Month: June 2023

Drake’s certified lover boy tendencies are rearing their adorable face yet again. According to the rumor mill, the “Search & Rescue” rapper has found his summertime love. The OVO Records boss is reportedly dating singer Lilah Pi. To celebrate Pi’s birthday yesterday (June 8), Drake took to his Instagram Story to share a sweet message. But who is Lilah Pi?

Before the blast of her image to his millions of online followers, Lilah Pi graced the cover of Drake’s artwork for “Search & Rescue.” Due to the nature of the song, many fans thought the musician was being petty by featuring a “Kim Kardashian impersonator” to push further the feud between him and the star’s ex-husband Kanye West. However, if the rumors are true, the Toronto native was soft launching his relationship.

Real name Delilah, the singer grow up in East London, where she discovered her love for music via her parents, telling Clash Magazine, “My dad was more indie pop like Beatles, Bowie, and that was always his vibe. My mum was always a Kanye person.”

Lilah Pi’s debut EP Atlantis was released in November 2021 via The Flight Club Records. Since then, she hasn’t released any more music.

Outside of music, Lilah does enjoy expanding her visual portfolio. Across her Instagram feed, she shares her love of painting, often uploading photographs of her completed pieces.

Similarly to Drake, Lilah Pi is also a die-hard romantic. She often posts about how her parent’s love for each and their marriage inspires her.

For much of hip-hop’s 50-year history, lots of attention has (rightly or wrongly) been lavished on three main regions: “The East Coast” (mostly consisting of New York, New Jersey, and Philadelphia), “The West Coast” (really, just LA, although the Bay Area has had moments of mainstream notoriety), and “The South” (everything from Texas to Florida, encompassing a dozen different sounds and styles). Meanwhile, since the mid-1990s, there has been an underground scene sizzling in Minnesota, just outside the national focus.

At the forefront of this culture-bending, often future-facing movement has been the Minneapolis/St. Paul-based label Rhymesayers. While multiple sources say it was founded in 1995, there’s some confusion among its own founders about when it came to be. But whenever Sean Daley, aka Slug, Anthony Davis, aka Ant (both collectively known as Atmosphere), Musab Saad (Sab The Artist), and Brent Sayers (Siddiq) officially formed Rhymesayers, they opened the door for a new paradigm in hip-hop, pioneered a novel approach to the creation and distribution of rap music, and became one of hip-hop’s longest-lasting emblems of the power of the independent label.

The impact that Rhymesayers has had on the landscape of hip-hop music and culture as a whole is often underappreciated but cannot be understated. While Siddiq and Slug, who graciously granted an interview to Uproxx to discuss their role in the past 50 years of hip-hop history, are both reluctant to posit any opinions about their importance to hip-hop, any Hip-Hop 50 celebration would be remiss to overlook their contributions. The label has been home to pillars of the indie rap scene, from Aesop Rock to MF DOOM, while producing and distributing projects from artists that pushed the boundaries of what hip-hop could be, in addition to producing the hip-hop-centric Soundset Festival, the first and longest-running of its kind.

And while Rhymesayers artists don’t often receive the same level of recognition as Golden Age pioneers like Gang Starr, NWA, Public Enemy, or Rakim & Eric B., you’d be hard-pressed to find a hardcore hip-hop head who doesn’t count at least one of the label’s artists as an influence. In this interview, Slug and Siddiq detail Rhymesayers’ rise to underground legend status, reminisce on their favorite moments in hip-hop history, and reflect on just what constitutes the forgotten sound of hip-hop’s fourth region: The Mighty Midwest.

We’re doing this on the 50-year anniversary of the official birth of hip-hop and Rhymesayers Entertainment has been a huge part of that. So Siddiq, Slug, if you could encapsulate what was Rhymesayers impact on the first 50 years of hip-hop evolution in a sentence, what would that be?

Slug: That is not fair. I’m not allowed to answer that question. Anybody that’s ever talked to me knows how I’m going to respond to a question like that. I’m going to downplay.

