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R. Kelly is asking to cut short his 30-plus-year sentence for racketeering, sexual abuse and child pornography based on strange new claims that jail officials tried to solicit a fellow inmate to kill him.
The disgraced R&B star made the eyebrow-raising allegations in a Tuesday (June 10) court filing asking to be released from the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, N.C., where he’s serving multiple decades after being convicted in two separate criminal cases.
Kelly claims he’s no longer safe behind bars because prison officials are trying to have him killed to keep from revealing prosecutorial misconduct he recently uncovered — namely, that his pre-trial cellmate stole his attorney-client communications and shared these private messages with prosecutors.
According to the motion, prison officials tried to stop this damaging information from getting out by soliciting fellow inmate Mikeal Glenn Stine, a member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang, to kill Kelly. Kelly’s lawyers say that while Stine ultimately did not go through with the alleged assignment, the threat still lingers.
“More A.B. members are accumulating at his facility,” reads the filing. “More than one has already been approached about carrying out his murder. One of them will surely do what Mr. Stine has not, thereby burying the truth about what happened in this case along with Robert Kelly.”
The motion includes signed declarations from both Stine and Kelly’s former cellmate. In a statement shared with Billboard, Kelly’s attorney, Beau Brindley, said, “The evidence we have before us demonstrates the weaponization of the D.O.J. to pursue a public figure through corrupt and criminal means.”
Brindley added that Kelly’s legal team is seeking clemency from President Donald Trump, saying Trump “is the only one with both the power and the courage” to curb such alleged prosecutorial corruption.
Prosecutors did not immediately return a request for comment on the motion, but they quickly filed papers of their own asking Judge Martha M. Pacold to strike Kelly’s filing, which contained the name of a child victim who was anonymized during his trial.
“Robert Kelly is a serial sexual predator,” wrote prosecutors. “He even documented his sexual abuse of children on film — creating child pornography — such that the abuse would live on in perpetuity. That abuse and harassment continues with defendant’s latest filing.”
Judge Pacold struck the motion as requested and ordered Kelly’s team to refile it with the victim’s name properly redacted. The judge set a hearing on the matter for Wednesday (June 11) in Chicago.
Kelly was convicted of a slew of sex crimes at two separate federal trials. A New York jury found him guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking in 2021, and he was convicted of child pornography and enticing minors for sex in Chicago in 2022.
The former R&B star was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the New York conviction and 20 years in the Chicago case, although the vast majority of the second sentence will overlap with the first. Both convictions have been upheld on appeal.
Thanks to a decadeslong love of Frank Sinatra and a relationship with his family that started when Frank Sinatra Jr. guest-starred on Family Guy, Seth MacFarlane was entrusted with a gold mine of never-released material arranged for the late crooner that has become his just-released ninth studio album, Lush Life: The Lost Sinatra Arrangements.
“If you’re an aficionado of this kind of music, it’s like being a Lennon-McCartney fan and finding something that was written in like 1969 that was just never played,” MacFarlane tells Billboard‘s Pop Shop Podcast of Frank’s daughter, Tina Sinatra, approaching him with the opportunity to dig into 1,200 archival boxes of unrecorded sheet music arranged specifically for her dad. “And you hear it, and it’s like, ‘My God.’
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“You know, the songs that we have are the songs that we have from his discography; obviously he’s gone, the arrangers are gone, so there’s nothing new. And then all of a sudden, it’s like, ‘Oh, you know what? There’s one more cookie at the bottom of the bag.’”
Listen to MacFarlane’s full interview in the new Pop Shop Podcast episode below:
Below, find highlights from our conversation with MacFarlane, and listen to the full chat in the podcast above.
Did Seth know these songs before digging in?
In many cases, no one has ever heard of them, because they just didn’t exist. There’s a song called “Who’s in Your Arms Tonight” — you could travel to the ends of the earth before we did this, and you would not find a single person who knows that song, because it just was never recorded, and everyone involved with this writing is long gone. … We asked the oldest guys in the band — I mean, our bassist played for Frank Sinatra for years in the last part of his life, and he had no idea what this was. So about a third of the songs on the album are songs in which both the song and the arrangement are just completely unknown.
What stood out in these unreleased arrangements?
