Category: News

After sending tens of thousands of Russians and allied forces to their deaths to fight against Ukraine, Vladimir Putin seems to be preparing for his own demise—or at least that’s the way it looks, literally. The Russian president has never made a secret of the fact that he thinks he’s pretty hot stuff, as countless shirtless photos of him indicate. War or no war, the murderous dictator seems intent on keeping his youthful glow (!?!) by having so much Botox injected into his body that he looks downright corpse-like.

While Putin is always surrounded by a small team of doctors, Michael Clarke, a visiting professor in the department of war studies at King’s College London, told Metro that there’s “no convincing evidence” that there’s anything actually wrong with Vlad. The man just really loves his fillers. “I always say that he is trying to embalm himself while he’s still alive,” Clarke said, noting that “he does take a lot of Botox.”

“There’s known to be a little team of doctors who are never far away, and it’s said that he leaves meetings at frequent intervals to go and consult with somebody,” Clarke added. “I suspect that he’s only a hypochondriac, to be honest.” Or maybe he’s just a fan of The Real Housewives?

Whatever the case, Putin—who will turn 70 years old in October—seems eerily obsessed with maintaining his vim and vigor. In the past, he has been known to consume and bathe in the blood of Siberian red deer, which some whackos believe stops the aging process. As for why he’s reportedly pooping in a suitcase now? Your guess is as good as ours. But it’s only a matter of time before someone slips up and calls him President Poopin.

(Via Metro)

Trevor Noah has weighed in on America’s #1 scandal, and no, it’s not the January 6 hearings. It’s Kim Kardashian damaging an iconic Marilyn Monroe dress by wearing it to the Met Gala. Earlier in the week, photos from The Marilyn Monroe Collection revealed the dress’ condition after Kardashian wore it on the red carpet, and there is noticeable wear and tear to the historic costume, including several missing crystals.

While Kardashian has been widely blasted for damaging Monroe’s dress, the blame has started to shift towards Ripley’s for allowing her to even wear it in the first place. (The Academy Museum reportedly warned Ripley’s not to do it.) Apparently, Noah is of the same mind. The Daily Show host blasted Ripley’s for making the call.

“They’re the ones who loaned the dress to Kim,” Noah said during Wednesday night’s episode. “Because Ripley’s owns the dress, they’re in charge of preserving it. So, if they told her it was okay to wear it, that’s on them.”

However, Noah didn’t let Kardashian entirely off of the hook. Via The Wrap:

“The Marilyn Monroe dress is a one-of-a-kind piece of American history,” he said. “The Met Gala happens every year. People dress like hamburgers there. You could have worn anything else. Because if you are entrusted with a piece of American history, you better do everything you can to take care of it.”

That said, Noah admitted he could see himself falling victim to the same temptation. “If the Louvre called me and they said I could kiss the Mona Lisa for a selfie, I would do it and I would use tongue,” The Daily Show host joked at the end of the segment.

(Via The Wrap)

The soundtrack for the upcoming Baz Luhrmann biopic Elvis is packed, with the most notable participant perhaps being Eminem. Now, he has shared his contribution to the movie, a new CeeLo Green collaboration called “The King And I.”

The track, naturally, is filled with references to Presley. Most obviously, the instrumental is based on the iconic “Jailhouse Rock” riff. Eminem also plays off of the classic “Blue Suede Shoes” lyric with the line, “It goes: one for the trailer park, two for my baby-ma /
Three for the tater tots, four if you ate a lot / Five if you came to rock, straight up while I’m sh*ttin’ on my comp’.”

Elsewhere, Em makes comparisons between Presley and himself, rapping, “Now I’m about to explain to you all the parallels / Between Elvis and me, myself / It seem obvious: one, he’s pale as me / Second, we both been hailed as kings.”

In an interview from earlier this month, Green said of working with Eminem on the song, “Me and Eminem have been friends for years. I’ve longed for an opportunity to work with him. He said, ‘Hey man, can you do this for me? I need it really quickly, I need it tonight.’ So when Eminem says he needs something tonight, you deliver.”

