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01 Mar 2024

Natania Reuben Says Diddy, Not Shyne, Was The Trigger Man In Infamous 1999 Club Shooting

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It’s already been a wild 2024 for Sean “Diddy” Combs because of all the accusations and lawsuits being thrown his way. Now, a decades-old court case is once again in the spotlight as one of its victims is speaking out and pointing her finger squarely at the Hip-Hop icon.

According to Vibe, the woman who was shot during the infamous nightclub shooting in 1999 that led to Diddy and Shyne getting arrested and standing trial for the incident is now saying that it was the Bad Boy CEO who actually shot her in the face on that fateful night. Natania Reuben took to Instagram Wednesday (Feb. 28), to put Diddy on blast for the incident. Diddy was acquitted in a court of law, but Shyne did an eight-year bid before being deported back to his home of Belize upon his release in 2009.

As to why she decided to clear the air on the situation that left her maimed all these decades later, Reuben took the time to explain her motive in the post.

Per Vibe:

“Let me tell you why that is of utmost importance to me,” Reuben said of the current legal issues plaguing Combs. “Because I am the woman he shot in the face in that December 27, 1999 Club New York shooting. I have told everyone ad nauseam since then, even the surgeon who did the surgery to take the bullet, I got shot in my face with a 9 mm hollow-point bullet called a cop killer.”

Reuben remained adamant that she fingered Diddy as the triggerman decades ago, insisting that she told the medical staff that performed surgery on her such immediately following the shooting. However, she suggests that Combs was able to bribe witnesses of the crime to dispose of incriminating evidence against him.

“I literally told everyone and never changed what I said,” she added. “I watched him, I got [shot] in the face, I watched him fire the gun. I’ve said it all this time. Even the surgeon who did my surgery testified in the criminal trial that while they were putting me under [anesthesia]. I was screaming, ‘Puffy [shot] me in the face.’… Everybody knew he did it, but he paid off the club bouncer and all these other people to hide the video. That’s his MO.”

Reuben suggested that Diddy was able to pay everyone off to help get him off the hook and even said that Diddy tried to intimidate her by flattening the tires on her car multiple times.

Whether or not Diddy responds to her claims remains to be seen, but given everything that’s being thrown his way these days, we won’t be surprised if he keeps his lips sealed. Nothing good can come of him talking about any of these allegations.

Check out Natania Reuben’s side of the story below, and let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

01 Mar 2024

Charli XCX: Photos From the Billboard Women In Music Shoot

My big struggle is deciding whether I care more about being the biggest artist I can be commercially or being critically sound,” Charli XCX says. “Then sometimes I land in this place of not caring about either of those things.”

For most of her decade-plus career as both a songwriter for other pop stars (Gwen Stefani, Camila Cabello, Selena Gomez) and a beloved solo performer herself, Charli has managed to strike an enviable balance between the two pop poles she has just described. The 31-year-old British artist has made inescapable hits like her 2014 Iggy Azalea collaboration, “Fancy,” which spent seven weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and more sonically experimental pop — including her celebrated pairings with SOPHIE, with whom Charli pioneered hyperpop — while establishing herself as a tastemaker with a track record for working with cutting-edge artists like Yaeji, Rina Sawayama and Caroline Polachek before the industry fully catches on.

01 Mar 2024

Peytan Porter on the Authentic Writing and Laurel Canyon Vibes of New Project ‘Grown,’ and How She’s Been ‘Reclaiming Her Entire Life’

On Georgia native Peytan Porter’s six-song, sophomore EP Grown, out Friday (March 1), she sheds light on a creative revival, the culmination of dismantling — then rebuilding — her sound to reveal her true self.

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“This past six to 12 months has been just reclaiming my entire life and setting myself on a really good direction,” she tells Billboard.

Porter’s music career gained traction not long after her 2020 graduation from Nashville’s Lipscomb University, where she studied public relations. A year later, she signed a publishing deal with Jody Williams Songs and Warner Chappell Nashville and saw her song “Therapy” go viral on TikTok. She followed with her pop-country debut 2022 EP In My Head. But while her debut only showcased one dimension of her musical abilities, Porter says Grown feels more akin to who she is. The album is lush with introspective lyrics and gauzy, Laurel Canyon vibes.

