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In 2015, Dana Biondi was looking for the future.
The frat-rap and weed-rap crazes in the early 2010s catapulted artists like Wiz Khalifa and Curren$y to fame, but by the middle of the decade, Biondi — who had promoted shows at New Haven, Conn., club Toad’s Place and had some rap management experience — sensed a different energy on hip-hop’s horizon. “I had really seen a lot of the fans sit at shows and just kind of bob their head,” he recalls. “I knew that the industry was pushing toward a new movement.”
Biondi found that future in $uicideboy$. At the dawn of what would come to be known as the SoundCloud rap era, the New Orleans hip-hop duo, consisting of cousins $crim and Ruby da Cherry, had quickly attracted a passionate cult following with their strikingly personal lyrics, rock-influenced sonics and attitude, and, particularly, their riotous live shows. “The first show that I went to to see them was at the Roxy [in Los Angeles] — and it was chaos like I had never seen before,” says Biondi, now 36. “Between the mosh pits and the fandom and the overall show just being… chaotically beautiful, in a way. I [knew] that they were really special.”
He started managing the Boy$ shortly after — along with longtime friend Kyle Leunissen, who introduced him to the duo — while also serving as music manager for G59 Records, the cousins’ own label. Distributed by The Orchard, G59 now boasts a battalion of similarly minded artists like Shakewell, Germ and Night Lovell who have since cultivated their own fan bases. But the empire all revolves around $uicideboy$, who have not only hit the top 10 of the Billboard 200 with each of their four official studio albums but also become a popular arena act with their annual Grey Day Tour (which in 2024 grossed $50.7 million, according to Billboard Boxscore) and a dominant brand in artist merchandise. (Biondi cites merch sales of over $30 million in 2024 alone.)
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Biondi initially endeared himself to $uicideboy$ and proved his capabilities by helping organize their early merch operations. But his versatility is what made him indispensable; now a G*59 label partner, he finds himself “jumping from a marketing call to a merchandising call to a call directly with the artist, to a call with the artist’s family, to a call with a major label, to a call with a lawyer,” wearing many different hats for both artist and label. (In a more literal hat-wearing sense, during his Zoom call with Billboard, Biondi reps the brand with a GREY59 skull-and-crossbones cap that complements a G59 RECS hoodie.)
And as Biondi has helped the duo build its empire, they’ve mostly avoided traditional pathways to mainstream success: The pair, which has no real conventional hits and only reached the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in 2024 (with “Us vs. Them,” which peaked at No. 96), has minimal radio promotion and does few media appearances. But Biondi is proud of what he has achieved with the Boy$ — who’ve already surpassed 1 billion on-demand U.S. streams in 2025 alone, according to Luminate — largely outside of the broader industry machine, and he believes it will only get easier for artists like them to blaze their own trails.
“If you’re a phenomenal artist and you’re very creative and you wrap the right team around you, the world’s yours,” he says. “I think that the future is indie.”
Dana Biondi photographed May 20, 2025 in New York.
Matthew Salacuse
When you saw $uicideboy$ the first time, could you see parallels between them and any other artists?
At the time, the fandom is what caught me. I saw how the crowd was chanting “G59.” I saw how mesmerized these fans were. There was only, what, 300 or 400 at the show? Maybe even less than that. But they were so engaged — and I just recognized early on the brand [strength]. And to me, that’s the most important thing: creating a brand and creating the stickiness of a brand with fans. That’s what will keep you around forever.
As far as comparing them [to other artists], I saw a combination of a hard-rock audience that was wearing black — and that was like skaters and more alternative — but then, obviously, they’re rappers, so I was able to hear the hip-hop influence of Three 6 Mafia and Bone [Thugs-N-Harmony]. It was kind of the perfect mesh of both genres, and that was really appealing to me because I had grown up listening to a lot of Bone Thugs and a lot of different alternative music.
