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We haven’t really had an especially lengthy Charles Barkley riff during the 2024-25 NBA season, but with the calendar flipping to 2025, Barkley finally found something that got him fired up: Los Angeles Lakers coach JJ Redick. Recently, during our latest cycle of people freaking out about NBA television ratings, noted former media member Redick cited a lack of “storytelling” and “celebrating the game” as problems the league is facing, and went on to say that “If I’m a casual fan and you tell me every time I turn on the television that the product sucks, well, I’m not going to watch the product.”

The comments weren’t specifically directed towards anyone, but Jason McIntyre of The Herd expressed that these comments lined up with his criticisms of “Inside the NBA.” Well, word got back to Barkley about this, and despite the fact that “Inside” was trying to go through highlights of a game between the Boston Celtics and the Minnesota Timberwolves, he decided to turn his attention to Redick.

“Y’all heard JJ Redick said something about me?” Barkley asked the desk. “JJ, you better calm down, cause when you come for the king, you better not miss … He said something about we’re the reason people ain’t watching this crappy product we got. Yeah, us, like we’re out there jacking up 100 threes a night … JJ, you come for the king, you best not miss, cause I can get you, brother. Remember, I got your Lakers games. You can’t hide them flaws they got. You just a dead man walking — they got rid of Frank Vogel who did a good job, they got rid of Darvin Ham who did a good job. You came out there thinking you were gonna change things with that same ugly girl you went on a date with.”

It is again worth mentioning that Redick never specifically identified the “Inside” guys as a problem, even if McIntyre turned this into a critique of them (one that, in fairness, is not exactly uncommon). Barkley, meanwhile, continued to critique the Lakers and Redick, saying that the Lakers “stink” and sarcastically saying that Redick thought he could make things work in L.A. He also turned his attention to his issues with how the game is played.

“We’re the reason ratings are down,” Barkley said. “We’re the reason, like we’re playing. If me and Shaq played, the ratings would be down. But in fairness, if me and Shaq played, we’d be like the third and fourth best players on that Laker team right now … bums out there, but it’s Frank Vogel and Darvin Ham’s fault! I’m tired of these people jacking up 100 threes saying we’re the reason ratings are down. ‘Thirty seconds to another three-point shooting contest!’”

I’d bet that Redick is going to get asked about this the next time he talks to the media, in large part because this came from way out of left field. Again, these are all pretty common complaints about “Inside,” while Barkley’s critiques of the increase in three-point attempts is by no means unique. But still, Redick has never been shy about critiquing the media for how it discusses basketball, so unless he decides to totally ignore all of this, this has the potential to be a lengthy back-and-forth between the coach of the Lakers and the most prominent pundit in the game.

Rap fans looking forward to a new year cleansed of conflict and bad vibes after a fractious 2024 might not get their wish. Just a day into 2025, Joey Badass seems to staked his claim on the top spot in his hometown’s rap rankings for himself — a position that’s sure to be disputed by somebody in the argumentative Big Apple — with his new song “The Ruler’s Back.” But one line, taken from a classic Jay-Z hit, has some fans thinking that the rift between the East and West Coasts of hip-hop has been reopened by Joey’s chest-beating new track.

Tapping Conductor Williams and Mario Luciano to produce a soulful beat, Joey raps, “Too much West Coast dick lickin’ / I’m hearing n****s throwin’ rocks, really ain’t shit stickin’ / ‘Cause if we’re talking bar for bar, really it’s slim pickings / I rap like I draw pentagrams and kill chickens.”

The line nods to Jay-Z’s 1996 track, “22 Twos,” which appeared on his debut album, Reasonable Doubt, at the height of the friction between Suge Knight’s Death Row Records, led by Tupac Shakur, and Sean “Diddy” Combs (then known as Puff Daddy) and his imprint, Bad Boy Records, which was fronted by The Notorious B.I.G.

While Joey doesn’t name any names here, the West Coast bar is a clear nose thumbing to the past year of fanfare celebrating Kendrick Lamar and his spanking of Drake in their spring battle. It looks like he wants some of that attention back on the birthplace of hip-hop — and himself, naturally. We’ll see if anyone steps up and accepts the smoke, but something tells me we’ll be looking at a much less contentious calendar year.

When rap fans saw “RIP Wayne” trending on social media today, some of them couldn’t help panicking — then, expressing their relief that the departed musician receiving an outpouring of appreciation online wasn’t Dwayne Carter Jr. (better known as Lil Wayne), but Wayne Osmond, the second-oldest of the ’70s pop-rock group, the Osmond Brothers. Osmond was 73, passing from a stroke on New Year’s Day.

