Category: News

Wednesday marks the end of Donald Trump’s presidency and the start of Joe Biden’s term as the nation’s leader. Despite this, Trump is using his presidential powers to the fullest extent in order to hand out pardons to several individuals in prison or facing charges for an array of crimes. According to Reuters, some of those having their sentences commuted were rappers Lil Wayne and Kodak Black, who were both pardoned by Trump on Tuesday night. The action comes a week after reports claimed that the rappers were on the president’s list of potential pardons.

Wayne’s commute comes after he pled guilty in December to illegal possession of a firearm, a charge he was set to face up to 10 years in prison for due to a prior felony gun possession conviction. The new charge stemmed from a December 2019 incident where federal agents were tipped off about a firearm on Wayne’s plane at Miami-Opa Locka Executive Airport. After a search was conducted, a gold-plated Remington 1911, .45-caliber handgun was found in his bag. Kodak Black, on the other hand, is currently in prison for falsifying documents in order to buy a firearm. He was arrested on the charge in May 2019 and six months later he was sentenced to 46 months in prison.

In addition to Wayne and Kodak’s commute, Trump reportedly also pardoned Death Row Records’ co-founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris.

(via Reuters)

Kodak Black is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Like all social media platforms, TikTok has its pluses and negatives. In a string of posts to Twitter, Doja Cat spoke about the latter after announcing she would no longer post her own videos to the popular app.

“I’m not comfortable making tik toks anymore i feel like something is wrong w me. y’all got me,” she wrote in a tweet. One of Doja’s followers replied and apologized for “people in the world who think spreading hate and leaving rude comments on posts is ok.” The “Say So” singer responded, saying, “They’re not even being hateful they’re just unintentionally gaslighting and i’m deadass not fit to just take the joke cuz i’ve actually struggled w sh*t before and i have a lot of fear in me so it just adds up in the end when i read that kind of sh*t.”

Another fan attempted to reassure Doja that most of the negative comments are “for likes” and not a direct attempt to offend her. While she admitted that she understands and sees it that way, she also said it’s still “f*cking depressing” that she has to deal with it. Doja ultimately placed the blame on herself saying that she put herself “out there to be made fun of” early in her career but now it’s “reached a point for me personally so i’m done w the funny sh*t.” She added, “Y’all can make fun of my music n my performances cuz those not meant to be a joke and ill feel better about that.”

Trump’s been busy his last days in office. He announced a weird garden. He dropped a history pamphlet that downplayed slavery, on MLK Day. But he also threatened to make an avalanche of pardons, which he was a bit slow to do. Indeed, it was mere hours until the end of his presidency that word spread about one of the biggest, and least surprising potential pardons. According to CNN, he’s reportedly going to bestow the honor upon Steve Bannon, his former Senior Counselor, with whom he had a falling out after his departure from the White House in 2017.

Sources stress that nothing is final until Trump signs it — and, as of this writing, he only has about eight hours left in office. And what is the crime for which Bannon would be pardoned? As per CNN, back in August of 2020, he and three accomplices were federally charged with “defrauding donors of more than a million dollars as part of a fundraising campaign purportedly aimed at supporting Trump’s border wall.” In others words, Trump is pardoning Bannon for ripping off his own supporters.

Bannon was a key architect of the outgoing president’s campaign in 2016, a job for which he left his post executive chairman at Breitbart News, where Trump remains a (mostly) hallowed figure to this day. Though the two parted ways — in part because he insulted his kids, even calling Ivanka “dumb as a brick” — they had reportedly reconnected in the last months of Trump’s administration. Bannon allegedly fanned the flames of his voter fraud conspiracy theories, and on the day before the failed MAGA coup, he told listeners of his podcast, called “War Room,” that “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow.”

When news broke of Bannon’s potential pardon, people were quick to point out what he was being pardoned for.

Some remembered Bannon didn’t work alone.

Others reminded people that Bannon, like Trump, is banned from Twitter, albeit for the crime of demanding people be beheaded.

Others remembered other weird Bannon stuff.

Some reminded everyone that Trump doesn’t pardon people because he likes them.

In any case, this hardly means Bannon is out of the woods.

On a more amusing note, there as at least one case of accidentally appropriate autocorrects.

(Via CNN)

After going more than three years without a solo single, SZA was back in action at the end of 2020 with a pair of singles: “Hit Different” and “Good Days.” The latter became the singer’s most successful single after it cracked the top 25 of the singles chart last week, coming in at No. 23. Now it’s the first song of her career to earn a top 10 spot on the Billboard chart.

