Michael B. Jordan is known for his love of basketball, and he’s turning that passion into a showcase for up-and-coming Black players with an HBCU basketball showcase starting in 2021.
The Hoop Dreams Classic will feature two double-header (for men’s and women’s teams) between top HBCU basketball programs as well as “an immersive cultural experience” that highlights other aspect of HBCU campus life like a Battle of the Bands and college and career opportunities for young people.
“This past year has been the tipping point for so many, including myself, in revving up support for Black people,” Jordan said in a statement. “As a Newark native, I am committed to bringing change to the community and am honored to be able to present The Hoop Dreams Classic as a way to celebrate the value of community, education, and Black college experiences. Through our shared love of basketball, I look forward to bringing the communal spirit of HBCUs to the city that helped shape me into the man I am today.”
Jordan is partnering not only with the Hoop Dreams organization but also WME Sports (a division of Endeavor) and Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, the company run by the owners of the Philadelphia 76ers. Some of the money raised from the event will be used to support organizations aligned with HBCUs around Newark, where Jordan was raised.
Throughout 2020, companies and government institutions alike have placed more attention on HBCUs, and the sports world has followed suit. By putting together an event that could become an annual occurrence, Jordan is helping to make sure that support for HBCUs doesn’t stop now.
New York City collective Michelle stormed onto the indie scene earlier this year with their infectious and joyful single “Sunrise,” which featured prominently on all of my playlists this summer. Now, the group is gearing up for the release of their debut LP, which is slated for sometime in 2021, and promises electric verse-trading and an unique blend of elements of hip-hop, indie pop, and R&B.
To celebrate the holiday season, the group’s six members sat down to talk Die Hard, hating Michael Buble, and their love-hate relationship with snow in the latest Indie Mixtape 20 Q&A.
What’s the best holiday gift you’ve ever received?
Julian Kaufman: A hug.
Layla Ku: A letter from Julian.
What is your earliest holiday memory?
Emma Lee: loud room, good smells, orange sweater.
What’s on your wish list for this year?
JK: A covid vaccine.
LK: Some semblance of what once was.
What holiday song can you not resist singing along to?
JK: “Let It Snow”
EL: “IIIIII don’t want a lot for Christma….” come on.
LK: Seconded. There is only one right answer to this question.
What’s the holiday song you wish you could zap out of existence?
Jamee Lockard: “Last Christmas”
LK: Michael Buble’s entire career.
What is your strangest holiday tradition?
EL: taping a drawing of an xmas tree on the wall in lieu of a tree.
What album makes for the perfect gift?
LK: Vince Guaraldi Trio: A Charlie Brown Christmas
Thoughts on snow?
JK: It’s great.
LK: It’s great and it sucks.
Charlie Kilgore: It’s great for the first day and a half, but it all goes downhill once the rock-hard, dirt-colored slush starts piling up.
What holiday movie can you not resist watching when it’s on TV?
JL:How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000)
Sofia D’Angelo:Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer (1964)
In Borat Subsequent Moviefilm, Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen) and Tutar (Maria Bakalova) trick Giuliani into putting himself into an unflattering position. It was pretty gross! It was also the plan “from day one” for father-and-daughter duo Borat and Tutar to target Giuliani, as the Borat sequel director Jason Woliner recently explained to Insider.
“Here’s the craziest thing: Giuliani was the name from day one,” he said. “Rudy was the name in the first version [of the script] I read… For the year and a half we were making this, he wasn’t at the level of prominence he is now. But suddenly just before this came out, he was trying to make a big splash.”
Woliner also credits Borat 2 for making it impossible to take Rudy seriously:
“A few days later the Guardian came out with the piece on his scene in the movie and that just blew up,” he said. “And from my vantage point, it discredited anything he was trying to do.”
It also didn’t help Rudy’s case when he referred to Borat as a real person.
