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Brandon Lake’s “That’s Who I Praise” continues its domination on Billboard’s Christian Airplay chart (dated Feb. 15) as it reigns for a 10th week. It drew 5.2 million in audience Jan. 31-Feb. 6, according to Luminate.
The song ties for the longest rule of the decade. Housefires and JWLKRS’ “I Thank God,” featuring Blake Wiggins and Ryan Ellis, began its 10-week stay at No. 1 in December 2023.
Meanwhile, Lake has a stake in one of the songs tied for second place. Elevation Worship’s “Praise” —— featuring Lake, Chris Brown and Chandler Moore — ruled for nine frames beginning last May; Katy Nichole’s “In Jesus’ Name (God of Possible)” started its own nine-week No. 1 run in April 2022.
Since the Christian Airplay survey launched in June 2003, the longest-leading No. 1 overall is MercyMe’s “Word of God Speak,” which dominated for 23 weeks starting that August.
The 34-year-old Lake, from Charleston, S.C., co-authored “That’s Who I Praise” with Steven Furtick, Benjamin William Hastings, Zac Lawson and Micah Nichols, the lattermost of whom also produced it. It became Lake’s fourth Christian Airplay chart-topper.
“I’m completely blown away,” Lake beamed to Billboard when the single hit No. 1 on the multimetric Hot Christian Songs chart in October. “To hear that this song is connecting with so many hearts out there is humbling and just unreal.”
Dewand’s First No. 1
On Gospel Airplay, Jevon Dewand’s rookie single, “Without You,” featuring Zacardi Cortez, Gasner the Artist and Jazze Pha, climbs 3-1 (up 12% in plays).
The Atlanta-based Dewand co-wrote and co-produced the song. It’s is the lead single from his same-named album, released last June.
“Without You” becomes the first Gospel Airplay leader for Dewand, Gasner the Artist and Jazze Pha, while veteran Cortez banks his seventh No. 1.
The song marks the first freshman entry to lead Gospel Airplay since Will Smith’s turn toward the genre with “You Can Make It,” featuring Fridayy and Sunday Service, led for a week in December. It became the first No. 1 for all three acts.
Over the past year or so, Jelly Roll has been open about his dedication to working to transform his health. Last year, he ran his first 5K, taking part in Tom Segura and Bert Kreischer’s 2 Bears 5K.
Now, the country star is gearing up to run his second 5K race in May in Tampa, Fla, and he’s intent on helping others who also want to change their health for the better. The “Halfway to Hell” singer told fans on Instagram Feb. 11 that he is launching Jelly Roll’s Losers Run Club as he gears up for the race.
In the video, he also told fans just how much his poor health was impacting his daily life, and how that inspired him to want to change.
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“A little bit over a year ago, I literally struggled to walk down my hill to the mailbox, y’all. I mean, it was really bad,” Jelly Roll said in the video. “And I’d let myself get to the point of being absolutely just disgusted with myself. I was just sick and tired of it, and I was like, ‘Man, I’m gonna figure this out. And about the time I was trying to find something to motivate me, I saw that Tom Segura had teased doing a 5K By May, and I knew right then that if there was ever a place that I was gonna feel safe trying to do my first 5K, it was going to be at the 2 Bears 5K.”
As he launches Jelly Roll’s Losers Run Club, the star said he’s launching a Facebook group, and has teamed with the Strava app to help others train for the race and stay motivated. Jelly Roll’s trainer Ian Larios will be helping people who take part with lifestyle, nutrition and exercise coaching. Meanwhile, ultramarathoner Matthew Johnson put together two plan options — one for beginners, as well as an intermediate plan — for partakers to train for the race.
“Matthew Johnson has the fastest time running across the state of Texas,” Jelly Roll said in the video. “This man is an absolute machine. I love everything about him, the fact that he is dedicating the next 12 weeks of his life to try and help me and a bunch of people like myself to run in a 5K.”
“What we are trying to inspire here is just change and belief and community,” Jelly Roll summarized of the group’s mission. “Somewhere where you can go and feel judgment-free when you’re trying to figure this thing out. I know how rough it was at first and how embarrassed I was to just be sucking snot and air every time I walked down the driveway. But it felt so good to have friends and people behind me, telling me I was doing the right thing. … I believe that we can create huge change right here. I believe a huge group of people can come together right here and encourage each other to become what they always dreamed they could be.”
Watch Jelly Roll announce his Losers Run Club below:
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Whether it’s her career or scorching hot sauce, Lady Gaga isn’t a quitter. And after conquering the Wings of Death on a new episode of Hot Ones posted Thursday (Feb. 13), the superstar got deep about the times she pushed through the urge to “walk away” from her career.
