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Two of 2021’s biggest selling albums were Drake’s Certified Lover Boy and Kanye West’s Donda. The former was the Toronto rap star’s chart-topper full-length release since 2020’s Dark Lane Demo Tapes and one that gave him another No. 1 single with “Way 2 Sexy.” On the flip side, Kanye’s Donda gave him his tenth solo No. 1 album and two Grammy wins for “Hurricane” with The Weeknd and “Jail” with Jay-Z. Despite the accolades that the albums received, Certified Lover Boy and Donda were not the most critically acclaimed bodies of work in 2021. In a recent post on Twitter, Denzel Curry, who recently called himself the “best rapper alive,” gave his honest opinion about the albums.

“Donda and CLB could’ve been better,” Curry wrote. “Yall n****s rich and got the greatest musicians at your disposal.” He continued in second post, adding, “The artwork for both projects were booty.” Unsurprisingly enough, some fans objected to Curry’s with one saying in part, “Donda and CLB washes anything this n**** has ever dropped.” Curry promptly replied, “D*cccccck Eataaaaah.”

Curry would eventually move on from the conversation, but not without sharing one last thought. “There’s people that don’t even listen to my music but agree with what I’m saying so let’s get it,” he wrote. “I’m a real one f*ck wit me.”

You can view Curry’s tweets above.

Few people in Congress have it as bad right now as Madison Cawthorn does. The North Carolina representative appears to have made so many enemies that there’s an entire PAC dedicated to destroying him, with a little help from his “friends.” Former aides have already publicly denounced him, and now so are a smattering of former campaign volunteers.

Insider spoke with four people who worked on Cawthorn’s 2020 House run, who went so far as to use their names when talking smack about the man they once believed in.

“He fooled the hell out of everybody,” said one Bruce Rose. “I despise him … he is a criminal and a performer.” Rose did not like that Cawthorn seems to think he’s above the law. “He changed. If you tout the law, you have to stand for the law, and he doesn’t,” he said. “He’s just an entitled little boy. He has not grown into manhood.

Another volunteer, April Holsinger, called Cawthorn’s habit of bringing loaded guns into airports “very irresponsible,” adding, “You should know if you have a gun in your bag or not.”

Another, Greg Wiggins, who said he will not be voting to re-elect Cawthorn, thinks he’s sold out. “He’s more interested in hobnobbing with people in Washington than hobnobbing with a farmer over here, or someone that’s a plumber, or someone that needs their help like a veteran,” Wiggins said. “It became all about Madison and not about district 11.”

Yet another, Debbie Brogden, agreed. “It seems like he’s forgotten where he comes from and who got him there,” she said. “It has been so heartbreaking to watch him turn into what he’s turned into.”

You can read Insider’s full report here while you await the even bigger bombshell that even Cawthorn can’t wait to see.

(Via Insider)

In the middle of April, Britney Spears took to Instagram to announce that she and her fiancee Sam Asghari were expecting their first child. The big reveal came months after she said she was “thinking about having another baby.” Britney shared her excitement about her soon-to-be baby Asghari in the Instagram post. “It’s growing !!!,” she wrote. “If 2 are in there … I might just loose it.” Just a month after Britney made the announcement about her pregnancy, the singer returned to Instagram with devastating news. In a joint post with Asghari, she revealed that she suffered a miscarriage.

“It is with our deepest sadness we have to announce that we lost our miracle baby early in the pregnancy,” Spears wrote in the Instagram post. “This is a devastating time for any parent. Perhaps we should have waited to announce until we were further along. However we were overly excited to share the good news.” She continued, “Our love for each other is our strength. We will continue trying to expand our beautiful family. We are grateful for all of your support. We kindly asked for privacy during this difficult moment.”

In a caption attached to the post, Britney added, “We are grateful for what we have in the process of expanding our beautiful family [pink heart emoji] Thank you for your support.”

You can read Britney’s announcement in the Instagram post above.

The Sacramento Kings picked Golden State Warriors assistant Mike Brown as the next head coach of their franchise. Brown, who is still in the midst of serving on Steve Kerr’s staff during the Warriors’ playoff run and filled in as acting head coach against the Memphis Grizzlies while Kerr has battled COVID-19, will be tasked with ending the longest active postseason drought in the league, as Sacramento hasn’t made it out of the regular season since 2005-06.

As it turns out, Brown won’t exactly have a ton of time to build around the core of the roster that went 30-52 last season. According to NBA journalist Marc Stein, the Kings wanted two things in whomever would be their next coach. One was that the person they hired would keep former player Doug Christie around as an assistant coach.

