Category: News

Nicki Minaj has landed a number of records in her decade-plus-long career and while it’s been almost three years since she released an album, her last one being 2018’s Queen, the rapper is still finding ways to label herself as a one of a kind rapper.

More than six years after the music video’s release, Minaj’s The Pinkprint highlight, “Anaconda,” has reached a billion views on YouTube. The impressive feat makes her the first female rapper to reach the ten-digit number with a solo song on the platform.

With “Anaconda” surpassing a billion views, Minaj also ties Katy Perry and Rihanna for the most overall music videos with more than a billion views on YouTube, that being six. The other videos from the Pink Friday rapper’s catalog to accomplish this include “Bang. Bang” with Jessie J and Ariana Grande, “Hey Mama” with David Guetta, Bebe Rexha, and Afrojack, and “Swalla,” with Jason Derulo and Ty Dolla Sign.

While the news may be a reason to celebrate for the rapper, it comes a little over a year after she listed “Anaconda” as one of three songs she wished she never recorded. She said this during a Q&A session with entertainment executive Irving Azoff at Beverly Hills’ Pollstar Live Conference and added “Starships” and “Your Love” to the list. “I was like, ‘Why did I do this?’” she joked during the conversation.

Nearly two years after signing a deal with Quality Control Music, Arkansas rapper Bankroll Freddie announced a deal with Motown Records to start off the year. The news was shared with a lavish video for his “Add It Up” track.

Fast forward two months and the rapper returns with a full body of work, one that’s accompanied with another video, this time for “Pop It.” The Megan Thee Stallion-featured visual sees the two rappers surround by luxury cars, a large sum of money, and women who, along with Megan, twerk and dance for the majority of the visual.

Bankroll Freddie’s major-label debut, Big Bank, also comes with guest appearances from EST Gee, 2 Chainz, Gucci Mane, PnB Rock, Young Dolph, Young Scooter, and Big30. The album was released a little over a year after he dropped From Trap To Rap, his first project on Quality Control. As for Megan, the track is her first release since picking up three wins at last month’s Grammy Awards in categories that included Best New Artist and Best Rap Performance. She will also headline this fall’s Bonnarro Festival with Tame Impala, Lizzo, and more.

Watch the “Pop It” video above.

Big Bank is out now via Quality Control Music. Get it here.

Megan Thee Stallion is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Hip-hop fans from near and far have been on edge on Saturday following news of DMX’s drug overdose and hospitalization early in the morning. TMZ confirmed that the rapper suffered the overdose Friday night at his home. He was then taken to a White Plains, New York hospital where he was listed in “grave condition” at the facility’s critical care unit. It was also reported that he suffered a heart attack due to the overdose.

For much of the day, updates about his health were nonexistent until his lawyer, Murray Richman, spoke to New York’s Pix11 News where he delivered somewhat of a relieving update on the rapper’s condition.

“He’s in the hospital as a result of a heart attack,” Richman said during a zoom call with Pix11 News. “He has been taken off [the] life support system and he’s been breathing on his own.”

While this may be comforting news for the time being, Richman added that they are not in the clear with the rapper just yet.

“We are concerned,” he said. “It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that I’m not a worried man at this particular point.” During their broadcast, Pix11 News said that DMX’s lawyer would not confirmed whether or not the rapper’s hospitalization and heart attack was the result of a drug overdose.

Since hearing the news early Saturday morning, a number of people from the music world have sent their well wishes to the rapper in hopes of a speedy recovery.

You can hear Richman’s words in the video above.

Isaiah Thomas will make his return to the NBA as a member of the New Orleans Pelicans. Thomas, who has not appeared in the Association since his time with the Washington Wizards came to an end last February, joined New Orleans on a 10-day contract, and is eligible to suit up for the team starting on Sunday.

Thomas was officially announced by the team on Saturday afternoon, and in a fun twist, Thomas is going to wear a number that he hasn’t worn at any point during his NBA career.

Shortly after, Thomas took to his Twitter account and explained that this, unsurprisingly, is a way for him to pay tribute to Kobe Bryant.

Thomas has always been someone who made clear how much he admired Bryant. Following Bryant’s passing in a helicopter accident in early-2020, Thomas spoke at length at how much Bryant meant to him, both on and off the basketball court.

“He’s meant everything to me,” Thomas said. “I started basketball because of Kobe Bryant. So it’s like — I just had talked to him last week.”

