Month: March 2021

In the video for Fireboy DML’s “Champion,” the 25-year-old Abeokuta, Ogun, Nigeria native recruits burgeoning Inglewood-born superstar D Smoke as the two recite defiant, self-confident lyrics over an uptempo Afropop beat. The two indie labelmates stage an international link-up to deliver a fist-pumping anthem amid sweeping backdrops, declaring themselves legends in the making as a choir sings the refrain.

Fireboy DML is half a year removed from his latest full-length release, the Headie-winning Apollo. The project obtained Best R&B Album honors earlier this year, while Fireboy himself earned a Viewer’s Choice award. The album single “Tattoo” also won Best R&B Single. Last month, Fireboy told DJ Booth of “Champion,” “I want to go down a legend. I want my music to live forever and continue to change people’s lives long after I’m gone. I also want to be remembered not just as a good musician but as a good person.”

D Smoke will seek to follow-up on his collaborator’s success at this year’s Grammy Awards later this month. His album Black Habits is up for Best Rap Album while the Netflix Rhythm + Flow winner also contends for Best New Artist.

Watch Fireboy DML’s “Champion” video featuring D Smoke above.

Shooting on the final season of The Walking Dead began a few weeks ago in Georgia, and although the series is straying some from the source material for the season 10 bonus episodes, it looks like the series is jumping back on the tracks for the final season.

There’s more evidence in the latest bit of casting on the show. Deadline is reporting that AMC has signed on Michael James Shaw (Blood & Treasure) as a series regular in the final season. He will play Mercer. Mercer is, indeed, a big deal character. There will probably several more additions to the final season, but there are three crucial additions: Mercer, Sebastian Milton, and Pamela Milton.

Pamela Milton is the leader of The Commonwealth, Sebastian Milton is her bratty son, and Mercer is an officer of the Commonwealth military, and he provides personal security to Sebastian Milton, although Mercer is not a fan — he is loyal, however, to his mother, Pamela. Mercer is also romantically linked Princess, played by Paola Lázaro. His character in the comics — where he is introduced in Issue #177 — also has a distinctive mohawk.

Shaw also played Agent Mike in Limitless, as well as Corvus Glaive in Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame. The Walking Dead is currently airing on Sundays on AMC. The final season will kick off in the fall.

(Via Deadline)

To be perfectly honest — following the example set by the late, great Christopher Wallace himself — the world didn’t need another Biggie Smalls documentary. The details of The Notorious B.I.G’s life and death have been thoroughly picked over by now, nearly 23 years later, with dozens of works from books and films to podcasts and television series providing reams of conjecture, speculation, and solemn reflection on the gritty self-styled King Of New York who rose from the streets of Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn to become the epitome of the “ashy to classy” archetype established by hip-hop in the decades since.

That didn’t stop Netflix from releasing yet another entry to the growing canon of works about the Brooklyn big man this week, the hyperfocused and touchingly graceful Biggie: I Got A Story To Tell. But where this more down-to-earth production differs from those that came before it is its intent attention to Christopher, the person at the center of the mythos, rather than on the lurid details of his beef with Tupac or his violent, unsolved death in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997.

Nearly an hour of the film’s 90-minute runtime is devoted to Wallace’s life before he released his game-changing debut album, Ready To Die, in 1994. Through interviews with his mother, Voletta Wallace, and unseen archival footage provided by Big’s right-hand man, Damion “D-Roc” Butler, a clearer picture of Christopher Wallace is developed throughout. From his trips to visit his mother’s family in her native Jamaica to the early musical education he received from a neighbor, jazz musician Donald Harrison, we can see the foundation of his unique, seismic flow and outsized stage persona.

In one particularly engaging scene, Harrison breaks down how Big’s flow imitated the rat-a-tat tapping of a bebop drummer, his percussive delivery playing invisible notes as he freestyled on corners. Scenes like this one offer new lenses through which to view iconic moments like Big’s sidewalk battle with Supreme; while familiarity can breed contempt, Harrison’s quick jazz lesson gives viewers new context and deeper understanding of not just the battle, but Big’s songwriting approach as a whole.

