Month: October 2022

Drake and 21 Savage recently had to delay the release of their collaborative album Her Loss due to producer Noah “40” Shebib catching COVID. But the extra week seems to have given them time to go all-in for promo — including a fake magazine, photoshopped to build anticipation for their music.

Record label OVO Sound shared a tweet boasting a picture of a bunch of Vogue magazines with none other than Drake and 21 on the cover, sharing that they’d be on the newsstands today, Oct. 31.

Rolling Stone journalist Simon Vozick-Levinson tweeted photos of the inside of the magazine, writing: “a street teamer just handed me a copy of this. it’s not a real magazine – it’s a photoshopped version of Vogue‘s October issue with a bunch of promo art for 21 and Drake’s new album. pretty funny stunt.”

This doesn’t look like it was done without the permission of Vogue or even Anna Wintour herself. On Instagram, Drake wrote, “Me and my brother on newsstands tomorrow!! Thanks @voguemagazine and Anna Wintour for the love and support on this historic moment.”

The copies can be found in select spots in New York only; you can find the full list of locations below thanks to the Drake update account, @drakerelated.

Her Loss is out 11/4.

Horror has long been more of a movie than a TV thing. The genre works best — and makes the most money — with a big crowd in a darkened theater. But it’s been making in-roads to the small screen. Mike Flanagan has made a killing with streaming series like The Haunting of Hill House, The Haunting of Bly Manor, and Midnight Mass, while Bryan Fuller was miraculously able to bring Hannibal Lecter to NBC prime time. Speaking of, Fuller has similar-but-different plans for another horror icon.

As per Variety, Fuller got a straight-to-series order from Peacock to make Crystal Lake, an “expanded prequel” series for Friday the 13th, the slasher franchise born out of the success of the original Halloween. Details are currently being kept close to the vest, but the words “expanded prequel” suggest that it won’t be a straight origin story for the series’ resident baddie Jason Voorhees. Indeed, Jason isn’t even the killer in the 1980 original; it’s his mother, Pamela, who starts gruesomely offering randy teens to avenge the negligent death of her son.

This isn’t the first time Friday the 13th has headed for television. Starting in 1987, a show of the same name played syndication for three seasons. Oddly, Jason never made an appearance. Instead, each episode dealt with some fantastical horror story. This one clearly won’t take that route.

The last time Voorhees made a new appearance on any screen was in the 2009 reboot, produced by Michael Bay. The film was a hit but it didn’t spawn a new run of sequels.

Fuller’s other credits are a diverse lot, including Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Pushing Daisies, American Gods, and Star Trek: Discovery. A fairly eccentric TV man, he’ll likely take a franchise prone to paint-by-numbers repetition in some goofball directions.

(Via Variety)

Since Briston Maroney was just a kid growing up in Knoxville, he’s always viewed Nashville as a sort of musical mecca, a promised land that separated casual musicians from real working rockstars. “That was the end goal. In my mind growing up, it was like when you go to the city limits, you had to play for your soul,” Maroney tells me over Zoom one autumn morning in Nasvhille, “I literally didn’t fathom that there were other professions other than musicians that kept Nashville running.”

Before Maroney brought his brand of scrappy singer-songwriter music to the world, he bounced between Knoxville, Florida, and California before finally settling in Nashville where he cut his teeth at messy and chaotic house parties, developing a style that reflects the eclectic vibes of the Nashville DIY scene. While the city is known for its influential country and blues culture, Maroney inhabits another more adventurous side of Nashville, and without the influence of the city, he’d be a very different artist.

“It kicked my ass at first and made me feel really small. I had to figure out what my identity was in such a large sea of people who all had pretty loud identities. Every time I realized I wasn’t going to fit in a certain lane in Nashville, I would come a little closer to finding the lane that I knew I could be heard in… what’s unique about Nashville is you see a lot of shows crossing genres. You’ll have a hip-hop act, a punk band, a singer-songwriter, and a jazz band all on the same bill because it’s just all kids who go to college together but end up at the same house party and go crazy together.”

That sort of cross-pollination makes Maroney’s own music hard to pinpoint. There is a level of confessional singer-songwriter earnestness in his work, but there is also a messy punk-indebted side that makes Maroney’s music feel adventurous, poppy, and a whole lot of fun. Think John Prine meets Tame Impala, which is a combination of sounds you wouldn’t know you needed until you actually heard it. This is best exemplified by Maroney’s latest single, “Oregon,” which features a visually stunning video directed by longtime collaborator Joey Brodnax.