…

“I mean, he’s the greatest of all time in life and in basketball. That’s how much I looked up to him,” Thomas said. “His legacy is going to live forever, but this [death] was a dent in everybody’s life that he’s touched, for sure.”

It’s unclear if Thomas will be part of the Pelicans rotation upon his eligibility to play, but with the team dealing with a few injuries right now, he could potentially add a scoring punch in the backcourt.

Bill Murray isn’t in the forthcoming Space Jam sequel, but his absence was very much felt on Saturday when the movie’s trailer debuted. At one point LeBron James — who replaces original star Michael Jordan and tries to save his son by winning an all-Warner Bros. basketball game — hatches his dream team, and it’s filled with superheroes and sorcerers and giant robots and kaiju: Superman, Gandalf, the Iron Giant, King Kong. That only prompted people to point out that Jordan fared well with the Looney Tunes stars and Bill Murray…and Wayne Knight.

In the 1996 original, Murray technically wasn’t playing himself, but he might as well have. He was simply a Bill Murray-esque actor who was also good friends with Jordan, who was playing himself, more or less. Murray appears relatively late in, offering his assistance in the big game. It was even reportedly Murray’s idea to do the part, even if he declined to return for more.

Space Jam arrived just before the second act of Murray’s career, in which he moved away from goofball roles and started doing more melancholic (but funny!) performances. Just two years he earned the best reviews of his career for Rushmore, and was soon doing others like it, such as Lost in Translation, Broken Flowers, even Hamlet (in which he made for an excellent Polonius). So in a way, Space Jam — along with the following year’s The Man Who Knew Too Little — were farewell to his mostly comedic early period.

So when people saw James hoping to recruit known badasses and not, say, one of the most beloved comic performers in history (and Wayne Knight, no slacker himself!), people made the same joke.

Some pointed out that Murray is a superhero in and of himself.

And others roped in another actor who’s shared the screen with Bugs and company: Looney Tunes: Back in Action star Brendan Fraser.

The Charlotte Hornets will be without another major contributor for the next few weeks. The team announced that prized offseason signing Gordon Hayward, who has looked like his former All-Star self since heading to Charlotte, will miss at least the next four weeks due to a right foot sprain that he suffered on Friday night.

“The injury was sustained during the second quarter of last night’s win over the Indiana Pacers,” the team said in a release. “The initial diagnosis was confirmed via a physician’s exam and studies today in Indianapolis. He will be reevaluated in approximately four weeks and further updates on his status will be provided as appropriate.”

Beyond the fact that losing Hayward for any amount of time would be a tough break for the team, this is especially brutal news following the news that LaMelo Ball may be out for the rest of the year with a wrist fracture. The team currently sits in fourth place in the Eastern Conference at 25-23, but are only a game and a half up on the 7-seed and a potential spot in the Eastern Conference play-in tournament.

Hayward has started all 44 games in which he’s appeared for the team this season, averaging 19.6 points, 5.9 rebounds, 4.1 assists, and 1.2 steals in 34 minutes per game.

In less than a week, Taylor Swift will release her first re-recorded album, Fearless (Taylor’s Version). The singer has been teasing this project since the end of 2020, when a previous contract with Big Machine, her old label, allowed her to re-record her first six albums. Why? In part because she currently does not own the rights to them. In addition to the new versions of the songs from her 2008 sophomore album, Fearless (Taylor’s Version) will also include seven previously-unheard songs. She shared the first such release — “You All Over Me” with Maren Morris — at the end of last month. As for the other six songs, they remained untitled until Saturday, when Swift debuted the full tracklist for the upcoming project.

The singer revealed a second guest appearance on the album: country singer Keith Urban. He appears on a track entitled “That’s When.” After sharing the news, Taylor spoke about the collaboration. “I’m really honored that @KeithUrban is a part of this project, duetting on That’s When and singing harmonies on We Were Happy,” she said. “I was his opening act during the Fearless album era and his music has inspired me endlessly.” She added, “I’m counting down the minutes til we can all jump into this brave world together, filled with equal parts nostalgia and brand newness.”

Fearless (Taylor’s Version) is out 4/9 via Republic Records. Pre-order it here.

Though he lost the race, Donald Trump raised a lot of money in the lead-up to the 2020 election. The campaign also refunded a lot of it — some $122 million, in 2020 alone. It’s not uncommon for campaign donations to be refunded, but contrast that number with the amount the Biden team returned: $21 million. There’s a reason for the disparity: As per The New York Times, online fundraising messages from Trump had a shady way to trick supporters into giving more donations than they perhaps intended.

