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For the first time in 13 season, someone other than Daryl Morey will serve as the general manager of the Houston Rockets. According to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN, Morey, one of the leaders in the NBA’s embrace of analytics, will step down from his position and move into an advisory position with the team until it completes its search for a head coach. The news of Morey’s departure was confirmed by Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle, who stressed that this was Morey’s decision.

As Wojnarowski explains, Morey approached Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta about this following the team’s exit from the second round of the playoffs at the hands of the Los Angeles Lakers, at which point the two sides figured out an agreement. Morey, it is reported, wants to explore possibilities away from basketball for now and is open to returning to the league in the future.

In the aftermath of Houston’s elimination from the NBA’s restart in Orlando, Florida, Morey approached owner Tilman Fertitta with the idea of leaving the job and the sides quietly worked through an exit agreement to conclude his 13 seasons running the franchise’s basketball operations, sources said.

Morey isn’t ruling out a future return to the NBA on the team side, but he has become increasingly determined to explore what else might interest him professionally, sources said. Morey also saw an opportunity to spend time with two college-age children who are each taking a gap year academically during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Rockets do apparently plan on promoting internally, with executive vice president of basketball operations Rafael Stone becoming their new general manager. The move comes as a major shock, as there was zero indication that Morey had any intention on leaving a team that had been built in his image over the course of his entire tenure. Houston, more than any team in the league, has been defined by its embrace of letting the numbers be their guiding principles, which has led to an admirable run of success.

However, the franchise — and, by extension, Morey — had come under scrutiny for never being able to get over the hump, with their overarching philosophy oftentimes coming under criticism. He also stirred up controversy prior to what ended up being his final year at the helm with a tweet in support of protestors opposing the Chinese government in Hong Kong, which led to the league taking a financial hit due to China’s refusal to air games in the aftermath. That did change recently, as CCTV aired the final two games of the NBA Finals.

It stands to reason that whenever he decides to return to basketball, Morey would be in demand by front offices in need of a major shake up. But for now, Morey is on his way out, and the Rockets are handing things over to Stone.

Run The Jewels has had a healthy relationship with Adult Swim for the duration of their tenure, and Killer Mike and El-P are set to expand on this weekend: They previously announced they’ll be teaming up with the network and Ben & Jerry’s to present “Holy Calamavote,” a performance to help inspire voter registration.

The performance airs on Adult Swim (the network’s first televised concert and RTJ’s first show in support of RTJ4) on October 17 at midnight ET, and ahead of then, the full lineup for the show has been shared. Aside from Mike and El-P themselves, the duo will be joined by Pharrell Williams, 2 Chainz, Zack De La Rocha, Mavis Staples, Josh Homme, Greg Nice, Gangsta Boo, DJ Cutmaster Swiff, Cochemea Gastelum, and master of ceremonies Eric Andre.

The performance will also be simul-streamed on the Adult Swim website, and the show will be made available on the Adult Swim YouTube channel immediately afterwards. The performance is set to include every song from RTJ4.

El-P recently told Uproxx about the new album, “We feel like this is a distillation of everything that we do and we really walked away from this feeling like we gave it our all and we stuck the landing. This is what the vibe was that we wanted to feel. And I don’t think there’s any radical departures, except we know going in how we want people to feel. We knew we wanted this to be raw and funky and joyous.”

Check out our recent interview with the duo here.

Anthony Davis accomplished his primary objective with the Los Angeles Lakers earlier this week when the team won an NBA championship, the first of Davis’ career. Now, Davis has a major decision facing him this offseason, as his contract gives him the option of opting out of his deal and becoming a free agent.

The rumbling for some time has been that Davis will choose to go down this path, and on Thursday morning, Shams Charania of The Athletic reported that this is indeed the plan. He did, however, note that Davis has no intention of going anywhere else, and his agent, Rich Paul, is going to sit down with the team and figure out a deal.

