Billboard Cover

Billboard cover star Brent Faiyaz paved the way for many other independent artists. With his success independently, he was driven to create a network where independent artists could thrive, which is how ISO Supremacy came to life. Brent Faiyaz talks about his journey as an independent artist, his advice to other independent artists, why ISO Supremacy’s mission is to support independent artists and more!

Brent Faiyaz:

I really like doing what I want to do. And then I like being able to say no to things that I don’t want to do. The main thing that comes with giving up a piece of your independence is not being able to say no. It really isn’t no deeper than that for me. So I think I just want to, I want to inspire people to not be OK with being told what to do. You can’t grow like this. How are you going to be constant? How are you gonna grow when mother—-ers constantly say no, no, stay down. So before people decide they want to do deals and they want to, they want to take these large amounts of money and they want to collab with this person, that person, I want people to really sit and think about like, you feel me, are they going to be okay with not being able to control the sh*t that they want to do? I was making money selling beats, like in high school, middle school. But that’s like a lot of how I got my friends like when I was young. Like it’d be like growing mother—-ers coming into the house like to get beats off me and sh–. And my parents are like, who are these grown adults coming by the house like to like what is thid going on, like bruh, people like my music.

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Billboard cover star Camila Cabello talks about her upcoming album, C,XOXO, and how she’s evolved her creative style to emulate her new era. She goes in depth about what to expect from her new album, the importance of songwriting and creative freedom in its creation, paying homage to hip-hop, what it was like to collaborate with Playboi Carti on “I LUV IT,” her plans to incorporate touring in the near future and more!

Camila Cabello:
I feel like this whole album is like signed C,XOXO because it’s signed by me — from me to you. What’s up, guys? I’m Camila Cabello and welcome to my Billboard cover shoot. So we are at my Billboard cover shoot in East Hollywood. We’ve got a little kiddie pool over here because we’re really trying to like, bring Miami to East Hollywood. As you can see, I’m wearing a little bikini here. Because you know, we’re repping Miami on this album, or repping the Miami girls. We got some heat that decided to show up for us today. It is actually sauna level hot, fun fact. It’s going to be really fun. There’s a really cute little dog, and here we go.

Erica Hernandez:
What I’m most excited to capture today with Camila is we’re in grandma’s house. And I’m just really excited to lean into this vibe that she’s created for herself and to capture her in her new moment. And I think it’s going to be beautiful.

Jared Ellner: 
Camila’s rebrand connects to this shoot because we have lots of metallics, clear, she loves blue. Things that really feel sort of like mismatched, nothing that’s like too coordinated. So we’re pulling a lot from her vibe.

Camila Cabello:
I feel like this new era, everything for me starts with the music and starts with the songwriting. And I do my exploring to figure out, you know, what is like the voice for this album?

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Country superstar and Billboard cover star Lainey Wilson talks about how she felt winning her first Grammy for her last album ‘Bell Bottom Country,’ how she came up with the name ‘Bell Bottom Country,’ the career challenges she’s faced, what it was like to grow up in Louisiana, how she feels about the country music revival, her inspiration for songwriting, style icons and more!

Lainey Wilson
Hey y’all, it’s Lainey Wilson. Welcome to my Billboard cover shoot.

Lainey Wilson
I’m on the set of my Billboard cover shoot here in Pasadena. We are so excited to get me all done up. I just got off of a 15-hour plane ride from Sydney, Australia. So they’re covering up some jet lag, but it’s gonna be a fun day and this is a dream come true.

Joelle Grace Taylor
Today with Lainey, she’s such a beautiful, flamboyant country star. We really wanted to give her kind of a spin on that we were thinking like, let’s elevate it to this kind of LA ‘Boogie Nights,’ pool party vibe. So she’s basically like, welcome to my villa. I look amazing. Would you like some lemonade?

Cherie Kilchrist
The pieces I pulled, I took from Lainey’s personal style. … She’s always looking for an exaggerated leg, bell sleeves, kind of like this Cavalli look here is a very standard Lainey pant that people recognize her for. So I tried to stay true to that while still doing the vibe of the shoot.

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Billboard cover star singer-songwriter T-Pain shares the stories behind some of his biggest hits “Buy U a Drank,” “Bartender,” “I’m Sprung” and “I’m N Luv (Wit a Stripper),” to his iconic features with Ye — formerly known as Kanye West — (“Good Life”), Flo Rida (“Low”), DJ Khaled (“All I Do Is Win”), Chris Brown (“Kiss Kiss”) and Lil Wayne (“Got Money”).

