Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 1/6/17
Michelle Obama delivers her final speech from the White House
3:00 PMThis weekend is a big one for us. Domonique Foxworth, Mina Kimes and I are hosting a new ESPN Radio show called The Morning Roast. It airs on Sundays from 9 a.m.-12 p.m. EST. Tune in, kiddos!
President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama’s departure has us in our feelings. Not because of any specific policies or anything like that. I’ve said this before, but they were just such a fun family and represented this nation in a way that the rest of the world respected so much. Anyways, the first lady spoke Friday for the last time in public as a resident of the White House. She is a legit incredible inspiration.
The N-word is not funny when white people say it. The N-word has multiple contexts when black people say it. This is plainly how it is. But if you misspell the word “bigger” in a tweet and it gets public, you’re in for all the jokes. You see, “B” is right next to “N” on the keyboard, so don’t make that mistake yourself. These jokes are freaking hilarious though, if you’re allowed to laugh at them. If not, too bad! Deal with it. Don’t even type it. We see you.
Remember when “intelligence” was a thing that was seen and not heard? You know, when the secrets of the United States’ entire military operations weren’t a matter of public, high school gossip style record? Remember that? Well, that’s gone now. To the point that when president-elect Donald Trump is getting a security briefing, the whole world has to know, just in case they want to try to hack said meeting. In all seriousness, there’s an intel briefing Friday. And, it appears to be a scene.
If you haven’t been paying attention, the Milwaukee Bucks are wilding on people. Giannis Antetokounmpo is the best player in the NBA’s Eastern Conference not named LeBron James, but they don’t seem to be able to rise up and really scare anyone from a record standpoint. They’re just a highlight machine at this point. But they’re still just 18-16. But look, Antetokounmpo makes them a League Pass MVP. Anyway, there’s a good team there, really.
Free Food
Coffee Break: If you don’t remember Rosey Grier, you might soon. The former Los Angeles Rams defensive end, who was part of the Fearsome Foursome, says he might run for governor of California. If you’re wondering, he’s a Trump-supporting Republican.
Snack Time: I absolutely love DJ Shadow. I also really like Run The Jewels. So, you can guess how I feel about Shadow The Jewels. Excellent start to the weekend.
Dessert: Anderson .Paak and Pharrell together? Yes. Please.
NBA
NBA releases 2017 All-Star uniforms
It’s Adidas’ last year with the league before Nike takes over
Allow members of Basketball Twitter to design the NBA All-Star uniforms and have fans vote on one. But that would be too democratic.
— Marc Griffin (@montrealmarc) January 5, 2017
Them NBA All-Star uniforms look like they on sale at a random rack in Marshall's or TJ Maxx.
— #PlayoffPelicans 🦅 SWEEP (4-0) (@MichaelHJordan) January 5, 2017
Adidas did not end its run with the NBA’s uniforms well, according to many. Nike will take over the contract for the league’s apparel, which means we have one last season to endure what the German company wanted to do for All-Star Weekend. It’s also worth noting that jersey sponsorships are coming next season, so keep that in mind.
Ostensibly, there’s no clear link to what most of us think of New Orleans. Nor is there any reference to why the game is there to begin with, which is because the league pulled out of Charlotte, North Carolina, following the fallout from the bathroom law in North Carolina. However, the uniforms do pay homage to The Big Easy.
My only gripe about the #NBAAllStar jerseys are they're just not New Orleans-Ish…
— CK (29-53) (@_CK2K) January 5, 2017
The 2003 NBA All Star jerseys were always my favorite. I remember Missy Elliot was wearing one on her MTV cribs episode haha
— Ned Slanders (@NikeTys0n) January 5, 2017
“The carbon and red Western Conference, and light granite and blue Eastern Conference uniforms incorporate aged metal treatment across the jersey font outlines and Adidas logo, as a nod to the French-inspired ironwork displayed throughout the city of New Orleans,” the company said in a press release.
But in general, these things are so difficult to get right. The warmups always look better than the uniforms themselves. And nothing works better than letting players wear their own jerseys, but those days are over.
NBA All Star Uniforms are uglyyy 🙄🙄🤢
— Naaaaaaaa Naaaaa 💙🧞♀️ 𓋹 (@AYoNaNa2PreTTY) January 5, 2017
I don't know why everybody on Twitter is complaining about the #NBAAllStar 🏀 jerseys. They look fine to me.
— Charles Thompson (@cathompson) January 5, 2017
Here are some more shots of the gear.
