Category: News

Legendary rapper MF Doom has reportedly died. News broke today with a statement from his wife, Jasmine, on Instagram, and HipHopDX also reports they got a statement confirming his passing. No cause of death has been released yet, but the post from his wife stated that he transitioned in October of this year. The hip-hop community is mourning the loss of a iconic figure, especially so suddenly and at such a young age.

Artists from all over the country and of all ages loved and admired the underground rapper, and took to Twitter to express their gratitude and admiration right alongside their sadness at his passing. Many fans have been commenting that in such a tough year, this is a very difficult final blow. It’s unclear why his death was revealed for the first time today, on New Year’s Eve, but it’s definitely become a day of mourning for the rap community at large.

From El-P, Phonte and Q-Tip to a younger generation of artists like Tyler The Creator, Jay Electronica, and IDK — who shared information about a track he was working on with Doom — the influence that the late rapper had is obvious. Some of the loving tributes from his peers are below.

The year 2020 is finally coming to a close, but not without one last weird thing trending on social media: Ben Affleck struggling to juggle some iced coffees and grab the mail at the same time.

If that sounds like the product of a slow news day, well, that’s kind of to be expected on December 31 of one of the worst years in recent memory. Times are tough, people are weary and there’s likely a long road ahead in 2021 that isn’t all that great, either.

Which perhaps is why people delighted so much in photos taken of Affleck outside of his home that continued a recent trend of him photographed with Dunkin drinks in varying states of stress and existence.

The photos, which show a somewhat beleaguered-looking Affleck struggling with a few drinks from the Boston-based coffee chain, are instantly endearing. And somehow mesmerizing, which is why several places like Page Six actually wrote about them. It seemed like all of social media was giving their takes on what was going on and what the images represented, too.

Like all great works of art, the photos seemed to represent something different in everyone.

Some people celebrated it like a rare shoe drop.

And as many pointed out, this running genre of photographs has caused a stir on social media before for one reason or another.

It immediately got added to an impressive collection of exhausted candids.

No team in the NBA has looked as self-assured and solidified through one week of the regular season as the Brooklyn Nets despite the fact that they entered the year with major health concerns, a new head coach, and two superstars who’d never taken the court together. The symphony thus far has been orchestrated beautifully by first-time head coach Steve Nash and their depth has shown to be a unique advantage already, but the biggest factor in the Nets’ promising start to the season is the promising return of Kevin Durant.

Since Durant went out with a ruptured Achilles’ tendon in Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals, it became an immediate debate among hoops fans whether and how effectively Durant could return. Sure, his game has never been overly dependent on bursts of athleticism, and medical developments seem to have lessened the challenges of recovery from what used to be seen as a career-ending injury. But at the same time, Durant is on the wrong side of 30 and uses his left foot more than most righties, a blessing considering he tore his right Achilles. The Nets also paid him and built a team around him as if he was among the elite class of players capable of leading a team to a title.

Through four games, those debates over the past 18-plus months have been answered with little fanfare. Durant looks, well, like Durant, except seemingly even more polished and patient than when we last saw him. The two-time NBA champion is averaging over 28 points per game on 52 percent shooting from the field, leading the Nets to the seventh-best offense in the NBA.

Never overly reliant on explosive dunks or a lightning first step, Durant has always had a way of gliding across the court. Nobody occupies space on a basketball court like Durant, and that’s still there when you watch him now at age 32 and coming off the injury.

Yet there are also flashes that show you that it’s not just an old man outthinking the youths. When Durant accelerates or sees an opening developing in the defense, he can still get there. The unguardable hang dribble, the smooth crossover, the occasional spin move, and the skyscraping release didn’t go anywhere. The scoring champion inside him is still there, it just roars less often than it used to.

Durant is also following a trend early this season in which he’s involved in the offense more as a jump shooter and passer than as an attacker. After peaking with 42 percent of his shots coming at the rim for the historically great 2016-17 Warriors, Durant has taken fewer than a quarter of his shots inside over his past three healthy seasons. The main difference in how Durant has functioned in Nash’s offense is that Brooklyn is playing faster than the Warriors did.

