Month: March 2024

Even though he was born “Katherine Elizabeth,” Skylar lived like a regular little boy for most of his childhood.

He was happy.

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This is Skylar.

But when puberty hit, he started feeling intense pressure to be “normal” and fit in. So he tried to present as more traditionally “feminine.”

But he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was denying a huge part of himself. Late in high school, he started taking testosterone.

Skylar started feeling more comfortable immediately. And before he knew it, he was at his “dream school,” having the time of his life. And taking lots and lots of pictures of himself.

Access to medical care played a big part in Skylar becoming the person he is today, but that wasn’t all.

Check out his story and walk five years in his shoes. It’s definitely a perspective we don’t see often enough:

This article originally appeared on 08.30.14

With all the miraculous blessings that a baby brings, the life you had before it came into the world is gone forever. No more spontaneous outings, putting your own preferences first, being reckless and carefree. Of course these sacrifices are well worth it, most parents would agree. But that doesn’t mean they don’t feel some grief over their former selves.

And it’s this fear of missing out, aka FOMO, that has one mom thanking her lucky stars that she didn’t have her first child until the ripe old age of 33.

Style content creator and new mom Kristie shared in a TikTok video how having a childfree 20s helped her going into her pregnancy at 33 with zero worries of missing out.

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“Becoming a first-time mom at 33, 10 out of 10, hear me out,” she said in the clip, acknowledging that pregnancies later in life aren’t without potential risks.

But, at least in her experience, having “15 years to be selfish” allowed her the opportunity to really become ready to be a mom on an emotional, mental and financial level.

So now that she is pregnant, she feels like she has “been there, done that” with the pre-mom activities, and can completely appreciate the new chapter of her life.

“This has been such an amazing time. I haven’t done a lot in the past three and a half months. I’m just kind of soaked in the time with my daughter. Not watching everybody’s Instagram stories, traveling or going out to dinner or going out on the weekends. And I’m not like, ‘I wish I was doing that.’ I’m like, ‘I’ve already done that. I’ve already done that a lot.’”

Nowadays, she’s perfectly content to “just enjoy the little things,” like the cup of coffee she’s about to have as her daughter takes a nap.

@astylechild

but also somehow simultaneously feeling like a teen mom

♬ original sound – Kristie

Kristie’s video clearly struck a chord with other moms who had their first kids later in life, and had similar positive experiences.

“34 with a 2 month old! PhD, JD done and more secure and no fomo! We lived and ate well!” one person wrote.

“100%. Had my first baby at 33 and I cannot imagine having one in my 20’s!! I’m glad I had my selfish time pre baby ❤️” another added.

Others simply agreed that just because our biology tends to favor getting pregnant in our 20s and even younger, life doesn’t often accommodate for that kind of timeline.

“I just turned 30 and the thought of having children anytime soon is WILD to me,” one person wrote.

As the Mayo Clinic explains, “The biological clock is a fact of life. But there’s nothing magical about age 35. It’s simply an age at which risks become more discussion worthy.” And that’s a great way of framing it. Sure, there are things to be aware of, like fertility issues, health risks, and potential complications—but that doesn’t mean it’s unwise to hold off on starting a family until you’re fully ready.

Frankly, the societal pressure to have a baby before 30 might be due in part to the medical risks, but let’s be honest: it’s also another way women are taught to feel “past their prime” after the first quarter of their entire life. Luckily, women like Kristie sharing their stories helps break through that kind of stigma.

Summer is just around the corner, that means it’s time to break out those razors and put on some shorts. That means retailers are starting to advertise their their summer collections to prime people for the newest trends. But there are some trends that may need to be retired before they catch on if you take the reviews of women online.

Free People, a specialty lifestyle brand for bohemian styled fashion, have released a new style of shorts. The internet seems to be slightly confused on if the material they received from the retail brand is supposed to be shorts or something else entirely. They’re supposedly shorts, but they’re “micro shorts,” which are similar to shorts you’d see in the wild.

They have two leg holes, a hole for your body and less material than pants. Checks off all the requirements for a pair of shorts…except, they appear to be about the length of underwear. That’s not an exaggeration and to prove that point a couple of women bought some to try on so you don’t have to. The videos are not only honest but hilarious.

