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europe May 17, 2017
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How Italy’s Serie A became one of the most lit leagues in Europe

For as long as I can remember, Serie A, Italy’s premier soccer league, has been known as a bastion of defensive tactics and grind-it-out 1-0 wins.

Spain’s La Liga is known for its quick passing and flair players, England’s Premier League is the most intense league with non-stop end-to-end action with the most expensive players in the world. Germany is where the tacticians construct the most well-drilled teams to harry and press all over the field, all in hopes to maybe just maybe actually beat Bayern Munich.

Italy has long been defined by the Catenaccio, Italian for “The Chain”, a tactical system where every player is seemingly attached along a string to nullify the opposing team’s attacks.

While Catenaccio tactics in their original form are mostly a thing of the past, teams in Italy have found success by reverting to conservative and simple defensive setups.

The Italian national team, L’Azzuri, have used these tactics to great success in World Cups and European Championships, with four World Cups and one European Championship trophy in their cabinet.

So Serie A became synonymous with this defensive attitude, the reputation of the league being that the best teams teams would grab a goal on a set piece and then sit back for the rest of the game.

After the Calciopoli scandal during the 2005-2006 season, in which some of the most prominent teams in the league were found to be involved in a wide network of rigging and manipulating games through communications between team managers and league officials, Serie A was sent back to square one.

Juventus were stripped of their 2005-2006 title and sent down to Serie B, with other teams including Lazio, Fiorentina, and AC Milan also getting a variety of stern punishments.

To critics of Serie A, Calciopoli confirmed their worst suspicions of the league, that it was a hotbed for corruption, greed… and boring soccer.

This reputation may have been earned in the mid-2000s, but in the past couple years, with a new injection of managers and a new generation of young talent, Serie A has become one of the most exciting leagues in Europe.

Detractors point to the fact that absolute powerhouse Juventus (who used their punishment in the Calciopoli scandal to revamp and redesign their business and soccer structures) have won the league for five straight years, and most likely a sixth this season.

But most European leagues are ruled by the teams at the top. In Germany, Bayern Munich have won the Bundesliga 13 out of the last 15 years. Since the 2005-2006 season in Spain it’s been Real Madrid or Barcelona taking home the silverware, besides Atletico Madrid in 2013-2014.

Even in England’s Premier League, the supposed most competitive league in the world, only six different teams have won the title since the English top flight officially became the ‘Premier League’ in 1992, Leicester and Blackburn’s one trophy each make this seem much more competitive than it is.

This is all to say that the whole “Juventus wins every year, Serie A is boring” narrative is just straight up disingenuous. This isn’t a Seria A problem, its a European soccer problem.

Also if you think it’s only Juventus in Serie A, you’re just not paying attention.

Despite the legendary Milanese powerhouses AC Milan and Inter Milan falling off a cliff in recent years, teams like Roma and Napoli have taken their place at the summit of the Serie A table.

Mauricio Sarri’s Napoli squad are just straight up the most entertaining team to watch in Europe.

They play a fast-paced, free-flowing style of soccer, or as the French call it, champagne football. Passing out from the back, creating overloads on one side of the field, and then hitting the openings in the defense with high-paced precision.

Driven by genius Slovakian captain Marek Hamsik in the middle of the field, the budding Italian superstar Lorenzo Insigne on the wing, and sudden 30 goal scorer Dries Mertens, Napoli create whirlwind attacks that completely overwhelm opposing defenses.

Look how easily they open up the best defense in the world (Juventus) with their passing and movement.

https://twitter.com/davidfutboI/status/848629992523255809

Faouzi Ghoulam, Insigne, Jorginho, Dries Mertens, and Hamsik tool around with the Juve defense, pulling them out of their positions and then Hamsik is able to slip into space and finish an absolutely ridiculous move from Sarri’s team.

Look at how Napoli play out of the back, even with a 3-0 lead.

https://twitter.com/MHChehade/status/861567102666375168

That’s just ridiculous. Instead of booting the ball clear and nullifying the threat of a hard-pressing Genoa side that’s trailing 3-0, Napoli pass around them in circles, as if they’re not even there, and then they’re off to launch another attack.

Here’s one last clip of Napoli because they’re so damn fun to watch. Watch how Insigne and Mertens explode towards goal from the halfway line after Senegalese center back Kalidou Koulibaly plays the ball through the lines… that’s just unfair.

