Aaron Rodgers is one of the biggest athletes in the world and as a top-tier athlete in his field, he understands the pressures that come with it all. As a member of the Green Bay Packers, Rodgers has proven himself to be a winner although, over the past few years, he has struggled to get himself a second title.
Rodgers has recently found himself in a controversy when it comes to the Packers, as he was holding out in hopes of a trade. Now, the situation has been resolved although the Packers need to prove they can surround him with talent in order for him to stay long-term.
The quarterback is a big proponent of mental health, which was a big factor in his decisions to stay with Green Bay. In fact, during an interview with reporters, Rodgers spoke about the Simone Biles situation, and how athletes need to do what is best for them.
Jamie Squire/Getty Images
“I think it’s important that we work on our mental state and as you’ve seen with Simone Biles, I think there needs to be more conversation around that,” Rodgers said. “We as athletes are often put on a pedestal that we’re not — that we’re beyond any mental hindrances or clutter. And the only time that mental health often gets talked about is when it’s under the conversation of depression. I didn’t have any depression, but I have a ton of respect for people who speak out in those situations.”
Biles has been heavily scrutinized for her decision, however, there are plenty of people out there who have supported her every step of the way. They understand that these pressures can be damaging to athletes, and now, the stage has been set for other athletes to do the same thing if they feel overwhelmed.
Over the past several hours, Chris Brown, Questlove, and GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) have all spoken out against DaBaby’s actions, and throughout all of the public commentary about him, the KIRK artist has even hit Instagram to shed some light on his perspective on the matter. Stressing that he has tried to make amends with the LGBTQ+ community, DaBaby claims that “a substantial amount of people refuse to understand [his] logic” and have decided to do “everything they can” to ensure that he can no longer put food in his kids’ mouths.
Rich Fury/Getty Images
Now, after reports of his clothing line with boohooMan getting axed, it appears that DaBaby himself has been dropped from the upcoming Parklife Festival in Manchester, England later this year. The festival has yet to publicly comment on the matter or confirm his removal, but there is a major discrepancy between the festival’s social media accounts and website. On the official website, DaBaby’s name is no longer featured on the festival poster, and when going to the line-up and schedule page, there is no sign of DaBaby anywhere.
Here is the original lineup for Parklife Festival, posted two weeks ago on July 14:
Parklife Festival/Instagram
Here is the current lineup for Parklife Festival, which has notably removed DaBaby’s name from the top-right corner:
Parklife Festival
In light of the backlash that DaBaby has been receiving, do you think it’s a good move for festivals like Parklife to cut ties with the BLAME IT ON BABY rapper?
Damian Lillard has remained loyal to the Portland Trail Blazers for years, even though they are a small-market team that has yet to provide Dame with a plethora of talent to win a championship with. Unfortunately for the Blazers, there are various rumors surrounding Lillard right now, and they all have to do with him wanting a trade out of Portland. At every turn, Lillard has denied these rumors, however, they keep coming back with great force.
For example, Henry Abbott of True Hoop recently reported that Lillard had requested out of Portland and that the Trail Blazers were already looking at trade packages. Since that time, many have criticized Abbott for his reporting, and today, Abbott came out with a statement saying that his sources are always accurate.
Gregory Shamus/Getty Images
Damian Lillard saw Abbott’s tweet and decided to engage with it as he took to Twitter with a reply of his own. “Now ask yourself that same question about me. I’ve been transparent for a decade..I never denied where I stood following the season… don’t loop me in becuz of the state of the game right now. What you are reporting is simply not the facts bro. I’m the ultimate source,” Lillard exclaimed.
Many fans were quick to get on Abbott’s case about this, although the journalist stuck to his guns saying “For sure. Appreciate that, and you. But realize: I work in a profession where my reputation is as important to my livelihood as health is to an NBA player. Please be very careful about calling me a liar. I take my job very seriously, and do not lie.”
At this point, fans are taking Lillard’s side in the ordeal, however, only time will tell whether or not Lillard sticks to his plans to stay in Portland. After all, a lot can happen in the offseason.
Following the premiere of Love Is Blind: After The Altar on Netflix this week, the world is discussing the show, and one scene, in particular, is standing out in conversations. The long-questioned debate over whether or not you need to wash your chicken before cooking it has returned, and this time, it’s because of Lauren Speed and Cameron Hamilton’s dynamic.
As the cameras followed Lauren and Cameron during a family dinner with Cam’s parents, Lauren called out her husband for failing to rinse the chicken before seasoning it. They entered a light-hearted debate over why Lauren thinks you should wash your meat before cooking it, and why Cameron thinks the high temperatures will destroy germs in the oven.
JC Olivera/Getty Images
People have been reacting to the clip, taking either Lauren or Cameron’s side in this argument, and Tamar Braxton came through with a notable response. Clearly, she’s the type to wash her chicken before seasoning, but she chose violence by calling out her sister Toni, who allegedly does not wash her meat.
“Toni don’t wash her meat,” she commented on The Shade Room’s post. “That’s why I will pass [vomit emoji].”