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In one video Nicole Walters, a New York Times best selling author and mom to three girls decided to order the shorts to see how they looked on someone with, “thigh meat.” She wears a size 12 and often jokes about being a curvier on the bottom. When she pulled the shorts out, it looked as if she was going to have to perform a magic trick to get them on. They looked to be the size a small child would wear, but they seemed to have gone on easily even though they looked extremely uncomfortable. She looked uncomfortable. The viewers likely looked uncomfortable.

“Oh wow. They’re in there and by in there I mean everywhere. There’s a lot of thigh meat happening right now in the, this region,” Walters says as she gestures at her upper thighs. “There’s some thigh meat, um…uh…I feel like they’re definitely in some places that I didn’t know I had.”

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A post shared by Nicole Walters (@nicolewalters)

Walter’s review of the shorts has people in stitches as she jokes about her Christianity falling out of the shorts.

“It’s the Barbie walk for me lol!!! Thank you for your service,” one person says.

“The way you warn us that you’re going to turn around almost made me scream with laughter,” someone writes.

“I’m just going to go ahead and dial 911 for help bc looks like you may need the jaws of life to come out them shorts…lol!! Your commentary had me dying laughing..lol,” another commenter jokes.

In another Free People “micro shorts” try on video, Nicole Story Dent braved the itty bitty shorts to show her audience the summer trend they can look forward to seeing. The first pair of shorts has multiple flaps that appear to be large pockets which inspires Dent to pretend to fly in them before the discomfort sinks in.

“It’s kinda giving waitress…if they ever want to make a Waffle House-Hooters hybrid, we have their uniform, she says. “We have been asking for more pockets so they delivered. Speaking of delivered, you could deliver a baby without having to take these shorts off.”

Dent guesses that the shorts would be more like “jundies” or “janties” than jorts, the shorthand term for jean shorts. Commenters couldn’t stop laughing at her description of the shorts while others provided her with words of wisdom.

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A post shared by Nicole Story Dent • Relatable Millennial + Momhood Content (@nicolestorydent)

“Do NOT drop it low in these jundies, that kind of contact with the club floor is NOT hygienic,” someone writes.

“‘There is nothing vegan about these. There is absolutely a cat being harmed!’ I’m cackling! You really should win something from Free People for this! @freepeople we found your next model,” another person jokes.

“This is the kind of content the internet was made for, it’s just so good. However my thighs started getting chafed just watching this,” someone laughs.

Surely these shorts were made for someone and they will look fabulous on whoever that person may be. But right now, there are a lot of confused, thoroughly tickled ladies on the internet who know they are not the target audience. If you’re brave enough to give these micro shorts a try, go ahead and stock up on some baby powder for all the chaffing.

Oh, society! We have such a complicated relationship with relationships.

It starts early, with the movies we are plopped in front of as toddlers.

GIF from Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”

And continues through adolescence, still through entertainment.

“I’d rather die than stay away from you.”

GIF from “Twilight.”

And then guess what happens? We’re peddled some more of what we’re supposedly meant to be aiming for when we’re adults.

“I was the one girl he chose from 20 other girls to be with. Now I know I’m special!” — me, mocking probably very sweet people.

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GIF from “The Bachelor.”

There are so many examples of this, it’s difficult to narrow them down. Not to mention all the social cues coming in all stealth-bomber-like to beat one’s psyche into submission. Like when single people go to weddings, their family members casually ask them, “When will YOU settle down?” And when a friend goes through a breakup, it’s almost instinctive to reassure them that there’s someone out there for them.

But what if not everyone is supposed to pair off? What if some people are — wait for it — happier when they’re single?

It’s kind of a radical notion in this culture, where pairing off is treated more as a foregone conclusion and universal life goal.

A study in 2014 from the National Bureau of Economic Research said that married people rated higher in happiness measurements than single people did.

You might have taken that study at face value.

But hold the phone! There’s another recent study from University of Auckland’s School of Psychology that tells a more complete story by comparing happiness levels among a very specific group of singles and marrieds.

How? Well they looked at something called “avoidance goals” and “approach goals.”

What are avoidance and approach goals?

Well, what motivates each person is different. Some people are motivated by going after what their desired outcome is. Some people are more concerned with avoiding undesirable outcomes. People are often mixed bags, displaying some traits of avoidance and some traits of approach, and where they’re at with it can change with other factors in life. But on the entire spectrum, some people fall on one distinct end or the other.

