandise with it during last year’s presidential campaign.

(via AllHipHop)

Super Bowl LV will pit the reigning champion Kansas City Chiefs against the Buccaneers in their home stadium in Tampa, with kickoff scheduled for 6:30 p.m. ET. CBS’ coverage of the game will begin at 11:30 a.m. ET as they go wall-to-wall with That Other Pregame Show and The Super Bowl Today right up until kick.

Over the course of seven hours of pregame coverage, they’ll try to dive into every possible angle on what we’ll see in the game that night. The five members of the CBS crew with Super Bowl experience will lean on that to guide their discussion. Bill Cowher, Phil Simms, London Fletcher, Amy Trask, and Gene Steratore give CBS a view into the Super Bowl experience from just about every viewpoint, with players who have won a Super Bowl on offense and defense, a coach who won and lost one, a former Super Bowl executive, and a former Super Bowl referee.

Over the past week, Uproxx Sports has gotten the chance to talk with those five about those experiences, with each sharing a favorite Super Bowl memory and how they plan to use that to guide how they will look at Chiefs-Bucs on Sunday.

Simms and Fletcher both can’t help but look at the defenses as the key in this one, as each offense is packed with talent — Simms noted they’re effectively All-Star teams at the quarterback and skill positions. Simms wants to see which team can dictate their style of play.

“Tampa Bay, they are a power team on both sides of the ball,” Simms says. “They can play that way and they have tremendous size. You know, we always just talk about the skill, but sooner or later it comes down to power, too, and Tampa Bay’s offensive line is powerful, I think their defensive line’s powerful. Now, when I look at Kansas City, it’s different. Offense, man, it’s movement, it’s everything to disguise and help their offensive line out, but they do have power on the defensive side. They have great size, and they have a tremendous coach. And, you know, they’re so aggressive. That used to be bad, but by the time last year about midway through the season, their aggressive defense became part of who they were and these cover guys got better. And look, they would not have won last year’s Super Bowl, I don’t think, if they didn’t have Steve Spagnuolo as a defensive coordinator.”

Fletcher expects the Chiefs to look to make Tom Brady work the ball down the field through the air, being aggressive in looking to take away the run so the Bucs can’t chew clock and keep Patrick Mahomes on the sidelines, while also being keenly aware of the Bucs’ big play threat as well. When it’s the Bucs’ turn to play defense, he anticipates Todd Bowles to dial it up with pressure to try and keep Mahomes from extending plays while leaning on Devin White’s speed to chase down the underneath stuff.

“Because the Chiefs are such an explosive offense, if you’re going to allow Patrick Mahomes to have time to get outside the pocket to create plays — which he’s as good as anybody in the league at — when he gets outside the pocket and buys time it’s hard for a defense or for a defender to cover a Tyreek Hill or Travis Kelce, or some of the other playmakers four and five and six seconds,” Fletcher says. “And when you look at the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, they love to bring pressure, I don’t think they’re gonna vary much from what they’ve done in the past in terms of blitzing and trying to get pressure on the quarterback. The Chiefs are going to be without their starting left tackle, so I’m sure they’ll try to scheme a way to take advantage of that. So going into the game, I believe that Todd Bowles is gonna dial up pressure and he may dial it up even more than he has in the past.”

From a coaching perspective, what stands out to Bill Cowher is the way these coaching staffs have adapted to their personnel and maximized the talent they have on both sides of the ball to shape their identities. That aggression from Kansas City’s defense takes advantage of their speed, while the Bucs are built to dominate in the front seven, and Bowles has leaned on that group to do damage and set the tone.

Offensively, Byron Leftwich and Bruce Arians needed to adapt this season to Brady, who wants to throw underneath more than Jameis Winston did, and they’ve found the balance between that and the deep passes they love to their dynamic pass catchers. On the other side, Eric Bieniemy and Andy Reid have embraced their generational quarterback’s gifts, and allowed Mahomes the freedom to explore his abilities fully while also understanding how to balance their big play ability with dominating possession, something that is easier with an all-everything tight end in Kelce.

