Month: March 2023

Last night at Rolling Loud, Tyga performed his set — and brought along a special guest in the form of YG.

While performing their 2019 collaboration, “Go Loko,” YG did a truly iconic dance, revaling that he’s multi-talented when it comes to moves. The duo also teased that they have what seems to be a full collaborative record on the way, as it was teased on stage.

“You know what I’m saying?” Tyga says in the video. “We only came up with one song, but now we about to drop the new album coming soon.”

When “Go Loko” was first released, Tyga revealed that they had been inspired by Mexico’s impact on culture…which hasn’t fully aged well. “Growing up in L.A., it’s a really big culture here,” he told the Recording Academy. “Even YG could tell you, he grew up around all Mexicans, so we really wanted to do something to give back to the culture.”

In addition, Tyga appeared on YG’s album last year, as a feature on “Run.”

“Me and Tyga were in the studio just trying to plot like, ‘What should we do for the video?’ There’s only so much you can do with that type of song. We ain’t wanna do like a flashy rap video, driving around in the cars. I got plenty of them,” YG revealed to Billboard.

Check out the videos of Tyga and YG’s performance (and album teaser) above.

The Memphis Grizzlies are two games into a four-game road trip, and over the next few days, the team will wrap things up against the Los Angeles Clippers and Lakers before returning home. Those games will happen without Ja Morant, as the team announced on Saturday afternoon that the All-NBA guard “will be away from the team for at least the next two games.”

The news comes in the aftermath of the NBA announcing an investigation into a video of Morant that made the rounds on social media earlier on Saturday morning. In the aftermath of the Grizzlies’ loss to the Denver Nuggets on Friday night, Morant went live on Instagram while he was at a club. At one point, Morant appeared to pull out a gun, which he briefly waved on camera before putting it away.

It is unclear if this is technically a suspension or if Morant and the Grizzlies amicably agreed for him to take some time away. It is also unclear if this will impact the NBA’s investigation into Morant in any way. Should Morant return to the team after two games, he’ll take the floor on March 9 in Memphis when the team plays host to the Golden State Warriors.

After a tense incident at an Oakland nightclub last month, in which GloRilla had water thrown on her, the rapper’s now-former bodyguard is speaking out, claiming he was unjustly fired.

“So all that extra sh*t, I don’t want to hear none of that sh*t. I got her out of there safe,” the bodyguard said in the video. “She making videos ain’t she? She talking to y’all can’t she? ‘Cause she talked to me. You alive we got out that muthaf*cker. I did my job, it’s complete.”

On the second slide, there is a clip of the altercation. “F*ck you bitch, weak ass b*tch,” the club attendee shouted at GloRilla in the video. Although the footage is blurry, GloRilla’s team seems to be trying to move her out of the venue.

“I’m not finna get to fighting nobody dats paying to come see me that’s security job to make sure mfs under control that’s they get paid to do,” GloRilla tweeted afterwards.

From the comments, at least on this post featuring the bodyguard, most social media users appear to be on his side, noting that if he had fought back, the other party could press charges in a lawsuit. “Security is not allowed to hit anyone because if that person sues him y’all not gonna help!” one person commented.

One of the biggest questions at the NFL Draft Combine involves the measurables for the presumed top quarterback prospect in the class of 2023, Alabama’s Bryce Young. While Young was the best quarterback in college football over each of the last two years and won a whole lot of games and individual awards, there are questions about whether or not he’ll be tall enough to succeed in the NFL.

Alabama’s official website listed Young at six feet tall and 194 pounds, and as it turns out, that isn’t quite right. While Young did bulk up a little bit, coming in at 204 pounds as he stepped on the scale, the former Heisman Trophy winner came in just a hair over 5’10.

It was noted in the aftermath of Young’s measurements that the Crimson Tide star comes in at almost the exact same size as Arizona Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray, who faced similar concerns about his size despite being a productive Heisman winner coming out of Oklahoma.

A pretty major difference between Young and Murray as they enter the league is that Murray is one of the most electric athletes to ever play quarterback, while Young was nowhere near as big of a threat with his legs, even if he is hardly a statue in the pocket. At the same time, it’s not like Young was always playing behind an elite offensive line in Tuscaloosa, and it stands to reason that he’s going to look awfully good during the field drills.

Tom Sizemore, the brilliant but troubled character actor who was a staple of Hollywood cinema in the ‘90s and early aughts, passed away on Friday after suffering a stroke caused by an aneurysm. He had been in a coma since February 18 and had been kept alive on life support. He was 61.

