Month: June 2021

There were a number of big performances at this year’s BET Awards, some of which proved to be among the biggest moments from the show. One of them included Lil Nas X’s steamy performance of “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” in which the singer concluded his set by kissing one of his male backup dancers in a moment that became far more controversial than it should have.

The kiss received a number of reactions, the latest coming from Madonna, who took to her Instagram Story to briefly share her thoughts. She posted an image of Lil Nas’ onstage kiss above another picture of her own famous kiss with Christina Aguilera at the 2003 MTV VMAs. She captioned it: “#diditfirst.” It’s fairly obvious that Lil Nas was influenced by that 2003 moment, so hopefully Madonna’s intent behind the post was not slight on the singer.

Madonna’s post comes after Lil Nas shared his own reaction to those who were not too happy with Sunday night’s kiss. “Since y’all still doing all this over a kiss imma just f*ck the n**** on stage next time,” he tweeted on Tuesday.

You can view a screenshot of Madonna’s post to her Instagram Story above.

UPDATE: The Bucks officially announced that Antetokounmpo would not return to the game due to a hyperextended left knee.

EARLIER: Giannis Antetokounmpo suffered a left knee injury during the third quarter of Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Atlanta Hawks. Antetokounmpo needed to be helped off the floor after suffering the injury, and although he did appear to be able to put weight on his left knee, it was evident that the two-time league MVP was in serious pain.

With 7:14 left in the third quarter, Antetokounmpo rose up to try and break up a lob attempt to Clint Capela. Antetokounmpo came down awkwardly on his left leg, with his knee appearing to buckle. He proceeded to lay on the floor in several minutes while State Farm Arena in Atlanta went silent.

Antetokounmpo eventually got up, but needed assistance from his brother, Thanasis, to make his way into the locker room. Prior to his going down, Antetokounmpo led the Bucks with 14 points on 7-for-10 shooting with eight rebounds and three assists. At the time of his injury, Milwaukee found itself in a 62-52 hole against the Trae Young-less Hawks. While he attempted to return to the bench, he eventually headed back to the locker room.

The Bucks entered Tuesday night’s game looking to go up in the series, 3-1, before things shifted back to Wisconsin. We’ll keep you updated as more information comes in about Antetokounmpo’s status, both in this game and throughout the rest of the series.

Willow Smith knew the music world well before entering it. After all, her parents are Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, the latter being the lead vocalist in the nu metal band Wicked Wisdom. Watching her mother also taught her a lot about being a Black woman in the music industry. During a recent cover story for L’Officiel, Willow spoke about Jada’s unfortunate experiences.

“My mom got so much hate,” Willow said. “It was intense racism and sexism, just packed on to the tens. People giving her death threats, throwing glass at her onstage. Some crazy stuff went down when she was touring with her band.” Willow then shared how Jada’s experience turned into a teaching moment for her. “Obviously, she was scared,” she said. “But she really showed me what ‘womaning up’ really was, by taking a stance and not being afraid of other people’s judgments and perceptions. I really wanted to just go within that place in myself and try something new, regardless of what my insecurities were.”

Her comments come after Willow shared her latest single “Lipstick,” and announced her upcoming album Lately I Feel Everything.

You can read the full profile on L’Officiel here.

Lately I Feel Everything is out 7/16 via MSFTSMusic/Roc Nation. Pre-order it here.

Penny Hardaway, the former NBA guard and current Memphis Tigers head coach, recently interviewed for the Orlando Magic’s open head coaching job, and according to reports, he impressed and became a serious candidate. But on Tuesday, he told Stadium’s Jeff Goodman that he was staying at Memphis:

He also took to his Instagram, posting a video indicating that he was staying at Memphis.

“One day, in the future, I’d love to coach in the NBA,” Hardaway said. “And wouldn’t that be great to work for the Orlando Magic? But today isn’t that day. Today I’m here with my players, the fans, the city working as hard as I can to bring us a national championship. That’s what I set out to do and that’s what I want to do.”

Hardaway would have been an interesting hire for Orlando. Not only is he a franchise legend, but he’s a coach who has succeeded working with young players and connecting with the current generation. For an Orlando team that fired Steve Clifford and traded Nikola Vucevic last year, Hardaway could have theoretically came in and played a major role in guiding them through a rebuild.

By his own admission, this isn’t going to be the end of Hardaway flirting with the NBA. At 49 years old, he’s still young in the coaching game. He could make the leap after several more years at Memphis and still enter the NBA with several years of coaching left in him.

Tucker Carlson is no stranger to making ridiculous claims, but the one he made on Monday night’s show seemed surreal even for him. While re-airing his Swiss cheese allegations about the FBI spearheading the Jan. 6 insurrection, the Fox News host made a curious assertion: He had, he said, irrefutable proof that the NSA was spying on him. Few believed it, and this news — which would be big if true — was never addressed elsewhere on his news network. It also seemed unlikely that if someone, even Tucker Carlson, asked the National Security Agency if they were spying on him, they would respond either way. And yet! That’s exactly what happened.