Damn, what made you go and expose family secrets like this, Tamar?
Paul Archuleta/Getty Images
Do you personally wash your meat before cooking it, or do you agree with Cameron that the heat will take care of the bacteria?
There’s a case to be made that Vince Staples is one of the most engaging West Coasts artists of the modern age, fueled all the more by the release of his recent eponymous album. Today, Vince took a moment to chop it up with Ebro Darden, where he opened up about a variety of interesting topics — including the album that might have been, a collaborative effort between himself, Alchemist, and Earl Sweatshirt.
In addition to that, Vince also took a moment to share his assessment of the west coast hip-hop landscape; as one of the most incisive emcees in the game, his observations certainly carry weight. Off the top, he made sure to give credit to a rapper who doesn’t always recieve the appreciation he deserves: YG.
Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images
“YG because he’s one of the most important rappers in west coast, hip hop period,” praises Vince, crediting YG for breathing a bit of life back into west coast rap. “And he kind of reinvigorated the sound with Mustard and everybody else. Brought the scene back. And we was already in kind of a groove because of what was coming from the function type thing.”
“Also on the other side of the spectrum, you had PAC Div,” continues Vince. “And you had Nipsey Hussle. You had UNI. You had Overdose. You had so many different things that was happening at once. And then that spirals into our future movement and things that was happening locally at that point in time. But the funny thing about it is that we kind of forget those things when they get big. Because now, YG is a superstar. Now Tyler’s a superstar. Like people will be forgetting to put Tyler on the LA rapper list. Because he is just so big, you forget these things.”
For more from Vince Staples, be sure to check out his complete conversation with Ebro Darden right here.
Skepta and J Balvin fall into a black widow’s trap in their sultry, surprising video for “Nirvana.” Taken from Skepta’s upcoming EP, All In, the song features a Spanish-inflected guitar loop over which the two rappers deliver flirtatious verses to the objects of their desires. The chorus promises to take a lover “to your Nirvana” as they insist that “every day’s a celebration when you come from the Gaza.”
In the elegant-looking, KLVDR-directed video for the track, Skepta approaches a sophisticated woman during a dinner party at her mansion. While at first, there are hints of heist thrillers like Netflix’s Lupin, it turns out that Skepta is really the one getting played as his seemingly successful seduction of the lady of the house ends with him awakening imprisoned alongside J Balvin, who’s tied to a chair and looks quite distraught, implying this isn’t for fun. The video concludes with the mistress walking the halls of the opulent mansion leaving what looks suspiciously like bloodstained footprints behind her as she goes to find her next victim.
The eerie video is surprisingly the first single from the new EP, which Skepta only announced earlier this week. Titled for the British star’s newfound love of poker, it also features Kid Cudi and Nigerian rapper Teezee and drops tonight at midnight.
The early ’90s might have been hip-hop’s golden era but thirty years later it’s apparent we’re entering a pretty special time for the genre. As much fuss as algorithmically generated tracklists have caused over the past couple of years, the current hip-hop landscape has been more diverse, creative, and boundless than that early time when the genre was seemingly recreated with every new release.
In 2021 especially, rappers have gotten out of their comfort zones, leaving behind familiar styles and sounds to forge new paths based not on what might sell or what the cool kids are doing, but on their own whims, fantasies, and newfound levels of access. Rappers like IDK, Tyler The Creator, and Vince Staples have always worked on the side of the field just left of center, but this year, they’ve all put out music that sounds effortlessly innovative, leaving behind the bombastic sounds that made them critical darlings to take creative risks — risks that have paid off, delivering some of their best output to date.
For IDK, that innovation came on his second album, USee4Yourself, in which he again takes a microscope to a single subject, examining it from multiple angles and drilling down to determine how he really feels about it. Whereas on his breakout mixtape IWASVERYBAD that subject was the institutionalization of Black men (especially himself) and on his debut album IsHeReal? he pondered the existence of a higher power and mourned the loss of his mom, on USee4Yourself he turns the lens to relationships and romance, filtered through his recent status as a rap star.
And while he includes frequent collaborator Rico Nasty and reaches out to the mainstream with features from Offset and Young Thug, he also burrows into his own hip-hop fandom, putting Jay Electronica and MF DOOM together on “Red.” That song also features Westside Gunn, one of rap’s modern avatar’s of bars-first hip-hop, while the production, on the whole, seems to take inspiration from Gunn’s Griselda collective rather than the brash sounds that defined IDK’s earlier projects. If anything, USee4Yourself sounds like if Yeezus was actually made by a Kanye who actually cared instead of just projecting the appearance of caring (IDK vocally sounds so much like him here, I made the personal decision to swap out all the Kanye songs on all my playlists with songs from this album).
