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Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang lifted Arsenal once again in the 2020 Community Shield, scoring once and adding the match-winning kick in penalties to lift the Gunners past Liverpool in the ceremonial start of the 2020-21 season in England. Along the way, he revived an infamous goal celebration to pay tribute to Chadwick Boseman.

The entertainment world was shocked on Friday when Boseman’s death was revealed along with his four-year struggle with colon cancer. Various tributes have poured in from fans in the music and NBA world, and those closest to him have added wonderful stories and examples of his impact on Black people in unforgettable roles in 42, Marshall and Black Panther. It was the latter role that inspired Aubameyang to pay tribute to Boseman after he scored in early in Saturday’s match, when the FA Cup champions took the lead against the Premiere League champions on a brilliant strike.

Aubameyang crossed his arms and clearly said ‘Wakanda,’ a reference to the Wakanda Forever salute made famous by Boseman’s T’Challa in Black Panther. Aubameyang paid tribute to the actor before the match, too.

And it was not the first time the superstar had celebrated a goal with the salute or paid his respects to Black Panther’s influence. In March 2019, Aubameyang celebrated a goal by pulling out a Black Panther mask and gloves and doing the same tribute.

As he said in 2019 according to ESPN, the movie had special signifigance to the Gabonese national.

“I needed a mask which represents me and that’s the Black Panther. In Gabon, we call the national team the Panthers,” he said according to ESPN.

After Saturday’s match, Aubameyang had changed his Twitter avatar to an image of him wearing the Black Panther mask in an Arsenal uniform and retweeted another image of him wearing the Black Panther mask.

It’s clear the loss of Boseman hit Aubameyang hard on Saturday, one of the many athletes who found a special connection to the late actor’s work.

Last week on UPROXX Life’s Expression Session, we took a break from all things whiskey and dove into the world of dark rum. I love dark rum. It’s a great drink that suits sipping and cocktails with equal measure. Admittedly, I’m a bit biased since I moonlight at Berlin’s oldest cocktail bar which happens to be called Rum Trader. Still, dark rum gets a bit overshadowed by whiskey and that’s a shame.

To help rectify that, I was honored to welcome a legend onto last week’s Expression Session, Appleton Estate’s master blender, the legendary Joy Spence. Joy walked us through a three bottle tasting of their new core line: The Signature Blend, 8 Year, and 12 Year. I also tested the 21 Year, which is a powerhouse dark rum everyone should try. Parsing the historical Jamaican rum with Joy provided a lot of opportunities to talk about that Jamaican funk (hogo) you get in their dark rums and learn from a true master about what’s in the bottle. It was a blast.

Of the three I tasted with Joy, for me, the 12 was a standout. But that doesn’t mean the rest were also-rans. Let’s dive into Appleton Estate!

Appleton Estate Signature Blend

ABV: 40%
Average Price: $25

The Rum:

This rum is a signature entryway spirit to the Jamaican style Appleton Estate is known for. The juice is a blending of 15 rums that have aged at least four years. The rums are then blended into a single spirit and aged once more in oak until it hits exactly the right spot.

Tasting Notes:

Dried apricot and peach mingle on the nose. The sip carries on with that fruit, highlighted by the peach for me. There’s a clear sense of the molasses in the sweetness of the sip with a warming, slightly funky end.

Bottom Line:

This is devised as a mixer. I really dig using it in a tiki or a rum old fashioned thanks to the dried fruit and natural rum sweet edges.

Appleton Estate 8

ABV: 43%
Average Price: $30

The Rum:

This expression was hand-crafted by Joy Spence to commemorate Appleton Estate’s 250th anniversary. The juice is a blend of rums — some pot stilled — that has aged at least eight years. The idea was to create a new signature bottle for the brand that truly defined both Appleton Estate’s long history in Jamaica and Spence’s multi-decade carrier blending rum for them.

Tasting Notes:

I get oak and spice up top with a mild fruitiness. A touch of honey arrives on the palate next to a flourish of bourbon vanilla and a touch of orange rind. But it’s really the Christmas cake spices and that oak that carry this sumptuous sip towards a long and warming end.

Bottom Line:

This works as a perfectly fine sipper, especially on the rocks (or just with a little water). It’s also a wonderful cocktail base. Just make sure the cocktail is highlighting the rum like a Manhattan or El Presidente.

Appleton Estate 12

ABV: 43%
Average Price: $45

The Rum:

This expression is what happens when you let quality rum like the eight above rest an additional four years. Each rum in the blend has been aged at least 12 years (some many more) and are hand-selected by Spence for their exactness in texture and flavor.