Porter name-checks the modern sounds of folk-rocker Foy Vance and the blues-influenced Chris Stapleton, as well as more classic influences, including Fleetwood Mac and Linda Ronstadt’s 1977 album Simple Dreams.

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“There’s just a kind of drifter, free nomad energy that comes with that whole timeframe,” Porter says of the 1960s and 1970s scene that birthed music from Ronstadt, Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, the Mamas and the Papas and more. “I was doing a lot of digging into that whole era and was inspired by how touring fueled the music itself. It felt like they hashed things out on the road and brought it into the studio. I wanted my music to sound like it does live and I can’t do that if I’m using track and synthetic sounds. This record feels like I’m stepping into my own.”

Porter, who is managed by Red Light Management, and repped by CAA for booking, will get the chance to showcase her new music this year at festivals including Tortuga Music Festival and Gulf Coast Jam. Beginning in June, she will also open shows for Tim McGraw on his Standing Room Only tour.

Billboard spoke with Porter, Billboard’s March Country Rookie of the Month, about the stories behind the songs on her new project and her journey toward her newfound sound.

What was the catalyst for creating your new album?

When my first record came out, I felt kind of lost. A lot of exciting things had happened fast, and doors were opening. I was trying to keep up and didn’t have the capacity to stop and create a direction for myself — it felt like I was going with whatever was popping up. When the project came out, it felt like a finish line of sorts, and for the first time I had space to pause and be like, ‘Is this the direction I want to go for the next 20 to 50 years?’ And I felt a resounding ‘No.’ There were so many parts of myself that I wasn’t showing, and that didn’t feel authentic. I’m not a good enough actress to have kept up the gig that long.

How did you take the time to recalibrate, creatively?

I spent a lot of time alone in the woods. I went on a dating hiatus. I tried to just be alone and figure out my style, independent of the people around me. I started making decisions and not asking for opinions. I cut my bangs, moved into a sketchy apartment and started decorating it with candles and weird mushroom decorations, gaudy gold and jewel tones. I figured out how to stop apologizing for what I like, and that bled into the music. Luckily, my team supported me. And I had turned 25, so it was like my quarter-life crisis. A perfect storm.

The title track of the album touches on the apartment and some of the rougher moments that come with figuring things out on your own. Are there any particular moments that inspired that song?

I wrote this after I moved into a two-bedroom apartment in Nashville. It maybe wasn’t the smartest decision I had made. I had an outside-facing unit, ground level. I remember it was New Year’s Eve and I’m in my bed journaling and I hear gunshots right outside of my window. I crawl out of bed and am sitting on the floor and praying for protection. I grabbed my guitar and just started capturing what was going on around me.

That moment was so far from what everyone back home was doing — my sister was expecting a baby, my best friend was planning a wedding — and I was going through this artistic shift. I remember thinking, “This is what you wanted.” I wrote like half of the song and brought it to Steve Moakler and Mark Trussell, to finish it together.

“God’s Hotel” has a more bluesy vibe and a message of self-acceptance. What feel were you going for on this?

On the road, we close with “God’s Hotel,” and then go into “Lean on Me,” and I wanted this communal kind of feel. When I go to a live show, I feel that. Finding a place where we all belong is important to me, because it’s a journey we all take of figuring out who we are, and then finding people who will let us be that.

You reunited with Greg Bates, whom you also worked with on In My Head. How did the process of working on this album compare with your first project?

I was much more hands-on sonically, with this record. I came in with playlists and vision for sounds and different instrumentations. He trusted me to know what I wanted. He pulled in players like [steel guitar player] Dan Dugmore, who played with Linda Ronstadt. He was intentional with the people he brought in and the sounds we used.

You recorded this album live, all the musicians in the studio together. How did that impact the feel of the EP?

We wanted to capture the live concert feeling. That meant not bringing in a blueprint of stems from a demo and working from it, but rather creating it in the moment. We played it all together and I got to sing with them on every take. There was this energy of it being a live shared experience, that I feel got captured. We did come back and tweak a few things after the fact, but I wanted it to feel like we were doing something together.

