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As it turns out, the Philadelphia 76ers will be buyers ahead of the 2024 NBA trade deadline. Despite Joel Embiid’s knee injury that has his status for the remainder of the year up in the air, Shams Charania of The Athletic reports that the team is set to acquire Buddy Hield from the Indiana Pacers.

Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN confirmed the deal, and reported that the Sixers will send Marcus Morris, Furkan Korkmaz, and a trio of future second-round picks to Indiana.

Hield’s name has seemingly been linked to the Sixers for years as a target on the trade market, and the team will now acquire him for the stretch run this year before he’s slated to hit unrestricted free agency in the summer. He should be able to provide some much-needed floor spacing, regardless of whether or not Embiid is able to come back — on the year, Philadelphia is 27th in the league in threes made per game and 26th in the league in threes attempted per game. They also sit in 27th in three-point attempt rate.

While Hield’s numbers aren’t as gaudy as they have been in years past, he is still among the league’s best high-volume shooters. As a member of the Pacers, Hield’s averaged 12 points in 25.7 minutes per game while shooting 38.4 percent from behind the three-point line.

Miles Bridges entered Thursday’s trade deadline as a player to watch, as his name got kicked around in potential deals in the previous few days. All of this came with a pretty big caveat: Bridges, who took the qualifying offer from the Charlotte Hornets before this season, had the ability to veto any trade if he wanted.

It turns out Bridges won’t even get to the point of being traded. According to ESPN’s Brian Windhorst, Bridges told the Hornets that he would not approve of any trade, meaning he’s going to stay in Charlotte going forward. Marc Stein confirmed the news.

There is a financial incentive for Bridges, who did not play last season and missed the first 10 games of this year in the aftermath of his arrest due on domestic violence charges in June of 2022, to stay with the Hornets, as a trade means that he would give up his Bird Rights ahead of unrestricted free agency in the summer. Phoenix was the team most closely linked to a potential Bridges deal, although it is unclear what the Suns would have given up to acquire him.

Bridges is averaging 21.3 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 3.2 assists per game on 45.8/36.1/87.1 shooting splits with the Hornets this season.

On September 24, 2023 (better known in some circles as the date of the Taylor Swift-Travis Kelce hard launch), Usher was revealed as the Apple Music Super Bowl LVIII Halftime Show performer. He simultaneously announced his next album, Coming Home, and sat down with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe to unpack the album’s message. It was initially due out during Super Bowl LVIII at Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas (Usher’s home away from home) on Sunday, February 11, but Usher must have realized competing for eyeballs with the Super Bowl was unwise, so he changed the release date to Friday, February 9.

What Time Will Usher’s Coming Home Be On Apple Music?

Usher is not like every other artist, but in this regard, he is. Like most every other album ever released, Usher’s Coming Home is expected to hit DSPs, including Apple Music, at midnight ESP (9 p.m. PST).

Usher shared the 20-song tracklist last week, as seen below:

The R&B icon also announced his Past Present Future Tour. The North American trek is scheduled to begin at Capital One Arena in Washington, DC on August 20, 2024 and wrap with back-to-back shows at Chicago’s United Center on October 28-29, 2024. The fan pre-sale is slated for Friday, February 9, at 10 a.m. local time ahead of the general public on-sale on Monday, February 12, at 10 a.m. local time. Find more information here.

Usher is preparing to drop his new album, Coming Home, very soon — and fans are extremely excited. It is going to be a major weekend for the musician, as he will perform at the Apple Music Halftime Show at the Super Bowl on Sunday, February 11.

As a full-circle moment, he will take the stage at Las Vegas’ Allegiant Stadium. It comes after he wrapped his residency in the city at the end of 2023 but is still set to headline the Lovers & Friends Festival there later this year. Those in other cities will also get to see him, with more tour dates available here.

Here’s what to know about when Usher’s new album will be available to stream on Spotify.

What Time Will Usher’s ‘Coming Home’ Be On Spotify?

Usher’s Coming Home is out on Spotify at 12 a.m. ET tonight, or, if you’re on the west coast, you can listen to the album at 9 p.m. PT. Any other time zones would be converted from those as measures.

The album will include a ton of collaborations, with the title track featuring Burna Boy, Summer Walker and 21 Savage on “Good Good,” H.E.R. on “Risk It All,” Jung Kook of BTS on the “Standing Next To You (Remix),” and more.