Once SZA got word of the news, she took to Twitter to rejoice. “Listen to me .. I’m so fucking speechless I JUST WANNA SAY THANK YOU FOR TAKING US TO THE TOP FUCKING TEN I DONT UNDERSTAND HOW WE GOT HERE BUT GOD IS ACTUALLY WYLING,” she wrote. “Wow THANK YOU SO MUCH I LOVE YOU!! BEYOND THE INNANNETS.” She also added that the music video for the track is “COMING SOON AFFFF.”

Speaking of, SZA recently asked fans to submit clips for the video and she said there were so many submissions that the Gmail account she created ran out of space. Despite the overwhelming amount of clips, she told her followers that the music video would not be strictly fan-submitted footage, saying, “it’s PART of the video .. jus part.”

For the last four years, the majority of Republican lawmakers have stuck by Donald Trump’s side, through thick and thin, no matter how many norms he shredded, even when as he spread voter fraud lies. That changed dramatically on January 6. Since the failed MAGA coup, key GOP leaders — among them Mitch McConnell — have finally thrown him under the bus, as though they, too, had had enough. (But at least he still has the MyPillow guy.) But it looks like Trump has an ace up his sleeve: According to the Wall Street Journal, the outgoing president has been talking about starting his own political party.

Sources tell the publication that in his final full week in office, Trump was telling several aides about the new party, which he was thinking of calling the “Patriot Party.” (It’s worth nothing that many of those who stormed the Capitol loudly referred to themselves as “patriots.”)

As per WSJ, it’s “unclear how serious Mr. Trump is” about this new venture, adding that doing so “would require a significant investment of time and resources.” The piece also point out that third parties, such as the Green Party, usually fail to draw significant support in elections, often siphoning off voters from the two major parties.

In other words, it could be disastrous for Republicans if Trump could wrangle the resources to steal his die-hard base from the party. Of course, he’s also about to deal with potential financial and legal troubles, and that’s on top of the looming impeachment vote in the Senate that could bar him from running for president in 2024. Then again, there’s always Don Jr.

In any case, when the news broke, people on Twitter — where Trump is permanently banned — had jokes.

Although some doubted the name would stick.

And some pointed out that it might not have been Trump’s idea.

(Via WSJ)

In just a little over two weeks, Foo Fighters will share their tenth album Medicine At Midnight, which will be their first full-length release since 2017’s Concrete And Gold. The upcoming album was first announced at the beginning of November and since then, the group has built up anticipation by sharing songs and interesting tidbits about it. Recently frontman Dave Grohl delivered some new information about the album’s second single, “No Son Of Mine.”

During an interview with the U.S. edition of OK! magazine, Grohl revealed that the song is a tribute to the late Lemmy Kilmister, aka simply Lemmy, the Motörhead singer, who passed away in 2015. “[It started out with] this country swing to it, but then we decided for something a bit more aggressive, and it turned into these chunky riffs,” he said. “I wish Lemmy were alive to hear it, because he would see how much an influence he’s been to me.”

In another interview with Classic Rock magazine, Grohl reflected on a morning he spent drinking with Lemmy. “I was shocked at how f*cking disgusting it was,” he said. “These aisles of magazines and VHS tapes, stacked three to four feet high, Lemmy sitting on the couch, in his black bikini underwear with a spiderweb on them, after just dyeing his hair black, doing a phone interview, with a video game on pause on the television.”

(via Classic Rock)

Medicine At Midnight is 2/5 via Roswell/RSA. Pre-order it here.

WandaVision debuted its first two episodes on Disney+ last weekend, plunging viewers into what appears to be some mystery wing of the MCU (or whatever it’s called since the franchise now bleeds into television). It’s already inspired lots of questions. Is it all some hallucination dreamt up by Elizabeth Olsen’s Scarlet Witch? Has Paul Bettany’s Vision somehow come back to life, albeit in a Pleasantville-esque old sitcom world? Right now anything’s game. But perhaps we almost weren’t thrown straight into the deep end: Originally WandaVision was supposed to get a tease in the end credits of Avengers: Endgame.

This comes from IGN, who teased out a detail in recent IMDb chat with Olsen and Bettany. Vision, of course, was one of the actual victims — as opposed to the ultimately reversible victims — in Avengers: Infinity War, felled by Thanos personally. That meant he was excluded from Endgame. But he was supposed to make a cameo, of sorts.