This time in the studio, I had a lot more opinions. I came in and saged the studio, and got it ready to be the kind of energy I wanted. It was the first time I felt like I had a voice in a space like that. It can be daunting with a mainly male presence in a room like that — to be a female artist, and come in and have a vision — but they gave me space to follow that vision.

“Run the Radio” is about a breakup, but also reclaiming freedom. What’s the story behind this song?

I was on a balcony on vacation, writing songs, and thought about this guy I had recently been involved with, who had lived in a van. I thought the experience was worth at least putting in a song. I thought, “I didn’t like any of his music” — and then I thought, “I didn’t like any of my exes’ music.” When I dated an athlete, I listened to hip-hop and R&B. I dated a mountain guy who was into obscure folk. The guy with the van liked EDM and house music. I realized I was trying to cater myself to him.

That’s when I had this idea of, “I run the radio now.” I only listen to what I like. The song came out so beautifully. The more I appreciate my own instincts and styles, the more I want to offer that feeling of freedom, strength, and just pure joy to people.

You signed with Jody Williams Songs and Warner Chappell Nashville in 2021. How have they championed this self-discovery season?

He’s the best person and guru. I remember saying, “Jody, I think I’ll just cut my bangs.” It’s like when you go through a break-up and you want to cut off all your hair — that happened creatively. And he goes, “Maybe start with a trim.” That’s the most Jody response — don’t blow up your life, but just start somewhere. And they have seen me through this crazy journey. They signed me to write songs, and then three months later I have a song take off as an artist. They have rolled with the punches and trusted me to know what I want for myself.

As an artist and a songwriter, how do you balance the demands of both roles?

It is a vast difference. Some days I’m making graphics at 1:00 a.m. and I have a [writing session] at 11:00 a.m. and a coffee meeting, and I’m doing all the artist things that people don’t realize we have to do. Then having to figure out what I get to put out as an artist and what songs I’m in love with as a writer. It’s a juggle; You want to honor the craft and that’s always hard in a commercial setting. But I love that I have the option of doing both; I think there is a time and place for both and I think country music, especially, kind of honors the people who can toe the line between commercial and craft.

01 Mar 2024

Victoria Monét on Her ‘Uphill Battle’ to Earning ‘My Own Reputation’

When Victoria Monét looked in the mirror five years ago, she saw a successful songwriter whose growing list of estimable credits included co-writes on two of Ariana Grande’s biggest hits, “Thank U, Next” and “7 Rings.” What Monét, then 30, didn’t see was a successful solo artist — a goal she had been tirelessly pursuing since 2009.

“It was a very difficult, uphill battle trying to get people to understand there’s a duality to me, that my relevance wasn’t only based on my proximity to somebody else,” Monét recalls. “Interview after interview, questions were snuck in about the artists I worked with. I just wanted to be a stand-alone artist with my own reputation.”

Monét’s long-held dream finally became reality with the 2023 release of her RCA debut studio album, Jaguar II. Her breakthrough single, “On My Mama,” and two earlier album singles, “Smoke” (with Lucky Daye) and “Party Girls” (with Buju Banton), created what she calls a “snowball effect” — and validated her solo artistry, not only in terms of chart position, different interview questions and her first headlining tour, but also in the form of golden hardware.

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At the Grammys in February, Monét — who entered with seven nominations, including record of the year and best R&B song — won best new artist, as well as the statuettes for best R&B album and best engineered album, non-classical. Her best traditional R&B performance nod — for “Hollywood,” featuring Earth, Wind & Fire and her toddler daughter, Hazel Monét — was record-breaking in its own right, making Hazel the youngest-ever Grammy nominee.

Victoria Monét Billboard Women In Music Shoot

Roberto Cavalli dress, Paumé Los Angeles ring, Elisheva & Constance earrings, choker and bracelet.

Sami Drasin

Victoria Monét Billboard Women In Music Shoot

Oude Waag dress and Paumé Los Angeles earrings.

Sami Drasin

But Monét’s three wins — her first triumphs after three prior nods for her work with Grande and R&B duo Chloe x Halle — represent another pivotal moment for the Atlanta-born, Sacramento, Calif.-raised singer-songwriter, who began pursuing a solo career when she moved to Los Angeles in 2009 to audition for a girl group under development by Grammy-winning producer Rodney Jerkins. Monét got the job and the group signed a Motown contract, though it was later dropped without releasing any music.

