Category: News

There are two things that make up great fighters. One is, obviously, the ability to fight at a level that transcends even the best of the sport. If you cannot box, or you cannot grapple, or you cannot make guys tap out better than everybody else, you will never be able to make it in combat sports.

But in order to go from that to another stratosphere, you need to have a sense of showmanship about you. Think of all the great fighters that we have ever seen, all of them have an otherworldly sense of the moment and how to keep fans enthralled, when they are both in the ring and outside of it.

I say all that to say this: check out this damn introduction.

This is Reshat Mati, a 22-year-old Albanian boxer from Staten Island who took on Dennis Okoth on Friday night. He decided that the best way to go about this was to go to the ring in a Batman costume while the Backstreet Boys classic “I Want It That Way” played. The only rule is it has to work, of course, and by god, it did. Mati needed all six rounds to get the job done, but he managed to move to 9-0-0 on his career via a final round TKO.

Here is a better look at the cape, which is extremely good.

This was Mati’s seventh win via knockout. Gonna end with some Backstreet Boys puns here, if you don’t mind: He must have told the ref “don’t wanna hear you say … that I lost.” He made sure the judges didn’t have to make “The Call.” He decided to “quit playin’ games” with his opponent and just ended things. His introduction was “Larger Than Life.” Alright I’m done, thank you, have a good weekend, folks.

The United States is dealing with two conflicting emotions right now. On one hand, the first COVID-19 vaccines are being administered across the country this week, mostly to frontline medical personnel.

However, on the other hand, the number of infections in the country continues to grow to a record high with over 238,000 new cases reported on Thursday. And it’s going to be more than a few months until we see a significant decline in infections caused by widespread vaccinations.

This week, thousands of frontline workers in hospitals breathed a sigh of relief when they received the vaccine. It has had to be traumatizing to go into work every day knowing you were always at risk of becoming infected with COVID-19.

A study out of the U.S. and the UK found that “frontline health care workers had a nearly 12-times higher risk of testing positive for COVID-19 compared with individuals in the general community.”

Frontline workers at Boston Medical Center celebrated the vaccine by dancing in the streets to Lizzo’s “Good as Hell.”

And do your hair toss

Check my nails

Baby how you feelin’?

Feeling good as hell

The BMC staff strutted their stuff on the sidewalk while still wearing their masks face shields and gowns. A clip of the video was shared on social media by BMC president Kate Walsh.

“Why I love my job!” Walsh wrote. “Teams of people working to safely and equitably distribute vaccines to their front line colleagues getting cheered on by their friends celebrating the arrival of the vaccines! A great day, a great place.”

According to Boston.com, the hospital received 1,950 doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine Monday and began giving its employees jabs on Wednesday.

On Monday, New York City critical care nurse Sandra Lindsay became the first American to get Pfizer’s vaccine outside of a clinical trial. After getting the shot, she wanted to let everyone know that there’s nothing to fear. “I want to instill public confidence that the vaccine is safe,” she said.

Although healthcare works seem like they’d be the least likely to be hesitant about getting a vaccine, there are still some who are skeptical of the shot. A recent survey of physicians in the Mount Sinai Health System in New York City found that 60% of doctors in the network and about half of the nonphysicians were enthusiastic about the vaccine.

“It’s going to be a marathon,” Susan Mashni, head of the vaccine distribution task force at Mount Sinai, said according to Buzzfeed. “If folks don’t feel comfortable right now, hopefully, they’ll come back and feel comfortable with some time.”

To make healthcare providers everywhere feel safer about getting the shot, frontline workers have been posting photos of them getting vaccinated on social media under #IGotTheShot. Hopefully, this will encourage those on the frontlines to get the shot as well as countless Americans who are on the fence about rolling up their sleeves.

When Paramore’s Hayley Williams announced she would be releasing her debut solo album last December, she didn’t envision that she’d be stuck at home for its entire rollout. In order to cope with lockdown, the singer began sharing acoustic covers of some of her favorite songs. Now, she’s sharing even more music. Williams released the acoustic EP Petals For Armor: Self-Serenades Friday, and it also arrived with a brand-new song.

The three-track project boasts stripped-down covers of her songs “Simmer” and “Why We Ever,” but it also features the previously-unreleased track “Find Me Here.” The tender song arrives as a heartwarming love ballad, expressing her trust and devotion in another.

