Month: May 2021

While coveted career-spanning awards can sometimes feel canned or phoned-in, there’s nothing that feels phony about calling Drake the artist of the decade. With over 200 entries into the Billboard Hot 100, a whopping nine No. 1 albums, and the kind of culture-defining force that few artists ever get to wield, he has undoubtedly changed the face of rap, pop, and R&B all at the same time. But to accept this monumental award, he didn’t enlist any celebrities or famous friends to present it to him, opting instead to have his friends and family lining the back of the stage while he accepted it.

And it wasn’t just his mother and father, other relatives and closest friends who were there with him. As he walked out onstage, Drake was holding the hand of his young son, Adonis, and even gave the trophy to the toddler to hold while he gave his heartfelt, off-the-cuff acceptance speech. For those who remember the accusations leveled against Drizzy during one of the lowest moments of his career — Pusha T’s venomous declaration “you are hiding a child” — tonight’s acceptance felt like a direct rebuttal to that attack. Putting it to bed once and for all, Drake dedicated one of the biggest awards of his career to Adonis, holding him up for a final celebration before heading offstage.

Congratulations Drake, artist of the decade… now can we please get Certified Lover Boy in time for summer? Watch his full speech above.

Bad Bunny has been enjoying life over the last few months in ways that not too many musicians have. The Latin singer shared his fourth overall album — which was also his third project in the span of a year — with El Último Tour Del Mundo. He also became an official WWE champion after he won the 24/7 Championship belt back in February. He would continue to make appearances in the wrestling league, like April’s Wrestlemania where he absolutely stole the show. Shifting back to the music side of things, Bad Bunny took the stage at the 2021 Billboard Music Awards to perform “Te Deseo Lo Mejor.” The performance came after he took home an award for Top Latin Artist at the show and shared a thank you in a speech delivered strictly in Spanish.

The set comes after the Latin singer announced the dates for his El Último Tour Del Mundo tour. The string of shows kicks off in February 2022 and continues just under two months as Bad Bunny will land in popular cities across the United States. After announcing the tour, tickets for it sold out in less than a week making the 2022 tour the quickest-selling tour since Jay-Z and Beyonce’s 2018 On The Run II Tour and one of the fastest-selling in Ticketmaster history.

You can watch a clip of his performance in the video above.

El Último Tour Del Mundo is out now via Rimas Entertainment. Get it here.

This past Friday a lot of people were getting their pop mania on with the debut Olivia Rodrigo album, Sour, coming right on the heels of her third single “Good 4 U” — but another massive pop single was released that day, too. If you somehow missed K-pop sensation BTS quietly dropping song of the summer 2021 contender “Butter,” now is the time to remedy that.

After already taking home the award for top-selling song — for last year’s massive, record-breaking hit “Dynamite” — the band took the stage in Korea to put on a show for their global fanbase, kicking things off with a backstage set where they danced around pianos, other instruments and scaffolding. Bringing things into focus, the group finished the bulk of their performance singing and dancing in a stage designed to look like their very own Billboard award step and repeat. Nothing looks better than this group sashaying down a red carpet, spotlight on full blast, debuting “Butter.” It’s likely this single is just the first offering from another project from BTS, and what a strong way to kick that off if so. Check out their performance above, and look out for more new music coming from these superstars very soon.

In today’s GOP, the popular thing to do when you’ve said something controversial or upsetting or even just incorrect is not to apologize or fix it. It’s to double down. Last week, Marjorie Taylor Greene — the Trumpiest of the freshman class of congresspeople — earned even more scorn than usual when she compared mask mandates to the Holocaust and Nancy Pelosi to Nazis. It was widely seen as highly offensive, so of course when doubled down.

As per CNN, Greene was approached at an event on Saturday and asked about comments that were condemned by fellow Republican lawmakers as well as the American Jewish Congress, who said that “such comparisons demean the Holocaust & contaminate American political speech.” But Greene didn’t think she was being anti-Semitic.

“I stand by all of my statements. I said nothing wrong,” Greene told a KPNX reporter. “And I think any rational Jewish person didn’t like what happened in Nazi Germany, and any rational Jewish person doesn’t like what’s happening with overbearing mask mandates and overbearing vaccine policies.”

When asked if she understands why many would find what her comparison offensive, she avoided answering directly. Instead she asked the reporter if she understands “about being forced to wear a mask or being forced to have to take a vaccine or even have to say whether they’ve taken it or not.”

