Category: Worldwide

It’s an emotional day around the NBA and the basketball world in general, as Tuesday marks the one-year anniversary of the tragic helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others. Friends, fans, family, and peers have come together to pay tribute to the Lakers legend who is gone far too soon.

Beloved and admired among his contemporaries, Kobe has also influenced an entire generation of up-and-coming basketball players, as numerous stars around the league have, on various occasions, talked about the ways they’ve modeled their game after one of the most unique talents in NBA history.

Kobe’s leap from high school to the NBA was still something of a rarity at the time, but those who were lucky enough to witness him put his enormous talents on display in the lead-up to the 1996 NBA Draft were left in awe by what they saw. Now, a brief but compelling piece of video evidence has finally emerged showing Kobe doing the Mikan drill.

On first glance, it might not look that impressive. But the rigorous physical demands required to jump that high and that quickly for a solid minute is much harder than seems on the surface and speaks directly to both his otherworldly athleticism at such a young age and, perhaps more important, his competitive nature.

Just ask Rex Kalamian, the Lakers video coordinator at the time, who called it “probably the most athletic Mikan drill you’re ever going to see,” via the LA Times. Kalamian had the wherewithal to preserve a good chunk of the VHS tape of Kobe’s workout instead of recording over it, as was standard practice.

There is apparently more than an hour of footage remaining that has yet to be released, and we can only hope we’ll eventually get to see more of it, as we continue to honor Kobe’s memory in whatever way we can.

Grammy-nominated singer Andra Day is less than a month away from making her acting debut in Hulu’s forthcoming feature The United States vs. Billie Holiday. Of course, no story of Holiday’s life is complete without paying tribute her thought-provoking music. Previewing the film’s soundtrack, Day now shares her powerful original song “Tigress & Tweed.”

Over vintage-sounding piano keys, Day showcases her evocative voice while proving she was the perfect choice to portray the iconic singer in the biopic. Throughout the lyrics, Day touches on Holiday’s venerable protest song “Strange Fruit.”

Speaking about the songwriting process, Day said she hopes the song gives listeners strength:

“If Billie Holiday were with us now, I believe she’d want to see ‘Strange Fruit’ evolved. If ‘Strange Fruit’ was a call to awareness, ‘Tigress & Tweed’ is a call to action because she laid the groundwork. Raphael Saadiq sent the perfect track and the lyrics finally came to me like a flood after a prayer one day. I hope people are strengthened by Truth and Love when they hear it.”

Listen to Day’s “Tigress & Tweed” above and watch The United States vs. Billie Holiday trailer below.

The United States vs. Billie Holiday premieres 2/26 on Hulu.

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

The Indiana Pacers announced a major bit of news on Tuesday afternoon involving the health and well-being of recently-acquired wing Caris LeVert. After previously revealing that a mass was identified on LeVert’s left kidney during a routine physical following his trade as part of the gigantic deal that sent James Harden to Brooklyn, the Pacers announced that LeVert underwent surgery to treat renal cell carcinoma, a form of kidney cancer.

Thankfully, LeVert — who had credited the trade for unveiling this, saying “I was 100% healthy so in a way this trade definitely showed and revealed what was going on in my body.” — is expected to make a full recovery, per the team.

“Caris LeVert underwent successful surgery on Monday to treat renal cell carcinoma of his left kidney,” the Pacers said in a statement. “The surgery was performed by Dr. Jason Sprunger at Community North Hospital in Indianapolis, Ind. No further treatment is needed. Caris is expected to make a full recovery and will be out indefinitely. Further updates will be provided as needed.”

LeVert making his debut for the Pacers, whenever that may end up being, is obviously second to the fact that this was identified and treated as soon as possible. This is a scary thing for anyone to have to deal with, particularly due to the fact that it came from out of left field, and hopefully LeVert is back to being 100 percent as soon as possible.

It seems surreal that Tuesday is the one-year anniversary of Kobe Bryant’s passing. Of course, it still feels surreal that Bryant is gone after a helicopter crash that also took his daughter, Gianna, and seven others, but for many in the basketball world, Tuesday offered up the opportunity to look back on Bryant’s life and tenure in and around the NBA.

