Category: Viral

Paul George is not going to hit free agency at the end of the 2020-21 NBA season. While the Los Angeles Clippers’ All-Star wing had the potential to decline a player option for next year, Adrian Wojnarowski brings word that George and the Clippers came to terms on a four-year max extension that could keep him in Los Angeles for the next five seasons.

According to George’s agent, the deal tacks another $190 million onto his already-existing contract. It also features a player option should George decide to part ways with the team prior to the 2024-25 campaign.

The Clippers also announced the news in a release.

George came to Los Angeles following one season in Oklahoma City. He was expected to play a major role alongside Kawhi Leonard in helping the Clippers get over the hump and compete for an NBA championship, but the team came up short, blowing a 3-1 series lead to the Denver Nuggets in the Western Conference Semifinals. On the season, George averaged 21.5 points, 5.7 rebounds, 3.9 assists, and 1.4 steals in 29.6 minutes per game.

There is major intrigue around the Clippers heading into this season for a handful of reasons — the way last year ended, the rumblings of major discord in the locker room over the treatment of George and Leonard, etc. This news, though, indicates that the potential that George could hit free agency at the end of the year is now off the table heading into the season.

Since rising to fame, Lizzo has become an inspiration in the body positivity movement. She’s known for her feel-good lyrics and optimistic outlook, but that doesn’t mean she’s happy every day. Like everyone else, Lizzo has days where she’s struggling to keep her mental health in check. In a recent video, the singer got real about how negative comments can affect her body image in order to let fans experiencing the same know that they’re not alone.

Sharing a video on TikTok, Lizzo opened up about how hard it can be to not believe hateful comments about her body — and she doesn’t always have an answer:

“I came home and took my clothes off to take a shower. And I just started having all these really negative thoughts about myself like, ‘What’s wrong with me? Maybe all the mean things people say about me are true. Why am I so disgusting?’ And hating my body. Normally, I’d have something positive to say to get me out of this, but I don’t — and that’s okay too. I think these are normal, they happen to everybody, they happen to the best of us. We are the best of us and I just have to know that tomorrow how I feel in here is going to change and I can only hope that it changes for the better. But I know I’m beautiful, I just don’t feel it, but I know I’m going to get through it.”

This isn’t the first time Lizzo has opened up about how fame has affected her mental health. “Fame only puts a magnifying glass on the sh*t that you already have,” Lizzo said in a previous TikTok video. “If that sh*t is f*cked up, you’re just going to have even more magnified f*cked up sh*t situations where it doesn’t even seem valid or like you’re even like supposed to feel that way so it f*cks you up even more because you feel super f*cking ungrateful.”

Watch Lizzo’s honest TikTok video above.

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

Compton dance-hop upstart Channel Tres has released his third EP, I Can’t Go Outside, a day early after announcing its intended release date, December 11, earlier this week. The seven-track EP features guest appearances from Tinashe and Tyler The Creator, the latter appearing on the track “Fuego,” which Tres broke out as a single today as well.

Featuring a typically uptempo beat and deadpan verses from Tres and Tyler, “Fuego” serves a double purpose in addition to its lewd dancefloor come-ons. Speaking to Apple Music about the collaboration, Tres explained, “‘fuego’ was the first song I wrote when I started the project. It was just really about me questioning my art, like, ‘Yo, it ain’t that bad. Why are you scared of this shit?’… So, that’s just me questioning myself as an artist and why am I doing it and stuff like that. And then, Tyler comes in and just kind of shuts up all my doubt. He definitely blessed me with that verse, for sure.”

“Fuego” is the two artists’ second outing as a collective, after Tres remixed Tyler’s “Earfquake” into a techno bop. Tres can also be found on Disclosure’s new album, Energy.

Listen to “Fuego” above. I Can’t Go Outside is out now. Get it here.

President-elect Joe Biden, like any new homeowner, wants to make sure he walks through those White House doors to a clean, tidy home. But, unlike virtually every incoming president in our nation’s history, he’s having to go the extra mile to make sure his family and his staff don’t catch a deadly virus from the outgoing commander-in-chief.

