Music

Lil Baby Accompanied The Family Of The Late George Floyd During A Visit To The White House

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Tuesday marks exactly one year since George Floyd was tragically killed by Minnesota police officer Derek Chauvin. The incident sparked nationwide protests, with millions angry that yet another Black life was lost at the hands of police. Days later, Chauvin would be arrested and charged with second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder, and second-degree manslaughter; in April, he was found guilty on all counts. Fast-forward to today and the family of the late George Floyd visited the White House to meet with President Joe Biden. They were also accompanied by Lil Baby.

Floyd’s family met with the president to discuss police legislation. Video provided by TMZ shows the rapper, when asked about the specifics of their meeting with President Biden, saying he was “trying to pass the George Floyd Police Act bill.” Shortly after a guilty verdict against Chauvin was reached, Biden asked lawmakers to revisit the bill, formally known as the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would ban chokeholds, make it easier to prosecute officers for fradulent offenses, and place restrictions on the use of deadly force.

This is not the first time Lil Baby has helped Floyd’s family. Back in December, he and former NBA basketball player Stephen Jackson threw a birthday party for Floyd’s daughter, Giana, with help from Atlanta restauranteurs Ericka and William Platt of Restaurant Ten and Rosie’s Café.

Rick Ross Responds To The BAL Player That Called J. Cole’s Roster Spot ‘Disrespectful To The Game’

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Shortly after the release of his latest album, The Off-Season, J. Cole played his first game in the Basketball Africa League. The Dreamville rapper had signed with the Rwanda Patriots to play six matches with the team. Three games have already gone by and while it may be exciting for some to watch Cole play professional basketball, his stats haven’t been great. The rapper has only scored five points in those three games, a performance that caused one BAL player to criticize his roster spot.

“For a guy who has so much money and has another career to just come here and average, like, one point a game and still get glorified is very disrespectful to the game,” Terrell Stoglin, a guard for AS Salé, said. Some people agreed with Stoglin, while others, like Rick Ross, did not. In fact, Ross took to his Instagram Story to respond to Stoglin’s statement.

“In no way is this meant to be disrespectful, but first and foremost, should no Black man’s dreams be censored nor limited,” Ross said. “Comin’ from a brother, I think you would understand what building these types of relationships would do for the business. For the eyes on the industry, you know what I’m sayin’?” He added, “You should be there to support the brother. If he made one point on the first game, by the time he get to the 10th, you should make sure he makin’ six a game, you understand?”

You can listen to Ross’ reply in the video above.

Earthgang’s ‘Aretha’ Is A Soulful Account Of The Duo’s Highs And Lows Over The Last Year

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If you ask Earthgang about their upcoming sophomore album, Ghetto Gods, the Atlanta rap duo will tell you it’s ready to be released. In fact, they originally teased that it would arrive on the same day as J. Cole’s latest effort, The Off-Season, which dropped on May 14. Sadly hat day came and went without Ghetto Gods, for reasons unknown to fans as well as the rappers themselves. Luckily, it appears that it’s finally on its way, as the duo released one of its songs, “Aretha.”

It’s a soul-driven effort that sees the duo reflecting on the highs and lows that occurred during their journey as artists. Johnny Venus leads the way with a verse recounting a disappointing moment from his career. “‘Options‘ dropped, barely made a sound, damn / I guess we let Nas and Cole down,” he said, referencing Earthgang’s 2020 single with Wale. As for WowGr8, he brings a bit more optimism to the mix. “This what I’m addicted to, this all I’m committed to,” he declares. “Set my sights on bigger moves, feel like this is middle school.”

“Aretha” is Earthgang’s second track in a little over two weeks, as they teamed up earlier this month to remix Drake’s “Lemon Pepper Freestyle.”

You can listen to “Aretha” in the video above.

Wale is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.

DMX And Griselda’s Benny, Conway, And Westside Gunn Get Busy On ‘Hood Blues’

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Fans of gritty, ultraviolent New York rap rejoice. DMX‘s long-awaited track with the members of Griselda Records, “Hood Blues,” has arrived and it doesn’t disappoint. Opening with a slinky, sinister kick-snare combo and the signature ad-libs of its primary performers — X’s growl and Gunn’s tongue-trilling automatic rifle effects — the new track hearkens back to an era when visiting the wrong neighborhood at the wrong time could result in some pretty unpleasant experiences.