AS Roma, who are currently in second place in Serie A, 1 point ahead of Napoli and 4 points off Juventus in first, just beat Juventus 3-1 this weekend.

Granted, Juventus are preparing for a massive Champions League final against Real Madrid, but Roma rather easily beating them is a sign that ‘The Old Lady’ as Juve as known, are far from invincible in Serie A.

Roma are led by former Manchester City castoff Edin Dzeko who leads the league with 27 goals and the Belgian Radja Nainggolan, the do-it-all center midfielder, who scores totally ridiculous goals and has a very dope name.

It bodes well for the health of Serie A that Roma and Napoli are right on Juve’s heels, despite the fact that Juventus bought Napoli and Roma’s best players last summer.

Gonzalo Higuain scored 36 goals for Napoli last year, equaling the 87-year-old record for goals in a season in Italy, prompting Juventus to buy him for around $100 million. To complete their business of draining their rivals’ best players, Juve then bought Miralem Pjanic, Roma’s center midfield maestro, for a cool $35 million.

Juventus is the cream of the crop in Italy, there’s no disputing that. Their financial might allows them to essentially control the flow of players in and out of Italy. Their spot in the Champions League Final shows that Juve is truly one of the top 5 teams in all of Europe, not just Italy.

Yet the Serie A title race (Roma 4 points off Juventus, and Napoli 5 points off), although all but over, is much closer than England, Germany, and Spain (beyond Real and Barca).

The fact that Napoli and Roma are keeping relative pace with Juve is a positive sign for the league.

New ownership deals at Inter and AC Milan promise to provide a huge spending spree from those clubs this summer, trying to reach the summit of Italian soccer once again. Young startup teams like Atalanta, Fiorentina, and Lazio are also showing promise heading into a new era of Italian soccer.

As for the Italian national team, after a disastrous 2010 World Cup where the defending champions failed to make it out of the group stages, there is a new crop of young players just entering their primes that will have L’Azzurri primed for a run in 2018.

With players like Andrea Belotti, Marco Verratti, Lorenzo Insigne, Federico Bernardeschi, Domenico Berardi, and Daniele Rugani all heading into their early and mid 20s, Italy has revamped and reloaded in a similar way to Germany’s infamous “Reboot” after the 2006 World Cup that has seen them win the 2014 World Cup.

In the meantime, watch Serie A, and when Italy is making a deep run in the 2018 World Cup, you won’t be surprised.

dave chappelle May 16, 2017
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Dave Chappelle apologizes for giving this dumbass president a chance

Back in November, Dave Chappelle hosted ‘SNL’ just days after overly-tanned, extremely intellectually-limited fascist Donald Trump got elected.

It was a unique opportunity for Chappelle, the legendary comedian was just emerging from a pretty protracted period out of the spotlight.

The week of November 8th was a pretty dark time for most Americans. The new President-elect talked shit about Mexicans, called to ban Muslims from our country, openly and casually admitted to sexual assault, and even brought fuckin’ Rudy Giuliani out of his cave to rant about mandatory minimums or whatever.

It was up to Chappelle to calm the masses and he delivered one of the more memorable monologues in recent ‘SNL’ history, perhaps due to the context of the moment.

He came for the white people (conservatives and liberals alike),

“You know, I didn’t know that Donald Trump was going to win the election. I did suspect it. It seemed like Hillary was doing well in the polls and yet — I know the whites. You guys aren’t as full of surprises as you used to be…”

I can’t lie, I was buggin’ the fuck out on November 9th. Chappelle said he hadn’t seen that kind of emotion since that particularly famous trial back in the day,

“The whites were furious. I’ve never seen anything like it. I haven’t seen whites this mad since the O.J. verdict. White people screaming on both sides, ‘Aahhh!'”

Chappelle riffed on the slight schadenfreude of seeing white liberals lose their shit,

“I’m not saying I’m enjoying it — I’m just saying I’ve never seen this before. I watched a white riot in Portland, Ore., on television the other night. News said they did a million dollars’ worth of damage. Every black person was watching that like, ‘amateurs.'”

Chappelle literally predicted an actual news story while reimagining the post-election meeting between Obama and Trump. Chappelle spoke of Trump’s regret,

“Oh, God. Got to tell you, this job looks like it’s going to be a lot harder than I thought.”

Yeah, this trash ass president would actually go on to say that.

But after having some fun with the crazy white people that elected this idiot and needling the liberals having a meltdown over our CRUMBLING DEMOCRACY, Chappelle had some poignant shit to say about Obama’s tenure in the White House and what that meant to Black America.