“Davis plans to opt out of his $28.7 million player option and re-sign with the Lakers, sources tell The Athletic,” Charania wrote. “Davis and his agent, Rich Paul, will hold meetings in the coming weeks to discuss the situation and the contract term that is most sensible for Davis.”

The “most sensible” phrase is interesting, because as Charania lays out, there are a number of paths that involve X years + a player option that Davis could explore. There are, of course, questions right now about where the league’s salary cap will sit entering this next offseason, and while Davis could take a LeBron James-esque deal that gives him the flexibility to opt out following next season, he could just as easily explore something more long-term that lets him decide to hit free agency as the league’s salary cap rises.

None of this is particularly surprising, because Davis deciding to leave the Lakers after winning a ring and being set up nicely to defend the title would be a strange decision. Still, for any of the other 29 teams that hoped to possibly get their foots in the door, it seems like that option will not present itself.

Donald Trump only comes up twice on The Sopranos. You’d think it would be more, considering Trump Tower is less than 20 miles from the real-life Bada Bing strip club, but nope, just the two times. In the first mention, Ira Fried, the “prick doctor,” says, “Eat my dust, Donald Trump” while running a housing scam. The second doesn’t happen until the series finale, when A.J. tells Tony that his goal in life is “work for Trump or somebody, be their personal pilot.” No one in 1999, when The Sopranos premiered on HBO, could have predicted that The Apprentice guy (it’s weird to think about The Apprentice and The Sopranos being on at the same time) would one day become president. But let’s say the show was still on: would Tony Soprano and the rest of his crew vote for Trump?

Michael Imperioli, who somehow only won one Emmy for playing Christopher Moltisanti, has recently taken to inserting pro-Joe Biden messages into The Sopranos. “Trump stopped by the Bing one night. We gave him VIP treatment, everything on the house and he didn’t tip anyone! Zero! Stiffed the whole staff… even Peppino the bathroom attendant. Unforgivable. VOTE BIDEN,” he wrote in one. And another: “VOTE BIDEN: Joe Biden was a long time customer at Satriale’s and yes, he loves his Gabagool. You got to live him for that.” When asked by Vanity Fair how he sees the election playing out, Imperioli said that the “the Soprano crew” would vote for Biden, while “most of the New York crew is not for Biden. They’re for Trump.” As far as I’m concerned, that’s canon. No self-respecting Green Day fan would vote for Trump — it’s not very punk.

Sopranos creator David Chase likely agrees with Imperioli, based on prior comments:

“He would think [Trump] was full of shit. Whether he thought he was a good president or not,” Chase said. “I don’t know that Tony thought much about that question at all, with anybody who was in office. But I know Tony would have thought Trump was penny ante, in terms of his lying and presentation.”

The next time you think about including Tony in this meme…

… don’t. Or else.

(Via Vanity Fair)

Rumors recently arose that Kendrick Lamar was set to leave TDE, his longtime home, to be the flagship artist on his pgLang label. He quickly debunked the Twitter speculation in a call with TDE CEO Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith,’ joking that the rumors “got ’em sayin’ I done shook the label and all that, man.” He also asked Top Dawg, “Why would I fall off?” That question has many layers.

“King Kendrick” was one of the biggest rappers of the 2010s. Good Kid Maad City, To Pimp A Butterfly, Untitled, and DAMN is an incredible run of albums, and there’s no reason to feel like he’s not capable of maintaining that excellence. How many albums will he drop this decade that become lauded as classics? Will his output make him his generation’s go-to choice for greatest rapper ever, especially when he’s already in a lot of top-fives?

It looks like Kendrick, unlike other great rappers who made pivots, is predominantly focused on music. But how long will music be his number one career priority? There are many exciting questions just like these surrounding Kendrick as he enters the 2020s as a hip-hop OG at just 33.

The first step in that journey could come this year. Kendrick has been mostly quiet of late — a disappointing development for those who wanted him to speak up on social issues — but we all know he’s working on an album. At the top of 2020, Billboard editorial director and current columnist Bill Werde revealed that Kendrick may “finally be done” recording his upcoming album, “and that he’s pulling in more rock sounds this time.” Werde gave an indication that the always ambitious artist was gearing to drop a new album that his fans are eager to hear — but then COVID hit.