Speaking about the song’s inspiration in a statement alongside its release, Williams said she hasn’t spent this much time alone with a guitar since she was a teenager:

“I spent this year at home like everyone. I hadn’t spent that much time at home alone with my guitar since I was a teen, before Paramore hit the road. Once I realized I’d likely not be performing any of my new songs live for a while I guess it just felt right to play them for myself and re-imagine them, just a little bit lonelier. It wasn’t long before I started writing new songs again and one of the demos I made seemed fitting for this little EP. ‘Find Me Here’ is the feeling of surrendering your loved ones to their own, personal struggles; Letting them take their time and come to their own rescue. It’s a hard version of love to learn but it is an important lesson in loving someone well.”

Listen to “Find Me Here” above.

Petals For Armor: Self-Serenades is out now via Atlantic. Get it here.

Hayley Williams is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

“Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?”

That line is sung by the cast of Hamilton in the musical’s emotional final number — and it’s an important question to ask ourselves in our daily lives. Whose lens are we seeing history through? Who wrote the article we just shared on Twitter? Who’s telling the story?

“Young adults live in a world that bombards them with other people’s opinions and ideas,” Sasha Rolon Pereira, Director of the Hamilton Education Program, says. “This isn’t actually new, the technology has just advanced and made it overwhelming in a new way.”

The Hamilton Education Project, or EduHam for short — founded by Lin-Manuel Miranda in conjunction with The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History — is keenly interested in who’s interpreting the history that students are learning. Does it reflect the neighborhoods and cultures they’re from or is it being told by someone with their own agenda? That’s why the program connects students to primary sources for research, because even textbooks are written through a distinct lens and are often inaccurate.

In short, EduHam encourages students to do just what Miranda did when he researched and wrote Hamilton — take back the narrative and then tell the story in their own style and voice.

“The truest way to find out what happened is to go directly to the voices –the letters people actually wrote to each other, the diaries they kept, the art and songs and speeches they made,” Rolon Pereira says. “Letting students interpret for themselves what all these primary sources mean lets them actively engage in history instead of being passive receivers of someone else’s version of it.”

Started in 2015 to create education outreach to pair with the mega-hit musical, EduHam has connected thousands of students to history, whether participating online or in their classrooms, in a unique way — through their own experiences.

“This is a story about America then, told by America now, and we want to eliminate any distance — our story should look the way our country looks,” Lin-Manuel Miranda once told the New York Times.

Often in interviews, the actor, musician, and playwright has noted that when he began researching Hamilton he saw endless parallels to people today.

“I was like, ‘I know this guy,’” he told the Times. “Just the hustle and ambition it took to get him off the island — this is a guy who wrote his way out of his circumstances from the get-go. That is part and parcel with the hip-hop narrative: writing your way out of your circumstances, writing the future you want to see for yourself. This is a guy who wrote at 14, ‘I wish there was a war.’ It doesn’t get more hip-hop than that.”

Though it seemed radical to mirror and juxtapose the experience of people of color in America with those of the founding fathers, Hamilton‘s breakaway success proves that the idea worked. The musical speaks on both metaphorical and literal levels to the diversity of this nation while playing with how history is told. Similarly, EduHam urges students to mine the past for connection points to the present day.

“We encourage students to discover the diversity of experience during the founding era and connect it to current events,” Rolon Pereira says. “From Phillis Wheatley’s depiction of George Washington to Abigail Adams’s famous letter urging her husband to “remember the ladies,” students are drawn into the country’s contradictions as Americans aspired toward liberty.”

EduHam features a wealth of materials on their website for students to access — with information on more than 45 Founding Era figures, 14 events, and 24 key documents, as well as 175 supporting documents, video clips from Hamilton, and more. Then they connect these materials to key moments in the musical and students are able to create their own original performances, inspired by the historical documents that most sparked their imaginations. These performances might be a rap or a song, but they also might be poems or scenes.

When the theater was still running, selected students were able to come together to perform these pieces. Giving many young adults the opportunity to see the show and interact with the cast.

“It has given hundreds of thousands of students access to a professional theater experience they might not otherwise have had, as both performers and audience members,” Rolon Pereira says. “Students are encouraged throughout the program to connect past people, ideas, movements to what they are seeing today. Especially regarding individual action, strength in diversity, and speaking up for civil rights.”

After theaters closed, EduHam created an extensive program at home — something that was already in the works, but was accelerated by COVID-19. Now, students all over the country have access to the custom-designed education program that connects early U.S. history with hip-hop and other performing arts. And they can upload their performances into a National competition and lottery that will pick winners to come to NYC to see Hamilton in person when theaters are back up and running.

