Category: News

Every now and then we receive an unexpected collaboration from two or more artists and this new track seems to be one of those. DVSN, Ty Dolla Sign, and the late Mac Miller bring their talents together for their new song, “I Believe It.” It’s a reflective effort that finds the trio looking back on their past with a former lover who broke all the promises they once hoped to keep. Along with the song, DVSN announced a joint project with Ty Dolla Sign is “on the way” in a post to Twitter.

While the song marks the first time the three artists have collaborated on a song, it’s not the first time the individual acts have worked with one of the names on the song. Last year, DVSN recruited Ty Dolla Sign for “Dangerous City” off their third album, A Muse In Their Feelings while Mac Miller worked with Ty Dolla Sign back in 2016 on “Cinderella” from the late rapper’s album, The Divine Feminine. Prior to the song’s release, DVSN and Ty Dolla Sign both shared videos of them working on “I Believed It” with Mac Miller in the studio, confirming that the song was worked on and finished before Mac’s tragic death.

The song comes after DVSN shared a deluxe reissue of A Muse In Their Feelings and weeks after Ty Dolla Sign joined YG and Mozzy in the video for “Vibe With You.” As for Mac Miller, the late rapper has a book on the way comprised of stories from his friends and collaborators.

You can press play on “I Believe It” in the video above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

While collaborations between multiple artists have never been more common, not every artist is really on that page. Maybe that’s because he already has dueling alter egos to deal with? At least according to his brand new tour, “Dr. Ev4l Vs. Rich Shooter.” Anyway, in a recent interview with Young Nudy on the Big Facts podcast with DJ Scream and Big Bank, he talked about the sometimes challenging aspects of music industry niceties.

“You gotta go in there and fake smile with somebody in the motherf*cker,” he said. “They not just going to let you in the door.” Later on in the episode he doubles back down on the challenges of a sometimes finicky industry. “They will tell me they f*ck with me doe, but you know how that sh*t go,” he continue. “But, sh*t, I don’t know. I don’t really be, like, having nobody where I be like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m excited to work with this person.’ If you gonna do it, you gonna do it. If you don’t, I don’t get a f*ck. Imma finished that sh*t anyways… So I don’t know.”

Despite all that, on his latest project, DR. EV4L does have a few collaborations — with his cousin 21 Savage of course, and G Herbo and Lil Uzi Vert — but when it comes to artists who aren’t in his immediate circle, looks like they’re going to have to wait, or come totally real.

Chris Paul is headed to the NBA Finals, finally, in his 16th NBA season. The future Hall of Fame inductee has long been considered the best and longest-tenured player in the league not to have even tasted the NBA’s championship round, and after coming so close in Houston and coming up short over and over in L.A., Paul was able to make it in Phoenix.

On Wednesday night, much as he did in Game 4 in Denver, Paul was determined to put an end to the Western Conference Finals. He struggled in his first three games of the series after missing a week following a positive COVID-19 test, but he found his shot and found his rhythm back at Staples Center for what has to be one of his finest performances of his career, considering the circumstances. Paul finished with 41 points, eight assists, and zero turnovers in Game 6, shooting 16-for-24 from the field including a ridiculous 7-for-8 night from three-point range.

Most of Paul’s damage came in the second half, when he absolutely took over late in the third quarter after L.A. cut the Phoenix lead to seven. Paul scored eight in a row for the Suns — with some vintage flopping shenanigans in the middle with DeMarcus Cousins — as he lifted the Phoenix lead back to 14 going to the fourth.

That onslaught continued in the fourth quarter as he was able to get wherever he wanted and make whatever shot he wanted, inside or out, as he dismantled the Clippers to help the Suns pull away to a 130-103 win.

After that last three, he got the Clippers to finally break, as Patrick Beverley snapped and got ejected for shoving him to the ground from behind, and not long after the reserves entered the game as L.A. waved the white flag.

After the game, an emotional Paul would talk about how his mindset was simple: don’t lose this game. For someone who has seen 3-1 leads evaporate and been a part of the worst shooting Game 7 in NBA history in Houston, the last thing he was going to do was let this come down to one game where shooting variance could send him home again. He was hot and he was going to ride that hot hand to the Finals, achieving a career-long pursuit in the process.

https://twitter.com/NBATV/status/1410448132672872449

The Suns will now get to rest up for a week as they await the winner of the Bucks-Hawks series that is tied 2-2 on its way back to Milwaukee with at least two more games to play this week. With how they are playing defensively, and Paul and Booker finally getting right in Game 6 offensively, they’ll have a great shot at bringing Phoenix its first NBA championship against whichever foe they face.