Particularly in the case of [Sinatra arranger] Nelson Riddle, you could instantly hear his signature trademarks, like those flutes. And that was what was so interesting. There was no question who wrote this, but it was new. It was familiar stylistically, but it was new, in the same way you watch a Wes Anderson movie that’s brand-new, you’re instantly going to know it’s him. You’re going to see his visual touchstones, but the movie’s brand-new. That’s kind of how it was. It was so clearly Nelson Riddle, but we were hearing the first new Nelson Riddle chart that anyone has heard in decades. So it was a pretty profound moment.
Is there a duet opportunity for frequent collaborator Liz Gillies or Carpool Karaoke partner Ariana Grande?
It would have been nice if we had found some, you know, Rosemary Clooney or Peggy Lee duet. I mean, Liz would have been my first call. For this kind of music, there’s just no one better on the planet, but so far, we have not found any duets. We haven’t dug through these boxes in such detail that there couldn’t be one — there may be. There are 1,200 boxes. We couldn’t play everything on that day because an orchestra is expensive. … But there’s so much in that archive that it is possible, and, yeah, if we find something, then we’ll give Liz a call.
How long could Seth be mining this material?
There are a couple [songs] that we recorded that we cut from this album, just because we had, I don’t know, some edict to get it down to 12 songs or less. All I know is we were told initially, I think they wanted it to be like six songs. I’m, like, “Guys, that’s not an album.” I don’t know, there’s all this, like, marketing data that they go by, and really, nobody knows sh–, because if they did, everything would be a monster hit. [Laughs] So I do remember us pushing back and saying, “Let’s do an album’s worth of songs for this thing.” So it’s a dozen songs, which, for a Sinatra album, was in the ballpark. And there were a couple songs that we did record that were not included that would be on the next one. … There are probably two albums’ worth of real, honest-to-God songs that can be released.
Is three days a residency? [Laughs] I once spent a week in Vegas, and I was like, “I’m forgetting who I am. I’m an insane person. The walls are moving.” That’s a lot of Vegas.
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Also on this week’s Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Taylor Swift’s former No. 1 album reputation, released in 2017, jumps from No. 78 to No. 5 on the Billboard 200 following an outpouring of fan support of the project after Swift announced she had acquired her Big Machine Records-era music catalog. Plus, SEVENTEEN and Miley Cyrus’ latest releases debut in the top five, while the top slots on both the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot 100 are static, with Morgan Wallen’s “I’m the Problem” and Alex Warren’s “Ordinary” staying put.
We also hit the biggest pop headlines of the week, including Sabrina Carpenter’s new “Manchild” single and video, Darren Criss and Nicole Scherzinger winning at the Tony Awards, David Byrne joining Olivia Rodrigo onstage at Governors Ball, and Mariah Carey returning with her new Eric B. & Rakim-sampling single “Type Dangerous.”
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard‘s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard‘s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s managing director, charts and data operations, Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
RAYE has a pair of collaborations coming out with Mark Ronson, and the British singer nearly shied away from working with the esteemed producer due to his connection to the late Amy Winehouse, whom RAYE has drawn comparisons to.
The first collab is titled “Suzanne” and is slated to arrive on Friday. People caught up with RAYE backstage at Governors Ball in NYC over the weekend, where she opened up about her initial hesitancy to team up with Ronson, who predominantly produced Winehouse’s final album, Back to Black, alongside Salaam Remi in 2006.
“Honestly, I’m not gonna lie, I actually was quite nervous and scared to work with him,” she admitted. “I just do want to say that I know I can never, ever, ever, ever, ever attempt to replace or imitate Amy. I’m in awe of her. We all are, and we miss her.”
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RAYE continued: “It’s quite a tough thing to even allow myself to create so freely with him,” she says. “But I really just wanted to be like, ‘Do you know what? I just need to forget what anyone else is gonna say about this.’ I absolutely love this producer. I’ve always wanted to work with this producer since I was a little girl.”
Their second collaboration is set to be released later in June, with “Grandma Calls the Boy Bad News” slated to land on the F1 soundtrack.
“We’ve made music together that I’m so proud of, and I love,” she gushed. “I play it, and it makes me happy and joyful, so I’m proud.”
The “Escapism” singer’s next album is starting to take shape, but she’s stuck without a title for the project, which follows her acclaimed 2023 LP, My 21st Century Blues.
“I don’t have an album title,” RAYE said. “I’m like, ‘What is it gonna be called?’ It’s stressing me out right now, I can’t lie, because I’ve got the music starting to really come there. I just don’t know what this album’s gonna be called. In my humble opinion, My 21st Century Blues is such a fire album title, and I can’t hand in an album title that’s less good than that.”