A number of individuals, whether they be current and former players and coaches or larger institutions, took to their Twitter accounts to offer up a kind word to Bryant and the rest of those who passed away.

In an interview with TMZ, one of Bryant’s former coaches, Byron Scott, discussed the importance No. 24 had in his life, to the point that he finds himself thinking about who he calls an “unbelievable person” on a daily basis.

“There’s two people that passed away in my life,” Scott said. “My mom, who I think about all the time, and ‘Showboat.’ I think about him every day. It’s something about him that, in my life, every day something brings me back to a memory of KB.”

The Lakers, unsurprisingly, offered up a tribute, too, calling both Kobe and Gianna “family,” a sentiment that the NBA shared.

Honoring both Bryants was also done by another team for which Kobe suited up, USA Basketball, and by another one of the many residents of the Staples Center, the L.A. Sparks.

UConn women’s basketball decided to remember Gianna, a well-documented Huskies fan who had ambitions of suiting up for Geno Auriemma’s program some day.

Even FIBA chimed in, recalling one specific Kobe moment from a game that the United States played against Brazil back in 2007.

It seems certain that Tuesday will feature dozens more tributes to Bryant as the day goes on, both on social media and during the three games that the league has on its schedule this evening. Then again, it’s hard to watch or follow basketball without seeing someone pay tribute to Bryant in some form or fashion.

Pasadena-based artist Charlie Hickey has a new EP coming out in February, Count The Stairs. The effort is produced by Marshall Vore, who got his collaborator Phoebe Bridgers to lend her vocals to the track “Ten Feet Tall.” Hickey shared a lo-fi visual for the song today, and Bridgers went above and beyond the role of backing vocalist by riding a scooter in the video.

Bridgers shared the track on Twitter and wrote, “very, very proud of this one.”

Hickey says of the song:

“‘Ten Feet Tall’ is sort of a different animal than any other song I’ve written. I was going to school at the time and was feeling quite alienated in this little world where everybody was instantly partying with their brand new best friends and fun came so naturally. I found solace in Marshall’s studio on the weekends. This was our first proper attempt at writing together and we were writing something really horrible. We were both kind of delirious and Marshall started singing the verse melody for the song as a joke, making fun of what we had been trying to write. But when I heard it, I said to him, ‘Wait, that’s the song that we’ve been trying to write.’ After that, we wrote the rest that night and recorded it the next day. We re-recorded it a few times before going back to what we did that day. I’ve never written or recorded a song like that since, and we weren’t sure it was even gonna come out but when I hear it back, it really serves as a time capsule of a very confusing/depressing but also very fruitful and fun time in my life!”

Listen to “Ten Feet Tall” above and find the Count The Stairs art and tracklist below.

1. “No Good At Lying”
2. “Count The Stairs”
3. “Two Haunted Houses”
4. “Seeing Things”
5. “Ten Feet Tall”
6. “Notre Dame”

Count The Stairs is out 2/26 via Charlie Hickey.

The RX is Uproxx Music’s stamp of approval for the best albums, songs, and music stories throughout the year. Inclusion in this category is the highest distinction we can bestow and signals the most important music being released throughout the year. The RX is the music you need, right now.

Given the method of BRS Kash’s introduction, it’d be silly to expect a wide breadth of topics and a ton of lyrical depth on his debut project, Kash Only. His current viral popularity was ushered in on the wave of goodwill generated by “Throat Baby,” a tongue-in-cheek ode to oral sex that turned a request for head into a woozy, nigh-romantic anthem. With that kind of calling card, anyone hoping for trenchant takes on the state of the criminal justice system or pensive reflections on mental health should already know to look elsewhere.

But while so many purveyors of pop-heavy, club-ready party rap anthems often experience difficulty extending their festive feats beyond their initial breakout hits, on Kash Only, the Atlanta native finds a comfortable groove in which his raunchy rhymes can revel. Moving along at a brisk pace and utilizing sticky, unique-sounding hooks throughout, Kash Only is a lighthearted introduction to LVRN’s latest addition and proves he has the juice to keep the party going past his signature single (and its equally racy remix).