The 66th NBA All-Star Game is Sunday, Feb. 19.
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 1/5/17
Charleston, South Carolina, shooting victims’ families speak out in court
1:30 PMOur managing editor at The Undefeated, Raina Kelley, took part in a Vanity Fair story titled The Greatest Media Mysteries Of 2017, and talked about protests. Check it out here!
Dylann Roof’s life is in the hands of a South Carolina jury. After being convicted of killing nine people at a church in Charleston, South Carolina, he’s decided to try to defend himself during the sentencing portion of his trial. He’s not even allowing his mental state to be considered as part of the case. This is presumably because he actually wants to die, and will likely be executed if he appears to be remorseless. The families of the victims are telling their stories in court.
Donald Trump really is determined to make his mark on America. It’s not enough for him to simply be in the office and enjoy the spoils of the presidency. He’s literally going to try to undo everything that’s already been done, just to say he did. Now, it’s causing him problems with the intelligence community, which is understandably concerned about his ties to Russia. The president-elect says he’s considering a plan to overhaul our top agencies. Yikes.
Fake news, as a concept, is a tricky one. Because, technically, “fake news” doesn’t mean anything and doesn’t aptly describe the actual problem and harmfulness. Because it’s propaganda, in fact, that spreads misinformation that can hurt people. It’s not The Onion. But how do you fix that? It feels like we’re back in the era of the internet where people literally believe everything, just because it’s there. Trying to fact-check this stuff is just a total crap shoot.
Wale debuted a new song on First Take this week, with Lil Wayne. Then he dropped a song called Smile, in which he made reference to Tomi Lahren, the conservative TV host from The Blaze. You might recall that she had a sit-down with Comedy Central’s Trevor Noah, who apparently risked it all and shot his shot, cupcakes style, with her afterward. Anyway, she thought she’d try to clapback at Wale. It didn’t go well at all.
Free Food
Coffee Break: Megyn Kelly is headed from Fox News to NBC News soon. And though she did publicly feud with our new president-elect at a debate, it doesn’t mean she hasn’t been on the wrong side of history before. It should be noted what her career has previously show us.
Snack Time: Curren$y and Freddie Gibbs have worked together in the past, and this week they announced they’ll be doing an entire EP together. Cool. But how Freddie Gibbs actually did it is better.
Dessert: Nicki Minaj is back on the market, it appears.
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 1/4/17
Omarosa Manigault will be working in the Trump White House
2:23 PMHappy Wednesday, kiddos. It’s a dreary one here in D.C., so let’s get this moving. I think I might go see Fences tonight.
You know Omarosa Manigault, right? The woman from The Apprentice who got famous after being on the show, then ran the reality star circuit for a while before disappearing from the public eye? That one. Well, she’s of course back on the scene now that Donald Trump has been elected, and what you might not know is that now that she’s been hired to his staff. It won’t be the first White House she’s worked for, sort of. She once was working for Al Gore, when Bill Clinton was in office.
One of the funniest things in 2017 so far happened in Los Angeles. The famed Hollywood sign in California was vandalized, and made to appear to read “Hollyweed,” which, by any reasonable metric, is just plain funny. It actually wasn’t the first time it happened, but the fact that someone did it on New Year’s Eve and that Facebook Live streamed the repair process is hilarious. Anyways, these are the guys that claim they did it.
Kim Kardashian is back, y’all. It’s been a rough couple of months for the most famous person in America’s favorite television family. There was the Paris robbery incident, then her husband went a bit wild and put their whole home life on blast. But, let’s be clear. We’ve missed Kim. And don’t come at me acting like this isn’t news. There’s one thing that’s harder to do than anything else: getting people to like you. She’s great at it. She’s better than you at it. Her social media game pops.
By and large, bowl games are a mixed bag. The experiences are so varied, whether you’re attending, playing or just watching on television, and what they mean to each person is completely different. But if we’re to glean anything from them, they are a reasonably decent indicator of what certain conferences are all about. This year, the Atlantic Coast Conference is doing it very, very big. And if Clemson wins it all, it’ll be the best conference bowl year ever.
Free Food
Coffee Break: You know what it’s like to shop while black. Typically, someone comes up to you with WAAAY too much customer service, or they hide in the corner and watch you, if they’re suspicious. At Versace, they were far more open about it, using so-called code words. Nice try.
Snack Time: I don’t keep up with rap beefs with any regularity, but I do check in if required. And this situation between Soulja Boy and Chris Brown might the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever seen.