Coming Home is out 2/9 via Mega/Gamma. Find more information here.

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

A few weeks ago, Uproxx was hot on the trail as to whether Maggie Rogers would drop an album in 2024. Rogers’ most recent LP was Surrender in July 2022, so any new music would be welcomed at any time. Luckily, Rogers won’t make her fans wait much longer. On Thursday morning, February 8, Rogers announced her third LP, Don’t Forget Me, is due to release on April 12 via Capitol Records, and the title track is already here.

“I wanted to make an album that sounded like a Sunday afternoon,” Rogers explained, per press release. “Worn in denim. A drive in your favorite car. No make up, but the right amount of lipstick. Something classic. The mohair throw and bottle of Whiskey in Joan Didion’s motel room. An old corvette. Vintage, but not overly Americana. I wanted to make an album to belt at full volume alone in your car, a trusted friend who could ride shotgun and be there when you needed her.”

The album was co-produced by Rogers and Ian Fitchuk, and the “Don’t Forget Me” video “was filmed in Super 8 in Maine.”

The intimate song captures Rogers’ reflecting on her place in life compared to those around her (“My friend Sally’s getting married / And to me, that sounds so scary / I’m still tryin’ to clean up my side of the street”) while appreciating where she’s at for now (“Love me til your next somebody / Oh, but promise me that when it’s time to leave / Don’t forget me”), especially because indulging the temporary allows for infinite possibility (Maybe there’s a stranger standing, holding out for love, just waiting / On the next street / Just for me”).

Watch the “Don’t Forget Me” video above. Below, check out the Don’t Forget Me album artwork and tracklist as well as Rogers’ open letter about the album.

Side A

1. “It Was Coming All Along”
2. “Drunk”
3. “So Sick of Dreaming”
4. “The Kill”
5. “If Now Was Then”

Side B

6. “I Still Do”
7. “On & On & On”
8. “Never Going Home”
9. “All The Same”
10. “Don’t Forget Me”

“I have had so much fun at every stage of making this album. I think you can hear it in the songs. And I’m finding it’s sort of the key ingredient to making all of this really fly.

This album was written over five days, two songs a day – three days in December 2022, two in January 2023. It was written in chronological order.

Some of the stories on this album are mine. And for the first time really, some of them are not. The moments that are mine feel like memories – glimpses from college, details from when I was 18, 22, 28 (I’m 29 now). In writing the album sequentially, at some point a character emerged. I started to picture a girl on a roadtrip through the American south and west. A sort of younger Thelma & Louise character who was leaving home and leaving a relationship, processing out loud, finding solace in her friends and in the promise of a new city and new landscape. I tried to capture her life with the intimacy of Linda McCartney’s photographs, spontaneous and open and free. She’s starting over, turning the page on a new chapter in her life. Some of the stories and details in the songs are from friends or from the news. Some I just completely made up, or rather, sort of flew out of me. Pen to paper. Fully formed. There they were. I think in this way, some of the deepest truths about my present were able to come forward. I wasn’t looking for them or digging them up, harvesting their stories before they had the chance to become fully grown. The truths about my life came from my deepest intuition. Things I wasn’t ready to say out loud to myself, but they found a place in the music.

Eight of the ten songs were written with my sole collaborator and teammate on this album, Ian Fitchuk. The other two songs I uncovered on my own and were the product of my long friendship with Lee Foster, the Electric Lady manager who, in the days before Christmas, realized I was on a roll and gifted me an extra day of studio time to keep working and catching the songs coming through my hands.

Ian and I co-produced the album together, and he plays most of the instruments on the album. He’s such an amazingly gifted player and feeler, and has become an even better friend. We had never worked together before this record, but in late November of 2022, I had a whispering feeling that we could make something interesting together and I DM’d him out of the blue wondering if he’d be open to give it a shot. I’m so grateful he said yes. These songs and session days are a record of our first time meeting in person, and it’s so exciting to feel that we’ve only just scratched the surface.

