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At this point, it’s rare to see something that feels truly new in the NBA. For every player that’s entered the league with the “unicorn” tag, someone has followed close in line to make their skillset feel less unique.

Victor Wembanyama, though, feels different. He was dubbed a generational prospect — the best since LeBron James — and that somehow undersold him. The Spurs put training wheels on him through the first third of the season, allowing him to grow more comfortable with life in the NBA. But since the calendar flipped to 2024, he has been unleashed as the centerpiece of everything when on the court (while still held under 30 minutes per game on average) and manages to do things almost every single night that leaves people shaking their head in disbelief.

When I asked Jayson Tatum what separates good players from great players during our conversation over All-Star weekend, he explained that consistency allows you to take a leap into the league’s upper echelon. The NBA is full of the best basketball players to ever walk the planet and they’re all capable of a big night at any given time, but the great ones are able to give you that night after night.

I’ve thought about that a lot as we’ve watched Wembanyama spread his wings over the past couple months. It’s not just that he’s capable of doling out the league’s first 5×5 since 2019, it’s that he threatens to do so on a terrifyingly regular basis. It’s not that he’s capable of a triple double with blocks (the first since 2021), it’s that he has 17 games with five or more blocks this season. This includes five of the last six, with that sixth game featuring only four blocks.

Since the start of January, Wembanyama is averaging 23.0 points, 10.2 rebounds, 3.9 assists, 3.7 blocks, and 1.4 steals per game in just 27.9 minutes a night. In that stretch, he’s had one truly bad game (15 points, one rebound in 22 minutes against Orlando) and a couple middling ones over the course of 27 outings. The rest, with pretty much every team focusing their efforts on him, have been sensational. That is the mark of a special player, and something we rarely see from a guy at this age on a team that is as rough around the edges as the Spurs.

On Sunday night in a win over the Pacers, Wembanyama put up another rather hysterical stat line with 31 points (11-for-17 shooting, 3-for-4 from three), 12 rebounds, six assists, and six blocks in 31 minutes of action. He did all of these things in this game:

1. Used his comical reach to throw down a poster dunk on Jalen Smith.

2. Used that same comical reach to get an absurd block on Obi Toppin.

3. Flashed the passing skills with a pair of silly looks to teammates — a no-look off of some outrageous handles for a man his size, then a wrap-around pass taking advantage of his preposterously long arms.

4. Hit back-to-back ridiculously smooth looking three-pointers off the dribble in the third quarter to end a Pacers run.

5. Capped it all off by flipping the ball in for an and-1 that helped seal the win.

You can put together a compilation like this from just about every Wembanyama game over the last two months, which just isn’t normal. It’s not only that he is capable of doing things no one else can thanks to his combination of length, quickness, handle, shooting skill, and fluidity. It’s that he’s already putting his otherworldly tools together to do those things every night, rather than just showing flashes and glimpses of potential here and there.

What’s maybe most terrifying about Wembanyama is, as my colleague Bill DiFilippo noted to me on Sunday, this should be the worst he will be at basketball for more than a decade. Right now, we’re watching a young man who’s scratching the surface of his potential while playing at an extremely high level, and doing so with very little in the way of a trustworthy supporting cast. The Spurs are the worst three-point shooting team in the league and only have one truly competent point guard on the roster in Tre Jones (who, it must be said, has been done an excellent job since entering the team’s starting lineup at the start of January, which, uncoincidentally, is when Wembanyama started to really break out). That raises the degree of difficulty significantly for Wembanyama on offense, but he’s still managing to put up big nights on a regular basis.

He’s starting to grow increasingly comfortable shooting the ball from deep (36.6 percent since the start of January) and is clearly building confidence in his scoring and creation ability every night. The big question everyone had for him was how he’d handle physical bigs given his thin frame, but he’s already proven to be adept at absorbing contact and using his length to still get the ball up to the rim even when he gets bodied away from it. On the other end, he is already one of the best defenders in the NBA without any question, and has room to grow as he learns some of the tricks of the trade and gets more reps to learn tendencies.

Nothing about Wembanyama and his skillset makes sense, but that’s also what makes him such a fascinating player. He’s everything he was supposed to be and somehow more as a rookie, and could very well fulfill on the promise of being the best player in the NBA sooner rather than later. That will require the Spurs to return to the top of the Western Conference, and while that feels a long way away right now, we’re already seeing that things can move very quickly with Wemby.

Donald Trump‘s brain is definitely not turning into slurry. Over the weekend, the 77-year-old had several verbal slip-ups during campaign speeches in North Carolina and Virginia, including confusing Barack Obama for Joe Biden (not the first time), pronouncing “Venezuela” in a way it’s never been pronounced before, and calling the country of Argentina a “great guy.” All in all, MeidasTouch editor-in-chief Ron Filipkowski counted 32 instances “where he mispronounced words, got confused, mixed up names, forgot names, and babbled insane nonsense.” (To be fair, Biden isn’t doing much better.)