Tasting Notes:

There’s an immediate nuttiness next to the dried fruit, oak, and funk. Hazelnuts come to mind mixed with dark chocolate, creating a nougat creaminess. There’s a touch of dark coffee bitterness spiked with orange and vanilla as the sip slowly fades away and leaves you needing more.

Bottom Line:

This is almost too easy to drink, especially with a single rock. It’s also a great go-to for a post-Christmas dinner snifter while the pie is being served.

Appleton Estate 21

ABV: 43%
Average Price: $140

The Rum:

Add another nine years onto the above and here we are. This isn’t even the oldest expression from Appleton Estate — they have a 30 and 50 year — but this is certainly the most attainable. The juice is a blend of rums that were aged in American oak for at least 21 years. The result is a bottle of rum that’ll stand up to even the most snobbish whiskey drinkers.

Tasting Notes:

The oak dances with echoes of vanilla, mild molasses, orange zest, and funk. There’s a real sense of old orange oils, mild worn leather, a spicy Christmas cake dripping in dark chocolate and served with a bitter espresso, and a counterpoint of citrus. The oak, funk, and spice taper off with a little burst of dark cherries and cacao nibs as a final billow of pipe tobacco smoke sneaks in.

Bottom Line:

This is a great bottle at a fairly affordable price. Maybe save it for a celebration though. It deserves to be savored slowly and with purpose. Then again, I paired a dram of this with a bison burger the other night and it was perfect. So, you do you.

Check out the whole tasting below!

Mulatto’s hot streak continues with a brand new video for “Youngest N Richest,” off her debut album Queen Of Da Souf. It finds the rapper heading to country fields, her boastful bars raining on listeners with lines like “I ain’t stand no threat from no p*ssy ho, she just talking / That b*tch said I wouldn’t be shit and now look at her watchin’.”

Just last week, the ATL-bred rapper shared her full-length debut. Across the its 13 songs, Mulatto calls on City Girls, 21 Savage, 42 Dugg, and more to provide verses of their own. Prior to the album, Mulatto was one of 13 names to be included in this year’s XXL Freshman Class, joing other notable newcomers such as Jack Harlow, Rod Wave, Polo G, and more.

Other releases from Mulatto that are worth noting include her “Queen Of Da Souf” remix with Trina and Saweetie and “Muwop,” featuring her favorite rapper of all time, Gucci Mane, both of which appear on Queen Of Da Souf.

You can watch the “Youngest N Richest” video above.

Queen Of Da Souf is out now via RCA Records. Get it here.

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

The NBA will return to play on Saturday afternoon when the Bucks take on the Magic in their Game 5, which was postponed from Wednesday following the Bucks refusal to play in protest of police shooting Jacob Blake seven times in the back in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

What followed was the rest of the league’s players joining the Bucks in refusing to play in protest, and a tense two days of meetings among players and later between players and owners. The result was an eventual decision to return to play this weekend, with the league and NBPA working together on an agreement to create a social justice coalition, turn every team-owned arena into a voting location, and air advertising and PSAs during the playoffs encouraging people to vote and addressing social justice issues.

While there had been some contention around returning to play initially, the resulting plan of action put into place — plus a conversation between some top players like Chris Paul and LeBron James with Barack Obama — led to the agreement among players to come back. On Saturday, Andre Iguodala spoke with CBS This Morning’s Dana Jacobson about the pause in play and the factors that went into their return to action.

Iguodala is among the few that haven’t shied away from the fact that the financial element of continuing to play was a factor in their decision, noting that NBA players continuing to accumulate wealth allows them to invest that further into the Black community. This was also something LeBron James reportedly pushed owners to do more of, as they have exponentially greater wealth and resources that could be put into those communities and create long-standing impacts.

He also notes the importance of the platform, something Draymond Green likewise noted on Friday, and that players needed a refresh as much as anything to take a break and talk about these issues that are impacting their mental health, seeing continued instances of police violence and the oppression of Black people. As games return, the focus will remain on social justice and the issues facing Black Americans outside of the Bubble, and players proved with the pause in play that anytime that is lost, they will bring it back to the forefront.

The Chicago Sky’s Diamond DeShields and Azura Stevens have left the WNBA bubble at IMG Academy, as first reported by the AP’s Doug Feinberg. According to the AP’s report, DeShields left for personal reasons and Stevens is out for the season with a left knee injury. Stevens will be evaluated by a cartilage specialist to address an osteochondral defect in her left knee, the team later announced.

The players’ departures will hurt the Sky, who entered the 2020 season with heightened excitement surrounding a potential title run. Last season, Chicago exceeded expectations in head coach James Wade’s first year in charge. After missing out on the playoffs the previous two seasons, the team turned things around in 2019 to qualify for the postseason and fell just short of a spot in the WNBA semifinals.