The film also touches on Big’s time spent dealing drugs around the corner from the apartment he shared with his mother, this time with the added texture of commentary from the men who stood out there with him. One, an elder ex-hustler named Chico Del Vec, spends much of his intro fussing at the cameraman that he doesn’t want to get into details of “the game” before crisply detailing the mentality that drove young boys like Big and his friends into it with a veteran’s well-weathered perspective. “If you wasn’t into hustling, good in sports, or going to school, you was a nobody,” he summarizes.

But Big’s cohort is also clear-eyed about their bad decisions as well. Here, just 30 minutes in, the film crystallizes the core concepts of hip-hop, its artifice and artfulness, its originality and creativity, and its universality. These 14-year-old kids had no clue of the world beyond their borough; as Big explains in an interview clip of his breakout hit “Juicy,” he didn’t know that there was money in rap. He only knew what he saw on the covers of magazines, that his favorite rappers wore gold chains and posed with flashy new cars. It never occurred to him that his hazy childhood vision of becoming an art dealer could be every bit as lucrative (and, in truth, probably more so, the way contracts were structured in those days).

It’s what makes Big — and his story — the perfect avatar of hip-hop, from its artists to its fans. He could have been any one of them. By focusing on his humble beginnings, I Got A Story To Tell finally humanizes him in a way few of the biopics or mini-series ever could because the focus shifts away from the big, pivotal moments of a hip-hop legend’s life to tell a simpler story about a boy with a dream, who hung out with his friends, got into trouble, got scared straight by a tragic loss, and persevered through normal, relatable doubts to remain as close to still being the person he always was when fame finally found him.

Of course, staying away from the more familiar notes of his greater life story allows the film to polish his rough edges, such as his alleged abuse of his romantic partners — which again, reflects a broader tendency in hip-hop and pop culture of flattening and simplifying complicated people. At one point early on, Sean Combs — you know he had to make an appearance here, although the film wisely minimizes his presence — notes, “You always were able to hear some remnants of previous rap artists. This guy, I don’t know where he came from with his cadence, with his rhythms, with his sound…” From Compton rapper King Tee, Puff.

But, then again, those rough edges are plain to see in other places. The point of Netflix’s documentary is to add another layer of context and humanity to the legend. It explains a little more of the hows and whys surrounding Big. When the film ends — as the 2009 biopic Notorious did — just after Big’s celebratory 1997 memorial in his hometown, it does so with a better understanding of the person who actually died, beyond the loss of his musical potential. So, did the world need another Biggie Smalls documentary? The answer is still “no,” but we’re all better for this one’s existence.

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

There are a lot of players over the years who could reasonably qualify as All-Star snubs, who for one reason or another never made the cut. After all, there’s only so many roster spots available each year. Mike Conley, for instance, once again became a casualty of that reality this season, despite playing some of the best basketball of his career on the league-leading Jazz.

But that’s not what this list is about. Instead of litigating the merits of all those so-called snubs, we’re going to spotlight the players we would’ve most liked to see in an All-Star Game setting, purely for the entertainment value they brought to the game with their swagger and their showmanship.

There’s some overlap, to be sure. Some of these guys had a legitimate All-Star case at one point or another. Others, well, not so much. The irony is that the latter comprise some of the more exciting what-if scenarios.

Jamal Crawford

JCrossover has the dubious distinction of boasting the most career points by a player who never made an All-Star team. Crawford has also hinted that he has multiple never-before-seen moves he’s been saving for just such a setting. Alas, we’ll go to our graves wondering what he had left up his sleeve.

Fortunately for us, Crawford approached every contest like it was an All-Star game, bringing a joy and free-wheeling energy to the court that always ratcheted up the entertainment factor. Case in point: his legendary “Shake-n-Bake” move is one of the filthiest things we’ve ever seen attempted in the flow of an actual game. Just ask Kirk Hinrich.

It’s just one of many tools in an arsenal that has been stealing souls for the better part of two decades, and even if he never got the chance to put the whole repertoire on display at All-Star Weekend, his career highlight reel is a nice consolation prize.

