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A$AP Rocky was full of emotions in the moment a jury ruled he was not guilty in his 2021 felony shooting case Tuesday (Feb. 18). So much so, he leapt straight over a courtroom barrier into the arms of the first person he wanted to celebrate with: Rihanna. In a news clip from a […]
Source: HipHopWired.com / iOne Digital
Hip-Hop icons Ja Rule and Juvenile catch up and trade stories on the latest episode of HipHopWired’s popular digital series, I Got Questions.
In the latest episode of the I Got Questions digital series from HipHopWired, two MCs who ruled rap music in the late 1990s and early 2000s in Juvenile and Ja Rule sit down to discuss their careers and perspectives in shaping the culture. After indulging in a sip of the Murder Inc. veteran’s new honey botanical whiskey Amber and Opal, Ja Rule shares the story of how Juvenile and Cash Money Records’ rise coincided with the appearance of his first group, Cash Money Click.
The “Holla Holla” rapper also shared how while on tour with Jay-Z and listening to Juvenile’s hit “Ha” from his 400 Degreez album, he witnessed Jay-Z come up with the verse for the eventual remix in his head. “Oh I got a verse for this, I’m gonna have to reach out to them,” Ja Rule said. Juvenile confirmed how he and Jay-Z connected to do the remix, and revealed that some down in his hometown weren’t too pleased. “Boy, a lot of people in New Orleans, the Hip-Hop heads were going crazy,” he began laughing as he reminisced, “but the hood, they were like “Man, why you did that? You sellin’ out!!” Juvenile also spoke about the Hot Boys reunion with Lil Wayne, B.G., and Turk, expressing how emotional it was for him. “If people watch it, they see me turn around a lot and I was turning around a lot because I was wiping my face,” he said. “I wondered if people realized what I went through to get my brothers on this stage together.”
Both rappers spoke about how hard it was to get the love from fans in New York, which led to Juvenile reminiscing about his legendary night at the Tunnel nightclub. Ja Rule then spoke about witnessing Ice Cube’s iconic performance at The Apollo Theatre in Harlem after his break with N.W.A. “When he took the hat off, and we saw he cut the Jheri-Curl off, we were throwing knots of money at the stage!!! Like, “Yeah, we got him! He’s with us!!”, he said.
They also shared stories about working with two historic producers like the late Irv Gotti and Mannie Fresh, and welcoming newer artists who sample his hits. “Don’t take the record and redo what I did. Take it in another direction, and reinvent it,” Juvenile stated.
Check out the entire interview above.
“I’ve been bursting at the seams to be able to talk about this stuff,” Chloe Moriondo tells Billboard of her upcoming album, Oyster. The singer-songwriter shifted her aesthetic across her three previous albums, from the ukulele twee on 2018’s Rabbit Hearted. to heartfelt pop-punk on 2021’s Blood Bunny to fuzzed-out, radio-ready melodies on 2022’s SUCKERPUNCH.
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Oyster, due out Mar. 28 on Public Consumption/Atlantic Music Group, functions as an amalgamation of those sounds, while also featuring the 22-year-old’s most vulnerable lyrics by far. “This feels like a very special project,” says Moriondo. “I’m nervous, as I always am before releasing things, but especially because this one’s so personal.”
On Wednesday (Feb. 19), Moriondo released the second preview of the album with “Hate It,” a gleefully unhinged pop track with a creeping bass line and an obsessive protagonist (“Wanna wear your body and trade places / Everybody loves you, and I hate it,” Moriondo sings on the chorus). After showcasing a sardonic streak on SUCKERPUNCH, Moriondo lets the dark humor simmer on the track while the listener is urged to hum along.
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“It’s one of the only non-aquatic songs off the album,” Moriondo says of “Hate It,” which is surrounded by songs titled “7 Seas,” “Abyss” and “Shoreline” on Oyster. “I did stick very thematically with the ocean, water and all things aquatic in general. But ‘Hate It’ was an oddball, and it just proved to me that I’m going to continue writing murderous pop love songs till I die, I’m pretty sure. And we just couldn’t leave her off the album.”