I’m here to be empathic. I’m here to relate in a sense of being able to observe, take it and understand it, but I know better than to give myself the agency to really speak on it. My reality is mine, and so I don’t know what our impact is on this culture that we are celebrating. I know what maybe my impact is on a specific branch of the tree if we want to talk about an impact I’ve had on a segment of MCs, or a segment of people who are attempting to do what I do.

I would say the impact I’ve had on a small portion of other advocates who have attempted to do what I do would be just I’m another one of those faces that tried to prove that you could do this yourself. That you could do it too.

Siddiq: I totally feel the same way. I mean, I think that has always kind of been part of our MO. I’ve always seen us as kind of like the working man’s addition to hip-hop in the sense of we’ve never felt entitled. I would never try to define any role I may or may not have had an impact on hip-hop because it’s had such an impact on me. I’m such a student and steward of what raised me that I can’t even wrap my head around that.

So if other people see that, if other people can glean that out of anything we’ve done, I think that’s amazing, but I don’t think I ever could. As much as I love the “you could do this too” as a sentence, it’s like I want to add all the caveats to that that I came upon because when we came up you couldn’t just do it and you had to go through some shit to be able to do it.

So yeah, it’s hard for me to wrap my head around me defining any impact we have or we have had. But I hope that we do. I hope that we have, but it’s hard for me to define that.

I would like to get your guys’ impressions of what’s changed for the better in hip-hop in the time you guys have been doing it. What’s changed for the worse? What you would like to see continue to change or evolve in the next 50 years of hip-hop?

Slug: I’m going to be one of those old heads that goes out on a limb and says, that it’s better now. When I say that, I’m not saying the quality. I remember beyond the sound, what was it about this music specifically, but also the personality and the culture of this. What was it that pulled me in and made me a true believer? And that was because, to make it humorous, it scared old white people.

It challenged the status quo. It challenged what was going on on a bunch of different levels.

And as far as I can tell, it still does that. And that’s its job. And so I don’t want to say that’s its job because I’m not here to call out anything, but I’m saying, to me, that’s a big part of what I want to see the youth have access to.

Siddiq: Yeah, I would agree. I mean, thankfully, I’ve never felt like I’ve fallen into the old-head category of just being angry at the kids. I’m very in tune with what’s going on, but I also am very connected to the Golden Era. That it was all imagination. It was all creation. There was nothing, there was no blueprint to it so everything was inventive and that was the beauty about its birth. I look at it today and I go, “Man, I don’t know that there’s ever been a more free time as someone doing this form of art in the sense of its creative energy.”

For a while, there was a box. It’s like if you wanted to be a part of hip-hop it’s like you kind of had to exist in this box. If you were outside of that box you were seen as something outside of that box. The boxes are gone. People may still want to try and debate it, but the reality is the boxes are gone. It’s a beautiful thing because, to me, it brings us back to that beginning point in some ways where you’re still here 50 years later being able to be completely innovative, and creative, and birthing new things.

How important is it to you guys to be kind of the beacon of not just independent, do-it-yourself rap, but also of those places in hip-hop that aren’t necessarily close to media centers? (This is my polite way of saying “what up with Midwestern hip-hop?”

Siddiq: In some ways our success and our existence really couldn’t have been fathomed. I mean… in some ways maybe it could because that was the spread and the impact of hip-hop. It was everywhere. There wasn’t a corner that shit didn’t seep into when we were kids, whether that was through what Breakin’ was doing, whether it was through the art form of rap, or graffiti, or whatever. These things spread across every facet of the country, the world really.

I look at the success we’ve had and I think there’s something indicative to being from a place like Minnesota, being from the Midwest, where you don’t have anything, especially not within hip-hop going on and coming out of here. You don’t have the industry per se, even though we obviously have huge musical history out of our state, whether we’re talking Flyte Tyme, or Prince, or Bob Dylan.