We linked up with Maroney ahead of his upcoming Paradise Festival, a two-day festival conceived and curated by Maroney that kicks off on November 3rd. The festival is a celebration of Maroney’s favorite crop of artists, all corraled together to reflect the same sort of intimate vibe found at those early house shows that formed his sound, albeit in a much bigger room, The Brooklyn Bowl Nashville.

“Essentially I wanted to bring in bands that I knew also really valued that homey, small, intimate show feel, but do it on a slightly larger scale. My dream is that I hope it feels like one of those house shows that we all started at. Everyone including the audience is a huge part of that.”

Immediately after Paradise Fest wraps, Maroney will begin work on the follow-up to his full-length debut, Sunflower, which he promises will be his most intimate work to date. Ahead of his Paradise Fest appearance (he’ll be headlining both nights), we chatted with Maroney about everything Nashville has to offer if you should find yourself in the city and are looking for the same sort of crunchy DIY vibe that helped to form him as an artist.

What’s the best Nashville venue and why?

The East Room

It would be the East Room. I think it’s just because of how many lessons I learned in that place the hard way and how much I just would not be who I am without that place. I learned how to play shows, I learned how to settle shows, I learned how to stand up for myself when the sound guy was a jerk. I learned how to follow bands that were louder than us or follow bands that were quieter than us. I learned how to just really figure out who I was and how I wanted to go about taking this journey. Everything happened in that room and it sounds great.

For a music fan visiting Nashville who maybe isn’t so interested in the country music scene, what’s one thing people visiting absolutely have to experience?

Grimey’s

Great question. I mean, there are so many really just insane music stores that are also just full of art and appeal to literally every genre. Of course Grimey’s is a huge one. It’s the pinnacle record store, bookstore, art store that just literally caters to every need. They’re selling Jason Aldean vinyls next to Cat Stevens, next to Lana Del Rey. It’s literally anything you want to listen to or be. If you have any interest in music, you got to go there.

What’s your favorite Nashville breakfast spot, and what’s the go-to order?

Portland Brew

There’s some good breakfast there, man. I go to Portland Brew East a lot, but also Portland Brew on 12 South is somewhere I used to go a ton. It’s pretty shitty and I love it. It’s just your standard coffee spot. I’ll go in there, grab a little cold brew, splash of oat milk, little vanilla syrup and then they have a sandwich called the Arago, just plain and simple egg, cheese, avocado on some multigrain. They also have hot sauce that I think it’s just Frank’s hot sauce in their own bottle, but it’s so good.

What’s the best late-night dinner spot?

Cook Out

Ooh, I don’t know if I’m legally allowed to say Cook Out because it’s not Nashville specific, but the number of times I’ve ended up at Cook Out and said it was the last time I was going to do that and then ended up there three days later. It’s pretty hard to beat, but also Beehive in East stays open pretty late. It’s like a vegan junk food place that they do hot chicken and chicken wings and chicken tenders and fries and tater tots and stuff. It’s like, it’s really just horribly, perfectly gross and greasy and really good.

Is there a fancy dinner spot or is it just the grimier or the better?

Barcelona

I typically end up in grimy situations whether or not I’m trying to, but there’s definitely some really nice restaurants as well. There’s a place called Barcelona that I used to work at when I first moved to town that’s like a tapas place. It’s like a wine bar too. Pretty bougie, really yummy. It’s like giant menu, you just order a ton of small plates and it’s super good.

What’s the best time of year to visit Nashville and why?

Fall

Right now truthfully. All of Tennessee is just beautiful right now. This time of year for us feels a little bit more like West coasty. It starts to get pretty chilly and the leaves start changing colors and it’s just like, I’m actually in Knoxville right now and everything is super orange and just looks an autumn calendar, just the air this time of year is enough to come out here and experience. It’s just really beautiful.

Are the summers there pretty brutal? What do you do at that time of year in the city? Just stay in, bunker down?

Oh, they’re horrendous and it’ll be like 102 until 3:00 PM and then it’ll thunderstorm and rains miserable until 6:00 and then your day is just toast. It’s impossible to work around it, so it’s definitely tough.

You’ve really only got two options. You stay in, try to just not go crazy until the evening when it cools off or you just have to do all the Southern shit and go jump in a lake or go find a swimming hole. There’s a bunch of places within an hour of Nashville that you can drive to that are natural swimming holes and stuff where the water’s just cold on its own. We go to the lake all the time and you have to be in the water the entire time or you fry to a crisp.