It’s all about empowering students to tell their country’s stories themselves, very much in the spirit of Miranda’s creative vision.

“Lin-Manuel Miranda wanted Hamilton to open the gates of theater as well as the American founding era to people of color,” Rolon Pereira says. “With a cast that is predominantly non-white, even in telling the stories of historical people who were white, the musical and the program celebrate the universality of American aspirations.”

For more information on these programs, please visit gilderlehrman.org. To register for EduHam Online go to hamilton.gilderlehrman.org.

Despite Wonder Woman smashing box-office records and being a stunning success for the DC Cinematic Universe, which had hit a stumbling block with the lackluster reception to Batman V Superman and was about to face even more trouble with the release of Justice League, director Patty Jenkins ran into some interference when it came time to set up Wonder Woman 1984. In a new interview with the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Jenkins reveals that she came very close to walking away from the sequel after Warner Bros. seemed reluctant to pay her as much as her male counterparts even though she’d deliver a blockbuster hit.

“They got paid seven times more than me for the first superhero movie,” Jenkins said. “Then on the second one, they got paid more than me still.” Realizing she’d have to play hardball, Jenkins prepared herself to say “no” to Wonder Woman 1984 if she wasn’t afforded the respect she’d earned. Via /Film:

“I started to walk away. I was gonna’ walk away. I even said I’d be happy to go to another studio and make a quarter as much because it’s not a sequel, on principle, no problem. It’s interesting as someone who never made any profit in my career up until Wonder Woman, that I was always at peace with it. I was like, ‘Hey I get it.’ But now I was like, ‘Listen, I never made any money in my career because you always had the leverage and I didn’t,’But now the shoe is on the other foot so it’s time to turn the tables.”

Obviously, things worked out, and Jenkins delivered the sequel that’s set to hit theaters and HBO Max on Christmas Day. However, Jenkins is noticeably more reluctant to tout her involvement with Wonder Woman 3. Couple that with the bombshell news that she’s signed on to direct Rogue Squadron, making her the first woman to direct a Star Wars films, and it’ll be interesting to see if Jenkins might have just left DC Comics behind for a galaxy far, far away.

(Via Happy Sad Confused)

Upon perusing the tracklist for the recently released “B-side” version of Eminem’s 2020 surprise album Music To Be Murdered By, you might be tempted to press play on the track titled “Book Of Rhymes” on account of the fact it’s produced by luminary beatmaker DJ Premier. If you care at all about the legacies of either hip-hop elder statesman, I strongly advise against this course of action. I personally made that mistake and had to go listen to Da Ruckus’ “We Shine” to remind myself why I ever liked the rapper in the first place, followed by a full-on Gang Starr playlist so I could hear a rapper sound like they actually appreciated having the legendary producer bless the beat they rhymed on. But, a little persistence pays off on this one. Read on.

After rumors of a deluxe version of the already gargantuan album circulated online for nearly eleven months, it finally arrived to smash any glimmer of hope that just maybe one rapper would resist the siren call of an unnecessary reissue this year. After all, if anyone could survive 2020’s industry shutdown without taking a major loss, it should be Eminem, one of the most successful and handsomely-paid artists to pick up a mic. Considering how dense and tough-to-digest he considers his mouthy wordplay on the surprise album, you’d think he would want to give fans a little more time to chew on it before bonking them over the head with another full hour of tightly-packed double entendres.

But alas, here we are, once again offered a sumptuous, utterly rich meal of endlessly complex rhyme riddles to unravel despite still being gorged on the last one. I’ll give it this; it’s more consistent and cohesive with the theme of the original work than perhaps any other deluxe version to drop this year, with the exception of Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake add-on, LUV Vs. The World 2. Where that deluxe edition felt of a piece with its predecessor — perhaps owing to its fortuitous, next-week timing — so too does Music To Be Murdered By feel like a collection of songs that belongs on the original, rather than a series of tacked-on, salvaged cutting room floor tidbits.

The 16 tracks are kicked off with another Alfred Hitchcock sample dubbing them “music to be buried by,” and it’s, well, apt in more ways than one, as it befits Eminem’s gift for double meanings. Sure, Side B is a fitting postscript, or perhaps even sequel, to the original MTBMB, but it’s also just as suffocating as being buried alive. The metaphors and shock value raps and puns and complaints about mumble rap pile up until the listener is basically crushed under the weight of Em’s near constant-harping on the same subjects he always does and has since 2017’s Revival. He’s the angry, angsty teen who grew up into a similarly angry, crotchety dad, yelling at his kid about looking slovenly while missing the mustard stain on his own shirt.

