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2 Chainz has been fairly busy this weekend. Kicking things off Thursday night, the Atlanta rapper was joined by Rick Ross for a Verzuz battle. The following night, 2 Chainz shared his “Money Maker” single with Lil Wayne, signaling that his Collegrove 2 effort with is, indeed, nearing an arrival. Closing his productive weekend, 2 Chainz officially joined Michelle Obama’s When We All Vote nonpartisan initiative with a message directed at the formerly incarcerated.

In his two-and-a-half-minute message, 2 Chainz urged former inmates to look into laws in their respective states and confirm whether or not they are able to vote in this upcoming election. It’s an effort to clear up a misconception in some cases that former inmates are no longer able to vote following their convictions. In the statement, 2 Chainz lists the main things that are the deciding factors for whether or not a former inmate will be able to participate in an election. While voting rights differ from state to state, 2 Chainz mentions that in most states, ex-inmates will have their rights restored following their release from prison. If ex-inmates see that they do qualify to vote, the rapper urged them to register if they have not in order to participate in the upcoming election.

2 Chainz’s message comes after Snoop Dogg revealed in an interview on Big Boy’s Neighborhood he never voted simply because he was unaware that he could. “I ain’t never voted a day in my life, but this year I think I’m a get out and vote ’cause I can’t stand to see this punk in office,” he said. “For many years, they had me brainwashed thinking that you couldn’t vote because you had a criminal record. I didn’t know that. My record’s been expunged. So now I can vote.”

Listen to 2 Chainz’s message in the video above.

Back in December 2018, Juelz Santana was sentenced to 27 months in prison following a March 2019 incident at New Jersey’s Newark Liberty International Airport where a loaded handgun and nonprescription oxycodone pills were found in his carry-on bag. After the discovery, the rapper was charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and carrying a weapon on an aircraft. Completing 19 months of his prison sentence, the Dipset rapper was freed last week and according to a report from TMZ, he owes Meek Mill a big thank you.

Sources told TMZ that Mill wanted to ensure Santana’s early release request was filed correctly and that the entire process was followed in the best manner. To make sure this happened, the Philly rapper connected Santana’s wife, Kimbella, with a lawyer who made sure the entire process was smooth-sailing. As a result, Santana was able to come home early and steer clear from serving any time at a halfway house, seeing that most are closed because of the pandemic. He is now on supervised release and must submit to a drug test within 15 days of his release.

In other news, Santana has also committed to giving back to inmates by working with non-profits who aim to overturn sentences for wrongfully convicted inmates. He also aims to create a platform to share the music and movies written by inmates during their sentences.

(via TMZ)

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

Kanye West decided to tease some things he’s working on (outside of the music space) on Twitter over the weekend, with what appeared to be an art installation as well as browsing “underwater homes,” but what raised the most eyebrows was his tease of a Yeezy-Derrick Rose sneaker collaboration with adidas.

The Yeezy line recently debuted its first hoops sneaker — which is banned from being worn on an NBA court because of the reflective material on it — and it appears the next evolution in Kanye dabbling in the hoops space will come with fellow Chicagoan Derrick Rose, who has spent a decade with adidas, himself.

The problem is, no one knows what the hell to make of the picture Kanye put on Twitter on Saturday night teasing the collaboration, because, well, it looks more like an air filter or the cutout of a foam mattress they use to show you all the layers.

Kanye always loves pushing the boundaries of, well, everything — for better or worse — and the Yeezy-D Rose certainly would count as an avant garde attempt at a basketball sneaker. I am unsure how it’s supposed to fit snugly to one’s foot or what kind of support it provides, but it is certainly different. I think that’s about the nicest thing I can say. We will see if this ever actually comes to fruition from what is clearly, right now, a wild concept, but all I know is if it does, whether it’s actually functional or not, hypebeasts will be at your local court wearing these styrofoam coolers on their feet.

Former American Idol and current America’s Got Talent star Simon Cowell broke his back in an electric bike incident in Malibu that sent him to the hospital on Sunday. Cowell — who was just referred to as ‘Simon’ in a report from The Daily Mail, had his representation confirm the reports that the TV personality and music producer, 60, fell while taking a test ride of his new bike and was rushed to the hospital.

‘Simon has broken his back and will be having surgery this evening,’ Cowell’s representative confirmed to both The Daily Mail and Page Six. The latter has more details about the incident and his interest in biking, which he used as part of a weight loss program in recent years. People reported Sunday that Cowell required 5-hour surgery to recover from the incident, though a source described him as “lucky.”

“Simon had surgery overnight and is doing okay this morning. It was a five-hour surgery and he has had to have a number of fusions and metal rod put into his back,” a source tells PEOPLE.