Kacey Musgraves recently guest-starred on an episode of Scooby-Doo, and now, she’s taking her voice acting skills to the next level. The singer announced that she landed a leading role in the upcoming Studio Ghibli film Earwig And The Witch, and she says the opportunity is a dream come true for her. Musgraves will be voicing the part of a witch in the film, and on top of that, she is also slated to lend her vocals to a song for the film.
Announcing her part in Earwig And The Witch, Musgraves said the opportunity was a “bucket list moment” for her: “My dad brought a vhs tape of Totoro home when I was about 9 and I’ll never ever forget the comfort and the magic that movie (and many other Ghibli films) have given me. My sister has always been my Mei and I’ve always been her Satsuki. To say this was a full-circle, bucket list moment is an understatement.”
Earwig And The Witch is directed by Goro Miyazaki, with planning assistance from his father, legendary Academy Award-winner Hayao Miyazaki. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the film is based on a children’s novel by Diana Wynne Jones (who also penned Howl’s Moving Castle, upon which a classic Ghibli movie was based) and follows the story of Earwig, who is forced to live with a selfish witch at a young age and sets out to undercover mysterious secrets about her new guardian.
The film does not yet have a confirmed release date, but Musgraves reports that it’s due out some next spring.
Back in early 2018, shortly after Black Panther hit theaters, Chadwick Boseman played a prank on his fans. The staff of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon coaxed some unsuspecting moviegoers into a special room, where they were told they could record a video of them gushing about the actor and what his work meant to them, all while addressing the film’s poster. Each person was eventually interrupted by Boseman himself, who emerged from behind a red curtain, to joyful shocks and shrieks.
Boseman was like that. More than most actors, he really enjoyed interacting with fans, generously giving his time, letting them know he appreciated their love. Of course, in the last few months, clips like the Fallon video have taken on added meaning. After Boseman died in late August — suddenly, prematurely, at only 43 years old, of an illness he had somehow kept private, known only to family and close friends — they revealed someone worried he didn’t have much time left. They show someone devoting his life to goodness and decency.
Chadwick Boseman was a great actor, and the loss we face from his passing — further stressed by the new August Wilson adaptation Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom — is incalculable. He was also a great human being — a gregarious do-gooder who treated fans and colleagues alike as he wanted to be treated. And as a result, he was treated in kind.
It’s easy to paint Boseman as bigger-than-life. When Spike Lee needed someone to play the almost messianic slain soldier in his Vietnam War epic Da 5 Bloods, he turned to Chadwick Boseman. “This character is heroic; he’s a superhero,” Lee told The Atlantic. “Who do we cast? We cast Jackie Robinson, James Brown, Thurgood Marshall, and we cast T’Challa. Chad is a superhero.” (He was referring to Boseman’s turns in, respectively, 42, Get On Up, and Marshall.) In death, Boseman has become almost mythic. His hometown of Anderson, South Carolina was quick to start building a statue of him. The final tweet on his Twitter account, breaking the news of his passing in late August of 2020, stands as the most liked in history, pushing Barack Obama to a distant second.
Boseman earned that mystique. Upon his passing, untold stories of his kindness flooded the internet. Some of those good deeds he did in public. When he won the Best Hero for Black Panther at the MTV Movie Awards, he gave the trophy to James Shaw, Jr., who had stopped a near-shooting at a Tennessee Waffle House. “Receiving an award for playing a superhero is amazing,” he said, “but it’s even greater to acknowledge the heroes that we have in real life.”
But many of those deeds were private and didn’t come to the public eye until after his death. One such story involved him being approached by a young, aspiring actor. Boseman spoke with him for over a half-hour, giving him advice on how to navigate Hollywood as a black actor, even buying him plays that had inspired him at his age.
30 mins later, they are still chatting. Chadwick taking the time to give this guy advice, speaking to what’s it’s like to be a black man in this industry, how to navigate it. The actor thanks him for his time and continues looking for books.
He didn’t want thanks. He just wanted to make sure this young man was taken care of and had access to resources he would need to succeed. Chadwick Boseman was the King of Wakanda. He was James Brown and Jackie Robinson. But above all that, he was a good man.