After seeing the “RIP Wayne” trend on Twitter (not “X”), fans couldn’t help noting the similarity between the two stars’ names. “I saw RIP Wayne and almost fell out,” wrote one fan. “Ya’ll have got to be more specific.”

“Respect to the Wayne that died but I saw ‘rip wayne’ under the music trending bar and I almost freaked out,” echoed another.

And, of course, the “Relieved Denzel” meme is taking over the trend, which serves as a reminder of just how big Lil Wayne is among hip-hop fans — if not the organizers of the upcoming Super Bowl Halftime Show. Despite some consternation on his part over that last bit, it seems he’s since cleared the air with this year’s performer, Kendrick Lamar.

Thankfully, it seems we’ve still got plenty of Lil Wayne to look forward to in 2025.

Talk about a star-studded team-up! Louis Vuitton has just dropped a new video announcing the LV x Takashi Murakami re-edition collection that combines Zendaya’s undeniable star power with Murakami’s colorful art, set to the music of visionary late producer SOPHIE. It’s loud, vibrant, psychedelic — everything you’d hope a team-up of this magnitude would produce. What a way to start off the new year.

The collection is a refresh of Murakami and LV’s team-up from the early 2000s and features reimagining of some of LV’s most popular signature women and men’s accessories and leather goods, including the Speedy Bandoulière, the criss-cross cardholder, Sunset Flat comfort sandals, cosmetic pouch, Keepal Bandoulière, trainers, belts, and more.

This collection is absolutely huge, we’d list as much as we can, but we’re talking about over 200 pieces across the entire LV catalog, all featuring Murakami’s iconic Y2K Superflat art style. So if you’re a fan of charms, psychedelic but playful imagery, or bright color palettes, you’re going to find a lot to love in this collection.

Instead of running through the best pieces of the collection, we’re going to instead point you in the direction of this BTS video where Zendaya breaks down the entire collection below. It’ll be a lot more fun than us just explaining it! Shop the full collection here.

Sci-fi devotees are feasting at Apple TV+ these days. From For All Mankind (which will spin off into the Star City series) to Foundation and Silo, no shortage of original-series hits exists. The tech giant’s streaming service is hard at work on the movie side, too, with an added secret weapon-team of atmospheric wizards, Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, who have scored upcoming film The Gorge. This creature feature will also star a sci-fi legend behind the leading duo, so let’s explore what to expect from his movie.

Plot

This film will land during the Valentine “season.” Don’t roll your eyes because, to that end, co-star Miles Teller told Screenrant that this movie is “good alternative programming… to your typical love story,” and Anya Taylor-Joy added that this movie weaves in “so many genres” to showing that romance. Teller further promised that “they have to go through some really entertaining, engaging, high-octane, hellacious sh*t to end up with each other,” which is supported by the film’s trailer that doesn’t hold back on story hints.

Director Scott Derickson (Sinister, Doctor Strange) helms the story of two snipers (Levi and Drasa), who are recruited by Sigourney Weaver’s mysterious character to guard opposite sides of a gorge that might be “the door to Hell,” according to a character portrayed by Sope Dirisu. The sniping duo isn’t allowed outside contact or communication with each other, but they end up falling in love (as much as two people can) through binoculars. Voyeuristically? Maybe. From Apple TV+’s film synopsis:

Two highly-trained operatives are appointed to posts in guard towers on opposite sides of a vast and highly classified gorge, protecting the world from an undisclosed, mysterious evil that lurks within. They bond from a distance while trying to stay vigilant in defending against an unseen enemy. When the cataclysmic threat to humanity is revealed to them, they must work together in a test of both their physical and mental strength to keep the secret in the gorge before it’s too late.

The film involves hefty fight-or-flight scenes and heavy stunt work, but while speaking with Collider, Teller revealed that the most difficult part of the movie to film was actually a dance scene due to technical difficulties involving a camera and wifi, which led to the pair filming “a whole day” to achieve “one shot” in the dance sequence. The lo-fi trick, apparently, was when Derrickson “just [took] the camera outside and [reset] it, and that worked.”

Another presence will loom larger than the Lovecraftian creatures in The Gorge, too. That would be the score from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, and you can always count on Reznor to be vocal about any situation. As he recently told Indiewire, the pair has now almost entirely devoted themselves to scoring films because they enjoy “the collaborative experience with interesting people.” Additionally, the pair dropped hints to GQ about their “kind of haunted, chanting murmur” that will set the mood for The Gorge, including in scenes such as “Teller and Taylor-Joy in an evil-looking spiky forest.”

