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Sometimes the best new R&B can be hard to find, but there are plenty of great rhythm and blues tunes to get into if you have the time to sift through the hundreds of newly released songs every week. So that R&B heads can focus on listening to what they really love in its true form, we’ll be offering a digest of the best new R&B music that fans of the genre should hear.

This week, Dreamville’s Ari Lennox debuted her new song “Chocolate Pomegranate” in the form of a live performance, Bryson Tiller offered a visual for throwback Trapsoul track “Right My Wrongs,” and Pink Sweats dropped the music video for “At My Worst.” Check out the rest of the best new R&B below.

Ari Lennox — “Chocolate Pomegranate”

As Ari Lennox readies for the follow-up to her 2019 debut Shea Butter Baby, the DMV talent is sharing some new music and this week she premiered her new song “Chocolate Pomegranate” on Genius’ Open Mic. The song isn’t available for streaming just yet, though. Fans will get access to the song on September 30.

Bryson Tiller — “Right My Wrongs”

Bryson Tiller is back in full form as he continues to share a string of solid single releases and this week he unleashed the music video for his track “Right My Wrongs” off his 2015 debut album Trapsoul. The Louisville crooner recently dropped four new tracks for a deluxe re-release of Trapsoul, including a collaboration with The Weeknd.

Pink Sweats — “At My Worst”

Pink Sweats put a vibrant visual to The Prelude track “At My Worst” set in a pink dry cleaner with the object of his affection. The Philly native is still hard at work on his debut Pink Planet which is set to be released soon.

Luh Kel — “All In You”

Rising R&B singer Luh Kel‘s debut album L.O.V.E. is set to drop on October 23. Ahead of its release, Luh Kel shares a song off the project titled “All In You” along with a music video that sees him searching for love. “I wanted to bring my own charm and swag to a concept like The Bachelor,” Luh Kel said in a statement. “’All In You’ expresses those feelings of liking someone so much, even if both of you have reservations about making the next step to be with each other.”

Daniel Church — “Too Much”

After penning songs for the likes Kid Ink and Trevor Jackson, singer-songwriter Daniel Church comes through with his first solo release of the year, “Too Much,” produced by Bizness Boi.

Saint Bodhi — “Blessed”

Saint Bodhi‘s debut album Mad World is on the way and if her latest flow of track drops is any indication about how potent the project will be, the alt-R&B leader just dropped a visual for her song “Blessed” as a reminder of its potential.

Lloyd — “They Don’t Care”

Lloyd emerged with a new song this week titled “They Don’t Care” in the name of social justice. The song lives on Empire’s compilation project Voices For Change, Vol. 1. “Our differences make us beautiful, not unequal,” Lloyd said of the powerful cut. “I use my voice to spread love, to inspire enlightening conversations, and, as a father, to make this world a more compassionate place for my son and daughter.”

Check out this week’s R&B picks, plus more on Uproxx’s Spotify playlist below.

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

The Indiana Pacers were a pleasant surprise of the NBA regular season, earning the 4-seed in the East during the seeding round of the NBA Bubble despite the absence of Domantas Sabonis. That came after they spent half of the season without the services of Victor Oladipo as he rehabbed from a ruptured quad injury, and the former All-Star never really regained his form this season.

Without Sabonis and with Oladipo still not looking like his pre-injury self, the Pacers were swept by the eventual Eastern Conference champion Miami Heat in the first round and entered an offseason of serious uncertainty. Their first move was to fire Nate McMillan — after giving him an extension while in the Bubble — and with the coaching search still ongoing, Indiana also has some personnel things to consider. The Sabonis-Myles Turner pairing remains awkward at best, and at some point most expect the Pacers to have to make a decision between the two, with the most likely outcome being Turner dealt and Indiana sticking with Sabonis coming off of an All-Star season.

However, they also seem to have another big move possibly being forced into their hands as Oladipo is reportedly wanting out of Indiana this offseason, as he enters the final year of his contract and will be a free agent in 2021, per The Athletic’s Jared Weiss.

Hayward won’t be opting out of his contract unless he has a long-term extension in place, which will be hard for a 30-year-old with a concerning injury history. Indiana is still home for the Haywards, and with Victor Oladipo looking to move on this offseason, according to sources, and Myles Turner possibly in the same boat, there could be an opportunity for Ainge to move Hayward and the abundance of draft picks in his war chest in a mutually agreeable way. Boston won’t have cap space again with three stars locked up long-term, so moving Hayward or Marcus Smart presents one of the few opportunities to get back a player making starter-caliber money.

It’s not the first rumbling of Oladipo looking to find a new home outside of Indiana, and his contract situation, coupled with health questions, make him far more difficult to move and gauge value on than, say, Paul George was when the Pacers moved him to OKC for Sabonis and Oladipo. What the market is for Oladipo this offseason is a huge unknown for a variety of reasons. One is that he is an expiring contract and the team trading for him would surely need to be a team that wants to sign him long term, but there will be some warranted trepidation about what level Oladipo is at as a player going forward that could limit what Indiana can get back in return.

