Music

Chance The Rapper Once Received $5,000 From The Man Who Found Shrimp In His Cinnamon Toast Crunch

by
Getty Image

If you’ve spent a decent amount of your Tuesday on Twitter, you more than likely caught some portion of the growing story between Jensen Karp and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. It began when Karp posted an image of what he said were dried shrimp tails that he discovered in his box of cereal. He reached out to the brand’s Twitter account and was able to get a response, but it wasn’t the one he hoped for. As a result, he took his cereal box findings to a lab to confirm it. The entire thing was written about in The Washington Post and while we wait to see how this plays out, there are more details coming out about Karp that continue to shock people.

After hearing who was the owner of the shrimpy Cinnamon Toast Crunch box, Chance The Rapper hopped on Twitter to share an encounter he had with Karp early in his career. “Fun fact,” he said. “The Cinnamon Toast Crunch shrimpy guy gave me 5 racks to shoot a video back when I still had a nose ring.” Just in case you didn’t believe him, Chance posted the tweet with a video that shows him receiving the $5,000 check from Karp and celebrating afterward. The track that got the visual treatment was Chance’s “Na Na” collaboration with Action Bronson from his 2013 tape Acid Rap.

That’s not the only celebrity connection Karp has. People also learned on Tuesday that his wife is Danielle Fishel Karp — yes, the woman who played Topanga, the love interest of Ben Savage’s Cory Matthews, on the beloved teen sitcom Boy Meets World.

Deante Hitchcock Pushes Through Hard Times In His Freestyle Over Outkast’s ‘Roses’

by

There’s no doubt Deante Hitchcock has something big planned in the future. The Atlanta rapper has spent the last month releasing very impressive freestyles over hip-hop tracks from today and yesterday, and for his latest offering he took on Outkast’s 2004 classic “Roses,” with an accompanying video. It finds Deante posing as a homeless man who aims to make ends meet. Despite his character’s hardships, he proclaims that one day he’ll reach the heights of some of today’s favorites in music, like Drake, Kendrick Lamar, Beyonce, and Young Thug.

The new video serves as the fourth consecutive entry in Deante’s New Atlanta Tuesdays freestyle series. He started things off with some bars over Lil Wayne’s “Let The Build Beat,” which arrived with a video that saw him carrying a goat. He returned a week later with a wild freestyle over SpotemGottem’s “Beat Box” and his own submission to the song’s TikTok-bred challenge. Most recently, Deante engaged in an all-out Nerf gun war while rapping over Drake’s No. 1 single and Scary Hours 2 favorite “What’s Next.”

Prior to the New Atlanta Tuesdays series, Deante shared a live version of his debut album, Better, and released videos of the performances with it.

You can watch the video for the new freestyle above.

Bobby Shmurda Can’t Drink Alcohol, Go To Bars, And More According His To Special Parole Conditions

by
Getty Image

Today marks exactly one month since Bobby Shmurda was released from New York’s Clinton Correctional Facility. The rapper spent almost seven years behind bars after accepting a plea deal on conspiracy to commit murder and weapons possession charges. His first month of freedom was well-documented, with a profile of his first day out published in GQ to a few club appearances with some of his rap peers. Bobby’s release from prison did come with some conditions, and thanks to documents obtained by TMZ, we now know what those are.

Bobby, who is under parole supervision until February 23, 2026, is not allowed to drink alcohol, attend any bars, or associate with gangs. He also has a curfew of 8 p.m., must submit to drug testing, and receive aggression and anger counseling. An additional component of the parole conditions is that Bobby must seek, obtain, and maintain employment, but with the world waiting on his official return to the hip-hop world, accomplishing that part should be no issue. He also landed a few performance slots during the NBA’s All-Star Weekend in Atlanta earlier this month.

The parole conditions explain a video that emerged at the end of last month, in which was seen turning down a drink during a club appearance. After the video circulated throughout social media, the rapper reposted it on his Instagram story and wrote, “Hell nah a n**** on parole.”

Burna Boy Advocates For The Power Of Self-Belief In His Inspirational ’23’ Video

by

After being shut out at last year’s Grammy Awards, Nigerian superstar Burna Boy is officially a Grammy Award winner after taking home the statue for Best Global Music Album (Twice As Tall) at the 2021 63rd Annual Grammy Awards earlier this month. To celebrate, he has released the inspirational video for his Twice As Tall standout “23.”

Naturally taking inspiration from its iconic namesake, much of the “23” video revolves around the sport of basketball, as seen through the eyes of athletes who are ordinarily invisible: Black women. One of the players the video chooses to highlight is wheelchair-bound, but poses in front of a full case of trophies.

Other women who appear in the video are dancers, designers, and music producers — all fields where Black women are underrepresented — while Burna’s performance sequences play out before projected images of his own accomplishments. “The music make me feel I be Jordan,” he croons on the chorus, encouraging listeners to be the best they can through the life-changing power of self-belief. “Now I understand why them say aiye po gan” — “Now I understand why they say there’s enough space” — he says, highlighting how there is room for everyone to be successful.

Watch Burna Boy’s “23” video above.

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

Dwyane Wade Sees Boosie Badazz’s Transphobic Comments About His Daughter As A Teachable Moment

by

Last year, Boosie Badazz found himself facing backlash for some insensitive and transphobic comments he made about Dwyane Wade’s transgender daughter. Boosie’s remarks not only led to public scrutiny, but it also ended up getting him banned from his local Planet Fitness. Now, nearly a year later, Wade has directly responded to Boosie’s comments, saying that they were able to spark positive and necessary conversations about trans rights.