In the new study, it held up that low-avoidance singles were a little bit less happy than low-avoidance married people. In other words, people who were more approach-goal motivated and married DO experience a bit more happiness.

But, interestingly, researchers found that singles who fall more on the high-avoidance side of the spectrum showed the same level of happiness as high-avoidance marrieds.

And theoretically, for those happy high-avoidance singles, they could very well find themselves miserable in a relationship for whatever reasons they avoid them in the first place. In individual circumstances, singlehood may be the best choice for some.

What does it all mean?

Some people love love and want to find their happily ever after. There’s nothing wrong with that, and society supports that model. More power to them!

But for those of you wondering if you’re weird or broken because you seem to prefer single life, there’s nothing wrong with you. Don’t let society pressure you into doing things their way, you magnificently beautiful lone wolf!

This article was written by Angie Aker and originally appeared on August 27, 2015

It’s cold and flu seasons, folks. During this time of year, we’re all on a mission to avoid the demon viruses that threaten to invade our bodies and wage Armageddon on our immune systems.

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But no matter how much vitamin C we consume or how diligently we wash our hands, we still have to rely on others to be smart about exposing people to their sick germs.

And that goes doubly for kids, who inexplicably do things like lick their own palms and rub communal crayons under their noses.

That’s why a mom’s recent Facebook post about keeping kids home when they have a fever has been shared more than 170,000 times. Samantha Moriá Reynolds shared a photo of a thermometer with a temperature of 101.4 with the following message:

This morning, Sam woke up and noticed her son wasn’t feeling well.
Sam took her son’s temperature, and wow! A fever.
Sam gave her son Tylenol and then…
Sam did NOT send her son to school.
Even after the fever went down a couple hours later, Sam did NOT send her son to school.
Sam missed work knowing that the well-being of her son and the kids who attend his school is more important than work missed.

Sam’s son was invited to THREE birthday parties over the weekend. Sam’s son has been so excited to go, but he will unfortunately also have to miss them because Sam’s son is SICK. Sam knows passing along a sickness would not be a great birthday gift regardless of how bummed her son may be.

Sam knows her son is still contagious until he is fever-free, WITHOUT medication, for 24 hours. If Sam’s son is running a fever at 7am on Sunday, Sam’s son will also not be attending school on Monday.

Be. Like. Sam.

Some parents will give their kids fever-reducing medication, the fever will go down, the kid will feel a bit better, and off they go to school. But fever meds like Tylenol don’t do anything to kill the virus that’s infecting the kid’s body. They just mask the symptoms of the illness and provide some relief to a miserable kiddo. If a fever goes down with medication, the child is still sick and still contagious.

The same goes for adults who try to tough it out by popping a Dayquil before heading off to work. If you want to infect your coworkers and make them hate you, keep doing that.

Granted, some parents may have a hard time finding childcare or taking time off work, and there’s a lot to be said for employers being understanding and granting leave to care for sick children. Our whole society needs to work together on this front to make sure people don’t feel like they have no choice but to send a sick kid to school. But that starts with parents insisting that their feverish kids stay home from school until they are no longer a threat to other people’s health and well-being.

The coronavirus outbreak keeps making headlines and the mounting death numbers from it are making people nervous, but the truth is that the plain old flu already kills thousands of Americans every single year. This season, more than 8,000 people have already died from flu and flu complications, and we’re still in the thick of the season.

The best way to keep illness from spreading is to stay away from other people when you are sick and to keep sick kids home until they are fever-free for 24 hours.

Be like Sam. Keep sick kids home. It takes a village to keep us all healthy.

This article originally appeared on 01.30.20

Nothing can ever fully prepare you for being an adult. Once you leave childhood behind, the responsibilities, let-downs and setbacks come at you fast. It’s tiring and expensive, and there’s no easy-to-follow roadmap for happiness and success.

A Reddit user named u/Frequent-Pilot5243 asked the online forum, “What’s an adult problem nobody prepared you for?” and there were a lot of profound answers that get to the heart of the disappointing side of being an adult.

One theme that ran through many responses is the feeling of being set adrift. When you’re a kid, the world is laid out as a series of accomplishments. You learn to walk, you figure out how to use the bathroom, you start school, you finish school, maybe you go to college, and so on.