From the early moments of his career to today, Drake has always offered a hand in spotlighting acts within the newer generation of both hip-hop and R&B. This includes ASAP Rocky and Kendrick Lamar, who he brought on to headline his 2012 Club Paradise tour before they earned their respective mainstream breakouts within the year that followed. Other names include Jhene Aiko, Migos, Lil Baby, and most recently Yung Bleu. The Toronto rapper’s streak continues with “Wasting Time,” his latest track alongside Brent Faiyaz.

He guests on The Neptunes-produced song that finds the pair pouring out their hearts to a special woman in their lives. While there might be issues in their growing relationship, Brent and Drake still desire to spend their free time with the respective women they have so much love for.

This song arrives after Brent grew to be one of 2020’s most popular R&B acts thanks to his F*ck The World project. The ten-track effort showed a more narcissistic side of the singer, one that often dipped into toxic habits within love. Recently, he’s kept fans happy with singles that include “Gravity” with Tyler The Creator and “Show U Off“.

As for Drake, the rapper continues to make his supporters wait for his upcoming sixth album, Certified Lover Boy. The project was supposed to arrive at the top of the year, but multiple delays have left fans with nothing but its lead single, “Laugh Now Cry Later” with Lil Durk, and hope that it arrives sooner than later.

You can press play on “Wasting Time” in the video above.

Three generations of hip-hop’s top technicians come together on “Life Is Like A Dice Game,” a new Nas release from Spotify’s Spotify Singles program in conjunction with the RapCaviar playlist. A&Red by Carl Chery of Spotify and produced by Hit-Boy, the single spawned from Nas’ 1993 sessions for his canon classic debut album Illmatic, where he freestyled the verse but never finished a song for it.

Now, nearly 30 years later, Spotify has completed the song, adding a beat from Hit-Boy and verses from two of Nas’s most clear-cut successors in Freddie Gibbs and Cordae, both elite MCs in their own rights, to finally put the freestyle’s portentous final line — “When I finish the sh*t, it’s going to be a hit” — to the test.

Nas explained how the track came together in a press release, saying, “Spotify pulled out a leak from the 90s that I did eons ago, and asked if I could resurrect it. I can’t remember where I recorded it, or who produced it – maybe Easy Moe Bee, he was killin’ the game at the time! Carl Chery from Spotify suggested we connect with Freddie & Cordae to bring the song new life and I loved it.”

July also marks the 25th anniversary of Nas’ follow-up to Illmatic, the criminally underrated It Was Written, which dropped on July 2 in 1996, as well as the 30th anniversary of Nas’ universally lauded breakout verse on Main Source’s “Live At The Barbecue,” which changed the rap landscape on July 23, 1991.

Listen to Nas’ “Life Is Like A Dice Game” featuring Cordae and Freddie Gibbs below.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Earlier this year Justin Bieber released his new album, Justice, but he hasn’t stopped putting out new music since. Just today Bieber announced a new collaborative single with rising pop force The Kid Laroi. Their new track, called “Stay,” will be officially released very soon according to a new tweet from Laroi:

This will be the second collaboration between the two artists, they previously collaborated on “Unstable” off Bieber’s Justice. And Bieber isn’t the first legacy artist of late to want to hop on a song with The Kid — he’s already collaborated with Miley Cyrus on a remix of “Without You,” featured on a song with Juice WRLD that came out last year on the anniversary of his death, “Reminds Me Of You,” and more recently, teamed up with Lil Durk and Polo G on “No Return.”

Maybe this new collaboration is just what Justin needs to get the news cycle off his apparent rip-off of the French duo Justice’s logo for his new album. Will a feature with The Kid Laroi lead to another No. 1 hit for Bieber, something that can vie with the impact of “Peaches”? Maybe so. Stay tuned for the official version of the song coming very soon.

Patrick Beverley was a big reason why the Clippers were even in their Western Conference Finals series with the Suns, forcing it back to a Game 6 in L.A. thanks in large part to his defense on Devin Booker and Chris Paul.

However, things came unraveled for L.A. in the fourth quarter as Chris Paul absolutely torched them down the stretch, erupting for 41 points on 16-for-24 shooting including 31 in the second half, as he looked to turn out the lights on his former team and reach his first Finals. After hitting another three-pointer to force the Clippers to call timeout, Paul took a bit of a victory lap around his old stomping grounds.

As he returned to the Phoenix bench, he gave Beverley a look — it didn’t even appear as though he said anything to Beverley — and Pat simply snapped, running over and shoving Paul to the ground from behind.

He was swiftly ejected and rightfully so, and it was clear that the Clippers had finally had enough of this series after showing a ton of resiliency for so long this postseason. Paul would pop up and celebrate finally getting Beverley to snap — he’d been trying earlier to get DeMarcus Cousins to, leading to an all-time flop from CP3 to pick up a T on Boogie — by walking around with his hands raised, triumphant, as he was on his way to the Finals for the first time and got the job done by getting under the skin of Beverley as he sent his former team packing.

