Category: Worldwide

Ted Cruz left the frozen state of Texas on Wednesday night for a Mexican vacation, but after social media outrage Cruz is attempting to claim his trip to Cancun was just a day trip. Cruz, who requested a police escort to the airport while hundreds of thousands of Texans remain without power and drinkable water amid a winter storm that fried the state’s independent electricity grid, is grasping at any defense for his decision to go on vacation during the crisis.

The Texas senator who had previously criticized Democratic lawmakers for traveling during a pandemic got caught doing the same, though it also came as one of the most powerful Texan lawmakers alive did nothing to help millions of freezing, powerless, and water-less Texans. Earlier Thursday, as word spread that Cruz had fled the country amid a deadly environmental disaster, Cruz kind of threw his daughters under the bus for the decision. And in a brief interview before his flight in Cancun, Cruz reiterated that the trip was his 10- and 12-year-old daughters’ idea, not his. He was just there to drop them off and head back the next day.

“Yesterday my daughters asked us if they could take a trip, with some friends,” Cruz said. “Heidi and I agreed, so I flew down with them last night, dropped them off here and now I’m headed back to Texas and back continuing to work to try and get the power back on. What’s happening in Texas is unacceptable.”

As others have reported, though, Cruz’s original plans were to stay in Mexico until Saturday according to the airline.

And as many pointed out, Cruz sure packed a big bag for what he inexplicably claims was just an overnight trip. We’ll see what he has to say when he deals with more reporters when he lands back in Texas. And if he can do anything to actually help people or if he’s as useless as other Republicans seem to think he is.

Shortly after the reveal of Jay-Z and Nipsey Hussle’s Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack collaboration “What It Feels Like,” the song stirred up controversy when one of Nipsey’s long-time collaborators laid claim to ownership of the track. Guy Jaxzon Rae, an associate of Mississippi rapper Tito Lopez, posted an old recording of the song that originally featured Nipsey’s eight-year-old verse and Lopez’s, tweeting “that nipsey and hov joint was once a nipsey and tito lopez joint” and sharing the song’s audio on Instagram.

The confusion prompted the song’s co-producers Mike & Keys to reach out to HipHopDX to clarify how the newly-released version came to be. Keys points out the production duo “used to do a lot of work with Tito Lopez,” elaborating that “We was even working on his album when he was signed to Capitol Records. One of the tracks that we did, Nipsey was the first person to rap on ‘Feels Like,’ but the thing is with that hook, we had sampled a Tito Lopez hook.”

Meanwhile, as Mike furthers the story, “we were with Nipsey every day, so they always used to call us and be like, ‘Man we want to do something to that song.’ But it was originally for the Mike & Keys album, so that was our personal song that we did with Nipsey, actually one of our first songs we did with Nipsey. This was 2012. To be honest with you, there are a lot of people who have verses on that beat. Tito wasn’t the only person. There’s like four or five other people who rapped on that beat. Like I said, that beat is from 2012. Tito was trying to get on the song because Nipsey was on it from the jump, but that was never his song. If he did a version to it, we never had it or heard it.”

As far as how the song ended up on the Judas And The Black Messiah soundtrack, the duo credits co-producers Rance and Mars of 1500 Or Nothin with putting the track in front of Jay-Z, who was inspired by Nipsey’s verse and the theme of the upcoming film (although his messaging is somewhat at odds with film subject Fred Hampton’s). While the duo expresses disappointment with Tito’s attempt to claim the song as his own, they spend the majority of the interview reaffirming their gratitude for working with Nipsey throughout his career: “I spent so much time with Nip that I had to figure out what he did and didn’t like,” Mike asserts. “What I learned from him is that he only did things that he was inspired by. He wouldn’t do nothing if he wasn’t inspired.”

You can read the full story here.

When Phoebe Bridgers guested on The Late Late Show in December, she declared, “I played a benefit concert for Tibet House and Carnegie Hall was the last place I played for human beings in a room.” This year, the annual Tibet House concert was forced to go virtual, and once again, Bridgers participated. The livestream went down yesterday and for the event, Bridgers was joined by some guests for an orchestral version of “Kyoto.”

