About 30 years from the day those hot bullets hit his torso on Las Vegas Boulevard, the man who helped murder Tupac Amaru Shakur, Duane “Keefe D” Davis, has been convicted of first degree murder for his killing. This is a remarkable concurrence of events that would make Makaveli himself smile wide with a cigar in his mouth, busting out that cackle that you could hear from fifty yards away. So far, on my timeline, users are cackling themselves, reminiscing about 2Pac’s celebrity, his emotional vigor, his intensity, his beautiful, urgent, unnerving songwriting, while denouncing Keefe D as a fool who could have continued to get away with murdering a once-in-a-generation artist if he had just kept his mouth shut. Yet, the allure of discussing past crimes in memoirs and YouTube interviews to rap media vultures like DJ Vlad seemed to have a curious and dubious hold on Keefe D. It is almost hard to blame him; he’s still living in a time that rewards such tomfoolery.

Read more

Read more

If you made me guess which rapper from my childhood almost surely defended the use of Artificial Intelligence in rap music, then Tyga would have been near the top of my list. The days of the unstoppable pop hit “Rack City” is no longer, replaced by an acceptance of a technological platform that has polarized everyone from rap fans to journalists. The Compton rapper told Vibe, “we definitely used AI as a [tool]. And I know people are going to be mad about me saying this, but it’s where technology is going. It’s no different than when Auto-Tune came out. Some people were opposed to it, but real artists took it and used it.” Tyga’s 80’s sweaty club movie-indebted album $tarface sounds like a SNL kit about a rapper who is trying to cosplay as a Miami Vice detective who can’t clear any cases. So, in lieu of talking about his music, we’re talking about A.I. again, its affects on hip-hop and how similar it is to other technological advances.

Read more

So, what does Mike Tomlin do when he sees that fans and media are exasperated with his message? He resigns from coaching and joins a national pastime for retired coaches: broadcasting! Last night on NBC, during the annual “Hall of Fame” preseason game, the first sight of organized football since the previous Super Bowl, Tomlin looked springy, even frisky, on the telecast, making light of the fact that he used to coach the Steelers for eighteen seasons, knowing the operation “intimately.” At one point, he was asked by studio host about the fit with Mike McCarthy and the Steelers, and he was bullish, describing McCarthy as a coach that has “confetti rained down upon him.” Compliments were as expected, Tomlin isn’t known to critique his fellow coaches, and while one wonders if he’ll have the gumption to do so during the regular season when the situation calls for it, he certainly wasn’t going to suggest that McCarthy is a poor fit for the Steelers. Luckily, he is probably also telling the truth. To be a former coach is to be inside of the fraternity of coaching.

The hiring of McCarthy was a result of a process that was slick and desperate, unlike other hirings that the Steelers have made in their history. It has become ultra cliche to discuss the youthfulness of previous Steelers coaches at the time of their hiring, but because of 62 year old McCarthy, it serves as a unfortunate juxtaposition to what was given to fans this coaching cycle. Completing only three in-person interviews, the Steelers hired McCarthy in late January, stunning a befuddled fanbase, this writer included. In sum, it had the air of slight panic. McCarthy is an impressive coach, a guru for offense, a coach who is stubbornly committed to the quarterback position as the position in need of elevating or fixing. Yet, he is also someone who hasn’t won a trophy since 2010 despite having plenty of opportunities to add to his hardware. Other veteran coaches have been hired by franchises looking for titles after droughts — the Broncos’s hire of Sean Payton, or the Chiefs’s hire of Andy Reid comes to mind — McCarthy’s narrative has been one of contentious disappointment from fans and management alike. (It helps that Reid drafted Patrick Mahomes, possibly the greatest quarterback of all-time). By the naked eye, one might have suggested that the Steelers were doing a local kid a favor. They usually try to hire young defensive coaches without previous employment baggage. The heights that Bill Cowher and Mike Tomlin reached were set aside for a conventional and quite boring pick.

The fans that called for Tomlin’s firing or resignation, an action that probably should have happened years prior to the buzz about it, quickly seemed to forget their desire for new blood as head coach of the Steelers. Mike Tomlin remains, after all the years, the worst greatest coach to ever wear a headset. He has that one title, inheriting a robust roster and elevating it by trusting skill position malcontents like Santonio Holmes, allowing the tradition to shine while infusing it with some of his Virginia-made bluster. Season after season, his greatness was in his consistency: the Steelers had this freakish ability to always have a meaningful football to play every season, even if the rosters on some of those teams never had a true chance of winning a Super Bowl. His weaknesses, though, were startling compared to some of his elitist peers: he never seemed to figure out the quarterback position after Roethlisberger retired, and he somehow never had the gumption to bottom out in order to try to make his chances of getting an elite quarterback easier. It was that great egotism that was his gift and his curse; the season where Roethlisberger tore his elbow out remains one of the most overlooked coaching seasons of this century, yet they would probably been better off bottoming out.

By comparison, though, the criticism that the McCarthy move is the same move as Tomlin as fell by the wayside. McCarthy is a native of Pittsburgh, and the introductory press conference served as a homecoming for a long lost “Yinzer” that spent his time having to contend with Jones family mania in Dallas prior to interviewing with the Steelers. Furthermore, a harrowing and heartwarming story in The Athletic about his family, the death of a brother, made its way into Steelers fans’s often dark souls. It wasn’t a flashy hire but it seemed to do its job: pacify a frustrated fanbase by hiring someone with ties to the town, signify to Aaron Rodgers that he wouldn’t have to run a new offense with another coach, maintain the contemporary status by hiring a competent coach that can get them to a Wild Card spot. The team might look different in the upcoming season but odds are the result will be the same.

It is most meaningful because Tomlin seemed to be in good spirits during the telecast, jolly, and looking forward to talking about football all season. It is easy to see why the situation between the fans and Tomlin became so toxic, why Tomlin ultimately decided to take a step back. Sure, the team needed another leader, but the fans were also overly infuriated with a great coach. The extra anxiety of watching Tomlin joke about the suites at LaTrobe proved to be much too relaxing for Steeler fans to handle, embarrassing themselves by claiming that Tomlin was dissing the friendly confines of the Steelers’s training camp location. For the fans, the standard of classiness that Tomlin kept throughout the tenure, is merely a suggestion to scoff at, but not a rule to abide by.

First of all, Kendrick Lamar is not a politician, nor a member of the Democratic Party so who knows whether he is an “opp”, or if he is being used by actual opps to further an identity politic agenda. He hasn’t come out and said that he is a fan of Kamala; he isn’t come out in support of any actual policy that mainstream Democrats are shuffling their papers for, in hopes that a bill will get passed during a session of Congress. After he spoke about the murder of Mike Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, he hasn’t even really spoken about police violence, if he has at all.. If it is in fact that he is being used by neoliberals and fake progressives, then it might be unfair for Drake fans such as myself to blame Kendrick on the neoliberal ruling class’s affection towards some of the rap music that he makes. However, one does remember To Pimp a Butterfly, when he had photos meeting Obama in the Oval Office, despite standout track “Hood Politics” throwing shots at the 44th President’s way. How much understanding of social justice, awareness of the identity groups that are discriminated against does Kendrick even have? I’m unsure; he might just be someone who is super into being a Black man, which is more than cool if that is the case. I’m super into being a Black man; I just think Drake makes twice the better music than Kendrick does.

Second of all, well, Kendrick genuinely got hot in 2024. He dropped a intense verse on “Like That”, a prose of maximal hatred on wax, as much of a warning shot as a sheet of music to be enjoyed. It was podcast rap, if I may borrow from Pitchfork’s Alphonse Pierre, at its finest, fodder to be conversed about on shows like The Joe Budden Show, or even Popcast, because it would be impossible not to bring it up. After “Like That”, he dropped a series of diss songs, only one of them (“Not Like Us” is a genuine hit) is actually good, and almost all of them seem destined to age poorly — like a ton of Kendrick’s music, which feels decidedly less timeless than the art that Drake makes. He took advantage of several things: a sometimes disingenuous left-wing faction that is tired of Drake’s “apolitical artistry” (more on that), women tired of Drake’s capitalist involvement with the misogyny of streamer culture, Drake’s lack of strategic planning, and his fellow rappers, co-workers angered by Drake’s possible slights, his possible relationship with women that they all seem to share, and the fact that their success has often come with a fruitful feature from Drake. Kendrick took advantage of Kamala Harris’s campaign for President, and as that beef developed, Kamala started off her campaign somewhat strong, a campaign that incorrectly tried to pretend like there is still such a thing as monoculture in the 2020’s. So, because of all those factors, Drake spent two years playing defense.

IT TURNED OUT THAT DRAKE had a surprise for us all, a volume of music that showcases all his skillset with ease. He dropped three albums on that night I posted the Instagram story: Iceman, Maid of Honour, and Habibti. Sure, Maid of Honour shows his astonishing versatility, with songs like “Cheetah Print”, “Outside Tweaking”, “Hoe Phase”, “New Bestie”, “Princess” infusing the longing that Drake has with the genuine experimentation that he can bring on a single song or project when he is in a playful mood. Habibti is the worst of the three, yet it brings his ear for beats and young talent together for his dump. Yet, it is Iceman that feels like the most important record of the three, the one that contains his inner most personal thoughts on what transpired in 2024 and the state of the Drake as a person and a legacy act. If he is showing his range on the other record, Iceman is where he is being Drake — the rap and ear worm beast that defined a generation of eccentric Black pop. Where previous records felt less hungry, more aimless, less urgent, Iceman is bursting every second with venom and revenge. Drake proves his worth to rap by being every traditional aspect that describes rappers: charming, mean, brutal, sexual, egotistical, and appetizing. It is the post-beef musings of The Blueprint 2 meets the misogynistic sexual impulses of All Eyez On Me meets the mafia boss fantasies of Master P’s MP Da Last Don. He thought the plaques would gain him unlimited respect and it didn’t; Iceman is the realization that his success, the hits, will not enough for random fans that distrust him as a person. The album isn’t the zeitgeist defining Take Care or the nervous euphoria of If You’re Reading It’s Too Late but it is monumental, a great comeback album, sitting at three on my rankings, high praise for someone with a solid discography despite being a behemoth. Drake starts with the somber intro “Make Them Cry” into the adaptable “Dust”, to the retro-bounce of “Whisper My Name”, where he re-affirms how universal his skillset is (“the dustiest niggas been fucking with us”).

Yet, it was not until “Janice STFU” when I first realized that Drake was back and no amount of television’s being turned off, Samuel L. Jackson appearances, and convertible cars could deny him of his spot of rap’s greatest hitmaker. If the song is the song of the summer, and it almost surely is, then it is a song for a Do the Right Thing summer — which, lucky for Drake, is perfect because every summer is a “Do the Right Thing” summer. It’s the epitome of everything Drake does well as an artist/rapper: the immediacy of its songwriting, mentioning the name of the lady feels like a trick he picked up on Take Care. It is ostentatiously melodic, interpolating a Lykke Li song that sounds like children’s rhyme with its simplicity yet otherworldly catchiness (“pull up maybach, beep beep baby” is the best line of them all, it sounds like something that Lucy Liu would have said in a crime flick made by Peyton Reed). The verses contain bite, legit contentious bars for Jay-Z and Kendrick Lamar, even though it’s mostly a radio smash that has to do with yearning for a loved one after a tough year of beef and losses. His vocal performance is loose and smooth, without any rush and with much pomp. “Janice STFU” is, quite simply, the embodiment of Drake.

Bending the line between genius and tacky to the point where the tacky barely exists is what Drake has specialized in throughout his career. He lives in the stubborn space between Instagram captions and lines that would cause Rakim to have a heart attack if it was said by Jack Harlow, yet make Rakim dance in the club with the rest of us when said by Drake. “Make Them Pay” is fantastic too, his best pure rap song since “4PM In Calabasas”, lyrical menace over a sensual, bright beat, similar to a song done by Beanie Sigel or Cam’ron in the early 2000’s. He’s never sounded more in control of a narrative on a song, dissing former allies like Rick Ross and DJ Khaled, discussing Khaled’s soft politics and affirming Drake’s weirdly overlooked belief in diversity — solipsism mixed with spite, spite mixed with his earned righteousness. Iceman has Drake back on top, reminding folks that only he can make the hits that he makes — the winks towards a guy’s guy swagger and the sensitive love songs that women adore.

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT DRAKE that appeals to people who seem to understand the pitfalls of wokeness. He’s a great musician, there’s that, and he’s without any think piece overambition. On my way home from the Yankees game last night, a 13-7 blowout by the Cardinals, I heard a group of college-aged white boys talking about Kendrick vs Drake. One of them, well this kid looked a little mixed, said “Kendrick’s cool but Drake is just so much better. You shouldn’t really listen to Kendrick unless you’re an activist”, which made me cringe, because it is disrespectful to Kendrick’s genuine rapping ability to suggest he is merely a rapper for social justice. He’s much more than that at his best; yet, at his worst, he is that, the rapper that white people who think they have taste name as their favorite at their dinner parties in their expensive brownstones. That kid might harbor some racial animus — it’s an undeniable fact that a lot of white people harbor some type of, let’s call it, racial insecurity towards Black people (and sometimes us towards them too), it’s just how race in America works — but I genuinely get why he said that regardless of his possible antagonism. For one, it is something I have said to my crew of friends, Black ones at that, or at least a variation of that. I’m usually more artful than that when I critique Kendrick’s music, like I always say “he is good at making his music seem important.” It is kind of a compliment, at least it is coming from me. Kendrick is good at sounding important when he raps, so much so when he is trying to be playful, like on Playboi Carti’s MUSIC, he often struggles to find his place. (Check out “Jealous” by Fredo Santana and him if you want a great Kendrick feature on a small, fun street song). Think about how the Pop Out felt like a celebration for Blackness and hip-hop in the face of 2020’s white supremacy, even though it is also a show where he brings out alleged murderers and abusers on stage with him. (Not that I care. If Drake is allowed to be complex, so is K-Dot). He’s a proper melodramatic and corny theater kid, where Drake himself is merely great fun, which is just as important as someone who is “important.” Iceman doesn’t have any life lessons on it, no stern finger wagging that Dot does on GNX and on other albums, no mention of Obama or Trump, no slightly conservative musings on what it means to be a Black man.

It’s refreshing that Drake is a superstar without any pretension of progressive politics, or progressive signifiers like songs about issues that plague the Black community. Yet, diversity — often a progressive politic — is all over his career. Drake could be a member of the French 75 if he didn’t love going on streams so much. His close friend, frequent and often great collaborator, Noah “40” Shebib is Lebanese; his co-founder for his label October’s Very Own (OVO), Oliver El-Khatib is Lebanese too. He has Black men in his crew, and more specifically Afro-Carribean men, basketball players like Kevin Durant and Stephen Curry, and his child’s mother is a French-Canadian. He is a Canadian rapper whose dad is an African-American from Memphis and whose mom is an Ashkenazi Jewish woman. He has duel citizenship. What makes his music so great is his taste level: Drake seems like a guy who could have a Tumblr or a music blog that had incredible recommendations on it. I’ve seen him be influenced by everyone from Wu-Tang’s Cappadonna to Aayliah to Lil Wayne to San Francisco’s Rappin’ 4-Tay. Now, Kendrick doesn’t get enough credit for shouting out Mozzy at the Grammy’s and he’s a big rap fan too, parts of Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers felt influenced by everyone from the impressionable Drakeo the Ruler to the off-kilter and abstract flows of billy woods, but Drake really makes his taste level part of his decisions as an artist, part of his lore. He spent time in the late 2010’s discovering new music, new artists, lending them ingenious hooks and songs that he would help land on the top of the charts. Isn’t that the idea of the word progressive? He’s a legit alien while still being emotionally resonant throughout his public life. I truly don’t get how people dislike that dude. He’s one of one.

