Month: July 2022

Jim Jones admitted that he was “upset” when he first heard his Lobby Boyz partner, Maino, had released the song, “Hi Hater.” Jones discussed his first impression of the breakthrough song during a recent interview with HipHopDX.

“I was mad,” Jones recalled. “I don’t think I ever even told you this! I was on fire when I heard that shit. This punk n-gga got a record, I’m upset! He really got a record, now he really in the game. You were on the outskirts to me before ‘Hi Hater.’ I heard ‘Hi Hater,’ I was like, ‘Fuck, man! Who the fuck…’ I kicked the posters over and everything, fuckin’ ‘Hi Hater,’ I’ll punch you right in your mouth.”

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He added: “I had every indication in my mind, that was a hit record. There’s no way around it, but I was really pissed off at the time. I was the hater he was saying hi to.”

“Hi Hater” was released in 2008 as the lead single from Maino’s debut album, If Tomorrow Comes… A remix of the track featuring Swizz Beatz, T.I., Plies, Jadakiss, and Fabolous was released later that year.

While the two were one-time rivals in New York, they eventually made amends during a run-in with each other at Lenox Mall. In the years since, they’ve been close friends and collaborators. Back in May, they released a full-length album as the Lobby Boyz. The project features Fabolous, Styles P, Benny The Butcher, and more.

Check out Jones and Maino’s discussion with HipHopDX below. 

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Chance the Rapper spoke candidly about the leaked video of himself being berated by Kanye West during a clip from an upcoming interview with Morning Hustle. When asked about the incident, Chance explained that the video didn’t give “the full story.” 

“It’s a clip of a larger moment, like no one’s ever gonna get the full story of what’s going on,” he explained. “And yeah, people do take it and run with it, ’cause I saw some people put, like, fake captions under the video to make it look like he was talking about my music or something like that. But in all honesty, this is real life. I have real friends and they go through real problems.”

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The footage, which began circulating in January 2021, was rumored to be filmed for a Donda documentary that was being created by Dame Dash. The leaked clip shows an interview portion with Dash, who says that it went down in Wyoming for a Donda recording session.

Chance added that he went to meet with Ye to check on his health: “I did come out there to check on my friend. Me and a lot of other people still have love for Ye. But he’s a human, he’s not perfect. He was obviously going through it at that time … It made me re-evaluate my friendship with him, for sure. I had never been so close to him going through an episode.”

“… At the end of the day, I definitely love the dude. That’s my guy,” he continued. “It sucks that sometimes people can exploit a moment that is a genuine moment.”

It’s difficult to make out what specifically caused the argument in the original clip and Chance didn’t get into those details with Morning Hustle.

Check out Chance’s explanation with Morning Hustle below. Chance’s full interview on the show is set to premiere on Monday.

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The highly-anticipated fight between Jake Paul and Hasim Rahman Jr. has been canceled due to a weight issue with Rahman. The news was announced by Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions (MVP) on Saturday.

“MVP and Jake Paul will not reward someone that has conducted themselves in such a deceiving and calculated manner,” the statement read. “Therefore, MVP is left with no choice but to cancel the August 6th event. This forced outcome impacts Jake Paul, Amanda Serrano and every other fighter on this card who have trained tirelessly over the past few months for this event. The boxing community must hold Hasim Rahman Jr. liable for his lack of professionalism.”

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Scheduled for August 6, the fight was to be held at New York’s Madison Square Garden with Amanda Serrano and Brenda Carabajal booked as the co-main event of the card.

MVP states that Rahman had signed a contract to weigh in at 200 pounds, but this was later renegotiated to 205 pounds. Finally, MVP’s statement claims that Rahman’s camp threatened to withdraw if the weight was not brought up to 215 pounds.

“Upon receiving this new contract Saturday morning, Rahman’s camp indicated for the very first time that he planned to weigh 215 lbs. at the official weigh-in and would not agree to weigh-in at 205 pounds and informing Most Valuable Promotions that they are pulling out of the fight unless the fight was agreed to at 215 pounds.”

