Category: News

In 2016 and 2017, Drake dropped his Views and More Life albums respectively and a big part of the projects’ rollout, as well as the debut of fellow OVO artists and different acts from across the music world, was thanks to the Toronto rapper’s OVO Sound Radio show on Apple Music.

From the show’s start in the summer of 2015 to its eventual end in 2018, a number of artists would debut new music on the platform including Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and “One Dance.” Many even credit a 2016 set on the platform as the first time they heard Ella Mai’s music. Well, nearly three years after OVO Sound Radio stopped airing regular episodes, Drake announced that it would be making a return on Thursday night.

The rapper shared the news in a rare post on Twitter. “Going live tonight at 10:30pm EST with the return of OVO Sound Radio and the launch of our 24 hour station SOUND 42 a new experience on @SIRIUSXM” he said. A notable aspect of the announcement is that the radio show was moved from Apple Music to SiriusXM. It’s unclear why he opted to switch platforms but after nearly three years away from the radio show, Drake may have just felt like a change was in order.

The radio show’s launch arrives hours before the release of Scary Hours 2, his upcoming project that looks to hold fans over until the release of his sixth album, Certified Lover Boy.

You can read his post above.

Unlike some actors in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, Paul Bettany does not have a reputation for spoiling things. But after a season of WandaVision it’s clear he can take credit for being one of Marvel’s biggest trolls. Spoilers incoming for WandaVision ahead of its Season 1 finale, so be careful ahead.

Bettany drew lots of rave reviews playing the synthetic humanoid Vision in Marvel’s first TV show on the Disney+ streaming platform, but he also raised some eyebrows when he teased working with someone later in the season that hadn’t been spoiled by casting news.

“There is one character that has not been revealed. And it is very exciting. It is an actor I’ve longed to work with all of my life,” Bettany told Esquire. “We have some amazing scenes together and I think the chemistry between us is extraordinary and fireworks on set.”

There were a lot of guesses from fans as the episodes rolled out weekly. In fact, it became a running subplot of sorts as fans tried to plot out what might happen on the show and who would appear in the final episode. But while some still expect the show’s final episode of Season 1 to have some surprises, the penultimate episode made some wonder if that mystery actor is actually… Paul Bettany.

The mid-credits reveal of WhiteVision made many people wonder if he was joking about facing off against himself in the final episode. And, as it turns out, Bettany admitted he was trolling fans all along. In an interview on Good Morning America, Bettay admitted that he was making a pretty clever joke. One he wasn’t sure people would be able to suss out when he dropped it all those months ago.

“You know when you think something is going to be funny and you say it and then you panic about it? That’s what I did,” Bettany admitted. “Fans started guessing who it might be. They were guessing people like Benedict Cumberbatch or Patrick Stewart. I was thinking, ‘God, that’s a good idea and they’re gonna be so disappointed when they find out it’s me.’”

Betttany, to his credit, was careful not to spoil anything else ahead of the final episode. And the mention of Cumberbatch, who plays Dr. Strange and many people have speculated will show up in the final episode, could even be a bit of additional subterfuge. But when asked if we should expect a battle between Agatha and Wanda, for example, he mostly made a facial expression and some noises that were not words. That seems inevitable, though, as is his own showdown with, well, himself.

Bebe Rexha and her fans got a nasty surprise today when a guy decided to expose himself during her Instagram Live. The pop star was connecting with fans on social media and raising awareness for her new single, “Sacrifice,” which will be out this Friday when the incident took place. Pop Crave has captured the video of Rexha on her Instagram stories after the fact apologizing to fans who might have seen the indecent images, and also fired off several tweets about finding out who was behind the prank and getting his access to social platforms removed.

Hopefully she does succeed in getting the offended user suspended or at least investigated for misusing the platform in this way. Especially for a man to come onto a woman’s Instagram and expose himself — potentially to underage female fans of Rexha — the act is particularly disgusting. Bebe gets the last word, though, by letting her followers know she’s surprised he even wanted to show them what he was working with, as she declared it wasn’t very impressive. Since people who engage in chaotic behavior like this for attention usually are very insecure, that comment probably hits him where it hurts. Anyway, look out for Bebe’s new single out later tonight.

Megan Thee Stallion is taking a moment to help her fellow Houston residents. The rapper’s hometown, along with many other cities in Texas, was slammed by a winter storm last month that results in power outages, boil water advisories and no hot water for many, as well as a senator who tried to skip out on helping for a trip to Cancun.

Hoping to speed up the road to recovery for many Houston residents, Megan has announced the Hotties Helping Houston fundraiser drive. Getting help from NACC Disaster Services and Texas Representative Sheila Jackson Lee, the drive will benefit single mothers and the elderly in the area.

Megan spoke about the drive in a post to her Instagram page. “It is always very important for me to help give back to the city that made me,” she said in the post’s caption. “I just want to say thank you to everyone who came together with me to help rebuild my hometown of Houston Texas.” Some of the names and brands that she mentioned included Maroon 5, Taraji P. Henson, Fashion Nova, her label 300 Entertainment, and Revlon. She also prompted fans to visit her website to find information on how they can help and to buy new merchandise that would see proceeds go directly to NACC’s rebuilding efforts.