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However, once we’re out of the school system and out from under our parents’ roofs, there is a vast, complicated world out there and it takes a long time to learn how it works. The tough thing is that if you don’t get a good head start, you can spend the rest of your life playing catch-up.

Then, you hit middle age and realize that life is short and time is only moving faster.

Adulthood also blindsides a lot of people because we realize that many adults are simply children who grew older. The adult world is a lot more like high school than a teenager could ever imagine.

The Reddit thread may seem a bit depressing at first, but there are a lot of great lessons that younger people can take to heart. The posts will also make older people feel a lot better because they can totally relate.

Being an adult is hard, exhausting and expensive. But we’re all in this together and by sharing the lessons we’ve learned we can help lighten each other’s load just a bit.

Here are 21 of the most powerful responses to the question: “What is an adult problem nobody prepared you for?”

1. Lack of purpose

“Lack of purpose. All your young life you are given purpose of passing exams and learning, then all of a sudden you are thrown into the world and told to find your own meaning,” — Captain_Snow.

2. No bed time

“You can stay up as late as you want. But you shouldn’t,” — geek-fit

3. Friendships

“Where did all my friends go?” — I_Love_Small_Breasts

Most of them are at the same place as you are … Probably wondering the same thing,” — Blackdraon003

4. Bodily changes

“I’m closer to fifty than forty, would have been nice to be better prepared for some of the ways your body starts to change at this point that don’t normally get talked about. For instance your teeth will start to shift from general aging of your gums,” — dayburner.

5. People don’t change

“Didnt know that other adults have the emotional intelligence of teenagers and its almost impossible to deal with logically,” — Super-Progress-6386

6. Money

“$5K is a lot to owe, but not a lot to have,” — Upper-Job5130

7. Our parents age, too

“Handling the decline and death of your parents,” – Agave666

8. Free time

“Not having a lot of free-time or time by myself,” — detective_kiara

9. No goals

“Not having a pre-defined goal once I was out of college. Growing up my goals were set for me: get through elementary school! then middle school! Then high school, and get into college and get a degree, then get a job, and then…? Vague “advance in your career, buy a house, find a spouse, have a kid or multiple, then retire.” At 22 I had no idea how to break that down more granularly,” — FreehandBirdlime

10. Constant upkeep

“Life is all about maintenance. Your body, your house, your relationships, everything requires constant never ending maintenance,” — IHateEditedBGMusic

11. Exhaustion

“Being able to do so many things because I’m an adult but too tired to do any of them,” — London82

12. Loneliness

“Being an adult feels extremely lonely,” — Bluebloop0

13. Dinner

“Having to make dinner every. Fucking. Day,” — EndlesslyUnfinished

14. Time changes

“The more life you’ve lived, the faster time seems to go,” — FadedQuill

15. You’re responsibile, even if you didn’t mean it

“You are held to account for bad behaviour for which you are negligent even if you had no intention to cause harm. As a lawyer, I see this all the time. People don’t think they’re responsible for mistakes. You are,” — grishamlaw

16. Work is like high school

“The intricacies of workplace politics,” — Steve_Lobsen writes. “

“When you’re in school, you think that you won’t have to deal with gossiping and bullying once you leave school. Unfortunately, that is not true,” — lady_laughs_too_much

17. Nowhere to turn

“How easy it is to feel stuck in a bad situation (job, relationship, etc) just because the cost and effort of getting out can seem daunting. And sometimes you just have to accept a figurative bowl full of shit because you can’t afford to blow up your life,” — movieguy95453

18. The happiness question

“Figuring out what makes you happy. Everyone keeps trying to get you to do things you’re good at, or that makes you money, but never to pursue what you enjoy,” — eternalwanderer5

19. Constant cleaning

“The kitchen is always dirty. You’ll clean it at least three times every day,” — cewnc

20. Life costs money

“One adult problem nobody prepared me for is how expensive everything is. I always thought that as an adult I would be able to afford the things I wanted, but it turns out that’s not always the case! I’ve had to learn how to budget and save up for the things I want, and it’s been a difficult process,” — Dull_Dog_8126

21. Keeping above water

“All of it together. I was relatively warned about how high rent is, car bills and repairs, how buying healthy food is expensive as hell but important for your health, how to exercise and save what you can, my parents did their best to fill in my knowledge about taxes and healthcare and insurance that my schooling missed, about driving and cleaning a household, about setting boundaries at work but working hard and getting ahead if you can, about charity and what it means to take care of a pet and others, about being a good partner if you were lucky enough to have one, about how dark and messed up the world is when you just read the news and what all that means to me and my community… I was reasonably warned about all of it.

