Category: News

On this week’s episode of People’s Party, Talib Kweli and his co-host-with-the-most Jasmin Leigh sat down with legendary DJ, producer, designer, and sneaker extraordinaire Clark Kent for a lengthy discussion that covers Kent’s Superman DJ Crew, hip-hop’s greatest emcees, and, of course, sneakers. If you haven’t caught the episode, it’s definitely worth a full watch and offers some deep insight into hip-hop’s earliest moments as a culture-dominating force.

Prior to the interview, we linked up with “God’s favorite DJ” for a chat about the famous trendsetter’s favorite sneakers of all time. It shouldn’t surprise anybody that the AF-1 ranks at the top — Nike famously commissioned Kent for an iteration of the shoe for 2010’s “Five Boroughs” project. In fact, of the eight sneakers designed by DJ Clark Kent currently available on StockX, half of them are AF-1s, each doper than the next. The dude knows shoes, so let’s jump in and find out DJ Clark Kent’s four other favorites, his all-time favorite sneaker drop, and who he thinks is killing it in the sneaker game right now.

Watch the full DJ Clark Kent interview on People’s Party above.

What is your favorite sneaker silhouette or pair of shoes, ever?

Well, my favorite silhouette is Air Force 1s because they are the cleanest, simplest, most easy-to-wear silhouette. I think they look perfect, and my favorite pair of sneakers of all time is white on white, Air Force 1s.

What are the craziest lengths you’ve ever gone to get a pair of shoes?

I found out that there were these linen Air Force 1s. Clean linen color with pink swooshes, coming out on a weekend only in Japan, but I wouldn’t be until Japan the week after, because I had to DJ there. I had the promoter change my flight to go a week early, actually a week and two days early. The first thing he said was “I’m not paying for a hotel.” I said, “It’s all good, I’ll pay for the hotel.” I need to be there like a day or two before the shoes come out. He doesn’t understand why I want to come. I don’t explain it that way, but that’s my mentality. The shoes come out on Saturday. I got to be there early just to prepare. So he switched the flight. I got the hotel, the same hotel that I was supposed to stay in.

I was staying at The Civilian. I’ve always stayed at the Civilian. That saturday morning I went to 11 sneaker stores and bought every pair of size 11 and a half of AF-1 linen that I could find. I brought back home 11 pairs to the United States after I did my show the week after. So basically, I went and sat in Japan for a week with a bunch of shoes, just to make sure I had them.

When I came back to New York, everybody made jokes about the fact that I was wearing sneakers with pink swooshes. Then, a couple of stores imported them, and all of a sudden it was a thing — “Oh my God, the pink Air Force 1’s, linen Air Force 1s!” and I’m looking at everybody like, three months ago, y’all thought I was funny!

It was just crazy.

Japan always has the best colorways!

Japan and London! They’ve come close in London or in Europe with JP sports. They always had incredible colorways, but in Japan, they do get some really incredible colorways.

Could you walk us through your five favorite sneaker collaborations? They could all be AF-1s if you want them to be, or shoes you own or wish you owned.

It’s really hard to say what my five favorites are. I think it might be easier to just say, what are my five favorite silhouettes. I would really have to sit here and jog my memory of all of the craziness that I’ve come across or stuff I went looking for that I missed. That would, seriously, probably take about a month — because I’ve been doing this since I was nine. I’d have to go back to 1975, and those were great shoes I was getting when I was a kid.

But favorite Silhouette is Air Force 1. The second favorite is the Air Max 1. Third… there’s a tie between Jordan III and a Jordan XI

The fourth would probably be the Adidas Grand Prix, and then the fifth would be — I like so many sneakers, man. I think it might be the Valley Competition.

Is there a pair that you’ve always wanted, but never have been able to get your hands on?

Yeah, there is plenty of shoes I wanted but couldn’t get my hands on, but the reason I missed them was that they didn’t make my size or something. It’s not because I don’t know how to find them, or I don’t know how to make the call to get it.

Now, there are shoes that are made that might only come up to a size 12, and I’m just like, “Come on guys,” “Well, this colorway is made for women, so the biggest size would be a men’s 11 and a half.” My God! There’s plenty I haven’t gotten.