You can read the announcement in the post above.

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

Kevin Durant is the NBA’s most online superstar. His tweets from his younger years remain some of the best the app has ever seen from an athlete, and he’s never afraid to mix it up with folks online, either on Twitter or in Instagram comments, for better or worse.

As such, KD doesn’t miss much when it comes to the online discourse of the NBA, and that includes viral snippets from the various sports talk shows. During Thursday night’s NBA All-Star Draft, Durant took Nikola Vucevic of the Orlando Magic and couldn’t help but jab at ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins in the process.

For those who haven’t seen it, Perk’s attempt at saying “Vucevic” on First Take while discussing All-Star snubs and who he’d remove from the team was hilarious.

The internet had a field day with Perk for his inability to get Nikola’s name out, including this personal favorite of mine.

KD’s brief troll was a highlight of the All-Star Draft, although not quite as good as Charles Barkley calling both of them out for “Utah Jazz slander” when they left Rudy Gobert and Donovan Mitchell for last, prompting LeBron to insist it wasn’t slander and then proceed to explain how no one has ever liked the Jazz no matter how good they are.

The 2021 NBA All-Star Draft featured LeBron James and Kevin Durant picking their squads and at the end of the process, there were two names left standing: Jazz center Rudy Gobert and Jazz guard Donovan Mitchell.

That the two All-Stars from the team with the NBA’s best record were the last selected was not going to be something anyone could ignore, and Charles Barkley couldn’t help but call out what he saw as “Utah Jazz slander” from KD and LeBron for leaving them for last.

James would address the situation at the end, insisting there was no slander and then proceeded to, well, kind of slander the entire organization’s history.

“There’s no slander to the Utah Jazz,” LeBron said. “You’ve got to understand, just like in video games growing up, we never played with Utah. As great as Karl Malone and John Stockton was, we would never pick those guys in video games.”

It’s a hysterical line, but Chuck wasn’t buying it, noting that when he said he needed size he passed over the taller Gobert for Domantas Sabonis.

It was the highlight of the night, along with LeBron promising he wouldn’t be tampering this year, and made for a delightful end to the All-Star Draft. In case the Jazz, which spent Wednesday night ripping into the officiating they’ve received this season, needed any added motivation going into the second half of the season, their top stars got it on Thursday.

The NBA All-Star Draft was held on Wednesday (airing on Thursday night), as LeBron James and Kevin Durant, the leading vote-getters in the West and East respectively, selected their rosters for the upcoming All-Star Game on Sunday. Durant won’t be playing in the game himself, as he works to rehab a lingering hamstring injury, so he had to make an extra selection in the first round, while James selected players for the fourth straight year, as he’s been a captain each time.

Back in 2019, while Anthony Davis was in the midst of his trade request that was focused on getting himself to Los Angeles to play with the Lakers, and James selected him first in the draft and immediately got called out for tampering by Giannis Antetokounmpo. This year, Giannis (who just signed a supermax in Milwaukee) went first to Team LeBron. As James explained when pressed by Kenny Smith if he’s drafting for the All-Star team or for the Lakers this year, there aren’t any free agents on the list so his selections were all about this weekend.

The results were strong for Team LeBron, as his starting group is himself, Giannis, Stephen Curry, Luka Doncic, and Nikola Jokic. Still, it was a funny moment, at least for some, while others might not have enjoyed the lighthearted joking about LeBron swiping players from other teams to join him.

The 2021 NBA All-Star Game arrives on Sunday, March 7 in Atlanta, and it will be a much different experience this year. In fact, Sunday houses the entirety of the league’s All-Star Weekend festivities, and that adds a bit of intrigue. For the fourth time, the rosters were selected via a draft this week, with LeBron James and Kevin Durant acting as captains for the two squads.

While our mock draft didn’t quite flow in the exact same way, the results were still quite interesting. James has been a captain each and every time the league has used the draft format, while Durant, who is not playing due to injury, was at the helm for the first time.

The draft itself took place on Wednesday, a full day before the release of the proceedings on television. As such, it wasn’t too shocking that one of the picks leaked early, with Team LeBron tabbing Giannis Antetokounmpo with the first pick.

From there, though, there was genuine mystery, and even more so after Durant admitted that he didn’t actually prepare for the draft itself, leaning instead on the experience of playing against this batch of players. By rule, the captains went back and forth with only the pool of starters available (and Jayson Tatum replacing Durant in the pool), and the flow went this way.

1. LeBron James (Team LeBron) — Captain
2. Giannis Antetokounmpo (Team LeBron)
3. Kyrie Irving (Team Durant)
4. Stephen Curry (Team LeBron)
5. Joel Embiid (Team Durant)
6. Luka Doncic (Team LeBron)
7. Kawhi Leonard (Team Durant)
8. Nikola Jokic (Team LeBron)
9. Bradley Beal (Team Durant)
10. Jayson Tatum (Team Durant)

After the starting lineups were set on both sides, Durant had the first pick for the reserves, countering LeBron’s advantage as the leading overall vote-getter. Things flowed from there, with Durant tabbing his Nets teammate in James Harden, and the final picks in the draft were both members of the Utah Jazz in Donovan Mitchell and Rudy Gobert.