THE IDEA OF WOKE — BEST DESCRIBED AS “HAVING AN UNDERSTANDING OF A DISCRIMINATION AGAINST AN IDENTITY GROUP THAT IS NOT JUST YOURS” — scares me at times. It feels like a fantasy of the Obama era that isn’t real and puts unrealistic expectations on other people, and even on us. It puts pressure on people who may not be educated enough to be decent allies, stripping them of their confidence when they say wrong things, alienating them by denouncing their words that they weren’t even smart enough to say, opening the door for them to become more conservative. (A real one would keep learning but it’s truly much more complex than that. Human beings are sensitive and have egos). It’s unfortunate, you’d wish every white person would understand what makes Future more brilliant than Tyler, the Creator, or what makes John Singleton’s Baby Boy two times the movie Sinners is but it just isn’t possible. Most people grow up with the same identity group, listening to the same bland rap music and bland pop music, watching the same bad movies. It’s worst with the women too, because they view it as male movies because it was watched by the white boys that were sexist growing up, as opposed to just “oh this is a movie with taste that has De Niro and Pacino in it.” So, when they see the one Black thing that they can get behind, they latch onto it, since they haven’t had much experience with Black people, a group of people that has taste just because it is easier to have taste when you in the depths of American life. One of my exes used to try to combat her lack of understanding about race by accusing me of hypermasculinity. She’s a loser for doing that, and thank God I am not with her any longer, but she was really only saying that because the power dynamic wasn’t equal. She knew it wasn’t. Like Kendrick said, they truly aren’t really like us.

I hate whenever I sound too weirdly progressive in a conversation with friends or whenever I do a piece that feels overly woke, like my piece about Caitlin Clark and Charlie Kirk. Kirk had a family, and despite the fact that he said super racist, super foul stuff every day, it wasn’t even like the person who allegedly killed him did it for a real reason. It was just some crazy moment. I sleep fine at night, but we live in a hyper violent world, I get why his killing causes worry. Clark really needs to figure out her place as a white athlete getting propped up by white men since she is in a league full of Black women but it was a little corny of me to say that she wasn’t cool because she walked out with Morgan Wallen and she was too white. Who am I to say that about a hooper? Too white? Would I say that about white men in media I admire like Jon Caramanica, Joe Coscarelli, or Wright Thompson? That sounds like if someone said I was too Black. It’s different because of the obvious racial implications that Clark brings with her but mad people — including Black men — walk out with Wallen. I stand by the ideas in the piece. I’m not wrong. However, she’s from Iowa, of course she is basic. I should be more measured — not expect too much out of regular ass people. Maybe I wasn’t being too woke, so much as I wasn’t framing what I wanted to say in the right way — the cost of writing a Substack with no editor.

I’m a pretty woke guy as much as I hate to admit it sometimes. I grew up in New York. I have Black friends — like men I consider my best friends, men who I say “nigga” with — Black women friends, white woman friends, I have Jew friends, a Sicilian-American girlfriend, Muslim friends, gay friends, trans acquaintances. I got a big personality, don’t get me wrong, I’m capable of the same high jinks that every other red-blooded male is capable of, but I’m in a progressive bubble, in a way, so when I speak about things, sometimes I can come across as hyper fixated on what people don’t have because I am from a place that gave me everything and everybody, plus I am young Black guy so I am naturally obsessed with rap music of all regions, and if you know rap, you’ll know music. My parents raised me to recognize injustices around me, even to know and be aware of backhanded racial compliments from white liberals (don’t think I don’t hear them if you say it to me, and yes, I am plotting on my revenge even though I should probably start responding to that bullshit right away).

I don’t love my art “woke” though. Part of having taste is going beyond the banalities of who is woke and who isn’t. I love my art punk — vulgar, majestic, frustrated, sexual, angry, swaggering, detailed — which can be woke, but is almost always uncomfortable more than it is any other trait. I am seeing Do the Right Thing at Brooklyn Bridge Park next week and what I am most excited for is showing Alexa just how sort of anti-woke the movie is. Spike understands people, that we’re capable of saying the worst things to one another even if we’re deep down trying to do better inside. Sal is trying; he’s got racism lurking underneath though, and it comes out in small ways until it finally explodes. Radio Raheem and Buggin’ Out are kind of right — why do you have a pizza place in our hood if you don’t mess with us, don’t get to know us? – but they are also being mad obnoxious about it, going about it in the way that feels the least cool way possible. It’s also wild hot outside and everyone’s antsy, and anger sets off when folks are sweaty and uncomfortable. It’s a truly the greatest American movie of all-time because it spares nobody, even and maybe especially the Black community of Bed-Stuy.

IT LOOKS LIKE WE WILL BE ENTERING in a possible new age of woke. Maybe. Mayor Mamdani has been doing a solid job so far as mayor of the greatest city in the world and he’s a pretty “woke” dude. Trump is still President, and the thing about Trump is really cultivated a constituency of people of different identity groups fed up with progressives. So, if you are a rich hyper-misogynistic Black man, Trump is for you; if you are a white woman cozying up to men to take advantage of conservative beauty standards or lily-white victimhood, then Trump is for you; if you hate gays, trans people, pronouns, then Trump is for you. I find pronouns corny sometimes but Trump is worse than remembering that someone is they/them. That dude in office is not a decent guy. He cares about no one but himself. It’s an ugly stain on all of us the fact that we elected him. I get it, I really do get it, at least I understand the reasons why, but it is still frustrating to see how sink to our lowest and lamest impulses. It is mad annoying, corny, and I am tired of it. Conservatives annoy the hell out of me, as does wokeness disguised as conservatism. Human beings are infallible, chaotic, self-destructive, and make mistakes, but I think we can all do better, myself included. I hope this time around we don’t put our faith in a single guy, like Shaun King, who was so corrupt that he might as well have been in a Tammany Hall, or Deray McKesson, who was a gay neoliberal obsessed with private schools. Maybe this time our faith is into the fellow man, or even into ourselves, that we can continue to expand our minds as much as possible.

I wonder, at times, if woke has caused me to lose opportunities. This is the Trump era but whatever one can do to stay level-headed, they should do. I left Trader Joe’s because they ain’t let me wear my “No Justice No Peace” pin and I became disillusioned but what if I saved up from that job and gave myself more money to be on my grind when I first started in media, instead of being so broke. I ain’t actually need to wear that pin. George Floyd would still be a murdered Black man, the epitome of state sanctioned violence. I don’t want to make anyone dislike me by finger wagging and being intense about topics that most people are not ready to be intense about. I want to work, create great feature writing, write a book, a script, live a big, beautiful life as a wavy Black man. Yet, wokeness comes from experiences of discrimination. Hearing things said to you by people you thought liked you, seeing things done to you by teachers or principals, knowing things said by foes, and honestly just being a person in America. I am woke, and it is because I have to be, and I am a guy with relative amounts of privilege.

DRAKE IS BACK ON TOP and it legitimately brings a smile to me. The guy has his issues, no doubt, but his music is so banging, and it brings humans together, forging lifelong friendships. Shout out to all my true Drake fans that I am proud to call my friends, some of whom I would consider woke, some who are much complex than that. It is impossible for me to write this article without listening to “Janice” beaming at his crystalling voice wondering why “Emiliana” hasn’t texted him, remembering when she needlessly pressed him about being a workaholic. How can someone so universal ever be denied? How can a label ever allegedly choose another artist over Aubrey Drake Graham? It reminds me of another line on that song: “buried alive, someone come dig me up.” Well, he digged himself up by dropping scorching hits. I hope Drake never leaves us, and I hope people can acknowledge his greatness despite what side you end up at, outward wokeness or not.

I.

ONE OF THE MORE OBVIOUS mistakes of the past fifteen years of hip-hop is Compton rapper YG’s pivot to a mainstream-friendly sound on Stay Dangerous. But even with that miscalculation, his discography is full of regional greatness that both made complete sense in that moment and has become timeless. Unfortunately, I was too young for “Toot It Boot It”, but I had “My Nigga” on my iPhone as a single and YG’s announcement to the rap world was relentlessly smooth, from the first sound of the absurdly bouncy beat to the final somber notes detailing the sorrow for his behaviors. 2013 Jeezy couldn’t even ruin the song. Watching YG face off against The Game at the Verzuz–a Verzuz he won handily–made me think more deeply about YG’s career, and what his legacy will be if more information and allegations in regards to the 2021 murder of Los Angeles street emcee Drakeo the Ruler. Although it is unclear what YG knows about what happened that night, rumors in the streets and on the internet have been buzzing for five years. This event is tragic, it is admirable if people just want this incident to die down and enjoy Kendrick Lamar’s Pop-Out without any of its complexities; yet, justice knows no emotion.

If good kid m.A.A.d. City was Tre from “Boyz n’ the Hood”’s favorite record, then Doughboy’s was My Krazy Life. It was the soundtrack of my senior year of high school: mercurial, direct, minimal, throbbing, unconcerned with prestige but crafted impeccably. DJ Mustard was the generational producer that provided YG with ready-made radio smashes, scorching horns; YG was candid, uncomplicated but packed with a drawl, slippery voice that could tell a story precisely. Without hectoring tales of morality, YG rapped about gang initiation, late night burglaries in Asian neighborhoods. YG’s album was full of storytelling, without pretentious principles that result in liberal adoration. In that way, he was not meant for the boardrooms but for the true rap heads. Think about how ScHoolboy Q made mainstream grabs with “Collard Greens” and even “Man of the Year.” YG avoided those by being a songwriter of direct action.

Sure, Kendrick might have claimed the mantle of the “son of Pac” on To Pimp a Butterfly, but you couldn’t tell me nothing about him when Still Brazy dropped. YG — a rapper who had been shot in studios, a rapper of economical and negative space — sounded more like Pac and had connection to him that was deeper than visions of interviewing Pac about capitalism, murder, and legacy. “Who Shot Me” was perhaps a wondrous cry for justice, for information, and in the contemporary state of who YG is, it seems almost foreign. “Bool Balm Bollective” is the best overall song on the album, reminiscent of the triumphant mid-90s songs that Snoop Dogg would perform. Like Snoop, there was always an undercurrent of stress that covered the tales of playful but urgent misogyny, and sometimes both of those topics would be characteristics in the same verse, crashing into one another to create a dynamic of exciting danger. It was playing with rap tropes while embodying them, in the only way that West Coast rappers can — think Dolemite but after a riot in Watts. Somehow, Still Brazy wasn’t just building upon what Kendrick did on To Pimp a Butterfly but perfecting it; where TPAB had moments of clutter and overwhelming Blackness, Still Brazy was a form of unreasonably gangster agitprop, a celebration of the street life granting you riches.

Should you forget about YG’s fanfare from that era, consider the relationship he had with Nipsey Hussle, a former Slauson Crip who became popular through a string of mixtapes in the early 2010s. If Jay-Z said that his interviews were hotter, then Nipsey Hussle was the gradual equation to that statement. Nipsey specialized in being a personality that his fans could get behind, a Robin Hood hustler that functioned as inspiration as much as he was just a regular MC. As a wordsmith, he was economical, often choosing not to wow with lyrical menace; he laid smooth vocals of highly pressurized life situations like he was hustling to pay rent. YG and Nipsey were different: YG was much more of an album artist, where Nipsey released mixtapes online, including 2013’s strong Crenshaw tape that sold for 100$ dollars each, selling it out at a pop-up event celebrating the release, which impressed a curious Jay-Z who bought 100 copies of it. Despite the fact that some–this writer included–overinflated Nipsey’s actual rapping career, Nipsey was a community builder, and, in YG, he found his sensitive rottweiler. They worked well together as people, bringing forth a certain gang unity that is much needed in contemporary times, and songs like “Last Time I Checc’d” are West Coast street classics.

“FDT” — you can imagine what that stands for — came out and turned Nipsey and YG into America’s favorite political rap duo. In present times, where Nicki Minaj is posing for photo-ops with Trump while he makes shock value jokes about hip-hop dances, it is strange that when Trump first ran for office, hip-hop was against him, a possible result of the Obama Presidency. As Trump has encroached onto American culture like O.J. stalking his ex-wife, unwanted but glaringly present, rappers have not taken adversarial stances against him Rappers have always been complexly political by nature, less against a particular person or party, and more against whatever is the establishment of the moment. Listening to “FDT” is like hearing an relic, and although the song feels shockingly earnest and has aged decently at best, it has a defiance and anti-establishment edge we’re missing in Trump’s conservative America.

II.. AT THE SAME TIME as YG’s Stay Dangerous came out, Drakeo the Ruler was the most important rapper working in Los Angeles. The two men were not friends, nor could they be considered peers. They were of two separate strains of street rap, with Drakeo’s “nervous music”– slithering tunes designed for car rides with meth in your trunk– becoming more dominant in Los Angeles towards the end of the 2010s. “If the boundaries between traditional gangsta rap, trap, and high-couture luxury hip-hop have become increasingly blurred, Drakeo incorporates elements of each but belongs to no party”, Jeff Weiss, wrote in a feature profile in The Los Angeles Times in March 2018.

Drakeo felt like the type of new generation rapper that might call the old way of doing things in L.A. rap corny. Could you imagine Drakeo rapping over Dre beats on Doggystyle? No, instead what Drakeo was rapping over was sparse, more akin to lunchroom table beats than they were to orchestra and keyboard backed G-Funk. Even the Terrace Martins of the world were gone from Drakeo’s worldview. He didn’t need them. Drakeo, who was murdered at the Once Upon a Time in L.A. festival in 2021, was singular. The conceit and the hieroglyphic universe that he operated in was only marveled by E-40, yet there is something about 40 that seems so joyful and almost sloppy, not intimidating. Drakeo is rougher, more clinical, and even more uncompromising, music for legit fans of the street and for the cartoons, how villains of animation are comic and are motivated by petty slights. That was Drakeo, timeless and completely new, creating language that had a cult following. Furthermore, Drakeo made YG feel obsolete. He created a new tradition of West Coast gangsta rap. YG tried to change his style, not continue the new era G-Funk that is on Still Brazy, or the tricky flows on that record, and quickly lost the city’s ear to upstarts like Drakeo.

Towards 2019, and the beginning of COVID, Drakeo was in jail for a murder charge. One of the sadder parts of Drakeo’s career was that he had to contend with the long arm of the law. His music played all over Rodeo Drive, all over South Central, yet he was in bondage, watching his life’s work ring out from a cell. Imagine what Drakeo’s run would have been like if he had been allowed to enjoy it like Wayne was allowed to enjoy his imperial run, or Jigga, or Future after Ciara dumped him; instead, he was silenced while the rap world turned up to his music.

When he got out, he didn’t shake hands with fellow peers. He rapped about guys he thought were trying to block his rise in the industry. YG and Drakeo began to publicly beef, throwing shots at one another without saying each other’s name. In March 2021, during a No Jumper interview, YG had said “it’s no rap beef, we really beefing, the homies are going to get you.” In August 2021, Drakeo dropped “Ingleweird”, one of the more scathing diss tracks of the 2020’s, and a song that shows a daring lack of respect for other Cali dudes. (“Just Dance” is also incredible, like spellbinding work, yet it is so disrespectful). At the time, it wasn’t widely reported, because the fog of Drakeo as a prisoner overshadowed the scary rap beef happening on wax.

