Month: January 2022

The Golden State Warriors have cooled off of late, going 5-5 in their last 10 games and all five of those losses have come with Draymond Green not playing. Green’s presence is obviously critical for the Golden State defense, but he’s also huge as a creator and connector offensively to help ease the burden on Golden State’s guards.

Unfortunately for Golden State, Green, who has been dealing with calf tightness, will miss at least two weeks as the Warriors medical staff has discovered that the root of his calf issue is actually a disc injury in his lower back. The team announced on Sunday that he’ll miss two weeks and then be re-evaluated, which does not guarantee a return at that point.

The two-week timetable would mean Green will miss at least eight games, including Sunday’s tilt with the Timberwolves in which they’ll also be without Stephen Curry, who injured his hand late last week and will skip the final game of this road trip. The Warriors are currently second in the West at 31-11, 2.5 games ahead of the Grizzlies and three games ahead of the Jazz in the four-team breakaway atop the West. Navigating this stretch of schedule without Draymond as they continue to work Klay Thompson back into the rotation could end up important for seeding, but in the grand scheme, Golden State knows the most important thing will be ensuring this back issue doesn’t linger and trying to get Green healthy for the stretch run and playoffs.

The Dallas Cowboys played host to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday in the late afternoon window of Super Wild Card Weekend, and as happens often in afternoon kicks in Dallas, the sun began to wreak havoc in AT&T Stadium because, for whatever reason, they built it with giant windows that face west.

As the sun gets lower, the glare on the field gets worse and in the late second quarter the Cowboys were on the wrong end of the sun issue on an important 3rd and 20 at midfield, trailing 16-7 in the final minute. Dak Prescott was trying to find Cedric Wilson over the middle in order to get into field goal range to make it a one-possession game before the half. Instead, the ball went whistling just over Wilson’s helmet because when the receiver turned back to find the ball he got hit with a face full of sun and never saw the ball, ducking out of fear of taking a pass to the facemask, unsure where the pass was.

It could prove to be costly, as it would’ve set up a long Greg Zuerlein field goal attempt, which while not automatic, would’ve given Dallas a chance for back-to-back scores to take the lead as they get the ball back to start the second half. Instead, they punted to the Niners who ran out the clock in the half and went to the locker room up 9 as the Cowboys offense has had its struggles with execution, a really talented San Francisco defense, and even the damn sun, which Twitter found rather hilarious.

The Bay Area has given plenty to the hip-hop world, whether it be certified legends like E-40 and Too Short, who competed in a Verzuz at the end of 2020, or more modern acts like Saweetie, Mozzy, Guapdad 4000, and Larry June. Add genre-influencing acts like the late Drakeo The Ruler and it’s clear that the region is more than worthy of recognition. Now there’s female rap duo Su’Lan, who have impressed many with their releases over the past couple of months.

One of them includes “We Talking Sh*t Again,” which recently received the music video treatment. The video captures the duo’s menacing approach, both with the performers’ aggressive demeanors and the militant support they receive from their crew. Su’Lan also delivers several cut-throat bars that aim to deliver the highest dose of disrespect possible towards their opponents. The track appears on their EP Free Su’Lan, which they released at the end of 2021. The album is also home to their single “Blue Cheese,” which also received a music video.

Prior to Free Su’LanBaby Glock Gang in 2020 and Tia & Tamera in 2019.

You can watch the video for “We Talking Sh*t Again” above.

Free Su’Lan is out now via Special Sounds. Get it here.

Many of us spend whatever money we have unwisely. Then there’s Mike Lindell. For the last year-plus, he’s dropped lord knows how much on pure nonsense, which is to say the baseless belief that the 2020 election was stolen from incumbent Donald J. Trump. A recent report claimed that he’s dropping at least $1 million a month on right-wing groups, who are still fruitlessly trying to get the failed blogger back in the White House. Then there’s that billion dollar lawsuit. Now he’s allegedly run into even more money problems.

As per Newsweek, Lindell went on Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, where he claimed that, on top of being banned on parts of social media due to his yen for spreading misinformation, he’s also being cancelled by two of the banks with which he does business. He alleged that Heartland Financial and Minnesota Bank and Trust were both trying to “de-bank” him. Lindell played a recording he said was from a bank official, who told the MyPillow guy that they were reluctant to be connected with someone who arouse the suspicion of the feds, especially considering his ties to the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

“[W]hat if somebody came in and said, ‘You know what, we are gonna subpoena all his account records…and then also we make the news,’” the person in the recording told Lindell, likely alluding to the House select committee investigating that fatefuld ay. “So it’s more of a reputation risk.”