Wade recently sat down for a lengthy conversation on the I Am Athlete podcast. Throughout the interview, Wade opened up about the effects of toxic masculinity and the strength his daughter, Zaya, showed in coming out as transgender. Wade said that as soon as his daughter came out, he was committed to learning as much as possible about trans rights so that he could facilitate a happy and healthy life for her. The basketball player also addressed all the transphobic comments that were being thrown around after news broke of his daughter’s identity.

Name-dropping Boosie, Wade said the rapper’s comments were a way of bringing important conversations into the limelight: “Boosie, all the people who’ve got something to say about my kids, I thank you because you allow the conversation to keep going forward. You might not have the answer today, I don’t have all the answers, but we’re growing from all these conversations. I thank everybody for even hating and starting those conversations, because those conversations are starting other conversations that we need to have.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Wade described the moment he knew he needed to educate himself about trans rights in order to support his daughter:

“I’m looking at my child, scared to tell me, and I feel like I’m pretty open at this time. I realized that I need to do better, and I need to do more, and I need to educate myself. So what I did is I picked up the phone and I researched as much as I can because I needed to understand. I sat down with my child and I asked questions, because I didn’t know. It’s not our job and responsibility to tell you who you are. You are going to be who you’re going to be. It’s my job to put you in the best position to reach that goal of who you want to be. Right now, we’re experiencing that with Zaya. Last year, we came out and we spoke to the world that, hey, my 13-year-old came home and said, ‘Dad, this is who I am. I am a transgender child.’ We didn’t come out until she was 12, to the world. But the reason why we came out to the world was because I got tired of trying to hide my child. It came to the point where I said, am I hiding her from it, or I am hiding myself from it?”

Watch Wade’s full interview on the I Am Athlete podcast above.

21 Savage Had The Best Response To Those Hating On His New Veneers

by
Getty Image

21 Savage has joined a growing list of rappers who have decided to part ways with his permanent grills. The rapper opted to replace his signature gold smile with a new set of white teeth, and people had a lot to say about it. But rather than let the trolls knock his confidence, the rapper had the best response to quiet haters.

The rapper showed off his new smile in a series of beaming photos he posted to social media. Many were happy to see the rapper looking confident with his grin, but there were also a fair number of trolls in the comment section. “Very rare sell this as an NFT,” his frequent collaborator Metro Boomin wrote.

21 Savage wasn’t fazed by those who pointed out that he had some oral work done. Instead, he revealed just how much it cost to remove his gold grills and replace them with a pearly white smile. “I paid 75k I’ll be dammed if I let y’all say these teeth ain’t mine,” he wrote in response.

The rapper may have paid an eye-catching amount of money for his new teeth, but seeing as he accepts no less than six figures for a feature, he can clearly afford it. Along with spending money on his smile, 21 Savage has also been putting some of his cash into a charitable cause. Back in October, the rapper announced that he was committing $100,000 in scholarships to teach high school students about the importance of financial literacy.

Check out 21 Savage’s new smile above.

Saweetie Says She Had PTSD After Being Bullied By Ebro Over Her Hot 97 Freestyle

by
Getty Image

In her new Cosmopolitan cover story, Saweetie comes clean about one of the formative incidents of her career. Addressing the infamous February 2018 Hot 97 interview in which host Ebro bullied her over her freestyle, calling it “basic” among other things, Saweetie says that the host’s insensitive comments left a lasting negative impression on her.

“It was a really dark point in my life,” she admits. ” went from being so loved so quickly because of ‘Icy Grl’ to, on my first promo run, well, you saw the interview. The script flipped really quick, like night and day. I was like, ‘Wait…’ I had PTSD from that.” She also notes that due to a lack of experience and artist development, which labels basically gave up on during the blog era ten years before “Icy Grl” blew up on Instagram, fans saw her as a bad performer, which further hurt her sense of self esteem.

“Because ‘Icy Grl’ was so popular, I was being booked at huge festivals,” she notes. “I was literally thrown into it.” However, she credits the experience with toughening her up and prepare her for success. “I’m really grateful for my start. Because the mistakes, the struggle, the grind—it allows me to appreciate the rewards that come now because I know what it feels like to sleep in motels, to drive and do promo, to be stressed out.”

You can read the full profile here.

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

Lil Yachty Shares All In His ‘No More Beatboxing Freestyle’ Video

by

It seems like every day brings another “BeatBox” freestyle, but Lil Yachty has arrived to shut it all down with his offering to the trend, “No More Beatboxing Freestyle.” As you may have guessed from the title, the first half of the song utilizes the beat from Coi Leray’s viral hit “No More Parties,” while the second half sees Boat taking a swing at SpotemGottem’s “BeatBox” instrumental.

In the accompanying visual, a solo Yachty roams his playhouse-like home, showing off his art collection. I use “art” here loosely, because the setup mostly consists of pop culture ephemera like life-size Batman and Ninja Turtle statues (shout out Leonardo), a clear-top piano, and a truly jaw-dropping collection of sneakers. In his rhymes, the former self-declared “king of the teens” recalls his explosive entry into the rap game and touches on his recent forays into Michigan’s underground rap scene with tracks like “Not Regular” and “Royal Rumble.”

Yachty, who is fresh off the dual releases of his tracks “Asshole” and “In My Stussy’s,” is the latest rapper to tackle the viral hit since DaBaby turned in a scene-stealing “Beat Box” freestyle of his own. Since then, Deante’ Hitchcock, Mulatto, and Polo G have all tried their hands, with Polo adding the twist of connecting the “No More Parties” beat, along with CJ’s “Whoopty.”