The global pandemic has muddied the plans for many top-tier artists. While it’s been a plentiful year of quality projects, releases from artists of Kendrick’s commercial stature are events, with tours and other financial boons attached to them. A tour is obviously not happening anytime soon. TDE is famously discerning about their releases, so the uncertainty of the pandemic has undoubtedly affected the prospects of an album that was reportedly done recording ten months ago.

But hope is not lost on a Kendrick project this year. Top Dawg said in May that it was coming “soon.” He was spotted in LA in September, reportedly filming a video. Perhaps TDE has realized that our current climate is the new normal, and they might as well drop a project that’s sure to be one of the top-streamed whenever it’s released.

It will be interesting to see whether the project still has a rock influence when it comes out, and how those sonics will affect Kendrick’s approach to the project as an MC. His spastic delivery and elastic flow find a home on any type of production. To Pimp A Butterfly and Untitled are some of the jazziest projects of recent memory, so it will be interesting to see how the pivot takes form.

WIll there be any other pivots coming from Kendrick? At 33, he’s still at his creative zenith. But history shows that’s not always enough to keep ambitious artists in the game. At 33, Kanye West released My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy an album that many of his stans regard as his best. When Jay-Z was 33, he had recently released The Black Album, his supposed ”retirement album” that’s generally placed in the top half of his catalog by fans. In 2006, Nas released Untitled at 33, a polarizing, but well-regarded album. All three of those projects showed that they could produce as long as they wanted — but rap isn’t all they wanted to do. Fashion goals began to play a larger role in Kanye’s life. For Jay-Z and Nas, it was entrepreneurial endeavors. They had all run rap so long that they were looking for their next challenge.

Will that happen with Kendrick? In March, he collaborated with Dave Free to launch PgLang, which is… still a mystery. The platform’s launch was characteristically ambiguous, with a redacted mission statement that indicates they don’t want us to know what they are until we see what they do. The recent rumor was disproven, but it still made the thought of Kendrick taking advantage of his influence and becoming his own boss an intriguing one.

We’ve seen this story occur with other top-selling rap acts of the 2010s. Drake now pushes his OVO label more than Young Money/Cash Money. Meek Mill pushes Dreamchasers more than MMG. The days of J. Cole as “Jay-Z’s artist” at Roc Nation feel like ancient history, as Dreamville is one of hip-hop’s most recognized crews. In all three cases, there’s no acrimony with their original bosses, labels, or crews, just a realization that all three men are their own entities — who could be upset if Kendrick decided to be that, too?

But of course, PgLang could predominantly be a content studio, like J. Cole’s recent bid to turn “big ideas into reality” with a Dreamville content studio that promises to extend “far beyond music.” Kendrick has created some of the game’s most creative visuals. It’s exciting to think of him and Free merging their visions along with previous collaborators and upcoming digital creators. Along with music videos would they do short films? Full-length features? The questions are endless with PgLang.

There aren’t many quotes out there that suggest where Kendrick’s head is at for the future, which is actually a good thing. His fellow top-tier rap acts like Jay-Z, J. Cole, and Drake move with an air of mystery that keeps fans plenty intrigued about their next move. With rappers now going hard into their late 40s (and Jay-Z into his 50s), we could conceivably see Kendrick Lamar making music for this decade, the next, and beyond — if he wants to. What will his catalog look like by then? Who knows. What is known is that Kendrick is set to drop a followup to DAMN “soon.” Where he goes from there will be one of the most intriguing storylines of the 2020s.

It hasn’t even been a week since season two of The Boys wrapped up its head-exploding run, but Eric Kripke is already getting fans of the show pumped for what’s to come in season three. The showrunner tweeted a screenshot of the next season premiere, which is ominously titled “Payback.” Kripke also revealed that filming will start in Early 2021, so hopefully we won’t be waiting too long for more episodes of Butcher and The Boys.