Great rhymes, mediocre beats, and stale content are Side B’s trademarks, along with, of course, the pre-emptive strike at anyone audacious enough to ask for more on the aforementioned “Book Of Rhymes.” On “Black Magic” with Skylar Grey, he again fantasizes about murdering an ex-lover. He builds up an eight-bar set-up to a one-liner about being the “rap god” again on “Alfred’s Theme.” He raps over a Casio keyboard default rhythm on “Tone Deaf” (get it? get it? DO YOU GET IT?). He again lampshades his prior offensive shenanigans to undermine critics’ legit complaints on “Favorite Bitch” with Ty Dolla Sign — another utterly misplaced feature.

One of those features catches a stray on “Guns Blazing,” where he calls down rappers who utilize ghostwriters — on a track with Dr. Dre, whose last true solo hit single was written by Jay-Z. I imagine one, the other, or both were staring very intently at the mixing levels at the monitors during playback so as to avoid a knowing glance that would have short-circuited every synapse in both their brains. On “Gnat,” which at least has a modern-sounding beat, he spits a half-dozen coronavirus references in the space of as many bars, references a two-year-old rap beef he ostensibly won, and on “Higher,” he goes back to 2009 — again — with a plodding beat that sounds like the soundtrack to every post-apocalyptic war movie ever made at once.

About halfway through the album, we finally encounter a highlight. “These Demons” kinda bangs, and if Em had done a whole album like this — a much shorter one — this could have been a truly enjoyable album. He even gets topical in a more meaningful way than just sprinkling COVID references everywhere like anti-maskers sneezing in a grocery store. “This pandemic got us in a recession / We need to reopen America,” he reports. “Black people dyin’, they want equal rights / White people wanna get haircuts.” This is an astute summation of the situation and bears exegesis — an entire album’s worth, if possible. Em claims his pen skills are unrivaled by any other writer’s in rap, so personally, I’d be fascinated to see if they are equal to addressing real-life situations worth exploring rather than imagined slights from Twitter trolls.

“Zeus,” the track that seems to be drawing the most buzz for the album, is more or less the apotheosis of Side B, and the track that highlights everything it does wrong — and right. It’s got a strong beat courtesy of Luca Mauti and T-Minus, a solid chorus from White Gold (a sub-theme could be, “Why Eminem should stop doing his own hooks”), and an earnestness that bolsters its directionality. It points to something that isn’t just “I’m the best rapper and should never be criticized under any circumstances ever” or “Gee, I hate women so much. One lady did me wrong once and now I fantasize about murdering them all constantly.” He starts off in these places, yes, even opening the track with a complaint that someone compared him to Tekashi 69 — who, ironically, is only around because aggrieved old heads keep bringing him up.

But then, he does a thing on the track that I and so many other people wish he’d do in real life. He grows. He changes. He learns. He finds something to care about outside his solipsistic obsession with being universally loved. He warns his successors — Drake, Chance The Rapper, Future, Migos — that fame and love are temporary. He reminds listeners that he overcame a life of intense abuse, neglect, and self-sabotage to earn his 11-year sobriety chip. And he acknowledges and accepts — if only for a moment — the critiques we’ve leveled at him for so many years. “They keep wantin’ me to rap responsibly,” he confesses. “When I’m constantly passin’ the buck like the fuckin’ Dollar Tree / But I’ma always remind you that I came from poverty / Black people saved my life, from the Doc and Deshaun, and all that we want is racial equality.”

Hallelujah, pass the popcorn. Even though the verse ends ambiguously and seemingly refocusing inward, it feels like maybe, quite possibly, Em might be working his way toward realizing that his platform means something. It’s a baby step. But it’s in the right direction. Hopefully, Slim Shady is finally getting enough of making music to murder his demons and making up his mind to set about dismantling those of the world. That tiny glimmer of hope? Consider it provisionally, begrudgingly restored.

Swae Lee is an incredibly prolific artist. In fact, he turned in over 700 songs to producer Mike Will Made-It for his new album this July. So when he recently misplaced a hard drive containing his music at LAX, the rapper was at risk of losing a lot of work. After Lee offered $20,000 as a reward for the hard drive’s safe return, it didn’t take long for an anonymous fan to come forward and insist that they have it in their possession.