With those two offenses being as talented as they are, Cowher expects a pair of factors to decide this game.

“I love that mantra that they’re both going to have went into this,” Cowher says. “It’s going to be move, counter move. Shot, take a shot, and can you respond. And so I always think it comes down to games like this, certainly the turnovers, we always talk about that, but to me, who can finish drives. I just go back and just look at the last few games. Tampa Bay, they stopped Kansas City in the red zone three different times. They were 0-for-3 in red zone. They stopped Aaron Rodgers three times and made them kick a field goal or at least make that decision and kick the field. So defenses are gonna give, they’re gonna take. But the ability to finish drives, the ability to hold people to field goals, to me is the most interesting.”

On the field, Trask is most interested to see how the Chiefs handle the excellent pass rush of the Bucs without starting left tackle Eric Fischer. Off of it, the former Raiders executive took stock of how these front offices assembled championship rosters. She notes how the two teams are constructed from the top down, with the great talent on the field that has sacrificed at times for the greater good — Mahomes, for example, made sure that the Chiefs also got an extension done with All-Pro defensive lineman Chris Jones last offseason as they were working on a deal with him, too.

She also, like Cowher, highlighted the coaching staffs and how they’ve pulled all of it together to create two teams with unique identities, but both following the key tenants of successful team-building.

“Look, the word ‘team’ is significant,” Trask says. “And you need to have a team that is more than an accumulation of individuals. Yes, it absolutely matters who is on the field and who is on that roster. But what we see with both of these teams is tremendous coaching. And what I think the best coaches do is they best position their players to be their best.

“So it is the job of the front office to bring in good players,” Trask continues. “And it is the job of the front office to also bring in the best coaching staff they can. And I believe the four most important words, not only with respect to a football team, and not only with respect to winning and building the environment you referenced, but all businesses are communicate, cooperate, collaborate, and coordinate. And if you are not as an organization, from top to bottom and throughout the organization, communicating, cooperating, collaborating, and coordinating, you’re not going to be your best.”

From a refereeing perspective, the task for Carl Cheffers and his crew is going to be very different depending on which offense is on the field. As Steratore explained, the points of emphasis and things the officials have to be paying attention to are very different because of the two different offensive styles, but he expects there to be a lot of work and pressure on the downfield officials.

“Brady is a very traditional pocket type quarterback, he very rarely goes outside of the pocket,” Steratore says. “So illegal contact and the fouls that pertain to the quarterback being in the pocket apply more there. Where Patrick Mahomes, with an RPO, which shows you run, it’s pass, he scrambles, is he in the pocket is he not, and that’s just breaking down, you know, the passing game a little. For officials that are working the receivers that you go through that step process, then to look back to make sure he is in the pocket and the ball is not gone, or it’s not a run. So many of those things, and then in this game, we have tight ends on both sides of the ball that can really do amazing things. And when tight ends can pressure and push the middle of the field, and with the speed that they both have on the outsides, the three officials that are downfield, that’ll work the majority of the deeper routes, they’ll be pressed into different types of coverages all day.”

Foo Fighters finally released their tenth album, Medicine At Midnight, his past Friday. The album faced a lengthy delay as a result of the coronavirus pandemic, and in a recent interview with Variety, Greg Kurstin, who co-produced it, spoke about the lengthy road to completion.

“We got to really experiment with all these weird locations in the house,” Kurstin said regarding the property the band rented in San Fernando Valley to record it. “We’d set up the drums in the living room or, for “Shame Shame,” in the stairwell in like a three-foot-by-three-foot space.” He added, “You’d arrive at the house and some people would be hanging outside. We had a kitchen there. It was really fun to have this relaxed environment.”

He also discussed the band’s evolution since their last album, 2017’s Concrete And Gold.