While talking about a BET sponsored party at the White House a couple weeks prior, Chappelle said he looked around at all the old white dudes with their paintings on the wall. He talked about how Abraham Lincoln had to personally go out and retrieve Frederick Douglass (the first Black man to be invited to the White House) and bring him into the White House because security wouldn’t let him in.

Chappelle expounded on the centuries of oppression that this place represented, but now a black president was having an entirely black event in the White House, “except for Bradley Cooper, for some reason” and Dave talked about what that meant to him and to our country,

“I thought about that, and I looked at that black room, and saw all those black faces, and Bradley [Cooper], and I saw how happy everybody was. These people who had been historically disenfranchised. It made me feel hopeful and it made me feel proud to be an American and it made me very happy about the prospects of our country.”

On that incredibly hopeful note, Chapelle went on to say he’d give ol’ Trumpy a chance.

“So, in that spirit, I’m wishing Donald Trump luck. And I’m going to give him a chance, and we, the historically disenfranchised, demand that he give us one too. Thank you very much.”

The week of November 8th seems so long ago now with the constant drama of the Trump administration. It’s basically just one constitutional crisis after another as we hope we don’t get dragged into some sort of nuclear war.

For his part, after seeing the absolute disaster of a presidency so far, Chappelle apologized for saying we should give Trump a chance at a charity event in New York City last night, according to MSNBC’s Willie Geist.

We forgive you Dave, now let’s get this large, orange child out the damn paint.

clippers May 12, 2017
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Kendrick Lamar narrates farewell video to fellow L.A. native Paul Pierce

Although Paul Pierce played most of his career in Boston, dude was a hero back home in Los Angeles.

Pierce went from Inglewood High School, where he was a McDonald’s All-American, to Lawrence, Kansas to play for Roy Williams’ University of Kansas Jayhawks.

With the 10th pick in the 1998 NBA Draft, Pierce was selected by the Celtics, where he played until 2013.

His last couple stops, in Brooklyn, Washington, and back home in Los Angeles, saw an aging Pierce transition to more of a role player, although he still showed brief flashes of the player he once was.

Some newer fans of the NBA may not know just how truly nice Paul “The Truth” Pierce was for years.

Dude averaged 19.7 ppg, 5.6 rpg, and 3.5 apg in his career, was a 10x All-Star, won the 2008 NBA Championship, where he was Finals MVP, and is fourth all-time in made three-pointers.

Every step of the way, Paul Pierce was a star.

Pierce announced last summer that the 2016-2017 season would be his last and was saluted by NBA teams and fans all year, even if Draymond Green had some shit to say about it.

The Clippers released a farewell video to Pierce on Thursday. The clip was narrated by Compton native Kendrick Lamar, who talked about the contrasts of Los Angeles.

On one side of L.A. you have the glitz and glamor of Hollywood, on the other side you have tougher neighborhoods where, as Lamar says, “you can find the grit, the fortitude, the truth.”

This is the part of L.A. that Paul Pierce exemplified, he was one of the realest to ever do it, with Shaquille O’Neal giving him his legendary nickname after Pierce dropped 42 on Shaq’s Lakers back in 2001.

The video concludes with farewells from James Harden (L.A. native), Chris Paul (teammate), Kobe Bryant (probably Pierce’s greatest rival), and Isaiah Thomas (current Celtics star).

It’s a pretty dope clip and for anyone that fucks with The Truth this video will definitely raise some goosebumps.

josh gordon May 11, 2017
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NFL continues to be trash, denies Josh Gordon reinstatement

Josh Gordon’s long and winding road to redemption has hit another bump as the NFL denied Gordon reinstatement to the league earlier today.

While Gordon has had his troubles with substance abuse and various run ins with law enforcement officials dating back to his college days at Baylor, the reasoning behind this latest denial is seemingly unclear.

Josh Gordon first broke onto the scene as a rookie in 2012, selected in the second round of the Supplemental Draft after the Houston native had been kicked off his college teams at Baylor and Utah for failing drug tests.

It was his breakout 2013 season in which Gordon showed so much promise, racking up 1,646 yards on 87 catches and scoring 9 touchdowns, despite missing the first two games due to suspension for violating the NFL’s substance-abuse policy.

– 👑-

A post shared by Josh Gordon (@flash) on

Then Gordon’s trouble really started, the electric wide receiver was initially suspended for the entire 2014 season for another violation of the substance-abuse policy. The suspension was later reduced to 10 games, and Gordon played the final five games of the season.

