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GOIÂNIA, Brazil — As the global pandemic deepened, Brazilian country artist Alex Ronaldo watched his career ebb away. So the veteran music writer cooked up a side hustle: He took hundreds of demos he regularly received from aspiring artists — mostly in the sertanejo, or Brazilian country, genre — and put them out on Spotify under false names and fake artists, with fake cover art, all created from his luxury seafront condo.
In December, three years after he launched his illegal money-making scheme, prosecutors arrested and charged Ronaldo Torres de Souza, who performs under the moniker Alex Ronaldo, in the first prosecution of an individual in Brazil for streaming fraud. The sertanejo artist confessed to uploading more than 400 tracks by other artists under false names to Spotify that generated more than 28 million fake plays — using artificial intelligence to aid in the scheme.
The major labels, via Brazil’s recorded music association Pro-Música Brasil, along with Brazil’s anti-piracy body Association for the Protection of Phonographic Intellectual Rights (APDIF), cooperated on what they are calling Operation Out of Tune. “Simply put, streaming manipulation of this nature is theft — stealing directly from artists and betraying fans,” Victoria Oakley, the CEO of IFPI in London, said in a statement last week.
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As seemingly important as his arrest was, in Goiânia — the “Nashville of Brazil” — the case underscored to music executives how little was being done to tackle a more serious problem plaguing the Brazilian industry: the buying of fake streams by artists, managers and music label executives to prop up artists on Spotify’s charts.
Brazilian music executives said a furious scramble for Spotify chart dominance is spurring artists to spend tens of thousands of dollars on fake plays for individual songs — and Spotify is doing little that they can see to stop it.
“Everything is bought and paid for here,” Gláucio Toledo, a sertanejo music manager, said about music streaming success in Brazil. “I know three people who got rich selling fake playlists. It has become an unfair competition in the digital world.”
Other industry observers are hearing similar concerns. “Brazil is on a lot of people’s minds across the industry, big and small,” says Morgan Hayduk, the co-CEO and co-founder of Beatdapp, a Vancouver-based company that specializes in streaming fraud detection. “When we talk to rights holders or to platforms there are questions about what they see in their Brazil data.”
One top music manager told Billboard that so-called stream brokers peddle 1 million streams for 50,000 reais ($8,750). That level of spending outpaces the average of around $4,000 that Spotify pays out for a million streams, this person said. The typical fraud scheme involves accessing fake-stream farms in Brazil or outside the country that use dozens if not hundreds of laptops and cell phones to run Spotify accounts continuously.
Spotify says it “invests heavily in automated and manual reviews” to prevent, detect and mitigate artificial streams on its platform. “When we identify stream manipulation, we take action that includes removing streaming numbers and withholding royalties,” a Spotify spokesperson said. “Bad actors are always evolving, so our dedicated fraud prevention team is always working to identify new trends and methods used to game the system.”
Nevertheless, competition to out-buy other sertanejo artists “is hindering other genres, such as funk, pop, MPB and electronic music, which sometimes struggle to make it into the top 10 or 15 because [the lists] are inflated,” says Raphael Ribeiro, CEO of AudioMix Digital, the Goiânia-based label and artist management company that launched several big sertanejo artists, including Gusttavo Lima, Jorge & Mateus and Wesley Safadão.
Fraud is also limiting the barriers to entry for less wealthy artists in Brazil. “Nowadays, it’s hard for an artist to break through if you don’t get involved in a scheme, if you don’t pay for streams, if you don’t create a bot, because there’s a lot of money involved,” Ribeiro says.
Heavy stream-buying could at least partly explain sertanejo’s dominance in Brazil over the past several years. Seven of the top 10 most-played tracks on streaming platforms last year were sertanejo, according to Pro-Música, with Felipe & Rodrigo’s live version of “Gosta de Rua” grabbing the top spot.
In Brazil, streaming success on Spotify strongly impacts touring and sponsorship fees for artists. Top concert earners include Jorge & Mateus and Lima, the latter of whom is so popular that until two weeks ago he was publicly weighing a run for president of the country next year. (He said he would focus instead on conquering the Spanish-language Latino music market.) Reaching the top 50 on Spotify typically boosts an artist’s touring fee to at least 300,000 reais (about $52,000), two Brazilian music managers said.
