Earlier this week, Nicki Minaj commanded everyone’s attention by dropping two steamy photos of her posing in a pink office and covering her bare body with various pink props. Along with the eye-catching photos, Nicki Minaj left the minimal caption, “F R I D A Y,” and ever since then, fans and artists have been mentally preparing themselves for whatever the “Megatron” artist has in store.
As far as the Hip-Hop community and music industry, in general, is concerned, however, Nicki Minaj is officially back, and all eyes are on her as Friday swiftly approaches.
Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images
Following her initial announcement on Monday, Nicki has quickly gotten back active on social media and dropped numerous teasers, one in which she stunned in a yellow dress while teasing lyrics and another in which she flashed a rare iced-out pink Richard Mille. Now, the Young Money artist has dropped yet another set of photos to promote her upcoming music release, this time opting to go topless.
In the sultry set of pictures posted to both her Instagram and Twitter, Nicki Minaj poses in a salon chair from her self-described “beauty room,” wearing nothing but underwear and a pink hat that reads “ICON” as she strategically covers her chest. For the caption, the Pink Fridaywrites, “New [music notes emoji] @ MIDNIGHT [crossed swords emoji] Going LIVE from my BEAUTY ROOM @ 11PM EST. DON’T MISS IT.”
Check out Nicki Minaj’s latest teaser below and get excited because new music from the Queen is only hours away!
On Wednesday night, the Nets took on the Spurs, and Griffin was spotted wearing his best colorway yet. The shoe in question has a white and blue upper, while the tongue has an homage to the movie “Superbad” and the character McLovin. You can clearly see the Hawaiian driver’s license from the movie except instead of McLovin on the front, it’s Griffin himself.
Seth Rogen himself eventually saw the pair of shoes and made a quick comment on Twitter in appreciation. Meanwhile, fans were all pretty hyped about the pair as it’s something creative that we haven’t really seen before. Shoes are a way to express yourself and Griffin certainly did that with these.
Unfortunately, these will probably never hit the market, which is truly a shame if you’re a fan of the movie.
Now, Brady will finally have an opportunity to get his revenge on the Patriots, as the Bucs and Pats are scheduled to play each other in Week 4 this season. In fact, Brady’s own father, Tom Brady Sr., is pumped about this matchup and had some strong words about it while appearing on a radio show in Boston.
“We expect to beat the Patriots rather handily,” he said. Of course, Brady Sr. isn’t actually a part of the team so it’s interesting that he would use a word like “we.” Regardless, he has always been hands-on with Tom’s career and if the younger Brady feels the same way, then we could very well be in for an amazing matchup.
While the season might be months away, we’re sure Bill Belichick is already making big plans for his grudge match against his former QB.
More than a year after Pop Smoke’s murder in Beverly Hills, the Brooklyn rapper’s presence is still sorely missed. Earlier this year, fans were able to witness his posthumous acting debut in Boogie, and they have also been treated to more posthumous music as well. Still, many people in the Hip-Hop community are still seeking closure and watching his murder investigation closely.
Recently, it was reported that the 15-year-old suspect who had been arrested for his connection to the fatal robbery had allegedly confessed to a cellmate at a juvenile detention center that he was the one who ultimately shot Pop Smoke. To the teenager’s chagrin, his conversation with his cellmate was recorded and used as evidence against him. Now, new details have emerged from a preliminary hearing for Corey Walker, the 20-year-old suspect in the case. Surprisingly, he also allegedly confided in someone who he believed to be his cellmate.
Scott Dudelson/Getty Images
Unfortunately for Walker, the cellmate who he reportedly admitted his guilt to was a police plant who was posing as a gang member. According to Complex, LAPD detective Carlos Camacho testified in court last week that Walker told the plant that he was a member of the Hoover Criminals, he had driven to the Airbnb that Pop was renting on February 18, 2020, with four “youngsters,” and he brought along gloves, masks, and a police scanner to help avoid the authorities.
Complex also reports that Walker admitted to arming two of the teenagers — the 15-year-old with “the heat” and “the guy from Stevenson Village” with “the burner” — before they entered the house, but he maintained that he waited inside the car and told the teenagers, “don’t use my shit.”
Along with the news that the parties involved fled the scene and sold Pop Smoke’s watch for $2000, this new development makes the crime seem even more nonsensical. Stay tuned as more details from this ongoing case emerge, and as always, rest in peace, Pop Smoke.
Still riding high off the success of his #1 album, DJ Khaled is now facing some backlash this week after posting a twerk video online during the month of Ramadan, a holy month of fasting and prayer for Muslims.
Khaled, who was raised Muslim, posted some behind-the-scenes footage of what looks to be a music video shoot for his song, “Body in Motion,” featuring Lil Baby, and it just so happens to feature a lot of scantily-clad women twerking and shaking their assets. While nothing seems to be out the ordinary for a music video in 2021, the problem lies in that DJ Khaled posted it on Wednesday, the last day of Ramadan.