III.. AT THIS POINT, you know the story. Drakeo the Ruler went to the festival he ended up dying at, wide-eyed and ready to perform the music that was just starting to get as good as it was previous to his jail stint. According to Jeff Weiss’s article, “The Assassination of Drakeo the Ruler”, it was a foul night. “To begin to understand why it happened is to grapple with the most corrosive aspects of humanity: the need for revenge and hatred of the other; our capacity for rage, ego, and jealousy”, Weiss writes. (Jeff is a very good friend of mine and he’s been criticized a bit online, but his reporting is precise and accurate). The piece is a tough but good read. Weiss writes, clear-eyed and without inhibition, how the murder of Drakeo could be interpreted as a slimy set up. “Six guys wearing ski masks and crimson hoodies square up in a fighter’s stance. A brawl begins… What I didn’t know is that he and his entourage–including his licensed and bonded security guard–had been meticulously searched and stripped of weapons before entering.” Later in the piece, it is said that the first fight was a diversion for a later ambush of 100, some in 4HUNNID gear — “battalions of 20”, Weiss writes. Drakeo was struck in the neck with a blade, and bled out from that cut. He was pronounced dead at the hospital.

IV. WE’LL SEE WHAT INVESTIGATORS ARE ABLE TO PROVE, but there is obviously enough chatter for something like this to be investigated and debated. In filings first obtained by The Los Angeles Times, Drakeo’s bodyguard, Alrick David Cooper III, testified under oath that he saw YG and two other men brandish knives and make slashing motions towards him and Drakeo. (To read more, Donny Morrison looked closely at these findings at powmag.net). Regardless of who organized this, what happened is a grave injustice, even if Drakeo had a 2Pac-like streak of needless defiance inside of him. Drakeo remains one of the most hardheaded rappers, in a genre full of those types of men, to ever exist. On records, he practically laughed at whoever his enemy was, whether that was a sheriff, prosecutors, or fellow rappers. That same need to show displays of bold disobedience to whomever is your peer is what we love about the genre. It seemed to embolden his enemies more. Lurking underneath us all are egotism, the pressures of street life, and jealousy; however, just because one disagrees with someone’s behavior, doesn’t mean they deserve to be hunted down, with security allegedly in on the infiltration by a crew full of Bloods. The streets are not prejudiced, death might come for all who indulge in its schisms, even rappers, and a fair one is a fair one, and sure, murders happen every single day, but the murder of Drakeo was shiesty. Drakeo was stripped of his weapons, while his murderers had weapons on them; YG was allowed to bring in “70 people, nearly five times what Drakeo was permitted”, Weiss writes. That epitomizes the difference between the two factions. “Ingleweird” surely escalated things, as did other rap songs, but whomever murdered Drakeo had an entire army with them, as if it were a scene in a Greek tragedy. This is not what Craig’s dad had in mind in Friday when he told him to put the gun down.

Seeing YG bust Game’s behind during the Verzuz made me feel multiple emotions at once: first of those emotions was remembering just how good of an artist he once was. It is a testament to YG’s early career, the amount of genuine hits he has, how his sound exemplified a robust region, how accessible he is, how unfair that battle was. As a rapper, he is past his prime, yet I even thought his recent effort, The Gentleman’s Club, had some good songs on it. It was the best album he has released since 4Real4Real. “HITMAN” is what made him somber and effective. “We Know the Truth” is hard to listen to knowing what the rumors are but his rapping is truly passionate. Game needed an A&R to give him a better list of track sequencing to play — where was “On Me” with Kendrick, “Ali Bomaye” with Tity Boi and Rick Ross, or “Let’s Ride” on Doctor’s Advocate? — but YG opened the show with the showstopping intro “BPT”, and the stupendously frisky “Bicken Back Being Bool”, which after all these years might still be his best song, and one of the greatest West Coast rap hits of all-time.

Watching YG and his crew dance around during the Verzuz, knowing what the chatter has been like online and in the city of Los Angeles for years now was tough to watch. If anyone, whether himself or others, has shown remorse for what happened that night, I haven’t seen it. Obviously snitching on oneself isn’t something that happens, yet it seems more gleeful than anything while Kendrick Lamar is influenced by Drakeo’s flow during parts of GNX and even Mr. Morale and The Big Steppers. Whether Mr. Lamar is merely celebrating one of his region’s greatest emcees, or engaging in his quiet-as-its-kept street politics, nobody will know (it’s probably both), and Mr. Lamar is super smart: he’d never tell, nor should he.

It’s an extremely complex situation, made more complex by social media. I loved Drakeo the Ruler’s music and was inspired by his reign throughout my life being a fan of rap. Being online for his run was unforgettable, he could have easily been the best rapper alive for a half-decade like Wayne was if not for his legal troubles. My love for Drakeo introduced me to men like Paul Thompson, Weiss, Mano Sundaresan, and more — men of actions, of the written word. We loved Drakeo, rightfully so, like fans in the basement of a small concert venue. I used to love YG too, before his music fell off, and before all the reports and the gossip spread around like a virus. It’s a delicate balance of wanting to love YG’s past accomplishments, understanding that human beings are infallible, egotistical, and thus make mistakes in judgement, but that we can control our destinies, that we don’t need to stoke the flame — all while still genuinely cringing at what has been correctly reported. At the Verzuz, for a while, I had forgotten how troubling and upsetting the whispers surrounding YG were. All there was on my laptop screen was triumphs of sound, ripples of dexterity, and community that has preserved through entire waves of state and human violence. Yet, the darkness allegedly lives next to that. All we can hope for is that reigning supreme over the carnage that has become just another day in hip-hop.

So much of that idea — that these men are taking on missions that prove their brilliance as artists, soldiers, and engineers yet pull everyone down with them, especially themselves — extend to familial torment as well. Nolan is a complex filmmaker in that he admires those men in a way, understands their brilliance, yet also does an even better job of showing the cost of those dreams, those days at the office, the neglect for the wives and children of the man. In that way, he has always reminded me of a less romantic Michael Mann. Where Mann puts his men in position to be swayed by love or justice, yet unable to overcome their job’s calling, Nolan is more clinical; his men are lonelier, and usually less charismatic and shiny. It is impossible to forget, if you’re a consistent movie goer, an exasperated Leonardo DiCaprio running to his kids before he checks out if the totem has stopped, a tearful Matthew McConaughey on a failed mission that will prevent him seeing his daughter again, or an overwhelmed Oppenheimer feel shame for not being able to care for his kids while he is working to develop a bomb that helps the a bloodthirsty American government wipe out an entire Japanese city. To see a Nolan character is to see man in turmoil, their greatness unable to mask the shame of their private lives.

Not many directors can make movies about people as tortured like he can, and despite the fact that some of his movies are overly long, clinical, and lack a certain vulgarity that I tend to gravitate towards, I watch them on opening night every time he has a new picture out. He is a movie-brain incarnate, a sophisticated member of what it means to be a filmmaker whose movies are big swings even if some of those swings are big budgeted and feature traditional Hollywood stars. He’s meticulous, a lover of cinema, made by him, sure, but also made by others, considering Heat his all-time favorite movie and lending mentorship to young filmmakers like Ryan Coogler. Yet, he has his flaws: Oppenheimer, despite moments of greatness, has some thankless roles from Emily Blunt, and the Hollywood cameos of Casey Affleck, Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, and Matthew Modine can be a little gaudy. The Batman trilogy — possibly his most famous yet least best films — bounces from incomprehensible to merely fun from scene to scene, yet the Bane vs Batman scene in the dark in “Rises” is one of the most explosive and minimal action scene to ever be in a big budget and mainstream film. His best film might be Tenet because he leans into the madness of the plot, creating a “vibe or die” work of art that is more matched by Hype Williams’s Belly than it is Michael Mann’s Miami Vice. (Dunkirk is 1B with Tenet, that movie blew my brain).

Christopher Nolan is a much needed artist. Whenever someone enormous can create mass monoculture that is interesting to talk about, they deserve some credit, especially in these divided times. Is he on my list of my favorite filmmakers? Up until The Odyssey, I would say he wasn’t. He has the least best films out of all of his famous filmmaking peers, such as a Fincher, for example. Is he an important one? Undoubtedly so, because of how big he is and how his films invite a certain debate. Getting into arguments about Oppenheimer and it’s massive regret over the arms race that provided them the need for an atomic bomb, the destruction it caused, was enjoyable. Whatever Mr. Nolan used to lack in vision, he has made up for with recent movies, including the very strong The Odyssey; whatever he has his grandeur and big-scale filmmaking, he can sometimes lack the skillset to create quieter, shiveringly sensual moments in his movies. There’s something almost too guarded to him, too cold, possibly too British.

However, it is the characters that have helped his work even when his storytelling lacked refinement. They’re historically underrated to me, and until the excellent Murphy won Best Actor for Oppenheimer, it shocked me that only Health Ledger had been given adoration for his portrayal of Joker in The Dark Knight. For Nolan, progressive ideals of power dynamics are delightfully gone in relation to his characters, even the very left-wing J. Robert Oppenheimer was a womanizer whose hubris did not allow him to see the political games that the American government would soon play with him. Let Mr. Nolan continue making movies about frustrating and talented men for the rest of time; he does it so well. With The Odyssey out nationwide, and my adoration for the greatness of the film, especially the third part, I decided to rank the top ten performances in Nolan’s filmography.

10. Tom Hardy in DUNKIRK (“Farrier”)

If Dunkirk is a movie about minor British heroes, or boys trying to merely survive, even if they’re showing themselves to be disarmingly frightened, then the one character that seems to rise above everyone else’s startled humanity is Tom Hardy’s Farrier. A pilot, or a “fortis member”, Farrier is in the air while others are on the ground. It’s all in the eyes with Hardy in this: there’s a moment where he decides to stay in the air to fight more German jets, because anything is preferable to leaving your fellow soldiers exposed. Dunkirk is a movie that sometimes feels unreachable, because there’s no central main character necessarily, but Hardy’s heroics, and his unflappability in front of monstrous bombs meant to send his spitfire to splashing in the water, is a character that we feel close to, and otherworldly impressed by. With Dunkirk, Nolan was attempting to show the fight against fascism as something rooted in history but also, as a fight that inspires. At the end, all that was left was his burning plane, lit by a soldier that would take capture over dishonor.

9. Matthew McConaughey (Interstellar)

I find “Interstellar” to be a bit of a bore, an overly saccharine PG-13 epic that is admirable at moments — truly jaw-dropping scene when they are in the ocean with the robots, trying to get back into the rocket ship — but completely full of emotion that I find catered to hallmark channels and stores at Grand Central Terminal. The movie is helped, though, by Matthew McConaughey’s charming portrayal of a Dad going on a mission that would take him away from his daughter. Released during the peak of the McConaissance, a bold second act of critical acclaim and re-appreciation for his past roles where he began to take movies that would be otherwise unwatchable without him and make them into entertain popcorn flicks, “Interstellar” remains one of the most heartbreaking performances of American dad. He’s reminiscent of Tom Hanks, the everyman star with enough groundedness and ambition for views to admire. So much of “Interstellar” requires the work of a star actor unafraid of American male earnestness while still have enough sheer presence to be a movie star. “Interstellar” does not work without McConaughey turning salt into tears, love into hope, and dreams into regret and mournful longing.

8. Aaron Eckhart (“The Dark Knight”)

Early in “The Dark Knight”, Harvey Dent is considered the hotshot prosecutor set to bring respectability back to Gotham. In a way, Joker is right: Batman isn’t one of them, even if he wishes he was. He’s a face, a rich vigilante doing what he can to bring a symbol of hope to the city of corruption and greed. So, next to Harvey Dent, it is why — and a chance to steal Dent’s girlfriend Rachel Dawes from him — both men are intertwined together, the danger of Batman, the traditional sense of justice that Harvey has. It is Eckhart’s Dent who has to sell the glamour of what it means to be a shiny new crimefighter that folks can actually see, the hope and ambition that one has to be the top cop that will help clean the streets. Then, as usual, corruption and crime proves too much for the eager newcomer to overcome, turning him into an angry flame out ready to right the wrongs received with a gun. Eckhart proves himself more than capable of capturing the sadness in all of this, distressing it is to see a known public figure become a villainous murderer, in a performance that is widely overlooked because of Ledger’s greatness in “The Dark Knight.” The second half of the film, though, belongs to Eckhart’s portrayal as a hero fallen, a cautionary tale, despite the fact that the viewers empathizes with the reasons for his violence.

7. Leonardo DiCaprio in “Inception”

“Inception” is one of the last times that Leonardo DiCaprio was in an action film. Since then, he has taken roles from auteur doing art flicks, where he gets a chance to showcase his comedic chops, his freewheeling nature, mixing pathos with sadness, charisma with frustration. It’s been a complete switch for someone who spent the 2000’s being a leading man for big movies like “Blood Diamond”, “The Departed”, and “Body of Lies.” “Inception”, released in 2010, is one of the last times where he didn’t feel like a new wave actor, but rather a traditional Hollywood star. Yet, he still has moments of the trademark anxiety that lands on his eyebrows, the chip that is constantly on his shoulder. Playing Cobb, a skilled thief that extracts information from subject’s unconscious, Cobb is forced to be a careful maniac, up on what could go wrong in a mission and suffering from demons that he is unable to defeat. DiCaprio plays this with a weariness that would stress out the leader of a student council, and he is also at his best whenever dealing with the trauma of remembering the guilt he has from his wife’s suicide.

6. Matt Damon “The Odyssey”/”Oppenheimer”

Using his long overlooked physical presence, Matt Damon carries “The Odyssey” despite his character being devoid of the boyish charisma that we have seen Damon have in films. Odysseus is many things, a cunning warrior, an absent father, a longing husband, a leader, a washed-up veteran, and Damon is able to lead this story with a presence that feels like watching a middle linebacker lead the best defense in the NFL. Looking back at this role, in the future, I wonder if we’ll fail to recognize what makes it special. It isn’t the greatest role, but it is one that haunts, a dread of spectre hangs over Odysseus even when he is showing off his incredible skills as a military leader. Damon is forced to be a leading man in the way old Hollywood made — physically able to win battles, romantic, and wise all in one — and he doesn’t miss a beat; it’s a strong performance from an actor who somehow can be underrated in how diverse his skillset is. In “Oppenheimer”, he shows up as a military liaison for J. Robert Oppenheimer and crushes it as a man trying to hold Los Alamos together even though the miliary already distrust who Oppenheimer is. Where Oppenheimer is genius, impulsive, emotionally immature, Damon spends time trying to put out his fires while showing his begrudging affection for Oppenheimer’s adventurous spirit.

5. Elizabeth Debecki in “Tenet”

In what might be the biggest surprise on the list, Debecki’s role as Kat Sator in “Tenet” represents a bit of a departure from Nolan in regards to women in his filmography. She is not a jilted wife who is alone while the husband globetrots all over the globe, she is not a daughter of someone famous, nor is she even Marion Collitard, the unsuspecting French woman that is setting fire to everyone’s plans. With “Tenet”, however, Debecki’s Kat is a woman being held hostage by her husband, yet she gets to be part of the schemes from the men too. Her only devotion is to her son, providing a life for him outside of the stranglehold that her husband has on them. Debecki plays Kat with a desperation of a woman being kept from freedom, kept from an easy motherhood, and it is the most piercing performance of humanity in a movie that rewards “cool guy vibes.” Plus, she wears heels that makes her look as tall as Scottie Pippen.