If you’re a fan of the outdoors, where in Nashville do you need to go? Where’s the best nature spot?

Bell’s Bend

Bells Bend is my favorite spot, probably maybe 20 minutes outside of Nashville towards Ashland City. It’s not paved, but it’s just a trail cut through this giant field essentially. It’s a six or seven mile loop that all the courses intersect each other and it runs along this river that’s really beautiful. I’d take my dog out there all the time and just let her off of her leash and it’s a maze system so she just goes and runs crazy, but can’t ever get out to the road or get out to the river. She has a blast.

Do you have a favorite Nashville bar and what makes it special?

Dino’s

That’s a great question. Everyone in Nashville would tease me for this because it’s just what everybody says, but there’s a place called Dino’s in East that’s really awesome. I don’t drink and I still love going there. The food is great and it’s totally a place for people who don’t drink or people who do drink, there’s just plenty of options. They have a lot of great non-alcoholic drinks too, and they just have a huge patio area outside where you don’t have to go in near the bar if you don’t want to. It’s just super open and I love that.

I definitely rip an insane amount of coffee and then if I’m at a bar I’ll go for if they have a kombucha, I’m not afraid to admit it.

What’s the best way to experience Nashville in a single day?

Morning walk, drink coffee, chill, grab dinner, hit the theater

Yeah, I mean, my dream day there is this time of year wake up, try to wake up relatively early, 8:00 or 9:00, which I say that because I want to sound good in this interview, but that’s probably bullshit. I probably wake up at 11:00. Go grab some coffee somewhere in East. There’s a lot of spots around where we live. Take my dog out, we’ll go to there’s a place called Shelby Park that’s super close to our house and there’s a greenway out there. Take the dog for a walk, hang out, drink some coffee, go grab some Acai back in East and then go over to somebody’s house. There’s just so many friends that live in our little neighborhood and everybody’s got a porch or a fire pit or something and it’s always just you end up at somebody’s house, just like five or six people and then 10 more people show up throughout the night and it’s a lot of hanging out.

Grab some dinner at Beehive. There’s something else I was going to say. Oh, there’s a spot called Fanny’s that’s a guitar shop. That my favorite place to swing through if I’m feeling like real good and I’m not going to feel bad if I accidentally buy a guitar I can’t afford or something. Yeah, swing through there and then just hang with the people. Oh, there’s a place called the Belcourt Theater as well, which is a little independent movie theater that they play. Just crazy stuff. This time of year they always are playing old school horror movies and stuff. That’s a super fun experience. It’s really beautiful and all the people that work there are really funny and really nice and it’s just a very immersive thing. Yeah, maybe go catch a flick and then if you want to go see a sunset, there’s a place called Love Circle that’s quintessential very, very 18-year-old cringey vibes. I love it. Sunset Spot where everybody goes out and hangs out. It’s just this big hill that looks over in Nashville.

Briston Maroney is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

These are weird times, so weird that an ex-footballer prone to surreal gaffes and disturbing allegations may wind up in the Senate. The latest polls have Herschel Walker neck-and-neck with his opponent, incumbent Democrat Raphael Warnock. Warnock is a pastor; Walker is a former pro football player who has been accused by multiple women of pressuring them to get abortions (in addition to a host of other things). Incredibly, the latter is running on the Republican ticket. But that’s only inspired another pastor to sound the alarm.

This past Sunday, Jamal Bryant, pastor at the Atlanta-area Newbirth Missionary Baptist, used part of his sermon to go off on Walker, who he accused of being manipulated by the GOP, effectively accusing him of being used him as a puppet.

“Ladies and gentlemen, when the Republican Party of Georgia moved Herschel Walker from Texas to Georgia so that he could run for Senate, it’s because change was taken too fast in the post-Antebellum South,” Bryant charged. He was just getting started:

“They thought we was so slow, that we was so stupid, that we would elect the lowest caricature of a stereotypical, broken Black man…. Since Herschel Walker was 16 years old, white men been telling him what to do, telling him what school to go to, where to live… where to pay for abortions, where to buy a gun, and you think they not gon’ tell him how to vote? In 2022, we don’t need a Walker, we need a runner. We need somebody to run and tell the truth about Jan. 6…. Georgia, I need you to know, the slave Negro y’all are used to don’t live here no more. We can think for ourselves, function for ourselves, and vote for ourselves!”