That was the last time he played in the NFL.

Gordon was suspended for all of 2015, but was set to be reinstated after the first four games of the 2016 season; however just before he was eligible to return, Gordon checked himself into a rehab center to, as he said, “gain full control of my life and continue on a path to reach my full potential as a person.”

A glimpse at Gordon’s social accounts and his working out with former Olympian Tim Montgomery, suggest that Gordon is trying to get on the straight and narrow path. He’s obviously dealing with some pretty serious demons and substance abuse issues, both of which the NFL has zero tolerance for.

It’s a pretty hypocritical stance by the NFL, which has allowed domestic abusers and sexual assailants to play in the league, but Gordon is getting the Ricky Williams blackball treatment.

https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/862715789807407109

The NFL’s draconian rules about weed use are even more ridiculous when placed alongside the league’s rampant prescription painkiller problem. In a lot of cases, guys are popping pills before games to mask pain and be able to go out on the field, but risking long term injury.

More alarming than players taking drugs to mask pain is a seemingly systematic operation by many team doctors to pump players up with numbing agents and blood thinners, like Toradol, without players’ knowledge of what is going into their bodies.

This has become the subject of a lawsuit, with more than 1,800 former players claiming that doctors “improperly distributed and administered painkillers, causing long-term organ and joint damage” according to SB Nation.

Last month, Commissioner Roger Goodell said he saw no benefits of allowing players to use marijuana,

“[Marijuana] does have addictive nature. There are a lot of compounds in marijuana that may not be healthy for the players long-term. All of those things have to be considered. And it’s not as simple as someone just wants to feel better after a game. We really want to help our players in that circumstance but I want to make sure that the negative consequences aren’t something that is something that we’ll be held accountable for some years down the road.”

Goodell truly has no shame. He’s claiming he doesn’t want to be “accountable” down the road for harming the health of players when the NFL is currently in a lawsuit because team doctors actively violated federal drug laws and regulations while treating players.

I understand the criticism of Josh Gordon, dude seemingly had it all and threw it away for the piff, but somehow framing him as the bad guy in all of this is severely missing the mark.

As for the Browns and where they stand, Browns executive vice president of football operations Sashi Brown said at the NFL’s owner’s meetings that they’d be open to a reunion, provided that Gordon is healthy.

“Listen, assuming he would play at the level we started to see glimpses of last preseason and certainly in the league before, [Gordon] would be a talent I think no team in the NFL would turn down if he got back in. Our decision with Josh is just understanding where he is in this process and being able to have him. We’re not in position at wide receiver to turn down a guy like Josh if we feel he’s settled himself. Josh is going to have an opportunity to reapply to the NFL and at that time we’ll make a decision when we know what’s going on.”

Gotta love the flaming hypocrisy of the NFL.

Gordon is eligible to apply for reinstatement again sometime in the fall, I’ll be rooting for him to tear the league up.

In the meantime, check out how twitter reacted to the news of the NFL’s decision to deny Gordon’s reinstatement.

https://twitter.com/AndyRuther/status/862700676555587584

10K80 May 11, 2017
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Forbes Five of richest in hip-hop shows importance of brand evolution

Yesterday Forbes released their annual Forbes Five of the richest hip-hop artists in the game and there weren’t exactly any surprises.

The names here are pretty much what we’ve come to expect on these kinds of lists, with the biggest moguls in hip-hop making up the top 5.

Diddy comes in at number one on this list, he’s essentially become a mainstay when it comes to the top of the Forbes Five. As Zack O’Malley Greenburg writes, “the only thing more predictable than a Diddy name change? His place atop our annual list of the wealthiest hip-hop artists.”

But Greenburg also points out that Diddy has found himself some real competition at the top echelon of hip-hop opulence. This competition comes in the form of Brooklyn native Jay Z, whose net worth has spiked in the last year,

“Jay Z’s fortune has jumped 30% in the past year after a $200 million investment from Sprint reportedly put the valuation of his music-streaming service, Tidal, at $600 million, more than 10 times what he paid for the company two years ago.”

Slotting in at third is superproducer and Beats founder Dr. Dre. In 2014 Dre sold Beats to Apple for $3 billion, which puts his net worth at an estimated $740 million.

The top three on this list are in a completely different class, falling just short of the billionaire tag. Diddy is worth a reported $820 million, Hov at $810 million is right behind him, and Dre rounds out this top three.

