Hip Hop News

Blake Griffin was reportedly advised not to sign with Boston when he asked an unidentified Celtics player if he should join the team, earlier this season, according to Jared Weiss of The Athletic. The player told Griffin that the Celtics were dysfunctional.

Weiss wrote, Saturday, that Griffin was “asked a Celtics player if he should join the team midseason and was told not to come to Boston because of the apparent dysfunction.”

Sarah Stier / Getty Images

The Celtics struggled throughout the 2020-21 season, going just 36-36, despite making it to the Eastern Conference Finals a season earlier.

Earlier this week, Boston traded star point guard Kemba Walker and two draft picks to the Oklahoma City Thunder for Al Horford, Moses Brown, and a second-round draft pick.

Brad Stevens, who replaced Danny Ainge as president of basketball operations earlier this month, spoke about his decision to trade Walker in a statement: “Kemba is a true professional and a great teammate and player. I want to thank him for his tremendous impact, and the positive contribution he’s made both to the Celtics and the City of Boston.”

Despite the statement, Weiss described Stevens and Walker’s relationship as “tension-filled,” and explained that they did “butt heads, though the pair were considered to have a productive working relationship and mutual respect for one another.”

[Via]

Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine are partnering together to produce a Marvin Gaye biopic titled What’s Going On, a reference to the legendary singer’s 1971 album of the same name. Allen Hughes, of Menace II Society and Dead Presidents, will direct.

“You’ve heard of all these big-name directors that have tried for 35 years to consolidate these rights,” Hughes recently told Deadline. “This started with Dre, saying let’s do this together, and then Jimmy came on, and Andrew Lazar, and we worked with the estate, with Motown and some other things that needed to be tied down, and we got it done.”

Neilson Barnard /Getty Images

Deadline reports that Warner Bros is rumored to be putting up the biggest budget ever for an African American music biopic.

“This is so personal for me,” Hughes told Deadline in an interview. “When I made my first film with my brother, we were fortunate to get ‘What’s Going On’ into the trailer for ‘Menace 2 Society,’ and it was a game-changer in elevating the marketing of that film. Every film of mine but the period film ‘From Hell’ had some Marvin Gaye in it, and I’ve just always connected to him.”

The film is expected to begin production next year and will likely release in 2023.

[Via]

Quavo dodged a question about whether he had Saweetie’s Bentley repossessed in the wake of their breakup, during a recent appearance on 99Jamz’ The Afternoon Get Down. The car was originally a gift from the Migos rapper, last December.

After bringing up the track “Having Our Way,” which features Quavo rapping, “Load up the bases, now I feel like Cal Ripken. She had it her way, now she out of a Bentley (Skrrt),” the radio hosts asked whether the bar was confirmation of the rumors.

“Do what y’all do,” Quavo responded. “Y’all know how to know y’all job. Only thing I do is rap.”

Frazer Harrison / Getty Images

On Friday, Rolls Royce’s Client Experience rep Cassidy von Seggern posted a picture of Saweetie in front of a new car with the caption, “She a real bad bish, drive her own RR. #icy.” The phrase is a reference to Saweetie and Doja Cat’s track, “Best Friend.”

“My girl!” Saweetie replied in the comments.

Saweetie also posted a video from inside the new car on her Instagram story with her song “Pretty & Rich” playing in the background. Her first studio album, Pretty Bitch Music, is set to be released next week, on June 25.

Billie Eilish says she “hated every second” of making her debut album, When We All Fall Asleep Where Do We Go?, due to a combination of several factors, including notes from the label, constant meetings, stressful deadlines, and more. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the Grammy-winning pop star explains that she took a very different approach for her upcoming project, Happier Than Ever.

“I hated every second of it,” she told Rolling Stone. “I hated writing. I hated recording. I literally hated it. I would’ve done anything else. I remember thinking there’s no way I’m making another album after this. Absolutely not.”

Alberto E. Rodriguez / Getty Images

As for how she’s changed the process for this go-around, she explained: “No one has a say anymore. It’s literally me and Finneas and no one else.”

Eilish recently came under fire after posts dating back to 2015, when she would’ve been 14-years-old, in which she allegedly used offensive accents and an anti-Asian slur. Her new boyfriend, actor Matthew Tyler Vorce, has also been accused of posting homophobic and racist content on social media in the past.

Happier Than Ever is set to release on July 30th. You can check out Eilish’s recent single, “Lost Cause,” here.

[Via]

Jazz center Rudy Gobert says that there are “a lot of things” that bother him about the end of Utah’s season after he was flamed by fans following a lackluster defensive effort in Game 6 of the Western Conference semifinals against the Los Angeles Clippers. 

“Obviously we had higher expectations than losing in the second round. Losing 4 in a row is something we didn’t do during the season,” he said after the game. “You try to ask yourself the right questions about what we can do so it stops happening.”

When asked his thoughts on how the season ended, he said he needed “to clear my mind, because there’s a lot of things that bother me.”

Kevork Djansezian / Getty Images

After taking a 2-0 series lead, the Jazz dropped their next four games in a row to be eliminated from the playoffs. Despite the Jazz taking a 25-point lead during the game, and the Clippers playing without Kawaii Leonard, Utah gave up 39 points to Terrance Mann and lost 131-119.

“It takes a team effort, it takes five guys to defend,” Gobert explained. “Everyone on their team raised their level, and it was hard for us to guard them. … Defensively, they were doing a better job than we did with the weapons they had.”

He continued: “The problem is if I don’t come and help, we give up layups. … The gameplan was for us to let Terance Mann shoot rather than letting Reggie Jackson or PG get layups. We tried to adjust with full rotations. They played perfectly on almost every possession.”

The Clippers will take on the Phoenix Suns in the Western Conference Finals.

[Via]

Will Smith has revealed the title and cover art for his upcoming autobiography, WILL, which will be published by Penguin Press and released on November 9th. Smith spoke about the process of writing the book in the video announcement on his Instagram, Saturday.

“It’s been a labor of love,” Smith said in his video. “I’ve been working on it for the past two years and it is finally ready.”

The book will follow Smith from his upbringing in Philidelphia, through his time on his breakout show The Fresh Prince of Bel–Air, and even more recent work such as Hitch and Ali.

Jason Merritt / Getty Images

On a website for the book, Smith explains that this has been a self-reflective process for him:

It’s easy to maneuver the material world once you have conquered your own mind. I believe that. Once you’ve learned the terrain of your own mind, every experience, every emotion, every circumstance, whether positive or negative, simply propels you forward, to greater growth and greater experience. That is true will. To move forward in spite of anything. And to move forward in a way that brings others with you, rather than leave them behind.

The cover art for WILL was designed by New Orleans artist Brandan “BMike” Odums.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Will Smith (@willsmith)

[Via]