“He landed on his back when he fell from the bike. The injuries are bad but he’s also been told he was lucky,” the source says.

Cowell was reportedly days away from shooting new episodes of America’s Got Talent, though it’s initially unclear if production will be delayed or he will recover in time to film.

Change is tough for everybody, especially when you are suddenly changing a team’s nickname after decades of protests and pleas from people insisting your football team’s logo and nickname was offensive to an entire group of people. For many, Washington’s NFL team losing its racist nickname is a long overdue decision that was made despite the wishes of the man who actually owns the team. Which is why any sort of struggles the franchise has in making that happen is some very satisfying schadenfreude.

The latest example of that is a failed attempt to find a new Twitter hashtag for the team’s upcoming season. On Sunday morning, the Washington Football Team’s official Twitter account tried to announce a new hashtag but quickly deleted the tweet because, well, it wasn’t a hashtag. The team is leaning hard into a traditionalist angle for the upcoming season, with the Established in 1932 aspect of the franchise a major marketing point. Which is why they wanted to change the team’s official Twitter hashtag from #HTTR — hail to the team’s former offensive nickname — to the less offensive #1932. One problem, pointed out by many when the tweet went up, is that the hashtag didn’t work because it doesn’t have any letters in it.

That tweet was quickly deleted, and the team sent out another referencing the mistake and asking fans what they think the team should use.

Even noted Washington NFL franchise fan Dale Earnhardt Jr. had an idea, though like #1932 it didn’t really stand out for a football team.

Most team hashtags are silly and not very clever anyway, so they’ll figure something out eventually. But it is interesting to see a team search for an identity on the fly, especially knowing that if they had changed the name more organically by listening to critics years ago, all of this could have gone a whole lot smoother than it has.

Draymond Green’s long list of fines is a fascinating glimpse at his NBA career, but the latest might be a preview of his post-playing days. Green was fined on Sunday $50,000 for comments he made during an eventful stint on TNT where he openly lobbied for Devin Booker to leave the Phoenix Suns organization.

Green appeared on TNT’s NBA coverage on Saturday night and had a lot of fun going back and forth with Charles Barkley about a variety of subjects. But when Green talked about another breakout performance from Booker as the scrappy Suns fight for the postseason, he apparently crossed the line and got well into tampering territory.

The news hit on Sunday morning, with the NBA making the fine official.

The NBA made it clear the fine was a result of his “get my man out of Phoenix” comments, which even Green admitted was “probably” tampering when he said it live on air. It made for great televison, sure, but as an active NBA player who has spent his entire career with an organization that built a super team and added to it in free agency, it wasn’t a great look for the league.

Booker still has plenty of work to do with the Suns this season, of course, as they try to make an improbable run into the NBA’s bubbled postseason. Green, meanwhile, has plenty of time to keep entertaining on television if he wants to. He’ll probably be more careful about what he says from now on, though.

There’s no denying the success Chika has seen so far in 2020. The Alabama native shared her debut EP Industry Games back in March and has seen rave reviews from some of the industry’s best and most popular acts, including Cardi B. Chika hopes to continue that success in the film world as she prepares to make her acting debut on August 14 through the upcoming Netflix movie, Project Power which stars Jamie Foxx and Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Taking a moment to kick it with fans on Instagram Live, things took a turn for the better when a rap legend joined the livestream.

To Chika’s surprise, Snoop Dogg joined her livestream late Saturday night and her excitement was very clear. “What the f*ck, Snoop in here?” she asked, ecstatic at the rapper’s presence. Snoop would eventually join the livestream where he used the opportunity to praise Chika and her music.

“I’m here to give you your flowers,” he announced. “I’m here to tell you I f*ck with your music. I love your sh*t. I play it. I enjoy it. I wanted to tell you that. I didn’t want to like let you hear about it. I want you hear it from me, from the Dogg’s mouth.”

Overwhlemed by his praises, Chika thanked Snoop for his compliments and returned some of her own to him calling him, “a f*cking legend, an actual goddamn pillar in our community.” The two would eventually agree to collaborate on a song after Snoop requested that he write one for her. In response, Chika said “I’m writing you a country song. It’s gonna be a Black country song,” to which Snoop replied, “Make it work. You gonna make it do what you do.”

While we wait for their upcoming collab, fans can give a listen to Chika’s new single, “U Should.”

Watch their full Instagram Live conversation above and see Chika’s reaction to the conversation in the tweets below.

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

There are a lot of frivolous purchases you can make when it comes to video games, but buying a second dock for the Nintendo Switch is certainly up there at the top. Unless your first one breaks, a second accessory device that’s mostly used to charge the hybrid console and connect it to a TV feels like excess, especially with rumors of a next-gen Switch looming.