A go-to tough guy type who played characters on both sides of the law, Sizemore began his film career in the late ‘80s, in his late 20s, appearing in small roles in movies like Oliver Stone’s Born in the Fourth of July. Sizemore would reunite with Stone five years later, as the loose cannon detective in Natural Born Killers. Even with brief screen time, he knew how to make an impression. In his brief appearance in 1991’s Point Break, he makes a meal out of chewing out Keanu Reeves’ undercover agent Johnny Utah.

If you went to the movies in the mid-to-late ‘90s, it was all but impossible to avoid Sizemore. His wild, unpredictable work was a highlight of movies like Passenger 57, True Romance, Strange Days, Devil in a Blue Dress, and many more.

At the peak of his career, Sizemore worked with the best: Steven Spielberg (Saving Private Ryan), Martin Scorsese (Bringing Out the Dead), Ridley Scott (Black Hawk Down). Michael Mann cast him in his crime epic Heat, in which he held his own as part of the gang of thieves led by Robert De Niro’s Neil McCauley, contributing one of screen history’s great ice cold stares. Mann later cast him as the lead in TV’s Robbery Homicide Division, which lasted one season starting in 2002.

Throughout his career, Sizemore struggled with serious drug problems, using heroin, crystal meth, methamphetamines, and cocaine. He told Larry King in a 2010 interview that he’d been sober from 1997 through 2002. At the time, he said he’d been clean for nearly a year. He was in an out of rehab and placed on probation for drug possession. He later served jail time violating said probation.

Sizemore had other issues as well. In 2003, he was convicted of physically abusing Heidi Fleiss, the notorious Hollywood madam of an upscale prostitution ring who was also his girlfriend. He served eight months in prison. In 2003, he was accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old, which he denied. Those accusations resurfaced in 2017. He again denied them.

As these stories broke, Sizemore’s career faltered, and he found himself going from working with the best of the best to low-rent fare made on the outskirts of the film industry. He occasionally slipped back into the mainstream. He had a plum role in the Liam Neeson-starring Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House. TV was more welcoming, with stints on Entourage, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Hawaii 5-0, Law & Order: Special Victim’s Unit, Lucifer, and Shooter, on which he was a recurring cast member. David Lynch gave him a moving role on Twin Peaks: The Return, as a shady corporate type who finds redemption with Kyle MacLachlan’s sympathetic Dougie Jones.

Sizemore was a complicated figure, singularly talented yet deeply troubled. After his passing, he was honored by others in the industry.

https://twitter.com/WendellPierce/status/1630707877512871936as

Some remembered his storied ‘90s and early aughts run, when he seemed to be in every four movies.

Others shared their favorite moments from his career.

(Via NYT)

Early on Saturday morning, a video began circulating of Ja Morant in a nightclub flashing a gun. The video appeared to come from Morant’s Instagram account, where he went live from a nightclub at some point in the aftermath of the Memphis Grizzlies‘ loss to the Denver Nuggets on Friday. If you would like to watch the video, you can do so here.

Considering a recent Washington Post report that laid out some off-court issues Morant has ran into in recent months, the video led to Morant receiving plenty of criticism. And right around midday on Saturday, the NBA released a statement indicating that an investigation into the video is ongoing.

The reporting from the Post laid out a trio of incidents in which “Morant and people close to him have been accused of threatening and even violent behavior.” Two of these incidents — a fight in which Morant “repeatedly punched a teenage boy in the head” during a pickup game at his house over the summer and a moment after a game where someone with Morant pointed a laser at members of the Indiana Pacers — had previously been reported, while an additional incident involving Morant and a number of his friends going to a mall in Memphis due to an alleged confrontation between a Finish Line employee and Morant’s mother was new.

Via Washington Post:

Confronted by the director of mall security, Morant and his friends refused the security guard’s demands to leave the mall parking lot. Police arrived and a “verbal confrontation” escalated, the report says, until someone in the group allegedly pushed the security director in the head.

“As the group was leaving the premises … Ja Morant said, ‘Let me find out what time he gets off,’ ” police wrote in the report.

The video of Morant with a gun came after the Grizzlies traveled to Denver and fell to the Nuggets, 113-97, although it is unclear if the video came from a nightclub in Denver. Memphis is on a four-game road trip, with their next two games taking place against the Los Angeles squads on Sunday and Tuesday.

During this week’s episode of The Masked Singer, viewers were shocked to find out that the person behind the Polar Bear costume was none other than Grandmaster Flash.

“In the world today, there’s a lot of sadness and when I seen this show on a rough day I had for business – I was laughing!” Grandmaster Flash said according to HipHopDX. “It actually had me laughing. It allows you to let your guard down and just have fun. It’s a great show. It’s a great show.”