With “Hood Blues” providing a guidepost to the sound of X’s upcoming posthumous album Exodus, fans now have a better idea of what to expect from the Swizz Beatz-produced project, which X’s longtime collaborator played in full for a select group of DJs and fellow industry pros during a private listening session on Zoom last week.

It’s certainly vintage-sounding DMX material, built around a sample of Lee Mason & His Orchestra’s “Shady Blues” and recalling Swizz’s more recent, stripped-down work more so than the raucous, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink synth approach he used earlier in his career. If Exodus continues in the same vein of “Hood Blues,” then it should satisfy longtime X fans and newcomers alike — and, on a personal note, I can’t wait to hear Jay-Z and Nas on a beat in this style, which could bring out the latent chemistry they’ve only rarely been able to tap into.

Listen to “Hood Blues” above. Exodus is out 5/28 on Def Jam.

Pusha T Says He Really Wants To Write A Children’s Book But No One Will Publish It

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Pusha T is currently hard at work on the follow up to his 2018 LP Daytona. The rapper has confidently said the 12-track effort is his bid for the “best album that drops in 2021.” But the upcoming album isn’t the only project Pusha wants to be working on. In fact, he’s apparently always dreamed of becoming a children’s book author.

Pusha first shared the news in response to a fan’s tweet about playing his Clipse song “Keys Open Doors” for their two-year-old kid. The rapper replied with, “Thanx and I’ve been trying to write a children’s book for years…they won’t publish me…”

One fan offered a theory as to why Pusha has a hard time securing a book contract. “It’s because you’ve used too many regular items as drug references,” they wrote.

Pusha had a simple response, writing: “A simple metaphor can be the death of you…”

If Pusha T did in fact end up securing a book contract, he wouldn’t be the first rapper to write a children’s book. Earlier this year, Lil Nas X unveiled his illustrated ABC picture book C Is For Country. It featured lines like “S is for swag. Just ’cause I’m going to bed doesn’t mean I can’t look good!” and “A is for Adventure. Every day is a brand new start!” In less than a month, the book landed on the New York Times’ best-sellers list. So if Pusha really is committed to children’s literature, he already has some stiff competition.

One BAL Player Thinks J. Cole Being On A Roster Is ‘Disrespectful To The Game’

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J. Cole’s professional basketball career has been, for lack of a better term, pretty modest. As a player for Patriots Basketball Club in the inaugural season of the Basketball Africa League, Cole has scored five points in three games. He’s looked like, well, a person playing professional basketball for the first time, although he does certainly have some skill on the court.

The biggest thing Cole’s done is bring attention to the league, although for one player, that trade-off is not worth it. Terrell Stoglin, a guard for AS Salé who averages 31 points per game, certainly sees the benefit of “a lot of attention, and, I guess, money” coming in because of Cole, but generally thinks he is disrespecting the game.

Via ESPN:

“I think there’s a negative and a positive [to J. Cole’s presence],” Stoglin told ESPN. “The negative part of it is: I think he took someone’s job that deserves it.

“I live in a basketball world. I don’t live in a fan world. I know a lot of guys that had their careers stopped by COVID and they’re still home working out and training for an opportunity like this.

“For a guy who has so much money and has another career to just come here and average, like, one point a game and still get glorified is very disrespectful to the game. It’s disrespectful to the ones who sacrificed their whole lives for this.”

Patriots chief operating officer Haydee Ndayishimiye unsurprisingly disagrees with this assessment — “We made a basketball decision which can be justified by our performance so far,” she said — but it is fair to point out that someone who has put their life towards playing ball professionally lost out on an opportunity to someone who recently started pursuing a basketball career. Still, the only rule is it has to work, and the brain trust with Patriots seem to be happy with Cole’s performance on the floor.

Moneybagg Yo’s Sunny ‘A Gangsta’s Pain’ Video Celebrates His Album’s No. 1 Debut

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In Moneybagg Yo’s breezy new “A Gangsta’s Pain” video, the Memphis native takes a break from promoting his new album of the same name to celebrate that album’s success. Not only was it his first album to reach No.1 on the Billboard albums chart, it did so twice, returning to the top spot just weeks later.

The video follows Moneybagg and his crew as they party in a fancy vacation home in the tropics, lounging in its pool, boating on a nearby body of water, and enjoying a big bag of green nuggets of you-know-what.

