McGregor has not fought since July 2021, when he broke his leg during his trilogy bout with Dustin Poirier. This fight against Holloway will take place at welterweight, and it marks a rematch of their 2013 featherweight bout, which McGregor won by unanimous decision. The fight headlines International Fight Week at T-Mobile Arena.

The Nike Air Mags he wore in the training photos is one of the most recognized shoes Nike has ever made. The shoe debuted in the 1989 film Back to the Future Part II and later became a real product.

The version McGregor wore features a grey build with a white strap and light blue accents underneath. It is not a training shoe by any stretch, which makes wearing it to the gym a deliberate style choice.

McGregor has always paid attention to his image in and around training. Overall, showing up in Nike Air Mags ahead of one of the most anticipated UFC returns in recent memory fits his approach.

Read More: Dwight Howard Alleges He Was Tricked Into Marriage By Amy Luciani

Conor McGregor Trains In Nike Air Mags

The Nike Air Mag has one of the more unusual origin stories in sneaker history. Nike also designed it for the 1989 film as a fictional shoe Marty McFly wears in the future.

The shoe featured a self-lacing mechanism in the film, which Nike eventually built into a real version in 2016. The 2011 charity auction version and the 2016 self-lacing release are the two main iterations that exist. Both are extremely rare.

McGregor wearing a pair to the gym signals that he either owns both or has access to a pair through his Nike connections. The Air Mag sitting alongside the Crumlin Boxing Club backdrop in Dublin also makes for a strong visual.

It mixes a very Irish, working-class training environment with one of the most expensive and sought-after sneakers in the world. That contrast also feels very on-brand for McGregor.

Read More: Dawn Richard’s Lawsuit Against Diddy Has Been Dismissed

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What should be made abundantly clear about this ruling is that the judge did not give her opinion on the veracity of Richard’s claims. Instead, the judge ruled that there were some filing errors, as well as other procedural issues that would hinder this case from ever seeing a trial.

For instance, 15 of Richard’s allegations were outside of the statute of limitations. There were two other claims involving the song “Deliver Me,” although copyright issues led to those claims being dismissed as well. Lastly, the judge felt as though the gender-motivated violence claim should be tried in a state court and not a Federal one.

Read More: Vince Staples, “Cry Baby,” & The Expectations We Place On Rappers

Diddy Scores Legal Win

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In fact, the judge gave Richard and her legal team a glimmer of hope by suggesting an alternative route. New York City has a Victims of Gender-Motivated Violence Act, which allows for women to pursue legal action regardless of how much time has passed. Richard’s lawyers have made it clear that this will be her next step.

“We’re certainly disappointed in the dismissals,” attorney Arick Fudali of The Bloom Firm explained. “However, we’re very encouraged that the judge chose not to dismiss with prejudice, and basically just refer the Gender Motivated Violence Act claim to state court. We feel very confident in the Gender Motivated Violence Act claims. We believe those are our primary claims anyway. We’re encouraged with the ability to pursue our Gender Motivated Violence Act claims in state court.”

This is a developing story that we will continue to follow.

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Furthermore, Howard was accused of manipulating his son into calling CPS on Luciani. As it turns out, Luciani had her daughter taken away by CPS around the same time as these allegations.

Since that time, Royce Reed has chimed in, showcasing very little sympathy for the Howards. Meanwhile, Howard has filed for divorce and has even earned himself a protective order.

According to TMZ, Howard has filed more documents against Luciani, claiming that she tricked him into marriage. For instance, Howard alleges she lied about not being able to have kids. Had he known the truth, Howard says he never would have married Luciani.

Read More: The 10 Rarest Sneakers In Chris Brown’s Collection

Dwight Howard Accuses Amy Luciani Of Lies

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Elsewhere in the documents, Howard accuses Luciani of a “history of lying and manipulation.” He also believes she tried to ruin him with a “crusade of lies and defamation.”

These are all serious allegations, as are the ones that Luciani has leveled against Howard. Meanwhile, in the midst of all of this, Howard has been given sole control of his home in George. Due to the protective order, this means Luciani must move out as quickly as possible.

