Month: February 2022

Frank Ocean is one of those artists who immediately captured the world’s attention. As soon as Channel Orange was released, it catapulted Frank, born Christopher Breaux, into superstardom. Yes, his previous mixtape Nostalgia Ultra was a fan-favorite as well, but the co-sign of Def Jam and Channel Orange‘s high-profile guests like Earl Sweatshirt, Andre 3000, and John Mayer, made it clear that this was an artist’s artist. A few years later, his cleverness in pulling the wool over his label’s eyes with Endless, and immediately following it up with Blonde helped establish Ocean as a legacy artist following in the footsteps of fellow rebels like Prince. Now that it’s been almost six years, though, fans are hopeful that some of things Ocean has been teasing over the last few years will finally see the light of day. Here’s what we know so far about what might be next.

Everything We Know About Frank Ocean’s Next Album
One thing we do know is that Frank has been reportedly shopping a new record around to labels. It seemed like he was gearing up to head into album mode back in 2019 when he shared both “DHL” and “In My Room,” but it’s likely the pandemic got in the way of any planned releases in early 2020. Though, he did put out another pair of singles in March of 2020, releasing “Dear April” and “Cayendo.” During a recent Christmas episode of his Apple Music radio show, Blonded, he also shared another new nine-minute track. Still, the best timeline we have for his new album is pegged to his rumored headlining slot at Coachella 2023. So it makes the most sense that even if we get a few new singles this year and in early 2023, that the project would drop close to his appearance at the biggest festival in the world.

The eternal question for music fans always looms large when artists take a few years off: When will they return? And since the back-to-back — or bait-and-switch — release of Endless and Blonde in 2016, Frank Ocean has been mostly off the grid. He did resurface to pay homage to his great friend Virgil Abloh after the fashion legend’s passing, but staying out of the spotlight is basically a full-time job for this R&B star. Still, it’s been close to six years since we got a full-length from Ocean and inquiring minds want to know, will we ever get another? And if so, when?

When Is Frank Ocean Releasing A New Album?
Unfortunately, if you came here looking for a definitive answer, that isn’t really in the cards at this time. Ocean has been slowly but steadily releasing songs here and there on his Apple Music radio show Blonded, including a pair of singles, “Dear April” and “Cayendo” back in 2020, but has spent the bulk of the pandemic canceling releases or working on secret side projects.

Due to delays and cancellations related to the pandemic, Frank won’t be headlining Coachella this year — though he was slated to in 2020 — but the festival’s co-founder claims he will in 2023. So maybe we’ll finally get an album before that massive appearance? Which means there’s a potential singles could start rolling out in late 2022… so that’s what we’ll go with for now. Give it six months and check back in. Rumors that he’s been shopping an album around to labels are persistent, so it could be a matter of timeline, and Coachella makes the most sense so far.

The Michigan Wolverines lost to the Wisconsin Badgers on Sunday afternoon, 77-63. After the game, a fight broke out between the two teams after the two head coaches, Michigan’s Juwan Howard and Wisconsin’s Greg Gard, had a testy exchange with one another. As the pair were being separated, Howard swiped at Badgers assistant Joe Krabbenhoft, making contact with his face and leading to tensions boiling over between the two teams.

The moment that appeared to lead to all of this came in the final minute of the game when Wisconsin was up comfortably — Michigan kept pressing Wisconsin’s backups, and in an attempt to avoid a backcourt violation, Gard called a timeout. Howard looked like he wanted to ignore Gard in the handshake line after the game, which led to Gard touching Howard’s left elbow in an attempt to slow him down. As he explained after the game, Howard believed that Gard touching him was the thing that escalated tensions.

“Well, basically, I addressed with the head coach that I will remember that, because of that timeout,” Howard said. “And for someone to touch me, I think that was very uncalled for, for him to touch me as we were verbalizing and communicating with one another. So, that’s what ended up happening, and that’s what escalated it.”

Gard, meanwhile, claimed in his press conference that he tried to tell Howard why he called the timeout, although by the sounds of things, he did this after he already touched the Michigan coach’s elbow.

As of this writing, it is unclear if the Wisconsin assistant who Howard swung at said or did anything in particular to further fan the flames in this incident.

NFTs are still a young phenomenon, though it’s already given celebrities another way to make some dough (or to just bore TV audiences). It’s also already become a target for thieves and scammers. Earlier this month, one lover of non-fungible tokens, whose Twitter handle was actually “ILovePonzi,” lost a large collection to a scammer. And on Saturday, the NFT world freaked out over hackers who’d nabbed nearly $2 million in digital doodads.