On top of that, the league is dealing with financial uncertainty and is awaiting negotiations with the NBPA about how to handle salary cap ramifications from the loss of revenue during the pandemic that figures to be an impediment for every potential big move this offseason. In short, there are a number of hurdles to clear to find a trade partner Indiana would want to deal with — they made it pretty clear with the George trade they don’t want to deal stars in conference — who would be able to find common ground with the Pacers on value. Still, it’s certainly something worth monitoring as the NBA Draft approaches in November and free agency begins, as Indiana will surely have plenty of calls to see where the market on their star guard is, but dealing him seems far from certain.

Sienna Miller has revealed how the late actor Chadwick Boseman was a true ally in making sure she was compensated fairly when the two starred together in 21 Bridges. In an interview with Empire, Miller opened up about the Black Panther‘s star generosity while also admitting her hesitancy to tell this story for the first time. “There was no showiness, it was, ‘Of course I’ll get you to that number, because that’s what you should be paid,’” she said.

According to Miller, Boseman, who was also a producer on 21 Bridges, pursued her for a role in the film. However, Miller had been trying to take a break from acting, and her daughter was just getting ready to begin school. So she told Boseman that she’d take the part, but only if she’s “compensated in the right way.” To Miller’s surprise, Boseman immediately got to work securing her salary and even went so far as to chip-in part of his own pay to make sure she was paid fairly. “You’re getting paid what you deserve, and what you’re worth,” Boseman surprisingly told her. Via Empire:

It’s just unfathomable to imagine another man in that town behaving that graciously or respectfully. In the aftermath of this I’ve told other male actor friends of mine that story and they all go very very quiet and go home and probably have to sit and think about things for a while.

Miller had never told the story to anyone before, but after Boseman’s death, she decided it was important to let the world know about his quiet generosity. “I think it’s a testament to who he was.”

(Via Empire)

Earlier this month, BTS made history when “Dynamite,” their first English-language song, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart dated September 5, making them the first all-South Korean artist to have a chart-topping song in the US. They kept their run alive for a second consecutive week on the next chart, only to have Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion’s “WAP” knock it from the top. “Dynamite” also spent the next week at No. 2, which brings us to this week: After two weeks away from the No. 1 spot, “Dynamite” is back on top on the chart dated October 3.

The song got a big boost thanks to a pack of remixes the group shared of the track: On September 18, the band shared “Bedroom,” “Midnight,” “Retro,” and “Slow Jam” remixes of the song, which accounted for 52 percent of the song’s overall sales in the tracking week.

Elsewhere on the chart, Justin Bieber and Chance The Rapper’s new collaboration “Holy” debuted at No. 3. That makes the song Bieber’s 20th top-10 hit, and it’s the third such song for Chance. Meanwhile, “WAP” has settled back into the No. 2 spot.

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

The Miami Heat’s run to the NBA Finals has been nothing short of spectacular, as they’ve needed 15 games to get past the 4, 1, and 3-seeds in the Eastern Conference. Along the way, they’ve found themselves with a flair for the dramatic, emerging as the NBA Playoffs’ most dominant fourth quarter team, pulling off some incredible comebacks and squeaking out tightly fought games by out-executing their opposition down the stretch.

They’ve done it against the Pacers, Bucks, and most recently the Celtics, but now face their biggest test in the Los Angeles Lakers. Jimmy Butler is a major reason for their fourth quarter success this postseason, as he has willed Miami to some wins — most notably Game 1 against Milwaukee. Among players who made it past the first round, only Jamal Murray averaged more points per fourth quarter in this year’s playoffs than Butler’s 6.8 (which was tied with Kawhi Leonard). Butler sees his productivity and efficiency spike in winning time, as he is capable of elevating his game to another level when needed, but he’s far from alone in that regard on the Heat.

As a team, Miami has a +17.8 net rating in the fourth quarter this postseason — 121.8 ORtg; 104.0 DRtg — which is by far the best in the NBA. They’ve been the best shooting team in fourth quarters, hitting 49 percent of their field goal attempts (35.6 percent from three) as they become a downhill, attacking the basket team in the final period. Between Butler and Goran Dragic, they have two players who excel at getting to the rim and both finishing and drawing contact, as evidenced by them having the second-most fourth quarter free throw attempts on average of any postseason team this year at 8.9 (only behind a Sixers team that got swept). They still have threats outside in Tyler Herro — who has also shown an ability to attack off the dribble — and Duncan Robinson, and an elite roll-man and offensive rebounder in Bam Adebayo, which make them capable of threatening a defense from every level of the floor.