You can see Kripke’s tweet below:

Considering Butcher separated Homelander from his son with the help of Queen Maeve and Starlight, along with throwing a significant wrench in Vought’s plan to sell large swaths of the supe-making serum “Compound V” to the government, it makes perfect sense that revenge would be on the menu. However, fans of the comic know that Payback is also the name of the very first Supes team that predates The Seven, and Kripke has confirmed that at least one member of the old timey group is arriving in the next season: Jensen Ackle’s Soldier Boy. Via Entertainment Weekly:

“One of the reasons that we’re getting into Soldier Boy [in season 3] and that team, Payback, is we’re interested in exploring a little bit of how we got here,” Kripke said. “Through the history of the supes, we can tell a little bit about the history of America and how we ended up in the current fraught position that we’re in. Soldier Boy gives us an opportunity to do that.”

Just like Aya Cash’s Stormfront (who is still stumping around out there) held up a mirror to social media, and the recent resurgence of Nazi rhetoric in American politics, Kripke plans to use Payback to satirize ideas like “Make America Great Again,” which shouldn’t be divisive at all.

(Via Eric Kripke on Twitter)

Alex Morgan surprised the world when she announced her move to Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Women’s Super League last month, the latest in a series of American players to go abroad this year. The 31-year-old has been out of action for over a year following injuries and the birth of her child, Charlie, in May. But Morgan is as hungry as ever to get back onto the field, training with her new team and watching from the sidelines with her daughter as she works to return to full fitness. As the 2021 Tokyo Olympics quickly approach, Morgan hopes to be ready to help the USWNT challenge for a fifth gold medal and her stint in London is the perfect place for the striker to get consistent playing time.

We caught up with the American star last week on behalf of GoGo squeeZ to discuss her recent move across the pond, the future of the NWSL and why she believes in the importance of youth sports participation in the U.S.

Your decision to play for Tottenham Hotspur in the FA Women’s Super League was obviously a big deal among fans and media alike. Why did you feel that now was the right time to make that move in your career?

I had to look at where I could get consistent training and consistent games. Unfortunately, with the NWSL, they had a plan to play for about 4-6 weeks and then shut down until next year, and with me coming back from pregnancy — and it being even more delayed with the Olympics postponed and the pandemic lingering on — it’s been about a year since I last played in a competitive environment. I needed to find a way back to the field and this was the best way to make it happen, knowing that there wasn’t really an avenue to do that in the U.S.

I know you’re getting back to full fitness after having your daughter — congratulations by the way. Where are you on the recovery front and how are you feeling about playing again after more than a year away?

I’m really excited to play. I wouldn’t have really pulled my family away from each other if I didn’t really need to do this for my career, so it is very important for me to get back onto the field and to feel good again, to get my touch back, my speed back and kind of my tactical mindset as well. I think over the last two weeks, my first introduction to team training has been sort of up and down because of little things here and there that have arisen within my body that would be expected after taking almost a year off of playing. So that has delayed things but nonetheless, I’m still really excited to get on the field and I’m doing everything I can to do so.

Recently, we’ve also seen Rose Lavelle, Sam Mewis, Tobin Heath and Christen Press move to England as well. Some people were mixed in their opinions on how this would affect the NWSL with so many of its stars leaving. How do you see these moves impacting the growth of soccer in the U.S. and impacting the USWNT at all?

Well, I think the NWSL is one of the best leagues in the world and I think it is one of the most competitive leagues across the board. I think a lot of the leagues around the world are quite imbalanced, but the NWSL creates more of a level playing field throughout the teams. And I think in the long term, this is not going to negatively affect the growth of soccer in the U.S. The NWSL is now the third league in the U.S. and has obviously lasted much longer than the first two leagues, but even the folding of the first two leagues had too much of a negative effect on the growth of soccer. I feel like in 2012, when we won the Olympics, we didn’t have a league at that moment. Now, I feel like the league is super important in identifying talent and getting Lynn Williams, Jessica McDonald and other players that you wouldn’t have otherwise found without a domestic league.