Jason Williams

God put Jason Williams on this Earth to play in an All-Star game. The fact that we never got to see him in action at the NBA’s annual event is a travesty. We did, however, get a brief glimpse of White Chocolate’s otherworldly magic during the Rookie Challenge game in 2000, when he pulled off an elbow-pass to Raef LaFrenz that we’re still marveling at to this day.

Still, that barely scratches the surface of what J-Will was capable of. His combination of ball-fakes, no-look passes, and crossover moves would’ve broken social media if he played in this era, and an All-Star game would’ve offered him exactly the setting he deserved to open up his whole bag of tricks.

Rafer “Skip to My Lou” Alston

Skip to My Lou was one of the few streetball legends to successfully make the transition into mainstream basketball. He even managed to carve out a nice little NBA career that spanned multiple teams and included a Finals appearance with the Orlando Magic in 2009.

Alston dialed down his streetball persona significantly in order to placate his coaches and prove he could thrive in an organized setting, but he could transform from Alston to Skip at the drop of a hat and take us back to the playground with a flurry of moves, like the ones he broke out against Sasha Vujacic one time for no particular reason other than because he could.

Like the other guys on this list, Alston obviously would’ve thrived in an All-Star game. He was a gifted entertainer who understood how to work the crowd, and he had a dazzling array of moves to back it up.

Rod Strickland

Both literal and spiritual godfather to Kyrie Irving, Rod Strickland isn’t a name that comes up very often anymore, unless Wu-Tang’s “Triumph” still figures as heavily into your rotation as it does ours. For those of us who remember, Strickland was the embodiment of New York City basketball, able to break down any defender you put in front of him and an O.G. Jelly Fam finisher around the rim.

Strickland is one of the guys on this list that had a legitimate All-Star claim, but he also deserves more recognition as one of the smoothest and most electrifying point guards of his generation.

Arvydas Sabonis

It’s nearly impossible to know how to properly frame Sabonis’ career in way that does it justice. At 7’3, he was the prototypical unicorn of his era, a dead-eye long-range shooter with eyes in the back of his head who could run the floor and defend with the best of them. Basically, a more athletic Nikola Jokic.

Thanks to the Cold War, we were robbed of seeing him in action at the peak of his powers, and by the time he reached the NBA at age 32, injuries had taken their toll. Yet, even then, Sabonis became a folk hero during his time in Portland, dropping filthy no-look dimes to his teammates on a nightly basis and going toe-to-toe with some of the best centers of the era despite his age and diminished physical abilities.

What we wouldn’t give to have seen him in his prime against the league’s best. However, we suppose there is some poetic justice in his son Domantas carrying on the legacy and representing the family name in the All-Star game for the second straight year.

Barely four days after the 2020 presidential election that experts and officials warned would take weeks to finish counting, Rudy Giuliani gave an outdoor press conference next to a sex shop where he declared Donald Trump the winner and embarked on a months-long campaign of getting absolutely wrecked in court thanks to a complete lack of evidence to back up that claim. On top of those very public and humiliating losses, Giuliani became the target of not one, but two multi-billion dollar lawsuits from election software companies that he slandered and defamed in his failed attempt to prove the election was stolen. While you’d think that would have taught Rudy a lesson, just this week he was banned from YouTube for continuing to push the “Big Lie” that Trump won.

So with all of that in mind, you can only imagine the reactions Giuliani received when he took to Twitter on Wednesday evening to lecture people on the dangers of spreading misinformation. “Misinformation has become a daily occurrence on social media platforms,” Giuliani tweeted with not a whiff of irony whatsoever. “If continued unaddressed, it will eventually lead to Jefferson’s worst nightmare of a poorly informed citizenry, which he saw as the greatest danger to democracy.”

Included in the tweet was a link to Giuliani’s latest video on Rumble, which is coincidentally the same video app where Donald Trump Jr. is currently posting insane rants in front of a wall of guns. Naturally, that fun tidbit didn’t help Giuliani’s credibility as he proceeded to get roasted on social media for actually thinking he’s the moral arbiter of what is or isn’t misinformation.