I would be going crazy if I had to give you a full list but there are enough that have come out that I couldn’t get, and contrary to what most people think — I don’t get everything. But what I do get is what I want. Do you know what I mean?

But like I said, if I want it and don’t have it, the shoes probably just didn’t come in my size. So even though I might have wanted them, I didn’t get them, but you know, I don’t trip off of that. Always remember one thing to be very, very true. There is always next Saturday.

Who, in your opinion right now, is killing it in the sneaker game? Brand, designer, a celebrity with great taste —

Salehe Bembury is doing very well. Joe Fresh Goods, he’s doing great collabs, I’m still doing great collabs! It’s so many, so many brands that can get it right. Do you know what I’m saying? Like, Bodega, when they do their New Balance Collide, always amazing concepts, there are just way too many to say who’s the one.

I don’t miss on Air Force One’s and Conflict doesn’t miss on New Balance. Joe Bodega doesn’t miss on New Balance. Right now, Virgil isn’t missing on Off-White. Supreme doesn’t miss. Do you know what I’m saying? Even when you think they miss, it’s not a miss. They could sell you a brick —

They have!

That’s when you know you are not missing. They sold you a brick, you’re not missing if you can do that.

Sneakersnstuff. The things that they do, they don’t miss. I think we need to give these outside collaborators the ability to do something with a big brand. When that happens, special things can happen. When you work at a plant and you are confined to this season, or this color is what’s happening this season, or this is the materials we’re trying to use this season that has to do with this initiative we’re pushing this season. When you are confined to those rules, the people who work in the brand are stifled. So with that stifling, the guys from outside look like they’re killing it. But they have guys who are sitting in those brands that are amazing. And they just aren’t getting to be as amazing as they could.

Travis is kind of killing me too. Who’s going to say that Kanye West wasn’t killing it on sneakers? There are honestly too many people out there.

WandaVision has come and gone but the quiet star of he show would like you to know that, if she had her way, there would have been more meme-worthy moments from her character if she had her way.

Kathryn Hahn, who as we already have established does not miss, really loved “hamboning it” up as the neighbor pulling the puppet strings of some important creatures in WandaVision. In a delightful interview with the New York Times, Hahn described just how much she enjoyed breaking the fourth wall and messing around despite her character, for much of the show, needing to play a straight-laced housewife who is very much not in on the bit. That kind of work as a nosy neighbor was, for her, the highlight of filming in a Marvel Cinematic Universe that’s often extremely self-serious.

My husband put it perfectly. He was like, seeing you in the sitcom portion of the show, I saw the you that I saw in college. I haven’t seen that part of you in so long — just you, hamboning it. It was so fun to be able to let go in those ways. At the end of every episode, we would try to shoot a little extra portion of it for the theme song [the “Agatha All Along” sequence]. So I could play directly to the camera and that would always make us laugh so hard.

It was also very interesting because [in the sitcom homages] we were all putting these roles on, on top of who we really were. It was so interesting to get to the last couple of episodes, where you see our true selves, who were actually very done-up and very big. And it felt very vulnerable to be at that scale. Those scenes between Lizzie and I, before Wanda embraced herself as the Scarlet Witch and she was still in her sweatpants, I think Agatha and Kathryn were very jealous.

The rest of the interview talks about her odd hobby of doing trapeze, what entering the MCU does for her indie cred, and how much she loved that she got to sing her own theme song. She’s also very appreciative that WandaVision ultimately told the story of some very strong women, and went into detail about something we don’t often see in comic book movies.

I was so turned on by the ambition and had mad respect for the fact that it is a superhero story that is ultimately about grief. And that there are so many women involved. And I love a witch, I really do.

There was also some other important news revealed on Monday, too.

9-1-1 (FOX, 8:00pm) — A flight attendant has had absolutely enough in midair, which sounds like a recipe for tossed drinks. I totally made that last detail up, but you could see it happening, right? Meanwhile a quarantine couple is slowly reaching the breaking point. Surely, we can all identify with how the part year has gone.