After conducting a life- and career-spanning interview with Gaga about her music, technique and rise from struggling New York City club performer to global icon — all the while the “Rain on Me” singer took bites of increasingly spicy chicken like a champ — host Sean Evans had just one more question for his latest guest to close out the interview. “What’s the closest you’ve ever come to walking away?” he asked.
“That is an incredibly deep question to ask me in this panic mode,” Gaga replied, blinking through the pain of the lingering, peppery heat.
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“I missed the community that I had in New York, and that was really hard,” she continued, reflecting on her days as a performer at Manhattan venues such as The Slipper Room. “There were definitely times where I felt like maybe I should walk away.”
“I know for sure that I never would,” the musician added. “I would definitely say that I was tested, and I always didn’t give up. And I’m still doing it, so it must mean I want to do it.”
Gaga’s stint on Hot Ones comes just a few weeks ahead of her highly anticipated seventh studio album, Mayhem, which arrives March 7. Following singles “Disease” and Bruno Mars duet “Die With a Smile” — which is currently on its fifth week at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — the A Star Is Born actress shared a third single, “Abracadabra,” during the 2025 Grammys broadcast Feb. 2.
Speaking of the Grammys, Gaga and the Silk Sonic star also took home some new hardware at the ceremony, winning best pop duo/group performance for “Die With a Smile.” The win marked Gaga’s 14th total — meaning she’s come a long way since the early days of her career when she may have wanted to throw in the towel. Reflecting more on how she got her start, Gaga also confessed to Evans that she used to call booking reps for venues pretending to be her own manager. “I’d be like, ‘She is so hot right now,’” she recalled, laughing.
Watch Lady Gaga’s Hot Ones episode above.
Want to ruin a friendship? Just tell your bestie that you don’t like the person they’re dating.
Most people learn that lesson the hard way somewhere in their teens or 20s. And Broken Bow artist Lanie Gardner, by writing “Buzzkill” about a guy’s difficult girlfriend, has discovered that saying it in a song can create the same negative outcome.
“I guess he still had some sort of feelings for this girl, so before it ever came out, it ended a friendship with him,” Gardner recalls.
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Oddly enough, the guy misread the song’s story. “Once he left that girl, the new girl – he thought it was about her,” Gardner continues. “When he left that [new] girl, it kind of revived a friendship. But it was just funny how that song has caused some ripples in real life.”
“Buzzkill” is the product of a writing session on Jan. 30, 2024, at the East Nashville home of writer-producers Katie Cecil and Chris Ganoudis. It was only the second time they’d collaborated; their first co-write had produced an emotionally dramatic piece, and they wanted to explore something different in their follow-up session. As they settled in with conversation, Gardner confessed her annoyance about a woman whose attachment to another friend had become an intrusion on her crew.
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“Literally, we would all be having fun, you know, out and drinking, and she would come around and she would start fights and mess with him the whole day,” Gardner says. “I just remember thinking, ‘Man, what a buzzkill.’”
Gardner hadn’t intended to build a song around the situation, but when she introduced that “buzzkill” phrase into the conversation, it made an immediate impression. “I was like, ‘Let me write that down,’” Cecil says. “You know, sometimes you kind of catch the title in the middle of someone’s venting session.”
The scenario had comedic possibilities, so Ganoudis developed a fast-paced mix of acoustic guitar rhythms and programmed 808 bass drum. It felt a little like rockabilly and a lot like the energy of KT Tunstall’s “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree,” and the track set an atmosphere that encouraged cheeky observation. The woman is portrayed derisively in the song’s opening salvos as a “Barbie doll, show stopper, beauty queen” and a condescending “Miss Hollywood takin’ over Tennessee.” Cecil and Ganoudis relocated from California about four years ago, and exaggerating about the women in the story came naturally.
“For lyrical purposes, you kind of have to make things the most dramatic version of themselves, to make it fun to sing and to drive the point home,” Cecil says. “So we were comparing this girl to the most insufferable L.A.-type girl you might come across who’s moved to Nashville but clearly just doesn’t fit in.”
Unlike Gardner and the “Buzzkill” woman, Gardner and Cecil worked well together, hunkering down on the song’s spirited lyrics. Ganoudis pulled on headphones and focused on the track separately, building the verses in a minor key and the chorus in a parallel major.
“You can’t sing the verse melodies over the chorus, or chorus melodies over the verse,” Ganoudis says.That brighter-sounding chorus allowed for more acerbic talk, and the protagonist insists on giving her friend an honest assessment of his girl: “They ain’t gonna say it but you bet your ass I will/ Yeah, buddy, she’s a buzzkill.”