Most of the performances you’ll hear are first takes. The recordings were initially a collection of demos to be re-recorded with a band. I think this is how and why it all came into being in the way that it did. I just thought we were playing, musically shaking hands for the first time. We met again in March to try to beef up the arrangements, but every time we tried to change them, we kept feeling like we lost something. When we listened back, we realized that taking the pressure off allowed us to drop our guards and pretenses in the studio, the result being a whole lot of character and heart. That week of throwing shit at the wall and testing our ideas turned the casualness of our original process into a deliberate creative choice that we could stand behind as an album. We decided to leave all the pieces that make the recordings feel real and feel human. Like performances, instead of manufactured or gridded perfection. In the end, the album was made because we weren’t trying to make an album.

There’s a warmth to Don’t Forget Me. In many ways, it feels like coming home, returning to the music and songwriting that grounded me when I first started making art in my bedroom when I was 16. My friends keep saying it sounds like the version of me that they know. Something looser, or sassier, or sillier than I’ve shown in public before. I wanted to make an album that sounded like a Sunday afternoon. Worn in denim. A drive in your favorite car. No make up, but the right amount of lipstick. Something classic. The mohair throw and bottle of Whiskey in Joan Didion’s motel room. An old corvette. Vintage, but not overly Americana. I wanted to make an album to belt at full volume alone in your car, a trusted friend who could ride shotgun and be there when you needed her.

The album’s title track is also out today. After an entire summer of playing this song live it feels GOOD to finally be feeling the levity of release. The song is a rough journal entry about going to a bunch of friends’ weddings and feeling so happy for them, but also realizing that I’m very simply in a different place in my life. I’ve joked with my friends that it’s a song about having low expectations, but really I think it’s about craving simple baselines – a good lover or someone that’s nice to me. When it comes down to it, our memories and relationships are all we have. I don’t have a lot of asks, but I want my time spent on this earth to add up to something. For it all to be worth it in the end. I think remembering someone can be the greatest form of loving because when we remember, the love lives on. When I’m standing at the end of my life, I hope a lifetime of accumulated love is what I’m left with.

I think its inherent that we give and take from each other. And that even with all the best intentions there can be some destruction too – take my money, wreck my Sundays. There are simple things I think we’d all give up for love. I think it’s just about wanting our sacrifices or suffering to be meaningful. To have it all not be forgotten. Don’t forget me.

This has been such a transformational and special time in my life. I’m so grateful for many years of support and care I’ve been offered to let me come to all of this in my way and in my time. I can honestly say I’m more ready than I’ve ever been…and most importantly, I’m having a blast. I hope you love this record as much as I do.”

Don’t Forget Me is out 4/12 via Capitol Records. Find more information here.

Now that he’s in his post-The Daily Show career, Trevor Noah is making it clear that he’s no stranger to innovation. In a bold new move, Noah produced a new comedy special on an unexpected platform: Fortnite.

The wildly popular online game has featured several musical performances in recent years, but Noah thinks Fortnite can go one step further and be a destination for comedy as well. The comedian’s calling the project JokeNite, and the first special is already live on the platform.

“With JokeNite Royale, we’re blending two things my mom never wanted me to get into, comedy and gaming,” Noah said in a statement. “I’m excited to step into this uncharted territory, breaking down traditional barriers and offering a fresh, dynamic way for fans to experience comedy.”

The first special features comedians Matthew Broussard, Preacher Lawson, Scott Seiss and Marcia Belsky who all performed in a Fortnite outfit, “against the backdrop of a digitally rendered comedy club.”

JokeNite launched on Wednesday night, and here’s how you can watch it via The Hollywood Reporter:

It’s at island code 6296-7829-6524 if you want to experience it for yourself, or on the “Epic Picks” section of the discovery page.

Noah’s JokeNite project also arrives on the heels of a massive investment from Disney into Epic Games, the makers of Fortnite.

In a press release to CNBC, Disney announced that it’s dropped $1.5 billion into a partnership with Epic to create an “entertainment universe” where anyone can “play, watch, shop and engage with content, characters and stories from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar and more.”

(Via The Hollywood Reporter)

Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires are getting divorced, according to records found by Rolling Stone. It shows that Isbell filed on December 15, 2023, after the musician powerhouse couple had been married for over ten years.

The publication notes that they first met in 2003, and managed to stay in the same circles in the years since. The two were married in February of 2013 and would have a daughter, Mercy Rose, in 2015.