“No one could have ever prepared me for how hard doing all of it at the same time and keeping your head above that water would actually be,” — ThatNoNameWriter

This article originally appeared on 01.28.22

A while after comedian Jerrod Carmichael appeared alongside Taylor Swift at a Kansas City Chiefs game, he has now opened up about how close exactly the two are… Or rather, how their friendship might be a little one-sided, although he has high hopes.

During his appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Carmichael was asked about the photo and what Swift was like.

“Taylor Swift’s my best friend,” Carmichael shared, putting the emphasis on best. “Like, I’m not her best friend, but she’s my best friend.” The audience then bursts out laughing.

“Can you think of a better friend to have than Taylor Swift?” he added, asking Kimmel directly. “I called my former best friend and I was like, ‘You’re out. Taylor’s in. You never invited me on a jet to your game.’”

Carmichael then praises her seriously, pointing out that he thinks the pop star is “smart and interesting.” Kimmel then tries to clarify a bit more about how he got an invite to the Chiefs game with her.

“I won’t even get top-billing!” Carmichael joked about the news coverage of it. “It’ll say: ‘Taylor Swift: Jerrod Carmichael’s Best Friend?’ Don’t do that to me, it’s gotta be something else. I do love her though.”

For those looking to see more of Carmichael’s work, his upcoming reality show drops on HBO next week.

Check out the clip of Jerrod Carmichael talking about Taylor Swift and their Chiefs outing above around the 9:10 minute mark.

Auburn lost a member of its starting lineup a little more than three minutes into its NCAA Tournament opener against Yale. As the Tigers were pushing the ball up the floor, starting forward Chad Baker-Mazara wound up his elbow and hit Bulldogs guard August Mahoney in the chest. While there are times where this could be waved away as incidental contact, Baker-Mazara clearly turned his head and looked before he threw the elbow, which is about as close to an automatic ejection as you’ll see.

Regardless, the officials took a look at what happened and handed out a Flagrant 2.

Right after getting into the locker room, Baker-Mazara picked up his phone and did what most people would do in this situation: started posting. Apparently, one of his posts got deleted not long after it went up.

Baker-Mazara then decided to offer up a word of support for his teammates, expressing his optimism that they’d be able to take care of business against the Ivy League champions without him on the floor.

The matchup between Auburn and Yale is the 4-13 game in the East Region, with the winner earning a spot in the next round against the defending national champions, UConn.

Way back in 2017, when I first started working at Uproxx, I wrote a piece called Bringing Drake And Kendrick Lamar To The Brink Of Battle about the longstanding cold war between the two prominent rappers, who fans have interchangeably considered the top of rap’s hierarchy along with J. Cole.

Collectively, they’ve been called hip-hop’s “Big Three,” but on Kendrick Lamar’s new verse on “Like That” from Future and Metro Boomin’s new joint album We Don’t Trust You, the Compton rapper derides the concept, declaring, “Motherf*ck the Big Three / N****, it’s just big me.”

He also spends a significant portion of his verse throwing shade at Drake, which some fans have interepreted as a response to Drake throwing some of his own on his J. Cole collaboration “First Person Shooter” from For All The Dogs.

Now, if you’ve found yourself wondering why these two have spent so much time and energy trying to dim each other’s light, here’s a timeline of their feud to help make sense of it all.

2011: Drake Invites Kendrick Lamar To Collaborate On Take Care

The first official collaboration between Drake and Kendrick appears on Drake’s second album, Take Care. On “Buried Alive,” Drake cedes the stage to Kendrick, who delivers an unbroken stream of consciousness reflecting on his already antagonistic relationship to fame. Even then, it was clear he wasn’t sure what to make of Drake’s extended hand; during the verse, he muses that their association would change him and not necessarily for the better. “So blame it on Mr. OVOXO / The reason why I’m breathin’ all the vanity I know,” he raps, the first sign that things were all hunky-dory despite their initially friendly footing.