“It’s not good to hate on people,” Gardner observes, “but it’s sometimes good to maybe call certain actions out.”
When they finished writing “Buzzkill,” Ganoudis supplied a track with plenty of energy, created by a spare number of instruments. But those sounds were routinely fattened, making the day’s production sound larger. “I’m really kind of minimalist in in my approach a lot of the times,” Ganoudis notes. “It’s just maximizing each one of those parts, so having less parts that do more, so that the bass is saturated in a way to make it take up the room that I want it to take up.”
Gardner laid down a vocal for it, caught up in the story’s surly sarcasm. “We did go back in and tighten some things up, but we were just such in a zone with ‘Buzzkill’ the day we wrote it, we didn’t have to recut the vocals again,” Gardner says.
Ganoudis took his time finishing the demo, turning it on Feb. 12 once he felt it was good enough to compete with anything else Gardner might be considering.
“When the labels are hearing it and the management’s hearing it, that’s a reflection of what we do,” Cecil explains. “That’s always good to get it sounding where we feel super confident that it will be a contender for a release.”
Ganoudis filled “Buzzkill” out further, playing nearly all the instruments on his own, while creating a framework with some intentional, built-in contrast.
“It’s kind of like a middle-up, middle-down approach,” he says. “The middle-down frequency spectrum of the track is pretty pop, you know. It’s got 808, it’s got a sample kick [drum] – like, there’s no live drummer on this thing. But then the top up is pretty honky tonk. That’s all live, you know. There’s no programming on the top up, with the guitars, and there’s some steel and all that.”
Ganoudis hired guitarist Gideon Boley to rip a fierce solo in the middle of the production, and Gardner returned to stack some tight harmonies on top of her original vocal. She threw in a bundle of ad-libs, too, including an off-the-cuff “one more for the people in the back” that adds to the glibness of the performance.
“That’s honestly one of my favorite parts of the song,” Cecil says. “I was like, ‘We gotta put that in there.’”SiriusXM picked it up, German choreographer Sascha Wolf developed a linedance for it, and Jonathan Craig produced a pool-hall video, released Feb. 3, that plays up the out-of-place snobbery of the buzzkill girlfriend. And just in case country broadcasters decide “Buzzkill” can aid their undying desire for more uptempo singles, Ganoudis fashioned a radio edit that replaces the “ass” reference in the chorus with a sneaky “whoop!”
Meanwhile, the friendship that “Buzzkill” killed appears to have survived, in part because the friend’s second relationship did not.
“All of a sudden,” Gardner says with a laugh, “we’re friends again.”
The Penske Media Corporation (PMC) announced its expansive slate of experiences and concerts at this year’s SXSW festival on Thursday (Feb. 13). The lineup of activations from PMC’s iconic brands — Billboard, Rolling Stone, Deadline, Variety, SHE Media, Sportico and The American Pavilion — will include panel discussion, concerts, fireside chats and must-see experiences during the annual conference and festival that will take place in Austin, TX this year from March 7-15.
The festivities will kick off on March 7-9 with Deadline‘s Deadline Studio and the On the Go with Deadline social activation at the Thompson Hotel, with to-be-announced talent stopping by for on-camera interviews and solo and group portraits.
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SHE Media will also set up house from March 7-9 for its Co-Lab event at 304 E. 3rd Street for a series of conversations about women’s holistic health featuring women’s health advocates, actors, comedians and specialists including: Chelsea Handler, Naomi Watts, Christy Turlington Burns, Dr. Jennifer Ashton, Tamsen Fadal, Scott Galloway, Stacy London, Emma Lovewell and Sophia Bush, among others.
Variety will host a live podcast taping with partner YouTube on March 8 with Hot Ones host Sean Evans and Variety Awards Editor Clayton Davis, followed by a March 9 screening and cocktail reception for the documentary Reef Builders: The Unlikely Partnership Restoring Coral and a panel discussion with actor Auli’i Cravalho, director/producer Stephen Shearman and others.
Sportico will host the two-day Sportico House (March 11-12) at Wanderlust Wine Co., which will feature top industry professionals dropping in for panels and live podcast tapings exploring the intersection of sports, media and business along with networking opportunities.
Rolling Stone will be back at SXSW for its third-annual Future of Music showcase presented by JBL, for a four-night (March 11-14) concert series featuring an as-yet-unannounced group of artists performing at ACL Live at the Moody Theater.