Despite this being the first Finals run for just about everyone on the Heat, there is an unshakable confidence and total belief across the roster that they belong in these moments. They have collectively taken on the mentality of Butler, and as a result they have been able to make other teams wilt and become frantic in the closing minutes, while they have a much more even, almost knowing energy about them that they’ll make plays when needed. They’ve been able to bring out the worst in the Bucks and Celtics in those moments, two teams with more playoff experience but also with playoff demons they have been unable to put behind them.

In the Finals, they will face a Lakers team led by the indomitable will of LeBron James, who has likewise imparted his cool confidence on his team. L.A. has not been nearly as good in fourth quarters as the Heat, as they actually have a net rating of -0.2 in the final period, but in those closing minutes, they have two superstars they lean on and a defense that has shown, over and over again, that they can turn things up a notch come winning time. At this point, there can be no expectation from the Heat that they can get the Lakers to wilt as the Bucks and Celtics did simply by applying pressure and awakening the demons of their past. Instead, it will be about out-executing them as a team, which is something they are certainly capable of.

This Lakers team is sensational, but is not a juggernaut. They require the best of you at all times in order to win, and that’s a challenge few teams are ready to meet every night in a seven-game series. However, the same can be said of the Miami Heat, a team that will go through hot and cold shooting spells, but rarely lets their intensity and effort waver based on whether shots are going in. As such, this NBA Finals should be a treat, even if it’s not the matchup too many expected back in August. The winner will likely be the team that can close games out best in a battle between two of the NBA’s very best closers in James and Butler.

What has to give Miami hope is that there have been a few games this postseason in which the Lakers opponents have had openings late, but have been unable to walk through that door and shut it on James and Davis. Their ability to close games on both ends, playing lockdown defense while also being the best fourth quarter shooting team in the league, is a formidable challenge for L.A., and the numbers indicate that the Heat have simply been better in just about every facet in the fourth quarter this postseason — field goal and three-point percentage, turnovers, free throw shooting. The caveat there is that they’ve yet to go up against the Lakers defense, but they certainly have the personnel and belief to go at the Lakers with their best shot in the Finals.

We’ll find out if that’s enough in short order, and hopefully get some high drama duels in the process.

In 2019, the Washington Times published an explosive(ly chauvinistic) article about Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spending “nearly $300” on a haircut. “The New York Democrat ventured into Last Tangle Salon on 19th Street Northwest last month and shelled out $80 for a haircut and $180 for lowlights,” the report reads with the headline, “Self-declared socialist AOC splurges on high-dollar hairdo.” The article was widely criticized for its sexism, and besides, as feminist author Jessica Valenti pointed out, “This is not an expensive haircut/color for a public figure who is frequently on TV.”

On the other hand, it’s almost half as much as Donald Trump paid in taxes the year he was elected.

Following the New York Times reporting that President Trump only paid $750 in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and wrote off more than $70,000 in hair-styling expenses when he was on The Apprentice, Ocasio-Cortez called out “misogynistic” Republicans for their monocle-popping reaction to her haircut. “Last year Republicans blasted a firehose of hatred + vitriol my way because I treated myself to a $250 cut & lowlights on my birthday,” she tweeted. “Where’s the criticism of their idol spending $70k on hairstyling? Oh, it’s nowhere because they’re spineless, misogynistic hypocrites? Got it.”

AOC also called Trump a “walking scam” who has “contributed less to funding our communities than waitresses & undocumented immigrants” and “never cared for our country more than he cares for himself.” Ocasio-Cortez and Trump both hail from New York, but only one of them can talk trash like a New Yorker. Hint: it’s not the guy with a 33 percent approval rating in the Empire State.

(Via the New York Times)

With tip-off for the 2008 NCAA National Championship Game just minutes away, Markieff and Marcus Morris settled into the living room of their grandmother’s North Philadelphia row home as the names of two of college basketball’s most prominent programs flashed across the TV in front of them.

On one side was Memphis, 38-1 entering that evening’s game. The team was led by John Calipari, college basketball’s most famous coach, and Derrick Rose, college basketball’s top pro prospect and the soon-to-be No. 1 overall pick in the NBA Draft. On the other side was Kansas, a college basketball blue blood, featuring a roster stacked with NBA talents like Mario Chalmers, Darrell Arthur, and Brandon Rush, and led by Bill Self, one of the country’s most revered coaches.

The Morris twins knew the players. They knew the coaches. They knew them all better than most. They were the only two viewers who over the previous two years had committed to play for both schools. They had first committed to Memphis in November 2006. They decommitted the following summer. They recommitted in July. They decommitted once again in September, then committed to Kansas in November.

But now, five months later, and unbeknownst to anyone—friends, family, even the schools themselves—they were once again unsure. At the very least, the eldest (by seven minutes) of the two was. Markieff felt a connection to Memphis. The urban atmosphere and culture reminded him of the Hunting Park neighborhood where he and his brother grew up.