4. Tom Hardy (“The Dark Knight Rises”)

Talk about presence. Talk about a character that incites fear from the protagonist. Bane is the first time that Batman feels overpowered in Nolan’s trilogy. Bruce Wayne spends his time in that suit beating up on criminals who are too mentally ill to put up a good fight, using their goons to battle but failing to put dents in Batman’s heart or armour. However, Bane — a former member of the league of shadows, the group that trained Mr. Wayne — is a titan, and he breaks Batman’s back in what has become one of Mr. Nolan’s most indelible scenes. Nolan films it with the lights completely off, no music either, so you hear the dominant grunts from Bane as he repeatedly compels Batman to fight back and continuously lose. It’s embarrassing and scary to watch. Batman is a broken man by the end of that fight, led there by Catwoman in order to embarrassingly get beaten down by a thuggish Bane, while the seductive voice of Bane’s taunts him throughout the fight (“peace has captured your strength, victory has defeated you”). None of that fear from Batman, the fear that he eventually gets over by the end of the movie, is possible without Hardy’s brutish, hammering role that requires him to be a villain who has his reasons for his villainous schemes. In order to Bruce Wayne to save his city, he had to go through Bane first, thus, go through Hardy’s performance.

3. Robert Pattinson (“Odyssey/Tenet”)

Towards the end of “The Odyssey”, Robert Pattinson’s Antinous screams a certain alchemy of words: “SOMEBODY GET THESE BEGGARS OUT OF HERE”, said with a clownish glee, as if he was performing for his petty high school gang in the cafeteria. Antinous feels like a combination of many movie characters: the mocking of the would-be prince that Joey Zasa from The Godfather Part III does, the lost boyhood of Birdie from Above the Rim, and slimy sensuality of Lester Diamond of Casino. It’s a wonderful creation by Pattinson, who plays a fearsome coward that has other suitors do his bidding for him. In a movie that is a controlled near-masterpiece, Pattinson plays Antinous as a loud, soulless boy whom the audience waits for his comeuppance. On the flip side, Pattinson’s Neil in “Tenet”, is a pitch perfect role for the smooth-talking Englishman, who plays John David Washington’s number two with a playful brashness. While The Protagonist spends his time behind on many details, on his heels whenever trouble arrives, Neil is as cool as a man on vacation, knowingly dealing with whatever situations come while they are trying to save the world. “I’ll see you at the beginning friend!”, remains one of my favorite lines in a Nolan picture, done expertly by the warm Pattinson, who was already prepared to give his life for the cause. It’s a subtle role that has received adoration; still, we need more recognizability.

2. Heath Ledger (“The Dark Knight”)

The large project in the Nolan trilogy is imagining what it is like to make a crime movie in Gotham, Heat for little kids. He ultimately succeed, and it is in no small part from Heath Ledger’s immortal interpretation of The Joker, a performance that garnered him a posthumous Academy Award. Ledger, who died before the film was released, spent time in a hotel by hismelf, in isolation getting him ready for the role. It is a miracle that this movie is good — it is nonsensical at times (the thing with Rachel Dawes not knowing the RICO act is so crazy), the movie is derivative and not always in a fun way, and it has weird politics (although Nolan’s brain is more complex than people give it credit for) — and Joker is why it is good. Where Batman Begins’s villain is the city itself, or Liam Neeson’s fighting expert Ra Al Ghul, Joker is Gotham’s most loathsome criminal and he is also preventing the other criminals that keep their money in a mob-ran bank. From the first scene on, he’s utterly mesmerizing. He’s in the same movie as everyone else but flips it on its ass like Nirvana flipped grunge music on its ass: going from a low voice to a high voice in the same scene, walking with a unorthodox gait as if he was an old Italian don, laughing like a sick mental patient. Where other villains in future comic book movies felt sympathetic, Joker was just Joker: a traditional villainous who is happy to wreak havoc on a society that he does not one ounce of belief in. It’s all done with a comedic glee, too, a villain’s villain sense of fun. (“You think you can take our money and get away with it?” “Yes”). If “The Dark Knight” works, it works because of one person: Ledger in Joker — the greatest aura farming an actor has ever achieved.

1. Cillian Murphy (“Oppenheimer”)

It might be hard to remember that before Cillian Murphy’s staggeringly great performance in “Oppenheimer” as J. Robert Oppenheimer, Christopher Nolan had never had an actor win Best Actor. All these roles, Leo, McConaughey, John David Washington, Guy Pearce, never netted Nolan an Oscar for Best Picture. It took Nolan using a historically underused Murphy — an Irish actor who had played an underrated character in “Inception” and a side character in the Batman trilogies, and a shivering soldier in “Dunkirk” who is too shell-shocked from the night before to function like a proper person — to win the vaunted gold trophy. Murphy had been the lead in dope projects before, real heads love him in “Peaky Blinders” as the leader of the Shelby’s, a crime family in England, and he does strong work in an Irish film called The Wind that Shakes the Barley, but he was a legit revelation in “Oppenheimer”, infusing the serious picture with some intellectual sensuality and longful regret. “Oppenheimer” is a movie about left-wing hubris, a man in flux who thought that he could create a scientific wonder without that wonder ruining the laws of man but it did create a beast, a beast that he is not prepared for. To see Murphy is to see emotional immaturity and genuine genius all into one man, one flawed but brilliant man that is compelling enough to hold the entire picture. “Oppenheimer” is without actual violence in it but its devastating as a gunshot watching Murphy’s feverish intensity while Robert Oppenheimer defends himself from kangaroo courts meant to embarrass him and strip him of his accomplishments as an academic in the country that he genuinely loves.

Furthermore, he plays off of Downey’s Lewis Strauss quite well, a role that is overrated but works whenever he is paired next to Oppenheimer — the Amadeus to Oppenheimer’s Mozart. During the film, the scenes with them sing from different warring philosophies and egos, with Strauss being nothing but a guy who is good at being part of the mix in government, and Oppenheimer being genuinely brilliant, so much so that he takes advantage of his popularity in ways that angrily annoy Strauss. Murphy is truly phenomenal in this: he has to carry this picture about men talking in dark rooms, deciding outcomes that normal people can only read about in the paper the next day and portray it as heart wrenching as something happening in the beaches of France. He has to be a ladies man like Don Draper, a bad husband and father, a friend, and a genuine maverick all in one, without missing a beat. It’s one of the big screen’s greatest performances, reminiscent of big roles that Denzel Washington, Daniel-Day Lewis played, one of the ten best lead performances of the 21st century, and the greatest acting role in a Christopher Nolan film. At one last, Nolan had his Oscar, and he didn’t need Bale, Leo, or even Damon to do it: it was the Irish Murphy, the underused genius Nolan had in his deep roster of great talents. What took him so long to give Murphy the role he always could crush? Who could have acted Oppenheimer’s fears, his arrogance, and his brilliance better than Murphy could? We are more rich in spirit, rich in knowledge because of Murphy’s great portrayal of whom is affected by the vanity of petty, average men, and the downside of American genius.

WITH MY BOOMING VOICE, Michael Kay could certainly hear me yell from about six rows away. At a September game at Yankee Stadium in 2024, Kay had the day off because the game was televised on Apple TV. This is the Aaron Judge grand slam game against the Red Sox. He was with his son and I was with a friend of mine, a fellow diehard New York sport fan that I met through fashion circles. Kay was sitting where he would not see me, at a price range that I could not afford, but I could see him, in a windbreaker sweater with his son as if he was a Wall Street trader taking his son out of the house. He got up from his seat at one point and I yelled “Michael Kay the God!”, in the only way a New York nigga can say that — with a jovial tone. He looked up, smiled widely and waved back and a pointed at me, as if he was JFK meeting young women on a rope line in 1960. In that moment, where I glazed him, he probably felt so alive, marveling at the successes and riches that he has attained from calling what is happening at a Yankee game on a microphone. I think about that night often. Did it bounce right off of Kay? Or, did he really appreciate my friendly words, saluting him for his seat and status as Yankees announcer?

I guess it is funny that I said that because, if I am being completely honest, Michael Kay is not necessarily a God level talent. He’s a fine talent. I like listening to him on YES Network broadcast, hearing his boyish signature call of “see ya!” even though he contains none of the weird whimsy of John Sterling or the super ethnic New York swagger of SNY’s Gary Cohen. One of the few things — like, I mean very few things, if very few — the Mets have over the Yankees is that their broadcast booth is a bit more cool than the Yankees booth is. The debonair Keith Hernandez was on Seinfeld, playing the boyfriend of Elaine Benes to wide approval. Ron Darling knows a ton about what it means to be a pitcher. The Yankees booth, although pleasant to listen to for the most part, don’t quite have those distinct characteristics. This clinical but inconsequential product includes Kay on his national ESPN Radio: it’s solid, it was fun that former Hot 97 stalwart Peter Rosenberg joined him for a few years, yet I prefer the swaggering edge of Mike Francesa, the defiance that the Pope has, the primal yells that come out of his mouth even after Dog left. Where Kay is an employee, “Da Pope” is a iconoclast.

YET, THERE IS A REASON why I said that, and it isn’t just the fact that I am a friendly person. My hope is that people know that I am being honest when I am giving compliments. I am a boy who was raised a Yankees fan, quite like Kay. Kay is “the God”, sort of, and it is strange that haters on Twitter have such a dislike for him sometimes. He was born in The Bronx, went to Bronx Science, an elite public school, then graduated from Fordham University. His story is a New York one: logging time as a reporter for the NY Daily News and the New York Post as a reporter and assignment writer. As the years went on he moved to MSG Sports to be a locker room reporter for the Knicks, all the way into being the radio guy alongside John Sterling for nine seasons. Once the Yankees moved to the YES Network in 2002, he became the lead play-by-play guy. So, I have heard the same play-by-play man my entire life. He is a hometown boy who is now the voice of the New York Yankees. That’s so cool, an accomplishment that should never be disrespected, even though what I wrote in the paragraphs above are also true. I am not afraid to say it: I like Michael Kay quite a bit, so when he said that Anthony Volpe told Yankees officials while he was in the minor leagues trying to work his way back to the big league club that he did not want to play second base, I believed him even though it became clear that he might have gotten faulty information. “One thing that he has done, and I am not sure that it was done, but enough people told me that it was done, that when the Yankees said maybe you should play some second base and he allegedly (Volpe) said “no, I am a shortstop.”

If this was a veracious account of one’s hubris, then it would have been damaging for Anthony Volpe because, to be frank, he is one of the most humiliating Yankee disappointments of my lifetime, if not the most. Kay apologized for getting this wrong on the radio the next day, and he deserves credit for that because it is never fun to get incorrect information, but the only reason why he is getting incorrect information in the first place is that Anthony Volpe is so bad at baseball. So far, in 42 games played since he came up after Jose Caballero’s injury, Volpe is batting .242 with a wRC+ of 94, which is below average but if you can believe it, the best number of his career thus far. However, if one were to say that it seems productive to have Volpe out there every night at shortstop, they would be promotion for the kid. Watching him play is miserable; unlike Caballero, who with a wRC+ of 96 isn’t Derek Jeter by any means, but still plays with a visible intensity and funkiness that you need in a 162 game season, Volpe is boring. His hitting provides no faith or confidence on any level, even after he apparently modified his swing so he could produce more slap hits. We’ve seen flashes: his rookie season might be his best, with his power being solid and his defense being uniformly excellent. Some of the games in the 2024 postseason run, where he wreaked havoc against the Royals and the Guardians; his plate discipline that October was very good, and it felt like he was finally turning the corner. That hasn’t stayed the same. 2025 was a year of hell — he played with a busted shoulder and his confidence suffered, booting balls all over the diamond and throwing waywardly to first. He struggled to attack balls, to play instinctively. It is known as the yips.

THE YANKEES HAVE PROTECTED Volpe a ton. It is complex up close, and complex for fans to witness, this writer included. The Yankees have created a system where Volpe is protected by the media with the help of Aaron Boone and his teammates. At its core, it is a good thing, an emblem of the Yankees’s ability to block out the noise of playing in New York. A team should always protect their players, it’s more effective than throwing them under the bus. Especially someone like Volpe, who seems like a swell kid, a well-liked presence in the locker room and someone who has worshipped the Yankees. He’s been seen with veterans at Knicks games, photographed golfing with Trump, and rumors of his days at Rocco’s in West Village are heard around town. On the L train, his ads are placed despite the gloomy statistics that follow his famed and unearned career. Yet, the protection of Volpe has dominated the headlines, taken up hours of tweets on social media, and Boone’s been on the offensive trying to prove Volpe’s worth to no avail — both because of the kid’s play and because, well, nobody is buying what Boone is selling. Relative to his skillset, no one has been helped out more by the team coddling him more than Volpe has. (Boone recently told the media that Volpe deserves credit for showing up everyday with a positive attitude, as if that has won us ball games that we need to be winning as the Rays gain a bigger lead by the day). Aaron Judge has done a solid job of helping to keep a wall around Volpe, even going so far as to call him a “special player” during his troubles last season. It’s almost embarrassing how much he has been protected by the organization.

I think the team started him in the minors even as he got healthy because Cabby was playing well but also because they are embarrassed by all of the press conferences and arguments with writers and podcasters where they defended Volpe as the next great Yankee. The infamous interview of Brian Cashman vigorously defending Volpe after his rookie season looks strange now. However, if you look closely, it is actually not talked about enough as a leap of faith. Cashman was attempting to give the young man a push, as he already did. They genuinely believed in him at one point. The Yankees of this era are often accused of being conservative with prospects by their fans — this goes back to the days of Joba Chamberlain — but they made an unique decision with Volpe: starting him on Opening Day right away without any manipulation of service time. Volpe was obviously compared to Jeter but he isn’t even as good as Didi Gregorius, so far the best shortstop they have had since “Numbah Two” retired to the palm trees of quiet life of Florida. The Yankees’s lore is both historical and ghostly, and Volpe being a fan, was set up to be part of the lore. The sad part about this saga is that has failed, now what is left is watching Aaron Boone yell at Jomboy and Jake for critiquing the way they play Volpe.

MICHAEL KAY CAN ONLY say inaccurate information on his show about Volpe because Volpe is this bad. Fans didn’t run with it so much as it became a game of telephone, tweeting to everyone what Kay said about Volpe. It’s over. The experiment failed, and it is time for Cabby to start every day and for Volpe, to be sent home to join another big league club that can work with him, away from the everyday hoopla of being a Yankee. So, I say lay off of Michael Kay, who was only relaying something that he heard, and although it might not have been true, it was said because everyone knows that the kid is not at the level. To be bad at baseball is to have chatter said about you that talks about you being bad. If the Yankees are serious about winning a title, and in the climate of the post-Knicks title glow, they should be as to build off of what they did, then Volpe probably shouldn’t be part of this team. He is not the solution, and if George Lombard Jr is to be taken seriously, then Volpe won’t sniff the team’s starting lineup by late-August. This is time to be daring like they were when they gave the kid a shot. Send him home or trade him now. Either way, he is not part of the future.