Brazil’s overall recorded music market is among the fastest growing in the world. Last year it grew 21.7% to 3.49 billion reais ($609 million) to land in ninth place on IFPI’s global ranking (88% of revenues came from on-demand streams), despite the country’s currency remaining historically weak compared to the U.S. dollar. That’s up more than double from the $296.2 million and 12th place it held in 2020, according to IFPI’s annual Global Music Report.
Allegations of an underground market in Brazil for buying and selling fake streams to prop up artists first began to spread during the pandemic, when a senior manager at a streaming platform and one executive at a major label — both based in Brazil then — told Billboard that stream-buying by big-name artists was prevalent, especially in sertanejo — and that indie and major labels were involved.
Fraudsters have had a head start on Brazilian investigators. The public prosecutor’s office in the state of Goias, where Goiânia is located, only organized a cybercrime unit last year. And prosecutors acknowledged that the Torres de Souza probe, which involved authorities in two other states, piggy-backed on reporting by Brazilian news site UOL — largely because none of the more than 50 composers who were victimized reached out to authorities first, they said.
Still, Brazil has done more than most countries.
Previous law enforcement efforts have focused on shutting down websites peddling fake streams and stream-ripping services, rather than on rooting out individual fraudsters. Pro-Música president Paulo Rosa told Billboard in 2022 that most of the illicit activity affecting Brazil was being conducted outside the country by mirror sites in Russia. Last year, Operation 404, a global anti-piracy effort, dismantled the top three most popular stream-ripping mobile apps in Brazil, while another initiative, Operation Redirect, targeted illegal music sites in Brazil associated with malware distribution.
“There have been very few streaming cases channeled through proper authorities anywhere around the world,” Hayduk says. “To see three in Brazil is still a meaningful number.”
Homegrown Streaming Fraud
That said, Torres de Souza’s case showed that a relatively uncomplicated streaming fraud operation can go undetected for years. At his apartment in Recife, in the northeast of the country, the artist, who has 13,000 monthly listeners on Spotify, used fake documents and emails to register other artists’ demos with distributors. Then he published the songs on Spotify and social media platforms under fake names and fake artists, using AI-generated fake cover art.
The heart of the scheme involved setting up 21 computers that ran the open-source program Sandboxie on various internet browsers, which could generate up to 16 virtual computers on each machine. That meant he could have up to 2,000 browser windows open simultaneously pumping out mostly Spotify streams for the music he illicitly appropriated, prosecutors described in their 90-page complaint.
Investigators found a wall of laptops generating millions of illicit Spotify streams at the condo of Ronaldo Torres de Souza in Recife, Brazil.
Courtesy of the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the state of Goiás, Brazil
Investigators seized computers and hard drives containing thousands of demos and hundreds of pieces of cover art. Torres de Souza ran the computers 24 hours a day, only disconnecting them when he traveled to avoid starting a fire, Fabrício Lamas, a prosecutor with Goiânia’s cybercrime unit, CyberGaeco, tells Billboard.
In the first year or so, the sertanejo artist relied on demos from aspiring artists to generate his illicit income. Then in the past year, he turned to fast-evolving AI programs to also create fake music, prosecutors said.
By all accounts, Torres de Souza, 47, was acting alone in the scheme. His wife of more than a decade was oblivious to what he was doing with a wall full of laptops running Spotify accounts all day long, according to prosecutors.
The scheme wasn’t always that sophisticated. The sertanejo artist ascribed fake male artist names to some songs that had female singers. And some AI-created cover art didn’t even refer to actual songs. Fake artist “Regis Costa,” for example, had cover art for “Taça de Vinho” (Wine Glass) — with an image of a martini glass instead of a wine glass — but there was no such song on the album.
Prosecutors estimated Torres de Souza generated more than 300,000 reais ($52,000) in illicit royalties from the first 400 or so songs identified. They expect that number to grow significantly when they gain access to his bank account in a few months, as proscribed under Brazilian banking law.
Torres de Souza faces a potential prison sentence of more than 10 years for the fraud scheme, Lamas said. Prosecutors and his attorney José Paulo Schneider said the music artist cooperated fully in their probe and expressed remorse for his actions. He was released from jail and is awaiting trial.