Marcus, however, was still pushing Kansas. He’d fallen for its tradition and practical benefits. When the whole recruitment process had begun, their high school coach had written out a list of questions to help guide their decision. How many players have the schools sent to the NBA? Will you play right away? What’s the roster look like? Their answers had directed them to Kansas. Nothing had changed in Marcus’ mind.

The two went back and forth. Neither budged.

Separating wasn’t an option. The twins were as close to siamese as two non-physically connected humans could be. Markieff and Marcus needed a tie-breaker.

“We were like, ‘Shit, whoever wins this game, that’s the school we’re going to go to,’” Marcus says 12 years later. “We figured we’d leave it up to that.”

The clock flicked past 9 p.m. Surrounded by family, the twins watched as the Kansas and Memphis starting lineups strolled onto the Alamodome floor.

Sitting in their grandmother’s living room, they felt relieved. They’d spent almost four years torn by the decision, making sure to seize control of the recruitment process from the start. Their needs were the ones prioritized, not those of the coaches and schools. They’d reneged on commitments, questioned and even defied college basketball royalty, flipped the script, and done the selling themselves.

If they needed any assurance that their process had been strong, that their instincts had been right, all they needed to do was glance at the names of two schools competing for a championship on TV. And so why not, thought Marcus and Markieff, leave their fate in the hands of chance?

Referee Ed Hightower strutted to center court. He tossed the ball into the air.

“And college basketball’s biggest night,” exclaimed CBS broadcaster Jim Nantz, “is underway.”

They never expected to go college. “No one in our family went,” Markieff says. Their road there began when they were in the seventh grade, when one day, while playing in the schoolyard, they heard a man shout out a question.

“How tall are you guys?”

The twins looked up. The man asking was one of the school’s football coaches. He held a phone in his hand.

“About 6’5,” they said. The coach raised the phone up to his ear.

“I’m standing here in the playground,” he told the man on the other line, a cousin of his and local basketball coach named Dan Brinkley, “and there are these twins here and they say they’re, like, 6’5.”

Later that week, Brinkley was driving down Philadelphia’s Broad Street when he spotted a pair of twins walking the opposite direction, toward Erie, towering above their friends.

That has to be them, he thought.

He turned around, parked his car and followed them home. He asked them if their mom was around. They pointed through the closed screen door. A woman, Angel Morris, emerged onto the porch. Brinkley told her who he was, how he’d spent years coaching and mentoring kids in the area, how if she entrusted him with her son’s futures he could secure them college scholarships. Then he handed Angel her his phone.

“Call anyone in there,” he said. “Ask them about Coach Dan.”

Angel, a single mom who worked at Temple University Hospital, took the phone. She disappeared inside. A few minutes later she opened the door.

“OK,” she said, “you can have my boys.”

Football was the twins’ first passion — Marcus played quarterback, Markieff first played center, then later on tight end — but they were willing to give basketball a try. By the time they were sophomores. both had shot up to about 6’9. The colleges, mostly local, started coming around. As juniors, they led Brinkley’s Prep Charter High School basketball team to a state title.

More schools expressed interest. Marcus and Markieff came back the following season even better. “I had to start telling them that summer to stop coming in so much,” Rahim Washington, a Prep Charter assistant coach at the time, said. “They were spending every day in the gym.” More schools took notice, from the Atlantic 10 to the Big East. Kentucky head coach Tubby Smith visited. Letters filled the family mailbox. The twins kept the first few.

“But it became so many we had to throw them out,” Marcus says.

“They were all straightforward, no special shit,” Markieff says.

And anyway, they preferred that Brinkley take the lead. “We didn’t know anything about that stuff,” Markieff says. “We didn’t know who was who. He told us that all we had to do was hoop, keep doing what we’ve been doing, and he’d take care of the rest.”

Brinkley and Washington would huddle in Brinkley’s office and bounce schools off each other. They’d analyze lineups, study which coaches had fared the best at developing forwards, predict which schools would have multiple front court openings. That last part was key.

“I had a phone call with (North Carolina head coach) Roy Williams one time and he was like, ‘We want you to come to school here but we only have one scholarship,” Markieff says. “I was like, ‘No coach, it doesn’t matter what school it is, we ain’t doing it.”

“Us going to school together wasn’t even a conversation,” Marcus says. “It was something that was just understood.”

“The two did everything together,” Washington says. “They came to school together, wore similar outfits, they pretty much ate the same thing.” They even molded their games in complementary ways — Marcus focused more on the perimeter, Markieff favored the paint — so their skills wouldn’t clash.

It was during their junior year that the twins first heard from Memphis. Derek Kellog, a longtime assistant of Calipari’s, got Brinkley’s number from a mutual friend. Calipari was in his fifth year with the school and “they were about to become one of the hottest teams in the country,” Brinkley said. He thought Calipari’s fast-paced, dribble-drive schemes would both accelerate the twins’ development and showcase their skills.

