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Sean “Diddy” Combs’ release date has been pushed back, a move that comes after media reports that he violated prison rules by drinking homemade alcohol.
After Diddy was convicted in July on federal prostitution charges and sentenced to four years in prison, the federal Bureau of Prisons inmate records initially projected his release date as May 8, 2028. But those same records, reviewed by Billboard, now say Diddy will go free on June 4, 2028.
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It’s unclear why the expected date was updated; such listings are just estimates, reflecting the “inmate’s projected release date based on BOP calculations.” But it comes after Combs allegedly violated multiple prison rules within weeks of arriving at a New Jersey federal correctional facility.
As first reported by CBS News, Combs faced potential disciplinary action for an unauthorized three-way phone call, which is barred by prison rules. His representative denied any wrongdoing to CBS, saying there “was nothing improper” about the call.
According to a report last week by TMZ, Combs was also caught in prison with homemade alcohol made from Fanta soda, sugar and apples. Combs’ family strongly denied that report, saying on social media that it was “completely false.”
In a statement to Billboard, a BOP spokesperson declined to comment on why Diddy’s date had been changed: “For privacy, safety, and security reasons, we do not discuss the conditions of confinement for any individual, including release plans, timing, or procedures, or whether a particular individual is the subject of allegations, investigations, or sanctions. However, we can tell you that Sean Combs has a projected release date of June 4, 2028.”
Reps for Combs did not immediately return requests for comment on the reasons for the changed release date.
Combs was arrested and charged in September 2024 with racketeering (RICO) and sex trafficking violations over claims that he ran a sprawling criminal operation aimed at facilitating “freak-offs” — elaborate events at which he allegedly forced ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura and others to have sex with male escorts while he watched and masturbated.
Following a blockbuster trial this spring, jurors issued a verdict clearing Combs on the more serious charges that could have seen him sentenced to prison for life. But he was still convicted on two lesser counts for transporting Ventura and others across state lines for the purpose of prostitution. Last month, he was sentenced to 50 months in prison.
Combs is currently appealing both his convictions and sentence; if successful, he could get out much earlier than the BOP estimates. But the appeals process is often slow, and Combs will likely serve a sizeable chunk of his term before the case is even decided. The star is also seeking a pardon from President Donald Trump, but the White House has publicly denied that it is considering that move.
Trending on Billboard Eminem and his longtime manager, Paul Rosenberg, have inked a multi-year partnership with the Detroit Lions to executive-produce the Detroit Lions Thanksgiving Halftime Show. Explore See latest videos, charts and news The Lions announced on Thursday (Nov. 13) that Slim Shady and Rosenberg will “consult” the franchise on all aspects of the […]
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Independent artists have earned more than $5 billion through TuneCore. The distribution partner for self-releasing artists — owned by Paris-based Believe — announced the $5 billion milestone today, marking the first public achievement of its kind among distributors for self-releasing artists, according to the company.
“Crossing $5 billion earned by TuneCore artists is a defining milestone for independent music—it shows that creative freedom and financial success can go hand in hand,” said TuneCore CEO Andreea Gleeson in a release. “Reaching this milestone didn’t just happen; it’s the result of listening closely to what artists need today and evolving TuneCore to power their growth. By combining innovation with intention, we’ve built programs like TuneCore Accelerator to help artists reach new audiences, and publishing services that ensure they collect every cent their music generates. This milestone reflects the extraordinary talent and drive of our artists around the world, and we’re proud to be the partner helping to fuel their success.”
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TuneCore was founded in 2006 with a mission to democratize music distribution for self-releasing artists and has evolved into a global company for independent artist development. Surpassing the $5 billion milestone reflects the cumulative earnings of all TuneCore artists since 2006 from bedroom producers to global stars alike—and comes just 17 months after surpassing the $4 billion mark.
“This achievement is a testament to TuneCore’s unwavering commitment to innovation for the independent artist community,” said YouTube’s global head of music Lyor Cohen in a statement. “For almost two decades, they’ve been committed to providing the infrastructure for artists to build durable careers and monetize their work. We share that mission—ensuring that YouTube is the global destination for their artists to build meaningful connections with their fans. We are proud to partner with TuneCore and celebrate this monumental success!”