At number four is Birdman, but to illustrate the sharp drop off from those three mega-moguls, Birdman is valued at about $110 million.

That’s not chump change by any means, but Birdman is not touching those three legends, especially with the chaos going on over at Cash Money Records. Having Drake, Lil Wayne, and Nicki Minaj on your label only works until they leave, which all three have reportedly expressed their desire to do.

Rounding out the top 5 is by far the youngest on this list, Drake. While not altogether shocking, Drake’s place on this list shows the moves he’s been making with a streaming deal with Apple music and sponsorship partnerships with Nike and Sprite.

While the music industry has changed pretty radically in the last twenty years, artists have found different ways to make money, beyond album sales. Whether it’s being at the forefront of streaming services, lucrative sponsorship deals, or making the dankest sounding headphones, these hip-hop moguls have used their entrepreneurial drive to make wild bread despite the changing face of the industry.

Bruh May 10, 2017
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Cop finds out he’s 18% black through Ancestry.com, sues chief for racism

In the latest installment of What Is Good In America Right Now? a Michigan police officer claims he was subjected to racial abuse upon learning he had African heritage after taking a genetic test on Ancestry.com.

Sgt. Cleon Brown was subjected to a constant stream of abuse by his fellow officers and even the mayor of of Hastings, Michigan.

According to MLive.com, Brown was subject to verbal taunts and jokes about his race,

“Sgt. Cleon Brown said the police chief called him, ‘Kunte,’ a character in Alex Haley’s novel, ‘Roots: The Saga of an American Family,’ while officers whispered, ‘Black Lives Matter’ and pumped fists as they walked past.”

The taunting continued and reached new levels when Brown’s fellow officers decorated the office Christmas tree with racist kitsch.

Twitter

Again, from MLive,

“At Christmas, the department hung stockings with names of the officers on a Christmas tree. A black Santa Claus figurine – with ‘18%’ written on its white beard – was put in Brown’s stocking.”

My dude Cleon is firing back and suing “the city of Hastings, police Chief Jeff Pratt, City Manager Jeff Mansfield, Deputy Chief Dale Boulter and Sgt. Kris Miller.”

Cleon Brown is not fuckin’ around anymore. It’s pretty clear he got this ancestry test and shared the information with his co-workers who thought they could joke around about his race, but took it way too far.

As for the city of Hastings, they are really trying it, saying it’s all Cleon’s fault for starting “the joking and banter”. The city’s statement read.

“Sgt. Brown, in a very joking and jovial manner, informed several of his fellow officers that he had recently taken a DNA test through Ancestry.com and the results showed that he was 18% African American.”

The co-defendants in the case all reportedly unfriended Brown on Facebook and refused to let him play in the charity basketball game after Brown filed a discrimination complaint.

This is some petty bullshit from the whole Hastings Police Department. Poor Cleon got ostracized real quick once he realized he was 18% black, seems pretty representative of law enforcement’s opinion of race in this country.

Shouts out Cleon though, we hope he gets all the money from Hastings and his trash ass co-workers.

It’s safe to say twitter had some fun with this one… maybe Cleon should’ve seen this one coming?

https://twitter.com/fivefifths/status/862313562924085250

https://twitter.com/AdamSerwer/status/862323460332285952

https://twitter.com/jbouie/status/862317151151173632

kanye May 9, 2017
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Kanye apparently posted up on a mountain in Wyoming making new album

It’s been all quiet on the Kanye West front for a minute now. Since his hospitalization in November while on his Saint Pablo Tour, Kanye has mostly stayed out of the public eye.

He surfaced briefly to go chit-chat with human trash receptacle Donald Trump and then posed for pictures with POTUS, proving that his hospitalization was for good reason.

Since then it’s been quiet for Pablo. He did not appear at his own Yeezy fashion show in February and then was absent from the Met Gala last week as Kim Kardashian appeared solo dolo on the red carpet.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BTl-VNvFwPk/

Kanye also scrubbed all of his social media on twitter and Instagram, and there were suggestions something was amiss with the 808‘s artist.

But according to a report from TMZ, Yeezus is all good, he’s just chillin’ on a mountain in Wyoming creating his new album.

TMZ even claims to know which mountain he’s on, but don’t want to create any problems for Kanye. From the report,

“We know exactly where he is but hey, we don’t want to ruin his mojo … we like his music, too. But we can tell you he’s been there a week and also went 2 weeks earlier, so he’s smack in the middle of the creative process.”