This comes from Vice, who report that someone or someones have been stealing and flipping NFTs on OpenSea, the internet’s largest exchange for digital collectibles. A warning on the service warned of a possible phishing operation and warned users to “not click links outside of opensea.io.” Those who’d been hit lost a number of high-end NFTs:

Blockchain records show that the attacker was able to transfer numerous NFTs from different users to their address for free. Stolen NFTs included examples from the Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and several other popular collections. The attacker has already sold some of the NFTs, for example, this NFT from the Azuki collection for 13.4 ETH ($36,380). The attacker’s wallet currently contains more than 600 ETH worth nearly $2 million.

That said, the hacker(s) did wind up returning some of their pilfered NTFs. Numerous tokens were returned to one user, save one, which remains frozen on OpenSea. Users of the service have been required to upgrade to a new contract, which fixes an issue that allowed hackers to nick valuable digital collectibles from unsuspecting users. So if you’ve spent a pretty penny on Bored Apes, best be careful.

(Via Vice)

Sunday afternoon’s Big Ten tilt between the Wisconsin Badgers and the Michigan Wolverines ended with the two teams needed to be separated in the handshake line. Late in the game, Wisconsin coach Greg Gard took a timeout when the outcome was already decided, which apparently did not sit well with Michigan coach Juwan Howard.

The two coaches came together at the end of the game for a handshake, but Howard had some choice words for Gard. Players and coaches attempted to get in between the two while tensions were on the verge of boiling over, but while that was happening, Howard extended his arm and swiped at Badgers assistant Joe Krabbenhoft, making contact with his face.

A brawl then broke out between the two teams, with plenty of pushing and shoving and several players appearing to throw punches without any of them landing.

This is not the first time this sort of thing has happened to Howard’s Michigan squad — the former Fab Five member-turned-head coach got ejected from a Big Ten Tournament game against Maryland last year for getting into it with now-former Terrapins coach Mark Turgeon, which he said was the result of him feeling like he was “being threatened.” The loss dropped the Wolverines, which entered the season ranked in the preseason top-10 but have struggled mightily to meet those expectations, to 14-11 on the year and 8-7 in conference play.

Shortly after this month’s Super Bowl Halftime Show, The Game hinted that he was a bit upset that he was left out of the lineup for the performance. The rapper, just like Snoop Dogg, Eminem, 50 Cent, Kendrick Lamar, and Anderson .Paak who all performed at the show, is a prodigy of Dr. Dre’s, which may have been why he hoped he’d be invited to perform. Days later, The Game’s longtime manager Wack 100 said that his client wasn’t invited to the halftime show because he “told that n**** [JAY-Z] to suck his d*ck like 18 albums ago.” This caused The Game to step forward and set everything straight.

“Don’t nobody speak for ‘The Game’ except ‘THE GAME,” he wrote in an image he posted on Instagram. “I ain’t had no conversation with nobody regarding Jay-Z and the Super Bowl he put together. I don’t feel no way about no being included. It was a GREAT SHOW featuring iconic artists. It was a WIN for the culture.” He continued:

“I control my own narrative. Do not be fooled by the internet, blogs, podcasts or anyone speaking on my name that is not me. My life & new album are both amazing & I’m in a great space creatively & artistically. I’m in Miami to help Ye’ finish Donda 2 & support my friend in one of the most pivotal times of his life/career. Leave me & my name out of any NEGATIVE conversations unless I have given you a REAL reason to include me !!! Hov’ continues to break down doors for the culture & I am in full support of anything & anyone who is on the help side of urban greatness.”

Last week, in a naked attempt to court more viewers uninterested in their artistic nominations, the Oscars announced a new, strange category: It’s called #OscarsFanFavorite, and it gives social media addicts the chance to fête a movie that actually made some money. Perhaps it can go to movie theatergoers obvious favorite: a little movie called Spider-Man: No Way Home, which has now outgrossed even Avatar (not adjusted for inflation, that is). Or maybe it will backfire even amusing fashion.

That might be the case, as Deadline reports that right now, the leading horse is Cinderella, Amazon’s much-mocked musical take on the classic fairy tale, featuring Camila Cabello, James Corden, and Billy Porter as the “Fabulous Godmother.” It’s not exactly a critical darling. On Rotten Tomatoes it has a mere 43%. But audiences don’t seem that smitten with it either, with an audience score of only 60%.

So does young social media secretly love it? Or re a bunch of chuckleheads bombing the system because they think it’ll be funny when the snicker-inducing Cinderella movie is more successful at the Oscars than the award-gobbling South Korean drama Drive My Car? Whatever the case, given the silliness of the category, people on Twitter thought it was apropos.

Then again, it’s not too late to deep six a category that seems about as respected as the quickly aborted Popular Movie mishegoss from 2018.