Video of Bryant’s fiery sermon went viral.

Walker has run one of the most chaotic congressional campaigns of the year, arguably wilder than the ones between Dr. Oz and John Fetterman, J.D. Vance and Tim Ryan, and Kari Lake and her inability to do a Zoom interview that’s not in “Portrait” mode. Walker brandishing a souvenir police badge mid-debate isn’t even in the Top 10 weirdest things during his run. The midterm elections are still a week-and-change away, which means not only more potential bombshells about Walker but also several more avalanches of frantic fundraising emails clogging your inbox.

(Via The Daily Beast)

The video for Quavo and Takeoff’s Only Built For Infinity Links standout “Messy” turns out to be just that. In the midst of an otherwise unrelated concept about a Halloween haunted house, Quavo decides to stoke the furor surrounding the single by apparently referencing his elevator fight with Saweetie. While most of the video features the camera panning through a house decorated for spooky season and rests on various characters having arguments, part of Quavo’s verse is shot in the mode of an elevator security camera — which you may remember was how we learned about that fight in the first place.

And just in case, it’s not completely clear, Quavo pulls out his bright orange, Call Of Duty-themed game console case, which seemed to be the catalyst for Quavo and Saweetie’s domestic dispute last March. While neither faced charges after an LAPD investigation of the incident, it did constitute a black mark on both of public images. It looks like Quavo’s belatedly confronting the controversy head-on — but what he’s trying to say remains frustratingly unclear.

“Messy” has been at the center of a maelstrom of speculation, as fans almost immediately linked part of Quavo’s verse to Saweetie and wondered whether he might be also referencing former fellow Migo Offset or labelmate Lil Baby. It seems, though, that we still have no concrete information, just more vague (questionably tasteful) posturing from Quavo.

Watch the “Messy” video above.

Saweetie is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Memphis’ Beale Street, Tennessee whiskey, and Bristol, England, aren’t often discussed in the same breath. But that’s what happened when I sat down with British Soul artist Yola to sip on a Tennessee whiskey sour and talk about the blues, Elvis, and women blazing their own paths in whiskey and music.

When I got the call to talk to Yola, I was pretty excited. I’ve been a fan for a couple of years thanks to her great Tiny Desk concert. I also have a British wife and children and travel there for work often, so I try and keep up with the culture in the U.K.

Anyway, the opportunity didn’t come across my inbox because of the music. Yola has teamed up with someone I’m a pretty big fan of in the whiskey sphere, Nicole Austin. Around the time we met, Yola was performing at this year’s Bourbon & Beyond Festival and hanging out with Austin, the General Manager and Distiller of Cascade Hollow Distilling Co. a.k.a. George Dickel. After watching the artist kill it — if only for a few moments — in Elvis playing Sister Rosetta Tharpe and on stage at B&B, I had a million questions for her about Memphis, Bristol, and Tennessee whiskey.

Our chat touched on representation and erasure, finding your place in the world, and working with people who don’t follow a standard path in music or whiskey. Let’s dive in!

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Before we get to the whiskey, can you talk a little bit about how the music of Bristol connected you to becoming a musical artist?

Well, I think I was growing up with a lot of record collectors. And there’s like “a music” in Bristol. It’s known for trip-hop. Its roots in music are extremely varied though. Everyone had extremely wildly eclectic tastes in music. If anything, the mark of you being Bristonian was that you were super passionate about six or seven completely polar genres. When I was growing up in the 90s the radio didn’t care about genre. It was like you might have Ginuwine next to Bjork. There’s no way that they’re going to undo this seesaw of what’s popular. That was the environment that I grew up in. You just got this really detailed smorgasbord of what’s happening in the world of music.

Let’s talk a little about your portrayal of Sister Rosetta Tharpe in Elvis. Where did you find the connective tissue between Bristol and Memphis?

Because of this whole environment of music, I was exposed to her in my mid-teens. I was drawn to her because I was listening to a song called That’s All. It came out in 1938, and she referenced the phrase “rock and roll.” And I was like, “wait a minute, everyone says rock and roll was invented in the ’50s?: But she coined the term and she invented it. I’m like, “wait a minute!”

So she grows up in the church and then combines this church tempo with blues playing. Because you all know that blues playing is all slow and mournful, but no, she rocks it. We’ve got the beat, we’ve got the style of guitar playing. What’s left? Then we’ve got her wailing and then we’ve got heavy distortion. There were other people using distortion, not as heavy as she was. And I’m like, that’s it, there isn’t anything left in the invention of the genre. That’s literally it.