The NSA took some time from looking into matters of national concern to publicly inform a guy who frequently laughs weird that, no, they have other things to do. “This allegation is untrue,” they wrote over their social media account. They then informed what they actually do (when they’re not debunking TV stars who used to wear bowties in public). “We target foreign powers to generate insights on foreign activities that could harm the United States. With limited exceptions (e.g., an emergency), NSA may not target a US citizen without a court order that explicitly authorizes the targeting.”

Did this humble Tucker Carlson? It did not. On Tuesday’s show, he yet again took time to go after the government agency, calling their response “an infuriating dishonest formal statement” and “an entire paragraph of lies written purely for the benefit of the intel community’s lackeys at CNN and MSNBC.

“The message was clear, we can do whatever we want,” Carlson exclaimed, though the message was definitely clear in a way he didn’t mean. He added, “Orwellian does not begin to describe the experience, it is like living in China.”

How many days will this drag on? Or will Tucker do what he often does and make a bizarre claim that doubles as red meat for his base, then never address it again, having moved onto greener pastures? Whatever the case, it’s clear not even the NSA wants to watch Tucker.

(Via Deadline)

Dennis Schröder is among the list of players hoping to get a big payday this summer. According to one official with the German Basketball Federation, that payday involves nine figures.

During an appearance on the Abteilung Basketball podcast, Armin Andres, the vice president of German Basketball Federation, said that Schröder wants a number in the $100-120 million vicinity, and there is optimism that he will be able to get that on the market.

It should be stressed that this could be Euros and not dollars, which would be in the range of $118-143 million. It is also worth noting that Schröder reportedly turned down an extension from the Lakers around $84 million at some point in the last year.

The former Sixth Man of the Year, Schröder had his ups and downs during his one year in Los Angeles. He averaged 15.4 points, 5.8 assists, 3.5 rebounds, and 1.1 steals in 32.1 minutes per game for the Lakers this year, but when the postseason rolled around, he struggled mightily, seeing his counting stats fall off and connecting on 40 percent of his shots from the field and 30.8 percent of his attempts from three. It got to the point that Lakers legend Magic Johnson openly questioned whether or not he had the mentality to return to the team next season.

(Via TalkBasket.net)

After an impressive year run that concluded with his sixth album, After Hours, The Weeknd will now bring his talents to the small screen. According to Variety, the singer will star in the upcoming HBO series The Idol, which is about a female pop singer who falls in love with an L.A. club owner who also leads a secret cult. The singer will also co-write and a co-executive produce the series alongside Reza Fahim and Sam Levinson, with all the three being labeled as co-creators.

Joseph Epstein will also write and executive produce on the show in addition to acting as showrunner. Levinson is also responsible for HBO’s hit series Euphoria, which landed a number of Emmy nominations, one of which was given to Zendaya for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series.

This is far from the first time that The Weeknd has found himself on television . In 2020, he appeared as himself in an American Dad episode, titled “A Starboy is Born,” that we also co-wrote. He also played himself on the big screen, in the 2019 film, Uncut Gems.

On the music side of things, The Weeknd recently joined Doja Cat in a video for their first-ever collaboration “You Right.”

Eric Adams pitched himself to New York City residents as a centrist. Of the many Democratic candidates for mayor, he was arguably the most unique: a former Republican, a former NYPD officer. He knew the other side intimately, and promised he wouldn’t pull any of their crap. But a week after the primary election, he did something surprising: After his once-commanding lead narrowed as more votes were counted, he dared question the legitimacy of the still-in-progress count, giving off strong vibes of You Know Who.

The primary saw the nation’s most populated city experimenting with something new: Rather than pick one favorite, voters would rank as many as five. It’s a first for the city, and it promised to delay the outcome not for days but weeks. The initial tally put Adams well ahead of his closest competitor, former Sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia. But a week later, as more votes trickled in, that lead shrank, from several percentage points to just a few. Rather than accept a conclusion everyone knew was likely, Adams played a Trump card.

“The vote total just released by the Board of Elections is 100,000-plus more than the total announced on election night, raising serious questions,” read a statement from Adams’ team. “We have asked the Board of Elections to explain such a massive increase and other irregularities before we comment on the Rank Choice Voting projection.”

Not long after Adams’ statement was made public, the city’s Board of Elections put out their own, admitting there “is a discrepancy in the unofficial RCV round by round elimination report.” Though they didn’t go into details, they said they “are working with our RCV technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred. We ask the public, elected officials and candidates to have patience,”

To many, Adams’ statement was triggering, summoning up memories of the aftermath to the 2020 election, in which the 45th president aggressively contested a free and fair election, even after it was clear his accusations were baseless (and often convoluted). And they were not happy to be back in that nightmare headspace.