Listen to “The King And I” above.

It looks like we may have to wait a little longer for Joey Badass’ new album, 2000. The album, originally set for release this week, has been pushed back.

Joey revealed the news this morning via Twitter.

“Man I got some terrible news,” he said in a tweet. “my album won’t be coming out tonight due to sample clearance issues… Right now, it’s unclear how long I’ll have to postpone it but my hope is no more than 2 weeks.”

It appears Joey had known about the delay for a while, however, was hoping he’d have a new date by now.

“I wanted to have a new date before I told you guys but it’s out of my control,” he continued.

The release of 2000 would’ve coincided with the 10th anniversary of Joey’s breakthrough mixtape, 1999, which spawned hits like “Waves” and “Hardknock.” Joey did not reveal a new release date for 2000, however, hopes to be able to share a new one soon.

“I’ll keep you guys updated obviously,” Joey said. “I’m almost certain I’ll have a new date by Monday. On the bright side, me and Chance’s new song drops tmrw.”

The song to which Joey is referring is Chance The Rapper’s new single, “The Highs And The Lows,” which is thought to appear from Chance’s upcoming comeback album.

It’s often said that fashion goes in cycles that come back around every twenty years or so. With this knowledge, I regret to inform all you millennials out there that you are now old. If it makes you feel any better, you can call it “retro,” which is what we did when we were bringing back bellbottoms and platform shoes and trying really hard to embrace punk aesthetics. Now, it’s our turn, as the baggy look is back and the teens are now running around looking like extras from She’s All That.

Leading the charge, as usual, is Tyler The Creator, who is pretty much the trendsetter for anyone who entered middle school around the time Odd Future was upending hip-hop’s cultural conventions and making Theresa May really nervous they might turn over the tea cart if they gained access to Old Blighty. Tyler’s brand, Golf Wang, has been one of the go-to looks for the legions of fans who used to scribble “Kill Them All” in their notebooks, terrifying teachers and conservative commentators throughout the 2010s.

Today, he revealed the lookbook for the latest summer collection, which consists of a variety of wide-leg, loose-fits, colorful sweaters, woven shirts, and jeans with biohazard symbols all over them. I guess Tyler hasn’t grown all the way up just yet — and he never should. You can check out some of the fits below, with more on the official website. They go live on June 18 at noon ET. You can grab them in-store at 11 am PT.

The Philadelphia 76ers have to figure out what the long-term plan is with James Harden. While Harden is still a very good basketball player, Father Time looked like he started catching up to him in a big way this past season, as the former league MVP lacked the burst that made him one of the most devastating players off the dribble at his peak.

Harden was dealing with hamstring issues, but the question Philadelphia has to answer is whether or not he can get his body right and return to form. Making this an even bigger question is that Harden has a player option for the 2022-23 season, and if he picks it up (which reports indicate he will do), he can hit unrestricted free agency next summer.

Giving a five-year supermax to a soon-to-be 33-year-old who struggled last season is, of course, not an easy pill to swallow. But a new report by Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report indicates Philly might not need to do that if it wants to convince Harden to stick around.

Two weeks from the beginning of NBA free agency on June 30 at 6 p.m. ET, all signs point toward All-Star guard James Harden returning to the Philadelphia 76ers on a shorter-term contract extension, league sources told B/R.

Harden and Sixers leadership are aligned on one clear directive, sources said: The franchise’s best opportunity to compete for a championship starring Joel Embiid, as well as Harden’s optimal opportunity to earn his first NBA ring, resides with Harden playing in Philadelphia for the foreseeable future.

Harden joined the Sixers at the trade deadline in a move that sent a package headlined by Ben Simmons to the Brooklyn Nets. While he had some games where he looked like a perfect compliment alongside Embiid, he averaged 18.6 points, 8.6 assists, and 5.7 rebounds in 39.9 minutes per game in the postseason.

