Month: February 2022

It happened very quickly, but it seems like James Harden could be traded by the Brooklyn Nets before next week’s NBA trade deadline. After initial indications said the team did not want to discuss a Harden move before Feb. 10, recent reporting indicates that the Nets are open to receiving calls from the Philadelphia 76ers and seeing if the two sides can work something out.

All of this begs the question: How did we get here so quickly? Yes, the Nets are struggling recently, as the team has lost seven games in a row while Kevin Durant is sidelined with an MCL sprain. But according to Alex Schiffer of The Athletic, Harden’s frustrations go beyond that losing streak.

“While Harden has thrown hints that he’s not crazy about Irving’s part-time status, a source with knowledge of Harden’s thinking said he’s frustrated in general with his Nets tenure,” Schiffer wrote. “He came to Brooklyn expecting to be part of a three-headed monster, yet has played a similar role to what was required of him in Houston: having to be the guy.”

Durant’s absence and Irving’s status as a part-time player — which Schiffer says “hasn’t been as much of a problem as one would expect because he’s played hard when available” — have made it so Harden has to shoulder a gigantic load in Brooklyn. His scoring numbers have gone down this year, as has his efficiency, but Harden has still produced for the Nets, as he’s averaging 22.5 points, 10.2 assists, and eight rebounds in 37 minutes per game while connecting on 41.4 percent of his attempts from the field and 33.2 percent of his attempts from three.

If rumors are true and Philly is a potential landing spot before the deadline, Harden would be able to defer a whole lot of responsibility to Joel Embiid and, if he’s not included in a trade, Tyrese Maxey. But if that does not happen, and he stays in Brooklyn, Harden can at least take some solace in knowing Durant’s return isn’t too far away.

Lizzo fans have been waiting patiently for a follow-up to her breakout 2019 album, Cuz I Love You, and that next project might finally be here. Following up a joint single with Cardi B in 2021, “Rumors,” she seemed poise to begin a new album cycle. But whether it was the hateful comments and backlash, or just more pandemic logistic delays, fans kept waiting for more new music or news of a longer release, and it never came.

That might be about to change though. In a brand new, sexy new teaser, Lizzo is glowing and basking in her completely naked body while a clip of a new single plays in the background. “If you love me, you love all of me — or none of me at all,” she sings. She also posted a lengthy caption with the clips. “If you love me… you love all of me. You don’t get to pick and choose. We should be unconditionally loving of one another, starting with being unconditionally loving to ourselves. Take a moment today and think about the conditions we hold so tightly to that keep us from the freedom of true love. Do you really wanna be so tightly wound? Free yourself in love. You deserve it.”

Check out that sizzling video below:

For Lizzo, using the internet to talk about music and food comes very naturally. You might even catch her posting a mystery man, her own Baby Yoda costume on Halloween, or her booty as a paintbrush. With a new single, and hopefully a new album, on the way very soon, odds are she’ll be in fine posting form, helping us all survive the boring weekdays of 2022. Check out her new video above and stay tuned for the single, which is most likely called “If You Love Me.”

After going three years without new music, Big Sean has been treating his fans well, having released two projects within the last two years. It started with his fifth album Detroit 2, which he dropped in 2020. The following year, he connected with Hit-Boy for their EP What You Expect. During a recent Instagram Live with Queen Naija, which came after she and Sean released their single, “Hate Our Love,” Sean shared some news about a project his fans have long awaited.

During the livestream, Sean said that his time in the studio has been spent completing his sixth solo album and a new Twenty88 album with Jhene Aiko. “We’ve been working on it for a little bit,” he said about the latter. “It’s coming along though.” Back in 2016, Sean and Jhene released their first project as Twenty88. Since then, they’ve released music under that name on two occasions: first, in 2017 with “OLLA (Only Lovers Left Alive)” from Jhene’s album, Trip, and again later that year with “Same Time, Pt. 1” from Sean’s album, I Decided.