An Instagram account launched this week, claiming to be a fan who found Lee’s hard drive in a Louis Vuitton bag at the airport. Lee hopped on an Instagram Live with the account and was not convinced that the fan was telling the truth. But then, the fan began pulling out personal items that they found in the bag: a watch, an iPad, a handful of condoms, a stack of cash, a mask, and finally, the hard drive in question.

While the fan made it clear that they did, in fact, have Lee’s hard drive, they weren’t planning on giving it up so easily. “I know it’s corona, I know it’s a pandemic. I need more than 20k and then I’ll give you it back,” they said. “If not, I’ll leak some of your songs.” The person then issued a hefty demand: $150,000 or Lee won’t get his hands on the hard drive.

Shortly after the Live ended, the fan conceded. Rather than forcing Lee to pay up $150,000, the fan offered another way the rapper can have his things returned safely. Posting a message to their Story, they said they’d give back the hard drive if they could get a photo or a feature with Lee and Drake together.

Just a few days before his conversation with the fan, Lee expressed his frustration over those who were approaching his hardship as a money-making opportunity:

“This situation shouldn’t even be looked at like a money-making opportunity. It’s more like do the right thing. 80 percent of the songs on that hard drive are locked anyway, you can’t even get on them. So just, if you got it, contact me through Instagram, send a picture of the hard drive, because I see a lot of bullsh*t. […] I need this hard drive. I’ve been putting every thing I have into this album on this hard drive. Each of these songs are all my time. I stayed up 16 hours in the studio, 18 hours, two days at a time. This is priceless.”

Watch a clip of the fan showing off Lee’s hard drive above.

The Beastie Boys song “Fight For Your Right” is essentially a stereotype at this point, inserted into movies or TV shows where parents just don’t understand. The Licensed To Ill classic has inspired countless scenes of teenage tomfoolery, but it seems at least one lyric from the song has become a real thing that inspired a real lawsuit in Michigan. Several reports out of the gloved state detail a suit between a man who alleges his parents threw out his collection of pornography.

Full credit goes to MLive here for writing a Beastie Boys-inspired headline here. But it’s also a bit too on the nose, which is why it’s a good thing that the Detroit Free Press also covered it, so we know this is a real thing that happened. A 42-year-old man, David Werking, recently won a lawsuit he filed against his parents for throwing out his [Beastie Boys voice] “best porno mag” as the result of a dispute in the home where they all lived.

The MLive story described the case against Beth and Paul Werking as the judge did, who said his parents should not have tossed out “a trove of pornography and an array of sex toys”:

“This was a collection of often irreplaceable items and property,” Greengard said.

His client had moved into his parents’ home in late 2016 after a divorce. After he left for Muncie, Indiana, he expected them to deliver his belongings. He later realized that a dozen boxes of pornographic films and magazines were missing.

His father said in an email: “Frankly, David, I did you a big favor getting rid of all this stuff.”

The judge earlier rejected the parents’ request to dismiss the case.

Werking claims he’s owed $25,000 in damages, which is a lot of smut. But the case itself is very weird, to say the least. Apparently the “incident” stems from a 2017 matter where the parents asked Werking to leave the home for at least three days. According to the judge’s ruling, he tried to contact his parents and get back his illicit materials, but they weren’t happy about him even having all that porn in the first place:

The parents said they had told their son when he moved in that he could not bring pornography into their home or it would be destroyed. They also contended he had abandoned the property and said he could have mitigated his losses by removing it himself.

The judge said the parents would not allow him back and that they said they would ship his property to him.

The parents had kept some materials, described as the “worst of the worst,” in a safety-deposit box, concerned it could be illegal.

Authorities apparently reviewed the material to check for anything illegal like child pornography, and came up with nothing incriminating. Which must have been a very weird trip to the bank but, hey, a job’s a job.

(Via MLive)

Have you had a Boulevardier yet? Never? You’re in for a treat. If yes, then you know how good this is going to be. The Boulevardier is a Negroni variation that throws out the gin and replaces it with a solid Kentucky bourbon. It’s subtler, a little less bitter, and slightly sweeter than your classic Negroni.

It’s also the perfect Christmas, holiday, and New Year’s Eve drink. Perfect to learn how to make as 2020 comes to a close.

