Category: News

Back on Nov. 6, Michael Porter Jr. suffered a back injury when he went up for a layup and came up in some discomfort. While the Denver Nuggets have not been able to provide specifics on when the high-scoring forward might be able to return, a new report indicates that we may not see Porter again this season.

According to Mike Singer of the Denver Post, a nerve issue in Porter’s back could lead to him missing the remainder of the season. The team is apparently willing to give Porter some more time to continue getting better and show that he is going down the right path, but if he is unable to do that, he might need to go under the knife, something that he has not needed to do since the summer before he entered the league.

The Nuggets have been vague about specifics of the injury and when Porter might be expected back. They have given him a timeline of a week to show improvements before considering other treatment options. Another back surgery is a possibility, sources said.

Porter’s back has long been a cause for concern, dating back to the one year he spent in college at the University of Missouri. The news comes on the heels of Porter putting pen to paper on a five-year max extension this past offseason. With Jamal Murray sidelined due to his recovery from a torn ACL, the team put a whole lot on Porter’s shoulders this year. He averaged 9.9 points and 6.6 rebounds in 29.4 minutes per game before going down, but recently, Nuggets teammate Austin Rivers revealed that Porter was dealing with back issues throughout the season.

After cleaning up at the 2021 AMAs, K-pop icons BTS closed out the night with a performance of their hit single “Butter.” Decked out in yellow, with melting hearts and plenty of dance moves to spare, the Korean group reminded everyone present why their stadium shows sell out all around the world whenever they go on tour. There’s a certain synergy that this group has performing together, which was on full display earlier when they joined Coldplay for the collaborative track, “My Universe.”

Though BTS have been winning awards for their music all year, this was one of the first occasions where the band could safely travel to America to perform in-person instead of sending in a video set up from abroad. There was definitely a more clear sense of their presence during tonight’s show, where they picked up several awards and repeatedly thanked their fan army for believing in them. And though it was rumored that Megan Thee Stallion would be joining the K-pop group to perform their remix version of the song, she ended up unable to attend tonight’s show, so they closed the event out on their own. But of course, these guys are pros and don’t need any help to deliver a sizzling sendoff. Check it out above.

Young Dolph’s tragic death is still a shocking and unfortunate reality for the music world. The Memphis native was shot and killed in his hometown as he stopped by a bakery. Investigators have yet to find a suspect in the incident, but they have released surveillance camera footage that will hopefully point them in the right direction. As the world continues to mourn his death, many wonder how Key Glock, fellow Memphis native and close collaborator, was holding up after the news. After a few days of silence, Glock spoke out for the first time since Dolph’s death.

“STOP asking me if I’m ok,” Glock wrote in a post to his Instagram Story with a broken-hearted emoji. “Knowing damn well I ain’t.” When news about Dolph’s death first broke out, Glock quickly deactivated his Twitter and Instagram pages. In addition to sharing the same hometown, Key Glock and Young Dolph are cousins by marriage. Dolph also Glock to his Paper Route Empire label back in 2017 and they collaborated on numerous occasions including their respective 2019 and 2021 projects, Dum And Dummer and Dum And Dummer 2.

Glock’s post after a man was shot near the memorial for Young Dolph in Memphis. The incident in three arrests as police officers apprehended two of the suspects at the scene while the remaining one was detained at a nearby intersection.

You can view Glock’s message in the screenshot above.

Giveon was one of the many artists in 2020 to make the best of quarantine times and break out into the mainstream music world. He released two EPs, Take Time and When It’s All Said And Done, which were later repacked into one 13-song project When It’s All Said And Done… Take Time. However, after 2020 concluded, Giveon kept things a bit quieter outside of landing his first No. 1 song thanks to Justin Bieber’s “Peaches” with him and Daniel Caesar. Things could be picking up for Giveon and it comes as stopped by to 2021 American Music Awards to perform “Heartbreak Anniversary.”

The performance was both a soulful and stirring rendition of the highlight track from Take Time as the Long Beach singer used the moment to showcase his vocals to the world. Giveon’s performance at the AMAs is just the latest in what’s been an uptick in activity for the Long Beach singer. Back in September, Giveon released his first post-When It’s All Said And Done… Take Time era single with “For Tonight.” The emotive track finds the singer longing for a single moment of intimacy with a special woman in his life. He later delivered an intimate rendition of the song during an appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.

You can watch clips from Giveon’s AMAs performance above.

We named Chloe as one of our rising pop stars to watch for 2022, but honestly, she’s already broken out in a big way as part of the duo with her sister, Chloe x Halle. In recent months, it’s been clear that despite the success of their sophomore album, Ungodly Hour, released in 2020, the two are both growing into solo careers as well. Halle was tapped to play Ariel in the new version of The Little Mermaid and Chloe was getting so much attention from simple social media posts, that she decided to release a debut single and video to go along with it.

So “Have Mercy” was born, and the single has been slowly but steadily racking up a dedicated fan base ever since. The song has already been covered by a HBCU marching band (or two), and Chloe raised eyebrows with an exuberant performance of the song at the VMAs. Tonight, she brought it back out for a performance at the AMAs, and as always, it didn’t disappoint. After descending down to the stage in a swing, the singer debuted her red-tinted hair for another dance-centric performance of her debut solo song. The audience was more than responsive to her high-energy performance, check it out above.

The pop girls said long songs are back! Well, in Adele’s case, it’s more of a theoretical thing. In a world that now contains a ten-minute version of Taylor Swift’s critically-acclaimed “All Too Well,” as part of the new Red (Taylor’s Version), Adele revealed in an interview this weekend that she almost joined in on the saga-length trend. As part of an earlier cover story with Rolling Stone, Adele revealed that the fan-favorite track off her new album, 30, was originally fifteen minutes long (!).