Big Sean’s reveal comes after he and Jhene were mistaken for Sarah Michelle Gellar and Freddie Prinze Jr. during their appearance at a Los Angeles Rams football game last month.

You can watch Sean speak about the Twenty88 album in the video above.

Lately, news stories about Kanye West have been mostly about his new relationship with either actress Julia Fox or about his upcoming album Donda 2. He even revealed the latter will be released on February 22. However, on Friday, Kanye took a moment to hop on Instagram and address a matter regarding his ex-wife Kim Kardashian and their daughter North West. In the post, Kanye claimed Kim was letting North use TikTok against his wishes, but Kim quickly responded and said that West’s constant attacks against her are far more harmful to North than TikTok.

Kanye isn’t letting up though. In a new post on Instagram, he thanked far right pundit Candace Owens for “being the only noteworthy person” to defend his stance against North’s TikTok use. In a pair of tweets, Owens wrote, “There’s no 8 year old in the world that needs social media. Go color.” She added, “Kim is wrong on this one. The psychological effects of social media on young girls is real and documented. It’s actually Kanye that is trying to protect his daughter in this regard and Kim is spinning this as ‘obsession’ and ‘control.’ There are other creative outlets for kids.”

“THANK YOU CANDACE FOR BEING THE ONLY NOTEWORTHY PERSON TO SPEAK ON THIS ISSUE,” West wrote in his post thanking Owens. “THERE’S A LOT OF CELEBRITIES SCARED TO SAY SOMETHING IN PUBLIC BUT THEY’LL TEXT ME IN PRIVATE AND SAY THEIR ON MY SIDE.” He continued, “I WILL NO LONGER PUT MY HAND THROUGH A BLENDER TO HUG MY CHILDREN. MY CHILDREN MY MOTHER TOOK ME TO CHICAGO WHEN I WAS 3 AND TOLD MY DAD IF HE CAME TO CHICAGO HE WOULD NEVER SEE ME AGAIN SO I BOUGHT THE HOUSE NEXT DOOR. I DREAM OF A WORLD WHERE DAD’S CAN STILL BE HEROES.”

Kanye and Owens have a history together. Back in 2018, he fell sway to her far right beliefs, only to turn on her in spectacular fashion. Every now and then they’ve patched things up, including when he was briefly booted from Twitter.

We all know the story of Kanye West gifting not just his new girlfriend Julia Fox a Birkin for her birthday, but also gifting several more to her friends. That’s a grand gesture if I’ve ever heard of one, and like most epic shopping stunts, it took a professional to pull it off. Anyone with even a slight familiarity with Birkins knows they’re hard to come by, especially the rare ones, so style reporters immediately wanted to know the story behind the bags. Complex Style editor Aria Hughes tracked down Michelle Lovelace, aka Style By Meech and @meechthestylist on Instagram and got the story of her birthday Birkin quest.

Meech was having a tough year already due to Instagram shutting down her account with 100K+ followers, and imposters immediately trying to take over her name afterward. As she was trying to face down the monster task of starting over from scratch, a call from Kanye turned her 2022 around fast. Working at lightning speed to source and vet the rare Birkins that Kanye wanted in just a matter of four days, Meech told Hughes that she flew to several different states to retrieve the bags herself (!) and then personally delivered them to Kanye in New York. But after she lined them up, at first Ye didn’t realize how much work went into Meech’s delivery.

“I lined them up and he was basically like, ‘Cool. Thanks,’” she told Complex. “But then later we were in the lobby with Julia and his assistant was like this is who got the bags, and Julia was like, ‘Oh my God, how did you make this happen? I know these bags are so hard to get.’ And then Kanye looks at me and is like, ‘Wait. These are hard to get and I just dismissed you like that?’ And I was like ‘Yeah.’ And he just gave me a big bear hug. I was freaking out. I was like ‘Oh my God. Kanye just hugged me.’”

We love a happy ending! Check out the full story here and go support Meech by giving her a follow on her new Instagram page right here.