1. James Harden (Team Durant)
2. Damian Lillard (Team LeBron)
3. Devin Booker (Team Durant)
4. Ben Simmons (Team LeBron)
5. Zion Williamson (Team Durant)
6. Chris Paul (Team LeBron)
7. Zach LaVine (Team Durant)
8. Jaylen Brown (Team LeBron)
9. Julius Randle (Team Durant)
10. Paul George (Team LeBron)
11. Nikola Vucevic (Team Durant)
12. Domantas Sabonis (Team LeBron)
13. Donovan Mitchell (Team Durant)
14. Rudy Gobert (Team LeBron)

The game is scheduled for an 8:00 pm ET tip-off at State Farm Arena in Atlanta, with the national broadcast on TNT.

Here are the final rosters, in order of selection.

TEAM LEBRON: LeBron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Stephen Curry, Luka Doncic, Nikola Jokic, Jayson Tatum, Damian Lillard, Ben Simmons, Chris Paul, Jaylen Brown

TEAM KD: Kyrie Irving, Joel Embiid, Kawhi Leonard, Bradley Beal, Jayson Tatum, James Harden, Devin Booker, Zion Williamson, Zach Lavine, Julius Randle

The politicization of basic public health measures amid the coronavirus pandemic has had deadly consequences for hundreds of thousands of Americans over the last year. Despite all of the evidence that wearing masks, limiting gatherings and staying socially distant can help limit the spread of coronavirus and prevent hospitalizations and deaths, many Republican-led cities and states have held off on mandating masks be worn in public and instituting other health policies.

Yet as vaccinations continue in America and optimism is growing that with their help and continued vigilance the country could have a more normal summer than it had in 2020, entire states rolling back mask mandates and other restrictions has been criticized by public health officials and President Joe Biden.

In an interview earlier in the week, Biden described rolling back mandates as “Neanderthal thinking” and warned that continued support for mandates and caution would be important in order to stave off a fourth spike of cases since the virus first appeared in America last winter. That phrase, however, drew the ire of Marco Rubio, who tweeted that Biden should apologize for offending… people who descended from Neanderthals?

Rubio, who once was considered a viable Republican candidate for president before he forgot how hydration works, immediately trended on Thursday because of his Twitter take. But it was mostly to make fun of Rubio for feigning outrage for what many felt was valid criticism of “reopening” swaths of the country still caught up not only in a public health crisis but, in the case of Texas, an environmental one as well.

As plenty of people pointed out online, taking offense to Biden’s criticism is pretty wild compared to the many, many things Donald Trump said while in office that never drew criticism from Republicans like Rubio.

It’s also, well, kind of a silly thing to get mad about, scientifically. And in video that was shared again this week, Rubio was more than willing to promote conspiracies and questions about Biden’s mental health during the election. Things that, in the eyes of many, were far worse than a comment using the word “Neanderthal.”

The battle of words doesn’t undo anything Texas is doing with its health mandates, but it will be another entry into the culture war that’s already seen children’s books and toys represent the demise of America rather than what’s actually threatening it: the increasingly bad health of its citizens.

The relationship between Kevin Garnett and Glen Taylor has been tenuous for a long time. Garnett famously indicated in 2020 that he did not want to have his jersey retired by the Minnesota Timberwolves as long as Taylor was the owner but, just a few months later, word broke that Garnett was attempting to work with Taylor on a potential sale of the franchise. For a long time, it has been public knowledge that Taylor was willing to sell the team, with the general stipulation that the Wolves stay in Minneapolis. Still, no sale has taken place to this point and, on Thursday, Garnett released something of a statement on Instagram, both announcing that he is essentially closing the door on being part of a purchasing group and expressing all kinds of frustration.

Garnett says he “got the news that this process of trying to acquire the TWolves is over” but also shared the potential to “focus on other places,” invoking Seattle and Las Vegas. Obviously, Garnett is not too happy that the door is seemingly closed when it comes to the franchise he spent the majority of his career playing for, but another layer of the story emerged after the Hall of Famer player’s comments.

In short, Taylor publicly indicated that he was blissfully unaware of Garnett’s interest in the first place.

“Kevin never contacted me at all saying that he was interested,” Taylor told Jon Krawczynski of The Athletic. “Nor was his name listed on any of the buying groups that asked for financial information to review.”

This seems to strain credibility, but Taylor may be getting into specific details knowing that he can plead ignorance in this case. Regardless, it is a bit of a curveball for the Wolves owner to suggest that, after several months of speculation, Garnett wasn’t even a name that came across his desk.

On one hand, it seems as if this saga is over. On the other, Garnett could respond to Taylor’s denial and, well, that could open the door to the discourse once again.