T-Pain:
This is the Hot 100, this is everybody. These are the best 100 songs. That was my first time releasing anything at all, you know, on a national level. Oh my god, what a world that opened up to me. You know what I mean? Like, I didn’t know what was going to transpire after that. I didn’t know how to deal with what was coming back or anything like that. I barely knew who I was myself, but I think I was just a kid — just a kid that didn’t know what he was doing. He didn’t know where he wanted to go, you know, just wanting one car at that time. I was fine with that. Until they gave me that first check. Holy s–t, that first check was out of control! S–t! Oh, yeah, that one car theory went out the window right away.

But having it break in at 100. I mean, that I was fine. I was good with that. And you know, a lot of people would see that, and they’d say, “Well, it’s nowhere near No. 1.” But at the time, that’s my highest charting record. Like I’m, I’m seen with the best 100 songs in this whole category. This is it. This is the Hot 100. This is everybody all at the same time. This ain’t hip-hop, this ain’t R&B, this ain’t adult contemporary, this ain’t Latin, this ain’t nothing. This is everybody. This ain’t country.

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New K-pop girl group VVS talk about what fans can expect from their debut, how their girl group concept is different from other girl groups, how they describe their R&B and pop sound and more in their Billboard Korea cover interview.

VVS
Hi Billboard, we are VVS!

Britney
Hello my name is Brittney and I’m the leader of the group.

Ilee
Hello I’m Ilee and I’m a rapper in our group.

Rana
Hello I’m Rana and I’m the main dancer in this group.

Jiu
Hello I’m Jiu and I’m the main vocalist in this group. Nice to meet you.

Liwon
Hello I’m Liwon and I’m youngest in this group.

Question: We heard you just learned your group name?

Brittney
So we finally finally finally got our name, we’ve been like waiting for this moment. So we’re so excited. Yeah, so we should tell them our name. So how about we introduce our group name?

VVS
Hello we are VVS!

Question: What’s the meaning of the group name?

Brittney
So we have three meanings to our group name. So our first meaning is that VVS means the highest commercial grade diamonds, so the first meaning shows our luxury side.

Ilee
Additionally, the second meaning of our group name VVS stands for the Roman numeral 5, representing the number five and VS or to be against, which represents our aspiration to overcome all obstacles together.

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Superstar DJ Peggy Gou talks about her debut album ‘I Hear You’ coming out in June, working with artist Olafur Eliasson on the album cover, her collaboration “I Believe In Love Again” with Lenny Kravitz, how much she loves her job and traveling all over the world, how her fans inspire her and more!

Peggy Gou
Hi guys, this is Peggy Gou here. Welcome to my Billboard cover shoot. We’re in Mexico. Right now we’re doing a shoot with Billboard. And I was playing at the festival on Sunday as well.

Peggy Gou
I believe that Koreans are very hard workers. They don’t like to waste their time. And they’re very efficient. And my team always says that about me: When efficiency is a person, it will be you. I don’t like f—ing around. I don’t like wasting my time. And that comes from Korean blood. I love this job. I take my job very seriously. And one of the things that I love about my job is that I get to tour many countries every weekend. Every weekend, I feel like I’ve learned a lot from not only the tour by meeting people, by going to the country, cities. And of course, sometimes I wake up thinking, Where was I? But I’ve been doing this since, like, 2014. So I think traveling is a big part of my life now. Someone asked me recently, what is luxury to you? And my answer was sleeping in your own bed with your own pillow. So that’s the hardest part of this job. I feel like I can’t stay in one place. Just I get bored super fast. I have so much energy. So staying in one place wouldn’t suit me. Even if I wasn’t a DJ or producer, I would still be doing something that travels. I’m back in London. We are on our way to Sydney. I’m a very visual person. Doing this job, I get to see, hear a lot of things and that inspires my visuals, colors. And also I get inspired by my supporters.

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Billboard cover star Tyla talks about creating her viral hit “Water,” the journey to creating her recently released debut album ‘Tyla,’ the diverse collaborations from Becky G, Tems, Gunna and Skillibeng, how her sound has evolved from R&B and pop to more Ampiano focused, how she feels to be the first artist to win a Grammy in the new African Music Performance category, how the South African dance Bacardi dance style inspired the viral “Water,” dance, canceling her highly anticipated Coachella performance and tour due to injury and more.

Tyla
People are gonna see me everywhere. So if you don’t like me, I’m sorry.

Tyla
The making of “Water,” I was wrapping up the album. And I was looking for sounds that I was missing. And I really felt like I was missing like a summer, banger, vibey type song. So I ended up working with these people that we call the Fantastic Four, which is Ari, Corey, Mocha and Sammy Soso and, we came up with literally the exact song I had envisioned. And we recorded it in a bedroom, literally. And I just remember repeating it and repeating it and playing it for whoever would listen and people that I played for loved it had a really good feeling I started performing it before it was out. And the response was so good that I was like, Wait, this could be the song. But obviously the challenge and everything took a like to the wall.

Watch the full video above!