They’re obviously much bigger now. When was the first moment that you went, “OK, this isn’t just something that can happen — this is something that is currently happening”?
When we started working full-on together, one of the first things I did was I brought them overseas and had them play proper club rooms. That was kind of a defining point — I was in the middle of Europe and the fandom was insane. I was like, “Man, this is going to work on a very big level, both here and domestically.”
A large part of our early success was doing a proper tour with proper routing overseas, in Australia and in Europe, and kind of showing the U.S. fans that this was a cultural movement and it was worldwide… and they were pulling the same amount, if not more, of people overseas than they were pulling in the U.S. The U.S. had to play a little bit of catch-up.
It’s pretty unconventional for mainstream acts to do an annual outing like the Grey Day Tour, as opposed to touring in conjunction with an album or a promotional cycle. What made you confident that this was the best touring strategy?
Growing up, I had always loved the concept of Warped Tour and how they went to so many different cities and brought so many different people around. It really created a yearly concert that each fan, no matter what, just signed up for. They were like, “We trust the Warped team to give us a great bill.”
The year that we started Grey Day [2019] — the year before was the last year of Warped. I saw a void in the marketplace, and that’s where Grey Day came from. Our lane was emerging, and it was very similar to that hard-rock, Warped lane — but it was obviously much more focused on hip-hop.
So I said, “Let’s just create our own yearly [tour], and let’s always look at some new artists that are up-and-coming — some friends that we just like to work with and like to tour with — and continue to keep it fresh and new and give the fans what they want.”
Dana Biondi photographed May 20, 2025 in New York.
Matthew Salacuse
Earlier this year, Billboard reported that you guys were shopping the catalog. Why did you think now’s the time for that, and has anything come of it yet?
It’s something that we are doing, and we just felt like it was a good time to try and gauge interests, really, and see where the market was for it. The guys have put out a lot of great music, and we plan on putting out a lot more albums and a lot of other great music. We look at the new music, starting this year, as the next phase of $uicideboy$. We’re just interested in the reach of the old music and looking for a partner to possibly consider for that.
But nothing firm there yet?
We have something firm, but it’s not done yet. So I can’t really speak on that.
Are there specific goals that they or you and the team have for the next few years?
We’ve hit so many different home runs in terms of touring and ticket sales and merchandise sales and streaming numbers. It would be nice to finally get some notoriety on the awards side of things, just because we feel like we are one of the biggest artists in music and our numbers and all of our credits show it.
And then, other than that, just continuing to make the Grey Day Tour bigger and continuing to get more eyes and views on the music. There’s still so many times where somebody will ask me what I do and I’ll tell them, and they’ll say, “Oh, I’ve never heard of those guys.” Which means that there’s more fans for us to attract. It’s always something that I enjoy hearing and shows that we still have some more work to do.
Would $uicideboy$ play the Grammys?
(Laughs.) I think so. They would definitely do it their own way because that’s how we do it. But I think they would. I think they would rock the house, and I think the rest of the world would view that performance as something really different and something that they might enjoy themselves. A lot of people would discover the $uicideboy$ on a stage like that.
Dana Biondi photographed May 20, 2025 in New York.
Matthew Salacuse
As $uicideboy$ become $uicidemen, have you had a conversation with them about what the next 10 or 20 years look like? So much of what they’ve done so far is centered on youth culture and around their fans discovering them at a formative time in their lives. And I’m sure that’ll continue. But as the guys enter their 30s and 40s, have you talked about how to keep the brand vital?
We like to focus on about a year or two at a time. It just helps us stay more on the pulse. I mean, nobody knows how or where music is sonically going – and they don’t focus too much on the overall sound of everything. But I think our focus is always about a year or two out, and we kind of plan our moves accordingly. Like I said, they’re going to be around forever. What that looks like in five to 10 years? I don’t know.
