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Drake and Pusha T’s beef from the summer of 2018 was one of the biggest moments of that year. While most fans were all for the back and forth that ensued between the two rappers, others were disappointed to see things unfold the way that they did. One of those people was Pharrell. The celebrated producer recently stopped by N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN’s Drink Champs podcast and during their three-hour conversation, the Virginia producer revealed that he was not a fan.

“I hate to see what [Pusha] and Drake are going through, or what they went through,” Pharrell said around the 1:11:29 mark of the podcast. “I hated all of it. Every bit of it. It wasn’t good.” He then revealed that he was unaware of Pusha’s strategy for “The Story Of Adidon.” “He knows I would’ve stood in front of him as much as I could, but he’s a different kind of person, he’s a Taurus,” he said. “When you feel like a line is crossed and you take off the gloves, that’s where your brain is at.”

Pharrell added, “It still breaks my heart to this day, because I would’ve loved to have heard those guys on a song together or heard a joint project together. I would’ve loved to twist that,” he said. “By the way, Pusha says Drake’s got bars. When Drake makes something that’s amazing, we talk about it all the time.”

Pharrell was also asked if his relationship with Drake was affected by his close friendship with Pusha. He declined that anything has changed between him and the Toronto rapper, and he revealed that Drake has always had nothing but good things to say about the Virginia native, both in public and in private. “Neither one of them are into problems,” he answered. “They don’t like it and it’s unnecessary but they’re both people when they feel like they’re being pushed to the limit they gotta do what they gotta do.”

You can watch the full interview in the video above.

Eminem and Machine Gun Kelly have spent the last two years in a classic beef, and they haven’t exactly buried the hatchet. The latest jab comes from the Detroit legend, who fired off a pair of subliminal attacks on his new album Music To Be Murdered By — Side B (Deluxe Edition). The first can be heard on “Gnat,” inw hich Eminem raps, “They come at me with machine guns / Like trying to fight off a gnat.” The second one is on “Zeus,” with Eminem rapping, “Fair weather, wishy-washy / She thinks Machine washed me / Swear to God, man, her favorite rapper wish he’d crossed me.”

Machine Gun Kelly caught wind of the disses, and it’s safe to say he was far from impressed. In a tweet, he wrote, simply, “those subliminals,” followed by laughing and trash can emojis. Whether we receive a fuller response from MGK remains to be seen, but surely he’s aware of the consequences of engaging in another public battle with Eminem. He recently revealed that their beef hurt sales for his 2019 album, Hotel Diablo.

“It was coming off the tail-end of that infamous beef [with Eminem]. So no one wanted to give it the time of day,” he said. “What I did in the beef was exactly what it should be, but that project wasn’t welcomed.”

You can hear “Zeus” and “Gnat” in the videos above.

Music To Be Murdered By — Side B (Deluxe Edition) is out now Shady/Interscope. Get it here.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has been the superstar of the nation’s pandemic response team. He’s the voice of reason, the one who knows how to stand up to Trump without inspiring his wrath (well, not always), the adult in the room. Speaking of which, he had a message for kids who are about to experience the weirdest and possibly worst Christmas since the pandemic of 1918: Don’t worry, Santa Claus is among the lucky few who’ve been vaccinated.

Dr.Fauci was on CNN fielding questions from the nation’s young children, who are worried about things like seeing relatives during the holidays and how much getting vaccinated will hurt. He was his usual laidback, charming, smiling, reassuring self, able to explain scary and complicated data in ways that were both clear and lacking in condescension. But he also knew the value of preserving their childhood, which is to say he wasn’t about to tell them that You Know Who isn’t, you know, real.

“I took care of that for you, because I was worried you’d all be upset,” he said to one kid’s question about St. Nick. “So a little while ago I took a trip up there to the North Pole. I went there and I vaccinated Santa Claus myself. I measured his level of immunity, and he is good to go. He can come down the chimney, he can leave the presents, he can leave and you have nothing to worry about. Santa Claus is good to go.”

You can watch more of Dr. Fauci’s CNN appearance in the video below, and it’s worth noting that more kids will likely take his advice some actual adults — the ones who’ve thrown temper tantrums about putting a piece of cloth over the mouth and nose, leading to the nightmarish spike we’re living through each and every day. But hey, at least Santa’s doing fine!