Reznor, as well, praised his musical partner for their symbiotic process, in which Reznor tends to watch a scene and “improvise some music,” and then Atticus uses his “superpower” to pull everything together to actually work with the scene. Their approach has made them a go-to pair for prestige-project scores since David Fincher’s The Social Network.

Cast

The creature(s) and the atmosphere do plenty of acting in this movie, but Miles Teller and Anya Taylor-Joy are headlining with Sigourney Weaver picking up her sci-fi queen crown for another go.

Release Date

Happy Valentines Day: The Gorge streams on Feb. 14, 2025 on Apple TV+.

Trailer

The trailer sets up the movie’s romance and adventure:

PinkPantheress spent some time touring in 2024, but other than that, she was relatively quiet in terms of musical output, aside from the single “Turn It Up” and collaborations with LE SSERAFIM and Kaytranada.

It appears 2025 will be different.

On X (formerly Twitter), PinkPantheress shared a couple of photos of her in a minimal home studio setup, featuring a couple laptops and a few pieces of audio and production equipment on a desk. She also wrote, “oh we are soooo back #2025 i missed y’all [heart emojis] thanks for waiting on me [single tear emoji].”

If a new album is set for 2025, it will be PinkPantheress’ first since 2023’s Heaven Knows.

Meanwhile, PinkPantheress spent some time in 2024 ruffling feathers with her thoughts on albums and songs. In an interview, she said, “I don’t listen to albums. I just listen to songs. […] That’s why when it came to my own album, I was like, ‘Do people care about tracklisting?’ I couldn’t believe it. Some people would were like, ‘Oh, it’s a great album, but the tracklisting doesn’t make sense.’ I’m like, ‘Just listen to the songs.’”

In another interview, she declared, “I was able to experiment and making short songs was just a result of me experimenting. A song doesn’t need to be longer than two minutes 30, in my opinion. We don’t need to repeat a verse, we don’t need to have a bridge, we don’t need it. We don’t need a long outro.”

Like many of us, Rihanna rang in 2025 by counting down the final seconds of 2024.

Rihanna’s video of her New Year’s Eve celebration shows her and a group of friends eagerly waiting for 2025 to arrive. After the clock strikes midnight, Rihanna exclaims, “Y’all, I didn’t drink all year! I didn’t drink all year!” The post is also captioned, “New Year, New Me.”

While Rihanna may have been celebrating an alcohol-free 2024, some have interpreted what Rihanna said as a joke: When she spoke, it had been 2025 for just a matter of seconds, so perhaps she was playing off the fact she hadn’t yet had any alcohol in 2025.

Either way, Rihanna has seemingly not been drinking much over the past couple years. She presumably abstained while pregnant with her and ASAP Rocky’s son Riot, who was born in August 2023. Then, in April 2024, Rihanna sparked pregnancy rumors when she was spotted pretending to sip champagne.

Famously, though, Rihanna did go day drinking with Seth Meyers in 2019, and Meyers later said, “We drank the same amount and then she definitely went out. Like, she was fine. She walked out, she looked as good as she did when we started. I went home, immediately fell asleep in the hallway of my apartment. Got in the door, fell asleep.”

Meanwhile, in the comments of the New Year’s post, a user named Lorenzo wrote, “We want an album forehead.” Rihanna fired back, “listen Lorenzo! You ain’t cute enough to be calling me by my black name you dizzy f*ck!”

Something strange is happening at Taco Bell. For whatever reason, the fast food brand keeps dropping fried food outside its usual M.O. and each time, they’ve knocked it out of the park. The brand’s super-limited chicken wings are some of the best in fast food, their fries are way better than they should be, and they’ve even made a valiant attempt at doing a chicken sandwich — which again, tasted way better than anyone could’ve imagined.

And now, they’ve done it again with the new Crispy Chicken Nuggets.

Not only are these nuggets good, but they may also be the absolute best fried food dish at Taco Bell, which is really saying something considering the fries are easily top ten material. And we’d know, because we ranked 36 different fast food french fries and Taco Bell’s Nacho Fries came in 7th overall. Now imagine pairing those fries with some delicious white meat chicken nuggets? It’s weird to say but, if you want one of the best chicken and fries orders in fast food in 2025, there is an argument to be made that you might find it at Taco Bell.

Here is our full review of the surprisingly delicious Crispy Chicken Nuggets. Let’s eat!