Time will tell. We’ve worked at a really fast pace to this point between doing 50-, 60-, 70-plus shows a year and traveling the world and putting out two to three albums a year. Their pace has been phenomenal. At a certain point, it’s got to let up. But for now, we have a lot of great releases and a lot of really good plans in the future for the next couple of years.
What advice would you give young artists or labels that are just starting to catch their footing?
Picking the right people around you and formulating a team is the most important thing for me. Having everything from an agent to a lawyer to a marketing guy… It’s not just a one-man show — it’s a whole team, and everybody has responsibilities on that team to move the ball downfield. I would also say concentrating on your fans and continuing to develop your brand.
There has been a lot of discourse about the lack of developed hip-hop superstars in the past five years — but it seems like when people have those conversations, they’re mostly talking about the top-level crossover hit-makers of the last 30 years. Do you think cult stars like $uicideboy$ are the future of hip-hop stardom? Is the future of hip-hop independent?
I think so. Fans are now just focused on what they want to listen to. We did so many years of going on a playlist, like a RapCaviar, and finding out about songs. And now I think word of mouth is back and hearing about songs — whether it’s through quick videos like Instagram or TikTok or friends that are listening and hearing about new sounds — I think it’s back to the streets, even though the streets are in a different form these days.
Digital streets.
Yeah, the digital streets — and I think that’s the key to the future. People will take notice over time. It might not happen immediately — or it might happen immediately — but people will take notice. It’s all about developing that brand and creating something that has stickiness and has power.
This story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Secretly Group has announced a partnership with Merge Records as the veteran indie label’s co-founder and co-president exits the business.
The announcement sees Secretly co-founders Ben Swanson, Chris Swanson, Darius Van Arman and Phil Waldorf acquiring a 50% stake in the company. Meanwhile, Merge co-founder Mac McCaughan will continue in his role as label president and head of A&R, though co-founder and co-president Laura Ballance will leave the business.
Other Merge staffers maintain their roles within the company, including label director Christina Rentz, Merge marketing director Jamie Beck and head of digital Wilson Fuller.
Merge was founded by MacCaughan and Ballance in North Carolina in 1989 as a means of independently releasing music made by those within their immediate circle of friends. This included groups such as MacCaughan’s Bricks and Wwax, alongside Metal Pitcher and Superchunk, which both featured MacCaughan and Ballance as members.
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Merge would attract plenty of attention throughout the ’90s and ’00s thanks to releases by bands such as Neutral Milk Hotel, The Magnetic Fields and Arcade Fire, with the latter proving to be a breakout success in the new millennium, giving the label their first appearance on the Billboard 200 with 2004’s Funeral, and first chart-topper with 2010’s The Suburbs.
“We continue to be inspired and amazed by the musicians we work with,” MacMcCaughan said in a statement. “I have known many of the people in the Secretly world for decades, and I know that they share Merge’s dedication to artists and getting their music into the hands of as many people as possible.
“We have seen this in action working with Secretly Distribution’s international team since 2012, and are excited about what the future looks like with the strength and experience of Secretly Distribution working for Merge artists around the world, and now here at home. I know Laura has her own exciting future ahead, and I am excited to continue and expand upon the label we’ve run for 36 years.”
“It was never my goal to start a record label when I was 21 and run it for the rest of my life,” Ballance said of her exit from the company. “I have been doing this for 36 years now. Life is short. There are other things I have always wanted to do: make more art, travel for fun, volunteer more, write a book and lots of other things that being so entrenched in running a business does not allow me to do.
“Merge Records started as a literal bedroom label, in my bedroom, and lived there for a few years before we were able to give it some space of its own. It has always been a labor of love. I am going to miss it and all the people and bands tremendously.”
“When we heard that Laura was looking to move on from Merge, we immediately engaged in conversations with Mac and Laura about what a new partnership with Secretly could look like,” explained Waldorf, Secretly co-founder.
