Troy Polamalu is officially a Hall of Famer. 

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The legendary Steelers' safety was among the five players honored Saturday night by being selected into the Pro Football Hall of Fame, according to ESPN.

"Honestly, it's just surreal," Polamalu told the Steelers' website. "I really feel surreal. I'm very thankful for all my teammates. This truly is a tribute to them. And I feel honored and unworthy of this, to be honest."

Polamalu was the Defensive Player of the Year in 2010, an eight-time Pro-Bowler, and a two time Super Bowl champion. Having retired after the 2014 season, has now been selected to the Hall of Fame in his first year of eligibility.

Sebastian Stan, who plays Bucky Barnes in the Marvel films, recently reposted a tweet that seemingly criticizes the writing for Avengers: Endgame, according to Complex.

Redskins' Quarterback Alex Smith is "very much lucky to be alive," according to a new interview with ESPN's Outside The Lines. 

Swizz Beatz and Alicia Keys have been going strong for over a decade now, and when a couple has been together that long, coming up with gift ideas for each other can start to get challenging. Luckily, it looks like Swizz knows his beautiful wife very well, as his birthday gift to her this year is not one most people would come up with (or could afford). Before fulfilling her hosting duties at the Grammys on Sunday, Alicia celebrated her 39th birthday on Saturday night, where her husband surprised her with her own tea company called “Alicia Teas.”

In a video showing the birthday surprise taking place, Alicia is seen reading the product description of her new teas, which includes the phrase, “the key to life is living it.” She then points out that he must have planned this out very far in advance. On the mic, Swizz announces, “we got endless amount of teas. Everybody in Starbucks all around the world, y’all gonna see Alicia Teas. He then speaks directly to Alicia, saying, “blessings, blessings. Happy birthday, baby. Love you.” The couple then lean in for a kiss before Swizz announces that tea will be served shortly.

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Alicia’s role as host of the Grammys was made a million times more emotional on Sunday, after news broke of Kobe Bryant’s passing hours before the show was scheduled to begin. She opened the night by paying her respects and acknowledging that they were in the “house that Kobe Bryant built” at that very moment. She and Boyz II Men also paid tribute to Kobe by performing the R&B group’s hit song, “It’s So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday.”

Emojis have always been about capturing the sentiment. Be it congratulating somebody with the prayer hands, expressing displeasure with the "unamused face," or incognito flirting by way of eggplants and peaches, the emoji landscape has become a cornerstone of modern-day communication. To think what our forebearers might have thought, were they forced to decipher an iMessage transcript. In fact, some might even be so bold as to call emojis a "language." After all, like many languages, emojis have continued to evolve over time.

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Now, 117 new emojis are set to join the fray over the course of the next year. Many have already accepted the "smiling face with tear" as a reflection of their soul, while others simply cannot wait to ask for the gabbagool with "Italian hand." There are women in tuxes, men in wedding dresses, and the transgender flag. There are mammoths and dodos, buffalos and polar bears. A Ninja seems destined to develop a dubious euphemistic meaning. As for the beaver...well...Canadian pride? Sike, another inevitable euphemism. 

Check out the new batch below and sound off with your early favorites. 

We often hear rappers spin tales of their rugged upbringings in their songs. Artists spit bars about struggling to get food on the table or having absentee parents causing them to find a makeshift family on the streets with gangs. Qaw’mane “Young QC” Wilson reportedly didn’t have that life. The 23-year-old’s mother, Yolanda Holmes, doted on her only child, reportedly gifting him with luxury clothing, jewelry, and even a Mustang.

According to a report made by The Chicago Sun-Times, Wilson wasn’t satisfied. A Chicago judge, along with prosecutors, believes that Wilson hired two of his friends to murder his mother because he wanted to collect on her life insurance. It’s alleged that Wilson’s girlfriend drove with their friend Eugene Spencer over to Yolanda’s apartment. It was there that the unsuspecting mother was shot and killed by Spencer while sleeping in her bed.

However, things didn’t go as easy as they expected, because Yolanda’s boyfriend put up a fight. The boyfriend was then knocked unconscious, so Spencer left and called Wilson to update him on what had happened. “Make sure the b*tch is dead,” Wilson alleged told his friend. Then, Spencer returned to the scene and repeatedly stabbed Yolanda.

Following her death, Wilson collected the insurance money and customized his Mustang. It’s also reported that he took out thousands of dollars from the bank and “made it rain” on his fans in a moment shared on social media. “The word is ‘matricide,’ meaning murder of one’s own mother,” the judge said during Wilson’s sentencing.

“Whatever he wanted, his mother gave to him. A car. A job,” the judge continued. “One could say he was spoiled. She gave Qaw’mane life, and it was his choice to take it way from her.” Wilson was sentenced to 99 years in prison. Spencer was given 100 years. “I just want to say, nobody loved my mother more than me,” Wilson reportedly said during his sentencing hearing. “She was all I had. That’s it.”

It was a historic moment just a month ago when Eddie Murphy returned to the Saturday Night Live stage after decades away from the hit series. His career took off when he was added as a cast member at 19-years-old, and when he joined the current cast of comedians to revive his beloved SNL characters, the series brought in its highest ratings for 2019.

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Now that his memoir Living in Color is available for purchase, Tommy Davidson seems to be spilling all the comedy tea. The In Living Color star has been enjoying his run around the press circuit as he shares tidbits of interactions that he’s had with other famous figures throughout his career. He recently claimed that during his stint on In Living Color, Jamie Foxx was a “mean” person who liked to bully him. In a recent interview with The Breakfast Club, Davidson stated that SNL creator and producer Lorne Michaels thought hiring Eddie Murphy was a “mistake.”