The Boulevardier harkens back to the Lost Generation in Paris and the “boulevardiers” or “men-about-town” who’d frequent spots like Harry’s Bar alongside creatives with the last names Fitzgerald, Hemmingway, and Dali. The titular boulevardier for whom the drink was named was a flaxen-haired American writer who ran a culture magazine back in those days called, you guessed it, Boulevardier.

Long story short, the American boulevardier preferred very American bourbon to botanical gin. And just like that, a new cocktail was born.

The beauty of this drink (and all Negroni variations) is its simplicity. The only thing you really have to dial in with this recipe is the balance. You want the bourbon to shine through with a bit of spice, sweetness, and oak. The Campari gets slightly muted by the brown liquor marrying to the sweet and herbal vermouth. Add some orange oils over the top, and you’ve got something truly special that feels like the holidays. Spice, sweet, bitter, dark, orange oils … add in some nuts and you’ve got a Christmas cake.

Let’s get mixing!

The Boulevardier

Ingredients:

• 2-oz. bourbon
• 1.5-oz. Campari
• 1.5-oz. sweet vermouth
• Orange peel
• Ice

The base and key to this cocktail is bourbon. I’m using Woodford Reserve standard bourbon. It’s accessible, affordable, and stands up to cocktail mixing. Then there’s the sweet vermouth. Look, a lot of “drinks writers” will shit on Martini vermouth. Are there better vermouths out there? Sure. Does that make Martini bad? No.

Especially not in quarantine times, when the fact that Martini Rosso only costs $10 and is available at every liquor store feels like a significant perk.

While I wasn’t picky with vermouth for this recipe, I did get picky with my oranges. I wanted an orange with a thick skin, so I could get a good peel off of it. Sometimes oranges get what feels like really thin skin, and those tend not to be ideal when you’re aiming for a nice peel off the fruit.

You’ll Need:

• Mixing jug
• Barspoon
• Strainer
• Rocks glass
• Knife or peeler
• Jigger

Method:

The first thing I do is set up my station: Bottles at the ready, glass, jug, spoon, jigger, and orange.

I then use a knife (you can use a vegetable peeler too) to slice a thin peel off the orange. It should be about the size of your thumb and include as little of the pith (white stuff beneath the outer skin) as possible.

Next, I fill my rocks glass with ice to pre-chill. I then add all my ingredients into the mixing jug. Generally speaking, you’re going for three to five ounces in the finished cocktail. In this case, we’re aiming for a large, five-ounce cocktail that suits the holiday season we’re in and ushers in a New Year.

I top up the mixing jug with ice. Always fill whatever vessel you’re using to mix all the way up. I use the barspoon to then stir the drink until the outside of the jug starts to frost over — maybe 45 to 60 seconds, maybe more.

You’re adding water while also chilling the drink — in essence, finding balance.

I strain the drink into the waiting rocks glass that’s already filled with ice. It should come right to the top.

Finally, I gently bend the orange peel over the glass (orange-side towards the glass) to release the oils. I then rub the peel all around the outside of the glass and bend it slightly before dropping it into the cocktail.

Done.

The Bottom Line:

The beauty of this drink is the lightness that has bold flavors layered in. There’s a nice spice next to mild bitter botanicals, herbs, and real sweetness. The orange oils really make it all come alive. There’s a slight sense of almost a gingerbread with a distant echo of dark chocolate (thanks to that bourbon) that really amps up the holiday vibes.

A nice perk with this drink is that you really don’t need anything to make it besides a glass and a stirrer. If you want to make it on the fly, build it in the glass by adding ice, bourbon, vermouth, and Campari, stirring, adding the orange, and dive in. It’ll take about 15 seconds and it’s 100 percent worth it.

Any educator will tell you there’s a million obstacles to learning. Many of these are practical in nature and have little to do with a student’s intelligence or ability. For a kid from Akron, for instance, it’s hard to learn when you’re hungry or dealing with housing instability, or when there’s other kinds of trouble at home or in the community.

These things don’t just impact learning, they lead to behavioral issues that compound the problem. In the public school system, it’s nearly impossible to account for all these factors. Teachers are overworked and underpaid, and they simply don’t have the time or resources to provide the level of individualized attention necessary to reach so many students on the fringe and help them be successful.

The achievement gap in America is one that mirrors its economic gap. Poverty is among the biggest predictors of academic success: Students who live below the poverty line are significantly less likely to finish high school and more likely to score lower on standardized tests, and students with parents who have little or no college education are also much less likely to overcome those generational traumas.