“This operation, when they got to Alex Ronaldo, was just the tip of the iceberg, but [investigators] didn’t look at the bigger picture,” Schneider says. “There are many artists who use this kind of non-organic reproduction to be able to make their songs go viral — in short, to monetize them.”
Blame Game
The length of Torres de Souza’s potential sentence could come down to who claims they were a victim, which is not so clear, Lamas says.
“There is a lot of confusion,” the prosecutor says. “The composers’ associations, the record companies’ associations and the streaming companies say, ‘We are not victims.’ But who is paying? The streaming companies, who say, ‘We don’t pay them, we pay the distributor’? It’s kind of a blame game.”
Goiânia prosecutors criticized Spotify, saying the company chose not to collaborate. “In this specific case, there was no delivery of platform information,” says prosecutor Gabriella de Queiroz Clementino. “Spotify stated that it had no interest in the criminal investigation.”
A Spotify spokesperson denied that charge. The platform “cooperated fully with the authorities to provide all requested information and certainly did provide an explanation about its processes to detect and mitigate artificial streams,” the spokesperson said, noting that Spotify “continues to be collaborative during this investigation.”
Lamas says prosecutors “are aware of other situations” involving steaming manipulation but would not provide further detail. “For us to effectively combat this, the state needs better collaboration from the companies that receive this data,” he adds.
For music industry officials who see stream-buying happening in Brazilian country music with impunity, new fraud probes couldn’t come soon enough.
“To me, the greatest harm from this [fraudulent stream] activity is that it generates a lack of credibility in the market,” says Marcelo Castello Branco, president of the Brazilian Union of Composers (UBC). “There will come a time when even the consumer will not believe these numbers.”
Alexei Barrionuevo is Billboard’s former International Editor.
Randy Travis, Rep. Linda Sánchez (D-CA), and Rep. Ron Estes (R-KS) will be honored at the 2025 Grammys on the Hill Awards. The event is being held on Tuesday (April 8) in Washington, D.C.
Travis, a seven-time Grammy winner and multiplatinum recording artist, is being recognized for his work championing fair compensation and protections for artists in the digital age. In 2024, he testified on Capitol Hill in support of the American Music Fairness Act, which aims to ensure artists are fairly compensated when their songs air on AM/FM radio. He is also committed to promoting the ethical use of AI.
“At this point in my life, I am fully focused on living and giving back,” Travis said in a statement. “I’ve been part of the music community my whole life, professionally for 40 years. I am passionate about advocating to keep music an honest pursuit of art and human expression. While I remain excited about new, cutting-edge technologies, we must protect, and fairly compensate, the creative minds that give us the music—and art—that feeds our souls.”
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Travis, 65, has amassed 16 No. 1 hits on Billboard’s Hot Country Singles chart and five No. 1 albums on Top Country Albums. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2016.
Representatives Sánchez and Estes are being honored for their leadership in championing policies that empower and protect musicians. Together, they re-introduced the HITS Act in Congress in January 2025 to advance tax reforms to ensure independent music creators can thrive.
The Grammys on the Hill Awards are just the start of a three-day schedule of events hosted by the Recording Academy.
On Wednesday April 9, the Academy’s annual Grammys on the Hill Advocacy Day will bring together Grammy winners and nominees, along with industry leaders, for meetings with lawmakers on Capitol Hill to discuss key legislative priorities impacting music creators.
On Thursday April 10, the Academy will hold its second annual Grammys on the Hill Future Forum, a conference exploring critical issues impacting the music community. The event will explore how to best build up music communities both locally and globally. Conversations will focus on the work state and local stakeholders are doing to develop and sustain music economies, as well as the challenges and opportunities facing new emerging music markets around the world.
“Grammys on the Hill plays a pivotal role in improving the lives of music creators, and we’re thrilled to see it evolve into a full week of advocacy, celebration and learning,” said Recording Academy CEO Harvey Mason jr. “I’m excited to bring our music community and policymakers together in Washington—not just to celebrate the changemakers fighting for creators’ rights, but to unite and take action to improve the livelihoods of music people across the country.”