There was a historic NBA athlete that came from the South, a Black neighborhood just like Ja Morant, and played with a bluster, a whimsy, and a cool that felt unlike anything that will ever be duplicated. His name was Allen Iverson. He hailed from Hampton, Virginia, where the illicit dog fights are held, where the lights on friday night shine as bright as Pusha T’s earring, where the white supremacy in the neighboring towns is as definite as a tax audit. Just like Ja, Iverson got into some trouble when he got to the NBA. Call it residual effects from being a young Black man with a target on his back. He had his arguments with his wife, police stops that led to a discovery of a handgun, possession of the finest hash available to a NBA superstar. Yet, Iverson avoided embarrassment. There’s been some hurt feelings, some tension with coaches, arguments with journalists, but he’s beloved, someone that is integral to NBA history. How can you tell the story of the NBA without Iverson? He forced the NBA to catch up with hip-hop. The traditional capitalism of Michael Jordan was over; durags, throwbacks, and shooting sleeves that looked as distinct as tattoos themselves began to be the standard way of life.

There was always something that stopped Iverson from going off the edge, the point of no return. Even the suburban Kobe Bryant made mistakes that he never take back, even if Allah has blessed him since his death. Iverson had an innocence to him, even after he almost lost his livelihood to a racist brawl at a bowling alley. John Thompson thought of him as a son. Larry Brown would take the shirt off his back for him, no matter how many practices that Iverson missed. Dwyane Wade, LeBron James, Russell Westbrook, and even Jalen Brunson all look up to him. I did too. Despite the Knicks owning my heart, I used to wear my Iverson jersey, talking loads of smack like he did, putting my hand into my ear. I dreamed of being that cool, that comfortable in my own skin, unafraid of the verbal shots that would be thrown towards me if I choose to represent my culture without hesitation. I’m sure Ja Morant is one of those kids too. Just like I was. He used to be on the Grizzlies. Now, after a series of incidents and PR mistakes, he’s on the Trail Blazers. The only rapper from Portland is Yeat. It’s probably the last place he expected to be at. Soon, we’ll be trying to wonder who Ja Morant truly is.

The trade comes on the heels of a seven year run with the Grizzlies, where he brought them to multiple playoff appearances and won Most Improved Player; where he brought a gun to the strip club and flashed another one on a friend’s Instagram live; where he fought a 17-year-old kid and tucked a gun in his waistband; where a friend threatened the Pacers’s team bus; where he was suspended for 25 games; where his field goal percentage dropped to a paltry 41 percent. It was a run full of up-and-downs but it started with hope, the resonance of something spiritual forming in Memphis while Ja was attempting dunks that no man should attempt. For this player became synonymous with the city’s culture, the city’s history of Black music and great barbecue, and it’s contemporary times of distress. Memphis became reborn as a basketball town with Ja there, leaving the era of the grit and grind Grizzlies that starred Tony Allen and Zach Randolph to a more dynamic offensive system. Ja was a leader of a group of bandits, as only Memphis basketball can be. Where Jaren Jackson Jr was a candy cane, Ja was a boyish bungee jumper, spotting the moments where he could make it on a YouTube highlight package. Dillon Brooks was the queer villain, a crazy barker that is the closest thing to Dennis Rodman that the league has seen since The Worm finally retired in an alcoholic stupor. The Grizzlies were back, the fun misfits of the league, even after LeBron’s Lakers beat them in Then, the city got darker.

Since COVID hit in 2020, Memphis has been in rougher shape than usual. Every urban city is going to have some crime in it. I consider it proper when a city has crime; that means there is art happening, life happening. There shouldn’t be so much that people feel unsafe but if nothing is happening in your city, then it is not a city that I want to be in. Human beings are irrational, complex, want to make money, and it is okay that someone sells drugs on the corner, even if one day someone gets popped because of it. The crime in Memphis went beyond that. In 2023, Memphis set a record with 397 homicides. That’s much more than New York, which has a population that is thirteen times larger than Memphis, had in the same year. When Ja was caught flashing his handguns on Instagram live and in the strip club, it made me nervous for him. It isn’t that I think Ja should legit fear for his life, but I wondered if the environment around Memphis made Ja think he had to carry like that. And if he thought he had to carry, why did he feel the need to flaunt it to everyone? I knew that these negroes might take that as a dare. In the same way that Memphis has become a punchline by even LeBron James, Ja became a warning for all young men who have attained fame. Now, he is being traded to a city that couldn’t be more different than Memphis.

In 2009, Zach Randolph was traded to the Grizzlies. The story ends with Randolph becoming a Grizzlies legend, the leader of the grit and grind teams, the skilled southpaw being the emotional center. To show opponents that the Grizz wouldn’t be bullied, Z-Bo got in the face of opponents like DeMarcus Cousins and Blake Griffin. He dominated Tim Duncan in a playoff series. At one point, though, Randolph wasn’t considered a leader by any means. He had done a stint in Portland for the first six years of his career. Portland, although it being a left-wing city, is very white, a complex city for a tall urban Black man to be in. I don’t want to live in Portland and I voted for Mamdani and Bernie Sanders. Portland might have the highest strip clubs per capita but the clubs serve vegan mac and cheese. It just isn’t the place for my chicken loving, rap music listening, gangster movie watching Black ass. Z-Bo stood out, had a microscope on him wherever he went, especially when he was getting himself into trouble. In a Grantland feature on Randolph, Jonathan Abrams wrote, “These days, Randolph praises Portland as a city, respects the team’s fans, and even has nice things to say about owner Paul Allen. He also believes the police and certain media members held a grudge against him. “They don’t take well to young, black urban kids coming out, having came from nothing,” Randolph said. “You come to Portland with braids, come with cornrows, people can’t relate to that. They peg you a different way and look at you a different way. If a guy’s got braids, he’s a thug.” Although that was a Blazers fanbase still reeling over the “Jail Blazers” squads from the mid-2000’s, Z-Bo, although he is not without his faults, exemplified the white progressive racism that can happen in cities like Portland.

Maybe Portland has changed. Damian Lillard was beloved there, still is, and he was hardly Andre 3000 in Showing Up. Ja Morant should be hungry after being discarded by the Grizzlies in a trade where it seemed like they took the offer just so they could be done with it all. Yet, Ja being traded to the Blazers is funniest outcome, as if you sent 2Pac to Terror Squad if he lived from those shots in Vegas. It is completely different than the street environment of Memphis, the Blackness of the Grizz fanbase, the history of pain in the city. Portland can be a fresh start for Ja. When you’re younger, many decisions are made hastily. Maybe he can think them through in a space with less noise. Maybe the white liberal heaven of Portland will frustrate such a blunt, unique Black dude. He might not be the most controversial player on the team thanks to the politics of the government in Deni Avdija’s home country. But, he is definitely the most unpredictable one. Can he look at his career to this point and fix it? He has not been without his injuries and perhaps he is the next Ben Simmons, a supreme talent done in by injuries but who’s haters blame his failures on his mental struggles. Hopefully his elbow and shoulder injuries go down as brief amnesia in what it is a lengthy career. Portland needs the injection of bluster; Ja definitely needs it.

In December, six months before Cry Baby, his new and sixth studio album came out, Vince Staples went viral for an interview once again, this time with the comedian Ziwe. In a salmon-painted room, with white accessories in a large, vaguely girlish space, he sat down with Ziwe, a woman often doing an ineffective dance with guest on their lack of understanding about race. She met her match with Staples. If Ziwe is a millennial in nature, earnest and jockeying for a subject to understand the weight of American culture, then Staples entered into the rap game the same way as Ziwe did: a young millennial, interested in holding white Americans accountable. Staples, though, confronted America with a stern tone, more strict than Ziwe’s bubbly yet angry comedy. Staples was, as usual, flipping an interviewer’s question into a funny punchline. After a question about January 6, Staples quipped. “I want us to do that. We would do better because they were just ugly. The problem with revolution is that it will be photographed. So sloppy, loose t-shirts, nobody got a pump, it’s just not beautiful. And so you’re fighting the government and you look like shit”, Staples says, barely breaking a sweat during this bold bit. “We’d be looking, Met Gala. Walls Bonner everywhere.”

It was funny, for certain, a startling take on Chris Rock jokes circa 1996 and 1999 about white people being less cool than Black people even when both are doing disagreeable things. Staples is good at interviews, especially for someone who isn’t remotely media trained. Remember when Dakota Johnson went on The Ellen Degeneres show and kind of spoke about Ellen as if she might be a little more evil than she lets on for her soccer mom crowd? Staples interviews are quietly deadly like that. For his relatively low fame, Staples’s words do seem to rattle people’s polite views on the topics he rants about. In an interview with Joe Budden, he responded to Jay-Z’s claims that the streets are done because George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin’s killer, is still alive and XXXTentacion isn’t. “As long as niggas are broke and have dead homies, the streets ain’t done”, Staples responded, to Jay-Z’s claims. That’s part of what makes Staples fun to listen to: he’s someone unafraid to say things that are unpopular, disagreeing with Jay-Z in order to do it. Much of him is based on being contrarian, so when he is asked about Drake and Kendrick beefing, he responds about it being a distraction to the larger issue of rappers being denied their publishing rights, which should be a basic right for all. For all of Staples’s acclaim as a rapper, he does not join in on industry politics, nor does he seem to fraternize much with other rappers. Who is Staples’s peer in the rap game? In a way, this makes Staples a lonely figure, an artist who is not part of any single scene nor genre, but is rather a rapper without a tree or a country. He’s made some strong music at points in his career, yet he’s a notorious enigma.

Ever since he dropped Summertime 06 and decided to pivot to an alternative hip-hop, almost none of Vince Staples’s most discussed moments come from his music. Whenever he does an interview on the state of music industry, some of his words hit with more of a punch than they do on some of his recent records. It’s a paradox. At his most focused, Staples is a talented rapper, a sophisticate of acrobatic flows that can be so tricky that you can hear it five times and still don’t know where it’s going to end up at. “Norf Norf”, on Summertime 06, is much like that. The third verse is a masterclass, with Staples packing Boyz n the Hood plots with Long Beach lore with the precision of a Brady out route by finish every stanza with “wet”, “fact-check”, and “clap yet.” The chaos of the flow, the words, the way he describes the intricacies of a popular hood classic is startling. So was his topics. Staples is a gangster rapper who has spoken about the anxieties of having white fans in a Black medium. On “Lift Me Up”, the intro track to Summertime 06 and one of its standout songs, he raps “All these white folks chanting when I ask them where my niggas at/Crazy, got me going crazy I can’t get with that/Wonder if they know I know they won’t go where we kick it at.”

It’s easy to see where Staples is getting at. Gangster rap music is always on the risk of being a minstrel show for the wickedest of white people because they don’t actually come from these neighborhoods, so some of them, or honestly probably most of them, are listening to this music without context, using the genre to scratch the itch they have for art that depicts American violence in a cool way as opposed what it actually is: mundane and devastating. In a way, Staples rapping about that is very intelligent in an industry that has now made billions on rappers and their violent lore. Think about the lore of 50 Cent, how he survived a very traumatic shooting in Jamaica, Queens that gave way to his reputation as a one-man wrecking ball out to get justice. That’s what sold in 2003 as much as his jaw-slurred hooks and sharp-edged lyrics. It was a sense that 50 was a superhero or supervillain representing American culture and its violence, it being 2003 when Bush sending troops to Iraq, with Dick Cheney helping him lie about their weapons of mass destruction. 50 was a stand in for the bloodthirsty and shivering hunger of the American man, lusting for revenge after bin Laden sent his underlings on a suicide mission in Lower Manhattan. Staples, who went into gang life in eighth grade, makes music that truly doesn’t glorify any of his life. Even on 2022’s Ramona Park Broke My Heart, he’s written from the eyes of a veteran of the war of the streets. It’s an emotionally acute record but not a harsh one: the subject matter needed more nerve. He is more Cormac McCarthy than he is 2Pac. He’s right to jap at white fans in a Black medium. He came up in the Vice era, where white men in glasses would go to neighborhoods and voyeuristically check out where rappers are from. It made for good YouTube videos, biographical details of a person’s life that let viewers understand the weight of the lyrics these rappers spout, but now we’re in the era of DJ Vlad, No Jumper, and N3ON, men with opinions and interviews on street life that they are infiltrating for their own gain. (I say this as someone who as spoken to Adam22 on Zoom and had a phase when I was younger where I consumed some of his content). Staples is trying to limit the hype of his music because it is about gang life in America, and there is a lane where that stuff becomes cartoonish. You could imagine fans treating him like a piece of meat to be picked at like D’Angelo.

Yet, because of this otherwise very smart contrarianism about his career and his music, he has become more famous for the stuff he says in interviews than he has for his music. There is a difference between critiquing the lust white people have for the violent details of hip-hop and trying to lessen your music out of fear those white people will become your fans. So many of his interviews are becoming clicks that filter onto timelines, clips for people to hilariously laugh at; so much of his music now feels cripplingly niche. He’s good at circumventing leading questions, flipping them to answer with tangents that are born out of the brain of a smoker’s fifth spliff. Staples’s face is confidently blank, his teeth not showing like he just listened to Ice Cube’s Death Certificate, his words blurting out the tantalizing danger that is in his mind, leading a viewer’s toes to be perked, awaiting what crazed opinion, what witty sentence he will say. In the space between a journalist asking a standard question and an artist giving a proper answer to said question, Staples becomes an uncontrollable truth-teller, as if having decisive and smart things to say is part of a kind of Tourette’s Syndrome. It’s impossible to know whether to laugh at him or laugh with him.

I’m laughing with him at times because I know what he is getting at — that people expect rappers to be violent, crazed individuals and Staples is just a regular guy making his art, trying to figure out how to be an artist without selling himself in a way that only benefits bad faith fans and consumers. I’m also laughing at him because of his career, which scans as disappointing once you erase Summertime 06. Staples is consumed by a niche amount of people, an amount that feels small compared to what he could be. Staples could be a huge star: his best music is so confrontational and acidic, anti-establishment music with vocals that drill like Snoop Pearson’s nail gun. Imagine if Earl Sweatshirt and How to Rob-era 50 Cent had a baby — that’s what Staples was when he first came out, threatening President Obama and monotonously and almost depressingly confessing that “they never taught him how to be a man, only how to be a shooter.”

In fairness to Staples, Earl Sweatshirt has also retreated from his fame in a compelling way. However, where Earl has progressed as a rapper, abandoning ultra-technical assonance and zeroing in on the intricate but casual details of his delivery and lyrics, Staples seems removed from rap scenes. Sweatshirt is now taking from smaller scenes like MIKE’s independent “muffle rap” scene and investing in them, where Staples is less involved with picking up new tricks from other rappers. Where Earl lives in the lane of honest absurdity, being scared of failing at his currently calm life because of the alcoholic darkness that lives right next to his raw wisdom, Staples is less knowable, using new album Cry Baby to critique America but interpersonally, as if he is an omnipresent viewer from the sky. By focusing on who is consuming his music, Staples has denied himself the right for his music to travel to a wide amount of people. He’s overthinking his output, making muted or rap rock music that feels so modest that he may as well drop it under a pen name. His fourth album, Vince Staples, for example, has some of his best verses, songs like “LAW OF AVERAGES” bounce with references from boxers like Muhammad Ali and Rubin “Hurricane” Carter to rap heroes like Lil Wayne, but it also is an example of Staples’s reluctance. Without breaking a sweat, he’s nimble, but he’s also wasting lyrics on songs that die in the hot air whenever I thought they would be steamy and vigorous.