Nearly one-fifth of the Nets’ possessions already have come in transition, and finishing possessions in the third-fewest seconds in the NBA. When Durant is out and running, it becomes rather simple — with the amount of shooting Brooklyn can put out in just about every lineup — for Durant to create for his teammates.

On this fast break dish, all Durant has to do is jog the ball toward the teeth of the defense to force an overreaction from the young, defensively challenged Hawks.

Nash is also smartly not afraid to put the ball in Durant’s hands in the halfcourt as a play-maker. With this skill as well as his unparalleled scoring ability, watching Durant heading into 2021 is like watching some sort of medieval adventurer who’s collected trinkets and tools over years trekking with different partners and challenges. Playing without much spacing in Oklahoma City, Durant learned how to get his shot off against punishing NBA defenses. With the Warriors, he grew as a passer and decision-maker. This version of him feels and operates more like LeBron James or Kawhi Leonard, guys who have seen every coverage and are content to wait out the defense before dissecting it. While Kyrie Irving — who, it must be said, has been magnificent this season — effectively closed a high-scoring win over Atlanta out, the Nets rotate around Durant as their axis.

After seeing Breanna Stewart blitz the WNBA this season and earn her second Finals MVP trophy after her own Achilles injury last spring, maybe it shouldn’t have been such a surprise to see Durant dominate right away. They’re similar players in that they’re both jumbo guards blessed with skill that is breathtaking for players of their size, and the two discussed how they’d been in contact during their respective recoveries.

Durant could be in for a more sound return to the court than even Stewart due to his game relying even less on jumping to gain separation, as Mike Prada broke down nicely in his newsletter. However, Stewart being younger theoretically could have helped her regain her full mobility and athleticism, while Durant doesn’t yet look like himself on defense.

Nash has helped in this area by often playing Durant at center alongside another versatile big in Jeff Green or Jarrett Allen, but Durant is either saving energy early on or may not have the same ability to move his feet or help at the rim as he did before his injury. There have been several times this season when more athletic players have blown by Durant or he’s simply avoided rotating to help at the rim.

The Nets have dozens of games to figure that out though, and they’ve already demonstrated they will take things pragmatically with both Irving and Durant this year to keep them healthy. Brooklyn entered the season as a fringe championship contender in large part because of questions about how good Durant could be, so this early-season success is already exceeding expectations.

If Durant can get even more comfortable and the Nets keep finding ways to maximize him in all areas of the game, they will be a nightmare to deal with come postseason time.

Rapper MF Doom is reportedly dead at age 49. An Instagram post from his account shared today stated that the rapper had “transitioned” on October 31, 2020 and was signed by his wife, Jasmine.

Begin all things by giving thanks to THE ALL!

To Dumile

The greatest husband, father, teacher, student, business partner, lover and friend I could ever ask for. Thank you for all the things you have shown, taught and given to me, our children and our family. Thank you for teaching me how to forgive beings and give another chance, not to be so quick to judge and write off. Thank you for showing how not to be afraid to love and be the best person I could ever be. My world will never be the same without you. Words will never express what you and Malachi mean to me, I love both and adore you always. May THE ALL continue to bless you, our family and the planet.

All my Love
Jasmine

Transitioned October 31,2020

HipHopDX reported earlier today that they obtained a statement confirming t he passed. The Instagram post from Jasmine was also shared on the rapper’s Twitter channel, though no cause of death has been reported yet.

The legendary rapper frequently worked with the Rhymesayers label to release his music, and they also shared the news on Instagram:

This is a developing story and will be updated with new information.

Bowl season is, for better or worse, rolling along in college football as a very strange 2020 season comes to a close with, fittingly, some very strange bowl matchups. Among those was Thursday’s Armed Forces Bowl game between Mississippi State and Tulsa, which saw the Bulldogs edging out the Golden Hurricane in a 28-26 game that will be talked about far more for what happened after the final whistle blew.