(Via Rudy W. Giuliani on Twitter)

Is it possible for a young star to become too good, too quickly? Oklahoma City has done an incredible job resetting their assets after the Russell Westbrook Era, and find themselves with an arsenal of picks and three straight deep draft classes to restock from. Does that mean they’ll get back to the NBA Finals with a new young core in the future? Is it even possible for lightning to strike twice and for the Thunder to draft a Hall of Famer in three straight drafts again? Those questions will be answered in due time, but for now, they already have a budding star on their roster in third-year point guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.

Chris Paul, Paul George, Westbrook, Kevin Durant and James Harden have all played for this team in the last decade, and they’re all gone. All sacrificed for the future, which may never come. The discourse surrounding the NBA is oftentimes too preoccupied with the future, focusing on assets and draft capital and equity, to appreciate what it’s got right in front of it, and that might be happening for OKC. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander won’t be an All-Star this season, but statistically, he’s basically indistinguishable from one. As of this writing, he’s averaging 22.9 points, 5.2 rebounds and 6.2 assists, and he’s shooting 50.8 percent from the field, 41.0 percent from three and 78.8 percent from the free throw line. Since returning from a knee injury, he’s had three 25-plus point games, including a career high 42 against San Antonio.

Compared to last season, it’s a jump, but perhaps not a superstar one until you factor in how the team around him has changed. There’s no Chris Paul, no Dennis Schröder, and no Steven Adams. The second best player on this team is likely 34-year-old Al Horford, who has only played in 22 games. Luguentz Dort and Hamidou Diallo have also been good, but neither is exactly an electric scorer (though both have improved). To take a leap in both production and, more importantly, efficiency in a season in which you lose most of the top-end talent around you, is extremely rare.

Gilgeous-Alexander has always been a uniquely talented shot creator. A 6’6’’ guard who plays mostly below the rim and has a relatively slow (if accurate) jumper, but he’s an elite “wiggle” guy, who uses his length, footwork, creativity and touch to basically manufacture shots in the paint out of nothing against set defenses. It’s partly why the Thunder’s relative lack of secondary scoring talent doesn’t really matter to him. When he’s right, he’s not really hindered by tough defenses. Most guards are too small, while most wings are too slow. Before now, particularly during his rookie year with the Clippers, Shai had trouble finishing over and around rim protectors, but his craft and ability to create distance between himself and the defense has almost eliminated that concern from his game entirely. In 2019, he was blocked on just over 16% of all his attempts in the restricted area (41 times in 253 attempts). Last season that number plummeted down to just over 9% (34 times in 365 attempts), while this season’s rate has ticked up slightly (10.1%, or 16 times in 157 attempts), his overall rise in efficiency can be most easily traced to his higher number of three point attempts overall, with a three-point attempt rate of .317 compared to .247 last season. Shai’s free throw rate has climbed upwards as well, landing at a very healthy .435 this season as compared to .352 last year and .272 as a rookie.

What all of these advances in getting to the line and hitting threes has done is fully opened the floor for Shai to do what he may potentially be the best in the entire league at: self-creating quality looks against set defenders.

His willingness to shoot more from three and efficiency in doing so, creates the space to do things like this to defenders, most of whom just have no shot against him by themselves. He’s too quick and too unpredictable. People use “wrong-footed layup” with Gilgeous-Alexander a lot, but to be completely honest, he doesn’t have a right or wrong foot. He’s a true outlier athlete, able to finish off either foot and with either hand.

Shai’s season serving as an understudy for Chris Paul, long the NBA’s premier two-point shot creator, seems to have accelerated this facet of his game and jettisoned his value as an iso scoring threat into overdrive. Of all 50 players this season currently averaging 16 or more points per game, he has the lowest percentage of two-point field goals assisted, with only 7.7 percent of all his made twos coming from assists. He’s also shooting 55.8 percent on all twos, putting him behind only James Harden and Jordan Clarkson among all top 50 scorers to score at least 75 percent of their twos unassisted.

