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Since his breakthrough just over a year ago, there have been few quiet moments for DaBaby. Whether it be through the three albums he released in 18 months or his steady appearances alongside a slew of musical talents or his entertaining music videos, the Charlotte-native has proven a knack for staying in the limelight. Supplying fans with another spotlight moment, DaBaby took to the 2020 BET virtual stage to perform “Rockstar” with Roddy Ricch.

DaBaby began his performance with quite the visual. Performing on the ground with a cop’s knee on his neck, DaBaby rapped the first verse of the song in that position before transition to a stage as he entered the song’s chorus. Dressed in all black with a pair of police cruisers and a group of protestors behind him DaBaby would later be joined by Roddy Ricch who performed his part of the song. Beginning on top of the police cruiser, Roddy’s verse presents him going back and forth between rapping and hitting the cruiser with a baseball bat. Bringing their performance to a close, a message appeared on the screen that read: “In loving memory to all the lives lost to racism and police brutality.”

Aside from the performance, DaBaby is up for five awards tonight which include Album Of The Year and Best Male Hip-Hop Artist. It was just a few days ago that DaBaby premiered the music video for his Billboard song chart-topper, “Rockstar.” With Roddy Ricch by his side the two rappers fight through a zombie apocalypse — because enough bad things haven’t happened in 2020 — with heavy artillery, great accuracy, and just a few headshots. He also recently joined Jack Harlow to remix “What’s Poppin” alongside Tory Lanez and Lil Wayne.

Watch his performance in the video above.

Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

Inglewood brothers D Smoke and SiR showed off their family’s insane range of talents on the 2020 BET Awards. As D Smoke begins to the leverage the notice from winning Netflix’s Rhythm + Flow last year into legit superstardom, he got one of the strongest looks of his nascent career by landing the performance on BET, but he refused to keep all the spotlight to himself, adding both his brother and their mother Jackie Gouché to his passionate performance of his songs “Let’s Go” and “Black Habits.”

With a stage set up to resemble their stomping grounds off Manchester Blvd, the performance opens with officers in riot gear watching a solo dancer gyrate at center stage while D Smoke looks on. When the music starts up, Smoke steps down from atop a burned-out car to utilize the spotlight to deliver his emotive message. SiR joins him to sing the chorus, then the song switches up and a whole team of dancers joins D Smoke on stage. At the conclusion of his second song, he cedes his time to his mom, who beams proudly as she sings the bridge.

D Smoke’s debut album Black Habits was selected as one of Uproxx’s Best Albums of 2020 So Far. With the additional look from BET, it looks like his star is shining brighter all the time.

Watch D Smoke and SiR’s 2020 BET Awards performance above.

Adding another highlight to an extremely successful 2020, Megan Thee Stallion took the stage at the 2020 BET Awards to perform her chart-topping hit, “Savage” as well as her newly-released single, “Girls In The Hood,” a track that sampled Eazy-E’s classic song, “Boyz In The Hood.”

Heading outdoors unlike the other performances of the night, Megan and her girls roll through the hot desert on ATVs to start their performance. Leading the way with “Girls In The Hood,” Megan the girls park their vehicles to perform the new track. Jumping back on the ATVs, the ladies make their way to a makeshift stage in the middle of the desert to perform “Savage.” Megan and company turn up the heat as they perform the song backed by a choreographed dance routine. While Megan performed the “Savage” remix with Beyonce, Queen Bey herself did not appear for the song.

Megan’s BET performance stands as another well-deserved accomplishment in a year that began with a lot of frustration. The Houston native became entwined in a contract dispute with her label 1501 Certified Entertainment, one that also barred her from releasing music at a point. Receiving permission from a judge that disallowed the label from blocking future releases, she would release her Suga mixtape soon after. While the project housed the Billboard No. 1 hit, the track did not reach the top of the charts until it was remixed by Beyonce, a fellow Houston native.

Watch her performance in the video above.

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

It may have seemed as though the members of Public Enemy had hit a wall in their relationship earlier this year, but it was all love between Chuck and Flavor Flav as they teamed up with an all-star roster of performers to remix their signature hit “Fight The Power” to open the 2020 BET Awards. The two hip-hop pioneers were joined by Black Thought and Questlove of The Roots, Nas, and Rapsody to rock the house and take over the streets with a raucous remix.