At the end of action, when the two teams would typically meet for handshakes, they instead traded hands in the form of a benches clearing brawl that got pretty ugly, with at one point a Mississippi State player kicking a Tulsa player on the ground before running off and a number of punches being thrown, mostly between helmeted players but a few involving those with helmets off.

Punching guys in helmets remains the dumbest football guy thing that happens far too frequently, as your best hope is to somewhat startle the person you punch and the worst case is breaking your hand. That said, the guy from Tulsa that runs up on a bunch of Mississippi State players without his helmet and then has to retreat while dodging punches to his uncovered head probably should’ve thought that decision through a bit more.

It was a competitive game but not one you would have expected to end in fisticuffs, but then again, I guess you throw out all the record books when Tulsa and Mississippi State meet in Fort Worth.

Tony Hawk is, by any objective measure, one of the most important people in the history of action sports, if not at the very top of the list. As a groundbreaking skateboarder, the face of a video game franchise, and cultural icon who transcended the sport, Hawk played a crucial role in making skateboarding enter the mainstream in a way no one else has.

He is also a very pleasant seeming 52-year-old dad, and while there are not a ton of revolutionary skateboarders, there are a whole heck of a lot of those. And in 2020, a common occurrence — people not realizing that Tony Hawk is in the same place as them — went to new heights. We know this because Hawk has a tremendous sense of humor about himself (see: this), and decided to tweet out a bunch of interactions he had with folks.

The year started off strong, with someone actually recognizing him but wanting to make sure he could stay incognito. Also: Hawk made an apparent order at a restaurant he went to (god, remember doing that?) with his cholesterol in mind, opting for a turkey burger over a good ol’ beef burger.

Several months later, as the United States was dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, Hawk was out in public when he got a selfie request … after, of course, someone pointed out that he looked like himself.

In August, Hawk and his daughter stepped out to take care of some things when, once again, someone recognized him, but only because they thought he was someone else.

Hawk went out to grab a bite to eat in October, and while waiting for his food, someone’s ability to say he looks like Tony Hawk struck again.

And just under the wire of 2020, Hawk was able to play his fun little game again, this time at a COVID-19 testing site.

Stand-up comedian Kyle Cease (famous for being the slow clap guy from Not Another Teen Movie) has a bit about seeing Hulk Hogan, and being unsure about whether he actually saw Hulk Hogan, and realizing he had never had that dilemma before in his life, because he had always been able to immediately look at a person and determine whether or not they were Hulk Hogan. The difference, of course, is that you can usually tell that one pretty quickly, but apparently, no one who has ever seen Tony Hawk in public has been able to immediately go, “Oh, wait, that’s Tony Hawk.” It is my sincere hope that many things change in 2021. One of the few things that I hope does not change is this bit.

50 Cent has been teasing fans that he’ll start an OnlyFans account, letting us know he’d be willing to do a Verzuz in the right circumstances, and going back and forth on his support for Donald Trump (looks like he’s finally on the right side there, though), so it’s nice to see him fit in some new music today. But this new song is related to his TV ventures.

His newly-released track “Part Of The Game” features rising Memphis rapper NLE Choppa and Bronx songwriter Rileyy Lanez, and will serve as the official theme song for the upcoming Starz series, Power Book III: Raising Kanan. Obviously, the new show will be a spinoff of 50’s initial offering, Power which has been a very successful and much-talked about foray into television for the hip-hop mogul.

Apparently, Power Book II is one of several additional shows the rapper is bringing to Starz, including Book II: Ghost, a story about a female sports agent (in a male-dominated field), one on the Black Mafia Family, and a “hip-hop anthology series” called Moment In Time: The Massacre that kicks off with a season devoted to 50’s feud with The Game. That’s a huge portfolio for someone who only recently began making TV, and it will be interesting to see how the shows play out in 2021 and beyond. Listen to the new theme song above.

For a lot of us, new music from Taylor Swift has been the only thing making 2020 bearable. Long story short, we survived, but that’s definitely in part because of her new albums Folklore, released this summer, and Evermore released just a few weeks ago. The follow-ups to her 2019 album Lover came way off Taylor’s usual album release timeline, as she was stuck at home without a tour and not much to do besides make music.