Dessert: Ivanka Trump is moving in down the block from the Obamas. There goes the neighborhood.
Music
Technics has no time for DJs anymore
The new SL-1200 turntable is apparently not for you
5:00 PMWhen Panasonic announced a year ago that it was reissuing the Technics SL-1200 turntable, my gut did a flip. The Japanese company was finally getting in on the nostalgia wave that’s served black fashion and culture so well in the past five years with a product that was arguably the most recognizable piece of equipment in hip-hop not called a microphone.
Yet to ring in 2017, Technics creative director Hiro Morishita told The New York Times that they didn’t plan to market the new product to DJs. He even went so far as to call such a strategy “problematic.”
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That statement is nothing short of a direct insult to the hip-hop community and, more plainly, an act of erasure. You cannot separate the Technics brand from DJ culture. Not in this lifetime. And with good reason, too. It was the best product on the market for 30 years. The look was one thing, but the durability is what made the turntables a best-seller. Then, Panasonic stopped making them, then went through a couple of reboots with side versions, which never matched the original.
In the U.K., vinyl sales are at their highest in 25 years, up 53 percent in 2016. Record Store Day has transformed from a quasi-niche artisanal event to a global phenomenon. To quote DJ Khaled, when it comes to wax, business is boomin’. You can buy LPs almost anywhere and subscribe to any number of services that’ll send vinyl to your house. Some will even pair it with a legit bag of coffee. I get a text every day with a photo of an album cover — if I want it, I just reply YES.
Vinyl culture has not just seen a resurgence, it’s been mainstreamed and gentrified all at once. Which is where this strategy from Technics comes into play. As high-end audiophiles have turned their interest to old mediums, all sorts of brands have been getting in on the fun. It’s why you can buy a turntable in a suitcase at Urban Outfitters with a T-shirt or alongside a $2,000 bike at Shinola.
why even re-engineer and reposition the 1200 as an audiophile turntable if you're not trying to leverage its cultural history?
— Brian Miller (@brianbillion) January 2, 2017
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From an age and money standpoint, hip-hop culture has aged perfectly for this product. It almost makes too much sense. After watching DJs wreck shop with the most well-known deck in the business in their youth, plenty of people would buy one these days as a listening device. While plenty of actual DJs have moved on to other products that certainly wouldn’t stop casual nostalgists from dropping large cash just to be able to say they had one, for the culture.
Which ultimately makes this so frustrating. To ignore the hip-hop community for the sake of, say, the classical music one, just doesn’t make sense. Rappers and orchestras are doing shows together at some of the most famous venues in the world. It’s borderline become a genre unto itself from a show standpoint.
Nas and Kendrick Lamar both performed with the National Symphony Orchestra at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Kanye West used an all-women orchestra in London at Abbey Road Studios to remix his album Late Registration, called Late Orchestration. Jay Z has taken his flows to Carnegie Hall and London’s Royal Albert Hall. Migos have even gotten in on this act. And how could we ever forget the way Sir-Mix-A-Lot shut it down with the Seattle Symphony. <— If you haven’t seen that, you need to watch it, by the way.
But all these synergies of musical styles aside, as a lifelong fan of the turntable as an instrument, a tool, a machine and frankly a cultural cornerstone, there’s a lot of disappointment in Technics’ stance. We get it. It’s supposed to be a better turntable. That doesn’t mean you have to abandon the people that got you there.
But this isn’t a Timberland heir in the ’90s saying their boots aren’t intended for black people. That was a relatively new trend at the time and, in general, it was a reckless comment about an item with a shelf life. Same sort of concept goes for Tommy Hilfiger, who popped off about minorities wearing his clothes back in the day. Shirts and pants come and go. The whole idea of the 1200s was that they did not.
It was an aspirational product for any hip-hop head. Saving the money to get them was half the battle. Not to mention that the worlds of audiophiles and DJ culture are more convergent than ever, which means this strategy of exclusion after using us to build a brand is just not smart. But then again, that’s just what people do when it comes to black culture. Ask Run-DMC.
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 1/3/17
Brent Musburger is a fan of Joe Mixon
2:40 PMWell now, how about Nick Viall? ABC’s The Bachelor debuted Monday night, and it appears that the women of color are finally, well, prominent on this show. Your boy is in not one, but two fantasy leagues for the show, by the way.
The House Republicans apparently have a lot to hide. While a large amount of America was watching Southern California pull off a rather stunning win against Penn State in the Rose Bowl, your friendly neighborhood Congressfolk were voting to gut an independent ethics committee. They put the one group in charge of checking on wrongdoing, in to the hands of party leaders. Then, after everyone called them out for shadiness, they changed their minds in another emergency meeting. Which is also pretty shady. Happy first day, 115th Congress!