9-1-1: Lone Star (FOX, 9:00pm) — The Rob Lowe-starring spinoff has even more chaos for us, including a bank robbery, a massive fire, and a parking garage that’s seemingly a maze to some upset patron. Are these all unconnected calls or not?

Snowpiercer (TNT, 9:00pm) — This week, Layton and Till are back in procedural mode while investigating the murders, and Wilford is up to no good with Miss Audrey. This season’s introduction of Bean caused the series to gain momentum, so the time is still right to catch this ride.

Beartown (HBO, 9:00pm) — This Swedish crime drama based upon Fredrik Backman’s bestselling novel, and it follows the domination of a junior ice-hockey team upon a small community after a retired pro hockey player, Peter, relocates to Beartown for a fresh start. This week, Peter’s pushing everyone (especially his coaching staff) to the limits while Maya’s working through her trauma, and Kevin’s trying to forget.

The Investigation (HBO, 10:00pm) — This Scandinavian limited drama series follows the real-life investigation into the 2017 murder of a Swedish journalist (Kim Wall) in what became one of Danish history’s most notorious criminal cases (aptly dubbed the “Submarine Case”). Chief Prosecutor Jepsen is now making it quite clear that the accused may go free unless his team can tie together firm evidence.

Jimmy Kimmel Live! — Seth Rogen, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Daddy Yankee

The Late Show With Stephen Colbert — Nicolle Wallace, Michaela Coel, Kings Of Leon

The Tonight Show With Jimmy Fallon — Amy Poehler, Courtney B. Vance, Willie Jones

The Late Late Show With James Corden — Andra Day, SG Lewis Feat. Nile Rodgers

Late Night With Seth Meyers — Eddie Murphy, Guy Fieri, Josh Herndon

In case you missed these picks from the weekend:

Coming 2 America (Amazon Prime film) — The much-anticipated sequel is (according to our own Vince Mancini) a rare example of a comedy that lives up to the original with a bang-up job in the costume department to boot. The followup also, naturally, celebrates the much-heralded return of Eddie Murphy as King Akeem, who’s definitely got Arsenio Hall around as confidante while they travel from Zaumda to Queens, New York, to take things back to basics. More good news: James Earl Jones is back, and the film co-stars Wesley Snipes, Leslie Jones, Tracy Morgan, Louis Anderson, Jermaine Fowler, Bella Murphy, Rotimi, KiKi Layne, Nomzamo Mbatha, and Teyana Taylor.

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run (Paramount+ movie) — Look for Keanu Reeves’ cameo in this irreverent animated adventure, which follows SpongeBob and Patrick, his starfish pal, looking to vindicate Mr. Krabs after he’s been framed for heisting King Neptune’s crown. In doing so, they must leave their Bikini Bottom refuge and make their way to Shell City in a journey that illuminates the power of friendship. In addition to the actual movie goodness, check out our “Rapid Fire” video with rapper 2KBaby as he looks to beat the buzzer in a quiz.

Monday is International Women’s Day and Megan Thee Stallion is celebrating in a big way. The rapper is partnering with Fashion Nova, a brand she previously designed a clothing line for, to give away a huge sum of money to women entrepreneurs.

Announcing the initiative on social media, Megan said she’s granting $1 million total to women entrepreneurs, female students, women-owned businesses, and women-focused charities:

“Today is International Women’s Day. I’m so excited to announce that Fashion Nova and I are coming together on a women’s empowerment initiative called Women On Top. We’re giving away $1 million in grants and scholarships all month to all the women. The first organization that I wanna give a big shout out to, and the first $25,000 to is the YWCA in Houston.”

This new project isn’t the only charitable initiative Megan has been working on lately. Earlier this week, the rapper announced her Hotties Helping Houston fundraiser, which aims to raise money to help build back the city following the devastating storm. “It is always very important for me to help give back to the city that made me,” she said announcing the benefit drive. “I just want to say thank you to everyone who came together with me to help rebuild my hometown of Houston Texas.”