Kanye has done this kind of thing before. He famously went to Hawaii to record My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and Saint Pablo was recorded all over the globe, including stops in Mexico and Italy.

It seems like this strategy of holing up in various isolated locales has worked for Kanye in the past, although ‘old Kanye’ used to make five beats a day in his room for three summers.

Anyways, we hope Kanye is feeling happy and healthy out there on top of a mountain in Wyoming.

Back in February ‘Ye claimed the album was called Turbo Grafx 16, which is a wild name but at this point we expect nothing less. Looking forward to whatever Kanye cooking up out there.

Indie rock May 9, 2017
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Mac Demarco’s ‘This Old Dog’ and why this dude is just so hard to hate

I’ve tried to hate Mac Demarco since my little brother showed me “Ode to Viceroy” during my junior year of college. I was both pissed off that I hadn’t heard Mac earlier, that I had been beaten to yet another up and coming artist by my little brother, and that I liked it so much.

I was both pissed off that I hadn’t heard Mac earlier, that I had been beaten to yet another up and coming artist by my little brother, and that I liked it so much.

It seemed so easy to make fun of, “look at this quirky indie Canadian guy with the fake Irish/Italian name making jazzy stoner slacker rock about cigarette brands.”

I tried and tried to resist as I went back and sifted through Demarco’s catalog, eager to find something to prove my thesis that the indie scene was propping up another mediocre white dude. But alas, to my horror I found myself… enjoying it.

The airy guitar melodies, the lyrics about respecting women and chilling really hard, the ever-present cloud of weed smoke, it was all too chill to be true.

Glance at at one of his social media profiles and you’ll see a litany of self-deprecating hashtags and ironic posturing that make Mac Demarco appear as another snarky ass guy in their mid-20’s. Sometimes this persona seemed at odds with his songwriting, especially at its most male ally moments, like on “Treat Her Better” off 2014’s Salad Days, Demarco tells anonymous scene dude to treat his girl with some respect!

“Treat her better, boy/

If havin’ her at your side’s something you enjoy/

If havin’ her in your life’s really so important to you now”

This is obviously refreshing to hear in the hyper-masculine indie scene (the song may have been written in response to a former band member abusing his girlfriend) but coming from the guy who takes pictures in front of Buddha with the hashtag #iloveblowingcock, makes it slightly difficult to take him seriously.

https://www.instagram.com/p/xqrjIvpvqt/?taken-by=macdemarco&hl=en

For every “Treat Her Better” there’s a “Goodbye Weekend” where Demarco sings of all the lost fun of the weekend past (“Macky’s been a bad bad boy”!) and how he doesn’t like Mondays.

The two halves of Mac Demarco, the sensitive guy who wants his friends to treat their girlfriends better and the party dude who just wants to fuckin’ chill and smoke Viceroys and make homoerotic jokes, have been at odds on Mac’s previous work.

Obviously there’s no problem with having both serious and more satirical subject matter, but it was just hard to take Mac Demarco completely seriously on his earlier work, even if it was catchy and cool as hell.

So when Mac released his third studio album This Old Dog last week I thought maybe this was my last opportunity to jump off the Mac Demarco bandwagon.

Mac was just gonna make a carbon copy of Salad Days and I could safely make fun of him from my perch on contrarian mountain. To put it plainly, I was fully ready to not fuck with this album.

This is not what happened. Mac Demarco released an interesting, complex, extremely well-written, and different album with This Old Dog. I should’ve known when I heard the single “My Old Man” as Mac uses a synth and acoustic guitar while singing about his relationship with his father.

Mac revealed in a long feature from earlier in his career for Pitchfork that his father was an addict and his mom booted him out of the house when Mac was five.

On “My Old Man” Mac Demarco takes a look in the mirror and isn’t exactly thrilled with what he sees, someone that resembles his own dad.

“Look how old and cold and tired and lonely he’s become/

Not until you see/

There’s a price tag hanging off of having all that fun“

Mac sings over a metronomic xylophone-sounding thingy and stripped-down acoustic guitar. Mac Demarco has never let us in like this and frankly it’s moving stuff.

On This Old Dog, there’s no doubting Mac as a serious artist. In terms of lyrical content, there’s no battle between two sides of his personality, no odes to the weekend, no sponsored content for cigarette brands.

There is much more raw emotion on this record. “Sister” is a really somber (I had to make sure I was still listening to Mac Demarco) song running just over a minute describing the sudden pain of a breakup.