TuneCore credits its nearly two decades of success to its parent company Believe which has direct relationships with digital service providers and streaming platforms worldwide. Another recent factor in the company’s success comes from the TuneCore Accelerator, the company’s flagship artist development platform. Accelerator provides artists with access to promotional and marketing opportunities designed to drive discovery, build audiences, and deepen fan engagement. In just the past year, artists in the program have generated over 21 billion new streams, sparked 2.5 billion artist discoveries, and seen their median royalties grow fivefold.
DSPs from Spotify to Apple Music are celebrating TuneCore’s milestone. With Spotify’s svp/global head of music Charlie Hellman stating, “We are proud to partner with TuneCore to uplift independent artists and enable countless songwriters, producers, and performers to turn their passion for music into a career. TuneCore paying $5B to artists is an inspiring milestone that reflects how far independent music has come in the streaming era.”
Apple Music and Beats vp Oliver Schusser added: “At Apple, we celebrate the creativity and value of creators across every stage of development, and we commend TuneCore for helping so many talented independent artists from around the world earn money and build careers on their own terms. Congrats!”
Globally, TuneCore’s reach continues to expand, with over 75% of new artists and labels joining TuneCore in the last year coming from outside the United States.
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Grab Pandy’s hand and hold on tight, because it’s almost time to jump into a new season of Gabby’s Dollhouse.
For season 12, hitting Netflix on Monday, Gabby’s stuffy BFF Pandy Paws (Logan Bailey) is singing a new song that reminds us why “It’s Good to Be a Gabby Cat,” and Billboard Family is exclusively premiering the tune and video below.
It’s the latest track from series composer and songwriter P.T. Walkley, the man behind the DreamWorks Animation show’s “Hey Gabby” theme song and countless other musical contributions (“Between all the songs and ditties, there must be at least 200 or more,” Walkley tells Billboard Family). So where did “It’s Good to Be a Gabby Cat” — which hits streaming on Friday — come from?
“The assignment on this Gabby tune was to look back through all their magical moments together that make it so ‘good, good, good’ to be a Gabby Cat,” Walkley tells Billboard. “The chorus hook came to me first, then the question was, ‘Well what makes it so good-good-good?’ So I thought back to moments of cruising through the ocean, riding horses through the old west, blasting through outer space, island hopping, playing games together, cooking together, and got as many of those memories as I could into a catchy little tune.”
Watch and listen below:
Pandy’s new song is featured in “Good to be a Gabby Cat Game Show!,” episode 5 of the five-episode new season. What makes this episode special is that the animated Gabby Cats join real-life Gabby (Laila Lockhart Kraner) in her bedroom instead of the Dollhouse for a Hollywood Squares-style game show.
It’s been a busy year for Gabby’s Dollhouse, with the six-episode season 11 premiering on Netflix back in February, followed by the Gabby’s Dollhouse Live! U.S. tour and Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie both arriving in September, as well as an immersive Gabby’s Dollhouse x CAMP experience that took fans inside the Dollhouse at CAMP stores in Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina.
All five episodes of season 12 arrive Monday on Netflix.
As he gears up to release his new EP Appaloosa on Friday (Nov. 14), country singer Orville Peck broke down the current phase of his career in the latest episode of Billboard‘s Takes Us Out.
Peck sat down with Billboard’s Tetris Kelly at Los Angeles’ Beachwood Café, where the pair chowed down on comfort food and took a look at the state of Peck’s career today. “[I’ve been] going back to my roots, in terms of just diving into the creativity and the artistry and the references that I grew up loving,” Peck says. “[Appaloosa]’s also got a very constant air through it in terms of lyrics, of just kind of being unconcerned with what things should sound like or look like. I’m really just making music for myself again.”
The singer, who spent the last few years rising through the ranks of country music and becoming a breakout star in his own right, says that his work with friends and former collaborators such as Noah Cyrus and Willie Nelson only further helped bolster his confidence about his own artistic output. But he points to one country superstar as his dream collaborator.
“I mean, I always say Dolly [Parton], I would love to work with Dolly,” he says. “I got Willie Nelson, he was really neck-and-neck with her, so she is the last one on my absolute bucket list that I would die to work with.”