“We looked up to Merge as we started our labels. We are not just fans of the music they’ve released, but their independent ethos and commitment to being an artist-first company,” he added. “Becoming a partner in Merge is beyond a dream for me – I saw Superchunk for the first time when I was a teenager, before I even knew you could have a full-time job in independent music, and attended Merge’s 5th Anniversary celebration at the Cat’s Cradle while I was a college student in Athens, GA, making this a real ‘pinch me’ moment three decades later.”
As MacMcCaughan noted, Merge has already been working with Secretly Group’s sister company Secretly Distribution for marketing and distribution services outside of North America for over a decade now. As part of the new partnership, Merge will continue to operate as a standalone label based in Durham, NC, while utilizing Secretly Distribution’s worldwide distribution arm and aspects of the Secretly ecosystem such as accounting, artist royalties, business affairs, licensing, IT and HR.
“Our aim is to support Merge with the independent ecosystem we’ve built at Secretly, while preserving what’s truly special about what Mac and Laura have built over the past 36 years, such that we can support Merge’s growth in the decades to come,” added Swanston, Secretly Co-Founder.
The first new album to be released following this partnership, and the first to be distributed worldwide by Secretly, will fittingly be Superchunk’s Songs in the Key of Yikes, which is scheduled for an Aug. 22 release.
Anthem Music Publishing has acquired a catalog of songs written and recorded by Country Music Hall of Fame crooner Marty Robbins.
Among the titles in the newly-acquired catalog are Robbins’ 1960 hit “Big Iron,” which reached No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 and No. 5 on Billboard’s country chart. The catalog also includes Robbins’ 1959 hit “El Paso,” which topped both the Billboard Hot 100 and the Hot Country Songs chart. “El Paso” won a 1961 Grammy trophy for best country & western recording, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998. His hit “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife,” which won best country song in 1971, is also included in the catalog acquisition.
Jason Klein, Anthem Music Group CEO, said in a statement, “Marty Robbins was a towering figure in American music – an artist whose storytelling transcended genre and era. His songs are woven into the fabric of country and western music heritage, and continue to influence artists and resonate with fans to this day.”
“We’re honored to see Marty’s music find a new home with Anthem Music Publishing,” the Marty Robbins Estate noted in a statement. “His songs have stood the test of time, captivating generations with their vivid storytelling and emotional depth. We’re confident that Anthem will not only preserve Marty’s legacy, but elevate it – introducing his work to new audiences while honoring the timeless spirit of the originals. Marty’s music has always belonged to the people, and we believe Anthem shares that same dedication to keeping it alive for generations to come.”
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During his four-decade career, Robbins found success as a singer, songwriter, musician, actor, author and even a NASCAR driver. He earned 11 Billboard Hot Country Songs chart-toppers, and several of his hits, including “El Paso,” “My Woman, My Woman, My Wife” and “A White Sports Coat (And a Pink Carnation)” were self-penned by Robbins. He earned two Grammy awards, was a member of the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame, and his songs “Big Iron” and “El Paso” were included in the Western Writers of America’s Top 100 Western Songs of All Time.
As a NASCAR driver, Robbins ran 36 NASCAR races between 1966 and 1982, earning six top 10 finishes, including a top 5 finish in the Motor State 500 in Michigan in 1974. Early in his racing career, he became a regular performer on the last segment of the Grand Ole Opry’s Saturday night shows, so he could take part in races prior to the show. He also starred in films and television series, including The Drifter, Western Caravan and Marty Robbins Spotlight. Robbins passed away in 1982 at age 57.