In Ohio, nearly half a million children live in poverty. It’s the sixth highest rate in the nation, and their achievement levels reflect those trends. So when LeBron James — a product of that very public school system — talks about how he could’ve been a statistic, about how he’s not even supposed to be here, those statements are a lot truer than they might seem on the surface. Overcoming those early obstacles wasn’t the foregone conclusion it now seems to be with the benefit of hindsight.

The memory of those struggles is a big part of what keeps LeBron grounded. It’s precisely why he helped open and fund the Akron-based I Promise School, a public learning institution that focuses on giving opportunities to the area’s most at-risk youth. In 2018, with a combination of public funds and money from the LeBron James Family Foundation, the I Promise School opened its doors with a whole new approach to what a public school education might look like when armed with the right resources.

I Promise serves more than 450 students in grades three through six, with the goal of adding a grade level each year. According to demographic breakdowns from Akron Public Schools, 59 percent of those students are Black, 10 percent are English Language Learners (ELL), and approximately 30 percent have a documented disability. The school uses a STEM curriculum (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), but its approach to education reaches far beyond standard classroom learning objectives.

At I Promise, educators and administrators abide by a “We Are Family” philosophy. In action, it means that a student’s entire family can use a wide array of resources designed to ease the many real-world burdens that make learning difficult for at-risk youth. For instance, parents have access to a Family Resource Center, which provides legal aid, job services, financial literacy courses, GED and ESL classes, mental health support, a fully-stocked food pantry, and more.

“We deliver curriculum in a very different way,” says LJFF Executive Director Michele Campbell. “Understanding that all of our students are coming to us living in trauma. So if you’re living in trauma, you just can’t sit and be like, ‘Okay, let’s get ready to learn math.’ You’ve got to peel back the layers and figure out what’s going on, and service those basic survival needs before you can even begin to learn. We believe that to be successful in education, you can’t just focus when the student is sitting in your classroom from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. or whatever time it might be. You need to look at that student holistically, and that student’s whole family unit. So, that is built into our school.”

It’s a philosophy that isn’t necessarily based on any other learning models, but rather on LeBron’s own individual experience as an inner-city youth with a single mom trying to make his way through a public school system that was ill-equipped to help his family navigate those challenges. When designing the school’s wrap-around services, LeBron and his mother Gloria worked closely to ensure families like themselves would have more opportunities.

So how do students qualify for admission? Eligibility is partly based on second-grade assessments for students in Akron Public Schools in reading and math. Students scoring in the bottom 20th percentile in these areas are then entered into a lottery. The number of eligible students varies each year, but I Promise has been able to accept between 20-30 percent of the students they’ve identified as high-risk since they opened. When students arrive at I Promise, they are afforded access to the many resources mentioned above for the duration of their time there, and beyond.

There are a number of ways I Promise goes above and beyond what’s feasible in a traditional public school setting. Yet, as part of the Akron Public School system, it’s subject to the same educational benchmarks as every other school, and in the state of Ohio and elsewhere around the country, that means student progress is evaluated via standardized test scores.

But within those confines, I Promise keeps to its vision of measuring success using a more holistic approach. From that perspective, it often entails helping students overcome the kind of practical everyday challenges that create barriers to education for youth in at-risk situations.

“For us, success looks really different. And quite honestly, it’s on an individual basis because every single one of our students comes to us at a different level of learning,” Campbell says. “And for some, it’s literally getting them to come and sit in a classroom and engage. So it’s very individualized, but again, it starts from whether it be attendance, behaviors, academic success; we’ve got to get those first things done first. And then we move forward with how do we help them learn and progress on the educational spectrum.”

For a school where it can be a big win just to get students to show up to class, it requires a different approach to behavioral issues as well. At I Promise, students aren’t suspended or expelled they way the would be at most public schools for behavioral problems. Instead, administrators believe that the trauma associated with an unstable home life is at the root of these issues and must be addressed first — students exhibiting these issues work closely with an in-house trauma specialist.

There are many issues that can lie at the root of these problems, but one area I Promise focuses on specifically is families who are experiencing homelessness or housing instability. That’s where the I Promise Village comes in. Located just a few blocks from the school, the Village opened its doors in late July of this year to provide rent-free transitional housing for these families. In partnership with Graduate Hotels, LJFF worked for more than a year to renovate the current building, which features 20 units varying in size from studios to one and two-bedrooms. Each includes a bathroom and kitchen. Two of those units are reserved for families experiencing emergency situations such as fires, evictions, etc.