Taco Bell’s Crispy Chicken Nuggets

Thoughts & Tasting Notes:

I ordered these nuggets with the highest amount of skepticism a person could have. I fully expected them to be downright awful. So if you’re going into this thinking, “How could these possibly be any good?” I’ve been there. Even visually, these nuggets leave a lot to be desired. When I opened my box and saw these nuggets, they struck me immediately as low quality. I imagined them to be dry, over-salted, and processed to the point that the meat would no longer resemble chicken.

I was completely wrong. Biting into this nugget, I was struck by how tender and flavorful this white meat chicken tender is. There is a well-seasoned blend of salty, garlic, onion, and black pepper flavors, with the meat giving off a juicy and tender texture. After the initial surprise of how good this dish is, I wondered if maybe I was just taken by surprise.

“Maybe this nugget isn’t good,” I thought. “Just way better than I expected.”

But nope, a few bites later, and still delicious!

When we taste test new dishes, we don’t go in hungry, as that might influence our feelings about a dish. So I had already had lunch by the time I tried the nuggets, and I ended up liking the dish so much I finished every nugget — all without every dipping one in sauce. When a chicken dish doesn’t need sauce, that’s the sign of greatness.

What blows my mind though is not that Taco Bell’s chicken nuggets are good, but that they’re so much better than a lot of the brands in competition. McDonald’s, Burger King, Del Taco, Jack in the Box, and Wendy’s have nuggets that take a backseat to these. Hopefully, this inspires the other brands to step up their game.

The Bottom Line:

Taco Bell’s chicken nuggets are so damn good that you need to try them ASAP. Taco Bell is carving up new lanes for itself and consistently proving that it’s one of the best fast food brands in operation right now.

Boy Meets World? More like 50 Cent meets Topanga.

During a meet and greet for his money-making Las Vegas residency, the “In Da Club” rapper posed for a photo with actress Danielle Fishel, who played quintessential ’90s crush Topanga Lawrence on the ABC sitcom that aired for seven seasons.

“@daniellefishel just said fvck it, shes gonna be fine forever. Happy New Year’s Eve. Vegas vibes!” he wrote on Instagram. In the replies, Fishel commented, “AHHHH! I had the BEST time – thanks for putting on such an amazing show. You were the perfect way to end 2024. G-Unit forever!”

You can see the photo here.

50 Cent has never shared his favorite TV show of all-time (maybe he prefers Girl Meets World to Boy Meets World!), but we do know his No. 1 movie.

“Oh baby, I got so many movies I enjoy. I’m a man on the road. Just gimme a DVD player and a great movie and I’m happy. But if I had to pick my favorite one, I love Friday,” he told author Cindy Pearlman in the 2007 book You Gotta See This, according to Far Out. “I could sit down and watch it right now. I could watch it anytime. That movie makes me laugh.”

Squid Game pulled off an enormous feat. Again.

Netflix’s biggest non-English language show (the first season still retains the top spot on that list) has a good start at snagging another all-timer spot with “265.2 million views,” at least according to Netflix’s publicly released data, since the second season’s Dec. 26 release.

Those numbers are particularly impressive given the wait time between seasons with Squid Game first debuting in September 2021 and the second season arriving in December 2024. That’s a three-year gap, albeit broken up by the franchise’s reality-show stint, Squid Game: The Challenge, which streamed in 2023. Also, Netflix revealed that a third (and final) season was in the works from creator/director Hwang Dong-hyuk and star Lee Jung-jae.

When? Netflix has only specified that the third installment is “due out in 2025,” and it reinforced that news with a New Year’s Day teaser “introducing” a new animatronic doll, Chul-su (or Cheol-Su), that appeared in the second season credits. Is there a precise release date, though?

Not officially. Yet there is speculation surrounding word from a Forbes report, which claimed that Netflix Korea’s social media accidentally revealed a June 2025 release date in a briefly surfaced video reel. That seems awfully (and too) fast, even though the second and third seasons were simultaneously filmed last year. As of now, however, Netflix Korea is running with a reel that only promises a 2025 return. In other words, the wait for a release date is on, although we might not have to wait long to find out.

In a late December interview with Variety, creator Hwang Dong-hyuk hinted at a date coming soon. He also offered a few third season story points:

“I believe we will be announcing the launch date for Season 3 soon. I probably expect that to launch around summer or fall next year. But as for the storyline of the third season, Gi-hun having lost everything, including his best friend, and all of his attempts going to failure, it’s now, what is he going to be like? What state is Gi-hun going to be in? And what will he choose to do? Will he continue on with the mission? Is he going to give up or persist? And so you’re going to meet our character Gi-hun at a very critical crossroads as we begin the third season. Gi-hun will not be the man he was in Season 2.”

The first two Squid Game seasons and Squid Game: The Challenge are currently streaming on Netflix.