My hope is that the NWSL has a solid schedule next year, is encouraging players to want to play there and that players feel comfortable playing in the U.S. leading into the Tokyo Olympics in 2021. I think that there’s some things in the U.S. that are really hurting the NWSL and a lot of U.S. sports in general with the handling of the pandemic, but the NWSL is trying to make the most of what they can do and so, I’m really hopeful for the future. And obviously, I will go back to playing the NWSL whether that’s next season or not, my future for soccer is in the U.S. and I want to continue supporting the domestic league.

Let’s talk about this new initiative you are working on with GoGo squeeZ to reimagine youth sports and make them stronger and more inclusive. Why do you think youth sports participation is so important?

I was really fortunate growing up to have parents who encouraged me to play all different sports — I’m a huge advocate of having kids play multiple sports and one of the reasons is to keep it fun and not forget the important parts of being a kid. To create friendships on a team, to really gain these sort of skills in sports that you can’t gain otherwise — and I’m not talking about soccer skills or technical skills, I’m talking about teamwork and leadership and time management and dedicating yourself to something and following through with something. I feel like sports taught me so much of that without me even knowing as a kid.

Partnering with GoGo squeeZ on this is so important to me as well because I have seen firsthand so many kids drop out of sports, because of their parents not being financially able to have them continue or for them to not feel like they belonged anymore because it wasn’t fun or they found other things to take up their time.

One of the underrated tragedies of a loved one dying is not knowing how best to honor them. How do you sum up a whole life in one eulogy or memorial service? And once that’s over, then what? What does the act of remembering require of us?

For Justin Robinson, whose older brother Jordan died young from an aggressive form of cancer, remembering his brother required devoting eight years of his life to an entire self-produced and self-financed documentary, My Brother Jordan. He released it himself, for free, on his unmonetized personal YouTube page at the end of August, because, he says, “It was free to be Jordan’s brother.” My Brother Jordan has since received more than 7 million views, without benefit of distributor or ad campaign.

My Brother Jordan is sort of the ultimate “labor of love.” After various distributors told Justin — for whom film is also a day job, working in the camera department on various productions — that his film was “too personal,” or too narrow in scope for a mass audience, he chose to just put it out into the world rather than change anything. It was more a necessary part of his own process in making sense of it all than something he hoped would make him a famous documentarian.

That My Brother Jordan has become something of a phenomenon all on its own seems to prove that the business world’s predictions of audience taste at best lag behind actual audience taste. Just this month Netflix released Dick Johnson is Dead, another extremely personal documentary directed by a professional camera person about a loved one’s mortality, to widespread acclaim (it’s currently 100% on RottenTomatoes, with some critics calling it their favorite film of the year). To be sure, My Brother Jordan is probably a few degrees more personal than that, but no less an achievement — a 63-minute distillation of eight years, 102 interviews, more than 300 videotapes, and 450+ hours of total footage.

Maybe, paradoxically, the way to achieve true universality is by not skimping on the details. Justin and Jordan, who also have two older brothers, come from a family of home-schooled pastor’s kids, the kind of family that banned the screening of PG-rated movies until the kids were in their teens. It’s a milieu that, as someone who grew up around a fair amount of devoutly religious people myself, frankly has always skeeved me out a bit. But Justin, whose two older brothers are now pastors themselves, spares neither the self-deprecation (at one point he freeze frames the old home movies to diagram “the official home-schooled kid’s haircut”) nor downplays the Jesus talk. It comes off as a person simply being honest about their upbringing, something more directors should strive for.

From a certain perspective, it could be the ideal soft sell, a movie with faith as a theme that doesn’t go in for the usual culture war stuff. Yet even with contacts in the faith-based film community, Justin says the word on the street was that My Brother Jordan didn’t sell hard enough, wasn’t traditionally “uplifting” enough for the “faith-based” film community to rally behind.