That setback, however, yielded the start of a friendship with future Grammy- and Academy Award-winning songwriter-producer D’Mile and pushed Monét to focus on the songwriting she had dabbled in while growing up in Sacramento. Shouting out D’Mile as a key supporter and mentor (“He let me and the girl group live in his place”), Monét worked with him on music she had begun recording on the side as an independent artist while she racked up writing credits with acts such as Travis Scott, Blackpink, Fifth Harmony and fellow rising R&B singer and new Grammy winner Coco Jones.

“It’s very hard to ask somebody to invest their time when you don’t have a label to push it through, a production or video budget,” Monét says. “But D’Mile was like, ‘I don’t care about that. I think you’re talented and love your voice … We got this.’ ”

Monét, who didn’t have a manager at that time (“Even when I opened for Ariana on tour in 2016, I did hotel bookings and routing”), found another kindred spirit when she met manager Rachelle Jean-Louis in 2018. “She has been my ride-or-die,” Monét says. “She saw things when no one else saw them.”

Jean-Louis, a former label executive and music supervisor, first crossed paths with Monét while working as the latter, placing Monét’s collaboration with RCA artist Lucky Daye, “Little More Time,” on HBO’s Insecure. “We’re mirrors of each other,” Jean-Louis says. “We both love music, are hard workers and passionate about what we do. Victoria’s melodies and the layering of her vocals reminded me a lot of early Marvin [Gaye] and Janet [Jackson], which was something I hadn’t heard currently at that time. And then hearing she wrote all of her songs … that’s a rare form of artistry that I’ve always admired.”

Victoria Monét Billboard Women In Music Shoot

Oude Waag dress and Paumé Los Angeles earrings.

Sami Drasin

Music fans got their first taste of Monét’s solo work through four EPs she released between 2014 and 2018. While none of those projects charted, they featured Monét’s ’70s-influenced modern soul that began generating word-of-mouth buzz for the indie artist. But on her Jaguar EP, released in August 2020, the singer emphasized another side of herself.

“I had to learn how to survive,” Monét said during a Grammy Museum Q&A in December when comparing the music industry to a jungle. “The jaguar symbolized my journey up to that point.”

Her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 as a solo artist was in 2019, when “Monopoly,” a song she co-wrote and was featured on with Grande, cracked the chart at No. 69. The week before, Monét had reached No. 16 on the Emerging ­Artists list.

With the August 2023 release of sequel Jaguar II, which delivers a sonically mesmerizing mix of ’70s retro soul, dancehall and Southern rap — and, like Jaguar, was executive-produced by Monét, D’Mile and Jean-Louis — Monét hit her stride. The album debuted at No. 6 on Top R&B Albums and No. 22 on Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums. Meanwhile, “On My Mama,” which samples Texas rapper Chalie Boy’s 2009 track, “I Look Good,” peaked at No. 4 on Hot R&B Songs, while spending 24 consecutive weeks in the top 10. Since the first tracking week of 2023 (from Dec. 29, 2022, to Feb. 1, 2024), Monét’s songs as an artist have generated 342.6 million official on-demand streams, according to Luminate.

“Because songwriters are writing for other artists, it’s really easy to hear their songs but think of the artist they wrote for instead,” Jean-Louis says. “But with the music that Victoria’s making, you can’t do that. The only person you hear when you listen to Victoria Monét’s music is her.”

Victoria Monét Billboard Women In Music Shoot

Victoria Monét photographed on January 16, 2024 at Cricket Ranch in Los Angeles.

Sami Drasin

Victoria Monét Billboard Women In Music Shoot

Paumé Los Angeles ring, Elisheva & Constance earrings, choker and bracelet.

Sami Drasin

With Jean-Louis and a predominately female core team handling both her business and creative plus strong support from RCA (“It has been a real joy to collaborate with a [label] team that really sees me; RCA changed that narrative for me”) — the newly minted three-time Grammy winner is looking ahead to festival performances at Coachella and Governors Ball, along with the deluxe version of Jaguar II.