Lindell then claimed they’d told him he has 30 days to shutter his accounts with them. But he refused. “I said, ‘I am not being part of this. I’m not leaving. So you’re going to have to throw me out of your bank,’” Lindell said. “Where does it end everybody? Where does it end?”

If true, it’s yet another financial blow to someone who made a fortune selling pricey pillows and who has been squandering it on such activities as a Thanksgiving marathon of bonkers conspiracy theories that no one watches. He’s even losing money due to that bizarre and untrue claim that he was dating actress Jane Krakowski. So things are not on the up-and-up for a guy who wants to imprison over 300 million people.

(Via Newsweek)

At the close of 2021, Brooklyn band Geese dropped their debut album, Projector — a rather short work, bearing just nine songs, but which proved to be one of the year’s better indie releases. Another impressive aspect about Geese is that the members are all in their early 20s, leaving them plenty of time to excel in their careers. With a bright future ahead of them, Geese brought their talents to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to perform “Low Era.”

Geese took the stage to deliver a lively performance that proved to be their nation-wise television debut. The band shined throughout their rendition of the Projector song thanks to a well-produced performance that saw them drowned in an array of vibrantly-colored lighting.

Back in October, when they released “Low Era,” Geese gave a short explanation about the song. “We had been trying to get everything to sound super heavy, creepy crawly, and complicated, really because that’s all we knew how to do,” they said in a press statement. “Four-on-the-floor songs like ‘Low Era’ had felt a little like poison to us for a while, until we consciously tried to challenge ourselves to write something more danceable.”

You can watch the band perform “Low Era” in the video above.

Projector is out now via Partisan/Play It Again Sam. Get ithere.

The start to the NFL’s first six-game Wild Card weekend had one controversial, one-score game that featured some drama in Cincinnati (unfortunately mostly centered on the officiating) and a pair of absolute blowouts with the Bills and Bucs both dominating against the Patriots and Eagles, respectively.

The Eagles-Bucs game was the first game of the Sunday slate, with Fox getting the draw for Tom Brady’s first game of the postseason, sending Joe Buck and Troy Aikman to Tampa, while Jim Nantz and Tony Romo scooped up the marquee game of the day in Dallas, where the Cowboys would host the 49ers in the 4:30 p.m. window. Throughout the Bucs blowout of Philly (that finished 31-15, closer than the game really felt), Buck and Aikman were not shy about voicing their frustrations with having to watch the Eagles flounder about on the field, but Aikman made things crystal clear in the promo for the late game, when he said point blank he wished he was in Dallas instead.

“It’s gonna be a great game,” Aikman said of the Niners-Cowboys matchup. “It’ll be a really good game. There’s a lotta people who’d like to be calling that game. But should be a lot of fun.”

Buck’s reaction is priceless, as he just chuckles and realizes they’re gonna get a call from someone at the league for that, but it’s surely how both felt. While Brady is a draw, the Eagles just flat out didn’t show up until the fourth quarter and it was a pretty ugly game that couldn’t have been all that fun to call. Still, you can rest assured this won’t sit well with some fans and the league may have some private complaints for Troy.

Marjorie Taylor Greene claims that she no longer holds the kooky views that were unearthed after she wound up becoming an elected public official. Like how she once seemed to approve of now-colleague Nancy Pelosi being executed. Or how she believed that a deadly wildfire in California in 2018 was caused by space lasers controlled in part by a Jewish member of a banking firm. That tinfoil conspiracy came to be better known as “Jewish space lasers,” a term that earned her much online dunking and has stuck with her ever since.

Well, Greene is still upset about the term, inspired by something she actually once believed. In an interview earlier this month with Mike Huckabee on his Newsmax show, she admitted that the this one — and not the many, many other things that have earned her mockery and scorn — really got to her.

“Terrible attacks, especially about silly things about something called ‘Jewish space lasers,’” Greene told Huckabee. “That was a term I had never used in my life but someone wrote an article and then they copied and pasted and put it all across the media.”

The dust-up left still haunts her. “That really hurt my feelings,” Greene said. “Because I’m a Christian and I would never say anything against any group of people, especially Israel. I would never do that.”