Since its inception in 2001, Grammys on the Hill has honored such artists as Alicia Keys, John Mayer, Pharrell Williams and Sheryl Crow. (See full list of artist honorees below.) The annual event has also recognized influential congressional leaders, including Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) and former Speakers of the House Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
Grammys on the Hill has led to several legislative victories for the music industry, including the Music Modernization Act in 2018 and the PEACE Through Music Diplomacy Act in 2022. In 2024, the Academy helped pass five pro-music laws, supported 20 state and federal bills, and rallied more than 3,500 members to engage in music advocacy efforts across the country.
Here’s a complete list of previous artists who were honored at the Grammys on the Hill event:
2024 – Sheryl Crow
2023 – Pharrell Williams
2022 – Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis
2019 – Yolanda Adams and Kristin Chenoweth
2018 – Little Big Town
2017 – Keith Urban
2016 – Zac Brown Band
2015 – Alicia Keys
2014 – Lady A
2013 – Jennifer Hudson
2012 – John Mayer
2011 – Don Henley
2010 – Garth Brooks
2007 – Quincy Jones
2006 – Kelly Clarkson
2005 – Gloria Estefan
2004 – Natalie Cole
2003 – Martina McBride
2002 – Vince Gill
2001 – Missy Elliott
Will Smith dropped off some new bars for Lyrical Lemonade, where he claimed to be the rap equivalent of legendary footballer Lionel Messi.
On Monday (March 31), Smith stopped by Lyrical Lemonade’s “Lunch Break Freestyle” as part of the continued roll out for his new album Based on a True Story. During his time on the show, the Oscar winner spit some braggadocious bars claiming that he is hip-hop’s G.O.A.T.
“Hip Hop’s Messi, Neymar and Ronaldo/ Goal, scored on these boys/ I’ve won damn near every award on these boys,” he spit over a thumping trap beat. “Sold-out movie theaters and even tours on these boys/ Feelin’ like a mop, wipe the floor with these boys.”
Earlier in the song, Will also boasted about the adversities he’s pushed through both in his career and in his personal life. “I be overcoming s—t that y’all be having trouble with/ Let ’em run they mouths, I mean really, that’s what come with this,” he rapped during the freestyle’s opening bars. “They built a wall but I’m jumping it and loving it/ They want me to be done with it, but I’m still havin’ fun with it.”
Will Smith dropped his new album Based on a True Story on March 28, and while his upcoming summer tour remains his main focus, he said on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast he might squeeze in another Men in Black movie during that time, too.
“I told myself I was done with sequels. I was like, ‘I’ve made enough sequels. I got some new things I want to make,’” he said. “Literally this morning, an hour before I came down here, they just threw the bag for another Men in Black. I was like, ‘Ah, I’m supposed to be going on tour this summer.’”
Smith said he’d likely shoot the film once he’s done with his European tour, which kicks off on June 25.
Watch Smith’s full freestyle above.
Kevin Hart a.k.a. Chocolate Droppa’s Tiny Desk concert debut supplied the April Fools’ Day entertainment, but don’t think this rap s–t is a joke to the comedic legend. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Hart pulled up in a hoodie and a backwards red fitted cap ready […]
There were times during the October 2023 making of their new album, Who Believes in Angels, out Friday (April 4) that Elton John wasn’t sure that he and his good friend Brandi Carlile could carry on.
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For example, as tensions in parts of the Middle East exploded following Hamas’s attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel’s retaliation in Gaza, John felt creating music was futile.
“Brandi was staying next door to my house, and she came around for breakfast and the newspapers were on the table,” John recalls over Zoom. “It was Gaza, the hostages, and I was in such a bad kind of funk — I just said, ‘I don’t know how we can write an album at this time when there’s so much crap going on in the world.’”
Carlile listened and then literally took their conversation and wrote “A Little Light” with such lyrics as “With the papers on your plate/ I see the sorrow in the headlines/ And the worry on your face.” The song goes on to acknowledge the difficult times, but to also find ways to “sing into the darkness.” The pair recorded the song later that day. While the album’s 10 songs don’t directly reference current events, “hopefully it’s an album that’s really ripe for these times. I really believe it is,” John says.
There were also internal challenges. John had come off his final world tour and was exhausted from the multi-year trek, at times throwing temper tantrums in the studio as the frustration to create something vibrant and new. “Nobody wants another Elton John album like the other 35 [I’ve made],” he says. “This one had to have energy, and it had to have a statement saying, ‘Listen, I’m nearly 78 and I’m gonna be really sounding powerful,’ and that’s what I wanted.
