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Moneybagg Yo released a lot of music in 2020. The Memphis rapper debuted two full-length albums, one of which peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. He also dropped “Said Sum,” a track that achieved viral fame on TikTok and saw remixes by the City Girls and Westside Boogie. And because of his fruitful year, the rapper apparently raked in a solid amount of cash. This had led the rapper to have a pretty skewed view of the virus’ affect as Moneybagg Yo said he hopes the pandemic doesn’t end.

The rapper shared his thoughts in a tweet, which fans instantly slammed as insensitive. Stating that he’s made millions of dollars this past year, Moneybagg Yo wrote, “Not gone lie I made a couple Ms in da pandemic, ion want it to end.”

Doubling down on the sentiment, Moneybagg continued to say: “I feel like the pandemic help a lot of people.” While the rapper did not elaborate, it seems as though he was referring to the staggering trajectory of the stock market in recent months.

A few hours after sending the initial tweets, Moneybagg Yo walked back on his comments, realizing now tone deaf they were. “I apologize to everybody I offended my comment was very insensitive it was not my intent to hurt anyone.”

Read Moneybagg Yo’s tweets above.

Joss Whedon was hit with a fresh batch of accusations last week after Charisma Carpenter, who played Cordelia Chase on both Buffy the Vampire Slayer and its spin-off Angel, claimed he had engaged in various forms of workplace harassment. Her allegations weren’t that shocking: Last summer, Ray Fisher — who played Cyborg in Justice League, which Whedon took over after original director Zack Snyder had to leave the project — lobbed furious allegations his way. And as more and more Buffy/Angel alumni speak up in support of Carpenter, Fisher made sure to get some jabs in, too.

Fisher didn’t mention Carpenter et al., and didn’t single out Whedon but also included the film’s producers. “There’s only one reason that I haven’t been sued by Joss Whedon, Toby Emmerich, Geoff Johns, Jon Berg, or Walter Hamada: They know I’m telling the truth,” Fisher wrote.

The actor accused Whedon of “gross, abusive, unprofessional, and completely unacceptable” behavior towards not only him but his fellow cast and crew. Meanwhile, Carpenter has claimed the TV- and filmmaker of, among other things, firing her after she got pregnant. Her Buffy colleague Michelle Trachtenberg also made some startling allegations, writing on social media, “The last. Comment I will make on this. Was. There was a rule. Saying. He’s not allowed in a room alone with Michelle again.” In other words, we’re still only at the beginning of what may be a messy and disturbing investigation.

(Via Deadline)

Monday marked Megan Thee Stallion‘s 26th birthday and she celebrated the day the best way she knew how: by dropping a sizzling freestyle video. Fans and musicians alike praised the rapper’s talent and shared celebratory messages. But one celebrity’s happy birthday wishes outdid them all: Beyonce officially wished Megan a happy birthday, and now she feels on top of the world.

Beyonce’s kind birthday wish was publicly posted on the singer’s website:

Shortly after seeing the message, Megan reflected on how blessed she felt. “I’m healthy, I can take care of myself, my friends & family love me, my boo love me (he mad at me rn but he still love me) shiddd Beyoncé love me, I’m just happy and blessed lol,” she wrote.

It was well earned as the rapper has been putting in a lot of hard work lately. Not only did she release the mixtape Suga in 2020, but she also dropped her debut album Good News, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Before that, she also earned her first No. 1 song after her Cardi B collaboration “WAP” broke the internet.

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

The New York Knicks entered Monday night’s game with the Hawks tied with the Hornets for sixth in the East at 13-15, thanks in large part to the sensational, All-Star worthy season Julius Randle has been having so far.

Randle is averaging 22.4 points and 11.1 rebounds per game, and has become a legitimately good three-point shooter at 39.4 percent. The skidding Hawks came into MSG needing a win desperately, but Randle refused to oblige as he went off for a season-high 44 points to lead the Knicks to a win in the highest scoring performance by a Knick since Carmelo Anthony back in January 2017.

The Hawks fell behind by double digits early, but clawed back to take a lead in the third quarter and kept things close for much of the game. However, Randle put them away with his career-high seven made threes, and some incredibly tough buckets late in a sensational individual performance to lead New York to a 123-112 win.

Helping Randle on Monday was R.J. Barrett with 21 points and seven rebounds and Immanuel Quickley with 16 points and five assists off the bench, but in closing time Nerlens Noel made a number of big plays on defense and punctuated the win with a vicious putback dunk over John Collins.