I think I’ve always seen it as something that allowed us to do it from a place that was authentic because we didn’t have to follow something, for one. And then two, I think also allowed us to uniquely stand out. I think being able to show that to the world and spread that across the country, I think that does then kind of relate back to that statement that Sean made earlier, “You could do this too.”

Slug: I was listening to Siddiq talk. I got to thinking about how there was a time when everybody, including myself, we all rapped like we were from New York, we had East Coast accents. Then some of us started to rap like we were from L.A. We started to kind of parrot what Freestyle Fellowship was doing, then or whatever Dre was doing.

And then down South happened. Atlanta had a sound, New Orleans got a sound, France, Paris, they were rapping in French. In Australia, they started rapping in their own accents. And as time goes on, every pocket, every scene, did finally break free from those chains of New York and Los Angeles and they started to find their own space.

This city’s no different. It did as well. I would say the main difference is that when it started to find its sound we were in the middle of that at the time. There were still plenty of groups here that sounded like they were from the South, and there were still plenty of people rapping here that sounded like they, I mean they had a New York “R.”

But you started to see a scene, a sound develop here because a couple of groups became more popular, other groups started listening, and it just does that natural thing. But I think the difference is none of the groups here ever fully, the sound never fully broke. You do see elements of the Minneapolis sound in some artists that got really big from around the country.

Over the past 50 years, we’ve all got favorite memories of what hip-hop has done for us on a professional and personal level. If you guys don’t mind sharing a couple of those, I would really love it. I would really appreciate it.

Slug: Me, it gave me identity. And that’s not to say I wouldn’t have had identity. Living in South Minneapolis and having access to this music, getting into graffiti, and socializing with other people into that stuff, gave me, I think, perspective and access to parts of my own imagination and parts of my own creativity. And I was into the Fat Boys as much as I was into Peter Gabriel “Sledgehammer.” It was all fun music when you’re nine. But as I got older, it gave me this space to go to escape from all the bullshit and get together with other people who were also escaping from all the bullshit to find ways to be creative.

Siddiq: I think the first was when I first heard “The Message,” walked down to the corner record store, bought the 12-inch, put it on, and I was like, “What the fuck is this?” I felt like I was visualizing New York in the early 1980s, and I saw everything Melle Mel was talking about. I wasn’t hearing it, I was seeing it. And I was just like… It blew my mind.

And then the other one is just completely random, but I just will never be able to get it out of my mind. I think it was Rock Steady anniversary. I don’t remember the exact year. We had went out to New York and we were just handing out CDs and stuff and MOP was playing the after-party. Okay, I… And I’m trying to remember the damn venue. It was like a second-story venue. You had to go upstairs in New York.

Just think MOP at the height of “Ante Up” in New York. It felt like we were going to fall through the floor. And like I said, it was the second floor of the venue, and you just felt the floor doing this [wobbles his hand], and I’m just… “This just don’t feel safe.” But I’ve never… Just the energy? I’d never be able to explain the energy I witnessed in that moment, in that room, to its justice. I’ll never be able to explain it and make somebody feel what I felt.

Just as the Roy siblings are on the verge of maintaining control of their late father’s media empire in the Succession finale, the situation takes a volatile turn as Shiv (Sarah Snook) refuses to vote to elevate Kendall (Jeremy Strong) as CEO. That decision not only robs Kendall of achieving his lifelong dream of finally taking over his dad’s company, but it takes their entire birthright off the table as tech bro Lukas Mattson (Alexander Skarsgård) becomes the new owner in a billion dollar purchase.

In those final moments, Kendall attempts to talk Shiv out of voting against him as Roman (Kieran Culkin) watches the scene unfold and ultimately descend into a brutal meltdown visible to everyone. The situation turns violent as Roman makes some choice comments about Kendall’s children, which causes him to violently grab Roman and squeeze his already damaged head. Kendall also lashes out at Shiv during the violent scene before being shoved away by Roman as he defends his pregnant sister.

It was a viscerally unsettling scene for the HBO series, and according to Culkin, the boardroom meltdown almost got way more violent. The actor recently revealed that he and Strong filmed several alternate versions that occasionally involved taking a few punches to the head. In fact, Culkin hadn’t watched the finale at the time of the interview and was curious as to which takes made the cut.