But even with such a successful and prolific year — plenty of people named Folklore the best album of 2020, including Uproxx — clearly, this year sucked for everyone. Taylor included. To poke fun at the absurd and sad strangeness of 2020, the pop star posted a photo of herself in a bear costume (?) to Twitter this morning with the following caption: “bye 2020, it’s been weird.”

It’s an appropriately weird photo for a difficult year that we’re all hoping will immediately vanish into a lovely 2021 when the clock strikes midnight tonight.

Interestingly enough, another musician decided to bid farewell to 2020 with a photo that involved a bear and a cat — El-P, one half of Run The Jewels posted this tweet a few hours later:

Taylor Swift famously loves cats, is this some sort of signal that the two are collaborating on her next surprise album? Most likely not but if it happens, remember who predicted it! Happy new year all, time for me to drink some eggnog and get offline.

Talking about your fantasy football league is a tough sell for someone not in it, but when that league involves trash talking guys like Ryan Reynolds and Chris Evans, people tend to be more willing to listen. This was why Joe Russo and I spent an afternoon on a Zoom call talking about Reynolds’ strong fantasy season ending in disappointment thanks to Chris Pratt.

AGBO, the film production company led by brothers Joe and Anthony Russo, sponsored a Superhero League with some of the biggest movie stars on the planet to raise money for charity through FanDuel. The 14-team league includes the biggest stars of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and also ESPN fantasy football expert Matthew Berry. But despite having an expert among Avengers, it was Pratt who wound up on top after Week 16 of the NFL season wrapped up.

“Reynolds was hot all year but he lost in the first round to Pratt,” Russo said, going through rosters and breaking down what went wrong for a team that drafted Alvin Kamara and went 11-2 in the regular season.

Pratt was the eight seed, he explained, but he’d been “on a run,” beating Reynolds, then Chris Evans and later Simu Liu in the finals to claim the title. We didn’t talk about just fantasy football, of course, but his excitement for the Cleveland Browns and fantasy football was clear. Russo also spoke to us about the future of the MCU and Star Wars universe and what life has been like in Hollywood during a pandemic.

Uproxx: I wanted to start with a football question and I know you’re from Cleveland but you’ve been in California for a long time, but are you a Browns fan?

Joe Russo: I’m a huge Browns fan!

OK, then I have to ask how you’re feeling about this season and their postseason chances.

I’m ecstatic. I think all Browns fans have a bit of PTSD because we’re used to — or all Cleveland sports fans, frankly until the Cavs won a couple of years back. We’re used to losing in the most dramatic possible ways. So I think I’m cautiously optimistic.

This is where I’ll reveal I’m a Bills fan so I share your pain. There are actually a few Browns fans on staff here at Uproxx and we’re all convinced the Bills and Browns are destined to meet in the postseason.

That would be incredible. I’m worried, because I think the Bills are probably the hottest team right now in the AFC. They look really good. But, I mean, that would be amazing. Talk about shaking up the traditional playoff landscape. You get the Browns and the Bills playing each other in a meaningful game in the postseason, it feels like buzzard world.

Yeah we’re used to 8-0 games in the snow and 6-3 games where there are more punts than first downs. This is a new year, for sure.

Without question, they do look great. And I gotta tell you, Cole Beasley has been a huge help for me on my fantasy teams.

I wanted to ask about your teams and just what was your draft strategy heading into this year. It was obviously going to be complicated with coronavirus and schedule changes. Did you do anything different to prep for this?

It was hard because you can’t, you just had to be ready to go on the waiver wire. My draft strategy, I had the good fortune to be friends with Matthew Berry, who is a good friend of mine. So I usually call him in August and ask, “What’s the draft strategy this year?”

He was really high on the top two or three tight ends going early, and waiting on a QB. Which I did in most leagues, I tried to vary up my strategy because I play in five leagues, because if you wind up with very similar teams and you have a catastrophic injury, all your teams are done. So I tried to vary up my rosters significantly from league to league. And I was fortunate enough to make it to two championships this year, though I will say I’m an underdog in both leagues, I’d say. But Cole Beasley and Myles Gaskin were two waiver wire pickups that were big for me this year.