While some gamers will go for whatever Switch is available in these trying times, the ability to play games on a TV in addition to its built-in screen is a huge asset for the console itself. It’s made the Switch a great device for things like Jackbox Party Packs, and bringing your entire console to another Switch dock elsewhere is a satisfying benefit of buying things on the console.

If you’re trying to travel with the dock itself, though, things are a bit trickier. It’s a nifty device but not meant for suitcases or backpacks. If you happen to have the perfect-sized book to wedge in its slot you’re likely not to crack it in half, but not everyone reads as light as I do. It’s a slight inconvenience for most, but the ability to travel with a Switch and put it on any TV has long been a quiet wish for many gamers.

Which is why the Genki Covert Dock for the Switch drew so much fanfare when the accessories company launched a Kickstarter for it in 2019. The AC plug did all the work the Switch dock does in a much smaller package, turning the slotted dock into a smaller wall jack with room to charge your Switch and port its video to a TV through an HDMI cable. The Kickstarter generated more than $1.7 million for Genki, making it the third most profitable campaign for gaming hardware behind the original Oculus Rift.

There isn’t much to say about the Covert Dock’s capabilities that offers any insight: it works great. Plug it in, connect an HDMI cable to a TV and a USB-C cable to the Switch and it fires right up. The USB input charges accessories and connects controllers and does everything the same port on the regular Switch dock does. If there’s anything to review here, it’s that it feels just like it should. There aren’t connectivity questions or concerns it might not work. It does what it should and doesn’t add any extra steps to playing games.

The benefits of the Covert Dock itself are obvious to the Switch, but independent of its HDMI capabilities it’s a great option as a travel charger in general. The Covert Dock comes with international adapters, and the fold-out prongs make it easy to switch to a more exotic power source. If you’re not using (or charging) your Switch at all hours, it can effectively charge MacBooks, phones and anything else that’s at its best charging at 30 watts. It also doesn’t seem to get too hot, which is always a concern when you’re swapping out device-specific chargers.

Though the device has the “covert” naming convention that’s definitely more about its size than function. It’s not the most elegant solution in practice, though, mostly because there’s nowhere to put your console once it’s connected. If you’re hiding it in a cabinet it’s not an issue, but traveling with it will look a little like this.

When you’re on the go, any gaming setup is temporary and size matters first and foremost. Which is why the Genki Covert Dock really is great: it does what it’s supposed to, and takes up far less space than what it’s replacing. The $74.99 sticker price is high compared to other docks but saving you the trouble of untangling your cables to pack up your dock might already be worth that price tag for some. The flexibility it offers on where and on which screens you play your Switch in your home is always nice, too.

The biggest problem with the potential purchase is the fact that, well, most people aren’t going anywhere right now. Its greatest utility is as a travel device first and foremost, both for the Switch and other devices that can use its small package to keep gadgets powered on the go. While testing out the Covert Dock in my bedroom I thought about all the times I could have traveled lighter with it or changed things overseas with less stress. It was a bit of a downer, honestly, to know it won’t be fully utilized in the foreseeable future. Until then, the dock is a bit of an investment in a future where the Switch’s portability is once again more asset than aspirational.

During the current worldwide pandemic, movie studios are no longer providing box-office figures because theaters have been shut down around the nation and the world. Because we are less interested in the actual figures themselves and more interested in what people are watching over the weekends, each week we will dive into Most Streamed and Bestseller Lists on Fandango, iTunes, Netflix, and Hulu to pinpoint the weekend’s most watched films.

While Christopher Nolan has been angling over the course of the pandemic to make Tenet the first major release after theaters reopen, the much smaller Solstice Studios has been planning all along to open Russell Crowe’s Unhinged two weekends before Tenet as a sort of test case for theaters. We are now less than two weeks away from the release of Unhinged, which I suspect will be when we start to finally get some real box-office numbers.

In the meantime, theater openings continue to progress in China. Now in its third weekend of release, Robert Downey Jr’s Dolittle, which was a bomb in the states, is now the top film of 2020 in China. Granted, it has only earned $15.4 million, and it only had to surpass the animated Spies in Disguise (a Christmas release in America), but at least RDJ can brag — for now — that he has the top movie of the year in the country with the second biggest box office in the world. In the meantime, the Interstellar reissue also opened in China as a tease for Tenet (and will also do so here in two weeks), and it earned $10 million at the box office, which is not bad for being in the middle of a pandemic.

Back in the states, it’s another fairly ho-hum week on the VOD and Netflix charts, as most of the buzz this weekend has been occupied by Seth Rogen’s American Pickle, which HBO Max snatched away from theaters to make available to home viewers (having seen it, it feels like a movie far more suited to the couch than the big screen, anyway). Critics so far have given it strong scores (75 percent), although audiences aren’t as keen on it (48 percent audience score). When a critical and audience split is that wide it is usually because the movie provides something that audiences aren’t expecting, and for those expecting a traditional, raunchy Seth Rogen comedy, American Pickle is decidedly not that — it is far more low-key and sweet than the comedies we typically associate with Rogen.