The Los Angeles Lakers will enter next season facing an awful lot of questions after failing to even make the play-in tournament in the West in 2022. The biggest of those is whether Russell Westbrook will be able to be a helpful player in Year 2 with the Lakers — provided he’s on the team still, which for now is the expectation — but beyond Westbrook there’s plenty to wonder about when it comes to L.A.’s ability to be a contender again.

Some of that will hinge on how they fill out the roster, but it’s also dependent on a bounceback year from Anthony Davis, who struggled through injuries once again in 2021-22. Injuries weren’t the only issue for Davis, who also regressed as a shooter, something he excelled at in the Bubble when the Lakers won the title and hasn’t replicated since. The questions about Davis’ shot only grew louder this week when a video emerged of him saying he hasn’t shot a basketball since April, which naturally became fodder for questions from fans about whether he was working hard enough on his game — despite there being ample time for him to ramp up on court work before next October.

That debate made its way to First Take where they somewhat oddly debated if Davis could be a “top 7” player in the league, which is one of the strangest arbitrary numbers to pick for such a ranking. When LeBron caught wind of those questioning Davis, he took to Instagram to assert next year Davis will show people once again why he is “Him.”

On Thursday, Stephen A. Smith offered his response to that, noting that LeBron may not be wrong but that the last time he made a similar offseason proclamation, it didn’t work out so well.

This is the tweet Stephen A. is referring to that, despite James deleting it, lives on forever in screenshots and the memories of NBA Twitter who will gleefully never let him forget it.

As Stephen A. noted, everyone did and the Lakers were not able to do anything to respond, as the Russell Westbrook experiment failed in ways most critics of the move couldn’t even imagine and injuries once again limited Davis and James himself. I get why James is backing his guy here, but Smith makes a salient point that offseason victory laps about what’s to come aren’t always the best idea and the biggest concern he has isn’t Davis playing well but instead him being on the court consistently enough.

It looks like Drink Champs isn’t the only podcast making wild claims about rappers and starting drama with its guests. Take the following statements with a grain of salt because it’s easy to just say things when there’s a microphone in front of you, but according to an OnlyFans model who appeared on the Barstool Sports podcast Sofia With An F, accepting an invite to the studio with Kanye West and Future led her to end up participating in the creative process in an unexpected way.

The model, Aliza, tells host Sofia Franklyn that after meeting Kanye in Miami, she received a message from the producer, “‘Come over to Future’s house, we’re in the studio,’” she says. When she got there, though, rather than being a “fly on the wall,” watching them record one of their surefire hits, she wound up naked and twerking for the two stars. “[Kanye] literally just has me come in the studio and get butt-ass-naked and twerk in front of him and all his friends,” she claims. The timing of the session appears to be during the recording of Donda 2. Maybe he was trying to cope with his impending divorce?

The outrageous story does sorta line up with some of what we know about Kanye’s in-studio proclivities though. Kanye told Apple Radio host Zane Lowe that he has a “porn addiction” and collaborators such as Daft Punk and Nicki Minaj have commented that he seems to use it to get inspired in the studio, watching during sessions, so this could be an extension of that. Considering how far left some sex workers’ stories have gone in recent years though, things could have been worse. But if it really happened, it still sounds bizarre and not a little bit creepy.

The Boston Celtics have been excellent this postseason off of losses, and they’ll have to rely on that to continue to be the case if they want their pursuit of a championship to stay alive. Boston lost Game 5 of the NBA Finals to the Golden State Warriors, putting them in a 3-2 series hole as the series shifts back to Massachusetts on Thursday night.

Celtics coach Ime Udoka has assuredly spent the last few days trying to find a happy medium between what killed them in Game 4 (Steph Curry going off and carrying the Warriors to a win) and what went wrong in Game 5 (keeping Curry in check but a number of other players having big games). While meeting with the media on Wednesday, Udoka pointed out one specific thing that he thinks would help Boston a whole lot as they attempt to win the next two games.

“I think we’re complaining at times too much throughout the game,” Udoka said, per Joe Vardon of The Athletic. “Late game may not be any different than first, second or third quarter. Something we need to block out and be better at overall.”

