Mark Hoppus Responds to Tom DeLonge’s Twitter Claim

It’s day three of the blink-182 soap opera and things seem to be getting a lot more dramatic with every passing day.

Yesterday, Tom DeLonge revealed that he and Mark Hoppus spent a week discussing with managers if it would be a good idea to let go of drummer Travis Barker, a very low blow to Barker if it turned out to be true, considering he and Hoppus have been on the same side since news broke on Monday.

Now, Hoppus is once again speaking out against his former bandmate exclusively with Alternative Press. In the one-on-one, Hoppus was asked about the tweet DeLonge posted, and quickly deleted, about replacing Barker. He responded by saying that the conversations weren’t about replacing Barker indefinitely, but more how issues arose during their 2013 Australian tour when Barker and the tour promoter were in the middle of feud with the latter claiming they were duped. This resulted in a lot of stress on the band especially with the idea that the promoter could sue them.

Check out the complete, newly released statement from Hoppus below.

There was a post of Tom’s on Twitter—since taken down—that said you and he once talked about replacing Travis.

[For the 2013] Australian tour in January, Travis obviously didn’t go on that tour because he didn’t feel comfortable flying, which was a possibility that we had known about from day one. When we agreed to do the tour of Australia Travis said, “I will do everything in my power to get back on an airplane, but if it gets to the day and I’m not ready to go, we need a back-up plan.” As it [came] closer to the time, Travis called me and Tom and said, “I’m not ready yet, I don’t think I’m going to be able to make the flight. We should go with a back-up drummer.” With Travis’ blessing we enlisted Brooks Wackerman and completed the tour.

However, during the course of the tour, Travis and the promoter got into a Twitter argument back and forth that was very contentious and was a lot of stress. Tom was upset, I was upset because it was happening while we were on this tour, and the tour was going very well. Everything should’ve been cool. The promoter thought that Travis had never intended to come to Australia and felt that he had been duped. Of course, that wasn’t the case.

After the tour, Tom was very upset about being put in that situation on tour, where people were threatening to sue, the promoter was angry and everything else. But he was really just blowing off steam. We got back from tour and Tom was having these calls where he was talking about “can we replace Travis, can we do whatever,” but it was really just Tom blowing off steam. There were a few days of calls where I listened to Tom, commiserated with Tom and, immediately afterwards, called up my manager and [said], “Tom’s upset right now, he’s talking about trying to replace Travis, but I’m not into it. That’s not going to happen.” And sure enough, Tom, after a month, called back up and was like, “Hey you know what? I was just angry about it. It was a bad situation, and of course I don’t want to kick Travis out of the band.” I don’t think Tom was ever truly serious about it. Even at the time, I felt he was just angry and he just needed to vent.

Pitbull Weighs in on Jay-Z/Cuba Controversy

Coming in a week or so late to the party, Mr. Worldwide himself, Pitbull has sounded off on the Jay-Z in Cuba controversy by releasing his own freestyle about HOV’s visit to the communistic country.

For those not familiar with the story, Jay-Z and wife, Beyoncé went to Cuba to celebrate their fifth anniversary with his mother as well as hers. It’s against the law to go to Cuba as a tourist, but somehow the power duo and their mothers managed to do so.

Most of the reactions from people about the visit was negative that even an investigation was started by two Florida congresspeople as to why they were allowed to go there. The unofficial-official reason was that Jay-Z was in Cuba to scout for new talent for his recently created sports agency, Roc Nation Sports.

Due to the backlash, he released a song on his Life + Time blog titled “Open Letter” where he kind of responses to the accusations. He states: “Politicians never did shit for me / Except lie to me, distort history. Want to give me jail time and a fine / Fine, let me commit a real crime.”

Now Pitbull, a super proud Cuban-American from Miami has responded in his own freestyle saying the following: “Politicians love to hate  you / But then they run away when it’s time to debate you / Question of the night / Would they have messed with Mr. Carter if he was white?”

The freestyle can be heard below:

While the main question being asked is how they managed to get away with this, the real question should be WHY would they want to go to Cuba with a million other places to pick from, especially for something as special as a wedding anniversary.

Scott Weiland Strikes Back at STP

Scott Weiland might have found out about his apparent firing from grunge band, Stone Temple Pilots from the media, but that is exactly how he’s voicing his opinion about what had happened.

For those that might not be familiar with what happened, the remaining members of Stone Temple Pilots released a sweet and simple statement earlier this week, saying that Weiland had been “terminated.” The funny part of it all, was that the frontman didn’t even hear about it from the band or his people; he read it online.

When he initially read about it int he press, his response was that he didn’t even know and that they couldn’t fire him because he’s one of the core members and wrote most of their well-known songs.

Now, several days later, Weiland is striking back saying that the only reason that they released such a statement was as  a publicity stunt just so they could sell more tickets. When asked if he was still fronting the band, he replied with a simple, “I started it.”

Rumors of the band letting go of the singer stated back in December when Weiland’s band mate from Velvet Underground, Slash, said in an interview that Weiland had been fired.

Weiland is set to start his solo tour tonight in Flint, Michigan where he said he would perform a combination of his material and stuff from the STP song lists.