In addition, Billboard‘s THE STAGE at SXSW will return as well for three nights (March 13-15) of live performances at the Moody Amphitheater at Waterloo Park, with each night highlighting a different musical genre. The party will kick off with county singer Koe Wetzel on night one, followed by Música Mexicana stars Grupo Frontera on March 14 and a closing-night set from dance star John Summit.
The American Pavilion will return for year two of its Worldwide Student Program — which last year gave 12 students access to some influential industry events — expanding its scope in 2025 to six days of “thought leadership programming and expert discussions” from creators in the worlds of film and TV.
Billboard’s parent company PMC is the largest shareholder of SXSW and its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
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With all the Nike and Air Jordan retro sneakers set to return in 2025 that has sneakerheads all in their feelings (and pockets), Nike is continuing to up the ante as they’re bringing back a new classic Air Jordan in a new colorway.
According to Highsnobiety, the skateboard Nike SB x Air Jordan 4 is set to return later this year but instead of the pine green and red colorway that we went crazy for in 2022, this iteration will be donning a “Midnight Navy” blue colorway that’s sure to be a bigger hit than it’s predecessor. Though there have been pictures of other SB 4’s circling the internet including and all-black version along with a red and grey sample, rumors of the blue Air Jordan 4 SB’s dropping next was well-known for quite some time.
Now that it seems like that does seem to be the case, many sneakerheads are anxiously awaiting a release date and stock numbers as collaborations like this tend to be highly sought after with limited product being available upon release days.
Per Highsnobiety:
The skate sneaker is set to get its second release and it has adopted navy blue paneling for the occasion. It’s not quite the original Military Blue AJ4, but it looks mighty similar.
And the similarities between this shoe and the OG Jordan 4 from 1989 go beyond just the colorway: it’s also in the shape of the shoe. Nike SB and Jordan tweaked the AJ4 design so that the shape around the toe box was more aligned with that of the original ‘89 model.
This update wasn’t made purely for aesthetic reasons (although, sneakerheads are notorious for moaning that the new-shape models don’t look as good), it’s to help the bubble-soled basketball shoe skate better. The new (well, old) toebox makes for a better flick according to Nike.
As many sneakerheads have learned over the years, the Air Jordan 4 is easily one of the most painful sneakers to wear all day regardless of how fly it compliments the entire fit. That’s why the Nike SB model was such a hit amongst the sneaker community and not only was it a comfortable pair of kicks, but roomy as well. It got to the point where it’s said that Nike ultimately decided to use their updated model for future Air Jordan 4 releases.
Now that we’re getting a new colorway of the SB 4’s, you can bet your bottom dollar these will be tough as nails to come by whenever release date rolls around.
Check out pics of the upcoming “Midnight Navy” Air Jordan 4 SB’s below and let us know if you’ll be checking for them when they drop in the comments section.
A Manhattan federal judge has tossed out a sexual assault lawsuit against Russell Simmons on grounds that he now lives in Indonesia, but legal problems still abound for the Def Jam co-founder.
In a decision issued Tuesday, Judge John Koeltl ruled that Simmons had shown by “clear and convincing evidence” that he is now a permanent resident of the Indonesian island of Bali, meaning his federal court lacked required form of jurisdiction to hear the case.
The ruling is a setback for the unnamed Jane Doe plaintiff, who sued Simmons last year over accusations that he raped her in the 1990s while she served as an executive at Def Jam. But the case can likely be re-filed in state court, where it would potentially not face the same issues.
In a statement to Billboard on Thursday, her attorneys vowed to do so – claiming Simmons was trying to “dodge accountability for his reprehensible behavior and escape litigation on procedural grounds.”
“From the beginning of this case, Simmons has claimed to be a stateless citizen domiciled in Bali, despite building his life and career in New York and taking advantage of his clear ties to the state when it benefits him,” said Kenya Davis, a lawyer at the firm Boies Schiller Flexner. “Our plaintiff is not deterred by this gamesmanship. We respect the judge’s decision, and we will see Mr. Simmons in New York state court.”
In his own statement, an attorney for Simmons praised the judge’s decision to dismiss the case: “Our justice system is based on rules and procedures,” said David Fish an attorney at the law firm Romano Law. “We are pleased that the court followed the rules of civil procedure and case law related to who can be brought into court.”
Asked about whether the case would continue in state court, Fish said: “I can’t predict what plaintiff’s counsel will do going forward.”
Simmons, who founded Def Jam Recordings in 1984 and later built a formidable hip hop empire, has faced a slew of abuse allegations since 2017 — first in an investigative article by the New York Times, then in a 2020 documentary film that featured interviews with numerous alleged victims.