I was going to say, that’s a lot of leagues to be involved in. But the league you run through AGBO involving Berry and a lot of Marvel actors is probably the highest profile one anyone can imagine. Is it different because so many people pay attention to it?

One, it’s amazing because it’s for charity and there are a lot of great charities people are playing for. And FanDuel really stepped up this year and put $1.25 million in the pot, which is incredible. So, that’s probably the league that’s closest to my heart for that reason.

And also working with a lot of those actors for almost a decade, they’ve become so close to me and my family. And it’s good to be able to rib and roast each other every year, we get a lot of laughs out of it and it keeps everyone in contact with one another.

Yeah, I was watching some of the videos and saw that there were moms involved, a lot of smack talk and people seem to really enjoy it. I’ve never really found that to be the appeal of fantasy football, but is that one of the aspects you really enjoy?

It’s not the focus for me, I really love watching football, I love the strategy of playing fantasy football. But when you have this many funny and talented people in the league it just seemed like a very natural concept to roast each other for charity. So it felt like a good way to bring attention to the league and the charities.

I have to say I saw Matt Berry went 8-5. It must be a pretty great feeling to beat a fantasy football guy at fantasy football. Like, we don’t get to out-act an Avenger in a movie or anything like that. So it must be pretty satisfying to do that.

I think so. I think the people definitely consider that a feather in their cap when they beat Matthew. He certainly has an inside track to pickups on the waiver wire because he gets that information ahead of everyone. It’s nice being friends with Matthew, he’ll get a hot tip on a player who may be injured and pick up their backup in the superhero league and then text me to pick up that player in my other leagues that he doesn’t play with me in.

With the Avengers and all the movies you’ve done, you’ve been around these guys a decade. What’s maybe the most fun conversation you’ve had on set while working on these films?

Oh boy. I mean, there’s been a lot of laughs. A lot of times we gather around the monitor and tell stories. They’re long days, so a lot of times we’re trying to keep each other’s spirits up. I’m trying to think of the funniest things. A lot of pranks get played.

One of the sweetest things is Robert Downey actually bought … Robert likes to restore old cars. It’s a hobby of his. And during Endgame he gifted Chris Evans a beautiful blue restored, I believe it was a Camaro. For playing opposite of him for all those years. That was a really touching moment because it really showed how connected everyone’s become and Robert’s generosity and the fact that this family who spent 12 hours a day together was going to be leaving one another. That’s probably one of the more touching moments on set.

It’s kind of an interesting period for Marvel and the new phase they’re headed with storytelling. You’ve been involved in so much of it, but maybe not as much as they get involved in TV and expanding into new shows. Is it kind of weird not to have the same level of involvement as you take on other projects?

We’re fans, so I love it. I just love being surprised by what’s coming next. We talk to Kevin (Feige) a bit, we text. We’re all really close. But I want to be a fan and just be surprised when I go to the theater or watch something on Disney+ the same way I was with The Mandalorian and was surprised at the end of Season 2 with everybody else.

I texted (Jon) Favreau after I watched the ending and said, “That’s one of the best moments of the last 10 years as a fan for me. Thank you.” So it’s good to, as fun as it was to work in the Marvel universe, it’s equally as fun to be on the outside and getting as excited as everyone else about what’s coming.

Earlier in the month Disney announced a bunch of new shows and projects in the Marvel and Star Wars universes. Some have framed it as an attempt to do to Star Wars what Marvel has created with the MCU. Do you think that that’s accurate, and if so what are some of the challenges that lay ahead to making that a reality?

I think it’s getting more complicated, certainly because there’s more material now. They have all the Disney+ shows and movies now. But Kevin has built an incredible team at that company of amazing creatives and they’ve got a great system for quality control so the expectation is that while they’re all working together like the ’90s Bulls. This is finely-honed machine that’s going to produce some great content.

The challenges are always how do you keep, as it gets bigger and bigger, how do you keep it all connected? And how do you make sure it feels organic? But I think they’re going to be fine.