Her label talked some sense into the diva, though, pointing out that songs that long tend to struggle with audiences who have a shorter and shorter attention span. “[The label] was like, ‘Listen, everyone loves you, but no one’s playing a 15-minute song on radio,’” she noted in a new snippet shared from her cover interview with Rolling Stone. The song now clocks in around six minutes, and has already been memed due to the extremely relatable title, and as an answer to the sometimes unsolvable problems of heartache and relationship turmoil. Still, if there were ever an Easter egg to include on deluxe editions or at a later date, it’s the length original version of one of 30‘s best songs. Check it out above if you haven’t heard the song yet.

The American Music Awards featured a truly innovative performance when Bad Bunny, Julieta Venegas, and Tainy hit the stage to perform “Lo Siento BB:/” with a futuristic aesthetic that saw Julieta dressed as a robot with a television head (a la the Saga comic series) and Bad Bunny suited up as a cyclops robot that may remind viewers of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey or GLaDOS from the Portal games.

Bad Bunny has been everywhere in 2021, performing his hits “La Noche De Anoche” and “Te Deseo Lo Mejor” on Saturday Night Live, on which he also appeared in a goofy musical sketch in which he became a talking plant and sang about last year’s lockdowns; he performed “Dákiti” at the 2021 Grammy Awards; and he even got to live out a childhood dream, settling a Twitter feud with WWE wrestler The Miz at this year’s Wrestlemania, where he won decisively by pinning his foe.

He followed up that triumph by reprising “Te Deseo Lo Mejor” at the Billboard Music Awards, then set about launching his next new music campaign with “Yonaguni” and “De Museo” after announcing the tour dates for his 2022 circuit, El Último Tour Del Mundo — which took less than a week to become Ticketmaster’s fastest-selling tour in history. Unfortunately, his most recent planned performance at day two of Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival was scrapped in light of the disastrous incident that took place on the first night of the event, but with tonight’s performance, he bounced back nicely and, considering his deft handling of his last handful of performances, we can likely expect plenty of intriguing new moves from the Puerto Rican superstar soon.

Watch Bad Bunny’s AMAs performance above.

Olivia Rodrigo has had a massive year, and she’s not about to let anyone forget it. After her smash debut single “Drivers License” put her on the map in a massive way, she followed that up with not one but two other bangers, “Deja Vu” and “Good 4 U,” before finally releasing her first full-length record, Sour. And the album was so packed with incredible songs that even tracks that weren’t initially slated as singles began to get a life of their own, including “Traitor,” which she chose to perform at the American Music Awards.

What else would we expect from Olivia after the year she’s had? Racking up fans like Taylor Swift and tonight’s award show host Cardi B, and even helping both Taylor and Paramore earn millions off their influence on Sour tracks, Rodrigo is very clearly just getting started. After a more than loving introduction from Cardi, Olivia took the stage in a classic pink gown, performing among a garden of darkened flowers, and playing guitar herself. Eventually the backdrop opened up into a whole cosmic sky, driving home how big the feelings in the song are. It definitely felt like the kind of romantic yet desolate setting the song deserved, and once again established Rodrigo as an excellent live performer. Check it out above and stay tuned for more AMAs performances, like BTS and Coldplay.

For his American Music Awards performance, Tyler The Creator popped out from backstage with a puffer jacket and his customary ushanka, rapping “Massa” in front of a house set in a snowy tableau. For some reason, he was wearing shorts. Unlike some of his previous performances, this one was relatively muted, as he stayed pretty much stationary in front of the door before stepping out into the snow, adding more and more passion to his performance while snow fell from the sky. And when the performance was done, he hopped on the back of a Vespa and cruised off the stage, as coolly as he entered.

Tyler The Creator’s big year kicked off in June with the release of the initial teasers for his new album, Call Me If You Get Lost. After putting up billboards promoting a phone number with a special, constantly-changing message from Tyler (which turned out to be the album’s interludes), he shared the first video, for “Lumberjack,” two weeks later.

He quickly followed up with a flurry of new videos and comedic sketches, including videos for “Wusyaname,” “Juggernaut,” and “Corso,” while his performance at the 2021 BET Awards solidified the hype for the album. Upon its release, it was critically acclaimed — you can read Uproxx’s own review here — and became his second album to debut at no. 1 on the Billboard 200.

Tyler also expanded his directorial portfolio with a music video for Maxo Kream, “Big Persona” (on which he also rapped), and a hilarious commercial for Converse that brought together NBA legend Bill Walton with gangsta-rap futurist Vince Staples. He certainly earned his slot on the AMAs’ appearance setlist, and his performance more than justified the show’s faith in him.

Watch Tyler The Creator’s AMAs performance above.

Coldplay decided to go ahead and shift to a full-on pop approach on their latest album, Music Of The Spheres, and that’s a good thing. Of course, if you want to go pop these days, there’s no better collaborator than K-pop icons BTS, and Chris Martin and co. immediately linked up with them for their “My Universe” collaboration and subsequent Suga remix. Giving fans the chance to see the song live, though, was a different story, as both bands tend to have fairly grueling touring schedules in a non-pandemic-impacted year. So what better place to make a live rendition of the song happen than at an award show? During tonight’s AMAs, the two bands joined together for a sparkling performance of “My Universe,” that may or may not have stolen the whole show a bit.

Even tonight’s legendary host, Cardi B, was reeling from the impact of the song, sharing earlier this weekend that she too wants to collaborate with these K-pop geniuses. Who wouldn’t? Check out their live performance with Coldplay above, and look out for more coming soon as the embark on a short string of tour dates in Los Angeles in early December. BTS never stops, and neither does their army of fans all across the universe.