Although the four acts weren’t able to team up in person to perform, each contributed powerful imagery of protest and their hyped-up performances in front of a Pan-African-themed American flag. The song was a pointed commentary on recent current events, which saw Black Americans take to the streets throughout the summer in protest of police violence after a rash of police killings of Black citizens, including Louisville EMT Breonna Taylor and former rapper George Floyd, who police choked out with a knee to his neck as he cried, “I can’t breathe.”

Public Enemy met with controversy earlier this year when a public spat between its principal members turned out to be a promotional tactic for their new project.

The New England Patriots decided Sunday night was a great time to make some major news, as reports emerged from Foxborough that they had reached an agreement on a one-year deal with Cam Newton worth up to $7.5 million.

The Newton signing brought plenty of fanfare and excitement from social media, as it was the signing many NFL fans had speculated on since Newton was let go by the Panthers earlier in the offseason, but there was also maybe another reason for the timing of this news getting out. Sunday night also happened to be the night that the NFL’s punishment of the Patriots for their latest Spygate-like controversy came down.

The league fined the Pats $1.1 million and took away their 2021 third-round pick for the illegal filming of a Browns-Bengals game in December — as well as banning Pats video crews from going to any games during the 2020 season.

This news broke mere minutes after the Newton news in a legendary news dump by the Pats, as bringing in Cam as their Brady replacement will lead ever A-block on sports talk television this week, while the punishment will now be treated as tertiary news. As far as impact, the third-round pick is clearly the biggest loss — no one is crying for Bob Kraft losing another $1.1 million in fines — given that the Pats always value their mid-round picks heavily and lean on those on draft day.

Roddy Ricch began 2020 with a slew of accomplishments. His debut album Please Excuse Me For Being Antisocial became the first album to top the charts on four separate occasions in five years following Taylor Swift’s 1989 from 2014-15. Simultaneously, Roddy would also begin his reign atop the Billboard singles chart with the “The Box,” where he spent 11 weeks at the No. 1 position. Extending his accolade list, Roddy took the 2020 BET Award virtual award stage for a colorful of “Ballin” and “The Box.”

Kicking off his performance by a piano, Roddy began with “Ballin.” Back a vibrant blue backdrop, he delivered a smooth and nearly-acoustic performance of the song before transitioning to “The Box” halfway through the song. Turning things up for the former Billboard chart-topper, Roddy kicked off the song in a Lamborghini before transitioning to the stage to complete the rest of the song. Earning the second-most nominations with five, Roddy will also look to an award tonight in the five categories which include Album Of The Year, Video Of The Year, and Best Male Hip-Hop Artist.

Roddy’s BET performance comes as his second in as many days. Saturday night, he was one of many artists to perform virtually as a part of the 2020 Roots Picnic festival. Rocking what looked like a diamond-laced jean jacket, Roddy gave an acoustic performance of “Ballin” for viewers. Both performances came on the heels of his newly-released “Rockstar” video with DaBaby.

Check out his performance in the video above.

Roddy Ricch is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

The New England Patriots appeared ready to hit the reset button at the quarterback position this season after Tom Brady left Foxborough for Tampa Bay. Brian Hoyer was the veteran of the group, with former fourth-round pick Jarrett Stidham and Brian Lewerke, an undrafted free agent from this year’s draft class, serving as the remainder of the quarterback room.

There was some thought that the Pats might just kick the can down the road and look to next year’s very solid quarterback class, headlined by Clemson’s Trevor Lawrence, for the future of the franchise, but on Sunday, word came that they were taking a swing on former MVP Cam Newton on a one-year, “incentive-laden” contract after the long-time Panthers QB was released earlier this year.

According to Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network, the deal is a minimum contract that can become worth up to $7.5 million.

Newton had yet to find the right situation for him, as he looks to prove he still has plenty left in the tank after injuries derailed his 2019 season. While Newton has been pinged with the “injury-prone” moniker, the 31-year-old had started at least 14 games in every season prior to last year in spite of two shoulder surgeries and the Lisfranc fracture in his foot that ended his season a year ago. The question is where Newton is with the arm and if he’s fully recovered from his foot injury to be the mobile threat that made him so dynamic at the peak of his career.

If he is, Bill Belichick might have found himself a steal in free agency and the Pats may not be out of the running in the AFC East despite losing a first ballot Hall of Famer at QB.

In lieu of actually shooting movies during the ever-rampaging pandemic, movie stars have done the next best thing (or thereabouts): virtual reunions. Rounding up casts of popular movies, be they modern classics or ongoing franchises, have become de rigueur in these strange times, and on Saturday, as per ScreenRant, we got a biggie: a handful of the vast, vast cast of the X-Men movie franchise got together on Zoom for a session that ended when Ryan Reynolds swung by to continue his longtime fake-beef with Wolverine/Logan himself, Hugh Jackman.