On Cry Baby, he might be going for what Kanye West did on certain Yeezus songs, but it gets closer to the inertia of Lil Yachty on Let’s Stay Here. West used Yeezus’s musty and cosmopolitan sonics as a canvas for his complicated musings on what it means to be a famous Black man in Paris and beyond. By bringing Chief Keef and King Louie to Paris fashion houses, he was showing the imperial ego of the Black man and the zenith of their creativity, being able to unpack his sexual appetites on “I’m In It” or his desire for the spouses of the white power structure, playing with racist tropes and flipping them for his own gain. That is the epitome of great Black art. Staples’s art is easy listening compared to that. His mention of Obama and Kamala on “Blackberry Marmalade” by interpolating Jay-Z’s flow on “The Story of OJ”, or the post-High Maintenance credit music of “Go! Go! Gorilla” is well-made but doesn’t pierce anyone’s skin, instead becoming music that seems to fade. There’s lyrics about capitalism and record label owners on “Cotton”, your worldly pleasures hindering you from having a livelihood in a country that keeps being more unaffordable on “The Running Man.” Yet, the music feels perpetually stuck in the cocoon of prestige. Where are the freak bass lines of Bootsy or the post-Radiohead meets static, television on the fritz sounds of TV on the Radio if Staples wants to make a rock album? Some of the music makes for a calm day in the park as opposed to being the canvass for Staples’s frustrations.

Yet, because he is talented, critics aren’t panning his music, they are mostly giving it good scores for its writing and steady production and coherent vision. I get it: Staples can rap and he’s one of the few rappers that is comfortable in adulthood, dropping records whenever he says they will drop with little drama and excessive egotism. It reminds me of Mac Miller’s output in the 2010’s. Miller was a friend to the media, so people were scared of disrespecting the work that Miller did. In a less glaring manner, Staples has benefitted from the same political acumen. He’s given the media hilarious quotes and hits on YouTube, so it has protected him for the mediocrity of his output. It makes me respect his career less, given him adoration that he hasn’t earned. Is the lack of nerve in some of his albums because he wanted to leave the deal he had with Def Jam? Still, if that is the case, I wish we had gotten some great music about that conundrum. He seems to be scared of his own electricity, scared of what it means to be a daring rapper, what it means to rap so well and rap so aggressively that people are shook of you. Summertime 06 is an album that should have had Kendrick Lamar hearing whispers because it has the storytelling of good kid m.A.A.d. City without the indebted-to-the-golden-age skits that take away from the album’s flow. Now, Lamar is probably wondering who Staples is, especially after their average collaboration “Yeah Right” didn’t move the needle. Lamar vs Staples should have been a West Coast debate for the last ten years. Instead, Cry Baby is almost offensively boring, switching genres but not at all polarizing anybody. What happened to the Staples that I liked on “Norf Norf” and “Señorita?” He’s become a darling of the magazine critic.

Some of his career scans as light cowardice, stemming from a fear of what his greatness would be: As a rapper, aren’t you in the rap game to be the best rapper alive? Don’t you want to be a rapper whose music is a trampoline for young rappers listening to you? It seems to me that to deny yourself a chance of being a certified West Coast rap legend just because white people are annoying about hip-hop that they like is to play yourself beyond belief. You will have a ton of white fans regardless; you might as well have more Black fans by dropping some heat that everyone can be astounded by. There is nothing that will make Staples more interesting than rapping at a level so impressive that the whole world takes notice, which is something that he is capable of doing but seems actively stopping himself from doing. Maybe he wants to show mystery, leave us with something more, but instead, he’s left us with strong scores from Pitchfork and Vulture that mute any reverberations that ought to repel.

Midway through the first quarter of game one of the NBA Finals, Harrison Barnes’s head fell onto Jalen Brunson’s knee. It happened because of the over eager push that Barnes received from Landry Shamet, who was trying to send a message to the Spurs. The message turned into a cautionary tale. Brunson felt the pain of Barnes’s head smashing into him. So did every single Knick fan watching the knee slightly bend and Brunson become limp. He winced and hobbled while the Knicks and the Spurs took turns with some poor possessions. Then, he went to the locker room. All of the fears that Knicks fans have, the comments from “Becky with the lawsuit” that they have defended Brunson from, the conventional wisdom about the health of the smaller player holding up until June, flashed through the eyes of every Knick fan. We were holding our breaths. What if Brunson was seriously hurt? A sprained MCL or an hyperextended knee immediately went to my mind watching Brunson walk in the lobby. A hobbled Brunson won’t get it done against Wemby.

There comes a time in every person’s fandom where you have to pray and start wondering if you hitched your hopes on someone who is about to be on the injured list. An injury happens and the perspective changes. They happen at the most inopportune times, when you have a good chance to win the NBA championship for the first time since 1973. You wait for the news on the injury, for the comeuppance that is coming because your team made it further than expected. You start to wonder why this is happening: the bargaining stage of death. Surely, God, who has never been known as a Knick fan, does not have your best interest here. Brunson walking to the locker room, looking like a tire from a truck just rolled on his kneecap, was one of those moments. For a while, I was scared that he asked out of the game after my friend Bill texted me that Brunson doesn’t really ask to come out of the game. In fact, he never does that. I was silent during this portion of the game, hoping that it was just a minor pain that wouldn’t prevent him from leading the Knicks to a much needed game one win against the Spurs. During these times, text messages flood your phone and it’s like they come in while motion slows down. The feverish intensity of the messages were balanced by the mental daze. First, it was my Dad, who commented that “if Brunson is out, that’s it!”, then it was my cousin, who asked my Dad to stay positive. Then, I clicked Twitter, with tweets coming in so quickly that my head was spinning. Finally, I got the courage to put the phone down. If Brunson was out of the game, then my phone would not help the issue at hand.

It reminded me when Paul Pierce left the first game of 2008 NBA Finals with a knee injury. Pierce was wheeled off the court in agonizing pain, drama that was born out of a Boston sports documentary produced by Cousin Sean from The Departed. Pierce cried like a baby, only to come back and lead the Celtics to big game one win that turned the tide of the series when the Lakers were threatening to steal a game in Boston. Pierce made three after three, writing himself into a Celtic lore that is as annoying as it is historic. Brunson didn’t cry, there is no theatrics coming from him, but I didn’t realize that the parallels were in the midst of coming true. In the moment, fans are never clairvoyant, rarely looking to what might come because the only mindset is right now, right as the Knicks were floundering and stumbling in the hot San Antonio arena. Forget about Brunson’s toughness, which functions as a skillset of his, it was doomsday at that point.

Brunson walked back to the bench, limping a bit, with body language that made me nervous, but with guts that fans have seen in the four years of his tenure. Brunson came back to the bench in the second, only to get his ankle stepped on by Luke Kornet. To keep the Knicks afloat, to ensure that all the fans knew that they weren’t going to lay down and let the Spurs take advantage of the hard contact made on Brunson, Jose Alvarado came in, knocking down a three over fellow New Yorker Julian Champagnie, inspiring fans with his play. By the time he got back on the court, waiting for the horse semen that was surely injected into him to flow through his blood, he was making tough layups and getting his ankle stepped on by former Knick Luke Kornet. To be Brunson was to be targeted by the Spurs. They sensed that pounding him, forcing him to create space with a bum ankle would help them keep him at bay. It’s a good strategy, but Brunson fired back.

Oh, Brunson: it had been a challenging night for him all night, being flustered by the no-call on the ankle stomp. However, when he got back on the court, he instantly made no excuses for himself, kept playing through the injuries, scoring phenomenal buckets in the fourth quarter, including a three to put us up one and a fall away hail mary to help seal the game for the Knicks late in the quarter. There’s been a ton of talk of Brunson being the greatest player in Knick history, or fans being prisoners of the moment and not giving enough credit to Clyde Frazier — one of the most underrated players in NBA history — or Patrick Ewing — who is still my choice. Certainly, he is already in the top five, smashing the expectations one might have had for him. To me, as it stands, he sits at number three, subject to change depending on if he delivers a title to the Garden faithful for the first time since my 66-year-old father was 14 years old. More importantly to the Brunson legacy, he is the man for the contemporary times: responsible for the hopes for an entire city and aware of that fact.

Before the series started, I had the Knicks winning in six games. Our offense is better, deeper than the injury-riddled offense that the Thunder had to work with by the time game seven of the Western Conference Finals rolled around. Like Karl-Anthony Towns said, our offense eventually catches up, we just have to continue playing that ballhawking and long-armed setpiece known as defense. They did that. The Knicks have a deeper roster than the Spurs do. After Wemby, who was not the best player on the floor last night, defeated by a very good Karl-Anthony Towns, the Knicks have the next best three or four players. Towns, OG, and even the best version of Bridges can be better than Castle, Vassel, and Fox. Yet, there are caused to be concerned. Dylan Harper’s success against us was like watching a orphan boy take control of his own life in a heartwarming teen drama. He was so loose, where Fox felt tight, and if Mitch Johnson wants to tie the series up on Friday night, Harper should play more than Fox plays in the fourth quarter. Fox is the star, and you don’t want to pierce his ego, but from my vantage point, the Knicks had a tougher team with Harper than they did with the hobbled Fox.

All I can think about is Brunson this morning though. At 12-31 shots from the field, he didn’t have the greatest game that I have seen him play but it epitomizes why he is the king of New York right now, and will be for as long as he is an elite player who wears the orange and blue. Efficiency is overrated when games as are dire as this, it is rare that a lead guard will be able to look like 2012-2013 LeBron with their percentages. As he tied the game in the third quarter, then helped us chip away in the fourth quarter, I realized that it’s not a debate who runs this town. It has never been a debate, and the greatest Knick of all-time mantle is well within his reach, a power that he is soon to achieve as long as his teammates continue to show up for him. We live in the now for the promise of banners that will hang in the rafters infinitely and right now, Jalen Brunson is our truth, our guide to enlightenment and trophy-riddled exuberance. May the Knicks win in six games.

I honestly wouldn’t wish Victor Wembanyama on my worst enemy. This is his first playoffs and he is playing like an eight-year veteran who is possessed to win. Big Nike has its hooks in him like Captain Dudley Smith watching over Ed Exley but his game has backed up the corporate mind control to make even his biggest skeptics shrug. Wemby is an enemy of basic, conventional wisdom: He’s a 7’4, French, cosmopolitan, biracial who can shoot like Kevin Durant and jogs with a fragility that somehow makes him more explosive. He is not at all concerned with the so-called/apparent hierarchies of the league because he believes he is the best player in the world. He looks like he could steal your girl from you at the club then cook her some linguine with shrimp and lemon at home before lasting five rounds on silk sheets with her. With Shai’s two MVP’s trophies, you thought he might be able to will the Thunder to victory. After all, that is what champions are supposed to do, even they are fractured from missing a second and third shot creator. Yet, there was Wemby, as gutsy and novel as a Too $hort fan at a feminist meeting, knocking down every shot that inched the Spurs closer to their goal. If my Knicks can win the NBA Finals, then they are going to have to beat someone who was built in the lab where they built the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park. I don’t believe in wishing to play other opponents, but did we have to pick the bionic guy?

The last time the Spurs and the Knicks played in the NBA Finals, it wasn’t much of a contest. The Spurs were profoundly better every year, riding a young Tim Duncan who led the Spurs to one of the greatest runs in professional sports. The Spurs were a media darling then, the epitome of what an organization should be. They won titles. The second and third options were Euros who played an unique style, the attitude of the team was never frightening, nor overly secretive; their coach was warm and cuddly unless you truly knew him and played for him. There was always something that stopped me from loving them though. All of the credit they got, all of the adoration they earned, the titles and awards they achieved felt like a successful infiltration for the type of NBA fans that are a bad jumpshot by Monta Ellis away from cursing AAU basketball. They were great — some of the basketball they played is the nicest ball you might ever see — but they were everyone’s favorite little team. Duncan was allowed a pass on things — like losing to eighth seed, or losing a Game 7 at home to the Mavericks, or losing a 3-2 lead to the Heat — that Kobe Bryant would have gotten criticized for. I couldn’t separate the Spurs from all the cornballs that I distrust, and neither Kawhi Leonard, who rebelled at playing for the Spurs. Leonard clearly wanted more for himself; the Spurs eventually traded him with protest.

Wemby makes this era of the Spurs feel different though. Where Duncan was swagless, a cipher, and as methodical as a serial killer from a Law & Order: Criminal Intent episode, Wemby is still figuring who he is, as his right. A 23-year-old superstar whose hips haven’t rounded into shape; his mind is quicker than his body like an autistic kid who is learning how to write for the first time. So, maybe, the Knicks have met their match. Going to San Antonio will not be a picnic, as LeBron James can tell you from the nightmares he still has from when he cramped in the 2014 NBA Finals. If there is any Knicks team that can do this, can beat this mountain of a phenom that is Wemby, it is a Knicks team starring Jalen Brunson and Karl-Anthony Towns. Brunson vs. Fox is a huge matchup, and one that the Knicks absolutely have to win if they have any chance of winning. There you have it. Knicks vs Spurs. The stalwarts vs the upstarts. Brunson vs Fox. Bridges vs Castle. Anunoby vs Vassell. KAT vs Wemby. Don’t worry, Knick fans: it’s only the best opportunity we’ll have to win for another fifty years.

I had to convince myself that Emmanuel Mudiay was going to be good for us, because surely, nobody else thought he would be good, least of all not Mudiay himself. We traded for him when his first couple of seasons with the Denver Nuggets went awry, a move of desperation when the Knicks were fiending for a point guard, any guard that could be a starter after the Derrick Rose experiment failed. We had tried everyone from Rose to Brandon Jennings, to the elder Jarret Jack. Then, we drafted Frank Ntilikina, pining Jack and Ntilikina against each other like Tashi Duncan’s boyfriends in Challengers while fans audibly groaned at Ntilikina’s lack of consistent minutes. Oh, how quickly Mudiay became the next far-fetched hope of the team, an acquisition that may as well been made at gunpoint. In fairness to Mudiay, the move made sense even if you were sure that he was, in the words of Rick Dalton, a “has-been.” The Congolese-American was once at the top of his draft class and committed to SMU to play for Larry Brown, the legendary coach who once coached names like Iverson, Billups, and Marbury. He decided to forgo college to play in China for one year for the Guangdong Southern Tigers. This was a kid whose once-promising career was starting to plummet. So, why not take a flyer and hope he lives up to his pre-draft rankings? If he got actually good, we had a starter; if he didn’t, there was no harm done when the team was destined to lose 55 games anyway. One more dead end won’t take too much time away from the eventful crummy destination.

I told myself that Mudiay was a diamond in the rough, a young kid who was unable to shine in Denver because of the altitude and rough air out there, leading his lungs to overflown with fluid. Soon, I was telling the tale that Mudiay had asthma, that the Nuggets should be a defunct organization because their play in a city where the air is more difficult breathe if you are a young point guard. With a lawless sense of fandom, I took a stab at willing Mudiay to be successful here, pushing the idea in my mind and everyone else’s that he is a killer, the next Chauncey Billups or Oladipo, lottery draft pick that becomes the man after a few years of ineffective play. I had more choices, more players to uplift in that noggin of mine that can convince myself of anyone’s greatness if I have a week: I thought Ntilikina should have played more, but I was never very keen on the Frenchmen’s game, not with its cerebralness or its methodical pacing. Frank felt like a white blogger’s idea of a Black player, despite the fact that the Knicks did everything in their power to make sure that he never felt comfortable, even though comfortability is the most useful thing you can offer a young player. So, Mudiay — like Langston Galloway before him, like Jerian Grant before him, like Derrick Williams before him — was the guy I latched onto.