(Via Deadline)

Later this week, Conway The Machine will release his new album, God Don’t Make Mistakes, which will be his official debut on Eminem’s Shady Records, which he signed to back in 2017. Last summer, the rapper revealed that it would include contributions from Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, Benny The Butcher, Westside Gunn, Jill Scott, T.I., and more. Six days before the release of God Don’t Make Mistakes, which arrives on February 25, Conway decided to surprise his fans with a special treat: He released his latest mixtape, Greetings Earthlings.

“I spent my birthday Cooking up a plate for y’all and it’s All star weekend too so I’m in a good mood,” Conway said in a post on Instagram. “Here’s Something to hold y’all over until the 25th.” Greetings Earthlings is set to arrive with 14 songs and it’s mostly composed of freestyles and remixes of songs by Kanye West (“Jail Freestyle”), J. Cole (“Greetings”), Big Sean (“Moments”), Baby Keem (“Family Ties), and Nicki Minaj (“Seeing Green”). Greetings Earthlings features Conway’s latest single, “John Woo Flick” with Benny The Butcher and Westside Gunn. He also included “TRU Bethel,” his collaboration with 2 Chainz, on the new mixtape.

Greetings Earthlings and God Don’t Make Mistakes will be Conway’s first full-length releases since last year’s If It Bleeds It Can Be Killed with Big Ghost and La Maquina.

You can listen to Greetings Earthlings on DatPiff here.

God Don’t Make Mistakes is out 2/25 via Shady Records/Interscope.

It’s been four months since the tragic, accidental shooting on the set of the Western Rust, and details remain murky. An investigation is underway, hoping to discover what exactly led to the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, who was killed by a prop gun wielded by actor and producer Alec Baldwin. A new piece by Vanity Fair digs into what we now know. No one, from Baldwin to novice armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed, is accepting blame. But one person who is wasn’t even on set.

Vanity Fair spoke with Neal W. Zoromski, a longtime Hollywood prop master whose credits include The Day After Tomorrow, Species, and Thank You for Smoking. Zoromski was offered the lead position on set less than wo weeks before principal photography was to begin.

“These folks started talking to me roughly 10 days before they were going to begin shooting,” Zoromski told VF. “And that’s a disservice, not only to the department and what the department is responsible for, but it’s a disservice to the film and a disservice to the actors that are working on the film.”

That was a big red flag but it wasn’t a deal-breaker. What was the deal-breaker was when he learned that he would only have two prop assistants, neither of which would focus exclusively on the many firearms. Instead, the unit production manager suggested making one of the assistants the armorer.

Then he learned he would have two prop assistants but no separate armorer to focus exclusively on the film’s array of firearms. “We’d really like one of the assistants to be the armorer that can push up on the gunfights and heavy armorer days,” Walters emailed him the next day. (She did not respond to requests for comment.)

“This would definitely create a dangerous situation with safety being minimized,” Zoromski said. When he realized he couldn’t hire a full-time armorer, he turned down the job — and is now overcome with grief, believing he could have prevented the accident. Indeed, when he heard the news, he was shooting a Super Bowl commercial with LeBron James. Feeling sick to his stomach, he went to the bathroom and threw up.

The investigation, meanwhile, continues. Last week, Hutchins’ family filed a wrongful death suit against Baldwin, who recently returned to work for the first time since the shooting.

(Via Vanity Fair)

This month’s Super Bowl Halftime Show turned out to be very beneficial for the artists that took the stage. Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar, and Mary J. Blige, all saw an increase in their streams after their performance. On Spotify, Dre’s numbers went up 185 percent, Mary J. Blige’s “No More Drama” saw an increase of 520 percent, and Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” went up 250 percent. Additionally, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg’s “Still D.R.E.” saw its streams go up 245 percent. But that wasn’t all.

“Still D.R.E.” also became Dre and Snoop’s first video to reach a billion views on YouTube. While the video for the song, which appears on Dre’s second album, 1999’s 2001, was released on the week ending October 3, 1999, the video was uploaded to YouTube on October 2011. In addition to Dre and Snoop themselves, the video, which was directed by Hype Williams, also features cameos from Eminem, Xzibit, Funkmaster Flex, and Warren G. As for the song itself, Dre and Snoop have been very open over the years about the fact that it was completely written by Jay-Z.

The new milestone comes after Dre revealed what words the NFL made him remove from the entire Super Bowl performance. The opening lines for Kendrick Lamar’s “M.A.A.D. City” (“If Pirus and Crips could all get along / They’d probably gun me down by the end of this song”) did not fly with the NFL, according to Dre. “They had a problem with that, so we had to take that out,” he said. “No big deal, we get it. But, all in all, everybody came in, we were professional, everybody was on time.”