New Hip Hop News

Beyonce’s been quiet on the music scene for a while. The singer’s last album, Everything Is Love, released in 2018 was a collaborative effort with her rapper husband Jay-Z. Other most recent musical events for the Lemonade star include 2019’s The Lion King: The Gift soundtrack and Homecoming: The Live Album, which accompanied her 2018 Coachella Netflix film.

Bey is finally back, with teasers of her latest single “Be Alive” featured on Will Smith’s King Richard, a biopic on the tennis superstars Venus and Serena Williams from the perspective of their father, Richard.

The song, which Beyonce wrote for the film with songwriter and producer DIXSON, serves as the soundtrack for the film’s emotional final scene and plays as the closing credits for the movie’s end. During Jay-Z and Beyonce’s surprise appearance at the London Film Festival, the song also played at the King Richard premiere.

The song encapsulates the spirit of the film— Black strength: “I got all my sisters by my side,” Beyoncé sings in the track, “I couldn’t rub this Black off even if I tried.”

Beyonce has been teasing other musical works on the way. In August, the singer told Harper’s Bazaar that she spent much of the last 18 months working on her next solo album.

“With all the isolation and injustice over the past year, I think we are all ready to escape, travel, love, and laugh again,” Beyonce said. “I feel a renaissance emerging, and I want to be part of nurturing that escape in any way possible. I’ve been in the studio for a year and a half.”

Stay tuned for more new music from the Queen B. Watch the new trailer above, and catch the film’s release on November 19. 

Over the last couple of years, China has been a big part of NBA discourse as the league tries to go International. Back in 2019, there was a big controversy involving China and Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey, who had some choice words about the country and its authoritarian regime. This led to a huge fallout in which the league threatened to never display any NBA games on TV again. Eventually, this got resolved but it wasn’t without some diplomatic action.

Now, China is going after the Boston Celtics following some comments made by Enes Kanter. Recently, the Celtics star sent a message in which he called out Chinese President Xi Jinping, while also calling for the freedom of the Tibetan people. Eventually, Tencent Sports saw the tweets and pulled all highlights from their network.

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Per CNBC:

“In a video posted on Twitter, Kanter called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator” and said he supports Tibetan people’s “cause for freedom.” The NBA star, who has commented on political issues before, repeated the phrase “free Tibet” three times while wearing a t-shirt with the Dalai Lama on it.

“Under the Chinese government’s brutal rule, Tibetan peoples’ basic rights and freedoms are non-existent,” Kanter said. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was not immediately available for comment.”

Kanter has always been known for his political activism, so it should come as no surprise that he would go after another authoritarian regime on the International stage. Once again, however, the NBA will now have to figure out how they will continue working with a country that has shown contempt for certain groups of people.

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Pusha T’s Daytona is a masterpiece. 

Despite initially pushing back against producer and G.O.O.D. Music founder Kanye West’s idea to cut the project to just seven songs, Push finally agreed and bodied all seven of them. From “If You Know You Know” to “Infared,” the Wrath of Caine rapper does not miss a single time, and despite not explicitly namedropping Drake on the album, “Infared” is the shot that started their now-infamous beef. (“Story of Adidon” might be the greatest diss track of all time but “Duppy Freestyle” doesn’t get the respect it deserves.) And while Daytona may have been overshadowed by Pusha’s brutal attack on Drake, it received a nomination for Best Rap Album at the 2019 Grammy Awards. 

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Now, as 2021 winds to a close, Push is promising a project better than his 2018 effort. 

Sitting down with Billboard ahead of his third closet sale with Grailed, a digital marketplace for menswear, the president of G.O.O.D. Music revealed that his new album is finished and “is currently in the mixing stages,” with some feature verses “still being finalized.”

Reportedly produced by longtime friends and collaborators, West and The Neptunes, Pusha T said the new album is better than Daytona. 

“I think I’ve topped Daytona for sure” Push told Billboard. “One-thousand percent.”

Continuing on to describe how the album came together, Pusha pointed to Pharrell as his toughest critic throughout the process. 

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“I was playing some raps for (Pharrell) in Miami and he was like ‘It’s cool, it’s good, but I think you’re gonna get mixed up with other people, and people thinking you’re all rapping over the same instrumental,’ and I was like ‘You disrespectful jerk, you serious?’ and he said ‘Nah man, you’re always gonna say the greatest things but you want to be different? We’ve got to make compositions.'”

Whether or not the new album is *actually* better than Daytona will be decided whenever the new project touches down, but knowing that Ye and Pharrell will have their fingerprints all over it makes Pusha’s predictions sound pretty believable. 

What do you think? Will Pusha T be able to top Daytona? Let us know in the comments. 

After nearly 13 years of rumors, speculation and a handful of director changes, the Uncharted film is finally right around the corner. 

Uncharted, based on the wildly-successful video game series, stars Spider-Man actor Tom Holland as Nathan Drake, and Lone Survivor actor Mark Wahlberg as his mentor, Victor “Sully” Sullivan. 

The film’s official trailer, released today, makes a couple references to the Uncharted video game series, including an airplane setpiece taken directly from Uncharted 3. However, despite acknowledging the Naughty Dog-developed video game series, the Uncharted film has been pitched as a Nathan Drake origin story, making a carbon copy of any of the video games unlikely.

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While conversation surrounding the film had been swirling since 2008, less than a year after the first Uncharted game was released, it took the better part of 12 years to actually get it going. After multiple swings-and-misses with different directors, Zombieland director Ruben Fleischer was hired in 2020 and the Uncharted film went into pre-production last year. 

Arriving in February 2022, Uncharted, will come on the heels of Holland’s third Spider-Man film, Spider-Man: No Way Home, which is set to release on December 17, 2021. The film’s trailer also comes in the wake of Holland’s Instagram announcement that he and Spider-Man co-star, Zendaya, are dating. Despite rumors that Holland could be done with Spider-Man after the release of No Way Home, with Uncharted on the horizon, 2022 is sure to be one hell of a year for the 25-year-old actor. 

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Wahlberg, who was cast as Sullivan in 2019, recently revealed that he had to eat 11,000 calories a day for his upcoming film, Stu, and told late night host Jimmy Fallon “it’s such a hard, physical thing to do … I would wake up after a meal and have another meal. I was eating every three hours. It was not fun.” 

Check out the trailer for the Uncharted film below and let us know what you think in the comments. 

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Kim Kardashian made her big hosting debut recently on Saturday Night Live, where she surprised audiences at home with her hilarious opening monologue and ridiculous skits. She put her all into the show, consulting her estranged husband Kanye West on her creative direction and more. With the superstar businesswoman celebrating her forty-first birthday today, the famous Libra popped up in a behind-the-scenes video, which was filmed as she recorded her verse for a rap song on the show.

“I know you little girls ain’t laughin’ at me, for your information, I wasn’t asleep,” she raps on the song, which debuted on her episode of SNL. DJ Akademiks posted the video to his page, baiting his followers into engaging with the content and asking who was ready for the “lyrical venom” that Kim K was spitting. Apparently, one famous rapper was more than ready.

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Commenting a fire emoji, Soulja Boy showed that he’s feeling Kim’s bars, perhaps considering reaching out for a feature on his next viral hit. It’s worth noting that Soulja is presently pretty upset with Kanye for omitting his verse from “Remote Control” on DONDA. The rapper called out Ye for leaving him off the album and replacing him with Young Thug. In June, Soulja shot his shot with Kim on social media. Two months later, he called out Kanye by saying he was the “first rapper with Kim Kardashian.”

Check out Kim’s rapping video below, the version that aired underneath, and Soulja’s comment as well.

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