By now you know that Mudiay was not a good player for the Knicks. David Fizdale’s proclamation that he was going to “get Mudiay right and he was going to be tough to guard” did not come true, not that anyone sane thought it would. There is magic in watching a player get better. The holes in his game dissipate, what was once a deceptive skill becomes the skill that defines him, the shots that he only sometimes took get taken with a cool regularity reserved for shooters. Mudiay did not have that spirituality. He did his best, his career highlight might be a killer dunk against the Grizzlies, but he was the epitome of that era of the Knicks, who were trading or signing anyone to fill up roster spots in hopes that one of the moves would pop out an all-star appearance. Deep into the depths of Knicks fandom, Mudiay was another long line of Knicks flameouts that the team signed in order to catch a glimpse of hope, especially after Porzingis went down with a Torn ACL in the 2017-2018 season. Damyean Dotson was another false idol, a project that fans tried to turn into a B plus grade, a sign that nothing at the time was going to make fans content. I had to root for Enes Kanter and his charade of double doubles while the opposing center outscored him because well, Enes Kanter lives to be scored on. There is definitely a joy in watching players get better, watching a team struggle to get somewhere — ticket prices become more affordable, there’s less bandwagons — but anyone who tries to sell you the theory that being a Knicks fan wasn’t that miserable, is not being real, they’re just being performative and passing it off as wisdom. Those days were the days of the ghost towns, the memory of the town faded and we were left with broke store owners and saloons full of bikers gangs that looted the stores. Say you are a Knicks fan back then, and you had the immaculate idea to try to argue for Toney Douglas as a point guard even though he wouldn’t know how to play the pick and roll even if Wilt Chamberlain was the roller, or you had to convince yourself that Mindaugas Kuzminskas should play more minutes — did you realize back then that was the worst moments of your fandom? I don’t think I did back then. Life forces you to stay in the present, stay in the grind of bills and losses, when ideally you should be looking into the future. Back then, you could have told me that the Knicks were going to be this bad forever.

I write as the New York Knicks are heading to the NBA Finals for the first time since 1999. Now, when I say that they are going to the NBA Finals, it did not happen in a tough seven game series where there had to be a winner eventually because of the sheer physicality of the style of play. No, I am saying that they sneaked past their opponents. When I say that they are going to the NBA Finals, I mean they marched imperially there; I am saying that they have a 50/50 chance to win the whole thing. For to watch this Knicks team is to see them demolish the opposition, send them home with their shoulders slumped. We no longer have to convince ourselves of anything because we are actually here, in flesh and blood, in bones and muscles, nearing the mountaintop after defeating the Cavs in four games. The final game was a rout 130-93, because of course it was. It was such a blowout that Tyler Kolek was able to play, launching threes like he was trying to impress an unknown Ohio woman. Timothee Chalamet screamed “white boy!” after a Kolek three went in. The clock hit zero and the team started to celebrate. As did I. Immediately, after the several Instagram videos that I made, Alexa and I kissed and hugged as if I was coming back from a tour in Iraq, and my cousin Alexander called me. We started to celebrate, pumping fist so hard we were punching molecules in the air, talking in phrases and not even sentence. “We did it”, is a big thing that I kept saying, although I am just a spectator, a fan of the boys in orange and blue. Then, we started talking about family.

Alexander and his Dad, my Uncle, would bond together by watching the Knicks, two Buford men of a different generation, one Bronx native who had to bootstrap his way into university and law school, bootstrap his way to the D.A. office, then join another law firm. Alexander, Upper East Kid, the benefit of that work ethic, that desire to do more, is just as much of a sicko about the Knicks as his father was and my father is. Uncle D didn’t live to see the Knicks in the finals again, he passed during the bad times, when the Knicks were trying to go for superstars like LeBron James and Dwyane Wade, titans of the game who weren’t going to come here — at least not in the state we were in — in their right minds. We started talking about Uncle D, my father (who went to Cleveland to see it happen), about my brother Jo, how I miss him, how he would be ecstatic at the play of Karl-Anthony Towns, Mikal Bridges, and Jalen Brunson. The Knicks aren’t just a basketball team in the city that I call home, it is a fabric of my life and my family’s life, and as much as I try to remember that sports is just sports, this has a different meaning for my family and I. For one, Alexander and I don’t have to root for Porzingis when there was always clearly something off about him and his overly involved brothers. Secondly, it’s a weight lifted off of us, a time for unbridled joy. We have to go to work the next day, I have to write and worry about where my next ideas will get landed at, but right now, last night and even this morning, there’s not a fog anywhere in my sight. It is an acknowledgment that good things do happen, that your favorite team can become competent, make the right moves, make a gusty trade for stalwarts like OG Anunoby when nobody would have judged the Knicks too harshly for keeping RJ Barrett despite himself.

There’s a ton of talk about Knicks management and while Leon Rose has done a solid job, everything always starts with the players. This run all starts with Brunson, who might not have been the hero we thought we would get but is a special player who understand the magnitude of this franchise and what it means to New Yorkers. Brunson is the tissue that connects Knicks fans of so many generations. He has the quiet storm of Ewing but he is a point guard, so he is able to connect with kids easier, able to connect with everyone easier. Basketball, out of all the sports, is about iconography and the six foot one Brunson has that because his game seems like a game that is is possible for every kid to emulate even though they do not have the sharp crossover he has, or the prodigious understanding of the angles of basketball and how to beat your opponents without “blow by” speed. These are a learned craft, akin to building a basketball team, and Brunson is a player who fans have wanted since they were in diapers: authoritative, responsible, excellent. He connects me with Stephon Marbury, who was my first superstar, but because of his aging game and the Knicks’s dysfunction at the time, Starbury was not our savior. Brunson connects me to my father, who is still a big Ewing fan, and a big Bernard King fan, and a Clyde fan that can remember listening to the 1970 NBA Finals on the radio with Uncle D. Brunson is an old soul like Clyde and Willis Reed, an old soul like my father and my Uncle. The job is there to be done, and although we are not finished, this was a major step in the life of Jalen Brunson’s tenure on the Knicks.

Brunson accepted the MVP award and shouted out his teammates, who have been extraordinary. Karl-Anthony Towns has become one of my five favorite Knicks (alongside Jamal Crawford, Al Harrington, OG Anunoby, and Melo) because of his play this postseason, which has abandoned the idea of Towns as this iso ball, back to the basket power forward and repositioned him as a point forward who can pass the ball to cutters or drive to the cup with ruthlessness. He’s been excellent in the postseason, as reverentially important to the offense as someone like Kevin Garnett or a more hyper realized Pau Gasol, while playing defense that I would consider good enough for us to win a championship. Towns is himself in a league that wants to punish individuality because we’re living in such a corporate era of the league. Where some of the NBA decided to take from Kobe’s worst impulses and become hypermasculine robots, Towns is himself, a proud, emotionally mature Black man who wears being Dominican on his sleeve, who carries his mother’s love with him everywhere he goes. It brings a tear to my eye; his remembrance of her reminds me of Alexander and I talking about his Dad. Mikal Bridges, who has been heavily criticized by a ton of Knicks fans including myself, has found his place as our fourth option who is just as deadly as Anunoby can be, who can bail out the Knicks if a possession becomes stagnant. The defense has always been great, but nothing is more powerful than having a player that can score when the first, second, and third options are taken away. Draft picks are for nerds; winning is fancied by the fashionable and Bridges has been phenomenal since that game against the Hawks.

I can now watch my favorite basketball team play in the biggest stage possible, where former “Knicks for Clicks” members like Richard Jefferson have to watch us without snark and current players like Draymond Green are forced to respect us for getting there. Among the reasons to celebrate, respect is one of them. It is a matter of record that the Knicks are one of the last two teams standing, that the Knicks will be competing for the NBA Finals and have a decent chance of winning the whole thing. The Knicks being in the NBA Finals is a chance to keep healing. That means that Clyde’s moment in 1970 has a chance to happen to Bridges or Anunoby, that Ewing can sleep well knowing that Towns that taking the big man mantle from him and put his own spin on it, that Brunson has a chance to sketched in New York athlete Mount Rushmore. So many years blend in together because of last night. The scariness of watching the Knicks in the playoffs has entered into a comfort, a joy for the crisp passes, the cuts to the basket, the backbreaking three pointers that made our lead more comfortable. The Knicks making it to the NBA Finals means that the memory of those that are left behind are shining through a little bit brighter this morning.

Read more

Read more

Read more

The Boston Red Sox love to put the blame for their failures on the manager’s feet. In 2011, the Boston Red Sox were expected to contend for a World Series title. They had an influx of talent. Carl Crawford was signed in free agency for whopping 142 million dollars over seven seasons. Adrian Gonzalez was traded from the Padres to bolster the lineup. Not only was 2011 supposed to be the year of the Red Sox; 2011 was also during a golden age of Boston sports that the team hoped to add to. It didn’t happen that way. The team stumbled out of the gate with a 2-10 record, including a 0-7 start where the bullpen mightily struggled. Carl Crawford was bad: his batting average was a middling .255, his wrC+ was 83. Still, using the talent they had, they improved in the following months of May, June, July, and August, until floundering with 7-20 month of September as they loss the AL Wild Card on the last game of the season by blowing a 9th inning lead against the Baltimore Orioles.

Immediately, the team needed someone to blame. The Boston Globe, a great paper that once housed legends like Peter Gammons, Will McDonough, and Bob Ryan, is owned by Red Sox owner John Henry and although in 2011 Henry did not own the paper quite yet, the smear campaigns had already happened. “Who’s going to be blamed for how poorly the Red Sox played down the stretch?” That was always the game that rival fanbases would play. This time, it was Tito Francona, the manager of the Red Sox who had led them the two World Series, the first of which was when they won four straight games against the Yankees, the Red Sox’s first title since 1918. The Globe suggested that one of the reasons for the Red Sox’s epic collapse was Francona’s marriage, which was on the outs as his wife of thirty years had begun living in a hotel; another reason was Francona’s use of pain medications for a chronic back injury was starting to become too much to manage. It was messy. Francona had “mutually parted ways” with the Red Sox after the season but this report made it seem like the owners had pushed him out. Theo Epstein, the wunderkind general manager, also left the Red Sox after this season. (Theo would later say he was under pressure by ownership to sign players that he didn’t love, like Crawford, because NESN ratings were down). The players didn’t escape the Globe’s reporting either, however true it might have been: Josh Beckett and John Lackey led a group of unruly pitchers who would order fried chicken and drink beer on days that they weren’t starting. When confronted about this by conditioning coaches, they were apathetic. The “fried chicken and beer” team lives in infamy; I’m never not joking about it to my Red Sox friends, an example of the bloated arrogance of that era of Boston sport.

The 2026 Red Sox are sure to have some possible smear campaigns in the future if it hasn’t already started now. On Saturday, Alex Cora and four coaches, including game coordinator Jason Varitek, were let go after a 9-17 start to the season. My Yankees swept them at Fenway Park, by the score of 4-0, 4-1, and 4-2 respectively. The hitting had been putrid. Roman Anthony, the star outfielder, struggled to make quality throws to home plate from the outfield. The Red Sox were expected to contend this season, coming off of an appearance in the Wild Card playoff series against the Yankees, but they’ve been wilting under the weight of the expectations. Fans are unhappy too. Who would have thought that Alex Cora would get fired earlier than Aaron Boone? Boone has always been compared to Cora in the minds of Sox and Yanks fans because they were hired in the same year and maintained a friendly relationship, despite Cora being the bench coach for the 2017 Trashcan Astros that found to be cheating for the entire season. Cora, who always felt overrated as an game manager but underrated as a locker room politician, has the title that Boone is still chasing but Boone’s recent reign as the manager is startlingly normal compared to Cora. The Red Sox/Yankees rivalry isn’t what it used to be, nothing will top what it was when the Red Sox hadn’t won in many years, but the two managers always shared a shaky friendship with one another. Boone has come out on top because of the consistency of his organization. The Steinbrenner family loves Boone, wants to win every year with him, and even if there’s mistakes that the team makes, Boone is appreciated and well-liked by the players.

The Red Sox have always been one of the leaders in analytics, from the early 2000’s when Epstein ran operations, to now, but they’ve brought in Craig Breslow to run the team and he’s been heavily criticized for being too catered to analytics. Some of that feels like bullshit though, which it almost always is whenever fans complain about their team being too into analytics. Yankee fans do similar things and it annoys me, considering how good Brian Cashman is at his job. No, the problem with the Red Sox always seems to be their ownership. Ever since the Mookie Betts trade, the team has struggled to find star power, and fans have had issues trusting the organization. How can we move forward without our generationally talented star that was expected to lead the offense after David Ortiz died? They also traded Rafael Devers, at the time an excellent hitter, and although Devers was more complicated player than Betts — considering Devers’s lack of fielding skills and attitude issues — it also felt like a move made by an organization that was doing anything they could to cut cost. The Red Sox ownership likes the cash cow that is Fenway Park, the revenue that the brand of the Red Sox brings, but now baseball itself. Out of all of the teams in Boston, the Red Sox suffer from their ownership treating Boston sports as not a real sport town, but like a Hollywood-like machine instead.

There is nothing that gives me more schadenfreude in baseball than Red Sox drama. Say what you will about the Steinbrenner family, but it seems highly unlikely that the Yankees would ever trade Aaron Judge like the Red Sox traded Betts, even if the chicken bucket stopped selling. The Red Sox have been beloved by the media for the championships they won from 2004 to 2018 and I hated it. Jealousy? Perhaps. It also felt phony, as if they didn’t stunk prior to that. David Ortiz was a superstar hitter, a big game player, but his legacy is even more than that: he changed the way an entire franchise was perceived in the media. He helped turn Boston into a city worthy of adoration and respect. Red Sox drama fills me with joy because of my anger at the Yankees not having a championship, yes, but also because all these years, the Red Sox have been darlings in the eyes of the national media despite how hollow some of the organizations seems.

The love affair is ending though. Fans are upset. Media can longer let John Henry’s venture capitalism slide. Jared Carrabis and Coley Mick, two Red Sox content creators who have a podcast called Section 10 Podcast, are pissed, with Mick reacting to Alex Cora posting a critique of the Mookie Betts trade with “my first move would also be posting about the Mookie Betts trade.” In my lifetime, from 1996 on, the Red Sox have trotted out six superstar hitters, hitters that put made me ridiculously fearful like being scared at what your drunk uncle will say to your new bride at your wedding: Nomar Garciaparra, Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Mookie Betts, JD Martinez, and Rafael Devers. None of them but Ortiz, who always seemed like a company man compared to those other great talents, finished their careers in Boston. Fans are realizing what all the detractors, all the players who got traded and smeared on the way out have known, that the Red Sox’s drive for success has always lived on a tightrope next to their need to cut corners and make a profit.

Tom Thibodeau was ours. He had been a Connecticut kid all his life, watching his father talk about old Garden legends, passing those existences of basketball nirvana onto his son. New York was the place he wanted to work at. He was an assistant coach here, barking at players from Jeff Van Gundy’s sideline whenever it was called for. After traveling to lesser cities like Houston, Boston, Chicago, and even a stint in Minneapolis where his East Coast intensity rubbed some prudes the wrong way, the Knicks’s marriage with Thibs seemed to work. I have written about Thibs extensively, and although he is an interesting character, something that he didn’t get enough credit for was how he essentially became the face of the organization, as silly as it is for a coach to be that. Julius Randle had a great first season under Thibs, but that a post-bubble season, and he is a complex, moody personality in a city that tends to like when its Black athletes feel more friendlier. It was Thibs that became the proxy for the front office; it was Thibs that was meme’d to death throughout his first season. That year ended in the first round, against Trae Young and the Atlanta Hawks, who were in the midst of their own lucky post-bubble season. It feels like the beginning of everything, everything good about this era — perennial playoff appearances, big games that matter — and everything bad about this era — unabashed tackiness. That season is the beginning of the clout hungry, viral-loving Knick fans that exist now, especially the younger ones, boys who were waiting to jump and scream after a pandemic that kept them inside, watching streams. Still, Thibs was a constant.