But, reflecting on her hard work, setbacks and wins thus far, Monét says it all makes her cherish her recognition as Billboard’s 2024 Women in Music Rising Star even more.

“I prefer it this way rather than [achieving] fame quickly or being given to me on a silver platter,” she explains. “I know I have a great foundation and legs to stand on because everything I built was brick by brick. A career takes an excellent amount of patience.”

This story will appear in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.

01 Mar 2024

Victoria Monét: Photos From the Billboard Women In Music Shoot

When Victoria Monét looked in the mirror five years ago, she saw a successful songwriter whose growing list of estimable credits included co-writes on two of Ariana Grande’s biggest hits, “Thank U, Next” and “7 Rings.” What Monét, then 30, didn’t see was a successful solo artist — a goal she had been tirelessly pursuing since 2009.

“It was a very difficult, uphill battle trying to get people to understand there’s a duality to me, that my relevance wasn’t only based on my proximity to somebody else,” Monét recalls. “Interview after interview, questions were snuck in about the artists I worked with. I just wanted to be a stand-alone artist with my own reputation.”

Monét’s long-held dream finally became reality with the 2023 release of her RCA debut studio album, Jaguar II. Her breakthrough single, “On My Mama,” and two earlier album singles, “Smoke” (with Lucky Daye) and “Party Girls” (with Buju Banton), created what she calls a “snowball effect” — and validated her solo artistry, not only in terms of chart position, different interview questions and her first headlining tour, but also in the form of golden hardware.

At the Grammys in February, Monét — who entered with seven nominations, including record of the year and best R&B song — won best new artist, as well as the statuettes for best R&B album and best engineered album, non-classical. Her best traditional R&B performance nod — for “Hollywood,” featuring Earth, Wind & Fire and her toddler daughter, Hazel Monét — was record-breaking in its own right, making Hazel the youngest-ever Grammy nominee.

01 Mar 2024

Matisyahu Talks His Upcoming Song ‘Ascent’ That Speaks Out Against Antisemitism & More | Billboard News

Matisyahu opens up about his new EP ‘Hold The Fire,’ what inspired him to write his upcoming song “Ascent” that speaks out against rising antisemitism, becoming an independent artist, why his trip to Israel following the October 7th attacks made him hopeful for the future, his two concerts that were canceled in Arizona and more.

Matisyahu
I was feeling really hopeless about what the future is going to look like for all of us and went to Israel and it renewed my faith in humanity.

Matisyahu
What’s up, this is Matisyahu and you’re watching Billboard News.

Rania Aniftos
Hey, everybody, it’s Rania Aniftos with Billboard News and we’re sitting here today with Matisyahu. You have a new EP out, ‘Hold the Fire.’ There’s something I’ve always liked about your music, is it’s always music with a message. So tell me a bit about the theme surrounding this EP and the inspiration when writing it.

Matisyahu
Sure, the theme comes from, the basis is a dream that I had maybe about 10 years ago in my early 30s, as I was playing lots of shows and started out, you know, with my career and then had a family and lived in New York and moved to LA, but playing, really grinding and playing lots of shows a year, like maybe 200 shows a year in order to survive, you know, up until COVID. One of the themes that became relevant to me is: How do you still stay in love with music after you’ve beenplaying so many shows and playing those songs over and over again? And I went through a complicated relationship with the music because it’s like your dream when you’re a teenager, and then it becomes reality. And then it’s like your dream come true. And then you’re making music and there’s the art and there’s the business, then there’s like, it’s like a relationship, you know. This EP is called ‘Hold The Fire’ and it’s about stamina, as an artist, and it’s about how to not let … your fire go out. But at the same time, you know, if you still stoke your fire too much, you could burn everything up and you could burn up in your own fire. And I guess the idea in the opening track is called “Fireproof.”

Watch the full video above!

01 Mar 2024

Matisyahu Opens Up About Canceled Shows in Santa Fe & Tucson: ‘We Know Why These Shows Are Being Canceled’

Matisyahu sat down with Billboard to run through the events that happened in Santa Fe, N.M., and Tucson, Ariz., earlier this month.