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

Rappers are always promising joint albums — or just feeding existing rumors about them based on fan speculation — but Lil Baby and Lil Durk’s proposed collaborative tape appears to be more real than ever after both principals spent the weekend hyping its eventual release on social media. While Lil Durk tweeted about the album and posted on Instagram, Lil Baby was busy avoiding Twitter, so he instead shared his thoughts via Instagram Story.

“Aye y’all tell @lilbaby4PF let’s drop that tape,” Durk tweeted. “Streets need this.” He followed up with a post on Instagram promising fans that the two rappers would drop the tape provided the post received 100,000 comments.

Meanwhile, Lil Baby first shared a screenshot of a fan account’s post to his Story, adding the text, “Aye y’all, tell @LilDurk let’s drop the tape.” Then, after Durk posted about it on Instagram, Baby shared the post to his Story, wondering, “Bra, why the hell you playing?”

The clamor for their crossover has reached a fever pitch mainly because the duo’s last collaboration, “Finesse Out The Gang Way,” was well-received by fans of both artists. The newly resurgent Durk has been on a roll for the past two years, just as Lil Baby emerged as a force himself. As both rappers climb into the upper tier of rap stardom, it’s only natural that fans would want to see them work together — especially considering their chemistry on tracks like “Finesse” and “3 Headed Goat.” Plus, Baby has proven he can bring the best out of a collaborator on 2018’s Drip Harder with Gunna, so giving Durk the same foil may result in some spectacular contemporary rap.

Will they actually drop a full project? Who knows, but maybe Durk can give Baby some pointers on his jump shot after Saturday’s disastrous showing at the B/R Open Run two-on-two game with Jack Harlow and Quavo.

Brittany Howard’s latest album, Jaime, came out in late 2019. That’s a good while ago, but Howard is such a captivating live performer that she doesn’t need a fresh new album to find her way into some sort of lauded performance slot. Over the past few months, she’s popped up on The Tonight Show, The Late Late Show, The Late Show, a virtual holiday benefit, and a Super Bowl after party concert. Now she’s back again and this time, it’s for a cover of Jackie Wilson’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher,” which is out today as an Amazon Original.

The song seems to be a favorite for Howard. She has performed it multiple times over the years, like when she sang it on Jools’ Annual Hootenanny in late 2019. It’s also a staple of her listening diet, as she indicated in a 2019 interview.

In other Howard news, she is up for a ton of Grammy Awards this weekend thanks to Jaime. She’s one of this year’s most-nominated artists as she and her work are nominated for Best Rock Performance; Best Rock Song; Best Alternative Music Album; Best R&B Performance; Best American Roots Performance; and Best Engineered Album, Non-Classical.

Listen to Howard’s “(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher And Higher” cover below.

Although IDK had a strong showing in 2020, the PG County-bred rapper has spent the last few months laying low until very recently, when he released the single “2 Cents” to break the relative silence since October’s “King Alfred.” It seems his warm-up period is going to continue for a bit, as he shares another new video, this time for a freestyle over the hit Pooh Shiesty song, “Back In Blood.”

On the original, Pooh Shiesty and Lil Durk recount tales of revenge. As IDK is a bit further removed from the troublemaking days he recalled on his breakout mixtape IWASVERYBAD, his freestyle focuses instead on the best kind of revenge: success. “I bought a chain and a crib in a pandemic,” he boasts. “Got a AMG and not a Panamera / Got a twin turbo in the hood like I’m in the trenches with Tia and Tamera.” It’s clear he’s sharpening his knives for whatever he’s cooking up to release in 2021, building on the growing success of his last year.

IDK’s solid 2020 included the release of his compilation album IDK & Friends 2, which doubled as the soundtrack to the Kevin Durant-produced basketball documentary Basketball County: Something In The Water, as well as making his television debut with the outspoken “No Cable” on The Late Show.

Meanwhile, the “Back In Blood (Freestyle)” video was also accompanied by IDK’s cover of Brent Faiyz’s song “Gravity” which originally featured Tyler The Creator. You can listen to that below.

There was a time when John Schnatter was simply eating pizzas as penance for his lack of racial awareness and using a slur on a conference call while at the helm of Papa John’s. A few years later, though, and he’s apparently an expert witness when it comes to cancel culture.