(Via CNN)

LeBron James spent his Saturday afternoon doing what he usually does during Saturdays in the fall: watching the Ohio State Buckeyes play football. Ohio State participated in the Big Ten Championship Game on Saturday afternoon in Indianapolis, coming from behind to take down Northwestern, 22-10.

The Buckeyes could not get much of anything going through the air against the pesky Wildcat defense. NFL Draft hopeful Justin Fields struggled, going 12-for-27 for 114 yards, no touchdowns, and a pick in an uncharacteristically awful performance. Instead, Ohio State turned to its ground game, with transfer running back Trey Sermon putting on a show at Lucas Oil Stadium.

Sermon, formerly of Oklahoma, ran the ball for 60 yards in the first half, but only got seven carries in the game’s opening half hour. Despite the fact that it was obvious that the ‘Cats couldn’t stop him, Ohio State relied on Fields, and as a result, they went into the locker room down, 10-6.

Then, the Buckeyes started leaning on Sermon, who put on a masterclass. By the time the dust settled, he had 29 carries for 331 yards and two scores. We’ll get into some of the records he broke momentarily, but watch how helpless the Northwestern defense looked trying to slow him down.

Ohio State threw the Wildcat front around, but still, Sermon managed to make dudes miss, bowl others over, and put a whole lot of miles on his tires a few minutes away from the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. As a result, he had a pretty big fan in the reigning NBA Finals MVP.

On the day, Sermon broke Ezekiel Elliott’s Big Ten title game record for rushing yards in a game (220 yards), Auburn’s Tre Mason’s record for yards in a conference championship game (304), and Eddie George’s record for rushing yards in an Ohio State game (314). He also caught a LeBron tweet and probably earned the Buckeyes a spot in the College Football Playoff, so all in all, not a bad afternoon for the young man.

The NBA is a star-driven league. Whether those stars are in actual or symbolic leadership positions, they exert enormous influence over the machinations of the league, be it free agency, the Draft, the collective bargaining agreement, or something else.

In the era of player empowerment, only now are they beginning to understand the full weight of what that means. It goes far beyond just exercising control over their financial destinies or which they team up with. More and more, it’s begun to encompass a much larger sense of social responsibility. In 2020, that influence continued to spill over into the political sphere in a major way.

It wasn’t just the marquee stars who took to the front lines of the Black Lives Matter movement. Players at every level used their platform, their money, and their clout to lead social justice initiatives. And in one of the year’s biggest moments, it was a pair of lesser-heralded players on a small market team that helped orchestrate an unprecedented work stoppage in Orlando amid the ongoing police violence against Black Americans, forcing the NBA as an institution to take action.

This time around, it wasn’t anything so glamorous as LeBron James and company taking center stage at the ESPYs to call for an end to gun violence. In fact, the moment that left an indelible mark on the league this year happened in the most modest of settings: in the tunnel just outside the locker room, featuring Milwaukee Bucks players in their masks and warm-ups, issuing an historic call to action and condemning a system that has been allowed to act against its own people with impunity for far too long.

Even Giannis Antetokounmpo, the team’s most visible star, ceded the spotlight to NBA veteran George Hill, who delivered the statement alongside Sterling Brown explaining why the Bucks were refusing to play in Game 5 of their opening-round game against the Magic in Orlando.

The Bucks were uniquely positioned to take the reins on the work stoppage, and not just because they play their home games less than an hour away from Kenosha, where the Jacob Blake shooting had recently shaken that community to its core. Brown himself had been a victim of police brutality just two years prior, when Milwaukee police tased and kneeled on him over a parking violation.

What was even more stunning about the Bucks’ decision was that it was made wholly independently. The rest of the league was free to respond however they wanted. The Magic, who were trailing 3-1 at the time, would’ve been within their right to take the forfeit. But, of course, that was never going to happen, and once they joined the Bucks in refusing to play, it caused a snowball effect, with the rest of the teams canceling their scheduled games for the night and subsequently throwing the remainder of the playoffs into doubt. It quickly spread to other sports leagues as well, as the WNBA and several MLB and MLS teams all postponed their scheduled games in a stunning show of solidarity.

It was a bold move, particularly the decision not to involve the players union or some of the other influential stars around the league. And to be sure, the Bucks’ unilateral decision muddied the path forward in the coming days. According to various reports, there were squabbles inside those marathon meetings in Orlando about what to do next, and shutting down the remainder of the season was very much, albeit briefly, in play.