Tencent Music Entertainment, China’s fast-growing streaming platform, announced on Tuesday (June 10) it plans to acquire Ximalaya, a Shanghai-based service for streaming podcasts and audiobooks. Under a merger agreement signed today, Ximalaya will become a wholly owned subsidiary of TME, subject to regulatory approvals and closing conditions. According to filings with the SEC and the […]
Billy Jones, a longtime figure in New York’s live music scene, has died at age 45. A statement provided to multiple outlets by a spokesman for the club says Jones died on Saturday morning (June 7) due to “a highly aggressive case of glioblastoma,” a form of brain cancer. Jones was the co-founder/owner of Brooklyn’s […]
Jonathan Mayers, co-founder of Superfly Entertainment and the co-creator of iconic festivals including Bonnaroo and Outside Lands, has died. His age and cause of death are unknown at this time.
Mayers grew up an hour outside New York City and attended Tulane University in New Orleans, graduating in 1995. He was first introduced to the music business through his work with famed New Orleans venue Tipitina’s and the long-running Jazz Fest celebration. He co-founded promotion company Superfly in 1996 with Rick Farman, Richard Goodstone and Kerry Black and staged its first concert during Mardi Gras with the Meters, Maceo Parker and Rebirth Brass Band. In 2002, the four men launched and sold out the first Bonnaroo after discovering the perfect festival site an hour outside of Nashville in Manchester, Tenn. Partnering with promoter Ashley Capps of AC Entertainment, agent Chip Hooper of Paradigm and manager Coran Capshaw of Red Light — and securing headliners like Trey Anastasio from Phish and Grateful Dead’s Phil Lesh and Bob Weir — the men created a 70,000-person festival that would become the blueprint for hundreds of other music festivals across the country.
In 2005, Mayers’ Superfly launched Vegoose in Las Vegas with programming at multiplevenues throughout the city. The first festival brought in approximately 37,000 visitors, and Mayers and his team ran the festival for three seasons before opting to shut it down. Mayers would also partner with Another Planet Entertainment in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2008 to launch Outside Lands in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. In 2017, Mayers led efforts to partner with Viacom and Comedy Central to produce a large-scale indoor/outdoor comedy festival in San Francisco called Clusterfest that included performances by Kevin Hart, Amy Schumer, Jon Stewart and Trevor Noah.
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While working on Clusterfest, Mayers began interfacing with major film and TV rights holders and created a new experience concept allowing fans to “step inside” some of their favorite TV shows on recreated TV sets. Mayers and team licensed rights from shows like Seinfeld, The Office, South Park, Arrested Development, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Daily Show to create immersive fan experiences visited by hundreds of thousands of fans. For the show Friends, Mayers led efforts to create pop-up experiences in multiple cities, including New York, Boston and Atlanta.
Despite his success, Mayers’ relationships with his co-founders at Superfly began deteriorating during the COVID-19 pandemic, and in August 2021, he was terminated from his position at the company. In early 2022, Mayers sued Farman, Goodstone and Black and accused them of civil misrepresentation, breach of contract and fraud for allegedly lowballing him for the value of his shares in Superfly. Also named in the complaint was Virgo Investment Group, a California private equity fund; Mayers alleged that its top executive, Jesse Watson, strung him along for months, promising $5 million in financing before firing him last summer. On Jan. 20, 2023, a New York judge dismissed the lawsuit.
After leaving Superfly, Mayers began work on a new project called Core City Detroit which sought to raise money to invest in a “culturally rich neighborhood anchored by a music campus providing world- class services, infrastructure, and housing for local/national artists & industry along with entertainment experiences for the public,” according to an investment deck on the project. Phase 1 of the Core City Detroit project included a drive-in diner by celebrity chef Kiki Louya and the renovation of an old pickle factory into a music production complex.
Mayers’ longtime friend Peter Shapiro, founder of Dayglo Presents and the Brooklyn Bowl, described him as a creative mastermind who had a deep love for live music and a vision for how it would evolve over the next two decades.
“Jonathan was one of the true real visionaries of the modern concert world and one of the core minds behind Bonnaroo,” Shapiro tells Billboard. “Modern-day festivals are all in some way built off of his vision.”
Company officials at Another Planet Entertainment issued a statement to Billboard following Mayers’ passing. “Jonathan was a bright light, always pushing new and creative ideas in the entertainment space,” they said. “He was a visionary who was integral in the founding and the spirit of Outside Lands. Everyone in the Another Planet family will miss him dearly.”
Music rights and media investment company HarbourView Equity Partners raised $500 million through the sale of a private asset-backed securitization (ABS), backed by royalties generated from its music catalog, to insurance vehicles managed by global investment firm KKR, HarbourView announced on Monday (June 9). The news comes a little more than a year after HarbourView […]
Now that Taylor Swift has bought back the masters to her first six albums, Scooter Braun is reflecting on his part in the yearslong back-and-forth he ignited by purchasing the singer’s catalog from Scott Borchetta back in 2019.
While speaking about the feud during an episode of The Diary of a CEO posted Monday (June 9), the music mogul began by sharing how he’d originally had high hopes for his relationship with the “Fortnight” singer after he bought Big Machine Label Group from Borchetta for a reported $300 million six years ago, gaining ownership of Swift’s back catalog in the process. Shortly afterward, the pop star shared a Tumblr post calling the sale her “worst case scenario,” accusing Braun of “incessant, manipulative bullying” over the years and including a screenshot of a post from Justin Bieber featuring Braun and Kanye West with the caption, “Taylor swift what’s up.”
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Braun says that he was “shocked” when he read Swift’s post. “When I bought Big Machine, I thought I was going to work with all the artists on Big Machine,” Braun recalled on the podcast. “[Taylor] and I had only met three or four times. One of the times, it was years earlier, it was really a great engagement. She invited me to her party. We respected each other.”
“In between that time since I’d seen her last, I started managing Kanye West,” he continued. “I managed Justin Bieber. I knew she didn’t get along with them. This is where my arrogance came in. I had a feeling she probably didn’t like me because I managed them, but I thought once this announcement happened, she’d talk to me, see who I am, and we’d work together. Then this Tumblr comes out, and it says all of this stuff, and I was just shocked.”
The involved parties would spend the next few weeks disputing details of how the deal went down — including whether or not Swift found out about the purchase only as it was publicly announced, which she claimed in her post — with Braun later writing in an open letter of his own that he was “disappointed” in the 14-time Grammy winner for having “remained silent” despite his family receiving “numerous death threats” amid the debacle. Swift would later announce plans to re-record her old albums, while the retired manager eventually sold her catalog again to Shamrock Holdings.
“I couldn’t fix the relationship that I didn’t have, but then I was able to figure out, ‘You know what? We’ll sell it,’” Braun said of selling to Shamrock on The Diary of a CEO. “In the world of streaming, the re-records will only help the old catalog as much as they help the new catalog. Both will get a bump. I showed how everyone can be a winner here, and I was able to sell the catalog and — I don’t want to go into too much detail, but it’s now come out very factually that I did offer it [to Taylor] … multiple times in that process. They said no, I sold to someone else, washed my hands of it and moved on.”
Swift has also previously addressed Braun’s alleged offers to sell her catalog back to her, though she recalls it much differently. According to the “Karma” artist, his team had asked her to sign a non-disclosure agreement before she could even “bid on [her] own work.”
“He would never even quote my team a price,” Swift wrote in a post on X at the time. “These master recordings were not for sale to me.”
Billboard has reached out to Swift’s rep for comment.
In any case, the musician walked away from negotiations and hammered away at her Taylor’s Version re-recording project, releasing highly successful new versions of Fearless, Speak Now, Red and 1989 between 2021 and 2023. Everything came full circle at the end of May 2025, when Swift announced that she’d finally been able to acquire her old catalog from Shamrock, about which Braun told Billboard at the time, “I am happy for her.”
On the podcast, Braun reiterated that he only hopes for the best for Swift. “I can’t worry about everyone’s niece being mad at me,” he quipped. “What I gotta do is show up for my niece, and I gotta show up for my friends and my family. I wish everyone involved, across the board, whether I know them or not, good wishes.”
Even so, the businessman confessed that the fallout was hard on his mental health and personal life, especially as he was going through a tough time with then-wife Yael Cohen that would eventually lead to a divorce. “When something happens to you that feels deeply unfair, and you can’t fix it, then you’ve really got to look at everything and realize the role you played in this or that, who you want to be,” Braun said of his disagreement with Swift.
“Everything in life is a gift,” he added. “Having that experience allows me to have empathy for people I worked with. I never knew what it was like to be on the global stage like that. I never knew what criticism like that felt like.”
Watch Braun’s full interview on The Diary of a CEO above.
Taylor Swift has won a temporary restraining order against an alleged stalker who the pop superstar claims showed up at her Los Angeles home numerous times over the past year to falsely claim she’s the mother of his child.
The order requires Brian Jason Wagner, a 45-year-old Colorado man, to stay at least 100 yards away from Swift and her residence. Judge Debra R. Archuleta signed the directive on Monday (June 9), three days after Swift petitioned the court for help.
In the restraining order request filed Friday (June 6), Swift said Wagner is a stalker who first showed up at her Los Angeles residence in July 2024. Wagner allegedly returned multiple times that month, at one point “carrying a glass bottle that could have been used as a weapon.”
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“During each of these visits, I am informed that Mr. Wagner made various statements about living at my property (not true), being in a relationship with me (not true), believing I am the mother of his son (not true), and needing to see me in person, all of which are untrue and disconnected from reality,” wrote Swift.
Swift said Wagner returned to the house again twice this past May, prompting her security team to run a background report. At this point, Swift’s staff discovered that Wagner had a criminal record and had sent “lengthy communications” from jail discussing a nonexistent romantic relationship with the singer.
According to the restraining order request, Swift’s team also discovered that Wagner had attempted to steal her mail and illegally obtained a California driver’s license that listed her Los Angeles address as his own.
“I do not share publicly where I reside and have never shared my address or the location of my Los Angeles residence with Mr. Wagner,” wrote Swift in the filing. “Therefore, the fact that Mr. Wagner has determined where I reside and visited the property several times, refusing to leave and claiming to need access, makes me fear for my safety and the safety of my family. The fact that both of these recent visits and Mr. Wagner’s inappropriate and threatening communications to my staff about me have escalated in recent weeks creates a fear of imminent harm.”
The temporary restraining order is set to expire on June 30, when Judge Archuleta will hold a hearing to determine whether a more permanent restraining order should be put in place.
Swift’s reps did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday. Wagner could not be reached for comment.
This is just the latest in a string of disturbing incidents that have landed Swift’s alleged stalkers in legal trouble over the past few years. Florida man Roger Alvarado was sentenced to six months in jail in 2019 for breaking into Swift’s New York home and taking a nap in her bed, and Texas resident Eric Swarbrick was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison in 2020 for sending violent and threatening letters to her former label, Big Machine Records.
In January 2024, a man named David Crowe was charged with stalking after showing up outside Swift’s New York apartment dozens of times in just a few months. The charges were ultimately dropped, as Crowe was declared mentally unfit for trial and transferred to a mental health facility.
More than three years after Young Thug, Gunna and dozens of others were indicted in Atlanta on gang charges, Thug’s last co-defendant has pleaded guilty.
A trial had been set to start Monday (June 9) in Fulton County court for Christian Eppinger, who stood accused of attempted murder for allegedly shooting an Atlanta police officer in 2022. But he instead entered a so-called Alford plea, allowing him to technically plead guilty while maintaining that he is innocent; he was later sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Eppinger was the last remaining defendant of 28 men indicted in May 2022 by Fulton County prosecutors, who claimed that Thug’s “YSL” — nominally a record label — was also a violent gang called “Young Slime Life” that had wrought “havoc” on Atlanta for years. Thug was released from jail in October after a judge sentenced him to just probation, a stunning defeat for District Attorney Fani Willis after her office had labeled him a dangerous gang boss.