Trump’s mental stability has slipped a lot even since 2020, according to his former former communications director, Alyssa Farah Griffin.

“I have said this before, he is not as sharp as he was in 2016 and not even a sharp as he was in 2020. For some reason, that doesn’t necessarily come across to voters the same way,” she said on CNN on Monday, according to Raw Story. “But Donald Trump is not the strongest fighter that Republicans could have right now and it’s remarkable how much voters don’t see the age as also an issue because he is only three-and-a-half years younger than President Joe Biden, but there’s something about the way they carry themselves that is just seen very differently.”

Farah Griffin added that while Trump has never been Mr. Articulate, he’s “gotten worse. It hasn’t gotten better. He’s not nearly as sharp as he was.” The folks on Morning Joe agree with her:

(Via Raw Story)

This past New Music Friday, Schoolboy Q released his first album in nearly five years, Blue Lips. The long-awaited follow-up to 2019’s Crash Talk, Blue Lips contained guest appearances from Ab-Soul, AZ Chike, Childish Major, Freddie Gibbs, Jozzy, Rico Nasty, and more. Prior to its release, Q dropped one single, “Yeern 101,” as well as teasers of several other tracks from the album, and although it’s still early, the album has already drawn major praise from critics and fans as a satisfying comeback for the South Central rapper.

It’s been so well-received so far, you may be wondering if there’s more new music on the horizon for the TDE star, particularly in the form of a deluxe re-release, which has become a standard for the music business as a whole.

Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it looks like Schoolboy isn’t a big fan of the format, so the answer is most likely a “no.” “Labels & artist kinda killed da deluxe,” he told a fan on Twitter. “it’s a scam.. no way I’m adding 3-4 songs to my album a week after it drop. I work 2 Hard on my craft for a extra 2k in sales. nobody cares.”

To be fair, the man’s got a point. During the big music industry slowdown during 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, it became common practice for artists — especially rappers — to follow-up new releases with “deluxe” editions adding a handful of new songs in the hopes of juicing streams. In some cases, a whole album’s worth of new tracks were added. While the strategy was seen as a useful middle ground to save resources from promoting EPs or mixtapes to keep artists’ buzz alive between albums, it’s rarely produced very many viable tracks or huge bumps in streaming numbers.

Perhaps Schoolboy’s decision to avoid chasing the trend will benefit him in the long run, giving fans time to actually anticipate his next release.

Last July, Sinéad O’Connor passed away from natural causes at 56 years old. The iconic Irish singer-songwriter never shied away from speaking out about various causes she cared about, and her estate is standing up for what she believed in on her behalf.

The O’Connor estate and her label, Chrysalis Records, released a statement to Variety condemning Donald Trump’s use of “Nothing Compares 2 U” at recent campaign rallies in Maryland and North Carolina.

“Throughout her life,  it is well known that Sinéad O’Connor lived by a fierce moral code defined by honesty, kindness, fairness, and decency towards her fellow human beings,” the statement reads, as per Variety. “It was with outrage therefore that we learned that Donald Trump has been using her iconic performance of ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ at his political rallies. It is no exaggeration to say that Sinéad would have been disgusted, hurt, and insulted to have her work misrepresented in this way by someone who she herself referred to as a ‘biblical devil.’ As the guardians of her legacy, we demand that Donald Trump and his associates desist from using her music immediately.”

O’Connor did, in fact, scorch Trump during an interview with the Dublin-based magazine Hot Press published in October 2020.

“I actually do believe Donald Trump is the biblical Devil, the f*cker,” O’Connor said, later adding, “I know this may sound extreme — I don’t really give a flying f*ck what everyone else thinks — but I am convinced the man is actually a Satanist. I’m convinced of it.”

Last week, Cardi B came through with a new music drop, unveiling “Like What (Freestyle).” On the track, some noticed that Cardi seems to go after the Coach brand, as she says in the chorus, “Like a Coach bag, baby, this ain’t what you want.” Two things there: The intent behind the lyric isn’t what it might seem, and Coach has offered a response to the song.

In a video shared over the weekend, Cardi explained that the lyric wasn’t a dig at Coach, but was instead a reference to Cam’ron and Vado’s 2011 song “Hey Muma,” which features the lyric, “Yo, girl, get a notepad (for what?) / You ain’t got no swag / And you so fine, it’s so sad / Still riding coach, need a Coach bag / Let me coach you, no Coach tags (what that mean?) / Get rid of that Coach bag.”