The reggae singer’s planned shows at Santa Fe’s Meow Wolf and Tucson’s Rialto Theatre were abruptly canceled due to security concerns, and he ended up performing a show at Tucson’s The Rock for fans to see for free. “There have been protesters at my shows, and two shows got canceled. One of them in New Mexico, where after we had driven hundreds of miles set up, had a sold out show, fans were starting to come, the staff claims that they were afraid to come into the show because of like, tenant protesters,” he says to Billboard. “We’ve discovered that that’s obviously not true and they chose to not come in and to wait untillthe last minute so that we had to cancel the show. The next night, there was a similar situation that happened and when they let us know that the show was canceled, I myself started making phone calls and found another venue, a legendary reggae venue down the street. […] They claimed there that it was a security issue at the Rialto, so we moved everything, found a completely new staff in two hours and had a beautiful concert with no security issues.”

He continued, “People can say what they want, but we know why these shows are being canceled. The bottom line is that we’re going to continue and we’re going to play every show on the tour and any venue that cancels, I have backup venues in every city in America. I’ve been doing 200 shows a year for 20 years in this country, and so we will play our shows regardless.”

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Following the cancellation, Meow Wolf shared a post that read, “On February 14th, we canceled a concert at the House of Eternal Return. Two hours before the show was set to begin, we found ourselves without adequate staff to safely manage the sold out crowd. Meow Wolf will always prioritize the safety of our employees and our guests. We are in the process of refunding all ticket holders […] Meow Wolf believes in free expression, respectful discourse and the power of art to bring people together. We do not tolerate Antisemitism, Islamophobia, hate, racism, discrimination or violence of any kind.”

The Rialto similarly cited “safety concerns and staff shortage” preventing the venue’s ability to “prioritize the safety of [its] employees and [its] guests.”

Matisyahu also opened up about his experience visiting Israel amid the ongoing Israel Hamas War, sharing that he “experienced hope,” which meant a lot “for the Jewish people right now and for a lot of people is this feeling of isolation, separation, anger, fear.”

He continued, “I was feeling really hopeless about what the future is going to look like for all of us and went to Israel and renewed like my faith in humanity and renewed my faith in God. You know, I have to say, I left with this feeling of light and I’ve been trying to take that and really put that into the music and into the shows and we’re facing a lot of tough situations right now. But that’s what I keep going back to. When I think about the people that I met, the survivors of those of that festival, the soldiers that I met, the families of the hostages and what they’re going through, and that’s what’s giving me the strength to to be myself and not be quiet about what’s happening right now.”

Watch Billboard‘s full interview with Matisyahu above.

01 Mar 2024

Range Media Partners Opens Nashville Office and Signs Tanya Tucker

Range Media Partners has opened a Nashville office and signed Tanya Tucker as a management client. 

Tucker joins a robust roster of country clients that includes Russell Dickerson, Dylan Gossett, Stephen Wilson Jr., Shaboozey, Drayton Farley, Yola, Luke Grimes, Ryan Bingham, songwriter Geoff Warburton (with Big Machine Music), Midland (with Sandbox Entertainment), and Hailey Whitters and Brent Cobb (both with Make Wake Artists).

The opening of the office, located in the Wedgewood-Houston neighborhood, follows last summer’s hiring of Nashville-based executives William Lowery and Shawn McSpadden. Lowery, senior vp of partnerships and business development, came from Brigade Media Capital and managing partner McSpadden came from Red Light Management. Range co-founding managing partner Jack Minihan also relocated to Nashville at the end of last year. Additionally, Range Media Partners managing partner/music division founder Matt Graham and Range artist manager/head of touring Kyle Wilensky will split their time between Nashville and Los Angeles. 

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In addition to the music team that numbers around 10, the office will include Range Sports’ head of football Kyle Strongin, who represents roughly 40 NFL players, including San Francisco 49ers quarterback Brock Purdy.