To really drive home just how much of an outlier scorer Shai is, here’s how some of the elite iso players in the NBA are doing at these same stats this season.

This is every top 50 scorer with under 20 percent of their two point makes assisted. Think about how often players like Doncic, Paul, Lillard, and Young hunt for iso scoring opportunities, how often they hunt for weaker defenders and pounce, and then think about what it means that a 22-year-old on a mediocre at best team is able to do it better than any of them can. The final result here is a player who creates easy shots for himself and others off the dribble (Shai is the NBA’s current leader in drives per game at 25.2, with only Doncic, Young and Ja Morant above 20 a night), who can also finish from incredible angles when the defense adjusts. He’s already into fairly elite territory historically, as his place on this list of the most efficient creators in recent history shows.

What he’s going to look like when he’s 27 or 28 is probably as close to James Harden as anyone since James Harden, and what that means for the Thunder moving forward, with the embarrassment of riches they have, could mean the difference between taking a few more swings in the draft or combining those picks and going after an established star to pair with Shai sooner than most assumed when they began their rebuild this offseason. Either way, it’s hard to dispute Shai Gilgeous-Alexander’s ascendance into the NBA’s young elite at this point, just as it was hard to do for Luka last year and Nikola Jokić and Giannis before that.

Jacob Angeli Chansley, better known as the “QAnon Shaman,” gave his first interview on Thursday since being arrested for his involvement in the violent attack at the Capitol on January 6. Jail hasn’t been easy on the 33-year-old Arizona resident, who reportedly left a note on Mike Pence’s desk reading, “It’s only a matter of time, justice is coming”: Angeli is “wasting away” from the lack of organic food, including, presumably, muffins.

In an interview with 60 Minutes+ reporter Laurie Segall that aired on CBS This Morning, the QAnon Shaman described his actions on January 6.

“I sang a song, and that’s a part of shamanism, it’s about creating positive vibrations in a sacred chamber,” he explained. “I also stopped people from stealing and vandalizing that sacred space, the Senate. I actually stopped people from stealing muffins out of the break room.”

Well, I’ve heard enough. I don’t care if he did take part in a violent riot that left five people dead. The man saved some Senate break room muffins! Let him go! An agitated Chansley also said that his “actions were not an attack on this country. That is incorrect. That is inaccurate, entirely.”

“But Jake, legally, you were not allowed to be in what you’re calling the sacred chamber,” Segall said to Chansley.

“And that is… and that is the one very serious regret that I have, was believing that when we were waved in by police officers, that it was acceptable,” Chansley said.

Chansley, who faces up to 20 years behind bars, has accused former-president Donald Trump of grooming him and millions of others and he’s “wounded” by not receiving a pardon, but he still considers himself an American patriot.

“I consider myself a lover of my country. I consider myself a believer in the Constitution. I consider myself a believer in truth and our founding principles. I consider myself a believer in God,” he told Segall, adding that he regrets entering the Capitol “with every fiber of my being.”

But then who would have saved the muffins?

(Via CBS News)

Foo Fighters stopped by The Late Late Show to perform their Medicine At Midnight highlight “Waiting On A War” last night. While they were there, they also took a few minutes to chat with James Corden, and over the course of their conversation, one of Dave Grohl’s excellent old pre-show traditions was revealed.

Playing off the fact that Foo Fighters have referred to Medicine At Midnight as a “party album,” Corden asked some of the band members what music they’d play at a party. Taylor Hawkins jokingly answered, “Just yacht rock, always, all the time.” Rami Jaffee then chimed in with the Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever soundtrack, an album that Grohl recently highlighted as a must-listen for children. Chris Shiflett added, “I remember when I first joined the band, we had a big boombox backstage, and before every show, Dave would put on Juvenile, “Back That Azz Up.” As Grohl excitedly recited some of the lyrics and other band members laughed, Shiflett added, “That was our pre-show warm-up.”

Shiflett joined the band in 1999, so while the band was touring in support of that year’s album There Is Nothing Left To Lose, Grohl was probably back stage getting pumped up to the then-brand-new Juvenile song, which is also known as “Back That Thang Up” and features Mannie Fresh and Lil Wayne. “Back That Azz Up,” by the way, was actually Wayne’s first-ever single.