The chat session was winding down, with only Jackman, Halle Berry, Famke Janssen, and Sirs Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart left when Reynolds suddenly popped up to annoy his longtime arch-nemesis. He wasn’t alone: Soon James McAvoy and Sophie Turner — of the second Origins/First Class wave — were making cameo appearances. “So many timelines, it’s like a recap of Knot’s Landing,” cracked Reynolds.

McKellen was the first to leave, but others soon split, too, joking that they had other virtual reunions to go to. Janssen was off to a Bond hang, being one of the villains of Goldeneye, while McAvoy’s said he had to do one for M. Night Shyamalan’s Split. (Turner, meanwhile, said, “I’m sorry, I thought this was a Game of Thrones reunion.)

Eventually only Reynolds and Jackman were left, but they were soon joined by Liev Schreiber, making this a reunion for another film: That’s right, it became a X-Men Origins: Wolverine pow-wow. Perhaps you forgot that Reynolds’ first played Deadpool when he was merely “Weapon XI”?

That film was also, Reynolds has said, the beginning of his fake beef with Jackman, which he said happened when he married Scarlett Johansson. Yes, they’ve kept it up for over a decade.

You can watch Reynolds’ appearance in the video above.

(Via ScreenRant)

Anthony Mackie has been with the Marvel Cinematic Universe since 2014’s Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which was the first time he played Sam Wilson, aka Falcon. It’s a good gig, and it got even better when he was bequeathed Cap’s mighty shield, but the actor isn’t afraid to call BS when he sees it. He did just that during a recent interview with Variety’s “Actors on Actors,” during which he criticized Marvel for the lack of diversity on their crews.

Mackie was speaking with Daveed Diggs, the Hamilton, Black-ish, and Blindspotting actor, who’s currently the lead on the TV version of Bong Joon-ho’s film Snowpiercer. He pointed out that with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, the show that reunites him with Sebastian Stan’s Bucky Barnes, coming to Disney+, that means they “both have the power” to demand their employers don’t employ a strictly white crew.

“It really bothered me that I’ve done seven Marvel movies where every producer, every director, every stunt person, every costume designer, every PA, every single person has been white,” Mackie said. The major exception is one of the MCUs that didn’t feature him:

“We’ve had one Black producer. His name was Nate Moore. He produced Black Panther … But then when you do Black Panther, you have a Black director, Black producer, you have a Black costume designer, you have a Black stunt choreographer. And I’m like, that’s more racist than anything else. Because if you only can hire the Black people for the Black movie, are you saying they’re not good enough when you have a mostly white cast?”

Mackie hoped to build a more diverse future:

“My big push with Marvel is hire the best person for the job. Even if it means we’re going to get the best two women, we’re going to get the best two men. Fine. I’m cool with those numbers for the next 10 years. Because it starts to build a new generation of people who can put something on their resume to get them other jobs. If we’ve got to divvy out as a percentage, divvy it out. And that’s something as leading men that we can go in and push for.”

Elsewhere in the chat, Mackie described The Falcon and the Winter Soldier as not feeling like a typical TV show. “Everybody who had worked on TV before was like, ‘I’ve never worked on a TV show like this.’ The way in which we were shooting, it feels exactly like we were shooting the movie cut up into the show,” he said. “So instead of a two-hour movie, a six or eight-hour movie.”

(Via Variety)

Sunday is the nine year anniversary of Beyonce’s fourth album, 4, and the Beyhive likely thought they’d simply celebrate the occasion. But the singer had something else up her sleeve: In a trailer posted on her website, she revealed that she would be releasing a visual album at the end of July.

Entitled Black Is King, it will premiere on the Disney Plus platform on July 31, and it will also be written, directed and executive produced by Beyonce herself. In a statement about the project, she described it as “a celebratory memoir for the world on the Black experience.” The film will, the statement read, be “a story for the ages that informs and rebuilds the present. A reunion of cultures and shared generational beliefs. A story of how the people left most broken have an extraordinary gift and a purposeful future.”

Disney and Parkwood Entertainment also revealed that Black Is King will reimagine the lessons presented in last year’s The Lion King remake, in which she co-starred and for which she produced the soundtrack, in order to help “today’s young kinds and queens in search of their own crowns.” The announcement comes almost two weeks after Beyonce shared “Black Parade,” a track that delivered praises to the ancestors.