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Even though Range has managed country artists for the last few years, establishing a physical Nashville office “is the thing that really lets people know that you’re in town,” Graham tells Billboard. “It’s one thing to get on a plane and be there, it’s another to open an office and have full-time employees that are making it a living, breathing organism on a daily basis and a place where other companies and artists can come and sit and have a conversation. It sends a different message of commitment.”

range, nashville

Courtesy of Range

Graham says Range picked the Wedgewood-Houston area, also home to Apple Music, because “that area is such a beehive of activity and energy in the music business right now. We’re certainly not making everyone be there every day, but we want people to come in and be social and be thoughtful and be creative.” 

The newest addition to the Nashville artist roster is icon and Country Music Hall of Fame inductee Tucker. “The Midland guys have a really great relationship with her. They’ve done some shows together, she did their podcast. I’m a huge fan of her career and I think she’s having a real resurgence,” Graham says of Tucker, who took home the Grammy for best country album in 2020. “I think all the pieces are in place for her to have a massive next wave of her career. There’s a real 360 approach to the things that she can do going forward that is not just going to be about recording music and touring. And I think that’s what she found really appealing about Range.”

On the other end of the spectrum, Range is experiencing tremendous success with newcomers Dylan Gossett, whose song “Coal” has surpassed 100 million streams and has sold out a pop-up show in London with a 2,500-person waiting list; Stephen Wilson Jr., who made his late night debut on Late Night with Seth Meyers in February; and Nigerian-American artist Shaboozey, of whom Kacey Musgraves has already declared herself a fan.

Graham says Range is actively looking to add more artists to its curated roster. “I think in Nashville, it’s very important that we stick to what we’re good at and know,” he says. “We like artists that push boundaries and are visually interesting and are breaking new ground in different ways. There’s just so many different new pockets and sub-genres of country that have emerged in the past few years. We want to keep looking into new territory. I think just looking to pick up tried-and-true country radio artists that are leaving disgruntled management situations is just not as exciting for us as building new talents.”

Range will share its Nashville space with Get Engaged, a branding entertainment company that has worked with such companies as Raising Cane’s, Morphe Cosmetics and Ryl Tea with Morgan Wallen, as well as country artists like Cole Swindell, Kane Brown and Chris Young.

Since launching in 2020, Range Media Partners’ music division has formed its own label in partnership with Capitol Music Group and Virgin Music & Artist Label Services and represents artists including Jack Harlow, Saweetie, Pentatonix, Paul Russell, Alec Benjamin and Lauv.

01 Mar 2024

Karol G’s Private Plane Makes Emergency Landing in Los Angeles

Karol G’s private plane made an emergency landing at Van Nuys Airport in Los Angeles, according to multiple published reports. According to the news first reported early this morning by KABC in Los Angeles, Karol G’s jet had taken off from Hollywood Burbank Airport Thursday evening, with 16 people on board. The aircraft is identifiable by its heart logo.

KABC’s AIR7 HD news helicopter captured photos of Karol outside the jet speaking on the phone.

According to the news report, the jet’s pilot reported smoke in the cockpit, but made a smooth and safe landing around 9 pm.

Karol G is in the midst of her Latin America stadium tour, but is slated to return to Los Angeles March 6, where she will be honored as Billboard’s Woman of the Year during Billboard’s Women In Music Event.

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The Colombian superstar has had a stellar past 12 months.  

She debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in 2023 with her Mañana Será Bonito (the first woman and second artist ever to do so with an all-Spanish-language album); she sold out her first stadium tour, grossing $146.9 million and selling close to 1 million tickets on 19 shows alone; she was the top female Latin artist on Billboard’s year-end charts; winner of album of the year and urban album of the year at the Latin Grammys; and, the first woman to win best musica urbana album at the Grammys.

At press time, Karol’s team had not replied to inquiries for comment on the Van Nuys emergency landing.

01 Mar 2024

Carly Pearce Talks Making Her ‘Healing’ Fourth Album ‘hummingbird’: Hear Title Track Now

Carly Pearce thought she knew what the title track of her fourth full-length album would be. Then she wrote “hummingbird.”

“When I wrote ‘Country Music Made Me Do It,’ I was like, ‘This is the title of the album,’” she says of the playful, cheeky song she released last summer. “’hummingbird’ was one of the last songs I wrote for the record and it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, this is what it was meant to be the whole time.’”