In other executive office-related news, one HBCU is in an awkward spot. The Talladega College Marching Tornadoes have decided to play Donald Trump’s inauguration parade, a decision that runs afoul of what many bands and groups decided, based on the president-elect’s politics. When was the last time you ever heard of that school doing anything? It’s an incredible moment for exposure, but at what cost? One’s dignity. You gotta feel bad for those kids because walking away from the biggest show of your life isn’t an easy thing to do.
T. Boone Pickens is a super rich oil tycoon. If you couldn’t tell that just from his name, now you know it’s true. You might know him best for his role with Oklahoma State football, where the stadium they play in is named after him. He happens to have an ex-wife who is currently being sued. Why? Because she allegedly was acting wildly racist about various things concerning her employees at her tourist ranch. The catchphrase here is: black people food. Yeah, don’t say that.
Monday night’s Sugar Bowl was a decent game. But the entire thing was overshadowed, understandably, by the situation surrounding Joe Mixon. He’s the kid that socked a woman in the face at a sandwich shop in 2014, and the video of the incident was brutal. For whatever reason, while calling the game, Brent Musburger decided that he wanted to praise Mixon for turning his life around, then went on to wish him well in the NFL. It didn’t go over well, clearly, and then, Musburger doubled down and basically antagonized some viewers. Not a good look.
Free Food
Coffee Break: The concept of Chance The Rapper and Childish Gambino releasing a mixtape is a pretty exciting one, but whatever it is they do together will make us happy, to be frank. Now that they’re posting on Instagram together, people are not ready.
Snack Time: I’m not particularly into knitting, but if someone made me one of these temperature blankets, I’d pretty much sleep under it every night, all year long. This this is incredibly dope.
Dessert: Migos ain’t just out here doing shows in Nigeria, they’re shooting videos, too.
Daily Dose
Daily Dose: 1/2/17
We really do have to say goodbye to the Obamas
3:00 PMWhat up, kiddos? I’m back, feeling energized and excited for the new year. I’d like to give props to Martenzie Johnson, whose week in this space was genuinely excellent. Time to rock.
It’s been a while since we heard from your boy, but Donald Trump is still wilding. Whether he’s popping off inane tweets about 2017, throwing people off his golf course or charging people major cash to kick it with him on New Year’s Eve, he isn’t slowing down. He’s also managed to somehow convince The Wall Street Journal that when he lies, it’s not actually a lie. How that works, we have no idea, fam. More importantly, clear your schedule for Jan. 10. That’s when President Barack Obama is going to give his farewell speech from Chicago. We expect zero dry eyes in the place.
If you didn’t see Mariah Carey’s performance in Times Square, check it here. There are a couple of levels to this. The people who are mad she was lip-syncing, an argument I’ll never understand. Secondly, there are those who were upset at how she handled the situation onstage. Then, those who thought her reply was excellent on Twitter. Then, all the way down to Carey’s camp, who are accusing Ryan Seacrest’s crew of actual sabotage. It’s not that deep, fam.
Over the course of my short journalism career, I’ve sat in a few press boxes. Not a ton, mind you, but enough to know that it takes a LOT to get kicked out of one, particularly during a professional game that typically serves as the working space for nearly a hundred people. But on Sunday, the somewhat unthinkable happened, when at a Philadelphia Eagles game, a reporter got tossed. Then, others were threatened with ejection if they objected. This is the equivalent of a parent saying they’ll turn the car around if everyone in the back doesn’t shut up. What a mess.
Speaking of abnormal occurrences at games, there’s U.S. Bank Stadium. At the Minnesota Vikings game Sunday, demonstrators managed to make it into the facilities and hang banners protesting U.S. Bank’s involvement with the Dakota Access Pipeline. Political message aside, it was a pretty impressive feat from a physical standpoint. Anyways, the people involved will be charged. Here’s the press release from those responsible.
Free Food
Coffee Break: The stories of how people fall in love can be interesting, but are often rather boring. Person meets person, person likes person, person, if they live in a place that allows, marries other person. But this story about a mixtape and then a wedding is pretty cool.
Snack Time: Want an apt description of where our nation’s politics are right now? Check out this editorial cartoon, which is about as good as I’ve seen in a long while.
Dessert: If you grew up a city kid, like me, you’ll love these pretty pictures.