“We broke the color barrier with In Living Color, but once the success of In Living Color came, like, look at Foxx now,” Davidson said. “That’ll show you right there. Now, there was the...Entertainment Weekly had the hottest shows of the nineties. And we weren’t in there. Not one single picture. Not even my foot. Not even Jennifer [Lopez’s] ass and that’s gon’ be in any frame… So yeah, that was there, because when I broke into the comedy scene, I broke into all the white clubs turning it out. Standing ovations. Killing it.”

He may have been wowing audiences, but he still was being rejected by those with the power to create career shifts. “And what they would tell me is, you’re not the one we want,” he said. “You’re not what we’re looking for. Even with Lorne Michaels, when I came to audition for SNL, he was like, ‘I’m not lookin’ for a black comedian. Eddie Murphy was a mistake.’ I was like… That was supposed to be my audition. And he said, ‘Have a nice day.’ I was like, ‘Whoa, hold on.'”

Davidson added that he didn’t know why Michaels alleged called Murphy a “mistake.” He added, “If you think Eddie was a mistake then what kind of show do you have? He like, saved your show?” Watch Tommy Davidson’s full interview with The Breakfast Club below.

The Grammys were overrun with outrageous outfits that are way out of budget for the average American, but Georgia rapper Pastor Troy took aim at 20-year-old Lil Nas X in a recently deleted Instagram post. The 42-year-old hip hop personality seemed to take issue with the “Old Town Road” artist’s pink suit and…well…gay people kissing in an Applebees commercial.

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Pastor Troy wrote:

“Welp, Guess I won’t be winning a GRAMMY…If this what I gotta wear. They love to push this shit on Our Kids!! The other day @applebees had some punks kissing and laughing eating mozzarella sticks. First Thing My 14 yr old Son said was, “F**** Applebee’s” And It Brought Joy to My Heart!! He sees it…their agenda to take the masculinity from Men, Black Men Especially. Some may say, “He Making Money!!” Rupaul do too, but I ain’t bumping his CD!!! Integrity is Priceless. Y’all Better open that 3rd Eye and let your Sons Know What Is Real…Or They Ass Gone Be Headed Down That Old Town Road Foreal!!~P.T. #TheyGoneRiiiiiiddddeeeTil theycantnomore #BlackOwnedandIndependent #NotMySons #ItAintWorthIt #Taketheroadlesstraveled #Youwillstillgetthere #DSGB #Wontbeonmypagelong.”

He would later double down on his remarks while dropping the word “f*g” in the process, and social media users were quick to call him homophobic. However, Pastor Troy has resurfaced once again and visited The Morning Hustle to deny those claims. He said: “I’m not homophobic at all. I’ve been in this rap game for 20 years I done took more pictures with gays, transvestites, all that. It’s not my concern what you are or what you do. Just because I took a picture with this person doesn’t mean I gotta go home and tell my son, ‘Hey man, it’s alright to be gay. I just took this picture with this gay person, it’s cool now.’ It ain’t.” Check out his clip in full below.

Ludacris has been handing out blessings this week in the name of music education. The rapper visited Hialeah-Miami Lakes Senior High School in South Florida on Wednesday to give students a very special surprise. Met with screams of excitement from the student body, Luda took the stage during an assembly and announced that he has donated $75,000 worth of music equipment and instruments. "I understand the importance of music education,” he told them. “It’s very important to me.”

Ice Cube is one of hip-hop’s most prolific songwriters to ever pick up a pen or reach for a microphone. His writing ability singlehandedly helped the west coast rise to prominence in the late ’80s and he’s also responsible for penning one of the greatest diss tracks in all-time in “No Vaseline.” However, as of the two decades, the Los Angeles-based lyricist has become a media mogul producing his own movies and running his very own professional basketball association in the BIG3. 

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Recently, the gangsta rap pioneer made his way to the Uproxx office as a guest on Talib Kweli and Jasmin Leigh’s coveted podcast entitled the People’s Party with Talib Kweli to discuss his legacy, his impact on the culture, the success of the BIG3, and more. 

With hip-hop purists being cognizant of his pen, the discussion of Ice Cube’s songwriting influence during N.W.A’s early days arose to which he revealed the inspiration behind writing Eazy-E’s most popular song, “Boyz N The Hood.” Cube revealed that he had initially written the cinematic song for a Queens-based rap collective called, Homeboys Only, but they were utterly confused by the context of the song as he described how Dr. Dre influenced Eazy-E to the deliver rhymes. During the interview, Cube said:

“The lyrics was foreign to them. ‘You talking another language, man.’ And I was. It was the sh*t we talk about out here. They didn’t understand what I was talking about so they rejected it and then Dre convinced Eazy to do it.”

The “Steady Mobbin” rapper then went on to reveal that the storytelling raps that he admired during that time influenced him to write the bars stating:

 “It was in the nature of (Ice-T’s) ‘6 in the Mornin,’ (Schoolly D’s) ‘P.S.K. (What Does It Mean?),’ so it was in that vein of telling a story. We was all fans of Slick Rick and fans of KRS(-One)… So those was my favorite cats at the time and so I wanted to make a rhyme that talked about what I knew about: Everything going on in the neighborhood.”

With the BIG3 continuously growing and Talib Kweli hoarding music the culture needs, both hip-hop legends have plenty of more to contribute to today’s rap climate. Also, with Ice Cube and Talib Kweli as charismatic of a unit as they are in an interview setting, this episode of the People’s Party has the potential to be one of the greatest pieces of content, Uproxx and Kweli have released to date. 

Check out the clip of Ice Cube revealing his inspiration behind writing Eazy-E’s “Boyz N The Hood” below and look out for the full episode of People’s Party with Talib Kweli featuring Ice Cube dropping on Monday, Feb. 3.