Obviously this is a tough year to create anything, it’s not fun. But some people have found ways to be creative in this time. Have you found a way to be creative or has it been tougher just to do anything with all the added safety concerns and stress and cost to do basically anything in 2020?

What’s been unique about it is that we’ve been especially conservative, my family and I. It’s good because we’ve spent a lot of time together, growing as a family. And I do find that, look, certainly stimulation helps with creativity. And there’s a lack of stimulation from the outside world. But I’ve found it to be productive in that one, I’m just generally happier because I get to spend more time with my kids. And two, all the drive time, especially in Los Angeles, has disappeared from my work day. And I just have more time to be productive.

Again, if there’s any silver linings that come out of this tragedy it’s that it may change the way that we work in the future which allows for more family time because we’ve been forced to mass adopt technology that allows us to work remotely.

Speaking of that, I know that you directed the Dungeons and Dragons episode of Community and I wanted to see if you were doing any games like that remotely to pass the time like I have.

Oh, that’s great. I have not, I haven’t played D&D in probably 20 years. It was a big influence in my brother and I growing up so I wanted to do that episode, but I have not. How’s it been playing remotely? Are you playing over Zoom?

Yeah, playing over Zoom with a document camera and using a lot of websites and all that. It’s possible, it just takes a little longer. Everything does.

One person rolling for all of you or you all roll yourselves?

We all roll individually, and if you don’t believe someone’s roll you make them move the camera to prove it.

There’s a lot of trust involved.

That’s right. Anyway, you spoke earlier in the year about the challenges facing movie theaters. And as someone who misses going to movies and detaching from reality for a bit, I was wondering if there was anything else you’re missing right now or are eager to get back to on the other side of this?

Certainly going to the movies. I think the sense of community that you get going into a theater with a group of people that you don’t know and then having a collective emotional experience is almost impossible to replicate outside of a theatrical space. So I think that’s the primary one for me that I miss the most. I think my kids probably miss being able to play sports and socializing with friends but, like I said, there have been other positives. Which is getting closer and bonding with each other at home.

I know you probably can’t say much about The Gray Man, but it’s a really big endeavor and Netflix seems to have high hopes for a potential franchise. It’s something you’re familiar with as far as the stakes involved, but how exciting is it to take that project on?

We love it. It’s certainly a genre that we adored and grew up in. Our father, those were his favorite movies, spy films and thrillers. And we shared a lot of experiences with him watching those.

Look, it’s a dream job, getting to be a filmmaker. It really is. Getting to use your imagine to tell stories and hopefully impact people the way that you were as a kid. And we love this particular project because it’s a thrilling project but it also has some real modern thematics in it that can make it relevant and ask a lot of questions about what’s going on in the world today. Which I think is why you make genre movies: you want to use the compulsive nature of stories to also introduce interesting thematics to an audience that maybe doesn’t want to deal with those issues outside of a fictional space.

Becky Hammon made history with the Spurs on Wednesday night, becoming the first woman ever to be a head coach in an NBA game. When Kyrie Irving was asked about it after Nets practice on Thursday, he praised Hammon and chuckled that he was glad that Spurs coach Gregg Popovich got ejected and cleared the way for Hammon.

“It’s a genderless society that’s going on in 2020, and I respect it,” Irving told reporters. “There shouldn’t be any role that is deemed male or female.”

This all comes after Irving initially determined he would not fulfill his obligation to speak with reporters during this Nets season and then was fined by the NBA. Over the past couple weeks, Irving has begun to do routine Zoom press conferences like his teammates do, but because of his superstardom and natural curiosity about the world outside of basketball, Irving often gets asked big-picture questions like this one.

Of course, Irving is also in his own small way involved with women’s basketball, especially after offering to pay the salaries of WNBA stars such as Natasha Cloud and Renee Montgomery who sat out the 2020 Bubble season.

Year after year, Hammon continues to be largely ignored when it comes to head coaching searches around the NBA, but she nevertheless continues to be a trail blazer in this league and seems to have enormous respect from players and coaches everywhere. Count Irving among those excited about her finally getting a chance on Wednesday.