Calipari (who declined an interview request through a representative at the University of Kentucky, where he’s now the head coach) flew to Philadelphia. He met the twins and their family for dinner at their grandparents’ house, which they had moved into in December after a fire had ravaged Angel’s home.

“He was the first coach to come visit us in the hood,” Markieff said. “That he wasn’t scared to come to the inner city, that was different for us.”

Calipari was engaging, exhilarating, and warm. The twins were impressed, but not awed by his presence. “We didn’t really know the weight that college coaches had,” Markieff says.

They liked what they heard and, upon visiting the campus the following November, liked what they saw. Markieff says “it was like being at home,” a sentiment his brother shared.

“The way it was set up in the inner city, it felt like visiting a school in Philly,” Marcus says. “A lot of the players” — he mentions then-sophomore center Joey Dorsey, a Baltimore native — “were similar to us, too.”

They whittled the decision down to Memphis, Kentucky, Indiana, and La Salle. On Nov. 16, in the midst of their senior year, Brinkley organized a press conference for them in the school auditorium. They sat at a table alongside Angel.

Markieff pulled out a blue Memphis baseball hat.

“I’ve been with him for 17 years,” Marcus said. “Why leave him now?” Markieff placed a matching hat on his younger brother’s head.

Brinkley texted Calipari the news.

“They were showing us the most interest,” Markieff says today. “It felt like the best fit.”

The twins capped off their Prep Charter careers that March. Memphis was next, except for one problem: Markieff and Marcus were young for their grade; they wouldn’t turn 18 until September. They decided they’d be better off — mentally, emotionally, physically — doing a year of prep school before heading off to college.

The twins, Brinkley, and reports from the time all say that this had been the plan all along, and that the brothers would re-sign with Memphis the following fall. But, according to Brinkley, “Calipari then decided he didn’t want that. He wanted them to come right away, even if they decided to redshirt. He said he could prepare them better if they were there.”

Rumors were also beginning to swirl that Calipari could soon leverage his Memphis success into a bigger job. “We didn’t think he would still be there with us,” Marcus says. So Brinkley began searching for other options.

Kansas piqued his interest. Their roster was full of players likely headed to the NBA within the next two years, meaning Marcus and Markieff would have more opportunities to play. He thought Self had an impressive history of developing forwards at both Kansas and Illinois, where he previously coached. He looked up the number for Self’s office and left a message with his secretary.

Self didn’t know much about Marcus or Markieff. “I hadn’t really heard of them until after they signed with Memphis,” he says. But he called Brinkley back.

“He told me that we didn’t know him,” Self recalls, “but that he had twins who could play and have good grades and are committed to Memphis but that they’re going to prep school and like Kansas.”

Self says he told Brinkley NCAA rules prohibited him from recruiting them until the fall. Brinkley sent him six tapes featuring clips and highlights anyway

The twins enrolled in Pennsauken Apex Academy in New Jersey and in July they told the Philadelphia Daily News that they were re-opening their recruitment. Upon hearing the news Calipari reached out to the twins. “I’m coming to see you,” he said.

Calipari and Kellogg boarded a plane to Philadelphia. They sat with the twins in their grandparents’ home, breaking down future lineups, where they thought Marcus and Markieff would play, what they thought they could do.

“The fact that Calipari flew out to see us, it felt like one of those things where he wasn’t going to leave the house until we told him we were coming,” Markieff says. So that’s exactly what they did.

“We just knew he wasn’t going to be there the whole time we were,” Marcus says.

“They wanted to see other schools,” Angel told a reporter at the time. “But as we sat down as a family and talked about it, everything worked out, and (Memphis) is exactly where we’re going and what we’re doing.”

Two months later, in early September and with school about to begin, the twins changed their minds again. The combination of it all — their concerns about Calipari’s future, their desire to enroll in prep school, their taking to the idea of playing for Kansas — had robbed Memphis of its gloss. It was time to find a new future home.

Self needed players. He’d likely lose five to the NBA the following summer. If some high school coach in Philly was offering him a pair of 6’9, nationally ranked forwards, he was more than happy to oblige. He and an assistant named Joe Dooley flew to Philadelphia to meet Marcus and Markieff at their school gym.

“Before that,” Marcus says, “we didn’t know who Bill Self was.”

Self and Dooley watched the twins workout. There were eight stations set up throughout the gym. Each station lasted about four minutes. The twins’ skills impressed the coaches, but something else stuck out, too.

“They were incredibly lazy,” Dooley says.

One brother only completed six stations before leaving for the bathroom. The other finished his at what Self and Dooley deemed an unacceptable pace. Afterward, Marcus and Markieff approached the Kansas coaches.

“On a scale of 1-to-10, how do you think we did?” they asked.

Dooley paused. He looked at them. “Minus two,” he said.

Still, Self was interested. Markieff and Marcus were both very large and both very good. Dooley took the lead on the recruiting, though “ I don’t even know if you can call it recruiting,” Marcus says. “Like, we literally don’t have one letter from Kansas. It was more like, ‘We want to go to your school, do you have spots?’”