That’s why in addition to working with his longtime partner/lyricist Bernie Taupin, he brought in Carlile, “because she was capable of pushing me,” John says. “I’m capable of pushing her. And then in the middle, you’ve got Andrew Watt, who was the most excitable, incredible producer. The start of the album was difficult. I was not well, I was tired. I wasn’t in a good mood. And for the first three or four days, it was touch and go whether the album would happen.” (For the first time, John allowed cameras to capture the recording process for a forthcoming documentary.)
The turning point was creating the nearly seven-minute album opener “The Rose of Laura Nyro,” which begins with an extended majestic, driving instrumental intro before bursting into John and Carlile’s vocals intwining in tribute to the legendary songwriter.
“Bernie gave the lyric to me. We’ve both been huge Laura Nyro fans all our life. We remember lying on the floor in my parents’ apartment and listening to [Nyro’s 1968 classic] Eli and the Thirteenth Confession. She was such a great writer, and she changed tempos. I felt possessed by her when I wrote that melody,” John says. “Brandi rang me that evening from the car, as she was leaving the studio, and said, ‘You won’t believe it, but it was her birthday.’” Nyro, who died in 1997, received a writer’s credit on the song along with John, Taupin, Carlile and Watt.
From that point on, the creative process was like an express train, John says. Despite—or perhaps because of the elevated self-imposed pressure—John’s playing and vocals sound vigorous and spirited throughout the set. “You should have seen it. It was it just pours out of him,” Carlile says. “You can’t believe it when you’re witnessing it. I’ve known him for 17 years, but I never saw him like that.”
Both Taupin and Carlile delivered lyrics to John, who would set the words to melody, as he has for decades with Taupin.
Their styles are similar enough that John says it felt no different whether he was writing to Taupin’s or Carlile’s lyrics. “Not at all,” he says. That’s in part because Carlile has absorbed Taupin and John’s songs since she was 11 and Taupin is one of her biggest influences. “I really realized it on this project just how natural that is for me,” says Carlile. “The way Bernie behaved toward me during this process was incredibly inspiring. You can really tell that he’s raised daughters. He was just so kind to me, even though I was helping to do his job,” she says. “He would take me for dinner, and we’d get steaks and drink whiskey sours. We would talk about Elton and then he would give me a lyric and trust me with it.”
With Watt and Taupin, the pair wrote and recorded the album at Los Angeles’ Sunset Sound Studios over a three-week period, joined by a core band composed of Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Pino Palladino (Nine Inch Nails, Gary Numan and David Gilmour) and Josh Klinghoffer (Pearl Jam, Beck).
Carlile goes toe to toe with John in showing off a harder musical edge on the album, propelled by a Sunburst Les Paul electric guitar John gifted her a few years ago after she had sent John another ballad and he wanted to give her incentive to rock out.
“I know she can write those beautiful Americana songs like she’s done on all her albums,” John says. “I love those things, but I wanted to push her to say, ‘Hey, you’re capable of doing so much more and varying stuff, because there’s nothing you cannot do.’”
Carlile first played the guitar at a show at famed outdoor amphitheater The Gorge in Quincy, Washington, near where she lives. “Then I started writing songs on it and it really did change the trajectory of my songwriting,” she says.
The album’s rock feel is especially evident on second track, “Little Richard’s Bible,” a bluesy, rollicking, piano-pounding up-tempo tune with lyrics from Taupin about Little Richard, another major influence on John, that is followed by the life-affirming “Swing for the Fences,” which features a belting lead vocal by Carlile and a video that depicts a beautiful gay love story.
“Laura Nero was a gay icon, Little Richard was a gay icon — and then we got ‘Swing for the Fences,’ which is about gay people,” John says. “So the first three tracks on this album are really about stating who we are. How great we’re celebrating the people who paved the way for us!”
The openly gay John, 78, and Carlile, 43, can’t help but wonder how different their childhoods may have been if they had had a song and video like “Swing for the Fences” to guide them and make them feel less alone when they were younger.