On the other streamers, Beyonce’s Black is King is no doubt continuing to play well on Disney+; it doesn’t appear anything has come along on Hulu to supplant Palm Springs as its top movie; and while it is hard to say what the top movie is on Peacock, The Big Lebowski is the top featured film on the service at the moment.

Meanwhile, on the VOD charts, Shia LaBeouf’s Tax Collector has taken the top spot on iTunes despite bad reviews (21 percent on RT) and some controversy surrounding the casting of LaBeouf in the David Ayer film. I haven’t seen the film yet, but I like to imagine that it belongs in the same universe as Ben Affleck’s The Accountant, and that the third in the series will be, The Insurance Adjuster.

Meanwhile, Capone jumped to number two on iTunes thanks to the $.99 rental charge, followed by The Outpost and Trolls World Tour. In at number five is Made in Italy, a film starring Liam Neeson and his son with his late wife, Natasha Richardson, Michael Richardson (reviews have been modest, 56 percent on RT).

On Fandango’s VOD charts, meanwhile, Katie Holmes’ The Secret: Dare to Dream — based on the self-help book, The Secret, is now the top film, despite being terrible. There’s not much else to report on that chart (Kevin Bacon’s You Should Have Left is number two followed again by Deep Blue Sea 3), except for those wondering what happened to Josh Hartnett. This mustache happened to Josh Hartnett, whose Most Wanted is #16 on the charts.

Finally, the Netflix charts this weekend are just weird, and very kid-and-teen friendly. The top film is a Netflix original dance film, Work It, which actually has very good reviews (80 percent on RT) based on a limited review count (15). 1993’s Dennis the Menace is number two, for some reason, followed by the original Jurassic Park (another 1993 movie), a Netflix original for kids called Malibu Rescue: The Next Wave and then Adam Sandler’s Mr. Deeds

Mid-August is usually dog days for films during normal times, and that hasn’t changed during the pandemic. Next weekend’s big feature film? Project Power on Netflix, starring Jamie Foxx, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Dominique Fishback. It’s about a magic pill that gives you superpowers … for five minutes.

Source: Deadline, Fandango, iTunes,

Man, Luka Doncic is really good at basketball, isn’t he? Doncic and the Dallas Mavericks took on the league-leading Milwaukee Bucks in the final game of Saturday night’s slate in the NBA’s Orlando bubble. Despite a fully-healthy Bucks squad, double-doubles by Giannis Antetokounmpo and Khris Middleton, and a huge evening from Brook Lopez, Dallas was able to gut out a 136-132 win in overtime.

The main reason why was the play of Doncic, who had perhaps the best game of his NBA career. The 21-year-old Slovenian standout scored 36 points on 12-for-24 shooting with a career-high 19 assists and 14 rebounds. It marked his 17th triple-double of the season, the most in the league this year, and he became the third Maverick to have at least 19 assists in a game, joining two other dudes who were quite good at passing the basketball.

The thing that is oftentimes so impressive about Doncic is the total control he is able to exert on games when he’s at his best. Everything happened at the pace he dictated, something that is oftentimes the case when the Mavericks win. He especially turned heads with his final assist of the evening — Doncic came off of a screen set by Maxi Kleber, who immediately dove to the rim.

With Antetokounmpo’s eyes locked on Doncic, the reigning Rookie of the Year laid off a cheeky between the legs pass to his big man, who dunked, made his way to the free throw line, and put the exclamation point on Dallas’ win.

Doncic was asked about the assist after the game, and like many great passers, he did not have a logical answer for why he made this happen. Instead, he gave an answer to gets to the heart of what makes him so good at setting up his teammates: he was able to immediately process what was happening and trusted his otherworldly instincts.

The performance was big for the Mavericks insofar as they have a chance to make a move up the Western Conference, although that is a bit unlikely. Currently locked in seventh, Dallas is two games behind the Oklahoma City Thunder in fifth and the Utah Jazz in sixth, and while their next game is against Utah, it would take quite a bit for them to make up that gap.

What made it a big performance, though, was it highlighted how when Doncic is at his best, Dallas is going to have a chance in any game it plays, even if it’s against the best team in the NBA. Perhaps this is something that matters more down the road — when Doncic and Kristaps Porzingis are a little older, and the franchise maybe adds a third star alongside them, and the top of the Western Conference isn’t as cluttered — but right now, the Mavericks are a dangerous group, thanks in large part to their All-Star guard.