Boseman knew all too well about Hollywood’s long history of putting black actors in boxes, that only a few, if any, have ever been handed the keys to the city. As his star rose, he didn’t quiet down. He spoke up, as when he was promoting Marshall in 2017:
“There was a period of time where it was Sidney Poitier is the guy. And very often, people will come to me or some of the other guys that are doing well right now and they say, ‘They’re going to pass the torch to you.’ And I don’t think that’s right, because it’s possible for there to be a Chris Pine, or a Chris Evans and Chris O’Donnell and a Chris Hemsworth and all the other Chrises, but it can only be one of us at a time? That is part of what’s wrong.”
Boseman became famous for delivering impassioned speeches that encouraged others to try and effect change in the industry. When speaking at his alma mater, the historically black Howard University, in 2018, he described the difficulties he faced when he “dared to challenge the system that dared to relegate us to victims and stereotypes with no clear historical background, no hopes or talents.” At the 2019 SAG Awards, he didn’t hold back either:
“We all know what it’s like to be told that there is not a place for you to be featured, yet you are young, gifted, and black. We know what it’s like to be told there’s not a screen for you to be featured on, a stage for to be featured on … And that is what we went to work with everyday … we knew not that we would be around during award season or that it would make a billion dollars, but we knew that we had something special that we wanted to give the world.”
For Boseman it wasn’t enough to be famous, to be considered a great actor. Like those that preceded him, he wanted to help make it easier for other black performers to make a mark on the business and on the culture. He fought to make sure Black Panther wasn’t whitewashed, stricken of its blackness, its African-ness. Marvel pushed back when he insisted that T’Challa and his fellow Wakandans spoke with an accent inspired by Xhosa, one of the official languages of Zimbabwe and South Africa. They worried, he told The Hollywood Reporter, that that might be “too much for an audience to take.” But he held his ground. “It felt to me like a deal-breaker,” he said. “I was like, ‘No, this is such an important factor that if we lose this right now, what else are we gonna throw away for the sake of making people feel comfortable?”
That’s why Black Panther resonated — because it didn’t soften the blow. And that’s why its impact could be felt immediately. The day after it hit theaters, Boseman was at an NBA game, where he gave Indiana Pacers star Victor Oladipo a Black Panther mask. Oladipo put it on and, in the guise of T’Challa himself, proceeded to perform a slam dunk. At that moment it felt like black culture was fully at the center of the culture. You could see it in videos of black moviegoers going to screenings in African garb. And you could see it in heartwarming videos of kids, who got to see themselves onscreen, who had a superhero who looked like them.
Boseman was the star of Black Panther, but he made sure it wasn’t the Chadwick Boseman Show. He surrounded himself with many great black actors from his generation: Letitia Wright, Michael B. Jordan, Lupita Nyong’o, Danai Gurira, Daniel Kaluuya, Winston Duke, and more. There was the older guard, too: Angela Bassett, Forest Whitaker — actors who paved the way for Boseman and for Black Panther. Boseman was a most generous actor. He didn’t hog the spotlight. He made room for others to shine alongside him, and he was at his best when he was playing against others who were as talented as he was. If he was making it, he was bringing everyone along with him.
That Boseman kept his illness under wraps, hiding his struggles with pancreatic cancer even as he made strenuous action films, was a natural extension of that generosity. On one hand, he apparently thought he could beat it and be ready for Black Panther 2. On the other, he wanted to be an example of strength, of grace and humility. In retrospect, you can see the signs. He cryptically alluded to his cancer battles to the press more than once.
Perhaps his malady motivated him to get in touch with younger fans fighting their own illnesses. After Boseman’s death, it was revealed that he’d visited terminally ill children in New Zealand. Then there was the time he broke down during a Black Panther interview, talking about two kids with whom he’d been in touch and who’d recently passed away from cancer. When Boseman himself passed on, a father of one of those children shared a video Boseman had sent them.