The former CEO of the pizza chain is back to doing interviews, and on Monday he made a wave of media appearances on far-right news outlets to talk about cancel culture. The first came with OAN, where he accused the Papa John’s board of framing him for racism.

The interview was, well, very OAN. One question asked Schnatter how he reacted when headlines started coming out that “smeared your good name,” which is an interesting way to describe a situation where not only did Schnatter use racist language, but he used it while at a corporate sensitivity training. Apparently, he’s trying to figure out how he was labeled a racist, but also working really hard not to say anything racist while he does.

“We’ve had three goals these last 20 months: get rid of this N-word in my vocabulary and dictionary and everything else. Because it’s just not true,” he said. “Figure out how they did this, and get on with my life.”

The thing is, well, he did have that racial slur in his vocabulary because he said it during a conference call, which is what caused all of this. The framing or whatever happened with the board that followed was clear damage control from a large corporation, and amid the controversy it decided the best way to do that was without the John in Papa John’s. But Schnatter insisting that he’s the victim of anything but his own words is certainly a stretch here.

In another appearance, this time on Newsmax, he talked more clearly about cancel culture. There were a lot of puns, because pizza.

Despite the welcome audience he may get from far-right news outlets that love to support imaginary things like widespread voter suppression that stole the presidency from Donald Trump, the rest of the internet certainly didn’t react well to his media appearances.

Over 17 million people tuned in to watch Oprah Winfrey’s much-anticipated interview with Meghan Markle and Prince Harry on CBS. For perspective’s sake, that’s “more eyeballs than last September’s Primetime Emmys and last week’s Golden Globes put together,” according to Deadline. Jared Leto and his flower have nothing on Oprah. It’s a good thing for CBS that the interview was a ratings blockbuster, as the network paid Winfrey’s production company, Harpo Productions, at least $7 million for the broadcast rights.

The two-hour Oprah with Meghan and Harry: A CBS Primetime Special pulled in 2.6 rating among adults 18-49 and 17.1 million viewers for the network in early numbers. In fact, with the exception of the 20.4 million who saw the post-Super Bowl debut of Queen Latifah’s The Equalizer, Meghan and Harry has been awarded the largest non-sports audience of the 2020-2021 TV season so far.

The 17.1 million final tally is equal to the number of people who watched Diane Sawyer’s 2015 interview with Caitlyn Jenner, but it’s well behind the staggering 62 million viewers for Oprah’s chat with Michael Jackson in 1993.

For those without CBS hoping to watch Meghan and Harry on Paramount+ (the former-CBS All Access) I have bad news for you: it’s not there. Variety reports that’s because Harpo, not CBS, owned the streaming rights, so “while the special was available on Paramount Plus to stream live, and is on CBS.com for free right now, it won’t be added to the nascent streamer’s programming.”

The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run is on Paramount+, though. It’s pretty good!

(Via Deadline and Variety)

For International Women’s Day, the Toronto Raptors announced that their game on March 24 against the Denver Nuggets will feature an all-women broadcast team with Meghan McPeak, Kia Nurse, Kayla Grey, Kate Beirness, and Amy Audibert handling all broadcast duties on site and in the studio for the game.

It will be a very cool moment and hopefully will continue to open doors for more women in the NBA broadcasting space beyond just the traditional roles that have been afforded to women, chiefly on sidelines. Some of the very best in the business in the NBA analyst role, both in studio and on games, are women, with the likes of Doris Burke, Sarah Kustok, and Candace Parker all proving that. As said in the video voiceover, the hope is to continue to prove that women belong “in all roles on a broadcast team” and for girls and women watching to have their “dreams ignited” by seeing the five women run a full NBA broadcast in every capacity.

As for the specific roles, McPeak, who was previously the Raptors 905 play-by-play broadcaster and currently does Washington’s Capital City Go-Go’s games, will handle the play-by-play duties with Nurse, who does analyst work for TSN during the WNBA offseason, on color commentary, Grey handling sidelines, and Beirness and Audibert, two of TSN’s on-air reporters, hosting the studio show.