Signing Jalen Brunson felt seamless because of the foundation that he had with Thibs as someone he had known his whole life, someone who coached his dad, and brought his dad onto his staffs in Chicago and Minnesota. Again, it wasn’t professional, because few examples of professionalism include hiring a free agent’s dad to be the assistant coach. Few examples of professionalism seem to include possible tampering. It was almost like faux competency, cutting the same corners that the old regime did but in a controlled way that turned up gold because Brunson is really good at basketball. After the first two Brunson seasons ended with a loss in the second round — that Miami series in the first year was modestly heartbreaking; Barrett played hard but his offensive issues are why that team didn’t go further — last year we traded for Karl-Anthony Towns and made it to the Eastern Conference Finals. The Pacers were on fire, hit us with a buzzsaw at the end of the first game, ripping our skins off, giving us wounds that can only be healed by Michael Clarke Duncan in The Green Mile. Then, the rest of the series was in their control, led by Tyrese Haliburton, who makes Reggie Miller seem like a decent person to grab a beer with. So, with a startling loss in the Eastern Conference Finals, the Knicks switched course. They fired Thibodeau. His longtime friendship with Leon Rose didn’t matter anymore. His trust of Brunson, even his cordial relationship with Towns, who didn’t take a liking to his communication style in Minnesota, stopped mattering. Jim Dolan wanted a change. So, they made it.

I think Thibs is nowhere near perfect, and obviously nobody is, but his mistakes are easy to call out because of how good his other attributes are. His age, his sense of rugged duty, his adoration for the game of basketball can keep him in the moment in a way that is detrimental to the future. Being a coach in the NBA requires you to think about how you will look in April and May because there is regular season ball and there is playoff ball, especially in this league. Thibs didn’t do enough to switch things up in the regular season, because to Thibs, nothing was given to him so he must have a win at all costs, he must squeeze a win out of the bench players or a Division III roster full of future Wall Street warriors. I think Thibs struggled in the Pacers series because of his insistence on playing Josh Hart in a series that is not good for Hart. I think it is fine that Thibs got outcoached by Rick Carlisle, because so did Phil Jackson, so did Erik Spoelstra. I think firing Thibs was fine but they made the wrong hire afterwards. I think that I miss Thibs.

One of the things about the Mike Brown hire that I immediately thought was that although Brown has had success in the NBA, there is nothing that he does that makes him better than Thibodeau, who is close to an expert at getting players to buy in. You may not think about it, because he is white and grouchy, but Thibs is a player’s coach, sensing who might be athletes that he can rely on for big minutes during the season. Players have their best seasons under Thibs: he plays them big minutes with a ton of offensive responsibility. Brown? It is unclear what is philosophy is.

That’s one of the reasons why the Knicks are down 2-1 to the Hawks, a team that they are better than. McCollum had another strong game, but this is not a team that should be beating the Knicks. What is Mike Brown doing? Up three, why isn’t Mitchell Robinson in for defense possessions that could use his size, his shot blocking ability, and his overall length? In what world does it make sense to have Towns in the corner while Brunson continues to pound the ball even though he is a step slow this series? (Brunson’s TrueShooting percentage is 55 and it’s down from years prior). Why is the penultimate possession ending in a wild Brunson shot? These are all questions that haven’t been answered. In the postgame press conference, Brown said “I’m not saying we’re gonna win it or anything like that”, probably to avoid giving the Hawks any bulletin board material. It is not a big deal, and he is probably right not to puff his chest out after a devastating loss, but it sounded timid. Tom Thibodeau thought he would win every single game. It is an insult to the team if you don’t. From the coach to the players, the Knicks are not seizing the moment at all.

Karl-Anthony Towns floated in the corner waiting for Brunson to work when he is the one who has been the best player on the team the whole series. We needed him to see that Brunson is struggling, either with the backcourt size of the Hawks or because he is a step slower, which is what I think is the real answer. The wear and tear on a body of his size will effect his burst, his quick step, his shot making ability. For all of Towns’s excellent second half, he needed to be better, be bigger in this game. Instead of running the corny play at the end of the game, he should have gotten the ball and went. You’re in the NBA for a reason; it is a game about the players. Make a damn dash to the basket with your intrepid size. They can’t stop you.

Finally, it is the power of friendship that ruining the team’s chances to win a title the most. Mikal Bridges, who we traded for, presumably so Upper West Side Knick fans could get excited about “team chemistry” , has been awful so far. What is it does Bridges do on offense? He never makes a big jumper, he struggles to get to the line, he’s turning the ball over because he is not in control of the ball. It sullies the Hart move, which is still great, and it sullies the entire idea of the Nova Knicks. Yet, because they need him on defense so badly, Bridges is playing more than he ought to. This is the player that told Dolan that he rather play for another coach other than Thibs?

I don’t know, man. Help me out here. Would a true contender not get a shot off at the end of the game because their 5’11 franchise player can’t see a damn thing so he throws the ball away in fear? Brunson is loved by fans and management alike, but game four is a legacy game for a great player that has been one of the three reasons why the team isn’t beating the Hawks. This does not seem like a serious team. The missed shots, the standing around waiting for Brunson to do another YouTube highlight package that gives Leon Rose a pat on the back, the lack of forcefulness from Towns — maybe this team just doesn’t have what it takes to bring us to the NBA Finals. Serious teams win the second game, win this game, and they would win the upcoming fourth game too, which I think will happen but I am awfully concerned about it. The Knicks might have a destiny and it isn’t Adam Silver presenting Jim Dolan a trophy while gritting his teeth the whole time. It is being forced to make a Giannis trade because these guys aren’t good enough.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. It is not yet a pattern but a ripple of failure. This game reminded me of the second game of the Pistons series last season, where he played grotesque hero ball, unethical basketball until finally the Pistons rightfully beat us by three points. Tonight, was similarly distressing. The Knicks had a fourteen point lead in the fourth quarter, were outscored by thirteen in the fourth by the Hawks, and it was partly because of how stagnant the offense got. Brunson is at his best when the offense is flowing, playing a two man game with Towns that can be equal amounts of punishing for the defense and illuminating for the offense. It happened in the first game, when Towns had a lane for a drive after a pick and pop. So, when Towns is open and involved in the offense, the team is better and more frightening. The daylight that Brunson can find after working with Towns is exactly what he should be cultivating, not a late in the clock step back that only happens after his pounds the rock because he isn’t passing anyone the ball.

Look, he’s an excellent player. I love Jalen Brunson for how much he wants to win a title for this city, for his jab-stepping three point daggers, for his funky layups off the glass. He’s a fantastic ambassador for the outsized ambition that one might have in New York. Brunson is the city’s booster, it’s zenith of work ethic and showstopping skill. Brunson is the team leader. This thing will go as far as he will take it. It will also go as far as Towns will take it, so Towns has to be focal point of this entire team. If not, why is he here? There is no selfish responsibility, only five fingers balled together to make a powerful fist. Towns needs to be given the opportunity to be the middle finger. I know that Brunson has read all of the NBA liner notes about having the heart of a champion, all of the heroic stories of Great Men Who Scored, players that lead their teams to the championship. That is a powerful thing for a precocious player like Brunson, someone who is a son of a coach. He’s waited for this moment this whole life. Still, he can’t take over the games without spreading the ball. It is not all on him. Yes, he was selfish last night, visibly, putting the team in harm’s way while they missed Towns’s versatility on offense, his ability to back down the Hawks’s lighter pound defenders. (Not helping matters is OG Anunoby, who is an excellent defender, but who was merely average on offense. It was deflating to see him miss two free throws that he needed to make. Embarrassing moment by Anunoby, which again, is not the first time that missed free throws by Anunoby led to a collapse. This is coming from a dude that is supposedly frustrated with the flow of the offense. Sure, but you need to hit your free throws).

Back to the night being predictable, the Knicks are much better than this Hawks team. Our best guys are better than their best guys, despite the great showing by C.J. McCollum late in the game. The Knicks should have won tonight. Mike Brown’s experiments went too far, and maybe, he needed someone to reign him in and say “hey, Mike, just go with Brunson and Towns for the rest of this second quarter because we have two days off and we need to break the backs of these guys.” In trying to focus what the best lineups are, we dropped a game. Yesterday, the New York Post’s Mike Vaccarro wrote “its imperative that they follow a feel-good Game 1 with a feels-even-better Game 2. The road ahead for the Knicks is going to be hard enough. It would behoove them to take care of business — and that means taking care of the Hawks, at home — as quickly as they can.” This was accurate: this fanbase wants to believe that they can bring home a title to this long suffering fanbase that has opened up their arms to this era with no inhibitions. The crazed, viral thirsty animals that are going to spend their time screaming in front of a camera for clout cannot take away from the true fans that are here because their soul burns for a chance at glory that never fleets. Tonight’s game was a chance to show all of us, from older gods who are here after years of suffering, to younger cats whose first favorite player had to be Marcus Morris, that they were a serious contender. They failed at that.

As a fan, I am pissed. They are better than this team. The Knicks had a chance to continue the vibe of the first game and instead, the Hawks got right back in it. As a rational human being, I am betting that the Knicks win in five or six games. McCollum had an abnormal game, and while he is a terrific scorer, he won’t play better than Brunson or Towns again. Yet, so much of this game is something that could have been avoided but it wasn’t, and now, the Knicks have to go to Atlanta with the series tied at one. It was predictable. It was devastating. I’m just disappointed in how they blew a layup and now things will be increasingly harder. I wanted it to be an easy win. Now, Brunson has to adjust. He usually does, and obviously nobody is going to be a perfect player, but the fix is so easy, so avoidable that it is hard not to be upset with #11 and his highlight package stubbornness. Is he the best player on a contender or is he the Godson of the GM? The rest of this series, this playoffs is a showcase for how good Brunson actually is. If he is the one, the rest of this series won’t be an issue. If not, then the selfishness will glare under the microscope.

Smart people have raised questions about the veracity of the Detroit Pistons’s successful regular season but if you actually saw the Orlando Magic walking into Detroit and sending their fans back home with a loss, then you are lying. To see the Magic was to see a team that we just saw get manhandled by the Sixers so it would behoove people to think that the Pistons were going to gentleman’s sweep them. On Sunday night, all the talk of an easy Pistons win were put to rest, exchanged for a sudden apprehension on the faces of the Detroit fanbase. It wasn’t a close game, either: 112-101 is a gentleman’s score, with the Magic winning every quarter but the second one. The Magic took control of the game by playing with their shorts on fire, with Jalen Suggs diving for loose balls like a white boy from the farm. It was theater kid basketball on his end, and sometimes in order to win a battle, you need to pull a Jadakiss and go the extra mile. The Pistons had only two players in double figures, Cade Cunningham and Tobias Harris; the Magic had all five of their starters in double figures, including a wickedly bruising Paolo Banchero, who was a tough cover for the Pistons, and Wendell Carter Jr, who has now become tied with Bam Adebayo for “guy who is holding his own in his relationship with his much cooler girlfriend.”

Watching the Magic in game one would have you think that the Magic are one of the toughest outs in the playoffs. They were hard to figure out in the regular season, a supposed machine becoming faulty under a bigger microscope. The news items in the regular season always seemed to be negative. Paolo Banchero, sniping at coaches in the press; Frank Wagner, struggling to stay healthy; Jamahl Mosley, on his way out of a job. It was assumed that the Magic wouldn’t step up for this series, a “1, 2, 3, Cancun!” team waiting to happen as soon as the Pistons went on a big run. Expecting them to lay down against the Detroit felt like the right kind of decision. Furthermore, the Magic seemed to represent everything that is annoying about being a NBA fan: the middling road to being in the middle, the false promise of number one picks that aren’t nearly as talented as you wish them to be. Banchero was under fire this season for not being enough of a playmaker, for not scoring the ball proficiently enough to be the number one option in an offense. A tweener without a deep ball. This might still be true: he’s not going to beat anyone off the dribble; he doesn’t take that many high percentage shots. Yet, he shoved on Sunday night, knocking down tough shots that become backbreaking when playoff time hits.

The Magic switched all of the screen and rolls that Cunningham and Jalen Duren made a living on in the regular season, exposing Detroit as a one trick pony, overly reliant on Cunningham to be great. Offenses with one central star struggle in the playoffs. Is it possible that NBA fans got suckered by Detroit’s physicality and dominant wins over the Knicks in the regular season? Whenever I think about this year’s Pistons team, ever since I saw that they were only nine in offensive rating, I think of the 2010-2011 Chicago Bulls team that won sixty games with Tom Thibodeau as head coach. They, too, had a surprising year, a jump from the year before. They, too, had a budding superstar, who is a great player despite some flaws with his jumper. Rose entered the playoffs in 2011 rightfully hyped, given the MVP award for leading the Bulls to their best record since the Jordan days, which was admirable but a mistake. Dwight Howard or, of course, a guy named LeBron James should have won. It took Rose taking a surprising team to sixty wins in order for him to MVP. It was an award for not being LeBron or Dwight, two players that were annoying the media at the time. Rose had moments in the playoffs but he struggled against the Heat and even the Hawks at times. The team, did too, playing a tough series against the eighth seeded Pacers; a six game series versus the Hawks; a five game downer against the Heat. The Bulls were denied once they faced a more talented team. Is this the fate of the Pistons?

The regular season is different. It is more emotional, variance is more lopsided, the bench is less of a factor. The Magic can match the Pistons’s physicality. They had more vigor, passes were more crisp, drives were more forceful. It was shocking. The starting five, a strength for the Magic, defeated the Pistons’s. Once the Pistons got the bench in the game, their strength in this matchup, the lead went down. Still, the Magic prevailed. Maybe we forgot that the Magic have also been here before. This is not their first rodeo. They pushed the Cavaliers to the brink two seasons ago. They were supposed to be better than the Pistons this season. I’m supposed to assume that eighth seeds can’t hang with the first seeds — did you see that Suns game on Sunday afternoon? — but there is exceptions to rules in life. They conspicuously played bad against the Sixers, so much so that the internet has their conspiracy hat on. Did they tank for the Pistons, a better matchup for them than the surging Celtics? Outrageous to suggest, and I am sure it will make people snicker, but they seemed so at ease against the Pistons that it is a question surely on everyone’s mind. Unafraid of Cunningham’s running mates, the Magic I have bought into their hype.

I still think the Pistons will win the series. Cunningham is still the best player on the floor, no matter how clutch Banchero was, or how versatile Wagner is. The Pistons are on the home floor, so if they have a seventh game, they have it in their home floor. Cunningham was excellent too, and if he can get more contributions from Duren and Harris, then they will beat the Magic. Harris, a player who has historically collapsed come playoff time in a sea of players much more talented than him, is someone who always leaves more to be desired. A Long Island native, he has the confidence and swagger but not the flair. Cunningham is coming back from a fractured lung, so they hadn’t really had a big matchup since before he went down with that injury. Home favorites tend to win the second game. The second game will be a win for the Pistons. It is quite possible that the Magic revert back to their disappointing ways. So, let’s see what happens: the Pistons should still win, but the matchups were troubling. Detroit, we have a problem and it is not street rap politics; it is the Magic.