So far this season, the Sky have looked solid, but not good enough to challenge the top of the pack. Currently, the team sits in fifth place in the league standings with a 10-5 overall record as Courtney Vandersloot puts up MVP-caliber numbers, posting a 50-40-90 shooting plit while running the Sky offense, and Allie Quigley is as dependent as ever, averaging 15.3 points per game while shooting 47% from the field.

DeShields has struggled to get going this year, missing some time due to injury and not looking like her usual electric self when on the floor. She was averaging just 6.8 points per game while shooting 43% from the field and just 17% from beyond the arc. During a game against the New York Liberty on Aug. 20, she suffered a quadriceps injury and was taken to a nearby hospital for evaluation.

Meanwhile, prior to injuring her knee, Stevens was enjoying her best season in a Chicago uniform. The 6’6 forward was averaging a career-high 11.5 points and 5.9 rebounds for the Sky before missing the team’s last two games while dealing with soreness in her left knee. In the same 101-85 win against the Liberty on Aug. 20, she exploded season-high 25 points and seven rebounds in what would be her last game of the season.

In a recent trade with the Indiana Fever, the Sky acquired forward Stephanie Mavunga and two picks in the 2021 WNBA Draft in exchange for former All-Star center Jantel Lavender. Additionally, Chicago has rookie Ruthy Hebard, Cheyenne Parker and Gabby Williams on their roster at the forward position who will all help cope with the loss of Stevens.

After the shocking death of actor Chadwick Boseman, social media has been teeming with moving tributes, from colleagues and fans alike, to a performer taken away from us far too soon. Plenty of clips have been shared, not only from his movies but from appearances during press junkets, awards shows, and so forth. One of the most gutting ones hails from the Black Panther press tour in 2018, and it finds him breaking down as he speaks about receiving letters from kids who succumbed to cancer.

“There are two little kids, Ian and Taylor, who recently passed from cancer, and throughout our filming, I was communicating with them, knowing that they were both terminal,” Boseman tells reporters. “And their parents said, ‘They’re trying to hold on until this movie comes.’…It’s a humbling experience, because you’re like, ‘This can’t mean that much to them.’ But seeing how the world has taken this on, how it’s taken on a life of its own, I realize that they anticipated something great.”

We now know that Boseman was himself dealing with his own health battles, having been diagnosed with stage III colon cancer in 2016. But at the time he was keeping the news quiet. But he still found a way to relate his own experiences with these kids’ hardships.

“I think back now to [being] a kid, and waiting for Christmas to come, waiting for my birthday to come, waiting for a toy that I was gonna get a chance to experience, or a video game, I did live life waiting for those moments,” Boseman said. “And so it put me back in the mind of being a kid, just to experience those two little boys’ anticipation of this movie.”

It’s at this point that Boseman breaks down, finally willing himself to be able to say, “Yeah. It means a lot.”

The clip is one a of number being shared that find Boseman seeming to cryptically acknowledge his own health concerns. In another, from 2017, comes from an interview he did with The Huffington Post’s Matthew Jacobs, who asked him about the difficulty of weight fluctuations between various projects. “Oh, you don’t even know,” Boseman responded with a laugh. “You have no idea. One day I’ll live to tell the story.”

Boseman was only 43.

Joyner Lucas returns with a remix of Jack Harlow’s “What’s Poppin” entitled “What’s Gucci” — a song that joins a long list of remixes by the Massachusetts-bred artist, including ones for 21 Savage’s “Bank Account” and Kendrick Lamar’s “DNA.” In conjunction with the newly-released single, Lucas also said he would also soon release a remix of Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s chart-topping hit, “WAP.”

Prior to the new remix, Lucas confirmed that his upcoming EP, Evolution, would arrive next month, on September 18. Lucas shared the cover to Evolution on his Instagram page, which depicts the face of a younger Lucas on his adult body. The EP would serve as his second release of the year following the album ADHD from March. After a slew of delays and pre-release singles, the album arrived with 18 songs and guest appearances from Logic, Young Thug, Fabolous, and more.

Aside from the album, another high point in the year came when Lucas shared a video for his ADHD track, “Will.” In it, Lucas celebrated Will Smith and his numerous acting roles over the last decade. The actor later joined Lucas on a remix of the track.

Listen to “What’s Gucci” above.

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

A very difficult week for the basketball community continued on Saturday, as the UConn and NBA families lost Clifford Robinson at 53 years old, as confirmed by the UConn men’s basketball team on Twitter.

Robinson was part of Jim Calhoun’s first teams at UConn, helping build a program that would become one of the nation’s best and most consistent teams for decades. In the NBA, he played for 18 seasons, earning Sixth Man of the Year honors in 1992-93 and appearing in the All-Star Game in 1994 while a member of the Portland Trail Blazers. He would later play for the Suns, Pistons, Warriors, and Nets. For his career he averaged 14.2 points, 4.6 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game, shooting 43.8 percent from the field and 35.6 percent from three-point range.