Via Variety:

Does it ever come to, like, slaps? Or do we ever go to the floor, or anything like that?

You wrestle, but you’re not fully on the floor, no.

Oh, well, cool! There were some where I was on top, and I was smacking his head. There were times when he got on top of me and just punched the shit out of me. And it was very alive, because we weren’t sure what the next one was going to be, and how it was going to manifest.

Culkin also revealed that Shiv was going to be more physically involved in the violent altercation, but there was a “safety thing” over Snook’s real-life pregnancy. That factor led to Strong and Culkin setting aside their aversion to rehearsing scenes.

“Jeremy and I are of the same opinion: We don’t really love rehearsing. We know what’s happening in the scene, let’s just do it,” Culkin said. “But we also have to be safe, because there was a safety risk.”

(Via Variety)

Guns N’ Roses have a big year ahead of them. They’re getting ready to hit the road, as well as headline Power Trip Festival and Glastonbury Festival.

The run began in Tel Aviv, Israel on June 5. It will continue through October, ending in Vancouver. The setlist, so far, is full of hits from their 1987 classic Appetite For Destruction like “Welcome to the Jungle” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” as well as from their 1991 album Use Your Illusion II, such as “Civil War” and “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door.”

Find the full setlist below from the first concert of their tour, as per setlist.fm.

1. “It’s So Easy”
2. “Bad Obsession”
3. “Chinese Democracy”
4. “Slither” (Velvet Revolver cover)
5. “Pretty Tied Up”
6. “Welcome To The Jungle” (Link Wray’s “Rumble” intro)
7. “Mr. Brownstone”
8. “Estranged”
9. “Double Talkin’ Jive”
10. “Live And Let Die” (Wings cover)
11. “Absurd”
12. “Hard Skool”
13. “Down On The Farm” (UK Subs cover)
14. “Rocket Queen”
15. “Anything Goes”
16. “You Could Be Mine”
17. “T.V. Eye” (The Stooges cover) (Duff on Vocals)
18. “This I Love”
19. “Civil War” (Jimi Hendrix’s “Voodoo Child”… more )
20. “Slash Guitar Solo”
21. “Sweet Child O’ Mine”
22. “November Rain”
23. “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” (Bob Dylan cover)
24. “Wichita Lineman” (Jimmy Webb cover)
25. “Nightrain”
26. “Patience” (The Impressions’ “People Get Ready” intro)
27. “Paradise City”

Uproxx cover star Moneybagg Yo has announced the dates for his 2023 Larger Than Life Tour, which embarks on August 3 and runs through September 30. He’ll be joined on tour by rising stars Finesse2Tymes, Sexxy Red, Luh Tyler, Big Boogie, and YTB Fatt. He announced the tour just a week after the release of his new mixtape Hard To Love, the first of two projects he plans to release in 2023.

The Memphis native said of the mixtape, “I’m more vulnerable on this project than I ever been because of what I went through in the last two years. I experienced a lot and endured a lot. I went through a lot. So, this album is really personal, but I know the world is going to relate to it because of the stuff I’m saying, the subject matter, I know people going through what I went through across the globe.”

Tickets for Bagg’s Larger Than Life tour go on sale Tuesday, June 13 at 10 am. You can get more info here. See below for the full run of tour dates.