Does Kai Cenat not know who Wale is? During Monday night’s 2025 BET Awards, the two crossed paths in what looked like a parking garage while Cenat was doing a livestream of his night. They greeted each other as Wale was playing Nintendo Switch, and when he told the popular streamer that he was playing […]
Turnstile is hitting the road this fall in support of their new album Never Enough, launching Sept. 15 in Nashville. The tour includes support acts SPEED and Jane Remover and special appearances by guests Amyl & The Sniffers, Blood Orange and Mannequin Pussy. Last week, the band released their new record and companion film Turnstile: […]
As protests continue in Los Angeles following sweeping ICE raids, electronic producer Cloonee has postponed a pair of shows meant to happen in the city this weekend.
“For the past four years now, I have called this city my home,” the British artist wrote Tuesday (June 10) in a statement posted to social media. “Like the city, my fans are diverse and it breaks my heart to see what the Latino community is going through right now.
“I have therefore decided that the right, responsible and only decision is to postpone this weekend’s events,” he continues. “Our time together is meant to be one of celebration, and now is not the time for celebrating.” Read the complete statement below.
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These shows were scheduled to happen June 13-14 at City Market in downtown Los Angeles, an area of town that’s seen myriad raids by ICE amid federal immigration efforts. Cloonee’s shows are now scheduled to happen July 11-12, with all tickets valid for the corresponding new dates, with refunds also available for the next seven days.
According to the L.A. Times, an immigrants-rights leader in the city reported that “about 300 people have been detained by federal authorities in California since sweeps began last week.” The situation has been inflamed after the Trump administration deployed the National Guard and U.S. Marines to Los Angeles amid protests over ICE raids.
Cloonee is one of many artists who’s spoken out on the ICE raids and their aftermath, with Doechii using her speech at the BET Awards in Los Angeles on Monday (June 9) to say that “I do wanna address what’s happening right now outside of the building. There are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities in the name of law and order. Trump is using military force to stop a protest. And I want y’all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us. What type of government is that?”
Read Cloonee’s complete statement: “For the past four years now, I have called this city my home. Like the city, my fans are diverse and it breaks my heart to see what the Latino community is going through right now.I have therefore decided that the right, responsible and only decision is to postpone this weekend’s events. Our time together is meant to be one of celebration, and now is not the time for celebrating.We are moving this weekend’s shows to the new dates of Friday, July 11th and Saturday, July 12th. All tickets will remain valid for the new corresponding date. If you are unable to join us at that time, you may cancel your tickets for a full refund in the next 7 days. All ticket buyers will receive an email to the address used to purchase the tickets with a refund link, or reach out to our team at insom.co/help.I understand this may upset a large number of ticket holders who, like myself, have waited months for these shows, and I do not take this decision lightly.I see you, I hear you and I simply will not throw a party whilst the Latino people who have supported me in this city are hurting so deeply.Please take care of yourselves, prioritize your safety and your community above all else. I will make this up to you in a months time.Dave.”
Source: Christopher Polk / Getty
Ray J caused a lot of drama online after claiming he slept with rapper Sexyy Red.
In a video, he said, “I slept with Sexyy Red, stop playing with me,” making it sound like something happened between them. People started talking fast, but it turns out, it wasn’t true.
Later, Ray J went on his own show and took it back.
Brandy’s brother said he was sorry and explained that he and Sexyy Red were just sitting next to each other on a plane. They both were tired, maybe fell asleep during the flight, but nothing else happened. Sexyy Red wasn’t having it. She clapped back on social media, saying, “N*ggas lie on they d*ck everyday b.” She made it super clear that nothing went down and called Ray J a “cornball” for lying. She even posted screenshots of their DMs where Ray apologized to her for making it up.
Then, out of nowhere, Justin Bieber popped in with a comment like, “Y’all wild for this” not really picking a side but clearly watching the mess unfold like everyone else.
In the end, Ray J got caught lying, Sexyy Red shut it down quick, and Bieber was just vibing with the popcorn. Moral of the story: Don’t lie for clout, especially on Big Sexyy. It will come back to bite you.
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Música mexicana singer-songwriter Codiciado has filed a lawsuit against his old record label, Rancho Humilde, and former bandmates in the ensemble Grupo Codiciado, claiming they stole his intellectual property by getting the band back together under the name Los Codicia2 after he went solo.