Watch the interview above and check out the band’s performance of “Waiting On A War” below.

Offset was right — they do anything for clout. “They” in this case is a Spanish rapper named Aaron Beltran, who is being accused of cutting off his roommate’s penis with a kitchen knife for a YouTube video. The Independent reports that the two men apparently had a mutual arrangement for the gruesome task in which Beltran would pay Andrew Breach, a British teacher staying with him in Zaragosa, Spain, between $240 and $3,000 depending on the video’s performance.

The two men were discovered when Breach went to the hospital for treatment. The doctors were able to reattach the member, then reported both men to the authorities. However, Breach later claimed that he was the one responsible for the amputation, claiming he was “unwell” at the time. However, authorities don’t believe the updated version of the story, and prosecutors are pursuing charges against Beltran despite the apparently consensual arrangement. Beltran denies the charges but is facing up to four years in prison as the case goes to trial.

An anonymous officer who spoke to The Independent is quoted, “When interviewing the victim in hospital he told us the accused cut off his penis. Andrew said he did not feel 100 percent a man and wanted to get rid of his penis. He agreed a deal with the accused to pay him €200 which would depend on how many views the video of the amputation received on YouTube. It was done on the basis of hits.”

If that’s truly the case, it was a bad plan; YouTube’s terms of service would see to it that such a video would be instantly demonetized and deleted.

The Gold Rush cocktail is a modern classic from the early-aughts New York bar scene. It’s a take on the classic Bee’s Knees (a Prohibition-era gin cocktail) but it replaces the gin with bourbon. Otherwise, we’re talking about a very straightforward sour variation.

This drink is extremely easy to make. If you have a minute to shake a cocktail, you can master this one.

Okay fine, there is one small hurdle to get over first. You need to make honey syrup. But don’t worry. That’s super easy and takes almost no time. We’ll tell you how to do it below.

Other than making honey syrup, you really only need a nice bourbon and some freshly squeezed (and pulp-free) lemon juice. Let’s get shaking!

Gold Rush

Ingredients:

• 2-oz. bourbon
• .75-oz. honey syrup*
• .75-oz. fresh lemon juice
• Lemon peel
• Ice

I’m using Longbranch from Wild Turkey. It’s not that I can’t live without Matthew McConaughey in my everyday life, it’s more that I really dig on his whiskey. It has this touch of creamed honey with a light citrus note that really works well in this particular cocktail, creating a notable sense of creamed honey on the palate.

Other than that, I squeezed two lemons and ran the juice through a sieve and into a small bottle. I got enough for about four cocktails from those two lemons.

*For the honey syrup:

Add one cup of honey to one cup of water in a small pot. Bring to a light simmer to emulsify (mix fully). Remove from heat and pour into a small jar or bottle. Cool completely before use. You can use the syrup for around two weeks in cocktails, hot toddies, or tea, etc.

What You’ll Need:

• Rocks glass
• Cocktail shaker
• Strainer
• Jigger
• Fruit peeler/pairing knife
• Juicer
• Sieve
• Small pot
• Jar or small bottle
• Spoon

Method:

• Add ice to a pre-chilled rocks glass, set it aside.
• Add bourbon, honey syrup, and lemon juice to a cocktail shaker.
• Add ice so that the shaker is about 1/2 full. Affix the lid and shake vigorously for around 20 seconds. The shaker should be frosted over.
• Strain the cocktail into the waiting rocks glass.
• Spritz the cocktail with the oils from the lemon peel and rub the peel around the glass. Drop it in the cocktail.
• Serve.

Bottom Line:

This is super refreshing. That creamed honey body really helps give this otherwise light cocktail a little heft and deep honeyed flavor. The texture is pure velvet with a nice edge of bourbon sneaking in.

The lemon really helps keep this bright and crushable. I can see drinking these well beyond spring and into the dog days of summer. Plus, once you have your mise en place ready, it takes less than a minute to make this. That’s a big win, folks!