It doesn’t take long for Kash to establish that while the goopy crooning on “Throat Baby” is surely the most effective tool in his kit, it’s far from the only one. On intro “No Manners,” he glides assuredly over a JetsonMade-inspired conglomerate of skittering 808s and whimsical recorder tunes — you know, those little baby flutes from your primary school music class — adopting a flow that is fittingly reminiscent of DaBaby’s and coolly referencing Nelly’s Country Grammar to describe his ideal girl.

Intriguingly enough, Jetsonmade does make a pair of appearances after clearly inspiring that intro, on “Shake,” which reprises the flutey sounds of “No Manners” with a beat that could also have appeared on one of DaBaby’s last few singles. Fortunately, the album changes gears before this trick can get stale, and “Yea,” Jetson’s second appearance on the album, more closely resembles the work Wheezy and P’ierre Bourne put in on Young Thug’s So Much Fun. Kash also manages a serviceable enough impression of Thugger on the few tracks in this vein, but his best mode is when he ditches Atlanta’s signature cartoon trap sound entirely.

“Kash App,” a surefire fan-favorite collab with Mulatto, secures the first of several New Orleans Bounce-influenced beats by Baby Breeze and ZachOnTheTrack on the album. Over the uptempo production, Kash evokes the king of all booty shake records, Juvenile’s “Back That Azz Up,” with both sonic callbacks from his collaborators and a “wobbledy-wobbledy” for good measure. However, Mulatto steals the show, not only balancing his testosterone-fueled perspective with a feminine counterpoint but also out-boasting him from her opening lines: “I need the CashApp ‘fore I make that ass clap / Bet when he be layin’ with his bitch he havin’ flashbacks.”

Another standout courtesy of Breeze and Zach is “Dance On The Dick,” a high-speed twerker almost guaranteed to spark a social media dance challenge. Were the strip clubs not shut down by a global pandemic, this would be the track to incite dollar-bill flurries and the most impressive displays of side-to-side booty work and the most enthusiastic drops. This is where Kash appears to be having — and provoking — the most fun. While it’s fun to hear his breezy interpretation of the Thugger moan, his staccato delivery is more propulsive, even if it does sound slightly derivative of DaBaby.

With few songs clocking in at over three minutes, Kash has just enough time to showcase his versatility without wearing out his welcome — or his limited subject matter. Kash’s lyrics can sometimes lean into being too simplistic and there isn’t much variation beyond anthems dedicated to tricking off on women, having sex with women, or the one song about getting his heart broken by women, “Thug Cry.” And this sequence on “Dance On The Dick” is downright cringey: “She’s a hottie, plus she got a body / And she do pilates, ride the dick like a Ducati / I like some wasabi, Chinese bitch, I call her taki.”

But overall, Kash’s splashy debut exhibits all the hallmarks of a natural hitmaker. He doesn’t push the boundaries much, with nearly every song on the album offering a variation on a proven formula (acoustic guitar + 808s, flute + 808s, late-’90s classic samples), but he’s skilled enough as a songwriter to overcome the limitations of his narrow range of topics and derivative beats and flows. He’ll need to expand his repertoire if he wants to really stick around but with LVRN, he’s got the right management team behind him to ensure he’ll make the right moves to maximize his potential. Sometimes, less is more, and as long as he can continue to create interesting, engaging, and distinctive spins with a limited palette, he’ll keep proving that aphorism to be accurate.

Kash Only is out now via LVRN/Interscope. Get it here.

At the end of last September, regular subscribers of Dax Shepard’s Armchair Expert received an unscheduled bonus episode titled simply, “Day 7.” Based on the title and the language that fans of Shepard’s podcast have become accustomed to over the years, it wasn’t difficult to discern what the episode would be about that morning. Shepard had relapsed.