As a result, Khaled is getting dragged for his post; with some saying he’s being disrespectful, especially in light of the situation in Palestine. “You’re not following your religion very well,” one person said online while another added, “It’s the last of Ramadan. And al Aqsa was attacked again. This is what you post. Unfollowing you.” See some other tweets below.
The veteran producer has yet to respond to the controversy and hasn’t removed the video, but that doesn’t mean he’s completely unaware what’s going on in the world either. Prior to the twerk video, he posted his prayers for Palestinians via Instagram.
“Sending love and light and prayers to my Palestinian brothers & sisters and Everyone around the world,” he wrote. “IM PRAYING FOR PEACE AND LOVE TO THE WORLD , PEACE AND LOVE TO EVERYONE!”
If it seems like every week a new celebrity launches a weed brand, that’s because… every… week… a new celebrity… launches… a… weed brand. For the most part, these entries into an increasingly crowded marketplace are pretty forgettable. But occasionally — as with the case of Jay-Z’s Monogram and Seth Rogen’s Houseplant — the right team manages to knock it out of the park, earning permanent shelf space at your local dispensary.
I’m pleased to say that FlowerShop — a new brand launched by rapper and producer G-Eazy, along with co-founders and fellow Bay Area boys Isaac Muwaswes and Gabe Garcia — is one of those select few. But FlowerShop isn’t just a cannabis label. It’s also a wellness company, with a long list of products on deck. Its first drop delivers rolling papers, lighters, ashtrays, and three glass-tipped pre-roll joint packs, called Bouquetpacks. A 1/8th flower jar and “cannabis juice” are coming soon.
The Bouquetpacks offer three different mood-focused strains — dubbed Comfort, Smile, and Joy — each packed in reusable plastic tubes and sporting a glass-filter tip for better handling and flavor. After smoking the Comfort strain, I spoke with Muwaswes, Garcia, and G-Eazy himself about the origins of the brand, their own relationships to cannabis, and why joints will always feel special.
But first, let’s break down the weed.
The Packaging
Dane Rivera
Right out of the gate, the first interesting thing about FlowerShop is the brand’s design aesthetic. The Bouquetpack’s matte flip-top box features a magnetic top, and four pre-rolled single flower joints packed in resealable plastic tubes with glass filter tips. At four joints per pack and a retail price of $50, you’re looking at a cost of $12.50 per joint.
Dane Rivera
Since an eighth of Panacea Farms Purple Double Deja Vu will cost you about $60 before taxes, this pack has pretty good value for what you get, it’s a lot better than Monogram’s $60 hand-roll, for example, and the weed is of a much higher quality.
A fifth joint would’ve really set this up as something special though. The packaging is playful and colorful, but we would’ve preferred just a little bit more information for the consumer.
One of the things that first struck me about FlowerShop’s pre-roll pack was just how fragrant it smelled after I cut open the sealed plastic envelope it came packaged in. Once the scissors pierced the plastic I was instantly greeted by a wave of floral and slightly minty smells, with a slight pepper edge that tickles the nose. The joint itself is incredibly well packed, just rolling it through my fingers showed a consistent and dense pack that led to a lengthy smoke session with thick clouds of milky intoxicating smoke.
Again, FlowerShop’s attention to detail and design is at the forefront here. Each glass filter utilizes blue-colored glass — fitting with the color scheme. Does that have any effect on how high you get? Absolutely not, but it certainly has an effect on the experience. Smoking FlowerShop’s joints feels like you’re enjoying something special, it’s practically begging to be shared just so you can pass it around as a conversation piece.
Of course, cool filters would feel like a gimmick if the high didn’t deliver. It does. This will be a fun joint to pass between friends when we’re past Covid, but right now I’m not sharing with anyone. Which resulted in me getting — to borrow a Bay Area phrase — hella high.
Comfort is made using Panacea Farm’s Purple Double Deja Vu and the high comes on incredibly quickly here. Well before you make your way through the joint, a pleasing buzz took over me — beginning in the center of the forehead before melting down in radiating waves of euphoric bliss through the rest of my body. Real talk: I did not expect a celebrity-fronted weed brand to hit this hard. FlowerShop chose well by linking up with Panacea Farm for this one and opting for a single-sourced full flower joint (rather than a blend of shake) led to a better tasting, less harsh product.
I broke up one of my spare pre-rolls (which I regret) to get a look inside — Comfort has a great medium-coarse grind and the bud is fresh and still slightly sticky.
Dane Rivera
Flavor-wise, Comfort had floral notes with a heavy gas flavor and a peppery, slightly melon aftertaste. The smoke was remarkably smooth which is rare in pre-packaged joints, resulting in pleasingly smooth drags that didn’t lead to a single cough during my whole experience.