Even before the work stoppage, Hill had expressed his regret about coming to the Bubble amid the widespread reports of police violence against Black people around the country and the widespread protests that had erupted in its wake. Many players echoed similar reservations about resuming play, before and after they arrived in Orlando. After the walkout, the question had been raised again: Was it better to use their platform via the NBA to bring awareness and change, or would their efforts be better served back home in their respective communities?

Ultimately, staying won out, in no small part because of the financial implications on a league that was already hemorrhaging money during to the pandemic. But not before the players had demonstrated the full capacity of their power in a way we’ve never seen. Despite the chaos that followed over the next 48 hours, they were able to meet all of their goals: resuming the playoffs, bringing the game back to fans, and putting pressure on the league to take tangible action in the fight for equal justice.

The result was the creation of the NBA’s Social Justice Coalition, which focuses on voting rights, education, civic engagement, criminal justice reform, and more. It also looked to expand the use of team-owned arenas as voting locations in the November election, a plan that was already underway in several cities and would arguably go on to impact the election in some key states — according to USA Today, nearly 300,000 people voted at sporting arenas across the country on November 3, and no stadium saw a bigger turnout than the Hawks’ State Farm Arena in Atlanta, where approximately 40,000 people cast their ballots in a state that ended up helping Democratic president-elect Joe Biden carry Georgia.

But the Bucks’ initial refusal to play was only partly aimed at forcing the league to take action. The more immediate target was the Wisconsin State Legislature. After the walk-out, the team got on the phone with Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul and Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes. Together, they clarified the phrasing of their demands to apply pressure to the Republican-led legislature for their inaction during months of civil unrest and a deadly virus that was spreading rapidly.

Since then, several Bucks players have spoken about the emotions and the intensity surrounding their decision and its immediate aftermath. Kyle Korver described the atmosphere inside the Bucks locker room prior to their bombshell announcement and what it was like watching assistant coach Darvin Ham, a father, openly reckon with the possibility that his son could be murdered by police without provocation or repercussion.

Korver also confirmed that it was indeed Hill and Brown who took the lead and first told their teammates that they would refuse to play and, more so, that they were willing to go it alone without putting pressure on the rest of the guys to join them. By all accounts, it wasn’t a premeditated act. Hill and Brown didn’t arrive at their decision until about 45 minutes before the scheduled tip-off and hadn’t communicated their intention with the Magic, the referees, the players’ union, or league officials. Bucks owner Marc Lasry didn’t even know about it until just before they notified game officials.

The whole thing didn’t just signal a new level of social and cultural engagement for the NBA and its players. It demonstrated the sheer power of an individual who is willing to stand on principle. In doing so, George Hill and Sterling Brown reminded us what real leadership looks like. They reminded us that it doesn’t have to come from the top, and it doesn’t have to come by committee. In a time where apathy and cynicism threaten to undermine the fight for equal justice, we’d do well to remember what even a single person is capable of.

Sukihana and Cupcakke’s lyrical warfare has just finished its second round. Earlier, Cupcakke dropped the scathing “The Gag Is,” in which she made it quite clear that the two rappers won’t find peace any time soon. Now Sukihana has responded in kind. On “Cupcakke Bummy,” Sukihana pulls no punches, taking aim at her competition’s family, with disses against her mother and kids. She also addressed something Cupcakke had said in “The Gag Is,” in which she called out Cupcakke for having an OnlyFans account. Only issue? Cupcakke, she claimed she’s also a subscriber.

The battle between the two artists began with Cupcakke’s brutal remix of 50 Cent’s “How To Rob,” which she released on Wednesday and in which she also attacked Cardi B, City Girls, Chief Keef, DaBaby, Doja Cat, DreamDoll, Flo Milli, and others. A day later Sukihana became the first to take the bait, responding with “Rob Who.” Twenty-four hours after that, Cupcakke released “The Gag Is.” Based on these events, we can expect a response to “Cupucakke Bummy,” from Cupcakke herself, by Sunday.

You can hear “Cupcakke Bummy” in the video above.

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

Jim Carrey is an unqualified comic genius whose legacy as one of the most inventive and fearless performers is secure. But even the greats swing and miss. Taking chances is what they do! With that in mind, a number of people have not enjoyed his most recent work, which has been playing SNL’s version of incoming president Joe Biden. And if you were among his detractors, then good news: He’s conceding the role to someone else.

“Though my term was only meant to be 6 weeks,I was thrilled to be elected as your SNL President…comedy’s highest call of duty,” Carrey wrote on Twitter. “I would love to go forward knowing that Biden was the victor because I nailed that s*it. But I am just one in a long line of proud, fighting SNL Bidens!”