The delicate, fiddle-laced title track about resilience closes hummingbird, coming June 14. “It’s kind of my little bluegrass moment,” she says, adding she got a tattoo of a hummingbird once she completed the project. “It’s lyrically way more abstract than what you would usually hear on a contemporary country record. It’s kind of an artistic way of saying that you’re not going to settle.”

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After the heaviness of 2021’s EP 29 and its full-length companion 29: Written in Stone, Pearce says writing the songs for hummingbird felt “light and airy and freeing and like a big exhale.” 

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Both 29 and 29: Written in Stone received commercial and critical acclaim, including Pearce’s duet with Ashley McBryde, “Never Wanted to Be That Girl,” which won a Grammy in 2023 for best country duo/ group performance. The sets fearlessly mined Pearce’s heartache following her divorce from Michael Ray and were filled with confessional reflections. The albums “really taught me just how vulnerable I could be and how that could transcend,” she says. “Even though I thought I was only writing my story, it seems like I’ve been writing a lot of other people’s stories.”

Still, Pearce hit a bit of a stumbling block when it came time to start the new album. “I was so intimidated of how to follow 29 because I never wrote that thinking it would have any kind of success,” she says. “But what it did is it taught me so much about how strong I am. And so, to see this album be finished and for it to speak to so much that has happened to me, I’m really proud of myself, and hummingbird will forever remind me that I can really do anything.”

While love often still goes sideways in the songs on hummingbird, on many of them, including “Truck on Fire,” “Still Blue” and “Rock Paper Scissors,” Pearce is coming from a place of control and often humor. “I think there comes a lot of strength and almost a playfulness to laugh at what you’ve been through and not make a joke of it, but make light of it because it’s part of your story,” she says. 

With the exception of the moving Grammy-nominated duet and current single “We Don’t Fight Anymore,” featuring Chris Stapleton, the first half of the 14-track album is more lighthearted than the second half by design. “It was important to me that the first songs that people heard from me were that I’m doing good,” she says “It’s a two-part album of healing because with the healing comes a great freedom and joy. Even the heavier side that can feel harder in moments, there’s still a sense of strength that 29 didn’t have because, quite frankly, I didn’t have the strength during 29.”

Carly Pearce, 'hummingbird'

Carly Pearce, ‘hummingbird’

Courtesy of Big Machine Records

Pearce, who co-wrote 13 of the 14 tracks, produced the album with 29 and Written in Stone producers Shane McAnally and Josh Osborne. “They know me on such a personal level now that I think they were the only people I could make this next record with,” she says. “They just had such a sense of where I was and where I wanted to go and sonically what I was wanting to do.”

That included “doubling down” on the traditional country instrumentation the Kentucky native featured on those two sets that was noticeably absent from her first two albums helmed by the late pop producer busbee. Songs like the twangy “Fault Line” recall her musical hero Loretta Lynn and the music she listened to growing up.

“My grandparents, when they figured out I wanted to be a country artist at 5, bought me all of these deluxe [compilations] from the ‘50s, ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s and ‘90s and I studied those. While ‘90s country is such a big part of me, those classic sounds of Loretta and Tammy [Wynette] and George [Jones], I was just a fan of all of it.” 

The gauzy, monochromatic, stripped-down visualizer for “hummingbird,” which premieres above, sets the tone for the images for the project. “There’s less makeup, less of the really fixed hair. There’s prisms in the lens of the camera,” Pearce says. “All of it has been super intentional and super important to me to make the visual feel different than anything I’ve ever done.”

Pearce drew inspiration from one of her fellow country artists. “Especially in country music, it can get very, very polished and predictable in imaging. I’ve been really inspired by people like Kacey Musgraves, who has stayed competitive, but always has something different in the way that she looks in her photos. And I wanted to find how I could challenge myself from a visual standpoint to just look a little different.”

Pearce will debut the title track at Big Machine Label Group’s luncheon at Country Radio Seminar on Friday (March 1). “That’s certainly not a song that you would think I would choose to sing at a radio luncheon, but I’m singing it because this is the kind of music that I make. This is the kind of message that I want to send,” she says. “It’s a really important record for me and I think just being able to sing something like this has also shown me that country radio has accepted me for me. And I feel really lucky that that is where I’m at in my career four records in.”