This breakup, or at least relationship troubles of some sort, pops up a lot on this record. After making his girlfriend cry, Mac muses “never thought some silly songs could go and hurt someone” on “Still Beating”.

Mac Demarco is making a record about getting older, the discontents of partying too much, and hurting the person you love, and it all sounds really good.

Musically, Demarco switched it up on this record as well. It’s the most stripped-down version of Mac Demarco we’ve gotten so far.

There’s more acoustic guitar, more synthesizers and keyboards, less of that surfy, Jimmy Buffet on a pound of weed style guitar melodies that we’ve become familiar with throughout Mac’s catalog.

With his stripped-down sound and more personal lyrics, Mac Demarco has made an incredibly real album about being in your mid-20’s in 2017.

There’s crazy shit going on out there, but Mac urges us,

“Don’t let the world outside the windowpane get to your head/

Hopefully make some sense of all this shit before you’re dead”

Hopefully.

clippers May 8, 2017
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Kristaps Porzingis tweets about Clippers, deletes it, comes with receipts

Poor Knicks fans just trying to live their lives after another trash season when all the sudden Kristaps Porzingis is tweeting “LA Clippers” with three smiling emojis.

The tweet was immediately deleted, but the damage to Knicks fans’ stress levels was already done. Kristaps is pretty much the only promising thing about their entire squad and losing him would be completely disastrous for the franchise, full stop.

Desus Nice (aka Kristaps Porslingdick) suggests that perhaps Knicks fans are no longer hurt by these things.

Porzingis’ tweet was immediately deleted and then on Sunday his reps claimed that Kristaps had been hacked and was sleeping while the tweet went out.

Ah yes, those evil Russian hackers, sneaking into NBA players’ twitters and starting random trade rumors! Yeah, nah. No one is hacking Kristaps’ account and posting smiley faces. If I am on Kristaps Porzingis’ Twitter I am wiling the fuck out, not doing some small shit like this.

The best part of this whole kerfuffle is Kristaps’ refutation of the tweet. I mean look at this piece of art, should be hanging in the MoMa.

He really tried it with the “most recently used” emoji excuse. I love every single thing about this tweet; the recent emoji excuse, the fact that he said b, the brief glimpse into Kristaps’ thotty emoji use.

It’s safe to say New York and basketball twitter went a little wild with the emoji defense and Kristaps New York-influenced vernacular.

All of this comes on the back of a report on Saturday by ESPN’s Ian Begeley claiming that teams asked about a trade for Kristaps after news broke of the Latvian skipping exit meetings with Knicks President Phil Jackson.

Things aren’t so great for the Knicks at the moment, but losing Kristaps would truly be a low point for the franchise. On the bright side, dude said “cmon b” so realistically the Unicorn isn’t going anywhere.

Shouts out to Knicks fans for being able to laugh through the pain.

Kylian Mbappe May 4, 2017
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The $100 million 18-year-old: Why every team in Europe wants Kylian Mbappe

If you’re at all plugged into the world of soccer right now, the name Kylian Mbappe has become completely unavoidable.

Every day new headlines emerge about where Mbappe may be off to, how much he’ll be worth, and what team he may or may not have been a fan of as a kid.

The hype around Mbappe has reached almost unprecedented levels, and that’s saying a lot in the world of European soccer, where kids are tracked and analyzed as professionals from their early teen years.

Mbappe was born to a Cameroonian father and an Algerian mother in Bondy, a suburb in Northeastern Paris.

His father Wilfried coached him as a youth for AS Bondy, but Kylian’s performances at the infamous Clairefontaine academy (which has produced French national team players like Thierry Henry, Nicolas Anelka, Blaise Matuidi, and Hatem Ben Arfa) got the young forward noticed by some of the biggest clubs around Europe.

Real Madrid, along with most major French clubs, tried to sign Mbappe, but he chose to develop himself at AS Monaco.

Kylian Mbappe debuted for the principality club on December 2, 2015 at 16 years 347 days, becoming the youngest ever player to appear for the club, beating out the previous record-holder Thierry Henry (who comes up a lot when talking about Mbappe).

The goals came quickly for Mbappe. Lined up alongside young, dynamic, and direct players in Portuguese-Venezuelan manager Leonardo Jardim’s system, Monaco have become one of the most exciting young teams to watch in all of Europe.