Despite being a disgraced former president reduced to ranting at strangers in resorts in which he now lives, Donald Trump continues to lord over the Republican party. Highers-up still jet down to Mar-A-Lago to kiss his ring; lawmakers being federally investigated over ties to sex trafficking rings still sing his praises. Then there are all those MAGA-fied candidates — cut-rate imitators fighting for his endorsement. But one is perhaps too out-there even for Donald Trump.

As per The Daily Beast, that person is Josh Mandel, a Rand Paul-approved candidate gunning for the Ohio Senate seat soon to be vacated by departing Republican Rob Portman. It’s a crowded race and Mandel — a former representative and state treasurer who BoingBoing dubbed “the most idiotic robot running for Senate in Ohio” — was once the frontrunner. But Trump has wavered on whether or not to formally give him his blessing, in part because people opposed to Mandel keep feeding him dodgy rumors about his “f*cking weird” sex life.

Sources tell The Daily Beast that Trump, a lover of gossip, has “privately regurgitated, often in disgust, a wide range of unverified, often completely unvetted, and lurid rumors about the MAGA candidate.” One source told the publication that Trump “has used the term ‘f*cking weird’ to describe Josh Mandel more than once,” and that he “has talked about [Mandel] and sex in the same sentence more times than I would have liked to hear.” (Reminder, by the way, that Trump has also been credibly accused of sexual misconduct by over two dozen women.)

Details about what those rumors are remain unknown, but it’s not just Mandel’s allegedly salacious sex life that have turned Trump off:

Mandel doesn’t have the right “visuals” or “look,” and could come off poorly on TV. Having met with and talked to Mandel, Trump felt there was just something about Mandel and his personality that rubbed him the wrong way. Also, the former president and current leader of the Republican Party has sensed a conspicuous dearth of “charisma” coming from this particular GOP Senate hopeful.

Still, Trump is known for his unpredictable changes of heart. There are still four months left before the Ohio primary, so who knows if he’ll go with one of the other many Trumpist hopefuls, or if he’ll suddenly decide those questionable rumors about Mandel are actually a plus.

(Via The Daily Beast)

Skrillex has, for the most part, been one of music’s beloved figures. As an early star of the dubstep movement, and a former post-hardcore kid, Sonny Moore has worked with everyone from Diplo to Ellie Goulding, and achieved a lot of success all on his own, but his most recent collaboration has the internet up in arms. Last night, notorious quack “Dr.” Jordan Peterson — whose various, controversial claims have been repeatedly debunked by real scientists and doctors — posted a photo of himself and Skrillex posing together with the caption “Guess who.”

Now, this doesn’t necessarily mean that Skrillex condones everything that Peterson stands for, but it is certainly not the friendship most people would choose to make public. Though Dr. Jordan Peterson was a professor at University Of Toronto up until recently, he retired from the role in January 2022 citing “the appalling ideology of diversity, inclusion and equity” that is “demolishing education and business.” This is from an op-ed he himself wrote, and that is up in the dek, so needless to say it encapsulates his views to a T. So yes, Skrillex fans are pretty unhappy, but some are just here to get the jokes off. Check out some the reactions below.

Last fall, the usually very articulate Awkwafina struggled to answer a question about perhaps the only controversial thing about her: her use of what’s been dubbed a “blaccent.” In movies like Crazy Rich Asians and Ocean’s 8, the actress and rapper partook in the sketchy tradition wherein non-Black people adopt a stereotypical Black voice. Now, a handful of years later, she’s finally addressing it.

In a lengthy statement dropped on her Twitter feed Saturday morning, Awkwafina began by addressing the “historical context of the African American community in this country.” She wrote about how “a group that is disproportionately affected by institutionalized policies and law enforcement policies – all the while having historically and routinely seen their culture stolen, exploited and appropriated by the *dominant* culture for monetary gain without acknowledgment nor respect for where those roots come from.”