For the performance, she was accompanied by Philip Glass (who puts on the Tibet House benefit), Jackson Browne (who backed Bridgers on her 2018 cover of “Christmas Song“), and the Scorchio Quartet. The collaborators joined each other remotely, with Glass playing piano and Browne handling backing vocal duties.

Elsewhere during the show, Bridgers performed “Moon Song,” joined by frequent collaborator Rob Moose on violin.

Meanwhile, Bridgers is fresh off being included on this year’s Time100 Next list, for which writer Carmen Maria Machado penned some words about her. In response to that, Bridgers commented on Twitter, “I barely graduated high school and today my favorite author wrote about me for the time 100 next list.”

Check out a clip from the performance above and buy access to the full stream here.

UK rapper Slowthai debuted his anticipated sophomore album Tyron this week, which boasted features from the likes of ASAP Rocky, Skepta, James Blake, and more. Shortly after the album’s release, he excited fans by unveiling late August tour dates this year. But he’s also wasting no time when it comes to new music. Slowthai has already begun devoting time to his third album, and it’s nearly 75 percent complete.

Slowthai sat down for an interview with Radio.com’s New Arrivals show with Bryce Segall on Thursday to talk about Tyron and some of the creative decisions that went into the album-making process. During their conversation, the rapper also hinted that he’s already making headway on the record’s follow-up:

“I got about 50 percent, I would say 75 percent [finished]. I’m so early in making it and I’ve got so much time now especially, that I wouldn’t like to put a number on it, but its already underway. […] I’ve become obsessed with a lot of songwriting and structures and how things are switching and chord changes and stuff and melody is something that’s important to me, so I want to explore that avenue a lot more, but then I want it to be left. I don’t want it to be like anything you’ve ever heard before, but I still want it to have them cliche schemes or themes, because its gotta come back to a point, you’ve always gotta have a point.”

Slowthai also revealed that Tyron was actually meant to be his third album. He eventually decided to release Tyron as his sophomore effort because it dealt with themes of mental health, something he thought people could relate to in this moment. “[Tyron] was meant to be my third album, I was gonna completely switch it and do something left, like completely left of all this stuff and then bring it back around,” he said. “But then being what I was dealing with, I felt it’s more pressing to deal with this now… and I wanted people to know they’re not alone in feeling these things, especially being confined to your own space and having to deal with yourself on the daily.”

Listen to Slowthai’s full conversation on New Arrivals below.

Tyron is out now via Method/Interscope. Get it here.

Shiva Baby has made the virtual film festival rounds since premiering at South by Southwest last year. The indie-comedy has also played at the Melbourne International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival, where it’s been met with near-unanimous praise from critics. It’s easy to see why from the intriguing trailer above.

Directed by Emma Seligman, Shiva Baby stars Rachel Sennott as Danielle, a college student who “gets paid by her sugar daddy and rushes to meet her neurotic parents at a family shiva,” according to the official plot synopsis (for the gentiles in the crowd, a “shiva” is basically a week-long funeral). When Danielle arrives, she’s “accosted by various estranged relatives about her appearance and lack of post-grad plans, while her confident ex-girlfriend, Maya, is applauded by everyone for getting into law school.” As if the day wasn’t already stressful enough, her sugar daddy “arrives at the shiva with his accomplished wife, Kim, and crying baby. As the day unfolds, Danielle struggles to keep up different versions of herself, fend off pressures from her family, and confront her insecurities without completely losing it.” Seligman described her film as being about the “exhilaration, insecurities, confusion, and horror that accompany young female sexuality and the realization that your sexual power isn’t as far-reaching as you hope it to be.”

Also, Fred Melamed’s in it. It’s a must see. Great poster, too.

Shiva Baby, which also stars Molly Gordon and Dianna Agron, debuts on VOD on April 2.