Tyler The Creator, meanwhile, takes a different — but no less effective — tack on his new album Call Me If You Get Lost. While the production combines all of Tyler’s best eras — the soulful reinvention of Igor, the reflective pop of Cherry Bomb and Flower Boy, the abrasive rap on Goblin — the subject matter finds Tyler settling into his role as a recent Grammy winner and multimillionaire, embracing rap’s classic braggadocio in place of his former rebellious shock-rap provocations. Inviting DJ Drama onto the tape to provide hyped-up ad-libs, Ty positions the album as his own entry into the Gangsta Grillz canon.
On several tracks, including the lead single “Lumberjack,” Ty points to his Rolls-Royce, finding ever more elaborate ways to both flex and juxtapose the signifier of wealth with his social status, a la The Throne’s “N****s In Paris.” In a recent interview, Tyler cited BET as the resource that taught him everything he knows; on Call Me, he finally wears that influence on his immaculately tailored sleeve, embracing the bombast of the 2000s crunk era’s fascination with garish jewelry and unfiltered gasconade. He also gets really real about feeling rejected by Black people as much as white people on the autobiographical “Massa,” challenging the expectations against him directly rather than subverting them or simply acting out as he had in the past.
Challenging expectations and sharing the grim realities of his biography were never problems Vince Staples had. Instead, he found that his unflinching confrontation of the traumas that defined his upbringing was being swallowed up by his caustic production choices. It’s no surprise that the EDM-influenced, demented, post-apocalyptic pinball machine beats on Big Fish Theory kept people from tuning all the way into what he was saying or that the alarming screech of the “Blue Suede” instrumental washed out the track’s harrowing narratives of life in gang-divided North Long Beach.
So instead, Vince challenged himself — and frequent collaborator Kenny Beats — to make something more palatable on his self-titled latest. The beats are awash in something like nostalgia — if the word “nostalgia” could ever imply the paranoia creeping through tracks like “Are You With That?” and “Sundown Town.” The placid beats and laid-back delivery are exactly what it seems like Vince would have been doing all along were commercial considerations never a factor (one senses his prior resistance to playlist-friendly material was his own form of rebellion at the thought of being a “star”). Getting away from the crazed, frenetic production that anchored his previous projects let Vince’s voice shine through.
Even Dave East, that eternally maligned avatar of millennial New York City tribalism, has found his groove working alongside soulful producer Harry Fraud on the singles from the upcoming Hoffa. East has struggled in the past, trying to wrangle mainstream expectations with his own taste, to the point where some fans on Twitter have wondered at his inability to connect with a wider audience while artists like those on Griselda seemed to garner more support by avoiding doing the same. Employing the smooth production of Harry Fraud, Dave has never sounded more comfortable than he does on “Diamonds,” “Uncle Ric,” and “Chapo.” This is what he should have been making all along, maybe.
And that seems to be the end result of all this experimentation. Although I said rappers got out of their comfort zones, perhaps the title should read they found and got into their comfort zones. Each of the above-named artists sounds more relaxed, assertive, confident, and clear-headed than they ever have, with nothing to prove and no one to impress but themselves. In trading in their trademark production or shaking loose lyrical crutches, by embracing the tactics and beliefs they once held at arm’s length, they have tapped into a new vein of creativity. The result is a gold rush of unique, engaging, progressive hip-hop that the culture could certainly use much more of — and that fans should reward with their ears.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
Lou From Paradise, an underground rapper from Staten Island, New York, is the latest artist to grace the Uproxx Studios stage for a Sessions performance that shows off his sinuous flow. Performing his song “James Dean,” Lou (who used to go by Lou The Human, which you might know him by already) spits with a graceful, well-practiced delivery that belies the complexity of his rhymes schemes and the low-key wit behind each bar.
Debuting back in 2017 with Humaniac under his old moniker, Lou’s easy flow and adherence to hip-hop traditions gain him plenty of attention from hardcore hip-hop heads, while his use of deconstructed, bare bones instrumentals marked him as an innovator rather than another stodgy imitator. Among his influences, he cites backpack rap favorites like Mos Def and Talib Kweli, De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest, while his love of twisting syllables draws clear inspiration from early Eminem. Basically, if you like beats-and-bars, boom-bap rap, Lou’s music will definitely take you to paradise.
Watch Lou From Paradise’s “James Dean” performance above.
UPROXX Sessions is Uproxx’s performance show featuring the hottest up-and-coming acts you should keep an eye on. Featuring creative direction from LA promotion collective, Ham On Everything, and taking place on our “bathroom” set designed and painted by Julian Gross,UPROXX Sessionsis a showcase of some of our favorite performers, who just might soon be yours, too.
Starting on August 9, the “Saweetie Meal” will go on sale with a Big Mac, four-piece Chicken McNuggets, medium fries, medium Sprite, and “Saweetie ‘n Sour” sauce. Unlike the other celebrity meals offered by the chain, McDonald’s is encouraging fans to “remix” their meals as Saweetie generally does, putting the nuggets inside the Big Mac, or putting ketchup on top of the burger instead of inside.
The “Saweetie Meal” has already proven to be a successful campaign on social media, trending almost immediately as people have been sharing their reactions to the concoction. The “My Type” rapper shared all of the ways to remix the meal, and some of them have disgusted fans.