As for a possible reason for the separation, Isbell and Shires had been open about the former’s struggles with drinking, which she got him to go to rehab for. They also struggled with the other person writing about their relationship. In 2020, while Isbell was making an album, Shires reportedly felt creatively ignored and decided to stay at a motel.

Last year, they also appeared in his HBO documentary titled Running With Your Eyes Closed. In it, the two did not hide their difficulties in the marriage, as Shires even shared an email she sent to him about counseling.

“I’ll never go back and watch it again,” Isbell would go on to tell GQ just last month. “But we told people the truth, and it was good they saw that, because that’s the job.”

However, by that point, the divorce had already been filed.

In the new psychological thriller Miller’s Girl, a college student played by Jenna Ortega “embarks on a creative odyssey” with her much older teacher (Martin Freeman). The official synopsis continues, “As lines blur and their lives intertwine, professor and protégé must confront their darkest selves while straining to preserve their individual sense of purpose and the things they hold most dear.”

Miller’s Girl has been criticized by people who haven’t even seen it for the inappropriate relationship between 21-year-old Ortega and 52-year-old Freeman, especially in a “gross” sex scene that’s gone viral. But the film’s intimacy coordinator, Kristina Arjona, told the Daily Mail that the Beetlejuice Beetlejuice actress was extremely involved and “comfortable” during filming.

“There was many, many people throughout this process, engaging with [Jenna] to make sure that it was consistent with what she was comfortable with, and she was very determined and very sure of what she wanted to do,” she explained. “Part of my job too is supporting her decisions. I adapt to whatever is the comfort level of my actors, especially on a production like this where there is a large age gap between the actors.”

Arjona was “hyper aware” of both Ortega and Freeman, “and making sure that we’re consistently checking in and that at no point are any of their boundaries being surpassed. And again, making sure – especially with someone who’s significantly younger – that they are giving continuous consent.” She added that due to the senstivie subject material, there were “different variations of how they wanted to shoot these scenes so that audiences could watch them at test screenings to see what was too much.”

Miller’s Girl is out in theaters now.

(Via the Daily Mail)

The Boys has been judiciously expanding thus far with a Diabolical appetizer and the successful Gen V spinoff, which will ride for a second season. The main series will return sometime this year with Season 4, although an official return date hasn’t been publicized yet. As well, a Mexico-set series will materialize sometime in the next few years, although yeah, what about that fourth season?

Well, there still isn’t a precise release date on the calendar. However, (probably) good news has (allegedly) surfaced via ComicBook, which points towards Hollywood North Buzz, a website that keeps track of filming in the Toronto area: “The Boys will be back in Toronto this Spring and Summer to shoot season 5.”

Reportedly, the series will film in Toronto from April through August, and reading between the lines, we can guess that Amazon is dropping each season of this IP in succession. We already know that The Boys Season 4 will pick up mere days after the events of the Gen V finale. Ideally, they will have cranked Homelander back into the sky again (Antony Starr just loves that), and then we might see Gen V and The Boys complete another round before The Boys: Mexico makes it to air/streaming.

Plenty of superhero satire to look forward to, in other words.

Or this could all be untrue, who knows? Only Homelander.

(Via Comic Book & Hollywood North Buzz)

Long before Ben Affleck married a mega-famous singer, he kissed another. In a post on her now-private Instagram account, Britney Spears casually revealed that she made out with the Dunkin fanatic.

“Cool pic of me and Ben Affleck and Diane Warren years ago!!!” she wrote. “He’s such an amazing actor. Did I fail to mention I made out with Ben that night… I honestly forgot… damn that’s crazy !!! Wish I could tell you guys the story that happened before that !!! Oh dear, I’m just being a gossip girl. Psss I actually forgot!!!”

The photo (which also features legendary songwriter Diane Warren) was taken in 1999, when Spears turned 18 and Affleck turned 27. It’s also the year of …Baby One More Time for her and Dogma and Forces of Nature for him.

According to Page Six, “Spears’ brief fling with Affleck, 51, may have played out before the Princess of Pop started dating Justin Timberlake that same year. The ‘Gimme More’ songstress, 42, and the *NSYNC member, 43, sparked romance rumors in the spring of 1999, despite Spears telling Rolling Stone at the time that she had ‘no feelings at all’ for Timberlake and was solely focused on her career.” We all know how that worked out.

Come think of it, Gone Girl would make a great title for a Britney comeback album.

(Via Page Six)