The other: Sacramento’s front office wants to end that playoff drought right away.

“Candidates were told that team officials are counting on a Minnesota-esque surge in the standings in Year 1 after a league-record 16 consecutive seasons out of the playoffs,” Stein wrote. “The Wolves went 46-36 in Chris Finch’s first full season on the bench to secure just the club’s second playoff berth in an 18-season span.”

A pretty major difference between Finch’s job in Minnesota and what Brown is being asked to do is that Finch was hired midseason in 2020-21 and got some time to figure his team out before they made a run in 2021-22. The Timberwolves went 16-25 in Finch’s first half of a season in charge, then rolled into this past season ready to go. Brown, meanwhile, won’t get to be around his team until Golden State’s season is over.

This past season, the Kings finished four games out of the play-in race in the Western Conference. Brown has plenty of coaching experience — he has been at the helm of both the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Los Angeles Lakers, and is the head coach of the Nigerian national team.

Last week was a bad one for cryptocurrency. A scene that was already rickety got worse, with numerous digital currencies plummeting. Bitcoin, that market’s most valuable crypto, which was worth nearly $70,000 last November, dipped below $30,000 on Wednesday. Amidst the turmoil, many remembered ads from the Super Bowl in February in which no less than Matt Damon was hawking for the dodgy currency. How can Damon and other celebs who shilled for crypto regain the public’s trust? Well, another actor has an idea.

That person is Ben McKenzie, alum of The O.C. and current Gotham star, who’s made crypto — and the famous people telling cash-strapped plebeians to invest in it — a target of his ire. After crypto’s terrible week, McKenzie reached out to the likes of Damon, Reese Witherspoon, Kim Kardashian, and more, with some advice on how to rebound.

“Free advice for celebs who have profited from crypto: disclose how much you were paid, say you are sorry, and give the money to victims of crypto fraud,” McKenzie tweeted. “Career saved.”

If that didn’t motivate him, McKenzie later tweeted, he pointed out that the money they got to pitch for crypto may not stay secret forever. “Oh, and given enough time, we’re probably gonna find out how much money you were paid anyway,” he wrote. “Just in case you want a little extra motivation to do the right thing.”

Last fall, McKenzie co-wrote a piece for Slate where he slammed the rich and famous who were advertising for crypto, calling it a “moral disaster.” He also jokingly (but not that jokingly) attacked celebs who were shilling both crypto and NFTs, which are also not doing so hot. “I’m just a former teen idol standing here (alone?) asking people to consider downside risk and the possibility of fraud,” McKenzie wrote in February. “I hope I’m wrong, but pretty sure we’ll find out soon enough. Good luck folks – don’t take financial advice from celebs, including me.”

Despite the long list of albums, mixtapes, and more that fill up his discography, it took Future well over a decade to earn his first No. 1 song as a lead artist. That feat came earlier this week when “Wait For U” with Tems and Drake debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 chart. The song is a highlight on Future’s ninth album I Never Liked You, which he released at the end of last month. Days after “Wait For U” reached No. 1, Future hopped on Twitter to praise Tems and share how the song came together.

“Soon as I heard the @temsbaby sample over @atljacobbeatz Instantly connected to my soul,’ he wrote in one tweet. Tems’ vocals on “Wait For U” are actually a sample from her 2020 song “Higher” which lives on her For Broken Ears project. Future continued his praises in later tweets. “@temsbaby VOICE IS AMAZING,” he wrote. In a final post, Future thanked Tems for her contribution to “Wait For U.”

“Even tho wait for u is a sample and not an original recording I still put Featuring @temsbaby if u wasn’t familiar with her work,” he wrote. “Thank u Tems.”

Future’s praises come after he and Drake released a Medieval-themed video for the chart-topping song.

You can view Future’s posts above.

I Never Liked You is out now via Freebandz/Epic Records. You can stream it here.

If you’ve been able to lend an ear to Kendrick Lamar’s newly-released fifth album Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, you were probably a bit taken aback by the album’s content. With that, it leaves us to wonder what visuals for songs on the album would look like once they’re released. Well, just a day after the album’s arrival, Kendrick has released the first video from Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, that being for “N95.”

The visual is a cinematic affair, one that begins with Kendrick in an all-white garment as he floats above the ocean water. Throughout the video, he works out on a rooftop, plays the piano, dances and does donuts in a car with Baby Keem, watches a car crash into a row of chairs beside him, and much more.