Moriondo began working on the new album in early 2023, tinkering on songs for weeks at a time in London and Los Angeles, while also processing the worst breakup of her life. Heartbreak, and how to manage its aftereffects, serves as the undercurrent of Oyster, from the mournful piano ballad “Pond” to the reflective bedroom-pop track “Raw” to the breathtaking “Siren Calling,” which offers closure within the final track.
“It was very cathartic to be able to pour out everything that had been going on in my brain and in my life,” Moriondo notes. “It was nerve-wracking, in some ways. I kind of felt like a baby sea turtle — flopping around, confused — for the first couple sessions and the first couple songs. I felt a little bit nervous, but it also felt like an outpouring of pent-up energy and emotion that I was excited to finally be able to release.”
Not only does Oyster represent the cohesive front-to-back listen of Moriondo’s career, but the singer-songwriter says that she wants every aspect of this album campaign to feel part of a whole — and that she became more hands-on with the planning of execution of this rollout than she’s ever been.
“With this album, I’ve just learned how crucial it can be to be as involved as possible creatively, with every facet of the album,” she says. “With an album like Blood Bunny or Rabbit Hearted., I was so young, and I say this as a term of endearment, but I was still very ignorant to a lot of things. I don’t think I poured as much of myself as I could have into a lot of my previous stuff, in terms of the touring, the vinyl packaging, just the life and blood of it. So I think I’m much more connected creatively to this album than I have been.”
After releasing “Shoreline” as the first taste of Oyster last month, Moriondo also announced a spring headlining tour, which kicks off on Apr. 24 in Detroit. She says that ideas for performing these new songs live have dominated her thoughts for months, and she hopes that her shows are as freeing for her fans as making this album proved to be for her.
“The people who come to my shows, whether they’re longtime fans or new fans or boyfriends or parents of fans, can expect to experience a very immersive show,” Moriondo says with a laugh. “A lot of dancing, a lot of potential crying, and something reminiscent of the Jellyfish Jam from Spongebob.”
How you like that! BLACKPINK announced its highly anticipated 2025 world tour dates on Wednesday, Feb. 19, revealing that the global trek will kick off in July.
The K-pop supergroup consisting of JENNIE, ROSÉ, JISOO and LISA revealed that the limited run of shows will begin with a pair of shows July 5 and 6 at the Goyang Stadium in Seoul, South Korea, followed by stops in Los Angeles, New York City, Paris, Barcelona and more. The tour ends Aug. 15 with a stop at London’s famed Wembley Stadium, which will also mark the first time that a K-pop girl group has ever headlined the venue.
Though not mentioned in the press release, the group’s Instagram post announcing the tour dates also revealed that 2026 shows are also coming to the Tokyo Dome in mid January.
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Tickets for the shows go on sale Feb. 27 via Live Nation. Onsale start times will vary by market.
The 2025 world tour will be the first time BLACKPINK has gone on the road as a group since the Born Pink World Tour, which ran from 2022 to 2023. That trek landed the K-pop group on the Billboard‘s 2023 Top Tours chart, having sold 703,000 tickets over 29 shows during the period of eligibility; the trek grossed $148.3 million.
The group first teased the upcoming tour on Feb. 5. At the time, little information was revealed, with BLACKPINK sharing just a quick teaser video of fans screaming in massive venues, the four women on stage and the clip ending with the message “2025 World Tour” in pink lettering over a black background.
Over the past year, JENNIE, ROSÉ, JISOO and LISA have taken a break from group duties to focus on their own solo projects. LISA’s solo effort, Alter Ego, arrives at the end of the month on Feb. 28, while JENNIE‘s Ruby arrives a week later on March 7. JENNIE is also dropping a collab track with Doechii titled “ExtraL” this Friday (Feb. 21). And just last week on Valentine’s Day, JISOO dropped her mini solo album, AMORTAGE. ROSÉ’s solo album rosie arrived in early December, and also features her Billboard Hot 100 No. 3 hit “APT.” alongside Bruno Mars.