YBN Nahmir may be the last YBN member left standing, but he’s waving the flag high and proudly as he promotes the new version of his 2019 single “Opp Stoppa” featuring 21 Savage. In the new video, Nahmir throws a front lawn party in the hood, complete with card tables, a box television set, and what appears to be a functioning oven, from which one of Nahmir’s guests produces a baked bird for the group to enjoy. Meanwhile, 21 makes his first appearance of 2021, and YK Osiris makes a cameo at the end of the video to show some love.

Nahmir was forced to realign after fellow YBN member Cordae dropped the crew’s acronym from his name in the wake of his solo success, prompting Nahmir to speak out. Although all three of the group’s most prominent members insist that they’re all still “brothers,” Cordae’s focus on his solo career seemed to put his priorities at odds with Nahmir’s, who wanted to pursue group hits as he kept the YBN family close to their gamer roots. Fortunately for Nahmir, he also had a pretty respectable solo following thanks to his breakout hit “Bounce Out With That,” which also helped land the crew their record deal with Atlantic. Repurposing his old single with a new verse from 21 Savage, he’s well on his way to capitalizing on his newfound solo status. He, Cordae, and YBN Almighty Jay have seemingly all landed on their feet, while other behind-the-scenes members have apparently moved on to other pursuits.

Watch the “Opp Stoppa” video above.

The Reddit-fueled GameStop stock craze seems to have died down in recent days, which means the next time you really consider the short squeeze market again may be when you see one or several Reddit-inspired movies on various platforms. But the incident, and Robinhood’s involvement with the controversial Wall Street escapades, were the talk of Capitol Hill on Thursday.

In a congressional hearing entitled “Game Stopped?,” Robinhood was put front and center as congress called witnesses in a hearing about exactly what happened in the late-January stock surges of retail stocks like GameStop, AMC and BlackBerry. It really did make for a surreal scene in Washington, though that’s honestly nothing new these days.

When the hearing was in session, however, it was even more odd. Starting with testimony from all over the place.

When Maxine Waters got to Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev, though, things really got tense. The chairwoman of the House Financial Services Committee made it clear she wanted answers about a variety of things, namely Robinhood limiting trading of GameStop stock and other volatile stocks, apparently at the behest of its lenders, while also telling the media publicly that the company didn’t have any problems with liquidity.

Tenev, however, tried to not answer the question as directly as Waters wanted: with a simple yes or no.

“I don’t have time,” Waters said at one point. “Just answer yes or no.”

Waters, who has a time limit when interviewing people at these hearings and tried hard to keep questioning moving, addressed the issues Robinhood has had with reports of them misleading customers, which surfaced well before the GameStop stock surge but only added to the issues the company has had in recent months.

“It seems retail investors often get a bad deal at Robinhood,” Waters said at one point. Later, she did the same to Citadel CEO Kennith Griffin, whose company took huge losses when its short sales of GameStop stock were called because of Redditors buying the stock and causing prices to soar.

You know things are bad when Meghan McCain is tearing into a Republican. Despite routinely defending her fellow conservatives, The View co-host set aside her party allegiance on Thursday to rip Senator Ted Cruz a new one for jetting off to Cancun while people are stranded without power in his home state of Texas following a freak winter storm. While calling Cruz’s trip “very Marie Antoinette,” McCain couldn’t contain her disbelief at the “worst optics I can possibly come up with in an era when there’s been a lot of bad political optics” as she equated the situation on the ground with “the apocalypse.” Via Raw Story:

“I read something yesterday that said that hospitals are out of power and that the people in hospitals were trying to find generators to sit around with blankets. I mean, the last time I was in the hospital was obviously when I was giving birth. I can’t imagine if the power went out. There’s a lot of heads to roll a lot of people to blame. I know what’s not helping right now is the fact that Sen. Ted Cruz is seen on a flight with his family to Cancun right now.”