Except for who it was and the way it played out publicly on a very popular podcast, Shepard’s story was not particularly unusual. He got in a motorcycle accident earlier in 2020, and he was prescribed pills for the pain. He started saving them in order to take two at a time so that he could get high. Eventually, he began buying pills to augment his prescription. Early on during the pandemic, Shepard lied about his prescription drug use to his wife, Kristen Bell; he also lied to his podcast producer, Monica Padman; and he even lied to his AA group. He accepted the cake for his 16th year of sobriety while high.

In the end, Shepard came clean on “Day 7” because of the themes of transparency and honesty that have made his podcast so popular. However, as he told Ellen Degeneres on her Tuesday episode, he really “did not want” to go public with his relapse “at all.” He worried about the embarrassment of the revelation, but he also had “bizarre fears” about losing his podcast.

“I have sponsors on my show — is that something that could cost me money financially?” he wondered.

In the end, however, the fear of losing his audience by not being honest is what drove him to come clean. “I get so much esteem out of being someone who’s vocally sober,” he told DeGeneres. “And I have people who write me — ‘I’m month one’ or ‘I’m week two’ — and I love that. That’s my favorite thing about being in public, and so I was just terrified I would lose that. I really cherish that.”

A friend, however, showed Shepard how to see the confession in a new light. “If your real goal is to help people,” his friend told him, “it’s not very helpful that you’re 16 years sober and married to Kristen Bell. In fact, that probably makes their life worse. So the fact that you just fell, that’s the actual value.” Once Shepard was able to gain that perspective, “it got a lot easier.”

The Armchair Expert, meanwhile, continues on. Yesterday, Justin Timberlake was the guest on Shepard’s 286th episode.

Andrew Wiggins has never managed to live up to the hype that surrounded him as a prospect coming into the 2014 NBA Draft when he was taken first overall. Wiggins was, briefly, a member of the Cleveland Cavaliers before being traded that same summer to the Minnesota Timberwolves as a centerpiece of the Kevin Love trade after LeBron James returned home.

In the years since, Wiggins has been solid if unspectacular, but most importantly, even when paired with fellow top pick Karl-Anthony Towns, the winning never came consistently in Minnesota. Wiggins was dealt to the Warriors last season in the D’Angelo Russell trade, partially as a reclamation project and partially as a salary dump from Minnesota. Thus far this season, Wiggins isn’t producing at the raw level he did in his best years in Minnesota, averaging 17.8 points, 5.1 rebounds, and 2.2 assists per game, but his efficiency has seen a jump — most notably shooting 40 percent from three — and he’s embraced his role as a secondary weapon alongside Stephen Curry.

On Monday night, Wiggins had 23 points in a win over his old squad, and after the game was asked about the emotions of facing Minnesota as well as why he seems to feel so comfortable in Golden State — during which he illuminated some things he seemed to think were differences in the team cultures.

Wiggins citing the Warriors “winning culture” over and over, as well as noting how they’re “organized” and “straightforward” with players certainly seemed like a bit more than just fawning praise on his new club. It also seemed to be a point about the problems the Timberwolves have as an organization, and why they haven’t been able to establish a winning culture of their own. While many saw this as Wiggins burying his old team, the fact of the matter is, he’s not wrong. These aren’t new critiques of what goes on in Minnesota, and while Wiggins was once considered part of the problem there, we have heard all of these things before when Jimmy Butler was pushing his way out.

It surely won’t endear Wiggins to the Wolves fanbase, but it’s also pretty much an accurate assessment of the uphill climb still facing Minnesota to try and establish an identity and a culture. For Wiggins, he’s gotten to see what that looks like now in Golden State, where roles are more defined and there’s an expectation of accountability across the board, including from players in the locker room. It’s clear that’s left an imprint on Wiggins and has him excited about his new digs.

Chris Hemsworth shared a photo commemorating the first day of shooting on the highly anticipated Thor: Love and Thunder, but the actor did more than just build up hype for his latest Marvel adventure. In a heartfelt post, Hemsworth endorsed efforts to change the date for “Australia Day,” which coincided with the start of filming on Love and Thunder. The national holiday was enacted in 1994 but has faced significant pushback from indigenous communities who have dubbed the event “Invasion Day” due to its celebration of the arrival of the British First Fleet. Using his Marvel clout, Hemsworth endorsed efforts to find a day that all Australians can join together and honor their country without condoning the evils of colonization. Via Instagram:

Many see January 26th as a date signifying the beginning of dispossession, disease epidemics, frontier violence, destruction of culture, exploitation, abuse, separation of families and subjection to policies of extreme social control. Let’s begin the healing and stand together in unity and support with our First Nations people with solidarity and compassion. Let’s find a date where all Australians can celebrate this beautiful country together.