Robinson ranks 13th all time in games played in the NBA, having played 1,380 games and being one of the league’s true iron men. He also was ahead of his time in the NBA as a stretch big man, as he ranks 55th in NBA history in career made three-pointers with 1,253 and 52nd in three-point attempts with 3,515.

Fans beyond the NBA got to know Robinson as he was a beloved figure during his time on the 28th season of Survivor. Robinson had battled cancer in recent years, but no official cause of death was given for Robinson’s passing.

Last week, former Disney Channel star Bella Thorne broke records when she joined OnlyFans, the subscription service known as “the paywall of porn.” Within 24 hours of joining, the actress had racked up a whopping $1 million in revenue from new subscribers. She was only getting started: By the end of the week she had added another million. But there’s one group of people who weren’t pleased with Thorne’s windfall: sex workers, who claim her presence has negatively affected their own business.

According to The Wrap, some OnlyFans members voiced their frustration over social media. “So cute how Bella Thorne made her OnlyFans on a whim without doing an [ounce] of research on how it would impact the community and she immediately f–ed it up for us,” wrote OnlyFans user Savana Solo.
“LOVE that!”

What are some of the accusations laid at Thorne’s feet? For one thing, after the enormous sum she acquired, OnlyFans put a cap on how much users are allowed to charge for pay-per-view content. That reportedly came after Thorne, who had been charging $20 a month for no-nudity content, was allegedly charging a $200 for a photoset. On top of that, OnlyFans suddenly extended the waiting period for when users can cash out their earnings, from seven days to thirty.

In a statement provided to The Wrap, OnlyFans denied that any of their new changes had anything to do “any one user,” and that the transaction limits were “set to help prevent overspending.”

In an interview, Thorne stated that she sees her OnlyFans account as a way that she “can really just be more personal with my fans.” But she also said she primarily joined it as a form of research for a project she claimed she was making with filmmaker Sean Baker, of Tangerine and The Florida Project. But Baker — some of whose films are deeply compassionate looks at people who work in the sex industry — denied that that project had ever gone beyond a meeting.

“I would like to make it clear that the news of me making a film (documentary or fiction narrative) about OnlyFans and using Bella Thorne as research is false. I’m NOT attached to this project,” Baker wrote. “Earlier this month I had a conversation with Ms. Thorne and discussed a possible collaboration in the far future that would focus on her life and the circumstances leading to her joining OnlyFans.”

Furthermore, he said he does not approve of Thorne’s action negatively impacting the sex worker industry. “On that call, I advised her team to consult with sex workers and address the way she went about this as to NOT hurt the sex worker industry. This has been the extent of my involvement,” he wrote. “I’m an ally and have literally devoted my career to tell stories that remove stigma and normalize lifestyles that are under attack. I would never do anything that could possibly hurt the community.”

Thorne isn’t the only major celebrity to recently create an OnlyFans account. Cardi B launched one in early August, promising a behind-the-scenes look at her and Megan Thee Stallion’s in-some-circles-controversial single “WAP.”

(Via The Wrap)

Chadwick Boseman only broke through in 2014, after playing Jackie Robinson in the biopic 42. In the short period that he was a major star, he racked up a peerless résumé, playing other great African-American historical figures, like James Brown in Get On Up and Thurgood Marshall in Marshall. He also played a key role in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, as T’Challa, aka Black Panther — the franchise’s first black superhero to get a solo movie.

The MCU employs a ton of great actors, so it was inevitable that when news broke Friday night of Boseman’s death to colon cancer — a struggle he kept quiet, telling only close family and friends — many of his colleagues would sound off on social media, paying tribute to an actor who everyone assumed had decades’ more great work in him.

There was Nick Fury himself, Samuel L. Jackson.

There was Chris Evans.

And Mark Ruffalo.

And Chris Hemsworth

Don Cheadle, the MCU’s first black superhero, whose “Rhodey” Rhodes suited up as War Machine back in 2010’s Iron Man 2, was there to honor him.

So was Brie Larson.

And Chris Pratt.

And Zoe Saldana.

Tom Holland, the youngest MCU superhero, was there to honor him.

Ditto Clark Gregg, who’s played S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson since the start.

Taika Waititi, who now directs the Thor pictures and voices Korg, weighed in.

As did Marvel Studios itself.

One of the most moving tributes came from Angela Bassett, who played T’Challa’s mom in Black Panther and Avengers: Endgame, and who shared the story of how they first met, long before they played mother and son.