As a disruptive force in the country space, and one who has often advocated for greater diversity and equity within the genre, Peck points out that he’s happy to see some progress finally being made for the genre he calls home. “I feel better about it. I think there’s a lot more people now feeling like they can make country music and not be within the sort of homogenized idea of what country ‘needs’ to be,” he says. “That’s amazing, not just for queer people, but for black people, for brown people, there’s a lot more artists who feel validated to be a part of that.”
But, he points out that country is “tricky” when it comes to progress, and says that the work is far from over. “There is some attachment to country with the culture of country,” he says. “In some ways we’re making a lot of progress, and then in some ways, that progress is making some people want to stand firm in their gatekeeping of country. It’s a constant conversation.”
He points to the recent rule change at the Recording Academy, dividing the previously existing best country album category into two separate lanes for “traditional” and “contemporary” country albums, as an example of his point.
“I actually think it makes sense, personally,” he says. “I think in the last 10-15 years, there has been more of a split between radio-pop country, which tends to be more about a certain type of culture than a sound. And then I think there’s the other side of country that is a more traditional, referenced type of country that’s more about the songwriting … that feels like it’s more open culturally to anyone who wants to express themselves in that.”
During the new interview, Peck also chats about his time playing the Emcee in Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway, his favorite song off of his new album and the “diet illegal” activities he and his friends got into growing up. Watch the full episode of Takes Us Out above.
Trending on Billboard The 1985 Chicago Bears are shuffling into a new HBO documentary. HBO announced plans for The Shuffle doc on Thursday (Nov. 13), which will explore the Super Bowl XX champions’ iconic “Super Bowl Shuffle” rap song and memorable music video. Explore See latest videos, charts and news Set to premiere on Nov. […]
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Orville Peck talks with host Tetris Kelly about his new EP ‘Appaloosa,’ starring in ‘Cabaret,’ his new role in the live-action ‘Street Fighter’ and more hot topics over lunch at Beachwood Cafe.
Orville Peck:
What’s up?
Tetris Kelly
What’s up? Good to see you man!
Good to see you, too! Thank you very much.
You’re doing it real big for some coffee today.
Oh yeah, just a little something, you know what I mean? You look great, too! I like the ostrich.
Listen, Beachwood Cafe, only for them. First of all, Orville, thanks for hanging out with us, because I feel like you’re busy as sh*t.
I’m the busiest man in the world right now.
You have so much going on.
No, but it’s nice. It’s good to, like, take a moment and hang so I’m happy to be here.
Well, listen, and I feel like I kind of doxed you a bit, maybe? You know, I’m putting your business out where you like to hang out.
I know, it’s true.
Beachwood Cafe, what is it about this place?
I mean, it’s, like, near to where I live, and I just like the vibe. They let me bring my dog in here. So, you know, she sits around and, like, you know, me and my partner come here for, like, dinner and things, so…
Lovely! It’s a little date night spot too.
It’s very nice. It’s very convenient. You know, Beachwood is, like, a really cool part of LA where it has this little community in the hills. So it’s, like, it’s kind of nice, yeah.
And then, I mean, did you know? Because I feel like, you know, Harry Styles as well, like, they have his lyrics on a cup. So, like, I’ve never been here, so I didn’t realize, I guess how legendary this place is.
Keep watching for more!
Trending on Billboard At an otherwise joyful celebration of Wicked in Singapore for the second film’s Asian premiere on Thursday (Nov. 13), a scary moment took place when someone in the crowd charged at Ariana Grande and forced Cynthia Erivo to step in as her costar’s bodyguard. In videos of the incident captured at the […]
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One of the unfathomable tricks D’Angelo pulled off on his beloved trio of studio albums was somehow sounding simultaneously like a lost R&B classic from the 1960s as well as a soul sonic space signal from some distant, funky future.
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If you couldn’t get enough of that silky retro-futurism on Brown Sugar (1995), Voodoo (2000) or Black Messiah (2014), The Roots’ Questlove has some good news for you. Speaking to The National News Desk outlet on the red carpet at last weekend’s 2025 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony, the drummer, Oscar-winning documentarian and frequent D’Angelo collaborator teased that there’s more to come.