“At one point there was going to be a tag, where [Scarlet Witch] opened a sort of body bag drawer and there was the Vision,” Bettany explained. “[Marvel Studios boss] Kevin [Feige] kind of talked to me and said, ‘I’ve got to pull the shots.’ And I was like, ‘Ugh!’ Because I really wanted that profit participation!”

So far, WandaVision has held mostly rigid to its sitcom pastiche, though that was already starting to erode by the end of the second episode, which further teased that the two may be trapped in some kind of simulation. Still, it’s good to have Vision back, even if, in another timeline, we could have had ever so slightly more.

(Via IGN)

The Sacramento Kings are a young, interesting team taking part in an immensely challenging NBA season. As such, downturns will happen, and the Kings are just 2-8 in the last ten games, largely due to a shaky defense. Still, it would be even more difficult to navigate in ups and downs of this grueling campaign without a bit of humor and, on Tuesday, Hassan Whiteside shared a window into some comedy from within the Kings’ roster.

Whiteside posted a video to Snapcat, complete with narration, and the comedic focus was on teammate Jabari Parker’s car as players loaded up with luggage.

Whiteside began by referring to Parker’s car as a “Dr. Seuss, Monopoly-ass car” and, upon finding out that it belonged to Parker, yelled out asking if Parker got the automobile from “Cat In The Hat.” From there, Whiteside called the call “future” and said Parker was a “trendsetter,” all while chuckling along.

Obviously, this isn’t the most important thing in the world, but it was undeniably hilarious. Both gentlemen have done well for themselves in terms of earning lucrative salaries in the NBA and, well, Parker’s car wasn’t the most typical choice, even for a man with millions of dollars. Whiteside decided to have some fun and share it with others. We can all relate to that, even if not to the purchase itself.

It’s the final hours of Donald Trump’s presidency, and according to many reports he’ll spend it dishing out a number of pardons. Names like Kodak Black and Lil Wayne came up as people whose sentences may be commuted. Though the list has yet to be made public, a new report from AllHipHop claims that Death Row Records co-founder Michael “Harry-O” Harris was among those granted an early release by The White House.

Harris’ prison sentence was scheduled to end in 2028. Activist Weldon Angelos, who was pardoned last month, confirmed the news to AllHipHop. “This is definitely an injustice they corrected today,” he said. “Out of all this drama going on with the White House, something good has coming out of this … Harry-O had another 10 years and he may not have made it.” He added, “There’s Covid … its rampant, there’s 40,000 people infected in the federal prison system and 190 deaths and its rising every day.”

Harris’ alleged commuted sentence comes after Snoop Dogg reportedly asked The White House for the pardon. According to The Daily Beast, criminal-justice reform advocate Alice Johnson, who was pardoned by Trump in 2018, revealed that the rapper reached out to her and Angelos after the latter’s commutation.

(via AllHipHop)

Kodak Black is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The Atlanta Dream are about to have something in common with United States Senate: Kelly Loeffler will no longer be affiliated with either. According to report from Chris Vivlamore of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, Atlanta’s WNBA team, which is owned by a group that includes the now-former member of the Senate from the state of Georgia, is on the verge of being sold.

Details are sparse about, well, all of this sale. In a statement to the AJC, a WNBA spokesperson said, “As it relates to the Atlanta Dream, we understand a sale of the franchise is close to being finalized. Once the sale negotiation is concluded, additional information will be provided.”

Loeffler’s group Dream Too LLC purchased the franchise in 2011, and in recent months, her ownership of the franchise came under intense scrutiny. During her tenure as an appointed member of the Senate, Loeffler, a Republican, bashed the players and the league for its support of the Black Lives Matter movement over the summer. The comments backfired considerably: Players, both from the Dream and across the league, responded by openly supporting a challenger for her Senate seat, Rev. Raphael Warnock, a Democrat, in Georgia’s sizable primary. While he was polling at just nine percent at the time, he rode this wave of attention to a first-place finish in the state’s run-off election and eventually beat Loeffler in January’s race for her seat by nearly 90,000 votes.

Throughout the campaign cycle, calls came from various corners of the basketball world for Loeffler to no longer be affiliated with the franchise, although WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert made clear that Loeffler would not be forced to sell. Baron Davis expressed interest in purchasing the team, and following her loss to Warnock, LeBron James tweeted his desire to form a group to purchase the Dream, although it is unclear if either has anything to do with the group in negotiations.