LISA, who also confirmed that a BLACKPINK tour was coming this year in her November Billboard cover story, expressed excitement about the trek at the time. Said the pop star: “I can’t wait.”
See BLACKPINK’s 2025 World Tour dates below:
Justin Timberlake, BTS’ J-Hope, Gracie Abrams, Raye and Benson Boone are among the headliners for 2025’s Lollapalooza Berlin. Among the other acts slated to perform on July 12 and 13 at Olympic Park and the Olympic Stadium in Berlin are: Armin Van Burren, Brutalismus 3000, Ive, The Last Dinner Party, Dom Dolla, John Summit, Artemas, Shaboozey, Royel Otis, Ashnikko, Magdalena Bay, Sofi Tukker, Bigxthaplug and Mark Ambor, among many others.
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Tickets for the festival are on sale now.
Lollapalooza Berlin was the first European extension of the beloved Lolla brand, first touching down in 2015, shifting between a series of different venues before finding its permanent home in the Olympic Park in the heart of Berlin.
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Last year’s fest featured a similarly eclectic lineup topped by Sam Smith, Martin Garrix, Burna Boy, OneRepublic, Seventeen, The Chainsmokers and solo sets from former One Direction band mates Niall Horan and Louis Tomlinson.
The 2025 Berlin edition will also host Mother Mother, Mahmut Orhan, Argy, Mark Ambor, Bunt., Nora En Pure, Miss Monique, Anna, Flo, Joey Valence & Brae, Neil Frances Present Club NF, Benjamin Ingrosso and Wasia Project, among others. The set from J-Hope will come following the conclusion of the K-pop superstar’s Hope on the Stage 2025 solo world tour, which will kick off on Feb. 28 with the first of two shows at KSPO Dome in Seoul, South Korea before jumping to the Barclays Center in New York and winding down on June 1 with the second of two shows at the Kyocera Dome Osaka in Osaka, Japan.
Check out the poster for the 2025 Lollapalooza Berlin festival below.
On the heels of his first book, Dark Days: A Memoir, in 2015, Lamb of God frontman Randall Blythe did not want to follow it up with another non-fiction book. But he was counseled otherwise.
“I was like, ‘Oh, I never want to write non-fiction ever again,’” Blythe tells Billboard via Zoom from his home in Richmond, Va. “But my literary agent was like, ‘No, you need to write another non-fiction book to prove to publishers that you’re not just a one-trick pony, contingent on this very kind of bizarre and unfortunate story.’ And I was like, ‘OK, he’s the literary agent, so I’m gonna follow his advice.’ But I didn’t really know what I wanted to write about. This book was more difficult to write than my first one.”
Dark Days focused on Blythe’s legal battles in the Czech Republic, where he was arrested in 2012 and hit with manslaughter charges over the death of a fan at a 2010 Lamb of God show in Prague; he was acquitted in 2013. “(Dark Days) had a classic three-act narrative structure provided by that unfortunate even in my life. This one it was more, ‘Here’s an idea. Let’s see what happens.’ So it was a different experience.”
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In Just Beyond the Light: Making Peace With the Wars Inside Our Head (Grand Central) — which published Tuesday (Feb. 18) – Blythe offers a series of essays about what Blythe calls “perspective” on mortality, sobriety, creativity, mental health, the environment and other issues. “I knew I wanted to write about death. I knew I wanted to write about surfing — that’s another thing that has broadened my perspective in life and really made my life better,” Blythe says. “So death and surfing, which I thought would be a good book title. And I just kinda went from there.”
Just Beyond the Light begins with a chapter devoted to Blythe’s relationship with Wayne Ford, a Lamb of God fan dealing with terminal leukemia who passed away at 33.
“The ultimate fear of every human is our mortality, really,” Blythe explains. “I befriended (Ford) during the last month or two of his life, and the way he handed his mortality was extremely…I hate to use the word inspiring, but it was. I had this honest, open sort of relationship with him when we were talking, and to see this young man handle it with such grace and dignity, it really altered my perspective.