“You’ll see soon,” Quest said with a grin when asked if there were any unreleased tracks in the vault amid reports last year that the legendarily time-taking “Devil’s Pie” musician was slowly accumulating tracks for the long-awaited follow-up to the Grammy-winning Black Messiah. “It’s always the sound of yesterday, but for the future,” Quest added. “This record is no different.”
Though no additional information on the project was available at press time, in a 2024 chat with the Rolling Stone Music Now podcast, collaborator Raphael Saadiq reported that the enigmatic singer was “in a good space” at that time. “I talk to him a couple times. He’s excited. We don’t talk much, but when we do talk it’s crazy, like, ‘Oh, you gotta hear this!’ He’s like, ‘You gotta play bass. I’ve got this track. I’m telling you, you got to get on it. It got your name all over it,’” Saadiq said.
He added that at that time D’Angelo was working on “six pieces right now and he seems super excited. He’s in control of his own destiny at this point. He has a management team, but they can’t make him do anything that he don’t wanna do. He knows it’s on him now and I think that’s a different angle that he’s coming from.”
Among the songs Saadiq said they were working on was an old track from their early days when they formed a short-lived group with A Tribe Called Quest’s Q-Tip. “I think it’s going to be a record on D’Angelo’s new album when it comes out, a record that we all did together,” Saadiq said. “I’m playing bass, D’s playing, me and D is singing backgrounds. It’s funky as hell too. D is a bad boy. … It’s aged well. Good music ages well.”
As he was wont to do, D’Angelo went off-the-radar after releasing his last album more than a decade ago, popping up in 2018 to contribute the song “May I? Stand Unshaken” to the Red Dead Redemption 2 video game soundtrack. He also did a non-competition D’Angelo & Friends Verzuz set at the Apollo in 2021 that was pretty much a solo affair featuring collabs with Method Man & Redman, H.E.R. and The Vanguard backing band trumpet player Keyon Harrold.
D’angelo, who died on Oct. 14 following a battle with cancer, also teamed up with Jay-Z for “I Want You Forever” for the soundtrack to the movie The Book of Clarence.
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Lady Gaga‘s Grammy-nominated LP Mayhem has been lauded by critics as a return to form for the pop superstar. But according to Mother Monster, the album wouldn’t have seen the light of day if it weren’t for the very different critical response her third studio album received.
In a new Rolling Stone cover story, Gaga revealed that the criticism she received for Artpop — and her subsequent turn away from pop music that resulted in the albums Cheek to Cheek and Joanne — provided a direct source of inspiration for Mayhem. “Mayhem as a piece of music, I never would’ve made it without the 10 years of experience that I had,” she said. “What would Mayhem sound like if I hadn’t become a jazz singer? What would it have sounded like if I hadn’t made Artpop?”
Reflecting on her experimental 2013 album, which became a fan-favorite in the years since its release, Gaga called the resounding critical panning of the project “very impactful” on the rest of her career. “Like, much more impactful than any other criticism for any artwork. That was the first time that I ever had major criticism about a piece of work that I’d made,” she said.
Gaga described Artpop as her “EDM opus,” and said that the album’s confrontational tone was created because she was being treated as a “business” rather than an artist at the time. “People don’t like it if I say, ‘I won’t dress the way you want me to dress. I won’t have the hair you want me to have, and I’m going to not make pop music the way that you want me to make it. ‘Cause you want everything to sound like ‘Bad Romance,’ and I’m never doing that again.’”
As for the sexist undertones of that criticism, Gaga pointed out that when male artists make new choices in their music, they are heralded as “radical thinkers discovering new territory,” while female artists are mocked. “I was sort of heralded as, like, over,” she said.
After a decade of detours, including multiple film roles in A Star Is Born, House of Gucci and Joker: Folie a Deux, Gaga said she and her co-producers on Mayhem — Andrew Watt and her fiancé Michael Polansky — knew that diving back into pop music meant she had to address that part of her career head on.
“One of the things I’m most grateful for is gaining all my artistic faculties back to make this record,” she said. “I had to dig very, very deep, and I had to change a lot of my life and recenter around what I needed as a human being.”