And then she coins the term a decade and a bit before anyone else even knows to refer to it in any way. And so when I was getting on point, the fact that she was not just an inventor and an innovator, but a genius to just come up with it all. I was like, how can I not be drawn to this woman? How can I not play this woman? And how can I not do justice to this grossly untold narrative? We hear narratives from all sorts of other people every single time, but because she was … that dark skin and plus-size as a woman … That’s how her narrative regarding her genius is constantly subverted and ignored.

There should be 20 biopics. There should be five documentaries. There should be all the box sets with remasters. I feel you.

You understand the concept of erasure. And you’re like, ‘yeah, erasure happens.’ And so it was massively important to me to do this role right and to make sure — that even though I grew up with her — to make sure that I had as much information as possible. You know the shouts, there’s a shout book, just endless online references. Luckily Baz [Luhrmann] is obsessed with research.

Sometimes he’ll do the research just because he’s so excited about the research and he doesn’t even then make the movie.

He’s a guy who loves homework.

He really, really does. And so I get exposed to that as well which is a blessing.

Did you feel a deeper connection between Bristol and Beale Street when you went there?

Well, weirdly enough, yes. But the funny thing is not necessarily. It feels like Beale Street has this history that is still something that feels like a slightly ambiguous story and overshadowed maybe just by the narrative of Elvis — even though we know we have movies about Beale Street to a degree.

And similarly, Bristol’s narrative has been reductive as well as though trip-hop happened 20-something years ago, and then it fell off the face of the map and nothing ever happened again. I think sometimes when there are narratives that are really actually profoundly interesting, rich, and varied but people don’t always want the interesting and varied story. They want the easy and dumb tales. And so they’ll look for just the nearest white guy and go, “You Buddy!” And that’s pretty much it. Or they’ll look for at least the biggest success story. And then they’ll just focus on that and then try and replicate that over and over and over again and only celebrate and speak on people that extol the virtues of exactly that paradigm.

And so people won’t hear stories like about Sister Rosetta Tharpe discovering Little Richard when he was 14 in Macon, Georgia, you know? At soundcheck, he’s just singing. She’s like, who’s this kid? And he’s a young black kid struggling with his sexuality. It’s the 1950s and you’re a gay black person and you need a place to be safe, to become the full Little Richard that we all know and love. Who provides that environment? A queer black woman or some buttoned-up suit?

So Sister Rosetta Tharpe has all of these performances on Beale Street at Club Handy and that’s where she showcased these people, her people. It all relates back to Memphis and just the narrative, the rich history there. That’s kind of what I’m passionate about.

Let’s talk about whiskey for a moment since you’ve partnered with a female-led brand, George Dickel. Nicole Austin is someone who is actually changing the industry massively. She’s releasing whiskeys that push the boundaries of what the product can be. She’s brash and bold at every turn in a very white and “buttoned-up shirt” world. Did you feel a connection to Dickel and Nicole because of that brashness?

Almost exactly. But philosophically, I’m like, I’ve been always trying to drive my own path and I’m always trying to find the connective tissue between genres. I’m experimental and, similarly, Nicole Austin is experimental at George Dickel, trying to find connective tissue between types of whiskeys.

It’s trying to find synergy between a lot of different palates. I’m not all the way down with the dusty and smoky end of Islay whisky. I like very much existing in the middle of a number of genres, like the blues and soul and whatever else is exciting me. I like things being eminently mixable. I love that philosophy. I love that whole, “oh, you can’t do it” as a driving force too and the whole “Oh, I’ll show you!” mentality of Nicole. I love that woman is listening to her gut and doing her thing and then being here being such a fabulous partner and putting on this awesome show.

That’s the kind of stuff I like to stand for. It’s pretty much my album Stand Up for Myself.

Going a little bit deeper, flavor, even in whiskey, leads you to nostalgia at the end of the day.

It does.

What sort of flavor profiles do you find that transport you when you’re sampling a whiskey? Or what do you search for?

Do you know what? I fricking love a sour. I love whiskey sours. I absolutely love them. I love bourbon whiskey sours. Especially when something’s got a different kind of … that kind of almondy little angle that you can put on a sour. Plus, I love any cocktail with egg whites. I love it. And so that’s a big one for me.