“It would have been unbelievable to have that. Unimaginable probably for Elton,” Carlile says. “I remember the first gay kiss I ever saw on television was in the ‘90s on the Roseanne show. Her sister Jackie. And I remember there were all these warnings on Channel Five: ‘You couldn’t have this on TV.’ And I was like, think about if I had had a video like ‘Swing for the Fences’ and how for life affirming that would have been.”
The album closes with the elegiac “When This Old World Is Done With Me,” a moving piece about death sung by John. John broke down in the studio when he realized what the song was about. “It sort of crept up on me. I was writing the verse, and I think, ‘This is pretty,’ then I got to the chorus, and I realized what it was,” he says. “When you get to certain age, you think about mortality because I have children, I have [husband] David [Furnish], and I was so happy with that song. I did it all in one take, voice and piano, and it came off really well. I don’t want it to be the last song people hear about me. I’ve got more songs in me than that.”
In fact, John says he hopes this album is “the start of something,” and the pair continuing to record together, but adds there are no plans — and further states that Carlile should do her own album next, “because we don’t want to become Steve and Eydie,” he says, jokingly referring to ‘60s pop duo/married couple Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme.
John has a bigger goal for his friend that he hopes this album will help accomplish. “My ambition for her with this album was to break her internationally. She’s a well-known artist in America, but in the rest of the world, she has a lot of work to do,” he says. “She came to England last year. She played Hyde Park with Stevie Nicks. She blew people away. She did the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, got five-star reviews everywhere. And so, this album hopefully will open all those doors that she deserves to walk through and become the international artist that she should be.”
Carlile sighs appreciatively upon hearing John’s declaration, and says she knew “on some level” that was John’s plan. She’s writing a solo album now, and confesses she feels “chordically anemic” without him there to assist with the music. But almost a year and a half after finishing the album and working with John and Taupin, she is still on a high.
“I don’t think it’ll ever really catch up to how incredibly life affirming this has been for me,” she says. “I’m gonna have to really think about it for the next 10 years.”
For 17 seasons, RuPaul’s Drag Race has served as a launch pad for new pop icons. Now, the show is honoring its inspirations by recognizing EGOT winner Liza Minnelli as a cultural icon who paved the way for entertainers like RuPaul. On Tuesday (April 1), Drag Race announced that RuPaul will present Minnelli with the […]
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On Monday (March 31), President Donald Trump signed an executive order that was created to prohibit “exploitative ticket scalping” and introduce reforms to the way tickets are sold for events. President Donald Trump was joined by musician Kid Rock in the Oval Office, who wore a white straw fedora and a red tracksuit with bedazzled elements such as an eagle’s wings, stars, and the number “250” to mark the country’s 250th anniversary next year. “I didn’t know too much about it, but I checked it out, and this is a big problem,” Trump said to reporters gathered for the signing.
The executive order aims to cut “price-gouging by middlemen,” directing Attorney General Pam Bondi and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to ensure that those selling tickets at resale prices higher than face value comply by fulfilling rules set by the Internal Revenue Service. The order also dictates that the Federal Trade Commission work with the Attorney General’s office to make sure competition laws are enforced and that there is “price transparency at all stages of the ticket-purchase process.”
Live Nation stated support for the order and other reforms, including a strengthening of the Bots Act from 2016, which cracked down on scalpers using bots to buy tickets and resell them at a higher price. “Scalpers and bots prevent fans from getting tickets at the prices artists set, and we thank President Trump for taking them head-on,” the statement read. Under the Biden administration, the parent company of Ticketmaster was sued by the Department of Justice in 2024 for running an illegal monopoly over live events.
“Anyone who’s bought a concert ticket in the last decade, maybe 20 years — no matter what your politics are — knows that it’s a conundrum,” the “Cowboy” singer, also known as Robert James Ritchie, said, adding: “It’s kind of ridiculous. I would rather be, you know, a hero to working-class people and have them be able to come attend my shows and give them a fair ticket price. I can’t control that right now so hopefully this is a step to make that happen.” Trump hurriedly signed the order after taking questions and handed it off to Kid Rock to display, adding, “You better do well with this.”
—Photo: Getty
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Jayden Dandridge, the man accused of fatally shooting rap artist Sayso P and wounding Houston rapper Sauce Walka, has been found dead in Houston.