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Buccaneers general manager Jason Licht says that Tom Brady plays a “huge” role in recruiting talent to Tampa Bay in free agency. Speaking about the advantage of having the seven-time Super Bowl champion on the team’s roster, Licht admitted that he often turns to Brady to help bring in players.

“Oh, it’s huge,” Licht said during a recent press conference. “I think any GM with an established veteran quarterback has an advantage, but when you have Tom Brady as the greatest, it’s even more of an advantage and I’m never going to apologize for using him to help me bring in players for this team.”

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He added: “If I’m thinking about a player or we are as a staff, I’ll give him a call and see if he can help us out and he’s always willing to do it.”

This year, the Bucs have brought in a pair of veteran stars in Kyle Rudolph and Julio Jones. They’ll be an important presence on the field in the wake of Rob Gronkowski’s recent retirement.

“We’re usually on the same page with that,” Licht said. “We didn’t have to kick too many weeds to find out about Julio Jones. We’ve known about him a while, and Kyle Rudolph was the best tight end that was available. But, we’re usually on the same page. We have a lot of communication – so does Todd [Bowles] and Tom [Brady] and myself. We talk a lot about players.”

After joining the Bucs, Jones spoke about the discussions he had with Brady prior to signing: “I talked to him, I talked to Tom several times but we were just talking, it wasn’t really about coming to Tampa, we were just communicating, you know just feeling each other out I guess, it probably was a tactic, but I don’t know, I’m here.” 

The Buccaneers will begin their 2022 regular season against the Cowboys in Week 1.

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Ali Shaheed Muhammad, best-known as a founding member of A Tribe Called Quest, stop by Talib Kweli’s podcast, People’s Party, earlier this week, to discuss the group’s legendary album, The Low End Theory. Shaheed even explained the nuanced meaning of the project’s title.

“Where [Q-Tip] and I are alike is we don’t like the conventional. We don’t like the predictable. We like the mystique of music, but in life. And we strive to just dig a little bit deeper,” he told Kweli. “So with Tip, he definitely wanted to dig way deeper, to put forth this message that yeah, it’s about the bass.”

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Shaheed continued: “So The Low End Theory — and we talked about this in the press in the past — so people might be familiar with the definition of The Low End Theory. It’s obviously about the frequency and the triple-entendre. Certain lows.”

He elaborated that there was another socially-conscious meaning, remarking that the group was inspired by the work of Public Enemy.

“The other is the fact that people of color were on the lower end of the totem pole of America,” Shaheed revealed. “And disgraceful as it is for a country that has come so far, and for us, specifically, our parents are the Civil Rights Movement. And to see their sacrifices and what they’ve done to attain a balance of equality, and to know that we’re still goin’ through it, it really upset us.”

He added: “We’re students of Public Enemy, students of [Boogie Down Productions], and so far as musically, we wanted to make sure that we put that message into the music the best way that we could.”

The Low End Theory is widely considered one of the best hip-hop albums of all time. The project was released in 1991 and features many of the group’s most popular songs including “Check the Rhime,” “Scenario,” and more.

Check out Shaheed’s appearance on People’s Party with Talib Kweli below.

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Anthony Russo and Joe Russo say that the most vocal voice advising them not to kill off Tony Stark in Avengers: Endgame was Jon Favreau. Speaking with Vanity Fair in an interview following the release of their newest film, The Gray Man, the Russo brothers recalled the pressure they faced getting rid of the beloved character. 

“Part of the pressure [not to kill Tony Stark] came from Jon Favreau, who called us up after he read the script … and said to us, ‘Are you really going to kill Iron Man?’” Anthony said.

Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

Joe added: “He did. Yeah. And I remember pacing on the corner of a stage on the phone with Favreau trying to talk him off a ledge. Because he’s like, ‘You can’t do this. It’s gonna devastate people, and you don’t want them, you know, walking out of the theater and into traffic.’ We did it anyways.”

While Favreau has contributed to Marvel films behind the camera, he also appeared in all three Iron Man films and three of four Avengers films as Stark’s companion, Happy Hogan. He currently serves as the showrunner on The Mandalorian.

From July 2019 until March 2021, Endgame reigned as the highest-grossing film of all time, bringing in over $2 billion at the box office.

Check out the Russo brother’s interview with Vanity Fair below.

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