“I’m almost 54 years old now. Mortality is staring me more and more in the face, and it’s something I think about a lot. And it doesn’t freak me out; I view it as something not to be afraid of because it’s going to happen to us all inevitably. But I knew I wanted to write about that.”
Mortality provides a thread throughout the Just Beyond the Light, as does discourses on sobriety, which Blythe achieved more than a decade ago. “I wouldn’t have these perspectives if I wasn’t sober now,” he notes. “I wouldn’t have any perspective, period, because I think I’d be dead by now — to bring it back to mortality. My drinking, it got in the way of everything because I bought into the sort of cultural mythos of the hard drinking, hard drugging, hard partying artist for awhile.
“I didn’t become an author until I got sober. I talked about being a writer. I did all the things that (Charles) Bukowski and (Ernest) Hemingway and Hunter S. Thompson did. I drank and partied and womanized, got in a few fights. I did all the things those great writers did — except writing. I was practicing to be a writer I suppose, but when I got sober I was able to become the writer I’m supposed to be.”
In other parts of Just Beyond the Light, Blythe uses a stay at the Chelsea Hotel in New York to ruminate on songwriting and other forms of creativity, while the chapter before laments the epidemic of school shootings in the United States and the lack of effective measures to prevent them. There are plenty of viewpoints in the book that may butt up against social and political sensibilities that have surfaced in the country during the past month, but Blythe (acknowledging that “I’m strapped in, it’s going to be a bumpy ride”) is ready to have those conversations when he begins a 15-date speaking tour to promote the book.
“I’m very much interested in conversations,” he says. “I think that is a problem within our culture now, that lack of dialogue. And for me, I think that dialogue can only effectively occur in a face-to-face setting, because I think that within the confines of the Internet there’s a tendency towards tribalization…and to view others almost as less than human. It’s us and them, and our common humanity is lost and people are just typing slogans at each other — from both the left and the right, as far as I can tell. There’s no discourse, and that’s extremely distressing to me.”
Those appearances will be anything but rote, Blythe promises.
“I’m not gonna be reading; they could just stay home and do that,” he says. “I’m gonna get up there and tell stories from outside the book. I want all the stories to service the main theme of the book, which is perspective. I’ve never done it before, so it’s gonna be an interesting experiment for me. We’ll see what happens.”
Beyond the book, Blythe says Lamb of God — marking its 30th year since he joined the band, then known as Burn the Priest, and independently released its first demo tape — is headed for a “light” year after heavy touring in the wake of 2022’s Omens album. Guitarist Mark Morton also wrote a memoir, Desolation: A Heavy Metal Memoir, for which Blythe provided assistance as well as a cover photo. (“His book is more of a Lamb of God retrospective,” Blythe says, “which I think is cool ’cause I don’t want to write that. I’m glad he did the heavy lifting.”) Blythe also made guest appearances on recent albums by P.O.D. and Lacuna Coil.
The band, meanwhile, will be playing festivals — Inkcarceration in Ohio and Louder Than Life in Kentucky — but Blythe and company are most excited about being on the bill for the Back To The Beginning on July 5 in Birmingham, England, where Ozzy Osbourne and the original lineup of Black Sabbath will play its final show supported by a who’s who of heavy metal and hard rock acts.
“It’s an incredible honor to be asked to do this,” says Blythe, adding that Lamb of God will be performing one of its own songs and one Black Sabbath song, which is already chosen, though he won’t reveal what it is. “Black Sabbath was the first metal band, and we are going to their home town, which is the birthplace of heavy metal, to give them the best send-off we can. And it’s awesome it’s going to charity. I think all the bands are pretty emotional about it. All of us have Black Sabbath’s DNA in our music. They are the tree from which we have all fallen. And this is the last one; Ozzy has Parkinson’s, so it’s not like the endless Kiss farewell tour. This is it. So we want to go and give them the best send-off as possible and just show respect and thank them.”