While McCain was aware that Cruz is already on his way back to Texas, and noted that he’ll have lots of local media to answer to, her segment on The View arrived before Cruz managed to make things even worse by issuing a statement where he blamed the trip on his daughters. According to Cruz, he was just trying to be a good dad by accompanying his kids after they requested a trip to Cancun because school was canceled. Never mind that there’s a pandemic going on, and his wife seemed to be visible in photographs with their daughters, it was important that Ted went, too. For the children.

(Via The View)

The Portland Trail Blazers shouldn’t be the Western Conference’s 4-seed more than a third of the way into the season, not with C.J. McCollum having missed 15 games and Jusuf Nurkic missing 16. And yet, here we are rapidly approaching the midseason break, and the Blazers sit at 18-10 and in position to snag a homecourt first round series.

There are a number of people that deserve credit for their current position. Enes Kanter has done yeoman’s work as the starting center in Nurkic’s (and Zach Collins’) absence. Gary Trent Jr. has further established himself as one of the NBA’s elite shooters. Carmelo Anthony continues to be a steady presence on the wing, picking some very opportune times to turn back the clock and catch fire. Anfernee Simons, thrust into a larger role than expected since the McCollum injury, has taken a leap as a shooter. Robert Covington hasn’t been an offensive force but does all the things to help hold this Blazers team together on defense.

However, as has been the case for years, the sun around which the Blazers revolve is Damian Lillard, and despite a rash of injuries and a roster few would point to as one capable of a top-4 finish in the West, here they stand because Lillard simply won’t let them fail. The All-NBA point guard is averaging 29.8 points, 7.7 assists, and 4.4 rebounds per game on a 45.1/38.4/93.3 shooting split, which is eerily similar to his season averages from a year ago. As was the case in the Bubble, when he willed this team to the 8-seed in the West, Lillard is carrying the Blazers during their active 6-game winning streak and his stats in the clutch (5-point game inside 5 minutes to play) this season are, truly, preposterous.

The 12-3 record in games that qualify for clutch time is the most impressive part about what Lillard is doing for the Blazers. Dame Time has been his calling card for a long time, but he’s never been as effective, efficient, or impactful on winning than he has this season for a team that needs every bit of what he’s giving them. His heroics in the fourth quarter have been nothing short of spectacular, but they’ve been thrust into the spotlight in particular after back-to-back-to-back wins this week that required his best in the closing minutes.

It’s the variety in Lillard’s game at this point that makes him a nightmare in these situations. His abilities to shoot from anywhere inside the halfcourt line get the most talk, and deservedly so. He and Stephen Curry have made the logo shot not just acceptable but a good shot, stretching defenses well beyond the three-point line. When teams do pick him up way up the floor, like Lonzo Ball did in New Orleans on Wednesday, it opens up a tremendous amount of room for Lillard to drive to the paint, and by coming up for a screen, whether used or rejected as he did on Wednesday, the Blazers take opposing centers out of the play by making them come out and defend a pick-and-roll 30-plus feet from the hoop.

When he does use the screen, it puts opposing big men in a no-win situation, as they have to choose to either give up their leverage at the rim by stepping out to contest a possible three, or sink back and give him space to rise-and-fire.

So, the answer is to trap him, right? Teams aren’t sending two at Lillard as often as they probably should, but the Blazers have also developed some clever counters to dissuade opponents from trying to trap him. Look at this possession in New Orleans, where they have Kanter set a screen 40-feet from the basket on the right side of the floor, which gives Lillard tons of room on the left side to get around the big man before he reaches the sideline and a trap can come from Ball as he chases back. Dame is able to turn the corner and eventually draws the attention of four Pelicans, which makes for an easy find of a cutting Derrick Jones Jr. under the basket for a wide open layup.

Lillard’s recent run has thrust him into the crowded MVP conversation, one headlined by LeBron James, Joel Embiid, and Nikola Jokic, but that has plenty more worthy of consideration depending on who you ask. The MVP conversation is always a tricky one, as every voter (and non-voter) has a different set of criteria for what goes into their personal selection, but what Lillard is doing for this Blazers team is worthy of every bit of praise he’s receiving in the moment.