08/03 — Orlando, FL @ Amway Center
08/04 — Atlanta, GA @ State Farm Arena
08/06 — Charlotte, NC @ Spectrum Center
08/08 — New York, NY @ Terminal 5 ***
08/10 — Philadelphia, PA @ Liacouras Center
08/11 — Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena
08/13 — Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena
08/17 — Indianapolis, IN @ Gainbridge Fieldhouse
08/18 — Cincinnati, OH @ Heritage Bank Center
08/19 — Chicago, IL @ Wintrust Arena
08/25 — St. Louis, MO @ Chaifetz Arena
08/27 — Milwaukee, WI @ Fiserv Forum
08/29 — Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom
09/01 — Los Angeles, CA @ Novo ***
09/02 — Las Vegas, NV @ Drais
09/07 — Birmingham, AL @ Legacy Arena
09/09 — Ft. Worth, TX @ Dickies Arena
09/10 — Houston, TX @ Toyota Center
09/12 — Seattle, WA @ Showbox SoDo ***
09/14 — Oakland, CA @ Fox Theater ***
09/16 — Richmond, VA @ VSU Multipurpose Center
09/30 — Memphis, TN @ FedEx Forum

***Support Lineup Will Change

Ex-President Donald Trump promptly melted down over his latest criminal indictment, and MAGA cheerleader Lauren Boebert did not handle the news well, either. Rival Ron DeSantis inadvertently sparked infighting on the subject, and that’s the same vibe coming from the co-hosts of Fox And Friends, which is once again looking like Fox And Frenemies. That’s increasingly been the case and often involves Steve Doocy attempting to explain things to his co-hosts while Ainsley Earhardt sort-of plays devil’s advocate, and Trump die-hard Brian Kilmeade looks like he would love to disappear into the studio floor.

The pattern took on new life on the morning following word of the new indictment. Doocy has already been publicly dragging Trump for his Mar-A-Lago hoarding of top-secret material and his anti-FBI rhetoric, so it’s no surprise that this is the side he’s still taking. He did so in an animated manner while on the verge of a celebratory tone.

If you watch this clip (posted by Media Matters’ Lis Power), Kilmeade’s glances toward the camera look like a mixture of processing the inevitable with a hefty dose of denial, along with “my spirit is leaving my body,” “help me, I am in Hell,” and “can you believe this guy?” His hero is going down the tubes, and wants to lash out, but every time he interjects, Doocy overrides him with logic.

Doocy did point out that these charges, while not fully revealed yet, look to be much more severe than handing hush money to Stormy Daniels. Watergate comparisons also flew from the elder Doocy’s mouth, and as stated by Powers, it does sound like a dad trying to educate young kids. Kilmeade does refrain from a public tantrum, to his credit, but he must be so frustrated. Doocy’s fed-up attitude toward Trump has been ongoing for years, and Kilmeade was previously aghast to hear his co-host going rogue, but now, Kilmeade looks increasingly sad on the subject.

Election 2024 is already throwing mad curveballs, alright.

Early in Game 3’s third quarter between the Miami Heat and Denver Nuggets, Jamal Murray wheeled around a screen from Nikola Jokic and beat Bam Adebayo to the edge. When Murray draws two on this action, Jokic is usually open for an automatic swing back for the open 3. Yet Gabe Vincent was lurking, ready to rotate and pounce upon any pass Murray lofted to his superstar pal.

Instead, Murray continued toward the hoop, aware that his exterior release valve was being monitored. As he approached the paint, Kevin Love, with arms and legs spread wide, abandoned Aaron Gordon and met Murray along the baseline. Drifting out of bounds, Murray tossed a leading bounce pass to Gordon, who loomed in the dunker spot for the slam and sparked a Miami timeout.

Days prior, the Nuggets ran a nearly identical set during the third quarter of Game 2. Murray engaged Adebayo. Jokic popped. Love kept a watchful eye inside. Gordon readied for a potential pass. Another defender (in this case, Max Strus) covered Jokic. That time, Murray, swarmed by Adebayo and Jimmy Butler, extinguished his dribble and enabled Love to stay home against Gordon. While he scanned for an opening, Bruce Brown shuffled to the middle of the key as his man, Vincent, was stuck defending two people.

But Murray’s pass sailed through Brown’s hands and Denver turned it over. A quarter and a half later, the Heat were victorious, tying the series at 1-1, and Murray had wrestled with their pestering, amorphous defensive schemes en route to a muted outing.