Thanks to the video for “N95,” we now have an idea of when the song was completed, and even when Kendrick got going on Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. Towards the end of 2020, Kendrick was photographed shooting what many believed was a music video at the time. He was seen rocking tan shorts and a fresh pair of Chucks while sitting on a plastic crate. That same outfit and scene can be found in the visual for “N95” at the 2:32 mark. This is worth noting as Kendrick admits to struggling with writer’s block for two years on “Worldwide Steppers.”

The visual for “N95” arrives after Apple Music announced that Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers earned the most first-day streams for an album released in 2022 on the platform.

You can watch the video for “N95” above.

Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers is out now via PgLang/TDE/Aftermath/Interscope. You can stream it here.

Rihanna and ASAP Rocky’s first child will probably arrive in the new few weeks. All eyes have been on the celebrity couple since they kicked off 2022 with the announcement of Rihanna’s pregnancy. Since then, we’ve received pictures of Rihanna happily flaunting her baby bump, comments from Rocky and Rihanna about the couple’s relationship, and details about their “rave-themed” baby shower. Ahead of the birth of his first child, Rocky stopped by the Drink Champs podcast where he opened up about his relationship with Rihanna.

During the conversation, Rocky took a moment to shine a light on co-host N.O.R.E. and commend his decade-long marriage to Neri Santiago, which was documented through WE TV’s Marriage Boot Camp: Hip Hop Edition. “I could see the realness between both of y’all and sh*t like that and I could really tell, like, y’all been through some sh*t together, y’all been through a journey and it’s real. It’s not fabricated, it’s actually real,” Rocky said. “And that’s what I aspire to keep, just genuine real sh*t, just f**k what the outside world got going on, f**k what the outside world think and sh*t like that. It’s really about an understanding between two components, you and your significant other.”

Rocky’s comments come after he dropped “D.M.B.,” which came with a music video that featured Rihanna herself.

You can watch the clip from Drink Champs in the video above.

Let’s face it, everyone is listening to the new Kendrick Lamar album. The Compton rapper made the world wait five years after Damn., before he dropped the already monumental accomplishment that is Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers this past Friday. The album officially had the most first-day streams for any album in 2022 on Apple Music, and even your Mom knows a factoid about it that she probably texted you with a bunch of emojis. So it’s only fitting that the NBA’s favorite Dad, LeBron James, is bumping that new Kendrick as well.

And not only is LeBron fully locked in to Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers, but he posted a minute and a half video on his Instagram Stories of himself vibing the heck out to it. The first part of the multi-part clip sees LeBron dancing in his backyard to “Mirror,” the last song on the album. “@KendrickLamar VIBES!!! SO TOUGH [fire emojis],” he commented on the first clip. He dances with reckless abandon, rocking a durag and a Spring Hill Entertainment T-shirt (his media company). Then, the video just keeps going, and LeBron? Well, he just keeps dancing, this time to “Rich Spirit.” We see a very extra crown statue in the background and his dance moves just start to melt together into a fairly cringe-y and totally emo display.

Props to LeBron for being vulnerable and giving absolutely zero f*cks. But as they do, the haters have thoughts.

Say what you will, but at least he didn’t try to sing any of the lyrics.

WNBA star Brittney Griner has been detained in Russia on drug charges for several months. Authorities in Russia have alleged that Griner, who has spent her WNBA offseason playing for UMMC Ekaterinburg since 2014, had vape pods that included cannabis oil among her belongings as she attempted to make her way through an airport earlier this year, and as a result, the seven-time WNBA All-Star faces up to 10 years in prison.

On Friday, Griner’s lawyer Alexander Boykov announced that the pretrial detention in which she’s been held has been extended by a month, something that he believes could mean that the case will go to trial soon per the Associated Press. But in the aftermath of that announcement, the WNBPA posted a statement to its Twitter account to call on the White House, Joe Biden, and Kamala Harris to do whatever it takes to return Griner back to the United States.

“Today’s news on Brittney Griner was not unexpected, and the WNBA continues to work with the U.S. government to get BG home safely and as soon as possible,” the WNBA said in a statement in the aftermath of the announcement.

The Biden administration has indicated in the past that it believes Griner is being wrongfully detained, and following Friday’s news, a State Department spokesperson said that members of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow were in touch with her earlier in the day. Griner, per the spokesperson, “is doing as well as can be expected in these circumstances.”