In addition to keeping his album rollout going, Moneybagg Yo also introduced the newest member of his Bread Gang crew on social media today. Not a lot is known about Tripstar at the moment, other than he’s also a Memphian and appears on the song “I Believe U” from A Gangsta’s Pain. Yo posted a video of the young, up-and-coming artists on his Instagram, writing, “AnyTime I Stamp Sum It’s Det, So If U Rock Wit Me And My Brand I Need Yall To Go Get In Tune Wit Da Newest Member.”

Watch Moneybagg Yo’s “A Gangsta’s Pain” video above.

A Gangsta’s Pain the album is out now on CMG/N-Less/Interscope Records. Get it here.

Akon’s Car Was Reportedly Stolen While He Was Putting Gas In It

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Akon was pumping gas at an Atlanta gas station when the unthinkable happened. While filling up his white Range Rover SUV on the passenger side, the musician reportedly turned and saw it being driven away by a thief.

Akon was able to contact the police and report the SUV stolen. Per The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the gas station’s security camera showed a black sedan pull up right next to Akon’s car. A man got out of the sedan’s passenger seat a slid right into Akon’s Range Rover, quickly pulling off as the black sedan followed.

At the time of the crime, Akon had a number of valuable items in the car, including a $25,000 diamond necklace and a $6,500 Louis Vuitton bag. Thankfully, the musician’s iPhone was also in the car, so he was able to use the FindMyPhone app to track his phone and stolen car to Lawton Street in southwest Atlanta. However, the car was already gone by the time police pulled up to the location.

Akon was able to once again locate his phone in Forest Park, where Officer Steve Avery reported it was successfully recovered early Tuesday morning. While the car has been found and returned to Akon, there are currently no suspects in the case.

J. Cole Tours New York City In His Gritty ‘Applying Pressure’ Video

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For some fans, J. Cole is as much a Queens rapper as he is one from the South. His journey to rap stardom more or less started in New York, where he attended St. John’s University and met his collaborators and Dreamville co-founders Bas and Ibrahim Hamad. In the video for “Applying Pressure,” Cole revisits some of the most meaningful locales around the city for him in a gritty, nighttime shoot reminiscent of the ’90s rap aesthetic that informs much of his work. Dave East, who Cole name-checks in the song’s lyrics, also makes a cameo appearance.

“Applying Pressure” was also the title for the documentary Cole released as part of the rollout for his new album The Off-Season. In it, he explains the process behind the creation of the album, which was inspired and influenced by the drills he would run while training for basketball. Both sets of drills paid off for him; not only did The Off-Season reach No. 1 on the Billboard albums chart as many of his previous works had done, but all of the songs from the album also landed in the top 40 of the Hot 100, including the four most-streamed songs landing in the top 10. Meanwhile, his basketball workouts got him a spot on the roster of the Basketball Africa League’s Rwanda team.

Watch the “Applying Pressure” video above and stream The Off-Season here.

Drake Threw A Dinner Party On The 50 Yard Line At SoFi Stadium After Winning Artist Of The Decade

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Drake’s well-known for his displays of wealth, which have ranged from ostentatious to borderline ridiculous over the years. However, after receiving a Billboard Artist of the Decade Award at the Billboard Music Awards this weekend, he certainly had a good enough excuse for his latest over-the-top expenditure. According to Variety, Drake rented out the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California so he could have dinner on the 50-yard line with his OVO crew. The recently opened stadium normally seats 70,000, but for Drake’s dinner party, the attendance was limited to a guest list that included DJ Khaled, Doja Cat, SZA, and The Weeknd.

E! News reported that a source said, “He rented the entire stadium for the night. The stadium has a gigantic banner with his name and ‘Artist of the Decade.’… There are huge champagne towers and several bars set up throughout the stadium. Drake also has cute album books featuring his favorite moments through his career set up around the stadium.”

It’s likely Drake went all-out to make up for prior missed opportunities to do so; as he noted in his acceptance speech, which he gave with his son Adonis by his side, “I’ve spent an incalculable amount of hours trying to analyze all the things I did wrong. I’m really self-conscious about my music, and even if I do a good job, I always wonder how I could have done it better. I rarely celebrate anything. And just for anyone watching this, that’s wondering how this happened, that’s really the answer: being so unsure how you’re getting it done that you just kind of keep going in the hopes of figuring out the formula. But tonight, for once, I’m sure as hell we did something right.”