Carrey debuted his take on the former veep-turned-president on SNL’s season debut, back early October, and he wound up doing it over a total of six episodes. His Biden seemed partly inspired by his old In Living Color character, Fire Marshall Bill Burns, though he played him as cooler and more confident than the longtime politician really is. In fact, it seemed so divorced from the actual Biden, who’s folksy and charming and endearingly bumbling, that it almost seemed like Carrey had studied the wrong guy.

But a smart person knows when to throw in the towel, and that’s what Jim Carrey has done. And it will free him to do other, better activities. There’s no word yet on who will take up the Biden mantle, but Carrey joins a fine list of Biden SNL performers, among them Jason Sudeikis, Woody Harrelson, and John Mulaney. But since Biden will be with us for at least another four years, obviously it makes more sense for SNL honcho Lorne Michaels to go with one of the regulars, rather than going to an outsider, as he’s overly wont to do.

(Via Vulture)

Lou Dobbs has always been one of outgoing president Donald J. Trump’s most stubborn cheerleaders, sticking with him through thick and thin. The Fox Business commentator has been on his side for the last month and a half, loudly parroting baseless conspiracy theories about voter fraud, even scolding high-up minions he feels have been insufficiently supportive. But on Friday night’s show, Dobbs did perhaps the wildest thing he’s done yet: He aired a segment that utterly debunked some of his most recent allegations about voting machines.

Dobbs’ most recent bête noir has been the Florida-based company Smartmatic, which has found him claiming, among other things, that they were in cahoots with Dominion, which has taken the brunt of the Trump team’s incoherent attacks. Friday’s segment began with what seemed like more of the same, before taking a hairpin turn.

“There are lots of opinions about the integrity of the election, the irregularities of mail-in voting, of election voting machines and voting software,” Dobbs told viewers. “One of the companies is Smartmatic, and we reached out to one of the leading authorities on open source software for elections, Eddie Perez, for his insight and views.”

The show then cut to an interview with Perez — not done by Dobbs, mind you, but by an unseen interviewer. Perez was asked point blank about many of the Trump team’s claims — that they were altering votes, that it had connections to Dominion, that ballots were counted outside the U.S. And Perez shot them all down, one after another.

When it was over, Dobbs didn’t come back. Instead, the show cut directly to commercial, with no further commentary.

What’s more, as per Mediate, the exact same fact check video will air during shows by Maria Bartimoro and Jeanine Pirro, who have also repeated similar claims.

So what happened? Why was Lou Dobbs setting up a segment that utterly contradicted and debunked his tall tales? Mediate reports that, after numerous Fox News segments linked Smartmatic to Dominion, the former threatened legal action, demanding not only a retraction from Fox but also the even more pro-Trump OAN and Newsmax. Will this change hearts and minds, convincing the many Republicans that their questions about election security are bogus? If history is any indicator, almost certainly not.

(Via Mediate)

It’s been four years since 21 Savage had his breakout moment, thanks to his mixtape Savage Mode, with Metro Boomin. Since then the Atlanta rapper has only gotten bigger: He’s had a Grammy win and a pair of No. 1 albums, his most recent being Savage Mode II. During a recent sit down with T.I. on the Atlanta legend’s ExpediTIously podcast, 21 Savage spent some time reflecting on his career and spoke about an early interaction he had with his host before he took off.

During the podcast, 21 Savage revealed that he asked for a $1 million record deal from T.I. before his mainstream breakout. T.I. turned him down, but he explained he did it in his best interest. “I had the same conversation with Thug,” T.I. said. “If I give you a $1 million, I’m going to take 10 times as much because that’s just the way the game goes. If you want to maintain ownership of your art and equity in your art, you need to go through those tough times in the beginning.” He added, “Can’t accept upfront money and cushion your blow. You have to go ahead and get it out the mud the same way you do anything else.”

Besides, it all worked out in the end. In 2017, Savage signed a deal with Epic Records where he was able to leverage 100% control of his masters.

You can watch the ATL rappers’ conversation in the video above.

2020 may have been the year of our collective discontent, but it was also our year in the kitchen. 54% of Americans report cooking at home more this year; 46% report baking more. As soon as the lockdowns started in March, Google searches for terms like “sourdough” and “banana bread” absolutely skyrocketed. People couldn’t eat out and they had a whole lot of free time to toy with, so the desire and opportunity to recreate their favorite dishes reached new highs.