Coach saw that video and replied on X (formerly Twitter), “We love Cardi!! [heart emoji].” Cardi shared Coach’s post and added, “[weary face emoji] love [heart emoji].”

Meanwhile, Cardi recently hinted at more new music coming soon, saying in a video, “I’m not letting my anxiety, I’m not letting what haters say, I’m not letting what fans say… if I do a song, I’m gonna just f*cking drop it. Well, I got no choice because I’m dropping my album this year, so stay tuned for the announcement. But don’t play with me!”

Megan Thee Stallion has been bridging the gap between hot girls and weebs since her 2018 breakout and anime streamer Crunchyroll took notice, embracing the Houston rapper’s support by making her a presenter at this year’s Anime Awards in Japan. While on the red carpet ahead of the show, Meg participated in a quick red-carpet interview for TikTok, showing of her otaku (Japanese for “fan”) cred by sharing her go-to comfort shows, defending her favorite anime genre, and name-checking which show’s characters she’d recruit as backup dancers.

Apparently, Thee Stallion is a big fan of the action genre, saying, “As soon as the anime come on, I wanna the city getting tore up. The city need to be destroyed on the first go. I need to understand why you’re mad, what is the character development story, what are we going through — take me on that ride with you.” For back up dancers, she says the fabolous fits of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure crew would make them shoo-ins for for the role, while her comfort shows include ’90s classics Inuyasha and YuYu Hakusho, which she says she’ll even fall asleep watching (how she can do that with all the yelling and explosions is beyond me).

Meg’s put her love for action anime on display a number of times throughout her career, doing elaborate photoshoots in cosplay and even performing as Sailor Moon in Japan a few years ago. She’s had a first-look deal in place with Netflix since 2021 — wouldn’t it be fun to see Meg get her own anime one day?

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

Keeping up with new music can be exhausting, even impossible. From the weekly album releases to standalone singles dropping on a daily basis, the amount of music is so vast it’s easy for something to slip through the cracks. Even following along with the Uproxx recommendations on a daily basis can be a lot to ask, so every Monday we’re offering up this rundown of the best new music this week.

This week saw Cardi B finally pop her head up and Miley Cyrus launch her 2024 with a big collab. Yeah, it was a great week for new music. Check out the highlights below.

For more music recommendations, check out our Listen To This section, as well as our Indie Mixtape and Pop Life newsletters.

Cardi B — “Like What (Freestyle)”

New Cardi B music has become a relative rarity these past few years. She’ll drop a new single here and there, but fans are still waiting for a new album to follow 2018’s Invasion Of Privacy. As that wait continues, Cardi has given fans something to chew on with her new “Like What” freestyle, which is built on a sample of Missy Elliott’s “She’s A B*tch” and sees Cardi delivering in-your-face bars.

Charli XCX — “Von Dutch”

Since releasing Crash, Charli has made some comments indicating she might not be the most fond of the pop-leaning project in hindsight. Indeed, she appears to be moving on from made-for-radio tunes with Brat, the new album she announced last week. She also shared “Von Dutch,” which is more of an electronic club number. It’s pretty awesome.

Pharrell Williams and Miley Cyrus — “Doctor (Work It Out)”

Miley Cyrus crushed it in 2023 with “Flowers,” and now she (along with Pharrell) have graced 2024 with “Doctor (Work It Out).” The tune is mostly carried by a relatively straightforward and rock-influenced groove, over which Cyrus delivers lyrics not-so-subtly teasing some nighttime extracurriculars.

Kacey Musgraves — “Too Good To Be True”

Musgraves has so far been in her gentle era as she rolls out her new album, Deeper Well. She continued that trend last week with “Too Good To Be True,” which is largely just Musgraves and an acoustic guitar as she expresses some uncertainty when it comes to getting vulnerable.

Faye Webster — “Thinking About You”

Webster’s fantastic new album Underdressed At The Symphony is out now, and she sets the table with the project’s opening number, “Thinking About You.” The six-minute song creates its own atmosphere with chilled-out instrumentation and Webster’s comforting vocals, all with a dynamism that indicates what’s to come from the rest of the LP.

Schoolboy Q — “Thank God 4 Me”

Schoolboy Q is chasing another No. 1 album to follow his first one, Oxymoron from 2014. He might have a good shot with his latest, Blue Lips: Uproxx’s Aaron Williams notes of the project, “His freewheeling philosophy of rhyme is looser than ever and his beat selection slinks coolly from jazz to blues to menacing hard rock to doo-wop soul — all genres that saturate the streets of his beloved South Central, Los Angeles.”

St. Vincent — “Broken Man”

While St. Vincent went all in on a 1970s aesthetic for her previous album, Daddy’s Home, she’s clearly heading in a different direction on All Born Screaming, her upcoming LP. She announced the project last week, when she also shared “Broken Man,” which wades into alternative/industrial territory before working an aggressive rock influence into the mix.