After the game, his teammates took the mic in the postgame interview to make sure they put it out there that he is indeed an All-Star this year, and you’d be hard-pressed to find an argument against that right now.

On Saturday, after five days of trial, the Senate voted to acquit former president Donald Trump of his role in the failed MAGA coup that resulted in five dead. But that doesn’t mean the investigation is over. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi announced her plans to create a “9/11-type commission” to look into it — a reference to the report by outside investigators into September 11 attacks, performed nearly 20 years ago.

“To protect our security, our security, our security, our next step will be to establish an outside, independent 9/11-type Commission to ‘investigate and report on the facts and causes relating to the January 6, 2021 domestic terrorist attack upon the United States Capitol Complex,’” Pelosi wrote in a letter to fellow House Democrats.

While the majority of the GOP continue their fealty to Trump, downplaying the attacks and demanding the country move on, their Democratic counterparts and a clutch of Republicans feel decidedly otherwise. Some even view it as an act of domestic terrorism. Pelosi was among the lawmakers sought by some members of the invading mob. Mere days after the attack, the House voted to impeach Trump a second time, with 10 Republicans joining their ranks.

The Senate once again failed to convict Trump, just as they had done over a year prior, when he was impeached for abuse of power and obstruction of justice, in a phonecall with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Shortly after helping to deliver the acquittal, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell gave a speech in which he admitted Trump was responsible for the tragic events. He was also one of many who voted to acquit.

(Via CNN)

It’s been just over three years since Migos released their well-received album Culture III, and fans have been anxious for its successor ever since. The group has dropped a few hints about the album, recently saying it was expected to arrive at the “top of the year.” But now, Quavo has offered more insight into when exactly people can expect to hear more music from the powerhouse trio.

Quavo was out on a Valentine’s Day date with Saweetie at LA’s BOA Steakhouse when they were bombarded by paparazzi. The cameramen followed the pair to their car when one of them asked Quavo about the status of Culture III. Quavo responded as he entered his car, spilling more concrete information than fans have had in months. “It’s coming real soon,” he said. “Less than a month and a half.”

The rapper’s album timeline makes since given Migos’ recent teasers. Just a few weeks ago, Migos unveiled an official trailer to the album, which offered an inside look at the project’s recording process. “We’re just young men trying to grow,” Quavo said in the trailer. “Right now, we’re at a point in our life we’re allowed to sit down and build and start from scratch.”

Watch Migos’ Culture III trailer above.

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

John Wall was synonymous with Washington D.C. in his time in the nation’s capital, not just because of his exploits on the basketball court for the Wizards, but because of the way he fully embraced the city off of it. Wall gave back to the city in an immense way, always putting in work in the community and became a beloved figure.

So when he was traded this past offseason for Russell Westbrook, just as he was set to make his return from an Achilles injury, there was plenty of backlash from the fanbase. Westbrook and the Wizards’ struggles and Wall’s resurgence in Houston has not helped those feelings of contempt, and so on Monday when Wall returned to Washington for the first time since the trade (and his second and final game against the Wizards this season) there were plenty with torn allegiances and it didn’t feel like a proper homecoming in the empty arena.

Wall got off to a hot start, slicing through the porous Washington defense for a thunderous dunk, showing some emotion after as he clearly enjoyed taking it to his old team.

The Wizards played a tribute video to Wall during the first timeout, balancing his on-court highlights with those off of it, a reminder of everything he did in the community as well as for the team.

Wall would finish the night with 29 points and 11 assists, a strong outing for the shorthanded Rockets, but not enough to take down Bradley Beal and his former squad. Beal, the NBA’s leading scorer, had 37 points on the night as he continues to be the best scorer in the league this season, and Washington pulled away with a 131-119 win.

After the game, Wall and Beal had a handshake and embrace as the two former teammates saw each other for the final time this season.

Whenever the Rockets go back to Washington next season, when fans are back, it will feel like a much more appropriate welcome for Wall, but for now, both sides can move on for the remainder of this season now that their brief season series is done.

Monday night saw John Wall’s return visit to the nation’s capital after he was traded this offseason to the Houston Rockets for Russell Westbrook, and the focus was on the former All-Star’s exploits against his old team. He had a big first half, scoring 22 points and dishing out seven assists, dueling with his old friend Bradley Beal, who had 19 at the break, in yet another high-scoring affair in D.C.

Unfortunately for Wall and Wizards fans, no one is allowed in the arena in Washington for games and as such, there wasn’t a chance for the D.C. faithful, who loved Wall, to give him a proper reminder of how much they appreciated his time with the Wizards. The stands at the Capital One Arena are tarped up and pushed back, as is the case most everywhere in the league, and we learned one of the sneaky downsides to this setup on Monday.