I feel like we’ve gotten to some different territory on this album. In my experience from the last one, Dave would bring in a guitar riff and that would be the seed of a song; we develop it from that. But this one was coming from the drums a lot. Like “Shame Shame” started as a drum groove. Dave would say, “I want to do something like this,” and he’d drum on his legs with his hands, or sort of sing the beat. Then he would develop that into this amazing song. It was really cool to see that evolution[…] There’s almost a dance element to some of the beats, that feels very different from previous albums.

Medicine At Midnight is out now via Roswell/RCA. Get it here.

(via Variety)

To most people, Kevin Sorbo is that guy who played Hercules on a TV show over 20 years ago. What some might not know is he’s a big outspoken conservative — almost as huge as Scott Baio, who was on a TV show over 30 years ago. If he makes news at all these days, it’s for getting owned by Lucy Lawless, star of the Hercules spin-off Xena: Warrior Princess, after he tweeted baseless lies about the failed MAGA coup. Cut to a few weeks later and he’s getting dragged online again, this time for making fun of Hunter Biden’s drug addiction.

“Tell Hunter Biden he forgot to pick up his lap pipe,” wrote the onetime Kull the Conqueror. “I mean crack top. I mean, I… you know the thing.”

The president’s son has long been a fixation of the far right, who’ve singled him out for alleged corruption, even by the former president’s corrupt sons. They also like to focus on Hunter’s struggles with drug and alcohol addiction, sometimes even mocking his father for caring about his son’s personal issues. So when someone who has been outspoken about his deep Christian beliefs thought it was a good idea to make fun of someone’s addiction issues, people remembered that he existed.

To his credit, Sorbo has eked out a career, albeit by pandering to the far right. He played a mean atheist professor in the first in the God’s Not Dead series, and he also wrote, directed, and starred in Let There Be Light, in which he played a mean atheist who comes to believe in the Christian god. What other actors can say they can only play two roles: Hercules or jerky non-believers? That’s range!

If it seems like just last week when I was trying my best to help readers sort through the nightmare of a potential NBA All-Star Game … oh, wait, it was! This week, more concern from readers about which players have spoken up for or against All-Star, but more specifically, why is it so many haven’t? Then, a question about snacking comforts for the relocated Toronto Raptors. But first, help for a reader’s “friend” “Brad” in D.C. who we’re told no matter how much he just wants to work hard and do his job, no one will leave alone, not to mention quit trying to acquire.

If you have NBA questions you want answered in the future, email them to [email protected].

Dear Ann Landry Fields, my friend Brad is working for a company that’s not doing well. They’ve made some bad acquisitions recently, they haven’t developed any young employees into difference makers, and they even gave this one Latvian guy a HUGE raise just because he had a productive quarter and now he’s totally slacking!

People keep telling him he should change his job, and headhunters are constantly harassing him. But he says he’s really happy there! It’s the only place he’s ever worked, he gets along great with the boss, and he got a very generous raise about a year ago. Plus, if his performance reviews are good — he’s honestly kicking butt this year — he’s looking at an even bigger raise!

Some people in his industry move around all the time, but he’s just not interested. When trade publications are constantly talking about his potential new jobs and publicly suggesting where he should go, it gets very stressful for him. How do we get people to leave Brad alone and believe him when he says he isn’t looking for a new job?

— Despondent in DC

Let me just say that Brad sounds like a stand up guy, Despondent, and I’ll bet he’s the kind of person who checks with everyone before he kills the coffee and then dumps the grinds from the coffee maker and rinses the basket out.

Now, you mention Brad’s constantly getting headhunted, so I’ll bet he has a LinkedIn. If he hasn’t tried it already, maybe he wants to start sharing some articles about job loyalty, or even just some vague stock images. Granted, he could pretty quickly be labeled a shill by his coworkers so that’s a risky move, even for someone as well-liked as Brad, so what I propose is this: Let the work speak for him.