As per the Times, in the final two months of the campaign, the Trump started using pre-checked boxes roping supporters into making recurring donations. Some found their bank accounts depleted and frozen after making initial donations they couldn’t much afford in the first place.

Times reporters discovered that, as early as March of last year, online Trump donation forms came with a yellow box that read “Make this a monthly payment.” Thing is, it was already pre-checked, and only eagle-eyed supporters could catch that they were being automatically roped into regular payments.

By early September, the forms started adding other elements. Pre-checked boxes for monthly donations evolved into weekly payments, in what was internally referred to as a “money bomb.” One box got people to pay an additional $100 later that month. Refunds ballooned; of the $122 million returned to supporters, $64.3 million of that was done in the last two months. But despite the huge refunds, the cash-strapped Trump team got what they wanted. As per NYT:

The recurring donations swelled Mr. Trump’s treasury in September and October, just as his finances were deteriorating. He was then able to use tens of millions of dollars he raised after the election, under the guise of fighting his unfounded fraud claims, to help cover the refunds he owed.

Trump continued to raid his supporters’ pockets after he lost the election. In the days after the race was formally called for Biden, he launched an “Election Defense campaign,” in which donations under $600 simply went to a Trump Political Action Committee and to the RNC.

Time will tell how many Trump supporters will grow wise to such shenanigans, but it’s clear some of them were royally screwed. The article tells of one Stacy Blatt, who was in hospice care for the cancer that would soon take his life. He was living on less than $1000 a month, and yet he gave the then-president $500:

Another $500 was withdrawn the next day, then $500 the next week and every week through mid-October, without his knowledge — until Mr. Blatt’s bank account had been depleted and frozen. When his utility and rent payments bounced, he called his brother, Russell, for help.

What the Blatts soon discovered was $3,000 in withdrawals by the Trump campaign in less than 30 days. They called their bank and said they thought they were victims of fraud.

“It felt,” Russell said, “like it was a scam.”

(Via The New York Times)

Paul Pierce turned some heads in the early hours of Saturday morning. Pierce, the retired Boston Celtics legend and current analyst for ESPN, went live on Instagram from someone’s home and broadcast himself partying. A whole lot happened and clips/photos made their way around Twitter of Pierce, surrounded by dancers, smoking and drinking. If you want to see what happened, click here, here, here, or here, but know that “Paul Pierce had a house party with a whole hell of a lot going on” is fairly NSFW.

As people woke up on Saturday and started to see what Pierce had going on, Twitter exploded with reactions. No one in the basketball world had more fun with this than Washington Wizards star Bradley Beal, with whom Pierce was teammates for a year in D.C. Beal could not believe that Pierce made a cardinal sin of IG: not hitting the “close friends” button.

A handful of other NBA players got in on the fun, with Kyle Kuzma calling the future Hall of Fame inductee a “sicko.”

There hasn’t been any sort of comment from ESPN about this or anything along those lines, and we’ll keep you posted if anything comes through. In the meantime, let this be a lesson to everyone to always double check that the things you’re posting on IG that you only want your close friends to see do not break containment.

Prayers from all corners of the music world are being sent DMX’s way after reports of a drug overdose and hospitalization broke on Saturday morning. According to TMZ, the incident also triggered a heart attack, which has left him in “grave condition” in the critical care unit of a White Plains, New York hospital. A number of artists took to social media to send well wishes his way and hopes of a speedy recovery.

T.I. was one of many who sent prayers to DMX on Twitter. “I appreciate you so much for pulling up & and checking on a n****,” he wrote. “So now I’m tellin you like you told me…This too shall pass…” Rick Ross was one of the first people to speak out after hearing the news. In a video he shared to his Instagram Story, he said, “Prayers up for DMX the legend, let’s put that in the sky.” Killer Mike also chimed in with prayers of his own, saying, “May God bless the Dog (DMX). Praying for him as I have just heard the terrible news.”

DMX’s struggle with drug addiction have been well-documented over the years. He once opened up about being tricked into smoking crack at the age of 14 by his rap mentor. He’s also checked into rehab multiple times over the past few years, once in 2017 and again in 2019. Hopefully, the hip-hop legend can pull through and begin the process towards a speedy recovery.

You can read some more reactions from the music world below.

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