This is the first message Chadwick Boseman sent to my son in 2017. He had already been diagnosed with colon cancer, unknown to anyone. Amazing. pic.twitter.com/2Tb4V2O8bN
One of the most gutting examples of Boseman’s generosity was a video from 2019, when he presented Denzel Washington with the American Film Institute’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Boseman told a story: When he was young and not particularly moneyed, he was one of a number of students at Howard who received a generous grant to attend a midsummer acting program at Oxford University. Some of that money, he later learned, came from Denzel Washington.
“Imagine receiving the letter that your tuition for that summer was paid for and that your benefactor was none other than the dopest actor on the planet,” Boseman told the crowd. He then got very serious. And as the normally cucumber cool Washington visibly held back tears, Boseman paid tribute to an industry legend whose generosity changed his life.
“An offering from a sage and a king is more than silver and gold. It is a seed of hope, a bud of faith. There is no Black Panther without Denzel Washington. And not just because of me, but my whole cast, that generation, stands on your shoulders. The daily battles won, the thousand territories gained, the many sacrifices you made for the culture on film sets of your career, the things you refused to compromise along the way, lay the blueprints for us to follow. So now let he who has watered be watered. Let he who has given be given to.”
No doubt Boseman was hoping one day he’d be holding back tears as a younger actor said something similar to him. Perhaps that Jimmy Fallon video, the one of him surprising fans, was his way of getting that honor prematurely — of seeing his own funeral, to hear what people said about him, much like Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn perched in the church rafters. At the time, only a select few knew what it really meant to him to hear fans sing his praises to his face. But hopefully he knew, in his final moments, that he would be forever remembered as someone who not only gave but who inspired young actors to do the same.
As the split between James Harden and the Houston Rockets becomes more likely, a new story from Tim McMahon at ESPN highlights all the ways the franchise has been “complicit” in making Harden the “boss of the organization.”
Now, with Harden on the outs, the Rockets’ dysfunction and the way they have seemingly kowtowed to Harden is coming back to bite them.
McMahon describes how Harden would use the threat of a trade demand to get what he wanted and then leverage that control into complete manipulation of the team’s schedule and style during the season. This grated especially on Russell Westbrook, who has long led teammates through accountability and companionship rather than unearned superiority.
More from the ESPN story:
Houston’s casual culture appalled Westbrook. In Oklahoma City, despite the fact that he enjoyed the same sort of superstar privileges as Harden has had in Houston, the Thunder operated with the discipline of a military unit under Westbrook’s watch. The Rockets were a stark contrast, especially last season under D’Antoni, who was never known as a disciplinarian and who was a lame duck in the last year of his contract after extension negotiations infamously fizzled twice over the summer.
Westbrook didn’t tolerate tardiness. With the Rockets, scheduled departure times were treated as mere suggestions by Harden and others.
“Nothing ever starts on time,” a former Rockets staffer said. “The plane is always late. The bus is never on time. … It’s just an organized AAU team.”
The Rockets’ culture was not only compromised by Harden often being tardy or disorganized, but also his desire to make the Rockets’ schedule a rolling party across the country. Harden, according to this report, would impose an extra night or two onto Houston’s travel if that allowed the team to spend more time in a place like Phoenix or Los Angeles. If they were within a quick trip of Las Vegas, Harden would take a private flight to party there as well, the report shows.
Altogether, it certainly paints a picture of a place that a hard worker like Westbrook or Chris Paul could have struggled, and helps show why during several big moments along this franchise’s recent history, they have appeared unfocused.
Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane is tackling a reboot of the ’80s comedy classic Revenge of the Nerds, which is already taking great pains to avoid the more problematic moments from the original. The reboot for 20th Century will reportedly star The Lucas Brothers, who will also serve as writers for the project that plans to explore what the heck being a nerd even means today. Via Variety:
The upcoming version won’t be a remake of the 1984 comedy, which hasn’t aged all that well and has been criticized in recent years for depictions of rape. Instead, the contemporary reimagining will pontificate about today’s nerd culture and what even constitutes a geek in the 21st century.