In a lot of jobs, I would caution that this isn’t such a great strategy, if only because employers are rarely paying attention. In fact many would be sort of stoked if you did not self-advocate, or bring up benchmarks and achievements, because that way they don’t have to acknowledge the work in any way that might lead to a more equity: a raise, a promotion, etc.

But in Brad’s case, if his colleagues are slacking and there’s this much outside interest around the guy, his value to his employer is only going to go up. It’s going to go up even more if Brad continues to clock in, carry the team company, and clean up at the (coffee) basket. The nice advantage to this strategy for your buddy Brad, too, is that if in the end he decides he’d like to test the waters elsewhere, whoever he meets with is going to take a look at that loyalty and sustained effort and thing whoa, this guy’s something special.

People like to complain about crappy jobs so much that they’ll even complain about what they perceive to be other people’s crappy jobs. It would be kind of a nice, universal human experience if it didn’t underscore the larger and more problematic human experience of people being consistently taken advantage of by those in higher positions of perceived power! All to say, as long as Brad thinks it’s sustainable and the job isn’t taking a physical toll on him, then he’s in the best position to secure himself a raise, promotion, new position, whatever he’s after. He just has to keep being himself.

What’s your take on the crickets from the players re: NBA ASG/(ASW?) It feels like they want this to happen since they’re already playing anyways.

Lastly, should they just ask Chuck and Shaq to coach both teams instead of risking the coaches who don’t have much to gain for being part of this sideshow?

Regards,

JD

For transparency and to other readers I’ll add that when JD sent this question in, the only NBA player who had gone on record to call out the NBA’s plan to hold an All-Star Game was the Kings’ De’Aaron Fox, who said the following: “I mean, if I’m gonna be brutally honest, I think it’s stupid. If we have to wear masks and do all this for a regular game, then what’s the point of bringing the All-Star Game back? Money makes the world go ’round, so, it is what it is.”

Fox went on to acknowledge that if he were voted in he would play, because otherwise he would be fined. Aside from the All-Star Game being a reckless, bad idea, the reality that a player would get fined if they wanted to opt-out undermines completely the concept of player autonomy in a season we’re supposed to believe is showcasing it at an all time, collective high.

It appeared to be a third rail that no one wanted to touch, but then the loudest voice in the league somewhat sternly spoke up:

In his postgame Thursday, LeBron James said he had “zero energy and zero excitement about an All-Star Game this year” and that it was it was “pretty much a slap in the face.”

James went on to talk about how long the previous season had been for himself and his teammates, how short the break was between seasons, and how at the beginning of this season, one of the incentives had been the promise of no All-Star Game, only the week-long break that typically follows it. He talked about the reality of the ongoing pandemic and the dangers of playing in a city like Atlanta where things are currently open, hitting starkly on a glaring point that the NBA has been able to avoid as if by its refusal to acknowledge alone, a strange thing to think the league needs reminding of but here we are.

“Obviously the pandemic has absolutely nothing to do with it,” James said in a clarifying callout after all the cloying make-believe with public health the NBA has been engaged in.

The hope is that with James having said his piece, other players will follow. Some won’t, maybe because of internal team pressure, because they aren’t in contention for voting, because they aren’t asked, or because yes, like you said, some might figure they’re already playing anyway and a pay bump wouldn’t be the worst thing. Some might want to play! At the very least, I’m glad a couple of players are reminding the league about the current, not great state of affairs.

And sure, Chuck and Shaq can coach, if only for a 3-point-less game that goes on for a new kind of forever even longer than the All-Star Game already takes.

Dear Ann Landry,

The 2019 Raptors were famously lifted by a late-night trip to an Insomnia Cookies in Philadelphia. With Tampa getting not one but TWO Insomnia Cookies locations, can this turn things around for the Raptors, or will it be too late since nine of their next 10 are on the road? More importantly, what is the one meal or social excursion you would take your team on to improve the vibes if you were a team captain?