A lot of my friends in Bristol were cocktail bartenders. And so my exposure to the kind of broad pantheon of food and drink is maybe a little more than most.

Like most people, Tara Reid got excited about her Halloween costume and couldn’t wait to show it off on social media. The Sharknado actress also hoped this year’s outfit might lead to more opportunities in the vast comic book movie arena, so it’s important she get this right. Manifesting dreams is important and powerful stuff.

“Queen of hearts I feel like a superhero in this outfit,” Reid tweeted on Sunday night. “I’m looking forward to playing new roles in future films channeling this energy.”

There’s just one small problem. Outside of a tiny necklace, the cards on Reid’s costume were not hearts. Literally every single one is the suit of diamonds, and well, Twitter definitely noticed.

After getting roasted for the faux-pas, Reid fired back at the haters on Monday. “This is for the shape police of Twitter,” she tweeted along with a screencap of her Instagram post showing the same exact costume. Only this time, there was a large diamond heart on her shoulder. The American Pie actress was not going down without a fight.

As for whether sticking a heart onto a costume made entirely of diamond cards stopped Twitter from dunking on Reid, well… have you been on that site before? It’s not a place known for subtlety and chill vibes. Folks kept right on going with the diamond gags, including this… gem.

(Via Tara Reid on Twitter)

Last week was a roller coaster for rap fans as within days of learning that Drake and 21 Savage had teamed up to produce a joint album continuing their “Jimmy Cooks” chemistry, the duo delivered a blow by delaying its release due to Drake’s longtime engineer Noah “40” Shebib getting COVID. Upon learning the new date, though, one of their musical peers decided it’d be best to take the day off, delaying his own album.

A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie might be a huge star in his own right, but he might also have a point. Drake is still the biggest name in hip-hop and the potential of reviving his oft-dormant battle rap persona for a full project — even if only half of it — will be a huge draw for rap-loving audiences. Meanwhile, A Boogie’s album, Me Vs. Myself, could easily go to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 considering the performance of his prior efforts but having to compete with both Drake and 21 Savage to get there seems to be something he has no interest in.

In a post on his Instagram Story, the Bronx native wrote, “Sorry but album dropping in December now, Drake was dropping the same day and I’m not with that.”

At least he’s as honest with himself as he is with his fans.

There have been quite a few Really Good New Shows this year and even though most of them have either dragons or medieval blondes or both dragons AND blondes, only one of them has Adam Scott, and that’s Severance (or that one miniseries with Maya Rudolph but that one doesn’t really count).

Apple TV+’s thriller premiered in February and quickly became a hit, racking up an impressive 14 Emmy nominations, and even though they didn’t win, they will surely have another shot when season two premieres (eventually). The second season just began filming, and AppleTV shared a first-look image featuring Adam Scott looking appropriately stressed out.

The series follows Mark, an employee at Lumon Industries, who becomes a part of the “severance” program after the death of his wife. This allows him to separate his “work” memories from his “life” memories, but slowly he realizes that things at a sketchy company that steals memories and exploits employees are not how they seem!

There are a lot of questions that we need to have answered in season two, though it will be some time before it graces our screens. It seems like that will be the case for a lot of good shows right now. But that doesn’t stop the internet from celebrating via Waffle Party gifs. Season two will feature the addition of Alia Shawkat, Gwendoline Christie, Merritt Wever, and Bob Balaban, so there is a lot to celebrate, after all!

Daryl Morey spent the offseason getting the band back together from his days in Houston, signing PJ Tucker and Danuel House to add depth to the Sixers in free agency — thanks in large part to James Harden taking a pay cut to open up some space.

The only problem was, the timing of the signings felt a bit too convenient, leading to a tampering investigation by the league into the Sixers offseason. On Monday, we learned the results of that investigation, with the NBA taking away the Sixers second round picks in the 2023 and 2024 drafts for having conversations with Tucker and House prior to the moratorium period opening on June 30 at 6 p.m. ET.

The Sixers released a statement accepting the decision and saying they will be moving forward as an organization, and if you were to tell Morey prior to the summer that he could make those moves for the cost of two second round picks, he’d almost assuredly say yes. As always, the NBA doesn’t really have a great way to deter teams from tampering without giving out huge punishments. The loss of second round picks isn’t nothing, as those are ways to fill out the roster for a capped out team like Philly and/or serving as assets to send out in trades, but this won’t deter the next team from having early conversations, they just might want to be a touch more discreet.