It’s good for the world that Justin Robinson didn’t compromise his vision. If My Brother Jordan is too personal, too narrow, shares too much… well that’s kind of the whole point, isn’t it? Without that, it wouldn’t make sense that Justin had done all this. He goes damn near to the ends of the Earth just to give his brother the posthumous gift of a fully-formed remembrance. You don’t have to know the Robinsons personally to be touched by the gesture.

—

Can you run through how long it took and everything you went through to put this whole project together?

My oldest two brothers, we’re not as tight as me and Jordan were, the age difference or whatever, but for whatever reason [Jordan and I] were like scientifically melded. Growing up, we did everything together. It was never the thing where the older brother hung out with the older friends and the younger brother was kicked out. We all shared the same friends. Then he moved away his freshman year of college to go play college basketball. When we came and visited him and he got cancer, 13 months later he died. And he had been dying for months and so it wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but… I mean, every death is original. No one dies in the same way and no one has the same family dynamics.

As a person who wanted to tell stories, this was the ultimate story because it was not just his story, it’s also my story. And when he died, I knew that I was going to tell his story in some way. I was pretty young and green in my filmmaking knowledge then, but I knew enough to shoot interviews and so it took me four years later after he died when I was a senior in college to start out on this journey.

I started in Florida, which was kind of the golden years of our relationship, but I started there and interviewed almost 35 or something people within a week. All my friends, coaches — just trying to gather as much information like a detective. And then a few years went by and then I started to feel like it was time to dig in and take it to the finish line, which I knew would be a year. So I started saying no to things. I’m freelance, I work in a camera department on movies here and there, and saying no to jobs as a freelancer, that’s not the greatest thing to do for money.

But I knew that it was the time so I started digitizing all these tapes and then really got invested. I ended up just driving to all these other states that we used to live, because we moved around a lot, and just started doing everything. I think someone asked me a question the other day, like, “What was the budget? What was the production company?” I’m like, I put gas in the car and drove to the story. There was no one behind me, I just kept doing it and kept at it.

The quantity was the biggest thing. There was so much footage and we had to go get the medical documents and get those released. There’s 1200 pages just of medical documents. I had to spend time going over those just to get it right chronologically to write the documentary’s voiceover. “Okay, this is July, in 2007. This is August and this surgery happened here…” It was massive. I lived in Dallas for almost two years of the main portion I was doing this and people would say, “How’s Dallas?” And I’m like, “I don’t know, I haven’t really left my apartment.”

And then how long between final edit and release?

I locked the edit in August 30th, 2018. So it took two years to get the color and the music. Everything was a journey, peaks and valleys of people coming in and working for free. And then my basketball coach who was close to me and Jordan, he randomly died of a heart attack, as you see in the documentary. That was a new challenge. He would have been the first person to see the full documentary. That kind of accelerated things, like “I got to finish this before someone else dies.” So much life had happened. I had out lived my brother. I’m older than he ever was by a long shot now, so I don’t know, it was just something that I was doing for myself. And then I wanted to screen it with friends, but the COVID hit, and that kind of became an ally in a sense. Because it’s a very personal watch. If you were seeing that publicly, maybe the world might not have been more open to the empathetic film that it is. So in a way with the year, I think everybody kind of needed a good cry in some way. I tried to kind of shop it to see if I could get it on streaming services anywhere and then people said, “It’s too personal, it’s not universal and you might have to cut some stuff. You might need to cut your coach out of it.” And I’m like, “No, I’m not going to do that.”

I assume you had basically finished it and then approached people to see about releasing it?

Yeah. I don’t have an agent or someone to sell it, but it was basically just colleagues in the industry that had connections or could’ve passed it along. And so January 8th, almost on the eight year mark of start to finish, I finished it. I started messaging around all year. And then COVID hit, which made it weirder for people to even take time to watch. And [they’d say things like] “I don’t know, it’s too personal. Maybe if you really knew him, it’ll be really great, but since you don’t know him, he’s not famous…” Like the classic things that you kind of assume going in.