2013: Kendrick Lamar’s Verse On Big Sean’s “Control” Sets The Rap World On Fire

It’s funny; the origin of Kendrick Lamar’s big break from the industry as a whole came on a song that isn’t even technically commercially available. For a while, K. Dot played the game, collaborating with Drake twice more (on his Good Kid, MAAD City single “Poetic Justice” and on ASAP Rocky’s “F*ckin’ Problems”) but when given the opportunity to collab with fellow rising star Big Sean on his second album Hall Of Fame, Kendrick instead went full scorched earth on “Control,” inviting the entire rap world to catch his fade. The song, which was released as a promotional single but ultimately cut from the album over sample clearance issues, brought an immediate response from dozens of rappers — but not the one he seemingly most wanted to react.

“I didn’t really have anything to say about it,” Drake told Billboard in August of that year. “It just sounded like an ambitious thought to me. That’s all it was. I know good and well that [Lamar]’s not murdering me, at all, in any platform. So when that day presents itself, I guess we can revisit the topic.”

2013: Kendrick Calls Out Drake On The BET Hip-Hop Awards

Revisit the topic Kendrick did, referencing Drake’s non-response in his Cypher verse at the 2013 BET Hip-Hop Awards. “Nothing’s been the same since they dropped ‘Control,’” he flexed. “And tucked a sensitive rapper back in his pajama clothes.” Unfortunately, despite name-checking Drake’s album, he failed to elicit a direct response, although some cited Drake’s verse on Future’s “Sh!t” as an indirect one: F*ck n****s gon’ be f*ck n****s / That’s why we never gave a f*ck when a f*ck n**** switched up.”

Since then, the two have exchanged a handful of subliminal potential disses, but never anything that either seemed to think was worth escalating the conflict over. A few examples include:

2013: Drake’s “The Language”

Nothing Was The Same was allegedly littered with references to Kendrick, none overt. However, it’s hard to overlook the first verse from “The Language” in which he decries “any n****s that’s talkin’ that sh*t just to get a reaction / F*ck going platinum, I looked at my wrist and it’s already platinum” — a subtle nod to Good Kid, MAAD City reaching the million-sold milestone two years after its release (by comparison, it took Drake’s debut album, Thank Me Later, just a month to accomplish).

2015: Kendrick Lamar’s “King Kunta”

When Kendrick incredulously wonders, “I can dig rapping / But a rapper with a ghost writer? What the f*ck happened?” many retroactively took it as a pointed reference to Drake’s “ghost writer” controversy, which was kicked off by Meek Mill later that year when he detailed being surprised that Drake asked him for a verse on a nearly completed reference song. After the scandal broke (and Drake cooked Meek with the onslaught of “Charged Up” and “Back To Back”), fans pointed to Kendrick’s bar as an example of foreshadowing… even though he never mentions Drake on the track.

2015: Drake’s Verse From The Game’s “100”

“I would have all of your fans / If I didn’t go pop and I stayed on some conscious shit,” has long been construed as a gloating shot at Kendrick for being unable to match Drake in commercial success. Another example of a line that could be about K. Dot: “I’m in the club every time that they play the competition If they even play the competition and I seen the response they get.”

2015: Kendrick’s Verse From Dr. Dre’s “Deep Water”

“Motherf*cker know I started from the bottom” begins the verse, calling back to one of Drake’s best-known but most scrutinized hits. (“I don’t give a f*ck about your whereabouts” could also be seen as a reference to the Canadian rapper’s tendency to release songs titled with timestamps and locations, such as…)

2016: Drake’s “4PM In Calabasas”

Less of a diss and more of a reminder, Drake made it a point to take credit for taking the risk of backing Kendrick and ASAP Rocky in 2011, eschewing the advice to bring R&B singers on his tour. “When they told me take an R&B n**** on the road and I told ’em no and drew for Kendrick and Rocky / I tried to make the right choices with the world watching.” Might have bit him in the backside.

2017: Kendrick’s “The Heart Part 4”

Ahead of releasing the Pulitzer-winning DAMN., Kendrick made it a point to tell Drake: “Jay-Z Hall of Fame, sit your punk ass down / So that means you ain’t bigger than rapping.” After taking some parting shots on “Element,” he went so long without dropping new music, that it seemed their feud had ended by virtue of sheer boredom on either rapper’s part.