In the early third quarter the game ball rolled out of bounds and somehow snuck under the stands, leaving the Wizards do-everything All-Star to go retrieve the thing.

Beal quite literally does it all for Washington, leading the NBA in scoring and even crawling under stands to make sure the game ball doesn’t get lost. This is something that you usually only see at a pickup run in an empty high school gym, but the 2020-21 season is full of surprises and we were blessed with what will surely become a highly used GIF of Beal crawling under the stands.

It’s a good thing he went and got the ball, because he caught fire in the third, piling up 12 points in the period to help the Wizards get out to a 10-point lead before he took a rest late.

The Trump years have torn families in two. And it appears that not even the failed but still deadly MAGA coup of January 6 — which at the time like the end for Trumpism, that it would shock the nation back into some kind of normalcy — will patch the country back together. (Most Senate Republicans wouldn’t even convict him, even after their lives were put in danger.) Case in point: One of the Republican congressmen who has come out against Trump since the Capitol storming was all but disowned by members of his family.

The New York Times published a profile of Adam Kinzinger, a Representative in Chicago’s suburbs. He’s against the Affordable Care Act. He’s an opponent of abortion rights. He received an endorsement from Sarah Palin. But he blamed Trump for inciting the attempted insurrection and he was one of ten House Republicans to vote in favor of what became his second impeachment. And that inspired 11 members of his family to collaborate on a handwritten, two-page letter condemning him.

“Oh my, what a disappointment you are to us and to God!” they wrote. “You have embarrassed the Kinzinger family name!”

The writing of the letter was done by Karen Otto, Kinzinger’s cousin, who paid $7 to send it by certified mail, to ensure that it got into his hands. “I wanted Adam to be shunned,” she told NYT.

Still, neither this — nor any of the other things non-family members have said about or to him in the last month-plus — have caused him to step down. “The party’s sick right now,” Kinzinger said, and he sees goal as to “restore” the Republican Party. Currently the GOP is split between traditionalists like Mitch McConnell, Trumpists like Matt Gaetz and Jim Jordan, anti-Trumpists like Kinzinger and Mitt Romney, and a vast number who appear to be afraid to come out against the former president, lest he drive his base to steal their congressional seat (or worse).

“We just fear,” Kinzinger told the Times. “Fear the Democrats. Fear the future. Fear everything. And it works for an election cycle or two. The problem is it does real damage to this democracy.”

Kinzinger has also had to put up with some pushback from You Know Who himself:

Mr. Trump, Mr. Porter said, poked his finger in his chest and told him to deliver to Mr. Kinzinger a vulgar message about what he should do with himself. When Mr. Porter relayed the comment to Mr. Kinzinger during a conversation on Election Day, Mr. Kinzinger laughed and invited Mr. Trump to do the same.

(Via NYT)

The 2020-21 college basketball season has been bizarre in many ways, but one ongoing theme is the struggles of various “blue blood” programs. Along with Kentucky, Michigan State and others, the Duke Blue Devils have been a mess all season long, posting an 8-8 record, and Mike Krzyzewski’s team will now be without its most talented player for the rest of the season. Multiple sources indicate freshman Jalen Johnson, a 6’9 forward projected to be a lottery pick in the 2021 draft, is opting out of the remainder of the campaign.

From there, Jeff Goodman of Stadium reports that “off-court issues” were occurring between Johnson’s side and Duke dating back for a while.

Johnson missed a handful of games in late December and early January before returning to the lineup on Jan. 12. Still, he was not able to replicate his early-season production, and Johnson averaged just 11.2 points and 6.2 rebounds per game in 13 appearances.

From a future-facing standpoint, it is hard to envision this decision will impact Johnson’s draft stock in a negative way. He is an intriguing and explosive athlete, combining quality size with an interesting skill set that should translate to the NBA level. While he connected on 44.4 percent of his three-point attempts, perimeter shooting is a concern, both due to low volume (18 attempts in 13 games) and previous struggles in pre-college environments. Johnson is a strong passer and rebounder for his size, though, which helps to endear him to professional scouts.

Duke isn’t likely to make the NCAA Tournament, seemingly needing to win the ACC Tournament in order to earn a trip to the Big Dance. As such, Johnson won’t miss that much of his freshman season but, at the same time, no one predicted only a 13-game sample from his college career, and Duke’s struggles may have held him back in terms of the ability to display his full arsenal while in Durham.