In the photos shared the Thor star, he’s joined by Love and Thunder director Taika Waititi as the two take place in a “Welcome to Country” ceremony performed by aboriginal dancers.

You can see Hemsworth’s Instagram post below:

Chris Pratt is also in country to reprise his role of Star-Lord and keep his hilarious rivalry with Thor going following the events of Avengers: Endgame, and there are reports that even more cast members from the Guardians of the Galaxy are quarantining in Australia to shoot cameos for the film.

(Via Chris Hemsworth on Instagram)

No one is enjoying the arrival of the Biden administration more than Dr. Anthony Fauci.

After a year of serving under Trump’s regime, Fauci’s once again making press appearances where he seems practically giddy at the thought of a Commander-in-Chief who believes in science and values facts over propaganda. The director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases has advised seven U.S. presidents during various health crises, but now, with Trump out of office, he’s getting candid about how difficult it was to manage the COVID-19 outbreak under the reality TV star’s administration.

Fauci, who received death threats from Trump supporters and seemed to constantly be in President Trump’s crosshairs for refusing to downplay the pandemic, told the New York Times that his “anxiety” started to escalate when New York City was hit with an onslaught of cases and Trump wanted to downplay the numbers:

“It coincided very much with the rapid escalation of cases in the northeastern part of the country, particularly the New York metropolitan area. I would try to express the gravity of the situation, and the response of the president was always leaning toward, ‘Well, it’s not that bad, right?’ And I would say, ‘Yes, it is that bad.’ It was almost a reflex response, trying to coax you to minimize it. Not saying, ‘I want you to minimize it,’ but, ‘Oh, really, was it that bad?”

Fauci began to grow even more concerned over Trump’s tendency to believe anecdotes from his business partners rather than the scientifically-proven data Fauci was giving him:

“The other thing that made me really concerned was, it was clear that he was getting input from people who were calling him up, I don’t know who, people he knew from business, saying, ‘Hey, I heard about this drug, isn’t it great?’ or, ‘Boy, this convalescent plasma is really phenomenal’ And I would try to, you know, calmly explain that you find out if something works by doing an appropriate clinical trial; you get the information, you give it a peer review. And he’d say, ‘Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, this stuff really works.’ He would take just as seriously their opinion — based on no data, just anecdote — that something might really be important. It wasn’t just hydroxychloroquine, it was a variety of alternative-medicine-type approaches. It was always, ‘A guy called me up, a friend of mine from blah, blah, blah.’ That’s when my anxiety started to escalate.”

Basically, Trump sounds like everyone’s conservative suburban aunt who spends too much time on Facebook and WebMD, but instead of just spewing eye-rolling nonsense over your family’s monthly Zoom call, he was telling millions of American’s to inject bleach into their veins or to start taking drugs with dangerous side effects. That’s when Fauci knew things were bad.

“I just said, ‘Oh my goodness gracious.’ I could just see what’s going to happen,” Fauci told CNN about Trump’s suggestion that disinfectant might fight the virus. “You’re going to have people who hear that from the President and they’re going to start doing dangerous and foolish things, which is the reason why, immediately, those of us who were not there said, ‘This is something you should not do.’ Be very explicit. The (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) came out, I think, the next day and put in one of their publications, ‘Do not do this.’”

The good news? Now that Biden is in office, things seem to be looking up for Fauci and the virology experts that work for him. He’s already admitted how “liberating” it’s been to give White House press briefings that focus solely on facts and data, and the new administration seems intent on ramping up the government’s response to the pandemic, which continues to ravage nearly every part of the country.

We’ve all been suffering, but we’ll give Fauci this win. He deserves it.

(Via New York Times & CNN)