However, in order to facilitate the move, Howard has been ordered to pay $10,000 towards his estranged wife. As for the divorce itself, that is still ongoing, and it could take a while before it is fully resolved. Both sides have not been particularly cordial, and that has certainly complicated matters.

Read More: Vince Staples, “Cry Baby,” & The Expectations We Place On Rappers

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According to new billboards that are going up across the United States, Future is gearing up to drop a new album. The upcoming project is called “The Real Me,” and as it stands, there is no official release date.

Overall, this is an exciting prospect, especially since we haven’t gotten a new Future album since 2024. If you remember, the artist had three projects during the 2024 campaign. He had We Don’t Trust You and We Still Don’t Trust You with Metro Boomin. Furthermore, the legendary artist dropped off Mixtape Pluto towards the end of the year.

Read More: Vince Staples, “Cry Baby,” & The Expectations We Place On Rappers

Future’s New Album

More recently, Future reunited with Drake on the song “Ran To Atlanta” with Molly Santana. With the World Cup song under his belt, it is clear that the artist wants to be just a bit more active this Summer. This can only be a good thing for hip-hop, which has been blessed with a stacked year of releases.

For now, fans are just going to have to play the waiting game when it comes to a release date. We’re sure more details are on the horizon. Perhaps even a single could be coming down the pipeline.

Whatever the case may be, a new Future album should leave many of you excited. Even at the age of 42, Future is still very much capable of making some chart-topping hits.

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The post Future Appears To Announce New Album “The Real Me” appeared first on HotNewHipHop.

The expectations are often contradictory, but they share a common thread. People keep measuring Vince Staples against goals he never set for himself.

These conversations have resurfaced following the release of Cry Baby, Staples’ first independent album and arguably his most polarizing project to date. Built on Punk, Alternative Rock, and live instrumentation, the record has divided listeners who expected another typical Rap album from one of the genre’s most respected voices. Don’t get me wrong, overall, many have praised Staples’ creative leap. However, others have questioned whether Staples has drifted too far from the artist they first embraced more than a decade ago. That’s when things get weird.

Read More: Cry Baby— Album By Vince Staples

The debate surrounding Cry Baby says less about Vince and more about the expectations people place on rappers, particularly Black artists who refuse to stay in one lane. Staples has spent his career challenging assumptions about race, class, violence, celebrity, and the music industry itself. The latest controversy suggests he’s now challenging another the belief that artistic growth should only happen within boundaries that audiences find familiar.

Rewriting Vince Staples

Much of the criticism surrounding Cry Baby begins with a version of Vince Staples that exists more in public memory than in his actual catalog. Throughout his career, Vince has been treated as though he emerged solely as a gangsta rapper, a chronicler of Long Beach street life whose greatest artistic value lies in his ability to document violence. That ignores much of what made his music compelling in the first place. Even when Vince rapped about gangs, death, and survival, he was rarely interested in those subjects as purely entertainment. His attention was often fixed on the systems surrounding them and the poverty that shaped communities. He shed light on the institutions that abandoned them and the ways Black suffering could be consumed as entertainment.

The distinction matters because many of the conversations surrounding Cry Baby assume Staples has abandoned something essential to his artistry. The criticism takes different forms as critics argue he should make a hardcore Rap album. Some insist his interviews have become more compelling than his music. A few frame his recent work as a retreat from the hunger that once defined him. Yet, those arguments often reduce Staples to a setting rather than a perspective. Long Beach becomes the story. The social commentary becomes secondary.

Read More: Vince Staples’ New Album “Dark Times” Is Sobering And Soulful

However, his music catalog tells a different story. Big Fish Theory embraced Electronic and Club influences at a time when many Rap listeners weren’t sure what to make of them. FM! transformed Los Angeles radio culture into a concept album. Vince Staples became more introspective, while Ramona Park Broke My Heart looked back at the people and places that shaped him. Dark Times confronted the emotional weight of carrying those experiences into adulthood. The sounds changed but Staples’ questions in maturation did not.