So there you have yet another classic double down. Meanwhile, Greene’s Republican colleagues have called out her insensitive and ahistorical comparison. Adam Kinzinger, the Illinois representative who’s being critical of the Trump part of his party, called her statements an “absolute sickness” while Liz Cheney, recently ousted from her position of power for not being Trumpy, dubbed them “evil lunacy.”

A CNN survey also found that fewer than half of House Republicans have publicly said that they’d get a COVID-19 vaccine. Whether they’ll get one anyway, in secret, to protect them from a highly contagious virus, is another matter.

(Via CNN)

The Weeknd is known for creating a new aesthetic and era for each album he’s released since his breakout project, House Of Balloons. The latest example came with his 2020 full-length effort, After Hours. From the red suit to his “injured” face wrapped in bandages, The Weeknd did an excellent job of defining the moments that came with his fourth album. However, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end and The Weeknd confirmed that the After Hours era is indeed over during the 2021 Billboard Music Awards. This announcement also came with exciting, yet vague news for fans.

While accepting the award for Top Hot 100 Song, The Weeknd used his speech to tease what’s to come. “The After Hours are done and the dawn is coming,” he declared. It’s very much possible that the singer just revealed the title of his fifth album to be The Dawn, but we’ll have to wait for him to confirm that. Regardless, it’s exciting to see that The Weeknd is already teasing fans with new music for a new era.

This is not the first time The Weeknd has hinted at new music in recent months. At the end of April, the singer shared a string of tweets that looked to build up excitement for the upcoming album. “Made so much magic in the small quarantined room,” he wrote in one tweet before adding, “nothing’s ever random… now just piecing it all together… it’s so beautiful.”

You can watch a clip of his speech above.

The Knicks and Hawks continued what has been a spectacular opening weekend of the NBA Playoffs with a tremendous, tense, back-and-forth affair that saw Atlanta swipe Game 1 on the road in a 107-105 win.

Trae Young starred for the Hawks with 32 points and 10 assists in his playoff debut, torching the Knicks consistently in the pick-and-roll game, and New York’s inability to keep him from getting downhill haunted them throughout the second half but particularly late in the fourth quarter. Young was able to get seemingly whatever he wanted and on the final possession of the game for Atlanta, they went to their bread and butter and got him to his floater where he buried it and had a message for the Madison Square Garden crowd.

The Knicks had a chance to tie or win with 0.9 seconds left, but ran a puzzling ATO that lobbed the ball into Julius Randle at the mid-post, who had a tough time catching it, turning, and shooting and was unable to even get a shot off before the buzzer.

For Young, it was an especially sweet moment as he silenced the crowd that opened the game with boisterous “F*ck Trae Young” chants.

Afterwards, Young reveled in the moment, saying he wanted to hear those chants again as he has fully embraced his villain role in this series.

For the Knicks, it’s a brutal loss as they got some tremendous contributions from their bench, namely Alec Burks who had 18 points in the fourth quarter, hitting big bucket after big bucket to keep New York in the game and give them a late lead.

However, Young and Bogdan Bogdanovic, who had 18 on the night and hit some big threes in key moments in Game 1, had the answer and the Knicks normal go-tos on offense weren’t able to find it in Game 1. Julius Randle had just 15 points on 6-of-23 shooting, as the team’s best player all year was unable to do much of anything in the playoff opener. RJ Barrett had the highlight of the game with his dunk on Bogdanovic, but he too was just 6-for-15 from the field for 15 points.

Burks’ 27 off the bench and Rose’s 17 kept New York afloat, but Atlanta did well to force the Knicks’ best players to take tough shots and they simply weren’t able to make enough. For Game 2 the adjustments will be very interesting, as New York has to figure out a new defensive gameplan for attacking Young in the pick-and-roll game — losing Nerlens Noel late certainly didn’t help matters — while Atlanta will look to find ways to open up the rest of their offense, which aside from Young attacking in PnR and Bogdanovic hitting shots on kickouts, struggled a bit.

It was the type of game we expected and there’s little reason to believe the rest of this series won’t be just as dramatic, and for at least night one, Young and Atlanta got the last laugh.

The playoffs are only two days old, but we already have a strong frontrunner for the dunk of the postseason courtesy of RJ Barrett.

As anticipated, Game 1 of the East’s 4-5 matchup between the Hawks and Knicks was a highly competitive, back-and-forth affair, but things really got going in the third quarter. That is when the second-year Knicks guard got the ball on the break against the Hawks and proceeded to punch one in on top of Bogdan Bogdanovic, sending the 15,000 fans in Madison Square Garden into an absolute frenzy.