A spokesperson for the General Services Administration told Politico that Biden plans to disinfect and sanitize every inch of the White House before letting his staff enter following his inauguration. This comes after a large number of Trump’s inner circle — which includes lawyer Rudy Giuliani — have fallen ill with COVID-19. Trump continues to host maskless events at the White House while trying to argue the results of the presidential election in court, with no success. But Biden isn’t taking any chances.

A team deployed by the General Services Administration has plans to sweep all surfaces of the East and West Wings of the White House, cleaning every piece of furniture, doorknobs, handles, locks, and any other surface human hands have touched. In addition, the Biden administration has hired a private contractor who will employ “disinfectant misting services” to rid the air of any lingering droplets. Biden plans to take other precautions as well: he’ll be working with a skeleton staff on-site while many in his circle continue to work from home, and Biden plans for everyone working indoors at the White House to wear a mask.

Still, the image of guys in hazmat suits having to clean up after Trump and his family leave is a stark reminder of how miserably the current administration has failed to contain the pandemic.

(Via Politico)

Long one of the best tight end in the NFL, Travis Kelce has been at the core of the the league’s best offense with the Kansas City Chiefs for three years running. Up to this point, though, he had never earned the top honor in the virtual NFL world.

That honor, of course, is the “99 Club,” the shortlist of NFL athletes who have a perfect 99 rating in Madden.

The All-Pro finally saw his stats improve this week and joined the 99 Club, where he was greeted by another member: Chiefs teammate and 2018 NFL MVP Patrick Mahomes.

Earlier in the season, it was Kelce, not yet a member himself, who announced to Mahomes that he was in select company as a 99-rated quarterback. The QB returned the favor to one of his favorite targets in a video released by Madden on Thursday.

Through 12 games this season, Kelce has recorded 82 receptions for 1,114 yards and eight touchdowns as the Chiefs have run out to the best record in football. In its announcement, the game makers said “Madden Ratings Adjustors took note of improvements in pass catching and run blocking and shifted his overall rating up to a 99.”

Kelce becomes just the third-ever Chief to join the 99 Club, alongside Mahomes and former Chiefs tight end Tony Gonzalez.

Jpegmafia returned after a few quiet months in November with a new EP titled, fittingly, EP! The eight-track project features each of his previously released, exclamatory singles from 2020, including “Bald!” “Covered In Money!” and “Bodyguard!” Now, he’s preparing to release a sequel, EP2!, with “Super Tuesday!” Featuring a stripped-down instrumental and a non-stop barrage of witty, wordplay-packed bars dissing Donald Trump, “Super Tuesday!” landed on YouTube with only a warning from the rapper that he’s working on a new EP. Whether he’ll see increased promotion for the project from EQT Recordings thanks to its new deal with Republic Records remains to be seen.

Still, EQT’s deal makes for a big win for the Bandcamp favorite, who broke out in 2018 with his sophomore project Veteran and gained an even bigger following the next year with All My Heroes Are Cornballs and his spot on Vince Staples’ Smile, You’re On Camera tour. He also produced “3 Tearz” featuring Run The Jewels on Danny Brown’s Uknowwhatimsayin? album, as well as IDK’s “Hello, Pt. 4” freestyle before embarking on his run of standout, self-produced quarantine music videos. “Cutie Pie!” “The Bends!” the “Bald! (Remix),” and “Last Dance!” can all be found on EP!, while Peggy also guests on Gorillaz’s Song Machine.

Listen to “Super Tuesday!” above.

Will Ferrell and (most of) the cast of Elf are reuniting for live virtual table read to help Georgia Democrats in the upcoming senate runoff election. Considering the 2003 film has become a holiday staple, if not an outright Christmas classic, the timing of the reunion couldn’t be more perfect. Zooey Deschanel announced the news on Twitter Tuesday night.

“If I were any more excited to be in the #ElfForGeorgia reunion I might explode into a burst of snowflakes,” Deschanel tweeted. “Join me, Will Ferrell, and many other amazing people from the original cast along with some special guests for our live reading! All donations go to support GA dems.”