Asked if the school ever dangled any additional benefits, Marcus says, “I know for a fact that Kansas never offered us shit.”

Dooley flew to Philadelphia a few times, had dinner with the family, and answered any questions Marcus and Markieff had. Dooley enjoyed them. He found them funny, smart, and “easy to talk to.”. Marcus and Markieff asked a lot about life in Kansas.

“We ain’t know nothing about the tradition of Kansas or any of that,” Markieff says. “We didn’t know nothing about Danny Manning, Paul Pierce, any of that.”

“All we did know,” says Marcus, “is that Wilt (Chamberlain) played there, because he was from Philly.”

In October, Marcus, Markieff, and Angel flew out to Kansas for their official visit. The trip got off to a rocky start. Lawrence was nothing like North Philly or Memphis. The amount of farmland they saw just on the drive from the airport to the school’s campus was jarring. The player tasked with showing the twins around — Chalmers and Rush — “Didn’t show us around the way we would (show recruits later on)to make sure you want to come to the school,” Marcus says.

“They were cool,” Markieff adds, “but it was boring.”

But Self had purposely invited the twins on the weekend of Late Night in the Phog, the school’s annual pre-season pep rally. Marcus and Markieff showed up at Allen Fieldhouse around 6 p.m on a Friday night. Rabid fans dressed in blue and white filled all 16,300 seats. Music blared over the speakers. Cheers filled the room.

“That shit was crazy,” Marcus says. “You could feel the tradition. We’d never seen anything like that.”

“It was just on another level,” says Markieff.

That experience combined with Brinkley’s advice was enough to win them over.

On October 31, the twins verbally committed.

“It all happened very fast,” Self says.

A little over five months later, Memphis and Kansas faced off in the National Championship Game. With 2:12 in the contest, Memphis forward Robert Dozier canned a pair of free throws, giving Calipari’s squad a nine-point lead. Marcus and Markieff exchanged a glance.

“We thought we were going to Memphis,” Marcus says.

It didn’t matter to them that they had signed a letter of intent to play for Kansas only two months earlier, meaning that if they reneged they’d be forced by NCAA rules to sit out a year, or that Calipari, unaware of their renewed interest, might not even want them back. Such obstacles, they figured, could be dealt with later on. Between them and Brinkley, there was no problem they couldn’t solve.

All that mattered in this moment was that Markieff was having doubts. He had felt a connection with Memphis. The problem was that there was no way he and Marcus were splitting up.

Kansas responded with a Darrell Arthur jumper, then stole the inbounds pass and drilled a three. Memphis missed a bunch of free throws. With 10.8 seconds remaining, and down by three, Kansas guard Sherron Collins dribbled the ball up the floor and fumbled it into the hands of Chalmers. Chalmers rose up from deep and buried a three with 2.1 seconds left.

“Unbelievable,” cried out Jim Nantz.

Kansas outscored Memphis by seven in overtime, giving them a 75-68 win.

“The way that shot happened, it confirmed it all for us,” Marcus says.

Says Markieff, “It was like it was meant to be.”

The twins moved to Kansas that summer. Angel came along. Marcus and Markieff struggled at first. Self is notorious for his grueling training camps and, in Markieff’s words, “our workout styles were opposites. There were times where we couldn’t believe how much shit we were doing.”

Says Marcus, “There was a lot of time where we wanted to hang them up, through the shoes over the wire.”

But they never did, and three years later Marcus was named Big 12 Player of the Year while Markieff earned second-team All-Big 12 honors. That spring, following their junior season, the twins declared for the Draft. Both were selected in the first round.

“Kansas changed us,” Marcus says. “We’re grateful for that.”

Calipari, meanwhile, left Memphis for Kentucky in March 2009.

In February 2020, Marcus’ No. 22 jersey was retired by Kansas. Self says the school now recruits forwards by showing highlights of the twins. He’s also dubious about their claim that had Chalmers’ jumper bounced out missed they might not have enrolled.

“I don’t believe that,” he says, laughing. “Have you been around them? They’re ridiculous.”

But Marcus and Markieff insist the story is true, even if no one else was aware of what was riding on that shot. “I know my mom would have been like, “You better not base your future off one game,” Marcus says.

“I don’t know, it worked for us.”

Yaron Weitzman is a freelance writer and the author of Tanking to the Top: The Philadelphia 76ers and the Most Audacious Process in the History of Professional Sports. Follow Yaron on Twitter, @YaronWeitzman.

Billie Eilish turns 19 years old in December, but even ahead of that, at her young age, she has already led quite the life. Her story is one worth exploring, and it will be examined in a new documentary, Billie Eilish: The World’s A Little Blurry. The film will premiere in theaters on Apple TV+ in February 2021, and it’s a production of Apple Original Films, in association with Interscope Films, Darkroom, This Machine, and Lighthouse Management & Media.