The atmosphere in the Garden for Game 1 was remarkable, with Knicks fans thoroughly enjoying their first taste of playoff basketball in eight years. After a year with limited capacity crowds, the Knicks, with a robust vaccinated section, had a nearly full building, and for the first time in a long time, it felt like normal. Well, as normal as a Knick playoff game can be.

They were living and dying on every bucket, but nothing got them going quite like seeing their young sophomore star put, as Greg Anthony said on the call, “not a mani, not a pedi, but a FACIAL” on Bogdanovic to tie the game after the Hawks had opened up a solid advantage earlier in the quarter. New York exited the quarter with a two point lead after going up as many as seven, and the stage was set for a sensational final period of play.

Ever since SZA teased her upcoming collaboration with Doja Cat in their interview for V Magazine — where the TDE star also praised Doja’s entire ethos — fans were eagerly awaiting the joint track. When “Kiss Me More” arrived, it was a little different than what we were expecting, an upbeat, jittery track with the girls taking turns on the verses, but it’s been slowly gaining momentum since April, and tonight the pair teamed up for their first live performance of the song at the Billboard Music Awards. The song has been holding steady at No. 5 on the Billboard chart, and tonight’s performance helped prove why — the pair managed to turn the song into a retro-futurist spectacle that was equal parts ’70s throwback and intergalactic vibes.

Doja kicked things off with fringe-y, orb-filled outfit surrounded by dancers, only to have SZA appear just in time for her own verse, rocking bright yellow hair and eventually joining Doja at the front of the stage to end the song with a final dramatic dip. The song is likely going to be on Doja’s long-rumored new album, Planet Her, but who knows… SZA also has a record on the way soon. Check out their performance above.

DJ Khaled shared his twelfth album, Khaled Khaled, at the end of last month, and just like his previous albums, the project was a star-studded affair that flaunted some of the biggest names in music. It’s this aspect that helped propel Khaled Khaled to No. 1 on the album charts. In the latest chapter of the project, Khaled calls on HER and Migos to accompany him on the 2021 Billboard Music Award stage where they delivered a colorful performance of their collaboration, “We Going Crazy.” Backed by pyrotechnics and a wide display of vibrant colors onstage, the group kept the energy high to kick off the award show.

Since dropping his twelfth album, Khaled has kept busy by dropping videos for a number of songs off Khaled Khaled which includes “Body In Motion,” “Let It Go,” and “Every Chance I Get.” However, it’s not Khaled who’s been highly active in recent weeks. HER is gearing up to release her official debut album, Back Of My Mind, and in the process, she earned Grammy and Oscar wins which brought her halfway towards the coveted EGOT. As for Migos, the Atlanta-based trio is also readying an album with Culture III locked in for a June 11 release date. They also shared the project’s latest single with “Straightenin.”

You can watch a clip from DJ Khaled, HER, and Migos’ performance in the video above.

Khaled Kahled is out now via Epic Records. Get it here.

After winning a thriller in the play-in against the Warriors, the Lakers made their playoff debut on Sunday in Game 1 against the Suns, and if anyone looked rusty, it was the Lakers. L.A. had a dismal shooting afternoon as a team, posting a rather awful 43.4/26/9/60.7 shooting split as a team in a 99-90 loss to the Suns, who got massive contributions from playoff debutants Devin Booker and Deandre Ayton in a 99-90 win.

While few on the Lakers played well, the performance that stood out as especially poor came from Anthony Davis, who had just 13 points and seven rebounds in 39 minutes of play. Davis was 5-of-16 from the field, including going 0-for-2 from deep, and just generally looked disengaged from the action for most of his time on the court. Afterwards, Davis took the blame for the Lakers loss, noting that he can’t play like that if they’re going to win games, much less a series.

Davis is right, and it’s not the first time he’s had a game where he all but disappears. Last year, once he got it going in the playoffs he was the unstoppable force the Lakers needed him to be, and we’ll just have to see if he can find that gear soon enough in this series. The good news for L.A. is that they’ve done this before, coming out flat in a Game 1 before making the requisite adjustments to steamroll through a series. That said, doing so against this Suns team will be more difficult than, say, last year’s Portland squad, and Phoenix wasn’t exactly operating at full strength in this one after Chris Paul suffered the shoulder injury that caused him to almost completely avoid shooting for the final three quarters.