There was one possible thing with maybe Vudu, they were like, “Maybe Vudu would buy it.” But I knew in the back of my mind that on August 19th it would mark 12 years of Jordan being dead, so I said internally, I’m just going to release it myself for free. Because, I mean, if you watch a movie and it’s $2, there’s going to be a pause of like, “Is it worth it?” Or is it worth the 20 seconds of typing in your debit card? I wanted to do it for free to eliminate everything so that all you have to do is click. And my YouTube channel is not monetized, so there are no ads. It won’t pause your viewing experience. It was free for me to be Jordan’s brother and it’s not free to make this, but I wanted it to be as free as possible in every sense of the word, financially and just available.

What’s the response been like now? I mean, you’ve had a lot of organic traffic to it now.

I mean, it was definitely surprising. It’s been [a big thing for] people that know me and people that knew Jordan for a long time because they had known [about this movie] for eight years. So I knew I had that momentum going for me. In the first two weeks, I felt like every person I’ve ever met shared it. And for the first time ever I had asked people like, “Hey, if you really dig this, it really does help to share it.” And it had like 20,000 views on YouTube and I thought, “Wow, this is kind of what I thought it would be like at the end of its life,” because I don’t have a big YouTube or Vimeo following.

And then it was about that 20,000 mark, it was like a Monday, then the next two days, it was just 40,000 more, 50,000 more, then a hundred thousand. People were leaving comments saying, “It’s on my algorithm. It just showed up on my page,” in New Zealand and Australia and the Philippines. And then people started sending me screenshots of TikTok videos, and it was like a bunch of 15-year-old girls crying watching the doc. It was like a reaction hashtag thing. That was new to me. Then it blew up on TikTok, so it was the wave of TikTok and the wave of the YouTube algorithm and then people were sharing it and it was on Reddit apparently. Then it just kept going. So at this point, it’s slowed down a little bit…and now it’s about to hit 7 million views. So it’s above and beyond my wildest dreams. But at the same time, it’s all cherries on top because I made it for me and the people that knew him. If you, a stranger, can see it and enjoy it, that’s awesome. It’s made for everybody, but I started making it for me.

Has anybody reached out that wants to distribute it now that they can see that there is a viewing market for it?

There was one group of people that talked about it and I haven’t heard. And they were just really interested when it hit a million views. I think that sets off big alarm bells for lots of people. So I don’t know if that’s going to lead to anything and then I’ve gotten a few emails from smaller things that sound shady, but nothing legitimate.

When you talk about doing it for yourself and when you finished it, it seems to me like that would be kind of like catharsis, like a chapter closed. Is it hard to have to talk about it all over again now that people want to interview you about it or you have to pitch it to someone who wants to distribute it or whatever, now that you’ve put like a decade into it already?

For me, not at all. A lot of the interview process was me kind of sharing my own heart. I drove a thousand miles to talk about him. I know there’s not a big vocabulary for death or grief. There’s like, “I’m sorry for your loss. I know how you feel. He lost the battle to cancer.” No one really expands on that. So for me, I was like, hey, I’m an open book. Jordan was the greatest person I’ve ever met. Not just because he was my brother, but I’m here to talk about him. I think he’s one of those people that falls into the genre of just the very simple, kind person that does something for no credit. And so in some ways, I wanted to give him the credit, but also tattoo this whole thing into my memory, [so that it will be there even] if I get old or forgetful one day. These were the glory days of my life thus far. So for me now, it’s not hard at all. It’s a joy to talk about him and to share.

So you guys were pastor’s kids. Are all your brothers pastors now?

My two oldest brothers are both pastors in Florida and then my dad is a retired Southern Baptist pastor.

And you’re still working in film production?

Not enough, but yeah. I’m not a pastor.

Do you think of this as a Christian movie?

No.