Soon, social media feeds flooded with stuck-at-home folks posting their food wins and fails. Along with so many loaves of bread.

Things continued to shift from there. As home cooking brought new skills, the general public began to investigate the supply side of their foodway. Searches for “gardening,” “growing food,” and “vertical hydroponics” all saw significant upticks (beyond their yearly springtime bumps). Meanwhile, with independent restaurants faltering, people’s understanding of the challenges faced by small businesses in the food and drink space deepened. We had frank conversations about tipping, examined the predatory practices of certain delivery models, and tested new ways of getting ingredients to our homes.

So while 2020 was incredibly trying for us all — particularly for those working in restaurants — it also led to new levels of knowledge that we’ll carry with us when the pandemic ends. And that’s worth acknowledging. Below, we dive deeper into three of the ways we’ve seen a change in how people prepare, cook, and eat food in 2020.

Growing Our Own

The increased popularity of kitchen gadgets — from sous vides to tabletop outdoor pizza ovens to air fryers — was already changing the way we cooked before the pandemic hit. Once we got stuck at home, our desire to refine our home food systems only blossomed. First, we geeked out on breadmakers and meat smokers that helped us make better food, but that passion soon extended to the ingredients themselves.

Lettuce Grow — creators of a vertical hydroponic tower for growing your own produce, called The Farmstand — saw ten times growth as a business in 2020. That equated to over a million seeds going directly into people’s homes. The feeling of resilience, without the complexity or space required of growing plants in soil, clearly appealed to a nation in upheaval.

“We offer systems with no anxiety or green thumb required, says Lettuce Grow’s CEO Jacob Pechenik. “From a technology standpoint, it’s designed to be user friendly so that anyone can master it.”

The idea that Americans, living in the land of fast food and ultra-processed ingredients, are more eager than ever to “grow their own” is an undeniable step towards better understanding our food system. With luck, it will lead to more independence and wider curiosity about the ways the factory-based model is failing us.

DIY

As we mentioned above, people started baking bread more at home during quarantine. A lot more. Google’s Year in Search 2020 revealed a long list of food-related searches that spiked over this past year. But it was about a lot more than just Google searches.

The hashtag for “sourdough” on Instagram has 4,183,483 posts. And if you want to get even more esoteric about the connection between food and social media, this year’s most-liked Instagram post wasn’t from a celebrity or model. It was of an egg. Yes, seriously. At the end of last year, the egg had already beat Kylie Jenner’s most famous post with north of 18,000,000 likes, but the humble egg added another 36,000,000 likes this year. (This probably speaks more to how we used apps to cure boredom in 2020 than food, but still…)

Another internet recipe turned viral craze was “Whipped Coffee” which came in third overall in Google searches in the “How to make…” category and second place in the “food” category. The social media darling of a drink/recipe moment was so popular our own Dane Rivera had to test it out to see what all the fuss was about.

We also saw an uptick in traffic on recipe posts here on UPROXX, with the following entries making massive impacts with readers.

• After The Oscars, Everyone Wants Ram-Don From ‘Parasite’ — Here’s How To Make It
• We Made The Burger From The Season Finale Of ‘Better Call Saul’
• Make This Easy Hand-Torn Pasta Instead Of More Sourdough
• It’s Time You Learned To Make Fettuccine Alfredo The Original Way

Food Delivery

Finally, food delivery changed in 2020. We’re not talking about food delivery from restaurants, although that changed pretty drastically too. (And needs to continue to change.)

Online meal-kit delivery services grew by 12.8 percent over 2020. It’s not hard to see why. With people stuck home and wanting to cook more but often without any of the preexisting skills necessary to do so, meal kits became the perfect gateway to culinary independence.

On the flip side, farmers, local-producers, brewers, and even fishermen skipped the middle-man of distribution and started selling directly to the consumer, a trend that began before COVID but saw new growth during the quarantine. If you want restaurant-quality seafood or specialty greens or fresh eggs or whatever, you can source those items easier than ever. Even Japanese a5 wagyu beef — once an item that few restaurants in the country could get their hands on — is available at home thse days.

The Chicago-Tribune noted recently that some small, local farms are doing better than ever — highlighting how farms have adjusted their business plans so that if restaurants start ordering again, farm groups “can continue to serve the consumer market” going forward. In short, public access to food straight from the people who grow or raise it isn’t going anywhere in 2021.