Just Beyonce The Light
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The dates for Blythe’s book tour supporting Just Beyond the Light include:Feb. 19 – Philadelphia, Pa, Underground ArtsFeb. 21 – Harrisonburg, Va., The Golden PonyFeb. 23 – Somerville, Mass., Arts at the ArmoryFeb. 25 – Montreal, Quebec, Théâtre FairmountFeb. 26 – Toronto, Ontario, Red Room at The Concert HallFeb. 28 – Lansing, Mich., Grewal Hall at 224March 01 – Joliet, Ill., The ForgeMarch 03 – Nashville, Tenn., The Basement EastMarch 04 – Dallas, Texas Granada TheaterMarch 05 – Austin, Texas, ParishMarch 07 – Denver, Colo., Meow WolfMarch 09 – Seattle, Wash., El CorazonMarch 12 – San Francisco, Calif., The IndependentMarch 13 – Los Angeles, Calif., El Rey TheatreMarch 14 – San Diego, Calif., House of Blues
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Once upon a time, MSNBC host Michael Steele was a diehard Republican. In fact, the former lieutenant governor of Maryland was the chair of the Republican National Committee for four years, from 2003 to 2007.
But things have changed over the last two decades, and these days, Steele is not only over the party that long abandoned him (after discovering he was more moderate than conservative, which is not the way they like their sunken place “Black friends”), but he’s completely fed up with the MAGA-fied GOP as well as the Democrats who have failed to stop them from making white nationalism great again.
On Saturday, after Alicia Menendez, Steele’s co-host on MSNBC’s The Weekend, read from a report from The Nation stating the courts cannot “save us,” during a discussion on whether the courts can rein in Trump and his perceived puppet master, Elon Musk, who have essentially turned the federal government into their own personal Project 2025 execution station.
“What would you have us do?” co-host Symone Sanders-Townsend asked Steele after he went all the way off on feckless Democrats during the discussion.
“I would like you to show that you give a damn!” he shot back.
“That you got a little emotion about the fact that people are losing their jobs indiscriminately,” Steele continued. “That this individual sitting down [in] the 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has given absolute power to one man who brings his son into the Oval Office, whose son says to him, ‘You’re not the president, you shouldn’t be in that chair.’ Now, where did he get that from? He got it from his daddy, because that’s what his daddy thinks of the man who brought him into the Oval Office. So I’d just like to see somebody wake the hell up and get excited about the fact that your country is under assault! They’re not at the gate anymore, they’re in your bedrooms they’re in your living rooms, they’re in your businesses, they got your data, dumbasses, they got all your stuff.”
Steele continued his rant with more harsh words for Musk.
“Elon Musk has his tentacles in everything you’re doing, not just off of X, but now he’s in the Treasury Department, he’s in the Labor Department, he’s in the Department of Homeland Security and nobody seems to give a damn,” he said. “So that’s all I want. Somebody to show that they care enough to get off their fat ass and say something about it.”
Mendez attempted to steer Steele’s ire back to the Republican party where the bulk of it belongs, and that’s when Steele made his feelings about his former party clear and unmistakeable.
“The hell with Republicans! They’re not going to do anything, they’re the problem!” he exclaimed.
So, what do y’all think? Is Steele right to highlight Democratic complicity in Trump and Musk’s MAGA regime, or are the Dems being unfairly blamed for Trump’s second term? Let us know what you think in the comments.
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Eddie Murphy’s impression of Tracy Morgan during “Black Jeopardy” proved to be a major hit on Saturday Night Live’s 50th anniversary special.
The iconic comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live celebrated 50 years on the air last Sunday (February 16), with one of its highlights being the return of “Black Jeopardy” featuring SNL veteran Kenan Thompson hosting as Darnell Hayes aka “Alex Treblack”. Eddie Murphy stole the show, appearing as Tracy Morgan while the real Morgan stood alongside him playing a man named Darius. Another SNL alum, Leslie Jones also played a contestant named Shanice.
“Welcome to ‘Black Jeopardy,’ the only ‘Jeopardy’ where every single viewer fully understood Kendrick’s halftime performance,” Thompson said, opening with a reference to Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime show. As he introduced Eddie Murphy, who was dressed in a tracksuit similar to what Morgan wears, Murphy yelled out in an exaggerated voice uncannily like Morgan’s, “Big dog gonna make some big money!”