My only gripe is that calling the strain “Comfort” is a bit misleading, they might as well call it “KO” — smoking a full joint solo launched me beyond couch lock and straight into a nap. I had no plans on taking a nap, I wasn’t even tired, so this is definitely not something to mess with if you’ve got plans.
The Bottom Line
Smooth smoke with earthy flavors of cracked pepper and subtle melon and mint, which results in a body-tingling euphoric high designed to knock you out.
The Interview
FlowerShop
You’re all Bay Area kids, can you speak to the cannabis scene in the Bay Area while you were growing up. I know it’s always been a big part of the culture.
Muwaswes: I was born and raised in San Francisco, not too far from Haight Ashbury, so some of my early memories of being exposed to weed was going down to Haight Ashbury with my friends to kick it. As a young kid you’re kind of exposed to this narrative around the history and the demonization of cannabis, but as I kind of got into it in middle school going to high school you start to make your own assumptions.
But even then, pretty early on in high school, I started to hear about all these medicinal uses for it and hearing about the groundswell that was happening surround Prop 215. It was really being looked at as a medicine, and I’ve come across friends of my parents who were using it as a medicine as well, so pretty early on I started to see it as “oh this is something we in the Bay Area kind of have a different view upon and are really progressive on” and that intertwined with the cultural aspect, growing up listening to hip-hop, being into all things hip-hop, music, fashion — it was intertwined in those subcultures.
Whatever group of friends I had — whether it was my athlete friends, my friends into music, the friends into fashion — that was one thing we all shared. One experience that connected us all was smoking.
I know the brand takes a heavily sensory approach to cannabis, that’s right on the packaging. What’s the thinking behind positioning the brand this way and how does it differ from other celebrity-fronted brands that are springing up in the cannabis space?
Muwaswes: When we built Flower Shop we really built it as a wellness company as a whole, I think we always looked at cannabis as one aspect or one category of what we’re trying to do from the perspective of wellness. For us, we tried to really define what wellness means to us. One big realization we had was that it’s not one thing, it’s not singular, it’s more about the journey than the destination
Through that, we started to define how we can take people through that journey, and what we do to get on that journey. It’s about inspiring our senses, whether it’s the music we listen to, the candle we burn that smells a certain way, whether it’s the lighting in the room that makes us feel a certain way and opens up our mood to certain elements or experiences, we always knew it tied back to one or many of our senses and we’re already in that mindset for a lot of the other things we were doing previous to FlowerShop. Whether it was in the design world with Gabe or the music world with G, it’s about bringing all of that together in a retailer experience.
That was kind of the genesis of sensory care, and then we started to apply that to everything we were doing from product to packaging to messaging to content.
G Eazy: To jump in, from my perspective as a musician, music can be a healing agent. Similar to flower, it can be something that brings people together, people who share this commonality come together for this shared experience. But as a musician I have a wide array of influences and taste in music, I can deliver “No Limit” but then I can do “Everything Will Be OK,” that wide offering and understanding of mood and emotions are important in anything you offer because you don’t just have one customer, and each customer doesn’t have just one mindset and mood.
We wanted to find what resonates at different times of the day or different times in your life, and wanting to reach people on a level of emotion and feeling, similar to the way music would.
FlowerShop
I wanted to ask you specifically about your smoking habits G, are you smoking a bowl before you hit the studio, something you do after to unwind, what’s your creative relationship with the plant?
G-Eazy: There is pretty much a constant burn in the studio. Atmosphere is huge in the creative process, that comes down to lighting, how cold I like it, the people I want and don’t want in the studio, and that comes down to what I’m drinking and smoking. With smoking, it’s not a requirement. It’s not needed to unlock creativity, but nonetheless, it’s something that loosens you up and makes you feel better and makes you feel joy or relaxation, that can only open you up and enable more flow of stream of consciousness.
Garcia: To add to that we started thinking about whether cannabis a creative performance enhancer? We like the idea, we can’t go shout it off the mountaintops, but for us, we like that conceptually and believe it. But to G’s point, it’s not a reliance.
FlowerShop
G what’s your preferred smoking method and why did you guys start with the BouquetPack over a flower jar?
G-Eazy: Joints and blunts. It’s what I grew up smoking. Every day in high school coming home from work, I’d get home around midnight or 1 AM and I’d roll up a personal blunt and smoke it in the backyard while my mom was asleep, just to be able to wind down and decompress and get ready for school the next morning. It was just culturally what I grew up doing.
Garcia: That’s the reason we’re excited to share the bouquet pack and included the glass tip pre-rolls, that’s our attempt to elevate what is standard.
Where is the product sourced from?