Steve Ballmer has a reputation for being the most animated owner in all of basketball. While that title in all of sports probably belongs to that guy in China who owns a soccer team and makes them play him and his son, Ballmer has this market cornered in the NBA and, probably, in the United States.

That leads to Ballmer doing some really weird stuff when he celebrates good things happening to the Los Angeles Clippers. Our latest example of this came on Wednesday night during Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals against the Phoenix Suns. I’m just gonna drop in the video and then we’re all gonna talk about how weird it is, cool? Cool. Let’s go to the video…

That’s super weird, man! I have no idea what he’s even trying to go for with this, it’s not like an emphatic slap on the back or anything, this is just grabbing and shaking another human’s thigh. Anyway, the Twitterverse, as you can expect, was just as confused about this as you and I were, friend.

https://twitter.com/MattDoyle76/status/1410440353874952194

One person even gave it as good of a nickname as you can, given the circumstances.

Having said this, please do not ever give another person a thigh five.

The third quarter of Game 6 in L.A. between the Clippers and Suns saw both teams make runs, with Phoenix ultimately going up 14 headed to the fourth, but it also saw things get a little chippy between some familiar foes.

Chris Paul closed the third on an 8-0 burst of his own, but in the middle of that there were the antics that have made him a despised player, in spite of his immense talent, for many. Paul shook DeMarcus Cousins on a drive and hit a floater in the paint, and then turned around to give Boogie a little bump. Cousins took the bait and put his elbow up high into Paul’s neck, not exactly with significant force but certainly to send a little message, and Paul proceeded to take a full on WWE-style bump.

The refs would take a look at the monitor and handed Cousins a technical foul for “a physical taunt,” which gave Paul a free throw that he missed in what many felt was an all-time “ball don’t lie” moment.

As many pointed out, Paul and Cousins have a lengthy history of this sort of thing, with Paul producing a legendary flop against Boogie back when CP3 played in L.A. and Cousins was in Sacramento.

The best part of all of it was Cousins watching the replay on the jumbotron and reacting with a knowing shake of the head, almost as if to say, I can’t believe he did it again.

Since Paul missed the free throw it proved to be ultimately harmless, but will be a moment revisited plenty as Paul put forth another all-time flop. We weren’t alone in drawing the WWE comparison, as Twitter was flooded with wrestling (and soccer) GIFs after Paul’s antics.

The good news for Paul is that his hot run continued into the early fourth quarter and, as such, the conversation after the game will hopefully be about his incredible play possibly getting him to his first Finals and not…that.

On the same day he was named worst living president and tried to ignore a question about his role in the Jan. 6 insurrection, Donald Trump was delivered another crushing blow: His family business, The Trump Organization, and one of his closest confidants, Allen H. Weisselberg (seen perching, out of focus, behind Trump and his oldest son, above), were indicted by a grand jury, as per The New York Times. The charges themselves were not made public, but the indictment itself is expected to be unsealed as early as Thursday.

The news is a major development in a year-long investigation into the now-former president’s dealings, which have been undertaken by both Manhattan district attorney, Cryus R. Vance, and the state’s attorney, Letitia James. Trump has long denounced the investigation as a “witch hunt,” words he’s often used when to decry probes into his questionable actions, but, as the Times puts it, “defending his company on criminal charges could be an expensive distraction as he considers another presidential run.”

Weisselberg, the Trump Organization’s chief financial adviser, has been associated with the family since 1973. First hired by Fred Trump, he started working closely with his son as he made a name for himself as a Manhattan developer. When he moved into the White House after winning the presidency, he entrusted the former bookkeeper with overseeing his company, carrying on work that has long been behind-the-scenes.

His ex-wife Jennifer — who aided the investigation following a nasty divorce — compared Trump and Weisselberg to “Batman and Robin.” She is also responsible for a recent bombshell report, which depicted Trump crashing the shiva for Weisselberg’s mother and proceeding to insult his home, showed naked pictures to mourners, and even hit on his then-spouse. Her husband, she said, did nothing to stop him.

While Weisselberg could seem outwardly pleasant, Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, who is currently serving time for him, painted a different picture of him, as per NYT:

Among the tasks Mr. Weisselberg attacked with fervor, former employees recalled, was ensuring that, per Mr. Trump’s direction, no dime left the company’s coffers unless absolutely necessary.

“He and Trump were like Frick and Frack when it came to stiffing vendors,” Mr. Cohen — who at times took on that same role for Mr. Trump — wrote in a book published last year. Mr. Burke, who served as chief financial officer for Mr. Trump’s casino business, said any Trump employee who dealt with vendors knew to “squeeze every penny” out of people, and that Mr. Weisselberg excelled at minimizing and delaying payment.

Weisselberg’s fate, and that of the former president’s business, will be made known as early as Thursday. And now his decades-long loyalty to a guy who can’t spell “junkie” will be put to the test.

(Via NYT)