On Thursday, though, the Nuggets won handily and Murray returned to his star form with 34 points, 10 boards, and 10 assists. Denver reclaimed homecourt advantage. Murray defined his imprint on the game rather than letting Miami do it for him. After seeing his third-lowest usage rate of the playoffs (24.4 percent) in Game 2, Murray sported his second-highest usage rate (35.4 percent) in Game 3.

He stamped his mark from the outset rather than being passive throughout the early stages like in Game 2, which hampered him separate from the commendable work of Butler, Caleb Martin, and the Heat’s entire defense. There was no repeat of that performance, both because of his sheer aggression and the counters he and Denver implemented to ensure Miami could not stymie him like that anymore.

In Game 2, the Heat shifted Vincent off of Murray and put Butler on him to incorporate more size into the matchup. Murray liked facing Vincent and repeatedly burrowed and weaved to his spots. Butler encroached on his rhythm and took away his airspace. Miami also brought strong-side help from the corners and wings to eliminate room to maneuver in the midrange. Adebayo frequently played at the level in ball-screens and interfered with pocket pass windows to Jokic. Murray wasn’t bad offensively that evening, but he was certainly quieter than normal. That’s a win for Miami and a loss for Denver.

In Game 3, Butler again opened on Murray, who clearly came prepared to neutralize the Heat’s defensive coverages and maintain his effervescent postseason. Schematically, the two most pronounced tweaks were more empty corner connections between Murray and Jokic, as well as amending the angle and location of the initial screen.

Whereas many of the screens in Game 2 were set up top, facing the hoop straight on, Jokic set more angled screens around the wings to grant Murray increased space and time to read how that help defender might act. When they did set angle screens in Game 2, the screens regularly directed Murray toward a crowded side with two shooters.

On Wednesday, Murray flowed off of those angled picks with only one shooter on the strong-side. Jokic served as a roller more than a popper on these empty corner sets, too, which sprung Murray into less precarious positions. The Nuggets ran some of them in Game 1 when Miami began cheating off of the strong-side against Murray, so the foundation of film and experience already existed. They really hammered it home to unlock their star guard in Game 3.

Denver didn’t dial up an empty corner pick-and-roll every trip down, however. That placed some of the onus on Murray himself to adapt, and adapt he did. Rather than Miami’s stunts forcing him to retreat, reset, or end his live dribble as they did in Game 2, he simply discarded them with sweeping gathers, dexterous dribbling, and beguiling change of pace. One instance, Brown floated from the wing to the corner and brought Martin with him, which freed up a driving lane for his backcourt mate. Unlike Game 2, Murray and the Nuggets were prepared for this approach and rode it to success all night.

Despite the seven turnovers, some of which were not his fault and two of which occurred once the result was decided, Murray’s poise as lead ball-handler was sagacious. Miami switched, trapped, and played drop against his ball-screens. He dissected all of it. His cadence and footwork rendered the defensive versatility moot. He showcased craft and an indelible mindset to feed Jokic on the roll, unswayed by the Heat’s pressure.

In Game 2, only eight (50 percent) of Jokic’s 16 field goals were assisted. In Game 3, 10 (83.3 percent) of them were assisted and one of the two unassisted makes came on a switch against Butler ignited by Murray’s determination. Jokic is a foremost tough shotmaker, but his baskets arrived much easier because of his point guard’s revival. He didn’t have to bust out the H-O-R-S-E trickery to buoy Denver’s offense.

Murray’s shot-making headlined his dazzling game. His decision-making punctuated it. Miami aimed to silence his own bucket-getting, so he seamlessly evolved and invited the league’s premier scorer to carry the mantle.

I cannot predict the Heat’s response. Maybe, they open with Adebayo closer to the level of the screen on Friday. That worked well against Murray in Game 2, but they reverted to traditional drop to open Game 3 — he exploited it to quickly establish his footing against every coverage they employed throughout the night. They could also trap him, cover Jokic with a third defender, and gauge whether Murray can laser more dimes like this.