The most problematic scene in question involves Robert Carradine’s Lewis wearing a Darth Vader costume to trick Julia Montgomery’s Betty into thinking he’s her boyfriend Stan who she thinks she’s about to have sex with. When she finds out it’s Lewis, she’s pleasantly surprised despite the act very clearly being sexual assault. Unfortunately, that kind of scene didn’t feel out of place in an ’80s sex comedy, but during a 2019 oral history of the movie, Revenge of the Nerds writer Steve Zacharias voiced his regrets and directly refers to the questionable encounter as “the rape scene.”
“I regret that,” Zacharias told GQ. “I’ve written a play for the musical and I eliminated the rape scene. I made it that Betty was thrown off the cheerleader squad because she flunked trigonometry and Lewis teaches her trigonometry and then before the rape scene he reveals who he is and she wants to have sex with him.”
Hopefully, MacFarlane has better luck after Fox Atomic pulled the plug on a Nerds reboot in 2006 that would’ve starred Adrian Brody. Yup, you read that right.
After making his television debut on The Tonight Show earlier this year, Jack Harlow returns to close out the year, way more successful and with his debut album in tow. In the months since his first appearance, Harlow was featured on XXL‘s 2020 Freshman cover, went No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 with the “What’s Poppin” remix, and appeared on the 2020 BET Hip-Hop Awards alongside Chika, Polo G, and Rapsody. Last night, he graced the set of Fallon’s show with a pair of pre-recorded performances forming a medley of album cut “Rendezvous” and single “Way Out.”
In the first half, Harlow performs the nostalgic “Rendezvous” from his childhood bedroom (or a passable likeness thereof), decorated with rap posters including the cover of his album, That’s What They All Say. In the second, the scene shifts to the floor of a circus tent, highlighting the parallel change in his situation from dreaming about rap stardom to joining the big show. As he raps “Way Out,” dancers contort and pose behind him, giving the performance the air of more elaborate staging and further underlining how impressive his come-up has been.
Watch Jack Harlow’s Tonight Show performance above.
That’s What They All Say is out now on Atlantic Records. Get it here.
When Chloe and Halle Bailey were signed to Beyoncé’s Parkwood management company in 2015 after going viral with YouTube covers of her songs, many were quick to assume the Atlanta-born sisters would be stuck in the superstar’s shadow. There’s something to be said about how rising white female singers are embraced when taken under a legend’s wing. But when it comes to Black singers, like Chloe x Halle, there’s unsolicited tension forced on them, as if there is supposed to be some kind of competition with their music elders. Well, Chloe x Halle fought against that stereotype with admirable grace — and it’s all thanks to their sophomore album, June’s Ungodly Hour.
The duo made their debut with 2018’s The Kids Are Alright, which bloomed with a DIY approach (Chloe produced 11 of the 16 tracks) to their idea of alternative R&B. The album’s major theme is finding themselves through adolescence, and their humility led to onlookers infantilizing the singers. We clearly missed the warning on “Grown” (which also served as the theme song for ABC’s Grown-ish): “Watch out, world, I’m grown now / It’s about to go down.” Chloe x Halle simply aren’t cute, “around-the-way” girls who like to play acoustic guitar. They are young ladies (now 22 and 20 years of age, respectively) who are stepping into their womanhood, and Ungodly Hour laid down the path for them to strut.
The album is a major step-up from The Kids Are Alright, where the singers take notes from Rihanna’s Good Girl Gone Bad formula and get naughty but not disingenuous. The first thing that stands out is the Parental Advisory sticker (OMG, they’re actually cursing?!), almost as if to tell naysayers: “We’ve arrived, bitches!”
“A lot of people think of us as little perfect angels that don’t have any problems, and that’s not true,” Chloe told Billboard earlier this month. “We really wanted to show the imperfect side of us on this project. We have fallen in love, fallen out of love, had our hearts broken. We’re still learning to love our insecurities. That’s what this album symbolizes for us: ‘Will you love me at the ungodly hour?’”