Signed,

Taking Back Sundiata Gaines

Unfortunately the state of the Raptors is still so tender and fraught to me that when I first read this through I thought, oh no, what if it reminds them of Kawhi? And from there, the departure of Serge Ibaka, and from there Marc Gasol, ’til none of it was about cookies anymore. Anyway, it’s a 7-minute drive on the freeway and 9-minute drive if Kyle Lowry doesn’t want to pay tolls (he wouldn’t) to get from Amalie Arena to the closest Insomnia location, but I think it’s safer to say that Yuta Watanabe or Malachai Flynn are getting sent to pick up some boxes for the plane.

For me, Taking Back Sundiata Gaines, if we’re talking vibes in and around Tampa, it might be hokey but I’m like, has anyone taken these guys on a fan boat tour yet? I had a friend do this for me the one time I was there, at a place down south of Naples where the fan boat operator looked to have had his fair share of run ins with the front end of a gator but talked with such love and care about the coastal and Everglades ecosystem, plus we saw some baby swamp raccoons. The guy also gunned it, and had a hard time not doing a donut every 10-15 seconds, which ended up being very bonding for the rag tag group of the six of us on that boat on account of all the screaming and fear of being launched into brackish, reptilian waters. That might be good for Toronto right now.

It’s been five years since we lost David Bowie, and while he’s best known for his many classic albums, he also found time to appear in a handful of sometimes excellent movies. Among his finest big screen turns — and one of the only ones in which he was a lead, not a scene-stealing supporting player — was 1976’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, a mind-blowing, deeply sad sci-fi, in which he played an alien who comes to Earth in a failed attempt to save his home planet.

Now that film has become the latest in the remake carousel. As per Entertainment Weekly, Paramount+ has greenlit a limited TV series version, which will star Chiwetel Ejiofor as the extraterrestrial loner. The showrunners are Alex Kurtzman — the big Hollywood player behind the Star Trek movie reboot — and Jenny Lumet, daughter of Dog Day Afternoon director Sidney and herself the writer of the Anne Hathaway drama Rachel Getting Married.

Mind you, this The Man Who Fell to Earth not necessarily a straight remake. It will simply be another adaptation of the novel by Walter Tevis, author of such novels as The Hustler (and its sequel The Color of Money) as well as The Queen’s Gambit, which was turned into a much-watched Netflix show. The book is a bit different from the 1976 movie, which is singular in its artiness and would be hard for anyone to redo. Still, good on Ejiofor, who gets to step into the same shoes as The Thin White Duke.

(Via EW)

HER did not drop an album in 2020, but the Cali-born singer remained very active, and it looks like the same will happen this year. Her official debut album is set to drop at some point this year. In the meantime, she brought her talents to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to perform her latest single “Fight For You,” which can be found on the soundtrack for the upcoming film Judas And The Black Messiah.

Earlier this month, HER earned her first Golden Globe nomination, which she received for — that’s right — “Fight For You,” which was nominated for Best Original Song. This comes after HER delivered a number of singles in 2020, including “Comfortable,” “Damage,” and “Hold Us Together.” She also collaborated with the likes of Jazmine Sullivan, Jhene Aiko, and A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. And she appeared on Saturday Night Live, where she performed “Damage” and “Hold On.” Last year also saw HER become the first Black female artist to receive a signature Fender guitar.

HER will soon perform “America The Beautiful” at Super Bowl LV on Sunday. She will also join Miley Cyrus and others for Verizon’s Super Bowl after-party concert.

You can watch her performance in the video above

Any hopes that 2021 would at least be less weird than 2020 were quickly dashed. Exhibit A (of already too many): Armie Hammer, acclaimed actor of The Social Network and Call Me By Your Name, has been accused of sending messages to women that were…bizarre, to say the least. A career that seemed to be skyrocketing has suddenly crashed into the earth, with him dropping out of one project after another. Now he’s even been dropped by his agency.