Muwaswes: Sourcing wise we have a number of really good relationships with cultivators throughout the entire state of California. A lot of the key growers out here we have partnerships with and what we’re doing right now is these drops or deliveries with individual strains and growers. The one you have right now, we partnered with Panacea Farms for — a craft grower under the NorCal banner. We’re doing a number of different things with brands, growers, and cultivators, long term we are going to be having our own genetics out there, but for the time being, we’re trying to find the best of the best that we want to work with that also understand our vision and understand what we’re trying to do from a sensory care perspective with these products.
FlowerShop
What brought you to the cannabis business? Your backgrounds are comfortably in design and music, not in the cannabis industry.
Garcia: It came to us really, growing up in the Bay Area and how prominent it is it was probably inevitable. It came through a design project at first. We’ve been in the creative design space for a long time.
We started getting inbound requests from the cannabis end, that’s how it initially started to come to us, and we entertained one specific deal and that’s where it really started. As we got into it and did the research, we wanted to find our foothold and what felt authentic to us to enter the space and it was through design, through packaging through a vision, but as we got into it, we started asking ourselves deeper questions.
This is a two-and-a-half-year project in the making and we’re really proud of it and excited to share it with the world.
What’s special about FlowerShop, what sets it apart from other brands?
Garcia: It’s all in our packaging! We really did our best to make it as recyclable and eco-conscious as possible. We tried to make everything reusable — or unique enough to make people want to reuse it. The tubes the pre-rolls come in, our incense sticks are coming in those, it’s also a tube you can use to clean your glass tips and reuse them, same thing for the box itself.
Our Bud Vase, which will be dropping in 90 days, has a jar that’s able to be reused. With all of our packaging, we’ve thought about how we can inspire people to reuse it and reapply it to something else. The vase is food grade, it can be washed in the dishwasher, it can be used to store yogurt —
G-Eazy: As a shot glass!
Garcia: You know it!
Muwaswes: We were just as focused on what was going into the packaging as who we are sourcing weed from. Using a single strain indoor for our prerolls, not using shake, grinding the best of the best, being meticulous about the grind and the coarseness, consistency on the burn and smoke, even on the sourcing of the paper!
Ashnikko has been on a tear ever since her stint opening for Danny Brown put her on the map in the underground rap world, and the release of her Demidevil album at the top was diverse enough to put her on our 2021 Rising Pop Stars To Watch list, too. She’s as versatile as they come, perhaps best illustrated on her Birds Of Prey soundtrack co-write, Doja Cat’s “Boss Bitch” (Which shares a name with a song she features on off Brooke Candy’s 2019 album that I highly recommend).
Despite her obvious skill in writing songs for other artists, though, today she’s back to promoting songs off her own Demidevil, sharing the video for the Princess Nokia-featuring “Slumber Party,” a raucous affair that finds Ashnikko quite literally stealing your girl. Dressed in a deconstructed renaissance fair style of corsets and flowy hair, the two women playfully subvert heteronormative ideas about innocent slumber parties with a decidedly sexual, queered account of what might happen between the two of them. As each frame of the painting comes to life, eventually the women are dancing through their explicit lyrics together, as sex toys and almost-make-out-moments abound. Check out the NSFW video above, and keep an eye out for more from Ashnikko.
When Kobe and Gianna Bryant passed away last year, it was as if we were all living a horrible dream. In retirement, Kobe had so much left to give while Gianna seemed to be poised for a career in the WNBA. It was a senseless tragedy and since that time, the basketball world has banded together in an effort to honor them in the best ways possible. While Nike’s contract with Kobe runs out at the end of 2021, they are still making shoes to pay homage to his legacy, and the Nike Kobe 6 Protro “Mamba Forever” does just that.
Thanks to the Instagram account @brandon1an, we now have a first-hand account of this shoe and what it will look like. As you can see in the IG posts below, the sneaker has a black scaled upper to it all while white overlays are placed towards the back and on the heel. The back heel has the Mamba logo on it all while Kobe and Gigi’s names are written out in gold. We even have the number two on each shoe as a way to pay homage to Gigi.
For now, there is no release date attached to these although they could arrive this summer. Stay tuned for updates on the shoe as we will be sure to bring them to you.
Today, it was reported by Shams Charania of The Athletic that A-Rod and his business partner Marc Lore have officially bought the team for $1.5 billion. Both Lore and A-Rod will own 50 percent of the franchise, which means Rodriguez is putting up $750 million to purchase the team.
The Timberwolves have been in a state of disarray over the last few years as their results on the court have been less than stellar. While it remains to be seen how new ownership will change this, there is no denying that A-Rod will be bringing a ton of passion to his new role as owner.
Having former athletes in ownership roles is definitely a welcomed trend and it will be fun to see how A-Rod embraces his new position.
Stay tuned to HNHH for more news from the world of basketball.