Critics still want Staples to occupy a role he may have outgrown years ago, if he was ever fully interested in it at all. The streets were never the entire story; they were the backdrop. Vince’s real subject has always been the world that produced them.

Moreover, criticisms that Staples somehow shrank himself on this project and failed to step into a broader lane that would bring more fame and fortune have surfaced. This is strange, considering becoming a billionaire hasn’t seemed to be Staples’ goal. Placing those Rap star expectations on an artist who has spent the better part of their career challenging those systems is more of a reflection of the listener, and what they believe success in Hip Hop looks like.

Black Music Never Stayed In One Lane

Shortly after Cry Baby arrived, a clip from Vince Staples’ album release show began circulating online. Reflecting on the release of Big Fish Theory, he recalled asking industry executives whether the project could be categorized alongside Electronic music. The response, according to Staples, was, “You don’t belong there.”

The comment may have been aimed at Vince, but the sentiment is familiar. As we enter Juneteenth Week, it’s difficult not to reflect on the Black artists who have spent generations being told where they belong, often by industries that profit from their creativity while narrowing the ways that creativity can be expressed. Entire genres have been built on Black innovation only to become culturally detached from the people who helped create them.

Read More: Vince Staples Explains How 50 Cent And GTA: San Andreas Inspired Him And His Music

Rock music remains one of the clearest examples. Before the genre became associated with white rebellion and counterculture, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was blending Gospel with distorted electric guitar. Chuck Berry helped establish the language of Rock and Roll. Little Richard transformed performance itself. Punk would eventually emerge from that lineage, and Black artists remained there, even as popular memory attempted to write them out of the story. Detroit’s Death was making Punk music before many listeners knew what to call it. Washington D.C.’s Bad Brains became one of the most influential Hardcore bands of all time, influencing generations of musicians who followed.

That history feels particularly relevant to the conversation surrounding Cry Baby. Too often, Rock and its adjacent genres are reduced to aesthetics, but it has always been about something larger. There’s the distrust of authority and rejection of social expectations. We can’t forget the resistance to institutions that demand conformity and refusal to remain where someone else put you. Those ideas are hardly foreign to Black music or Black history. In many ways, they define it.

The Blues challenged the conditions imposed upon Black Americans after emancipation as Jazz rejected convention and rewrote the rules of American music. Soul became intertwined with the Civil Rights Movement. Hip Hop emerged from communities abandoned by political and economic systems, transforming frustration into art, language, and identity across regions. Rebellion is one of its longest-running traditions in Black music.

Read More: Vince Staples Explains How Mac Miller “Changed My Life”

Further, Staples is hardly alone in challenging expectations. Rico Nasty spent years blending Punk energy with Rap, only to face constant questions about where she belonged. Denzel Curry has incorporated elements of Punk, Metal, Jazz, and Alternative music throughout his career, despite being widely regarded as a rapper. Lil Uzi Vert’s embrace of Rock influences and Alternative aesthetics was often treated as a departure from Rap rather than an evolution. André 3000 faced similar criticism long before he picked up a flute. Every generation seems to produce Black artists willing to test the boundaries of genre and an audience eager to pull them back.

Why Do We Want Artists To Stay The Same?

Staples has always been preoccupied with systems. Violence appears throughout his catalog, but rarely as an end in itself. His attention tends to settle on the conditions that produce it. That perspective remained remarkably consistent, and that consistency is easy to overlook because Vince has never been an artist who repeats himself sonically. What ties his catalog together isn’t genre but inquiry. Staples has spent more than a decade asking variations of the same questions. Who benefits from violence? What happens when survival becomes identity? How do people navigate systems designed without them in mind? What does success actually solve?

Simply reducing him to a gangster rapper is an irresponsible assessment of his music, if we really need to scrutinize it to that degree at all. Still, Staples is hardly the first artist to encounter this dilemma.