Game 6 of the 2022 NBA Finals will tip off on Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN.

With only three new songs on a record, BTS can still make the earth move. Since most pop stars need to pack out arena shows to make their presence felt, the pandemic has been an understandably unpredictable time for plenty of the world’s most famous musicians. But several of the biggest stars opted to go right back to releasing music without a hitch, like Taylor Swift’s double whammy, folklore and evermore in 2020, or Billie Eilish swiftly following up her breakout debut just two years later, in 2021, with Happier Than Ever. Taking their cue from these artists, who seemed to intuit that even without tours, fans wanted more new music, less than a year after their last release, BTS dropped a massive anthology for fans to dig into.

It’s worth noting that the band also performed a series of one-off shows in massive American markets like LA and Las Vegas to keep their live show top of mind, even if a full-blown global tour hasn’t made sense for them yet. Clearly, the world’s biggest boy band aren’t going to let a minor catastrophe like a pandemic stop their momentum, and a sort of exponential energy of late that just keeps building. Proof is the latest entry into their quickly growing discography, and with a collection of almost fifty tracks, the album is making a case for the band’s progress.

Even if “Butter,” released in 2021, or “Dynamite,” from the summer of 2020, was what really put the band on the map for some American listeners, BTS has actually been together for quite some time. And for those who study the inevitable trajectory of incredibly successful group acts, that longevity is a testament to their patience. Forming over a decade ago, back in 2010, they released their debut EP, 2 Cool 4 Skool, in 2013 — and put out a whopping eight albums before 2020’s Be, which was anchored by the mainstream hit, “Dynamite,” their first all English language single. The group’s early work is mostly split between Korean and Japanese language albums, but more recent releases have prioritized English in their songs, and their success in America has strongly correlated with that move. On Proof, the song selection runs the gamut, with inclusion from all three phases, and a reminder that these guys aren’t just producing hits in the US — they’re superstars around the world.

Coming almost ten years after that first release, Proof is more song cycle than record, a sprawling declaration of the band’s global influence and practically a symposium on their range. Across 48 songs that are divided into two sections — with only the first two available on streaming, a third full of rare demos and unreleased material has been relegated to physical releases only — the seven-member collective is proud to remind the world of their vast back catalog. Each of the album’s three sections also includes a new song, giving listeners something current to chew on even as they dig deeper into the BTS discography.

The first new song, and de facto lead single for the album, is a soft rock track called “Yet To Come,” one that falls in line with other slower, more introspective tracks from the group, like “Life Goes On.” The band also released a brand new video to accompany this track, elevating it a bit beyond the other two with additional visual treatment. The second new release, “Run BTS,” feels like a sly tribute to another three-letter rap group (Run DMC, natch), and doubles down on their hip-hop roots — even if their government isn’t necessarily thrilled about that connection.

Reportedly, this single and another track, “Born Singer,” were banned by Korea’s government-run TV channel. Proof marks the first official release for “Born Singer,” making it technically a new song, too, though it’s existed as a SoundCloud loosie for years now. The song is a modified version/remix/sample of J Cole’s “Born Sinner,” not only doubling down on the hip-hop influences the group has always embraced, but giving an old declaration of intent a proper release. Initially, the song dropped right after their debut EP, a ferocious declaration of where they knew they were headed.

The final new track, and the only part of Proof’s third act that’s available on streaming, is another schmaltzy tune, “For Youth,” and all of this emotionalism should’ve prepped listeners that big news was likely coming. Because one of the other things Proof so effectively does is showcase each member’s distinctive sound and talents, so the news that they’re focusing on some solo endeavors after this anthology is not all that surprising. They’re clear that this is not a break-up, and leaving fans with a big collection of material is definitely a way to connect with The Army until they’re back together again.

In this context, Proof also serves as a monument — a tribute to what the band once was, an end of an era and a start of a new chapter. In that sense, it becomes infinitely more valuable, and serves exactly the purpose it was designed for — proving their worth.

Proof is out now via Big Hit. Stream it here.