2023: Drake’s “First Person Shooter” Verse

Despite taking in one of Kendrick’s Big Steppers tour stops (after Kendrick expressed confusion at Drake and Kanye squashing their own feud on that album), Drake seemingly couldn’t resist getting in some digs at Kendrick on his J. Cole collaboration, nor slighting him during his own tour, telling fans he wouldn’t disappear on them for years at a time (suggesting that’s what Kendrick did between 2017’s DAMN. and 2022’s Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers).

2024: Kendrick Lamar’s “Like That” Verse

And here we are, full circle — sorta. Truthfully, this feels more liek is should be an intermission, although it’s also the first time in over 10 years Kendrick openly baited Drake with an invitation to throw down. We’ll see if the time Drake predicted all those years ago finally comes to pass, or if Kendrick’s craving for conflict continues to go unsatisfied.

Welcome to a special corner of Neil Gaiman‘s The Sandman Universe. Also, surprise! Netflix is about to gift viewers with a treat while they await more of the flagship series, which is currently working on new stories of the Endless. In the meantime, the streamer will present two young investigators who become partners at solving supernatural crimes, despite being dead and after being born decades apart. They’re ghosts who are the only guys to call in for the job after human hunches cannot suffice, especially when things get paranormal. And that means that they encounter many hazards, including witches and the depths of Hell, while helping mortals put their realm back at ease.

Are you in? Let’s talk about what we can expect from Netflix’s Dead Boy Detectives.

Plot

Viewers of The Sandman are currently waiting to see whether that show’s second season will address Season Of Mists, otherwise known as the fourth graphic novel volume of The Sandman comic books. That volume includes a tale about characters within a British boarding school, and the purpose of the ghost story relates to Lucifer’s (portrayed by Gwendoline Christie in the Netflix series) ongoing beef with Dream (Tom Sturridge). Eventually, Gaiman decided to resurrect these characters for a further adventure because he couldn’t help himself, as Netflix details with these quotes:

“Who amongst us can honestly say that if we were hanging around the Earth as a ghost we wouldn’t want to start a detective agency?” asks Gaiman. “I think what fans responded to the most was their good-heartedness and dedication.”

From there, a Vertigo spinoff comic happened, and in 2024, the interwoven nature of these two comics, along with the fact that we will be waiting until 2025 for The Sandman to return, provides the perfect window for Dead Boy Detectives to step into the spotlight as ghosts who are solving the paranormal mysteries that confound human investigators. Co-creator Steve Steve Yockey compared the two TV series: “If The Sandman is this really lush, rich supernatural drama, then Dead Boy Detectives is the Hardy Boys on acid… Hopefully just as addictive, but through a severely cracked lens.”

Will there be any crossover action on The Dead Boy Detectives? Given that both series hail from Netflix, chances were already good that this would happen. The streamer has also revealed that at least one member of the Endless will surface in the new series’ first season. Who shall it be? My hope is for it to be Death, and that also seems like a natural transition to make (including a logical, literal shift) between the shows.

Here’s the lowdown from the show’s description:

Meet Edwin Payne (Rexstrew) and Charles Rowland (Revri), ‘the brains’ and ‘the brawn’ behind the Dead Boy Detectives agency. Teenagers born decades apart who find each other only in death, Edwin and Charles are best friends and ghosts… who solve mysteries. They will do anything to stick together – including escaping evil witches, Hell and Death herself. With the help of a clairvoyant named Crystal (Nelson) and her friend Niko (Kitamura), they are able to crack some of the mortal realm’s most mystifying paranormal cases.

Cast

George Rexstrew (as Edwin Payne) and Fate: The Winx Saga‘s Jayden Revere (as Charles Rowland) pick up the roles of the heading ghostly detectives. A Series of Unfortunate Events‘ Kassius Nelson will portray Crystal Palace, the pair’s psychic medium who signs up for the Dead Boy Detective Agency. Lukas Gage portrays the shapeshifting Cat King (for real), and the cast also includes Briana Cuoco, Ruth Connell, Joshua Colley, and David Iacono.

Release Date

This Netflix series arrives on April 25, and we still await an official return date for The Sandman, which is filming now.

Trailer

Strong Lockwood and Co. vibes are coming from this teaser trailer.