This comes from The Hollywood Reporter, who says that WME has cut ties with the actor amidst the allegations. His publicist has also reportedly severed ties. Said messages were revealed by multiple women, and they include beyond kinky sexual fantasies involving abuse and even cannibalism. Other women have stepped forward with similar allegations. Hammer has denied the claims.

Since being accused, Hammer has stepped out of a number of projects. There was The Offer, Paramount+’s lavish behind-the-scenes look at the making of The Godfather, in which he was to star. He also resigned from an as-yet-untitled action rom-com opposite Jennifer Lopez. (He was replaced by Josh Duhamel.) Meanwhile, his Call Me By Your Name director and co-star, Luca Guadagnino and Timothée Chalamet, are reportedly considering making a movie about cannibalism, without Hammer, with whom they are (were?) supposed to reunite for a CMBYN sequel. In other words, we continue to live in interesting times.

(Via THR)

Internet Money spared no shortage of features on their 2020 album B4 The Storm, which saw verses from the likes of Roddy Ricch, Wiz Khalifa, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, and more. Juice WLRD‘s posthumous bars can also be heard alongside Trippie Redd on their sweltering collaboration “Blast Off.” Now, Internet Money follows the album’s release with an animated video to Juice WRLD and Trippie Redd’s track.

This past December marked one year since Juice WRLD’s tragic death, but Internet Money’s new visual honors the late rapper in their own way: by depicting him as a zombie hunter in a post-apocalyptic universe. In the animated clip, Juice WRLD and Trippie Redd team up to fight monsters and take down a giant demon.

The song is one of several posthumous tracks from Juice WRLD. Just a few weeks ago, DJ Scheme released his Juice WRLD-featuring track “Buck 50” and before that, Juice WRLD’s posthumous album Legends Never Die was released. The album was wildly successful and debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart. Though lots of the rapper’s music has been released, there could be countless others on the way as it was revealed that he had recorded nearly 2,000 songs before his untimely passing.

Watch Internet Money’s “Blast Off” video above.

B4 The Storm is out now via Internet Money/10K Projects. Get it here.

Some of the artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

With the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the NBA season hasn’t gone as smoothly as hoped. Numerous games have been postponed and several players have missed time because of either testing positive for the virus or being in contact with someone who did. Even still, the league is attempting to push forward with plans to hold an All-Star in Atlanta next month, despite several players coming out against it.

Friday night gave us the latest pandemic-related ordeal, as Kevin Durant was ultimately forced to exit the Nets’ game against the Raptors due to the league’s health and safety protocols. Durant was initially held out for the start of the game, then later took the court, before once against being removed after officials determined that Durant had been in contact with an individual who recently tested positive.

He took to social media after the game to express his frustration in a series of incensed tweets, criticizing the NBA directly for what he sees as an inconsistent application of the league’s contact-tracing measures. After the game, James Harden told reporters that he and he rest of the team were likewise frustrated by the situation.

“It’s frustrating. … I don’t understand.”

James Harden was upset with the contact tracing situation involving Kevin Durant during tonight’s game.

(via @SNYNets)pic.twitter.com/ieF1K5h5Jt

— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) February 6, 2021

The Nets ended up falling to the Raptors, 123-117, marking their fourth loss in the last 10 games after putting together a nice string of victories. Harden has a point about the toll the pandemic has taken on the league as a whole, with so many games postponed and so many players in and out of the lineup for teams across the league and the difficulty of maintaining any kind of consistency or momentum amid all of that turmoil.

Yet, it’s unclear what a reasonable solution might be to any of the myriad problems that have cropped up, given that the league has been reluctant to pause the season or revisit the idea of a Bubble scenario. For now, it appears it will be business as usual for the NBA during a time when the world is anything but normal.