Portland will likely come back to Earth a bit in the near future, as it’s hard to imagine this current run of play being sustainable. The nightly Houdini act, with Lillard pulling off increasingly difficult escapes from late game peril, tends to eventually lead to some losses. However, what Portland’s doing isn’t self-inflicted, like, say, the Lakers doing the same this year because they can’t bring themselves to care about the first three quarters most nights. This is out of necessity from a thin roster, and every game they win feels almost like two, because it buys them a bit more time for their other stars to get back for a playoff push.

No one would have faulted Portland for slipping back into the muddied pack of teams in the play-in race out West while down their second and third best players, with the hope that once McCollum and Nurkic were back they could make a late push for seeding and once again win their way into the playoffs. Instead, they’ve surged ahead to move 2.5 games ahead of the Warriors in that 7-seed, where a play-in fate awaits. Lillard has been quick to give credit to his teammates after wins, whether it be Covington for his defense, Kanter for his rebounding, or Anthony, Trent Jr., and Simons for hitting big shots when called upon.

But behind that guise of humility is the NBA’s preeminent late-game assassin. He knows the importance of keeping his teammates pumped up in case he has to call on them, but so long as there’s a sliver of space, the number 0 is the only one getting dialed up.

Writer James Lane Allen once wrote, “Adversity doesn’t build character, it reveals it.” If that’s the case, we’re seeing the true character of political leaders in the state of Texas right now.

While Senator Ted Cruz gallivanted off to Cancun as people in his state froze in their homes, boiled water for drinking, and stood in line for hours to get food, former Texas representative Beto O’Rourke gathered volunteers and organized a grassroots effort to help elderly Texans stuck in their homes to connect them with resources.

O’Rourke wrote on Twitter that a virtual “welfare check” phone banking event held on Wednesday, February 17 had reached 151,000 seniors.

“One of our vols talked to a man stranded at home w/out power in Killeen, hadn’t eaten in 2 days, got him a ride to a warming center and a hot meal,” O’Rourke wrote.

O’Rourke has been sharing county-specific shelter, food bank, and aid information on social media, pointing people to the places where they can seek help in their area. He’s also holding another phone bank welfare check event on Thursday from 1:00pm to 9:00pm, which anyone in the country can sign up to be trained and help with.

The situation in Texas is dire. Millions have been without power for days, millions more are under water boil orders, stores are running out of food, and people are chipping icicles off the insides of their homes. While there’s nothing anyone can do about the weather, there is plenty that can be done on the ground to get people connected with the help that is available.

Politicians can bicker all they want about who’s to blame for this crisis, but it’s pretty obvious that the problem is the state’s approach to independent energy competition with little government oversight or regulation. Texas is known for distancing itself from the federal government and limiting its own state government, which means people have to rely on each other in a crisis. Isn’t that what small-government ideology is all about? The power of local communities and organizations to provide what people need? Wouldn’t it logically make sense, then, that politicians who scoff at government aid and regulation would be the first on the ground providing that community-oriented assistance, since that’s the societal structure they want to see?

How ironic is it then that the politician doing that assistance is Beto O’Rourke, while Texas’s actual elected official, Ted Cruz, hops on a plane to Cancun?

O’Rourke pointed out the irony of the Texas government being run by people who don’t believe in government and explained how fighting regulation led directly to the crisis Texas is currently experiencing. “We are nearing a failed state in Texas,” he told Chris Hayes on MSNBC.

It’s worth pointing out that O’Rourke isn’t even in an official leadership position right now. A lifelong resident of El Paso, O’Rourke served four terms in the House of Representatives and gave Ted Cruz a run for his money in the Texas Senate race in 2018. He also made an ultimately unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 2020. But at the moment, he’s just a private citizen, and he’s doing far more leading by example and taking far more action than Texas’s actual elected representatives.

A crisis shows us who is fit to lead and who is not. Good for Beto O’Rourke for stepping up and exemplifying what leadership should look like and for helping out his fellow Texans when they need it the most.