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According to People Magazine, authorities confirmed Jayden Dandridge’s death just days after he was publicly identified as the primary suspect in the Memphis shooting that occurred on March 22. Dandridge, was wanted for his alleged involvement in the attack, which took place outside a Memphis business. Sauce, whose real name is Albert Mondane, was injured in the shooting, while his artist/friend, Sayso P, was killed.
The violent incident sent shockwaves through the Hip-Hop community, as Sauce Walka is a well-respected figure in the rap world. Law enforcement had been searching for Dandridge in connection with the case, and his death adds another tragic layer to an already devastating situation. Authorities have not yet released details about the circumstances surrounding his death, including whether foul play was involved.
The killing of Sayso P and the wounding of Sauce Walka have drawn attention to the ongoing violence within the rap industry, with many artists and fans expressing their grief and frustration over the loss of another rising talent. While police continue to investigate both the Memphis shooting and Dandridge’s death, the case underscores the dangers that many Hip-Hop artists face.
As more details emerge, the rap community mourns the loss of Sayso P while awaiting answers about the events that led to Dandridge’s death.
Cardi B had the internet fooled when she posted a video of her moisturizing with a Raising Cane’s sauce, which seems to have been part of an elaborate April Fools’ Day prank.
On Tuesday (April 1), Cardi B shared a video on Instagram announcing that she had just purchased Raising Cane’s new Moisturizing Sauce.
“Everybody always asks me, how does my skin look so beautiful, so shiny, so amazing at the age of 32, three kids, job stressin’ me out and sleepless nights?” the Bronx-bred rapper said. “Well, I’ve been using this new cream. It’s the Cane’s Moisturizing Sauce Cream. Oh my gosh.”
Cardi then proceeds to lather herself up with the tan-colored goop, rubbing it all over her face and chest before licking some residue off her fingers.
“Sorry, I’m just so hungry and the moisturizer just tastes so good,” she says.
The Cane’s sauce, in collaboration with Ipsy, was actually done as an elaborate April Fools’ prank, and fans let out sighs of relief in the comments.
“Happy April 1st, she won,” one fan wrote, while another added, “Lmao bye Cardi! Took me a sec but dang it, I ain’t no APRIL FOOL!”
The lighthearted post comes just a few days after Cardi hopped on Instagram for a more disheartening reason. Much to her dismay, Cardi showed fans on her Instagram Story that her daughter, Kulture Kiari Cephus, had scribbled all over the raper’s crocodile skin Hermés Kelly bag.
“We spent $60,000 on this purse,” Cardi said. “Look what my daughter did to my purse. Look what my daughter did to my purse. Look what my daughter did to my f–king purse… mmmmm.”
Watch Cardi B’s prank below.
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Source: Asus / ROG Ally X / Xbox
It’s no secret that Xbox is working on a dedicated handheld gaming device and is not too far off from getting into gamers’ hands. We didn’t know who the Microsoft-owned gaming company is working with on the dedicated console, but that could have changed thanks to a teaser dropped by Asus.
Gamers are buzzing after Asus dropped a teaser for a new Asus ROG Ally handheld gaming device. It appears it could be the long-rumored dedicated Xbox handled, and this does not seem to be an April Fools’ joke either.
In the teaser, which also seems to be a homage to the classic sci-fi/horror film The Fly, Asus’ mascot, OMNI, gets into a fusion pod to upgrade himself with “marathon stamina, more capacity, faster speed, and fresh look.”
During the upgrade, a ROG Ally and Raikiri Pro controller fell into the pod with OMN, resulting in an Asus ROG Ally with some Xbox flavor.
Xbox’s response to the post using the meme of the monkey puppet looking and then looking away added more fuel to the fire.
Everyone seems to believe that this is the highly anticipated Xbox handheld. “Yeah, so it looks like ASUS just teased the Xbox handheld…,” journalist Destin Lagarie wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“This is an Xbox,” Gamertag Radio and Kinda Funny’s Parris Lily said on X.
Again, we’re just reading the tea leaves provided by the two companies. While they haven’t provided any information, we expect a full announcement very soon.
This latest news comes on the heels of Backbone launching a limited edition transparent green controller for smartphones.
Until that announcement comes, you can see more reactions in the gallery below.