You can see Deschanel’s tweet below along with a secure link to tickets:

The live table read will take place on Sunday, December 13 at 4 PM EST, and almost the entire cast of Elf will be there along with some special guests. Via ElfReunion.com:

Featuring Will Ferrell, Zooey Deschanel, Bob Newhart, Edward Asner, Mary Steenburgen, Amy Sedaris, Andy Richter, Kyle Gass, John Lithgow, Danny Woodburn, Jon Favreau*, Ed Helms, Busy Phillips, and Matt Walsh. Hosted by Ashley Nicole Black.

*Pod Save America’s Favreau

Notably absent is Elf director Jon Favreau and actor James Caan. While the two could easily be busy with other projects, Caan revealed back in September that an Elf sequel never happened because Ferrell and Favreau didn’t get along. According to Caan, Ferrell was on board with returning as Buddy the Elf, but he wanted a different director, which wasn’t possible due to Favreau’s contract. “It was one of those things,” Caan said while lamenting the loss of what he hoped would be a franchise.

(Via Zooey Deschanel on Twitter)

Megan Thee Stallion has had an undeniably busy year. Not only did she recently released her hit record Good News, but the rapper was named one of TIME’s Most Influential People Of 2020, had her first No. 1 song with Beyonce, and received her first Grammy nomination. The rapper appeared on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert to break down this year’s events and talk about her hit song “Body.”

Discussing her Beyonce collaboration “Savage,” Colbert asked Megan who gives better advice between Jay-Z and Beyonce. “I will say Jay-Z gives the fun advice,” Megan said. “Say if I’m having a bad day, he’ll be like, ‘Megan. Girl, you need to be somewhere driving the boat. Turn up, have a good time, forget what the people say. He gives the more hot girl advice.” But with Beyonce, Megan said: “She says it the nicer way and Jay-Z gives it to me the more turnt up way.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Megan detailed how her song “Body” was written after she noticed she had gained some weight at the start of quarantine, but still looked good:

“In the beginning of quarantine, I definitely gained the quarantine fifteen. I was literally in the living room looking at myself like, ‘Wow, girl. You’ve really done it. What are you even eating, like why are you baking so much? How many honey buns can we eat?’ So I was looking at myself in the mirror like, ‘You know what? You look good though. We should dance about it.’”

The rapper continued to say the song is about people “celebrating their bodies.” She added that she wants fans to listen to her song and leave with a sense of body positivity: “I definitely just want my fans and my supports to feel like, ‘If Megan Thee Stallion said I’m fine so I must be fine.’”

Watch Megan Thee Stallion on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert above.

Good News is out now via 1501 Entertainment. Get it here.

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

While the sports calendar has been wonky in 2020, sneaker releases have kept up, with everyone from Damian Lillard to Derrick Rose either releasing or announcing new concepts just in the past few weeks. The shoe companies haven’t slowed down either, and the latest and greatest innovation from adidas is its Futurenatural technology, which the company announced Thursday and hopes will “mirror an athlete’s speed and quick change of direction.”

Futurenatural will combine the midsole technology of Boosts with the light cushioning of Lightstrike with the goal of making adidas sneakers comfortable and responsive to acceleration and change of direction.

More specifically, adidas developed the Futurenatural concept by looking over foot scans of thousands of hoopers worldwide to develop a mold that more “closely represents the shape of the actual human foot.” The bottom of the shoe uses an “athlete data-informed traction pattern” to give better grip on the court for sudden cuts and movements.

As a hat tip to the biggest adidas athlete whose game mirrors these concepts on the court, James Harden will be the first NBA player to have the Futurenatural technology in his sneakers.

The Harden Vol. 5 will be the first sneaker to have Futurenatural integrated into it, adidas announced in a press release. The Harden 5 will go on sale in “early 2021.”

Ever since rappers started wearing heavy metal bands’ tour T-shirts, it was only a matter of time before someone found a way to finally bring the two genres back together. That someone has arrived and his name is Mario Judah. Born in 1999 and cutting an imposing, bulky figure, Judah hails from Atlanta — just like many of hip-hop’s most innovative genre-benders — and saw his profile rise significantly after the release of his song “Die Very Rough” — just four months after releasing his first song “Crush.” Now he’s receiving name-checks from some of hip-hop’s most influential figures including happy-go-lucky rapper Father, go-to video director Cole Bennett, and weird Twitter pioneer turned stand-up comic and part-time MC, Zack Fox.