Spearheaded by players like Radamel Falcao, Bernardo Silva (22), Thomas Lemar (21) in attack with Tiemoue Bakayoko (22) and Fabinho (23) anchoring the midfield, Monaco have scored a fucking ridiculous 95 goals this season and sit comfortably atop the Ligue 1 table ahead of mega-rich PSG who have won the league four straight years.

Besides Falcao, who is a veteran of top flight European soccer but fresh off disapointing spells with Manchester United and Chelsea, the entire Monaco squad is made up of some of the most exciting young prospects in the game. Fabinho and Bernardo Silva  have been linked to Manchester United, Lemar and Bakayoko to Chelsea.

Monaco’s fullbacks Djibril Sidibe and Benjamin Mendy are likely to go to European powerhouses this summer as well.

No matter how much amazing young talent is on this squad, Mbappe is the cream of the crop. At 18 years old, Mbappe has scored 24 goals in 38 appearances across all competitions for Monaco and it doesn’t even matter who he’s playing against.

It’s perhaps fair to look at France’s Ligue 1 and conclude that Mbappe isn’t performing against the best competition in the world, but he scored two goals against Manchester City over two games in the Champions League round of 16 and then three goals over two games in the quarter finals against Dortmund.

Leading up to a semifinal matchup with Italian giants Juventus, Mbappe is poised to officially announce himself on the greatest stage as one of the best strikers in the game… at 18 years old.

So then what does the future hold for the young Frenchman? He has been linked with a move to Real Madrid, Manchester City, Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, Inter Milan, Arsenal, and Manchester United. The price? Rumored to be over $140 million for his services.

That would make Mbappe the most expensive soccer player in the world at just 18 years of age, blowing Paul Pogba’s alleged $123 million fee out of the water.

A look Mbappe’s highlight tape shows why he’s such a hot commodity. His blistering pace lets him speed past defenders with ridiculous ease and he simply does not stop moving. He’s not just a runner as his nose for goal and finishing ability mean that once he’s past you he will punish you for it.

Mbappe is a true striker by every measure, able to play in the middle of the park with anyone, but he has a special knack for navigating the channels on the wings, using his movement to find the spaces in between the defenders and breezing through on goal.

This style reminds some of another great French striker who played for Monaco, a certain Thierry Henry. Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger didn’t hesitate in making the comparison in February,

“Mbappe is not exactly Thierry Henry, but it’s true he has similar qualities. We follow him, we know him very well, he’s developing well. I think he extended his contract last season with Monaco so it’s Monaco who will decide about his future. He could be another Thierry Henry… He’s a guy who’s electric like Thierry was, can dribble, can pass people and is efficient. The talent is similar. After that, does he have the same level of motivation, desire and intelligence that Thierry had? The next two years will tell us that, but the first signs are very promising.”

High praise from Le Professeur indeed. While Wenger’s reputation has taken a bit of a hit recently with his club’s loss in form, he is still a highly revered figure in France. Diego Costa, Chelsea’s enigmatic but prolific striker, said of Mbappe,”if he continues to progress at this rate, he’ll be a phenomenon. He’s a killer in front of goal.”

And Kylian’s own teammate Fabinho sees only great things in Mbappe’s future, “sooner or later he will end up at Madrid, Barcelona or a club like that. But for now he’s here, so lets enjoy that!”

To go from a professional debut in December of 2015 at 16 years old, to being the second youngest ever to receive a call up from the French national team, to leading his team into the semifinals of the Champions League and the top of Ligue 1 well before his twentieth birthday makes Mbappe truly one of the most exciting young players in recent history. We’re starting to run out of superlatives for the striker.

For his second goal against Dortmund (4:36 in video above) he preys on a mistake by the Dortmund backline, sprints past Sokratis (a highly experienced Greek international) and fires an absolutely unstoppable shot past Roman Burki in goal. That is the finish of a man with all the confidence and poise in the world, a finish of a, well, not a damn EIGHTEEN-YEAR-OLD.

For his part Kylian had stayed humble. He apparently lives at the Monaco training ground like most of the other youth players, is absolutely obsessed with soccer, and said of a potential move to Real Madrid, “we all must take things step by step. Madrid is for players at the peak of their careers, and I am not there yet.”

Sounds like a kid that has the absolute killer attitude to become one of the great players in world soccer. All signs point to that being the case and Mbappe garnering the highest price-tag of any player ever. Apparently he’s reading Michael Jordan’s autobiography, before it’s all said and done he may just be the MJ of soccer.