Eilish shared a 30-second announcement video for the film today, and while it doesn’t reveal much, it does include a brief clip of an infant Eilish happily slapping piano keys, foreshadowing her future proclivity in the medium.

There isn’t much info about the movie available yet, it will presumably track Eilish’s young career, from her breakout with “Ocean Eyes” (or perhaps even earlier) to the success she currently enjoys following her No. 1 2019 debut album When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?. Eilish was seen being followed by a documentary crew on tour in October 2019, so assuming that crew was involved with the Apple doc, expect to see tour footage in the film.

This documentary wasn’t cheap for Apple: At the end of last year, it was reported that the movie is part of a $25 million deal between the tech giant and Eilish.

Watch the announcement video above.

When word came down in 2019 that Roy Choi and Jon Favreau were making a celebrity-powered drop-in cooking show, it sounded like surefire fun. The show was a success and kept the promise of its premise — a wooly, sometimes-informative, often-funny hang fest for Choi, Favreau, and their famous friends. It deftly blended kitchen education with out-of-the-box recipes and interviews with Marvel and Star Wars insiders.

The show wasn’t genre shaking, mind you, but there really wasn’t anything not to like. Cool people doing cool stuff is pretty much the easiest recipe for TV success known to humankind. But it works for a reason.

The latest season of The Chef Show — technically season two, volume one — premiered on Netflix last Friday, with five new episodes landing at once. Each installment is a bit like meeting with two old friends for an after-work cocktail. You’re catching up, you’re smiling at clever banter, and you’re getting a bit of a buzz on. You leave flushed with memories of why you always liked hanging out with these super pals in the first place.

In short, Choi and Favreau are food TV’s warm hug — breaking the isolation of the quaratine era.

This season’s episodes of The Chef Show find the duo hitting the streets of Los Angeles. The episodes center on three restaurants in L.A.: Milk Bar, Simone, and Tartine Bianco. The two remaining episodes capture the duo in their studio kitchen — cooking up Italian comfort food and burgers and fries.

If you’re looking for an episode from this installment to really get you hooked for the first time, the second episode of the season, called “Roy’s Italian Cuisine,” is the place to start. The pair work in the kitchen making meatballs for both spaghetti and lasagna and then go through the arduous process of cooking artichokes. As always, Favreau asks the perfect questions for a passionate-but-not-expert-level home cook.

That episode aside, this season feels a little short when it comes to both length and new ideas. Each 30-ish minute episode flies by, making it an easy binge, but the famous friend drop-ins are gone. The removal of this star-adjacent element clearly takes something away from the magic of the show. The problem with creating a series based, in part, on celebrity clout is that when it’s not there you notice. (It’s hard not to lament the fact that none of Favreau’s The Mandalorian cohort makes an appearance.)

The show also seems to be playing catch up to the rapidly changing restaurant scene. Clearly taped pre-COVID, Choi and Favreau visit L.A.’s famed and now-closed Tartine Bianco and chat with chef Jessica Largey at Simone (a restaurant she left over a year ago). That’s to be expected, to some degree. This show has always been a bit of an afterthought for two busy, famous, rich, and successful men. But it is noticeable.

Gripes aside, The Chef Show offers two-hours and thirty-minutes of enjoyable, easily binge-able content. It’s perfect for a rainy, autumn weekend and background kitchen viewing while you cook. You’ll learn a thing or two from Choi as he guides Favreau through recipes. And the “pals palling around doing pal stuff” is a nice respite from a world on fire.

Taken as a whole, the series is a cruisy-yet-edifying glimpse into the dynamic of two close friends, their bond, and the connective power of the kitchen. If you have an appetite for that sort of camaraderie, you’re going to find this time well spent.

You can watch all five episodes of season two, volume one of ‘The Chef Show‘ on Netflix right now.

Last week, Bryson Tiller shared a deluxe reissue of his beloved Trapsoul album, one that arrived almost five years after its original release. The reissue was released with three previously-unofficial singles by the Louisville native: “Just Another Interlude” — which flaunts a sample of Drake and Omarion’s “Bria’s Interlude” — “Self Righteous,” and a remix of “Rambo” with The Weeknd. While many, including myself, rolled their eyes at the idea of a deluxe album dropping a half-decade after the original album, the narrative behind its release is a bit more than the presumed cash grab. It’s an undeniable opportunity for Bryson to start fresh and bring his disgruntled fanbase back to his good side before the release of his upcoming album.