Do you think there’s…

No, just short answer, no. There was a pretty big acquaintance, colleague, friend who’s big in the Christian film world as a camera assistant or a camera operator. I’ve worked on a lot of the faith-based films, like some of the Christian movies and the ending [of My Brother Jordan] was not happy enough. There was a rebuttal that it was not ready to come out of the oven, so to speak. It was an interesting perspective from that genre and that audience because that’s the genre I grew up with and still see from time to time. I don’t picture it as a Christian movie. I have a handful of feature scripts I’ve written that fall within a backdrop of Southern religious culture that deal with that because a lot of those cultures are very cinematic. I don’t know if you grew up in church, but if you’ve ever heard of a country Baptist church potluck where they have a meal after the service, I mean, that’s some of the most cinematic things that you could ever photograph on film in a weird way. The things I grew up with are very interesting to me cinematically, but none of those I would consider Christian films. Even if I said it was a Christian film, someone would say, “No, it’s not,” or “It’s not Christian enough.” Even if God made a cameo, I think they’d probably say it’s not.

I was wondering that because I could see someone wanting to sell it as a Christian film. Do you think it’s because it doesn’t sell Christianity enough, is that why it wouldn’t work as that?

I think that was the gist of the email I got, was that it needs to sell it at the end, but I’m not a salesman — I’m a filmmaker. So yeah, I’m sure that that would be the goal for a lot of people, but the story is the story and the ending is never what people want — usually in life or in movies. I’m kind of okay with the endings that happen in life, as tragic as this one is.

Vince Mancini is on Twitter. You can access his archive of reviews here.

Yesterday, Ice Cube was on the receiving end of some backlash after it was revealed that he helped the Trump administration work on its Black outreach program, The Platinum Plan. He shared some responses to the backlash yesterday, and since then, he has spoken more on the topic.

One fan tweeted at the rapper last night, “My Hip-Hop HERO @icecube is working with the Darkside. I haven’t felt this low since Kobe passed. HEARTBREAKING. Cube, I’m not sure you understand how much we value your voice. And when we see you ‘jumping the shark,’ it KILLS us. Especially in 2020.” He replied, “Every side is the Darkside for us here in America. They’re all the same until something changes for us. They all lie and they all cheat but we can’t afford not to negotiate with whoever is in power or our condition in this country will never change. Our justice is bipartisan.”

He continued on the same thread this morning, tweeting, “Black progress is a bipartisan issue. When we created the Contract With Black America we excepted to talk to both sides of the isle. Talking truth to power is part of the process.” In response to a Washington Post tweet that reads, “Ice Cube once rapped about arresting Trump. Now he’s advising the president on policy plans,” Ice Cube wrote, “I will advise anybody on the planet who has the power to help Black Americans close the enormous wealth gap.”

Another Twitter user shared a screenshot of a 2016 tweet in which Ice Cube wrote, “I will never endorse a mothaf*cka like Donald Trump! EVER!!!” Ice Cube replied simply, “I haven’t endorsed anybody.”

Revisit our recent look at how Ice Cube and other rappers have long been shining a light on police brutality here.

Since the death of Pop Smoke, the late rapper has gotten on tracks with a lot of huge hip-hop names. His posthumous album, Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon, was filled with collaborations, and now Smoke’s roster of musical friends has expanded every more as Lil Wayne hops on a new remix of “Iced Out Audemars.”

A preview of the collaboration surfaced earlier this month, and now the full track has dropped. On Wayne’s new verse (which replaces Dafi Woo’s), he begins with a shout out to Smoke, rapping, “Iced out Audemars / Wait, I told you so / Blacked out all my cars / Rest in peace to Poppy / Here today, we gone tomorrow.”

It can’t be understated how many guest rappers appear on Shoot For The Stars, Aim For The Moon, as the tracklist features Quavo, Lil Baby, DaBaby, Swae Lee, Future, 50 Cent, Roddy Ricch, Tyga, Jamie Foxx, Gunna, Young Thug, A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie, and others. That star power has helped give the album star power, as it is still hovering near the top of the Billboard 200 chart.

Listen to the “Iced Out Audemars” remix above.

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