Jay-Z addressed it years ago when he famously rapped, “Hov’ on that new sh*t, n*ggas like ‘How come?’ N*ggas want my old sh*t, buy my old albums.” The line defines what has followed musicians for generations. Audiences often celebrate growth in theory but resist it in practice. The albums that first connect with listeners become benchmarks, and every project that follows is measured against a version of the artist that no longer exists.

Read More: Vince Staples’ New Album Gets Co-Signed By Rock Legend Flea

Hip Hop is filled with examples. Fans wanted Nas to recreate Illmatic. They wanted Lil Wayne to remain in the Tha Carter III era. Tyler, The Creator built an entire second act from refusing to be confined by the version of himself that first gained attention in Odd Future. Yet, many of those same artistic risks are now viewed as essential parts of their legacies.

Jay-Z was never going to make Reasonable Doubt twice. Janelle Monáe was never going to spend her career repeating The ArchAndroid. The history of Black music has never been written by artists who stayed put. It has been crafted by those willing to risk misunderstanding in pursuit of something new. Cry Baby belongs to that tradition whether listeners embrace it or not.

The post Vince Staples, “Cry Baby,” & The Expectations We Place On Rappers appeared first on HotNewHipHop.

The problem is that the exclusive vinyl for Reasonable Doubt will be sold through an exclusive deal with Target, a company that pulled back its DEI efforts following Trump’s election win. Naturally, this has garnered significant backlash for Hov, especially as activists have advocated for boycotting Target, as All Hip Hop pointed out. 

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Instagram page Essence Of Black Culture said Jay “made himself available to be used to directly smack the community in the face in a ‘yeah and yall aint gonna do sh*t about it either like yall never do.’” They also pointed out his deal with the NFL in the midst of boycotting the league for how they treated Colin Kaepernick. 

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Jay-Z’s Relationship With Target Called Out 

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Another Instagram brand, Being Black Is Lit, similarly pointed out Roc Nation’s relationship with the NFL, accusing him of “helping [Target] in restoring their brand with the Black community.” “Please remember what Jay Z did when the Black Community planned to boycott the NFL for what they did to Kaepernick, and some of you defended him saying he’s playing ‘chess’ & all you got were ‘diverse’ halftime performers and him getting richer. Although a lot of you worship celebrities, for the rest of you please continue to stay strong and continue Boycotting.” 

Jay-Z might address the outrage in a new freestyle, if he decides to acknowledge the backlash at all. But it seems like no one has faith that he’d adjust his plans solely based on the calls to boycott Target. What do you think? Let us know in the comments below. 

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The post JAY-Z Strikes Target Deal For “Reasonable Doubt” Exclusive Vinyl Amid Boycott & People Aren’t Happy appeared first on HotNewHipHop.

Overall, this has been a huge tragedy for the music world. Oliver Tree managed to touch the lives of those he worked with. One of those artists was none other than rap legend Kid Cudi. The two had done music together and had even appeared in some videos with one another.

Taking to Instagram on Monday, Cudi revealed that he had recently spoken with Oliver Tree and that there were plans for a podcast interview. Cudi expressed his grief over the news, noting that he hopes his he sees his friend again soon some day.

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Kid Cudi Speaks About Oliver Tree’s Character

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“Ima miss u bro. We were just talking about u doing my podcast,” Cudi said. “When I see u again, we’ll finally do our interview my brother, rest peacefully my friend. Ill always remember our time hanging and performing w you on Encore. What a wonderful human being you were. We lost a really special one. Everyone blast Oliver’s music wherever u are. WE LOVE YOU OLIVER TREE.”

This latest helicopter accident has reminded fans of some similar accidents that have taken place over the past few years. For instance, Kobe Bryant, his daughter Gianna, and seven others died in a helicopter crash back in 2020.

These accidents are extremely tragic, and our thoughts go out to the families of those who were lost on Sunday.

Read More: The 10 Rarest Sneakers In Chris Brown’s Collection

The post Kid Cudi Pays Homage To Oliver Tree After His Tragic Passing appeared first on HotNewHipHop.