With just those two songs, though, Judah perfectly embodied the platonic ideal of a rapper who does metal… or maybe a metal singer who somehow found his way to rap via the melodic, scene-inspired work of Juice WRLD and Trippie Redd. In the video for “Crush,” Judah, a husky giant with Fuschia hair, raccoon eye makeup, and a Tupac T-shirt, threatens to “crush all of my enemies” over a buzzing guitar riff with thundering 808s straight out of the gothic trap pioneered by Metro Boomin and Southside. The drums are the key to the thing, I think; where previous attempts to fuse the dark instincts of metal probably overly focused on incorporating DJ scratches and corny backward cap-wearing lead singers to the mix, Judah understands that the driver of hip-hop is the rhythm.

And what a rhythm it is. It’s trap, to be sure, but it’s also just similar enough to the backlines of bands like Pantera (a Mario Judah inspiration) that it could pass as a reasonable facsimile of the sound with the right temp adjustments. Judah sings with a throaty vibrato straight from his bowels, with just enough grit to evoke the “I’m possessed” disposition of its influences. The video is full of the horrorshow imagery that permeates the metal world as well; bloody skulls, plague masks, and a menacing Joker mask worn by an eerily posing figure brandishing a knife a la The Strangers make everything suitably creepy. The video has racked up nearly 800,000 views to date, but it was its follow-up that helped bring Judah to his current level of notoriety.

“Die Very Rough” has over 10 million views on YouTube since September — and continues racking them up by the thousands every day. This one is again a threatening display of murderous intent, with Genius contributors describing it as “a marvel of medieval rap” and comparing his flow to a Disney villain’s showstopping theme song. It’s an accurate summation of his approach: Throw Scar from The Lion King into a blender with Slipknot (substitute with Avenged Sevenfold if no Slipknot is available), throw in TM88’s drum kit along with a half-gallon of lean, and hit puree. Lyrically, Judah compares himself to a big dog and a lion, while the listener is “the prey that is hiding.” Finding the bridge point between the two poles — the hyperviolent bravado that marks their typical subject matter — and incorporating the most fun parts of each allows Judah to reside in a tenuous harmony directly in the middle. Whether or not he can keep it up for a full project is anyone’s guess, but we’ll soon have a chance to find out.

The project, according to Judah’s recent run of increasingly obstreperous promotional tweets, is to be titled Whole Lotta Red. But wait, isn’t that the title of the long-awaited Playboi Carti follow-up to 2018’s Die Lit that was supposed to have released this year? Yes. Yes, it is. That’s the genius. By tying his release to a higher-profile one impatient fans have kept near the top of social trends, Judah outs himself as a disciple of Young Thug’s eye-and-ear-grabbing promotional ethics. In 2016, Thugger trolled Lil Wayne with the title of his debut commercial mixtape, Barter 6, after Wayne repeatedly delayed the fifth installment of his Tha Carter album series. Capitalizing on the vacuum created by the album’s absence, Thug was able to supplant Weezy atop fans’ wish lists and assert himself as rap’s hot new star.

Judah’s employed the same strategy, threatening to drop Carti’s album himself after assigning a deadline of December 6. While he didn’t release a full project, he did share “Bih Yah,” his third standalone single which departed from his own established style by hijacking Carti’s signature squeaky-voiced, non-sequitur-spewing flow over a beat that could make a gamer prepare for a boss fight. He accompanied the track with yet another ultimatum: Either Carti puts out Whole Lotta Red on December 11 or Judah will. Since it seems unlikely the major label-constrained Carti will be able to meet his demands, Mario Judah just might get exactly what he wants: a cadre of ravenous fans eagerly awaiting his appearance on the proverbial Wrestlemania ramp. Bah Gawd, that’s Judah’s music, and this rap-rock disruptor has designs on taking over the game — even if he has to go through his own heroes to do it.