The Village isn’t considered a permanent solution, however. How long a family stays depends on the plan they’ve outlined with the foundation prior to moving in. As with the school, the Village provides resources related to financial literacy, adult education, and trauma counseling, all with the goal of helping the families become more independent.

The innovative approach at I Promise doesn’t just apply to student learning. It informs teacher support, as well. At I Promise, the class sizes are smaller, but the demands of teaching students living in trauma are much greater. To address this, they’ve partnered with the University of Chicago’s TREP Project (Trauma Responsive Educational Practices), which educates and supports teachers who work in communities with high levels of poverty and crime.

“It’s a demanding experience,” Campbell says. “Their day looks different than their counterparts in Akron Public Schools, because we build so much professional development support into that. All of our students are at the lowest 25 percent in our district, and I know a lot of them come with behavior challenges, which is more demanding on teachers. So the TREP continual professional development and the STEM professional development for that curriculum is really important. So we fund all that, and we help advocate for those changes with our teacher’s union, because our school, they need to look different.”

Because there isn’t much precedence for this in terms of learning models that provide this level of support, there’s naturally been some skepticism about the efficacy of this approach. Though the sample size was small — approximately 250 during their first year of operation — that data on student growth showed plenty of reason for optimism.

On their district-wide MAP assessments (Measures of Academic Progress), 93 percent of students met or exceeded their individual growth targets in reading and math. I Promise also received an A on their Progress Measure report card, meaning students are exceeding average growth rates compared to other students around the state. Additionally, students are subject to high stakes, state-level tests in English Language Arts for third graders that determine whether they pass to the next grade, and so far, no students at I Promise have had to be retained.

Part of what makes the school unique is that, unlike other alternative or charter schools that operate on private funding from high-profile individuals, I Promise is part of the public school system in Ohio and has to be able to demonstrate in tangible ways that what they’re doing is working. To aid in that, they’ve employed an in-house researcher from the University of Akron to track the data on student performance.

For I Promise, their relationship with the Akron Public School system isn’t just about proving that at-risk students can thrive when you ease the extracurricular burdens that negatively impact learning. It’s aimed at influencing public schools to adopt some of their philosophies, integrate similar programs and resources, and to reconsider what’s possible in public education in general. That’s a tall order for schools and districts that don’t have the backing of one of the biggest sports icons of his generation.

Even then, there are gigantic challenges associated with an endeavor like this. LeBron isn’t the first athlete or celebrity to help found a learning institution in their community, armed with money and good intentions. Many have tread this territory before, to varying degrees of success. One example is Spurs legend David Robinson, who founded the Carver Academy in San Antonio in the early 2000s. What started as a private, faith-based institution has since evolved into a not-for-profit charter school that is part of the IDEA Public School network in Texas. As with I Promise, Robinson wants to show what’s possible in public education when you have the right resources.

“I think we want to try to make public education as good as possible,” Robinson says. “We can come up with some things that maybe can be learning points and learning lessons for the public schools … just to show what’s possible and hopefully get some best practices that maybe can be transferable to public school. So I think that there is value there to try to do things a little bit differently than the way we’ve been doing it. Because in many neighborhoods, many communities, these kids are not getting a proper education. So they’re not getting exposed to what they need to, and how can we be more efficient and more effective at providing that for every single kid and not just some districts and some communities.”

For as much progress as I Promise has made in the two years since it opened, the pandemic has brought new challenges, just as it has for so many schools around the country. I Promise students transitioned to online learning in mid-March and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. As part of Akron Public Schools, students are provided a Chromebook and continue to have access to the school’s many resources, but given the unique obstacles that so many families face, administrators have had to adjust their priorities.

“It was all about, yes, our students are online learning, but that wasn’t the priority,” Campbell says. “The priority was, are they safe? Do they have food? Do they have the place to lay their head at night? It was about survival. And as we got into this in March and continue today, that’s what it continues to be. We have a 24 hour hotline. They have access to medical care if they need it. We’re all about survival.”

Despite these challenges, LeBron and his foundation continue to look toward the future. This week, they broke ground on House Three Thirty in Akron, which is slated to open in 2022 and will act as hub for I Promise families and others in the community, offering access to family programs, financial literacy courses, job training, youth sports, a space for group gatherings, and much more.

For I Promise and LJFF, it’s just the latest part of a bold and ambitious mission to redefine what it means to be a community and take responsibility for one another’s success and well-being.