Last year, Simmons was hit with two lawsuits over such claims. The first came from the Jane Doe at the center of this week’s ruling, who says that she was serving as a successful music video producer when she was “sexually harassed, assaulted, sexually battered, and raped by her boss.”
The other case came from Drew Dixon, a former A&R at Def Jam who accused Simmons of rape in both the Times article and the documentary. In her February 2024 lawsuit, Dixon accused Simmons of defaming her by suggesting during an interview that she was lying about the incident.
That case remains pending. Simmons had moved to dismiss Dixon’s lawsuit at the outset on free speech grounds, but that request was denied by a judge last week, sending the case toward more litigation and an eventual trial.
Simmons also faces additional litigation from three other accusers — Tina Klein-Baker, Toni Sallie and Alexia Norton Jones – who alleged in New York court filings last month that the hip hop mogul had reneged on confidential settlements that separately required him to pay them a total of nearly $8 million.
2 Chainz was one of the Atlanta artists Kendrick Lamar named in the third verse of “Not Like Us” who had worked with Drake in the past before proceeding to call him “not a colleague” but a “colonizer.” And now, the “Watch Out” rapper is sharing his thoughts on the mention.
Chainz stopped by The Breakfast Club on Wednesday (Feb. 12) with Larry June and The Alchemist in support of their Life Is Beautiful album, and Charlamagne Tha God asked the rapper formerly known as Tity Boi about Lamar name-dropping him on the Drake diss that arrived last May.
“I just think it was kind of like some wordplay, ’cause Drake and I got a song called ‘No Lie,’” said the rapper, who has teamed up with Drizzy in the past for other tracks, including “All Me,” “Big Amount,” “F–kin’ Problems” and more. “And so when he said he lied, it just felt like, I don’t know, but I didn’t take it as no kind of way. I don’t think he was taking a shot at me.”
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He continued: “I’ve heard all type of instances where somebody want me to say something back. I just think it was a moment where it was about Atlanta artists.”
On the Grammy-winning track, which went on to top the Billboard Hot 100 and break the record for most weeks atop the Hot Rap Songs chart, Lamar rhymes: “2 Chainz say you good, but he lied/ You run to Atlanta when you need a few dollars/ No, you not a colleague, you a f—in’ colonizer.”
June, meanwhile, said he hasn’t heard “Not Like Us” in its entirety. “I never heard that full song,” he said. “I f–k with everybody. I just didn’t particularly hear that song fully. I heard a lot of it on Instagram and stuff like that. But I was doing the album with him at the time, so I wasn’t really listening to too much s–t like that.”
The Alchemist, who produced “Meet the Grahams,” expanded on how the diabolical Drake diss came to be, noting it was actually built around a gospel sample. “Yeah, that’s a gospel record. Yeah, the sample was,” he said. “I wanna be Switzerland really. Leave me out of it, but they end up making me the battleground … I had sent the record to Dot months before that happened and I heard it when everyone else heard it.”
Watch 2 Chainz, Larry June and The Alchemist talk about “Not Like Us” on The Breakfast Club below:
Mufasa: The Lion King is set to hit digital retailers this month, and to celebrate all the bonus content that will become available for fans to enjoy, Billboard is sharing an exclusive clip that finds two of the creative forces behind the live-action musical reminiscing on their early Lion King memories. Explore Explore See latest […]
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Kendrick Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance was already historic, but it was his background dancer, Zul Qarnain, who stole the spotlight with a powerful political statement. As Kendrick rocked the stage, Zul used the massive platform of the Super Bowl to bring attention to the ongoing suffering in Gaza and Sudan.
Standing on top of a car, Zul pulled out both a Sudanese and Palestinian flag and waved them proudly, sending a clear message of solidarity. However, his peaceful protest was short-lived as security quickly tackled him and escorted him off the field. While he wasn’t arrested or charged with anything major, Zul was banned from attending any NFL events for life.
Zul Qarnain is no stranger to activism. He is the owner of the Open Book Platform, an initiative that unites Muslims and promotes peace. In his work, Zul has continuously tried to bridge divides, and he recently made headlines by visiting one of America’s most dangerous neighborhoods, Chicago’s “O-Block,” to reduce violence and help people turn toward faith.
His Super Bowl protest, though controversial, was an extension of his lifelong mission to raise awareness and encourage peace in places that need it most. Despite the consequences, Zul’s actions sparked conversation around global issues and demonstrated his commitment to using his platform for positive change.
Check out Hip-Hop Wired’s full conversation with Zul Qarnain: