Billboard Cover

10 Jan 2024

Teejay On Working With Davido, Afrobeats, Future Of Dancehall & More | Billboard Cover

Jamaican dancehall artist Teejay talks about the success he’s found on TikTok with his song “Drift,” working with Davido and French Montana on the “Drift” remix, the influence of Afrobeats, the difference between reggae and dancehall music, the future of dancehall and more!

Teejay
When people talk about dancehall artists, you don’t have to just say, um, I know Sean Paul or know Shaggy or you can say alright, I know Teejay.

Teejay
Yeah, grew up in Montego Bay, I grew up with my mother, my uncle and my five, my four brothers and one sister. So I was basically the breadwinner in the family growing up I was the one who basically left school at seventh grade just to continue music so I can help the family out. All my brothers is artists. So they have the studio so they would have like FruityLoops, Sonar, Acid Pro I’d watch them learning how to use of all of the user Pro Tools. I start recording myself at the age of nine that’s how determined I was at the time. When I’m not in Jamaica, I stay in Miami more, most of the time just to free the mind, you know as to all the vibes and free the mind, that’s some advice from my song from the past two years, so try to market myself for the younger generation for even my son, my daughter. Yeah, I’m young but most of time age have nothing to do with it because you know.

Watch the full video above!

09 Jan 2024

Sexyy Red On ‘Pound Town,’ Nicki Minaj Collab, Touring With Drake & More | Billboard Cover

Up-and-coming rapper Sexyy Red shares how she started rapping, the success of her song “Pound Town” and collaborating with Nicki Minaj, going on tour with Drake, hiding her pregnancy while on tour, all the viral success she’s had in the last year and more for Billboard’s future of hip-hop cover.

Sexyy Red
They be callin’ me Michael Jackson, so I just be like, okay, whatever but I guess they sayin’ because of the influence I be havin’ on people.

Sexyy Red
I wanted to be everything because I was good at everything. I used to think I was gonna be a painter. I used to be drawin’ a lot designing my Barbie dolls’ clothes. I used to be doing they hair. I knew I could do it. But I just didn’t know this what I would be doing. I always knew because I was just different. I was weird I was quiet. But everybody used to want to be my friend. I was pretty my hair was real long. My mama knew how to dress me. Everybody used to just be like flocking to me. But I was weird I was quiet. Like I was shy. I didn’t want to talk to nobody. But people still just, I don’t know like I always been like that person for real. My ex-boyfriend had cheated on me. So I had made a diss song about him. And then I rapped it to him. He was like, “oh that’s hard, I liked it.” And it is when we would be around his friends, and he had me rap the song to his friends. And they was like oh, you actually can rap, they like you hard, so then I was just like for real, and I went to the studio and made a real song. And then everybody was like send me the song, send me the song and people started booking me for parties.

Watch the full video above!

08 Jan 2024

Odetari & 6arelyhuman on Their Biggest Influences, Finding Success on TikTok & More | Billboard Cover

Odetari and 6arelyhuman talk about their biggest music influences, going viral and finding success on TikTok, how they started working and collaborating together, the future of EDM and more.

Odetari
Do we feel like we’re underground? I don’t know. The numbers are…

6arelyhuman
Not really…

Odetari
Kinda not underground.

6arelyhuman
I really started experimenting with a lot of different music styles and stuff early on. Kesha was like my number one inspiration. She really helped me realize that what she was doing is something I really enjoy. Also Lady Gaga, of course.

Odetari
When I heard Tyler, the Creator’s “Jamba,” it was just really unorthodox chords in there. That’s when I was like, oh, I want to make music like that. I want to make it now. What I was putting out there is so much different than now. I feel like I just had that moment this year, where I was like, Okay, this is what I want to do.

6arelyhuman
That’s like the same thing, it felt right. I can say things that I wanted to say and it all kind of just fell in place.

Odetari
I definitely have influence from Houston sound like when I was growing up, I looked up a lot to Travis Scott, cause me and his sister went to the same school were pretty close friends. And she kind of took me along the journey when he was first starting, like going backstage and stuff and seeing where he was with Owl Pharaoh to where he is now just really shaped a lot of the things that I want in life. I always knew with TikTok that going viral, especially with music. It’s usually like a one-time thing if you don’t do it, right. So the first song that I had that went viral I think in like, one day, I had hit 256,000 streams, which was crazy to me because I had never passed like 10k on a song. But I saw how fast it went up. got really excited. And then the next day it dropped like half. So it was like a roller coaster.

Watch the full video above!

07 Dec 2023

Karol G: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

“I forgot to wear the knee pads,” Karol G says ruefully. “I’m going to have scrapes.” She beams. For a soaking wet pop star who has just been dragged through a shallow pool, Karol looks remarkably happy.

Moments before, a group of writhing, shirtless male dancers had lifted Karol, dressed in a white bikini and transparent baggy pants, high above the water as she performed a medley of songs from her unprecedented past year in music, including material from her chart-topping February album, Mañana Será Bonito; the edgier August follow-up, Mañana Será Bonito (Bichota Season); and a small teaser of her new single with Kali Uchis, “Labios Mordidos.” Her arms knifed back-and-forth through the pool in fierce synchronicity with her platoon of dancers — all water-drenched sexiness, but a punishing physical routine nonetheless. After Karol dries off, wrings out her pants and gets her glam touched up, she’ll do it all over again.

“I want it to be spectacular,” she says matter-of-factly of the roughly four-minute Billboard Latin Music Awards performance. To that end, she enlisted renowned choreographer Parris Goebel, whose work includes Rihanna’s Super Bowl halftime show performance, to continue pushing her as a dancer. “Dance doesn’t come so easy to me,” Karol admits. “To do the things I do, I have to rehearse a lot.” Earlier this year, Goebel choreographed Karol’s MTV Video Music Awards performance.

Read the full cover story here.

07 Dec 2023

Karol G Opens Up About ‘Mañana Será Bonito’ Hitting No. 1, Global Stadium Tour & More | Billboard Cover

Colombian superstar Karol G opens up about becoming the first woman to have a Spanish-language album, Mañana Será Bonito, reach No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart, her thoughts on doing a global stadium tour, her relationship with Feid, wanting to start a record label, giving back to her community and more.

Karol G
The energy people release, is directed toward me and it’s like I’m a battery, loading.

Karol G
Hey what’s up, I am Karol G and you are watching, Billboard.

Karol G
It had never happened. Yes it’s true! We are celebrating, we celebrate a lot as a team, but it’s crazy for me to think my album was the first album in Spanish to hit No. 1. To think Karol G is the first female Latin artist on a global stadium tour, is very crazy.

Karol G
I started in 2006 and I realized this month we celebrate 4 years of “Tusa.” But then, my first songs were released 15 or 16 years age. Imagine spending 15 years and thinking when will my moment come?

Karol G:
Someone told me, “Are you doing a stadium tour?” Beyoncé is doing stadiums. Taylor Swift is doing stadium tours. Are you ready for stadium tour? I said no. I’m not ready today. But I’ll be ready because it depends on me and my commitment. And on my team, the tour was planned for 2025. We did the Puerto Rico concert in March. At that moment, which was 11 days after the album was released people knew the whole album.

Karol G:
When I say “I go with the flow,” at the first show, I didn’t have the whole album and there were three dates. In the second, I had 4 more songs, and in the third show, I did the whole album. That’s where I sat and said I’m not interested in numbers, not interested in risk, not interested in anything. I want to do this tour and I want it to be global.

Watch the full video above!

06 Dec 2023

Behind the Scenes of Morgan Wallen’s Billboard Cover Shoot | Billboard Cover

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16 Nov 2023

Tate McRae Shares the Secrets Behind Her Hits, Biggest Music Inspirations & More | Billboard Cover

Rising pop star Tate McRae reveals all about her biggest career hits to date and reacts to seeing them appear on the Billboard charts, shares how artists like Noah Kahan, Rosalía, and Post Malone inspire her, talks about how excited she is for the Billboard Music Awards, how she went from aspiring dancer to rising pop star and more.

Tate McRae
When Billboard on Instagram posts that top 10 picture and to see like my name beside like Taylor Swift and Bad Bunny is just like so next level. Yeah it feels very surreal what’s happening right now.

Tate McRae
Hey, my name is Tate McRae and today we’re gonna be climbing the charts, looking at how my music is charted and also my idols, how they’ve charted. I remember the day I was on a walk with my mom. And I remember I was like, oh my god, I’m No. 1 on like the Bubbling Under the Hot 100 chart. And I was like, this is the biggest day of my life. When “You Broke Me First” hit 17 it’s pretty wild, because I feel like I’ve just been watching my favorite artists of all time on that chart. And I think at first, I didn’t realize the capacity of what “You Broke Me First” had done until I actually like got to L.A. and realized that it had, you know, gotten to a specific spot and gotten that big. When I wrote “You Broke Me First” I was 16. I was like, I have put this song out. I really want to the first time I’d like film, my first ever like legit music video was with my friend. Like back in Calgary, on Video Star on my phone, it’s only two passes of the entire music video. It’s so crazy. It has like so many views now. And it’s so strange to just look back and see that it was literally made on an iPhone.

Watch the full interview above!

16 Nov 2023

Tate McRae: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

Tate McRae was recently scrolling TikTok when an old interview she did at 16 came across the screen. “I was the most awkward person ever, and I was like, ‘There’s no chance that this is the same person,’ ” she says with a grimace. “You evolve so much, and not only am I seeing it, but I’m documenting it in my music in real time.”

Now 20 and living in Los Angeles, the native of Calgary, Alberta (which she calls “the Texas of Canada”), has spent much of her life thus far on screens — both her own, while navigating TikTok like a promotional pro, and others, whether on network TV or YouTube. As a teen, McRae placed third on the 2016 season of So You Think You Can Dance and soon after, in fall 2017, launched the weekly YouTube series Create With Tate, which she used to share new choreography and music covers. She thought she would go on to become a backup dancer, but she felt equally drawn to songwriting, covering her bedroom walls with lyrics, quotes and poems that her mother has since painted over in a shade she describes as “serial killer white.”

One of the first videos she posted was a song that proved she wasn’t destined to be anyone’s backup — and could very much hold pop’s center stage on her own. The lovelorn piano ballad “One Day” (which McRae wrote herself) gained traction online, and by early 2018, she and her parents were flying to New York for label meetings (accompanied by McRae’s dance manager at the time); just a year later, it was announced that she had signed a record deal with RCA and a management deal with Hard 8 Working Group. As her high school graduation in Calgary neared, McRae was splitting her time between midterms and awards shows.

Tate McRae will perform at the 2023 Billboard Music Awards on Nov. 19. Watch on BBMAs.watch, @BBMAs and @billboard socials. Read the full Billboard cover story here. 

19 Oct 2023

XG: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

Earlier this year — on a warm day in May, Asian ­American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month — a septet of young women fought nerves backstage at Forest Hills Stadium in Queens. Just over a year after its official debut, the group XG was in town for Head in the Clouds, a music festival celebrating Asian and Pacific Islander culture, creativity and art organized by record label 88rising. But the gig held broader significance: It was the act’s first international performance outside of Japan, and in New York, no less.

Despite its early-afternoon billing, the stadium was packed — and chanting, “XG! XG! XG!” — when the group took the stage in glitter-emblazoned suits. The warm welcome made it difficult to believe that this was XG’s first time in New York, and after kicking off the set with its debut track, “Tippy Toes,” the crowd’s chants reached a fever pitch as the members segued into their viral hit, “Left Right.” Fans and casual festivalgoers alike danced freely to the beat, some even singing along to the song’s catchy chorus.

Reflecting today on that Head in the Clouds performance and XG’s subsequent appearance at the festival’s Los Angeles iteration, the group — whose members range in age from 17 to 21 — exudes gratitude. “New York was our first international performance, and the ‘XG! XG!’ chants were really touching,” XG’s Cocona says. In Los Angeles, she says, she even saw some fans wearing makeup inspired by the music video for “GRL GVNG,” XG’s prerelease single from its debut mini-album, NEW DNA. “And it was just really, really cool to see all of that!”

Read the full Billboard cover story here.

19 Oct 2023

Global Girl Group XG Share Their Personal Styles, Music Influences & More | Billboard Cover

Get to know global girl group XG as they share their personal styles, biggest music influences, how they define girl power and more during their Billboard cover shoot.

Maya
Well we’ve been inspired by a lot of groups but maybe TLC, Destiny’s Child and Spice Girls.

Maya
The evolution of girl power.

Jurin
I think the fundamental haven’t changed.

Maya
It hasn’t changed I agree, I agree.

Jurin
I think defining yourself in a certain way.

Maya
Don’t limit yourself.

Jurin
Yeah not being bound by any boundaries or anything like that is what I believe is the fundamental aspect of girl power.

Jurin
Whenever I decide on an outfit, I always try to project the image I want to become. For today’s Billboard interview I went with something a bit more mature and colorful and added a bit of playful touch.

Jurin
Destiny’s Child, TLC and Aaliyah. I love them. I love new challenges, and I like to set my mind to something and just get on with it. So I call myself Active Gal.

Jurin
Well for me personally it means having my own style and loving myself. I think that’s what girl power is.

Harvey
We all have very different personalities and things we really like. Each of us have to remember what we’re really into. Taking time to do what you like to do? I think we are doing that individually. I’m the same with COCONA and HINATA but I also try to draw pictures. I also like to read books and do other things that I really like.

Watch the full video above.