The Trump vibes were so strong even Don Jr. tweeted about it. But others were not that surprised that Adams would pull this.

Don jr https://twitter.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1409998713708240901

Others put the blame on the decision to try out a new form of voting so soon after an election that inspired grifters to take advantage of a degree of uncertainty.

And others were worried that this — questionable, if not baseless, questioning of election results — were now the new normal, if even a Democratic candidate was willing to go there.

In other words, fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be another bumpy election.

(Via Yahoo! News)

Grand Theft Auto 6 is a white whale of the video game community. After going an entire console generation without a new GTA game, fans everywhere are starting to get angsty about when a new title could be on the way. We know one is in development, that was essentially confirmed by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier back in April, but rumors of the game being in development have been persisting since 2016.

Those rumors had a new fire lite under them on Tuesday when a potential release date was reportedly leaked. The downside: The date in question is 2025. Yes, that is a laughably long time, but if there’s one thing we know about Rockstar, it’s that they like to be ambitious with the games they create. That ambition is how they’re able to make such large and expansive worlds, and it also is why they don’t typically pump out GTA games as fast as, say, Call of Duty‘s yearly releases.

While 2025 is the rumored release date, that is so far in the future that it’s impossible to be a time that anyone at Rockstar can actually commit to. If the rumor is true then it is likely an internal goal that has been set by the development team. However, anyone that’s worked in game development knows that dates change and goals shift. Making a video game is hard and it’s impossible to predict what kind of roadblocks could get in the way of development. For example, if this game really did start development in 2016 like the earliest rumors suggest, then that means they have probably already scrapped whatever they were working on to start over once or twice now. Those are the kinds of challenges that video game developers go through and it’s why we can’t actually put any weight behind a 2025 release date rumor, it’s just too far in the future.

Now, some people may be wondering why it takes a video game that long to be made, especially one that is rumored to already be in development. Well, for starters, Rockstar has not given up on the cash cow that is GTA Online, not by a longshot. Grand Theft Auto V’s online mode is one of the most lucrative pieces of media ever created and so popular that it is now available on three different generations of consoles. They still have plenty of their current development staff working on and supporting GTA Online.

The other reason a game like GTA 6 is going to take such an extended period of development time is a mix of the worlds that Rockstar likes to create, as well as a shift in company culture. We’ve always known Rockstar to make huge worlds — GTA has practically defined the sandbox genre, while their most recent release in Red Dead Redemption 2 was maybe their most ambitious ever. Creating a world like that takes the kind of time that has traditionally forced companies into unhealthy crunch culture, one that they have reportedly been making efforts to work on and fix.

Of course, the heaviest amount of crunch doesn’t usually take place until the last year or two of a game’s development, but it’s possible that the reason these rumors of Rockstar giving themselves so much time to make GTA 6 is to ensure crunch doesn’t happen again. Red Dead Redemption 2 had employees working 55 to 60 hour weeks. To make sure that doesn’t happen again, and to keep employees healthy, it’s possible that Rockstar is planning out with development headaches in mind.

With all this considered, a 2025 release date sounds reasonable, but it’s just way too far off in the future to actually say it’s a sure thing. Maybe we’re lucky and every deadline is hit on time and the game comes out perfect in 2025, just as the developer reportedly wants, but that rarely happens in video games. We will just have to wait until development is farther along to know for certain when GTA 6 is coming out.

The Atlanta Hawks face a major issue heading into Game 4 of the Eastern Conference Finals. Due to a foot injury he suffered in the third quarter of the previous game, Trae Young will not be able to take the floor, meaning Atlanta faces a serious risk of falling down 3-1 to the Milwaukee Bucks.

The question exists regarding who will start in his place, and while the obvious answer is to put Lou Williams in the lineup, Inside the NBA analyst Charles Barkley has a slightly unconventional answer.

“I wouldn’t do that,” Barkley said about potentially letting Lou Will cook with the rest of the starters. “I would start Jeff Teague, because if you start Lou Williams, I don’t see…”

It was at this point that Barkley felt the need to stress, “yeah, Jeff Teague, I would start him.” This led to Ernie Johnson pointing out that Teague — who, in fairness, used to play for the Hawks from 2009-16 and for 25 games last season — is in this series, just for the other team.

“Wait, who is the other guy?” Barkley asked.

“He’s on the Bucks,” said Kenny Smith, in a very measured way.

“Big dummy!” Shaquille O’Neal proceeded to joyously say.

Thank you for tuning into this special Eastern Conference Finals edition of “Who He Play For?” We’ll see you next time.