And we love every minute of that hour, which captures the multi-faceted nature of Black women. Yes, we might be scorned from time to time. But that’s not the stereotypical crown we like to carry. We can be beautifully vulnerable, so seethingly bitter as we pick up broken heart pieces, completely self-assured and independent to the point that it frightens people. The end result is pure sophistication, with Chloe refining her production skills while allowing new (but quite established) collaborators to help shape the duo’s vision.
Ungodly Hour opener “Forgive Me” fuses slinky R&B with a heavy trap bass as the ladies snarl at an ex-flame (“You must got me f*cked up”), and the album shows off harmonies as polished as Destiny’s Child on “Don’t Make It Harder On Me.” They display angelic charm on the empowering “Baby Girl” while being caught up as the other woman on the dramatic “Wonder What She Thinks of Me.” “Tipsy” is a devilish wink (“If you lose a life, that’s not on me”), they call upon millennial house gods Disclosure for the shimmering title track, and “Busy Boy” channels the sass of Y2K-era TLC. And of course, there is the standout “Do It”: with master songwriter Victoria Monét and hitmaker Scott Storch on the credits, the glittery single would’ve taken over the clubs if only it weren’t for the current state of the world. But it still became the duo’s biggest single to date, sliding onto the Hot 100 for their first entry, with a No. 63 peak.
Chloe x Halle used the ongoing pandemic to their advantage and rose as the Princesses Of Quarantine. Stationed in their Los Angeles home for most of the year, the sisters used their backyard, creative director Andrew Makadsi, and an incredible imagination to create some of 2020’s strongest at-home performances. With their now-infamous tennis court playing a supporting role, they held a dance battle against themselvesat the BET Awards, dove under the sea way ahead of Halle’s debut as Ariel in 2021’s live-action The Little Mermaid on the TODAY show, paid homage to the Spice Girls at the GLAAD Awards, and embraced Afrofuturism for the MTV VMAs. With a year that has been heavily weighed down with grief, artists like Chloe x Halle have not only provided everlasting moments of joy but also showed just how flexible R&B remains by switching up their sound with each performance. Despite being burdened with questions on if they’ll ever go solo, the sisters firmly stand by each other’s side. Chloe’s smoldering vocals and Halle’s featherlight and jazzy tone, combined with both of their pristine ears for melodies, create soulful magic.
Many people love to toss in the “R&B Is Dead!” card in the industry’s monopoly game every few months, but it’s growing more and more evident that those folks simply aren’t paying attention. R&B is the star of 2020 — and it’s the ladies who are running the game. Along with Chloe x Halle’s three Grammy nods for Ungodly Hour, their counterpart Jhené Aiko scored the ultimate Big Four accolade (Album Of The Year for Chilombo). Brandy’s B7 proved that women could slide into a comeback era with ease, and Summer Walker’s Over It is among the Top 20 of the Billboard 200 year-end album chart. Two years ago, Chloe x Halle proclaimed the R&B kids will always be alright — a statement that hasn’t let up since.
Of all the classic holiday songs, the one that rocks the most is by the father of rock and roll: Chuck Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run.” That makes it the perfect Christmas tune for Foo Fighters to cover, so that’s just what they’ve done as an Amazon Music-exclusive single. Dave Grohl and company delivered an appropriately amped-up version of the single, which has the band performing it at an aggressive, breakneck pace.
Grohl has been as active this holiday season as just about anybody. In addition to the Chuck Berry cover, he and Greg Kurstin are in the midst of a series of covers of songs by Jewish artists in honor of Hanukkah. Grohl previously described the series, “With all the mishegas of 2020, @GregKurstin & I were kibbitzing about how we could make Hannukah extra-special this year. Festival of Lights?! How about a festival of tasty LICKS! So hold on to your tuchuses… we’ve got something special coming for your shayna punims. L’chaim!!” So far, Grohl and Kurstin have busted out covers of tunes by Beastie Boys, Drake, Peaches, Bob Dylan, and Elastica, and there are still some performances yet to come.
Listen to Foo Fighters cover Berry’s “Run Rudolph Run” above.
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