Since that time, Keke Palmer has been teasing Evans. The two did another Hot Ones together, and they have appeared in some other lighthearted videos. In fact, Palmer surprised Evans with a kiss one time, which led to fans remarking about their natural chemistry.

Over the weekend, the rumors surrounding Palmer and Evans broke new ground. This is because the two were spotted on a dinner date, engrossed in conversation.

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Keke Palmer & Sean Evans Get Close

Of course, anyone could simply make the case that these two are just friends and wanted to enjoy a meal with one another. However, this is the internet we are talking about here. People are naturally going to be messy, and they are naturally going to want to weigh in with their own two cents. For some, it is a lot more fun to speculate than to wait and sit around for more facts.

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Social Media Reacts

In the tweets below, you can see how fans felt about the recent dinner date. For the most part, fans found it quite charming, noting that Evans and Palmer make a cute couple. Others felt as though they saw this coming from a mile away. Moreover, there is a small minority of people who think that they have been dating for months and are finally soft-launching their relationship.

Whatever the case may be, it is clear that Palmer and Evans have fans talking. Their friendship continues to blossom, and we’re sure we will hear more from them soon.

The post Keke Palmer & Sean Evans’ Dinner Date Has The Internet In Shambles appeared first on HotNewHipHop.

The “Carmine” first released in 1991 during Michael Jordan’s first championship-defending season with the Bulls. He wore them on Ring Night at the start of the 1991-92 season. The colorway uses a white leather base with red nubuck overlays and black on the tongue and portions of the midsole.

The 2021 retro was notable because it brought back the original Nike Air heel branding for the first time since 1991. That was a big deal for collectors who had pushed for the OG-accurate version for years. Before that, the 2014 standalone retro used a Jumpman logo on the heel instead, which many fans did not like.

The 2027 version is expected to follow the 2021 blueprint with Nike Air on the heel and a translucent outsole. Full family sizing is expected, meaning kids and grade school sizes will also be available at launch.

Jordan Brand has not released any official images yet, but the March 13th date is confirmed. The Air Jordan 6 is clearly back in focus for Jordan Brand heading into next year.

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Air Jordan 6 “Carmine”

The Air Jordan 6 “Carmine” carries more history than most people realize. It was one of 5 original colorways released when the Air Jordan 6 first launched in 1991.

That original lineup also included the more well-known “Infrared” colorway. The “Carmine” stood apart because it was the first Air Jordan 6 to use a contrasting color block on the upper, mixing white and red rather than sticking to one dominant tone.

Jordan wearing it on Ring Night also gave the shoe a specific moment in time. That game kicked off his first title defense season, which he won. The retro history of this shoe is also interesting because each version has come with something slightly different.

The 2014 used Jumpman, the 2021 brought Nike Air back, and collectors will be watching closely to see what the 2027 version does.

Read More: Jordan Brand Revives The Air Jordan 7 “Miro” With Official Images

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For years, Ye and Ty have been sitting on the track and have been waiting for the right time to make their move. It’s been ages, and for the most part, fans have just given up hope when it comes to the song ever being released.

Last night, during a live stream on social media, Ty Dolla $ign gave fans a glimmer of hope. In the clip below, the artist can be heard playing the song. However, he eventually stops himself as soon as an unidentified woman starts rapping. The voice is very particular, and no, it’s not Nicki Minaj. Instead, it sounds a lot like Ice Spice.

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Did Ice Spice Replace Nicki Minaj?

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While some may see this as a slight to Nicki Minaj, it remains clear that she didn’t want her verse to come out. Consequently, it should not be surprising that Ye and Ty would look elsewhere for a woman’s voice. Why not go with someone who is a viral up-and-comer?

It is unclear when this new verse was recorded. Furthermore, it is unknown whether or not this verse is ever going to come out. If it does, we’re sure the Ye fans out there will be thanking their lucky stars.

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The post Kanye West & Ty Dolla $ign’s “New Body” Appears To Have An Ice Spice Feature Now appeared first on HotNewHipHop.