This takes us back to 2017 when Bryson released his second studio album, True To Self. He was less than two years removed from the record that not only changed his life, but one that his fans filled with immensely loyal supporters heralded as an R&B classic. Despite this, Bryson failed to recapture the magic, a downfall that earned the infamous “sophomore slump” title. While this writer believes the album wasn’t nearly as bad as social media made it to be, Bryson explained on multiple occasions why the album failed to meet expectations. “I was in a dark, dark place after Trapsoul, so I don’t know, I wanted to start over and I just don’t feel like I made it yet,” he said in a December 2017 interview with Tim Westwood. Months later in a 2018 tweet, Bryson would further explain his distaste with True To Self, saying, “I was depressed before I made that album and you can hear it in the music.” Three years later, his sentiments with the album remained the same as he explained it in an interview with Billboard.

It was two years after Trapsoul came out and I was going through a lot of sh*t — like, legal stuff and personal stuff. I didn’t really want to create an album at that time […] I wasn’t really trying to put energy or time into it. I wasn’t really trying. It was just me being lazy. It was my C-game.

With all this in mind, it begins to become clearer and clearer why Bryson opted to release Trapsoul deluxe album almost five years after its release. It gives the “Don’t” singer an opportunity to drown his listeners in its nostalgia and use the natural substance to scrape the bad taste left by True To Self with just weeks left until the arrival of his third album. Bryson has to be aware that Trapsoul is his fans’ siren song. Its re-release saw fans delving into their relationship woes of the last decade in a moment of toxic reminiscing. It also, for what might be the first time in three years, gave him a legitimate reason to celebrate his musical offerings as it wiped his slate clean and pushed his fans to deliver a momentary wave of forgiveness. This is one of the few benefits of deluxe albums and re-released projects.

Deluxe albums and re-released projects have far overstayed their 2020 visit. Its presence may not be the absolute worst thing ever, but like a lingering relative who is two months past their “three-week visit,” the additional person taking up space in the house nags you just enough for consistent discomfort. While deluxe albums and repackaged releases are nothing more than a cash grab or a simpler and cheaper way to release music 85% of the time, the other 15% is much more intentional. They can aim to correct past faults and attend to the fanbase’s latecomers.

Take Pop Smoke’s posthumous debut Shoot For The Moon, Aim For The Stars for example. The album received a deluxe reissue after fans were underwhelmed by its initial release. The absence and presence of certain names and songs were questioned, leaving fans to wonder if this is how the late rapper envisioned his debut album to look like. However, with the deluxe, fans’ complaints were attended to. Fivio Foreign, who also calls Brooklyn home, was added to the album on two separate occasions. Burna Boy was also added to the album, appearing on a “remix” of “Enjoy Yourself” alongside Karol G, a track that fans heard before the album’s release thanks to an unfortunate leak.

A similar narrative rings true with Lil Uzi Vert. The Philly rapper released his Eternal Atake album in March after a label dispute pushed the album back for two years after his Luv Is Rage 2 debut. Just a week later, Lil Uzi Vert would release its deluxe, one he marketed as Lil Uzi Vert Vs. The World 2, in what looked like an attempt to deliver all the music his fans should’ve gotten during his prolonged label issues. Pop Smoke and Lil Uzi Vert’s deluxe albums both succeeded, to varying extents, in correcting and addressing their past faults and dispelling the levels of frustration and dissatisfaction their fans dealt with.

On the flip side, rising R&B talents Lucky Daye and HER received a jolting boost in their respective careers after their projects were re-released as albums. In late 2018 and early 2019, Lucky Daye released his I and II EPs respectively. Both were repackaged with a few new additions for his Grammy-nominated official debut album,Painted. HER’s 2016 H.E.R. Volume 1 and 2017 H.E.R. Volume 2 were also repacked for her Grammy-winning official debut album H.E.R. in late 2017. The same occurred with the Cali born singer’s second album as 2018’s I Used To Know Her: The Prelude and I Used to Know Her: Part 2 as both were repackaged for her 2019 Grammy-nominated album, I Used to Know Her. While this strategy might be bothersome for the day-one fans of these artists as anticipated releases turn out to be nothing more than old news, it favors the artists by maximizing the fanbase that their impeccable talents deserve. When it comes to HER and Lucky, the proof is in the pudding. HER is a 10-time Grammy Award nominee and a two-time winner, while Lucky received four nominations at his first Grammy awards.

With the deluxe reissue of Trapsoul, Bryson takes advantage of both of the aforementioned examples. He corrects his past faults while favoring the late stragglers of his audience, regardless if their tardiness pertains to the whole Trapsoul experience or just the unofficial additions that were originally buried within Bryson’s SoundCloud page. Aside from Bryson himself, the decision for the rereleases should also be credited to Bryson’s home label, RCA, which is coincidentally the label that Lucky Daye and HER call home. With fellow labelmates like VanJess also engaging in the re-release trend, RCA highlights what a well-strategized reissue looks like when an artist’s best interest is at the forefront. Regardless, thanks to the Trapsoul deluxe, additional appreciation can be given towards the impeccable body of work Pen Griffey presented nearly five years ago.

Trapsoul (Deluxe) is out now via RCA. Get it here.

Lil Uzi Vert is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.