Awkwafina then tried to clarify her position in all this. “But as a non-Black POC, I stand by the fact that I will always listen and work tirelessly to understand the history and context of AAVE [African American Vernacular English], what is deemed appropriate or backwards toward the progress of ANY and EVERY marginalized group,” she wrote. “But I must emphasize: To mock, belittle, or to be unkind in any way possible at the expense of others is: Simply. Not. My. Nature. It never has, and it never was.”

She continued:

“My immigrant background allowed me to carve an American identity off the movies and TV shows I watched, the children I went to public school with, and my undying love and respect for hip hop. I think as a group, Asian Americans are still trying to figure out what that journey means for them – what is correct and where they don’t belong. And though I’m still learning and doing that personal work, I know for sure that I want to spend the rest of my career doing nothing but uplifting our communities. We do this first by failing, learning, acknowledging, hearing and empathizing… And I will continue, tirelessly, to do just that,”

A couple hours later, Awkwafina returned with another announcement. “”Well, I’ll see you in a few years, Twitter – per my therapist,” she wrote. “To my fans, thank you for continuing to love and support someone who wishes they could be a better person for you. I apologize if I ever fell short, in anything I did. You’re in my heart always.”

She then clarified that she was not retiring from the entertainment industry, just from the “ingrown toenail that is Twitter,” and that she will “avail” herself “on all other socials that don’t tell you to kill yourself!”

So we’ll be hearing from Awkwafina again, and we don’t mean a postcard.

(Via People)

Towards the end of 2020, Wizkid released Made In Lagos, his long-awaited fourth album, which produced “Essence,” his collaboration with Tems that went on to become one of the big songs of the summer of 2021. The track was later remixed with a verse from Justin Bieber, which further boosted the song’s appeal. That remix appeared on a deluxe reissue of the album, which also featured another fan-favorite record: “Mood,” with rising Nigerian singer Buju.

Months after sharing the deluxe album, Wizkid and Buju bring their talents together in a new video for “Mood.” It’s a vibrant effort that features Wizkid and Buju having a grand ol’ time together as they show off some dance moves. Wizkid also gets whisked away by a woman who does a great job of grabbing his attention.

Wizkid’s newest video comes after he and Burna Boy connected for one for the celebratory track “B. D’OR“. He’s also set to bring his talents to Puerto Rico’s 2022 Afro Nation festival, which is set to go down next month. Megan Thee Stallion, Burna Boy, Tems, Ckay, Koffee, Naira Marley, Rema, Tekno, and more are expected to perform.

You can watch the video for “Mood” above.

Made In Lagos (Deluxe) is out now via RCA Records. You can stream it here.

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

The majority of Republicans haven’t been participating with the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. But they haven’t been content with simply doing nothing. Some have spent months either downplaying the violent attack, even publicly condemning the investigation. On Friday they went even further still, censuring the two lone Republicans on the committee and actually declaring that the Capitol storming was “legitimate political discourse.”

As per The New York Times, the Republican National Committee, when faced with a former leader who continues to spread the voter lies that led to the attack (and is now even slamming his ex-veep), decided to go after party members who are trying to ensure such a thing never happens again. They voted to formally censure Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both die hard Republicans and both people who have refused to whitewash over Trump’s actions. (Cheney was infamously stripped of some of her power by her own party last year.)

In a statement, they condemned Cheney and Kinzinger for collaborating with Democrats over what they called the “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

After the vote, certain Republicans attempted to clarify their language to make it seem like they weren’t condoning the violent assault, which left five dead and dozens of police officers injured. That didn’t go so well.

“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” said Ronna McDaniel, the Republican National Committee chairwoman. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.” (Mind you, the investigation is largely focused on the violence at the Capitol.)

The GOP’s extraordinary statement, which found the party further aligning itself with a loose cannon who was gorging on McDonald’s while sick with COVID, did not go unnoticed by several people in power, among them Cheney herself.

Others treated it with gallows humor.

And so the party that a very long time ago ended slavery are now parroting the dubious claims of Tucker Carlson.

(Via NYT)