Asked Friday (June 6) if the massive prosecution had been a “waste of taxpayer money,” Willis vehemently defended the case and stressed that it had resulted in 19 convictions: “What my constituents say, who just voted me by 68 percent, is she’s doing an amazing job,” Willis told Atlanta’s NBC affiliate. “We are making sure that this community is safe.”
A representative for the DA’s office did not immediately return a request for comment on Monday.
Pitting prosecutors in America’s rap capital against a chart-topping rapper who helped shape the sound of hip-hop in the 2010s, the YSL case captivated the music business for years. Most notably, it relied heavily on song lyrics as evidence, a controversial practice that has drawn backlash from the music industry and efforts by lawmakers to stop it.
The case also saw Thug sit in jail for years while the messy proceedings — the longest in state history — played out in court, turning his charges into a cause célèbre and raising big questions about procedural fairness. Gunna, a frequent collaborator and protégé of Thug, was also initially charged, though he quickly pleaded out.
The charges against Thug and the other YSL members were built on Georgia’s Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations, a state-level version of the federal RICO law used against the Mafia, drug cartels and other large criminal enterprises. Prosecutors alleged that members of the YSL enterprise had committed murders, carjackings, drug dealing and many other crimes — and that Thug was the “King Slime” crime boss running the operation from the top.
But when the trial kicked off in January 2023, that sweeping narrative proved difficult to litigate in court.
After an unprecedented 10-month jury selection process, prosecutors slowly worked through a vast list of witnesses that included more than 100 names. Last summer, the case was delayed for weeks due to a bizarre episode over a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a witness — an incident that saw the judge removed from the case. Things got worse for the DA’s office in October, when botched testimony from a state’s witness sparked talk of a mistrial and prompted a wave of plea deals.
Prosecutors offered such a deal to Thug, but it would have seen him spend 25 years in prison. Thug’s attorneys rejected that offer and instead opted to simply plead guilty — a gamble that paid off spectacularly when Judge Paige Reese Whitaker sentenced him to just probation with no time served in prison.
“I know you’re talented, and if you choose to continue to rap, you need to try to use your influence to let kids know that is not the way to go and that there are ways out of poverty besides hooking up with the powerful guy at the end of the street selling drugs,” Whitaker said.
After that, just two key defendants — Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick and Shannon Stillwell — remained in the trial, facing some of the most serious charges in the case, including carrying out the 2015 murder of rival gang leader Donovan Thomas that played a central role in the prosecution’s case. But a jury largely acquitted them on those counts in December, and both were released immediately after the verdicts.
Those verdicts ended the trial, but not the case. Eppinger and several others had been separated from the case early in the proceedings to face their own trials on charges related to YSL.
Eppinger, an aspiring rapper who used the performing name “Big Bhris,” pleaded guilty to a slew of charges on Monday, including armed robbery and RICO conspiracy. Though he was sentenced to 40 years, it will be served concurrently with an existing 45-year sentence on an earlier crime, meaning he did not receive any additional prison time.
Though the Thomas killing formed a core part of the YSL case — Young Thug was alleged to have helped rent the car that was used in the drive-by shooting — no defendants were ever convicted of the murder. The last defendant alleged to have been involved, Damekion Garlington, took a plea deal last month that saw him sentenced to five years in prison for aggravated assault.
In the Friday interview, Willis argued that crime had dropped in Fulton County “because of the efforts I have done against gangs.” And she harshly criticized others — media outlets for “glorifying violence,” defense attorneys who “don’t care about the African American community,” and even Judge Whitaker — for how the YSL case has been portrayed.
“It was an amazing time. We had 19 convictions. The community is safer,” Willis said. “We made sure that we got the resolutions that we want. If they’re unhappy with sentencing, they should elect other judges.”