Codiciado (Erick de Jesús Aragón Alcantar) made the accusations in a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday (June 10) against Rancho Humilde; the label’s trio of co-founders, Jaime Humilde, Jose “JB” Becerra and Roque “Rocky” Venegas; and former Grupo Codiciado members Alexis Aguirre, Ivan Ramirez and Giovanni Rodriguez Meza.
Grupo Codiciado formed in Tijuana in 2015 and later signed with Rancho Humilde; it reached No. 8 on the Regional Mexican Albums chart with Miro Lo Que Otros No Miran in 2018. The group disbanded in 2021, after which its lead singer, Codiciado, went solo, returning to the Billboard charts with his song “Vamos Aclarando Muchas Cosas” in 2023 and launching a successful tour the following year.
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The trouble started when Aguirre, Ramirez and Rodriguez Meza debuted a new group called Los Codicia2, pronounced “Los Codiciados,” under Rancho Humilde at the beginning of 2025. Codiciado claims the group’s name infringes his own trademarked moniker.
“The infringing mark adopted and used by defendants is practically identical to plaintiff’s marks,” wrote Codiciado’s lawyers. “This mark differs from plaintiff’s ‘CODICIADO’ mark only in that the final letter is ‘S’ and in the preceding term ‘LOS.’”
Codiciado says Rancho Humilde and his former bandmates are purposefully trying to mislead fans into thinking he’s affiliated with or endorses the new group, stating in the lawsuit that they’re attempting to “trade on the goodwill of plaintiff’s marks, cause confusion and deception in the marketplace and divert potential sales of plaintiff’s products to defendants.”
According to Codiciado, this alleged wrongdoing has persisted despite his sending multiple cease-and-desist letters to the label and band. He’s now seeking a court injunction to make them stop, plus monetary damages for trademark infringement, trademark dilution and unfair competition.
“Defendants’ acts are causing and, unless restrained, will continue to cause incalculable damage and immediate irreparable harm to plaintiff and to his valuable reputation and goodwill with the consuming public for which plaintiff has no adequate remedy at law,” the lawsuit reads.
Representatives for Codiciado declined to comment on the claims. Rancho Humilde did not immediately return requests for comment.
Source: Paras Griffin / Getty
The American Music Awards might’ve jerked Kendrick Lamar out of a few well-deserved awards a few weeks ago, but the BET Awards sure as hell didn’t as the biggest rap star in the game today walked away with more awards than he could handle by the time the annual ceremony was over.
Leading the pack with 10 nominations, Kendrick Lamar’s name was called to the stage five times as he won awards for Video Director of the Year, Best Male Hip Hop Artist, Best Collaboration: “Luther” Featuring SZA, Video of the Year: “Not Like Us,” and ultimately Album of the Year: GNX.
Taking to the stage, Kendrick Lamar thanked BET for constantly repping the culture as only they can and have for decades now and thanked his fans while reminding them to come see him and SZA on tour.
While the culture is proud to see Kendrick Lamar finally get his flowers on a consistent basis, the streets of LA continue to be embroiled in political turmoil as the Trump administration continues to escalate their war on the Latino immigrant community by unnecessarily sending in military personnel to quell the peaceful protests against the ICE raids that have been taken place for the past few days.
This is something that Lamar’s fellow TDE label mate, Doechii, brought some attention to as she accepted her award for Best Female Hip Hop Artist. She took the time to address the injustice we’re currently experiencing at the hands of a fascist undertaking of America.
“As much as I’m honored by this award, I do want to address what’s happening right now outside of the building,” Doechii began. “There are ruthless attacks that are creating fear and chaos in our communities in the name of law and order. Trump is using military forces to stop a protest. I want y’all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us. What type of government is that?”
Reminding everyone that ICE is ripping families apart due to the color of their skin, Doechii said she felt it was her duty to use her platform to speak up for all oppressed people including Black people, Latinos, Trans, and everyone in Gaza who is still under attack by Israeli President, Benjamin Netanyahu.
Props to Doechii for this. She’ll now be in MAGA’s crosshairs, but that’s expected at this point whenever someone speaks against their dear leader.
Check out Doechii’s powerful speech below and let us know your thoughts about it in the comments section.
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Leon Thomas’ breakout hit “Mutt” conquers another radio ranking as it climbs to No. 1 on Billboard’s Rhythmic Airplay chart (dated June 14). The single steps from the runner-up spot to become the most-played song on United States panel-contributing rhythmic radio stations in the tracking week of May 30-June 5, according to Luminate. For its […]