J Balvin, De La Ghetto, and Jowell & Randy — “Triple S”

J Balvin teams up with De La Ghetto and Jowell & Randy on his latest, “Triple S.” The song title stands for “Suelta, Soltera, Sin Nadie Que La Joda,” which in English loosely means “Single, Strong And Not To Be Messed With.” Indeed, the punchy song sees the artists celebrating women and all their strength.

Mannequin Pussy — “Loud Bark”

MP worked with producer John Congleton on their new album I Got Heaven, and it’s a collaboration that has clearly worked out. The project is out now and songs like the dark and atmospheric “Loud Bark” show the group adding a polish to their sound without completely sanding off the edge.

Fred Again.., Lil Yachty, and Overmono — “Stayinit”

Yachty has been expanding his artistic boundaries a lot lately. His latest collab sees him entering the worlds of Fred Again.. and Overmono with “Stayinit,” yet another club banger from Fred that carries the momentum of his star-making 2023 into the new year.

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

Last Thursday, February 29, Karol G had a traumatic experience when her private jet, carrying 16 people, was forced to make an emergency landing in Van Nuys.

According to ABC7 Los Angeles, the cause was the pilot reporting mid-air that there was “smoke in the cockpit.” The outlet relayed, “Greeted by emergency crews, the plane made a smooth landing at Van Nuys Airport around 9 p.m., and there didn’t appear to be any injuries.”

Over the weekend, Karol G continued her tour in support of her album Mañana Será Bonito. Karol G appeared to reference her flight scare while on stage. Pop Crave aggregated a TikTok by @london.sebas, which shows Karol G emotionally addressing her crowd in Guatemala. As per Pop Crave’s translation from Spanish to English, the multi-platinum Colombian star said, in part, “I don’t know what’s happening energetically, but whatever it is, I’m not going to give up. And you came to see my show.”

On Wednesday, March 6, Karol G will be honored as Billboard‘s 2024 Woman Of The Year at the annual Billboard Women In Music Awards at YouTube Theater at Hollywood Park in Los Angeles, California. As per Billboard, Karol G is set to perform at the ceremony.

The most-watched video on Saturday Night Live‘s official YouTube channel is “Porn Teacher,” an otherwise forgettable sketch that has 102 million views because of the search term-friendly title alone. The third most-watched video is a Harry Potter parody where Lindsay Lohan plays Hermione and Harry and Ron turn into the Tex Avery wolf over her summer “growth spurt.” The fourth-most watched video is one where Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone make out. The only non-horndog video in the top four is “Black Jeopardy with Tom Hanks,” at least for now.

While hosting SNL over the weekend, Sydney Sweeney played a Hooters waitress who is bad at her job but rakes in thousands of dollars in tips. The title of the sketch: “Hooters Waitress.” It already has nearly two million views and probably been GIF’d nearly as many times.

The sketch has also received a response from the Hooters account on X.

“Sydney, if you work one more shift before hanging up your orange shorts, we’ll donate the day’s proceeds to The V Foundation for Cancer Research,” @Hooters wrote, adding hashtags for Sweeney, SNL, and The V Foundation, which has raised over over $353 million for cancer research.

You can watch “Hooters Waitress” above. And more from Sweeney’s episode here.

Following the passing of Richard Lewis last week, Curb Your Enthusiasm dedicated its latest episode to the passing of the beloved actor/comedian who was a regular guest on the Larry David series.

According to PEOPLE, Sunday’s episode of Curb started with a dedication card that read, “In memory of Richard Lewis. 1947 – 2024.”

Prior to the dedication card, Larry David among the numerous stars who paid tribute to Lewis shortly after news of his death broke.

“Richard and I were born three days apart in the same hospital and for most of my life he’s been like a brother to me,” David said in a statement released by HBO on Wednesday, February 28, the day of Lewis’ death. “He had that rare combination of being the funniest person and also the sweetest. But today he made me sob, and for that I’ll never forgive him.”

The two comedians had a curmudgeonly rapport that started right out of the gate. During an August 2023 interview, Lewis opened up about the first time he met David when they were both just kids. It didn’t go great.

“I disliked him intensely,” Lewis recalled. “He was cocky, he was arrogant. When we played baseball, I tried to hit him with the ball: we were arch-rivals. I couldn’t wait for the camp to be over just to get away from Larry. I’m sure he felt the same way.”

However, the two men reconnected over a decade later when they were both working the New York standup scene. Their old baseball rivalry no longer mattered and Lewis and David became dear friends, including working together on Curb right up until Lewis’ passing.

(Via PEOPLE)