Independent of scheme, Butler has to be better defensively. He lost track of Murray a handful of times off the ball and often failed to stay attached through screens. Neither were the case when he bottled up Murray during Miami’s win. His offense perked up, but his defense faltered. Him balancing two-way stardom may prove the most practical adjustment.

Eventually, it might not even matter. Head coach Michael Malone and co. are spearheading a clinical playoff run from the sidelines. Murray is a star. Jokic is the superstar of the NBA. Their dynamic two-man game is built on “a trust and a feel” fostered through seven years together, and it has this Nuggets squad two wins away from the mountaintop.

It’s hard to imagine Margot Robbie not playing Barbie, but she wasn’t the first choice. Barbie originally starred Amy Schumer, who later dropped out of the project (before Greta Gerwig was involved) in 2017. “Sadly, I’m no longer able to commit to Barbie due to scheduling conflicts,” she wrote at the time. “The film has so much promise, and Sony and Mattel have been great partners. I’m bummed, but look forward to seeing Barbie on the big screen.”

Schumer finally revealed the real story on Watch What Happens Live.

“I think we said it was scheduling conflicts, that’s what we said. But yeah, it really was just creative differences. But you know, there’s a new team behind it, and it looks like it’s very feminist and cool, so I will be seeing the movie,” she said, according to Variety. When asked by host Andy Cohen if the old script wasn’t “feminist and cool,” she replied, “Yeah! Yeah.”

Schumer mentioned to The Hollywood Reporter last year that Sony “definitely didn’t want to do it the way I wanted to do it, the only way I was interested in doing it.” She said she should’ve known the project wasn’t for her when the studio gifted her a pair of Manolo Blahnik shoes to celebrate her casting.

There are no hard feelings between Schumer and Robbie. “I can’t wait to see the [Margot Robbie] movie, it looks awesome,” she said. Schumer didn’t mention how she felt about Ryan Gosling as Ken, because she need to — who could be mad at this guy?

Barbie opens on July 21st.

(Via Variety)

Selena Gomez’s schedule is filled to the brim. Whether she’s taking meetings for her cosmetics line Rare Beauty, filming for one of her shows on the Food Network, or popping into session studios for her forthcoming album, Gomez is swamped. However, the “My Mind & Me” singer still wants to find love.

In a viral video, the entertainer confessed that she is indeed single, and it’s a struggle. While attending a soccer matchup with friends, Gomez sporadically belted out her relationship status. As weird as it may sound, the hilarious moment was captured on video and uploaded to the actress’ TikTok page.

The post is captioned, “The struggle, man lol,” while in the video, Gomez can be heard yelling, “I’m single. I’m just a little high-maintenance. But I’ll love you soooo much.”

Gomez may be against dating apps, but she doesn’t mind putting herself out there in person. Gomez has been linked to several other musicians in the past, but those whispers are often muffled by the star. Earlier in the year, rumors began to circulate online that she was dating The Chainsmokers’ Drew Taggart. The pair was spotted out bowling together. However, Gomez quickly took to social media to cut those down, writing in her Instagram Stories,”#IAmSingle.”

It’s an exciting time to be affiliated with the Denver Nuggets. The team is in the middle of competing in the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history, and as of right now, they find themselves up, 2-1, on the Miami Heat. They are overwhelming favorites to win the Larry O’Brien trophy and Nikola Jokic is erasing any doubt that he is the best player on the planet.

But guess what, folks: Despite all of this, Denver’s front office found time to make a trade in the middle of the Finals. Hours before Game 4 tips off in Miami on Friday night, Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN reported that the Nuggets and the Oklahoma City Thunder pulled off a deal that involves a bunch of draft capital moving around, with the most notable pieces of the puzzle being a pair of first-round picks moving in opposite directions.

Denver finds itself in a position where its core players — Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr., Aaron Gordon — are all under contract through at least the 2024-25 season. It’s why there’s so much optimism about their ability to keep being a contender over the next few years, but as Wojnarowski pointed out, it’s important to them to do everything they possibly can to maximize their odds of winning as many championships as possible before their cap sheet becomes untenable.