While the new season recently started, he still managed to make it to episode three before facing elimination. Grandmaster Flash performed Blondie’s “Rapture” during his time on the zany competition series.

“I sung horribly, but I sang it the best way I can and sitting down with the musicians and the vocal coaches in doing the best I can do with it,” he told Variety about how he felt during the performance. “But I had to do it with this 15 pound [costume] on me and do it in a cool way. I’m trying not to laugh but it was so stupid, but it was so fun.”

As the story goes, “Rapture” was written for him after Debbie Harry attended one of his shows with Fab Five Freddy.

Watch Grandmaster Flash’s reveal on The Masked Singer above.

Maisie Peters made a recent appearance on Australia’s Triple J to deliver a performance of Green Day’s “Basket Case” for their Like A Version series.

Compared to the original, Peters’ cover opens with a member of her band playing the violin and slows down the pacing to give a haunting-yet-captivating feeling of the 1994 song. However, by the second verse, the energy starts to pick back up, making it a truly fun watch.

Peters, who is currently touring as an opener for Ed Sheeran, revealed that her choice of song stemmed from her longtime love for the band, which she discovered as a tween. She is set to release her sophomore album, The Good Witch, in June.

“I wanted to do something slightly unexpected and Green Day were one of the first bands I discovered when I was 12. I loved that song, I loved ‘21 Guns’ and ‘Wake Me Up When September Ends.’ They were real pillars of my adolescence,” she said. “I loved the spirit of all of those Green Day songs. I loved the energy and the fire.”

Ahead of her performance, Peters noted that she pulled inspiration from folk, country, and The 1975’s song, “Part Of The Band,” to craft the sound of her take.

Check out Maisie Peters’ Green Day cover above.

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

Donald Trump loves his childish nicknames. There’s an entire Wikipedia page devoted to the dozens of schoolyard taunts he’s bestowed upon his many, many enemies. Some are better than others. Some are even full-on bigoted. But so far he’s been unable to find a good one for his top rival for the 2024 Republican presidential ticket: Ron DeSantis. And based on a new report from Bloomberg, he better keep trying.

As per the report, allies have — like most people — not exactly warmed to his most frequent DeSantis moniker: Ron DeSanctimonious. Trump seems set on it anyway, but that allegedly hasn’t stopped him from spit-balling some other ideas. Alas, these aren’t very good either: “Ron DisHonest,” “Ron DeEstablishment,” and the succinct “Tiny D.”

Thing is, he did reportedly stumble on one that’s both funny and genuinely mean. The New York Times reported a few weeks back that he’d been trying out “Meatball Ron” — an apparent poke at DeSantis’ Italian heritage and his weight. (Not that Trump is a spring chicken himself.) Alas, Trump has denied that he came up with that one, so for now, the clunky Ron DeSanctimonious it apparently is.

In other Trump nickname news, last week he debuted one for the Biden administration’s transportation secretary, Pete Buttigieg, which was, of course, straight-up homophobic.

(Via Bloomberg)

On Friday, Page Six reported that one of the most chaotic couples in America, Kellyanne and George Conway, were getting a divorce. The story, based on multiple insiders, has not been confirmed, but if true, it would mean an end to a 22-year marriage between two Republicans who, at least until Donald Trump came along, saw eye-to-eye. Since then their union has been very publicly messy, and after word that they were calling it quits, no one was happier than one of his fiercest haters, Kellyanne’s former boss.

“Congratulations to Kellyanne Conway on her DIVORCE from her wacko husband, Mr. Kellyanne Conway,” Trump wrote on his rinky-dink Twitter clone, as per Mediaite. “Free at last, she has finally gotten rid of the disgusting albatross around her neck. She is a great person, and will now be free to lead the kind of life that she deserves…and it will be a great life without the extremely unattractive loser by her side!”

According to the report, both Conways have “lawyered up.”

Kellyanne first became known to the public at large in 2016, when she was hired first as Trump’s campaign adviser then later his campaign manager. After his election she stayed with him as his senior counselor. She became notorious for her interactions with the press, including infamously making up the “Bowling Green massacre,” which is not a thing.

Meanwhile, George became an outspoken critic of his wife’s boss, even co-founding The Lincoln Project, comprised of old school Republicans who teamed with Democrats to ensure Trump didn’t serve a second term. They remain active, as Trump is eyeing a third term.

Trump routinely went after George, despite him being married to one of his closest cronies. As for Kellyanne, she’s criticized him, too. Kellyanne and George have long been very public about their disparate views. Things got so intense that in the lead-up to the 2020 election, their daughter Claudia attacked her parents on social media, even vowing to seek emancipation — a move that caused Kellyanne to resign from Trump’s team. And now this.

(Via Page Six and Mediaite)