Speaking of which, earlier this year Greene did what she never did and apologized after repeatedly drawing offensive comparisons between those trying to save lives during a pandemic and the Nazis. After inspiring widespread condemnation from Jewish and Holocaust remembrance groups, Greene issued a rare mea culpa. She even went to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, where she seemed to finally learn what others learn much earlier in life.

In the meantime, Greene’s fans can be assured that she still has plenty of kooky, illogical beliefs, some of which got her permanently suspended from Twitter at the year’s start.

(Via Raw Story)

After earning a lot of attention last year, rising Houston rapper Monaleo wasted no time getting to work in 2022. In 2021, she had her breakout single “Beating Down Yo Block,” plus an appearance on fellow Houston native Maxo Kream’s Weight Of The World album. She ended the year by dropping the single “We Not Humping,” which she recently graced with a video. In it, Monaleo and her boyfriend and rapper Stunna 4 Vegas throw a raucous house party that upsets at least one of her neighbors, but that proves to be the least of her worries.

The video is set to be the latest offering from Monaleo’s upcoming debut project, which is set to arrive spring of this year. The song also captured her growing popularity as the video became her quickest to tally 100,000 views, doing so in just a day. In addition to records like “Beating Down Yo Block” and “We Not Humping,” Monaleo has also shown her versatility through the muscle-flexing “Suck It Up” and the warm-spirited “Girls Outside.”

Other highlights in Monaleo’s career so far include being selected for Beyonce’s Summer 2021 Ivy Park campaign and Youtube Music’s Foundry Class of 2021.

You can check out the video for “We Not Humping” above.

The Detroit Pistons are having a rather dreadful year, as they have been without their best player for much of the season as Jerami Grant deals with a torn thumb ligament, and have only managed 10 wins at the midway point of the season.

The No. 1 overall pick from last year Cade Cunningham has struggled with efficiency, as rookies often do when they have to be the lead creators for an offense, but is averaging 15.5 points, 5.8 rebounds, and 5.3 assists per game, providing some bright spots for the faithful in Detroit. For Cunningham, the losing has been frustrating and on Sunday against the Suns, it seemed he was trying to get himself and his team fired up and earned an early exit for it in questionable fashion.

After picking up a first half technical, Cunningham was able to get the baseline and unload a little frustration on the rim with a thunderous dunk on a late contest from Jalen Smith, who Cunningham pointed at to let everyone know who he got. That led to his second technical, which Cunningham obviously disagreed with as did most watching, as to give that as a second technical felt pretty soft.

It’s not a shocking technical, as the league has long tried to penalize players for directly taunting other players with points and gestures — Dikembe Mutombo’s finger wag being the most famous example as it had to start being done to the crowd rather than in a player’s face. Still, it’s a tough way to get tossed and in a game the Pistons were already losing considerably, there’s now not a lot for fans to even look to enjoy on the floor with Cunningham taking an early shower.

When Jay-Z tweets, you might as well buy a lottery ticket. After sending a total of zero tweets in both 2019 and 2020, Hov sent a meager five to the three million followers of his @sc account in 2021. Two were thank yous following his Rock And Roll Hall of Fame induction, and three were about Jack Dorsey/Square’s purchase of Tidal. There was also one reply to Jack Dorsey, who was bigging up Tidal’s algorithm. It’s not the most riveting stuff and Jay-Z (who won’t do a Verzuz battle) also follows exactly zero people on the platform. Suffice it to say, Twitter just isn’t his thing. That’s cool. But pardon us for getting excited when he does tweet out something revealing, which is exactly what happened Sunday in a brief exchange with Questlove.

Somehow, this all started when a Pro Wrestling podcast host sent an innocuous tweet about the polarizing 1997 single “Always Be My Sunshine.” “Hot take: ‘Sunshine’ by Jay-Z was fine and got an unnecessarily bad rap. Actually holds up better now than it did then,” tweeted Will Washington. This prompted a quoted retweet from Questlove, who had some feelings of his own about Jay-Z’s 1997 sophomore album, his first with Def Jam. “Our main argument is his hate for Vol 1. He is embarrassed for trying to make a monster & not putting numbers up. But ALOT of this lp contains his best moments. Fight me @sc,” Questo said.

And lo and behold, this got Mr. Carter out of hiding. At 8:45 am on January 16th in the year of our lord 2022, Jay-Z clapped back, writing, “Agreed . More so, I know what could have been, so it haunts me … streets is watching was the first song made !”