“Now wait a minute, Tracy. Don’t you already have a lot of money?” Thompson asked. “You gotta have a lot of money if you live like I live,” Murphy shot back. “I eat four-cheese lasagna. If they only got three cheeses, I ain’t eating it.” As Thompson tried to cut him short, Murphy stated, “I refuse to ingest three cheeses.” The sketch took another hilarious turn soon after.
“Darius, Tracy, y’all seem like you might be related,” Thompson said to Murphy, who replied: “Well, James Earl Jones is my biological father. James Earl Jones impregnated my mother on the set of ‘Claudine.’ You know what? We might be related.” The late James Earl Jones played Murphy’s father in the Coming To America movies. Morgan, dressed in a checkered short-sleeve shirt immediately replied looking annoyed, “I don’t see it.”
The sketch would take a couple more memorable comedic turns, with another SNL alum Chris Rock joining in for one question, joking that he was a fan since the 1970s when the show was called “Mama’s Got Questions”. His question asked the contestants to identify the Church Lady, a character fellow alum Dana Carvey played in the 1980s and 1990s. The answer was supplied by Tom Hanks, popping up as Doug, a MAGA supporter who he first portrayed on “Black Jeopardy” in 2016. MAGA Land didn’t like that.
Check out the entire segment above.
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Drake will be back outside this summer; especially in London. He will headline all three nights of The Wireless Festival.
Drake will be taking his talents back to The Big Smoke. On Sunday, Feb. 16 the popular music festival confirmed Drizzy will headline each evening of the three-day concert series but as expected there is a unique twist. According to the Instagram announcement, Drake will perform a different set each time making the three evenings distinctive.
To add to the excitement, Drake will be joined by different friends and guests each night.
For the first night on Jul. 11 he will be joined by PARTYNEXTDOOR and Summer Walker. Drake seems to keeping the details of his second night close to the chest with “THE MANDEM” (UK slang for a group of guys) as the only details shared about Jul. 12. The closing night he will be joined by Burna Boy and Vybz Kartel. The 2025 Wireless Festival will take place at Finsbury Park in London. The general sale for tickets starts Wednesday Feb. 19 at 12pm GMT. You can find more information on it here.
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Source: Bryan Bedder / Getty / DJ Khaled
Out of all the rumors surrounding Rockstar Games’ highly anticipated video game GTA 6, gamers hope this one in particular is pure C A P.
Spotted on Gamespot, word on the video game streets is that you will reportedly be hearing DJ Khaled screaming “WE THE BEST” and dishing out major keys in GTA 6 because the music producer will host his own radio station in the game.
A prominent Call of Duty insider named The Ghost of Hope on X, formerly Twitter, shared some inside information on the GTA 6 and claims the “Wild Thoughts’ crafter will host an in-game station.
“DJ Khaled will feature in Grand Theft Auto 6 to host his very own music station that will also play his songs,” Hope wrote in a post. “There is potential for other real-life artists to be included as well on their own radio stations.”
This concept isn’t new to the Grand Theft Auto video game franchise. Music artists and their music have been featured on the game’s radio stations, which play a significant role in the gameplay. The game will be heading to Leonida, GTA’s hilarious take on the state of Florida—and its Miami-inspired Vice City.
Gamers Are Not Excited About DJ Khaled Being In GTA 6
Still, that doesn’t mean people have to be hyped about this news because, based on the reactions, gamers are not jumping for joy at the idea of DJ Khaled’s alleged involvement in GTA 6.
“Thanks to rockstar’s kindness they gave dj khaled his own radio channel, so his music doesn’t show up on the good stations,” one post on X read.
Another post stated, “No one asked for this.”
It’s clear DJ Khaled’s presence, voice, and likeness are not wanted in GTA 6, and we totally understand. If this news is true, we know which station will be the least popular of them all.
You can see more reactions in the gallery below.
1. Lol, bruh
3. Howling
4. Now why would you say a thing like this?
5. Pretty much
6. HA HA HA
10. Nah chill
12. Nah chill