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If there’s a current “big three” when it comes to different styles of Caribbean music, it’s probably reggae, dancehall and soca. Between Buju Banton’s Stateside return and Vybz Kartel’s release from prison and subsequent Freedom Street bonanza, reggae and dancehall, respectively, earned much-needed boosts to their global profiles thanks to the massive legacy of those Jamaican giants. Now, it’s soca’s turn – and Trinidad is leading the charge.  
Led by a slew of joyous, anthemic hits – including leading road march contenders from Bunji Garlin (“Carry It”) and Machel Montano’s (“Pardy”) – this season’s soca anthems are connecting with audiences in a very special way. After soca band Kes played a sold-out concert at New York’s Brooklyn Paramount last year (Dec. 14), the crowd spilled out into the streets, belting out Destra and Montano’s classic “It’s Carnival,” despite the sub-20-degree weather. Last month, Montano timed the release of “Pardy” for the same week he made history with the first-ever soca set for NPR’s Tiny Desk concert series. 

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Meanwhile, Trinidadian-born rap megastar Nicki Minaj joined forces with Trinidad Killa for a soca-flavored track called “Eskimo,” and she recently teased a remix of Garlin’s infectious “Carry It.” And, of course, there’s no legitimate discussion of 2025 soca that doesn’t include Yung Bredda’s “The Greatest Bend Over” and Full Blown’s culture-quaking “Big Links” riddim. 

On March 3 and 4, tens of thousands of revelers will parade in the streets across Trinidad, honoring the centuries-old Afrocentric celebrations that evolved into today’s Carnival festivities. In addition to the liberating mayhem of J’ouvert morning’s Stink & Dutty Mas and the extravagant costumes of Pretty Mas, Trinidad Carnival also incorporates traditional elements steeped in the island’s rich and sacred history. The national stickfighting competition honors Kalinda martial art and the annual reenactment of the Kambulé riots – a series of 1880s protests against colonial police’s efforts to restrict certain freedoms and aspects of culture – keep history at the center of the celebration. 

Of course, music is also an integral part of Trinidad Carnival, with a slew of competitions providing unforgettable entertainment, including Calypso Monarch, Soca Monarch, the King and Queen of the Bands, Panorama, the Carnival Road March. Before the winners of those competitions are decided – particularly Soca Monarch and the Carnival Road March – producers and artists spent the months leading up to Carnival dropping their best swings at the season’s defining soca anthems.  

On Sunday (March 2), Montano, who already boasts six International Soca Monarch wins and 10 Road March victories, won his first-ever Chutney Soca Monarch title with “Pepper Vine.” Montano came up short at Calypso Monarch, landing in fifth place with “Bet Meh” behind Helon Francis’ “To Whom It May Be” — as did Yung Bredda, who placed third with “We Rise,” his first-ever showing at a Calypso Monarch final.

Bredda has quickly emerged as one of the defining voices of soca this year with “The Greatest Bend Over,” his take on Full Blown’s “Big Links” riddim, which dropped late last year (Dec. 2, 2024). A Trini star who plays both soca and calypso music, Beedd recently appeared in Billboard’s weekly “Trending Up” column thanks to the steadily rising Stateside streaming totals for “Bend Over.” His sweet, perfect-for-all-ages track is joined by contributions from Montana (“The Truth”) and Kes (“No Sweetness”), as well as “Good Spirits,” the first song penned to the riddim and a notable step into the spotlight for Full Blown as recording artists. 

“One day we were messing with some different melodies and exchanging ideas; I would do the music and Kevon would do the writing,” recalls Kory Hart, one-half of Full Blown, from the very studio in which the sibling duo crafted the “Big Links” riddim. “The public sees the highs more than anything else, but we’ve been through a lot of difficult periods. That’s where ‘Good Spirits’ really came from.” 

After cutting “Good Spirits,” the brothers decided to make it a riddim because “it helps when people see a big name like Machel Montano as the lead artist.” Full Blown — the Trini sibling production duo of Kory and Kevon Hart — has been working with Montano for over 15 years now, so their collaboration was as natural as it was inevitably great. A later session with Kes at producer Tano’s studio led to “No Sweetness,” which would have been the final song on the riddim if not for the duo’s nagging feeling that they needed Yung Bredda on it as well. Full Blown initially brought the 24-year-old entertainer to the studio “because [they] wanted somebody who would write their own song, so that [they] wouldn’t have to do so.”  

Once he heard the riddim, Bredda wanted the duo to write the song, so the collaboration was “put on the shelf for a second.” After sitting with the riddim for a few more weeks, Kevon started sketching out an idea for “The Greatest Bend Over” while his brother was out, and Kory helped structure the song when he returned. Accented by its notable incorporation of zess, a Trinidadian dancehall subgenre, the composition and resounding success of the “Big Links” riddim epitomize Full Blown’s commitment to crafting soca that’s steeped in tradition and unafraid to push forward into new sonic territories. 

“The introduction is dominated by the tabla, a percussion instrument that’s the identifying mark of zess,” explains Hart. “It would be a typical groovy soca beat without it. Zess has a very large following among the youth in Trinidad, but [those artists] have been struggling to be accepted by mainstream Trini music – which is soca. For us, this was a very clever way of combining the two and showing the Zess artists that they do what we do, just in a different way.”  

In addition to the “Big Links” riddim, Lady Lava’s “Ring Finger” is also making waves across the Caribbean diaspora. A Trini recording artist and poet, Lady Lava has been making music since 2008, cultivating a unique lane characterized by lyrics of female empowerment. With her career back on the upswing after a down period marked by the quick succession of her first pregnancy and the COVID-19 pandemic, Lady Lava is seizing her moment – and courting new fans like Grammy-winning rapper Cardi B. 

“You don’t have a ring, then you don’t have a mister,” she proclaims over Aaron Duncan’s thumping “Summer Steam” riddim. A musical reminder to never let a no-good man pull the wool over your eyes, “Ring Finger” is a soca anthem for women by a woman – one that stands out from the scores of odes to wining women sung by male soca artists.  

It’s that feminist bent that’s allowed “Ring Finger” to enjoy such marked longevity: The song was a local hit when it first dropped in summer 2024, but TikTok virality over the fall and the winter kept wind in its sails. The official “Ring Finger” TikTok sound plays in over 22,000 posts, and the audio from a live performance soundtracks a further 13,000 posts. Last month (Feb. 19), Lava graced On the Radar with “Ring Finger,” marking a rare soca number on the buzzy live performance platform. By infusing contemporary soca instrumentation with brash lyricism sourced from her poetry background and the femme-forward approach of female dancehall giants like ’90s and ‘00s hitmaker Lady Saw, Lady Lava is ushering in a new era of soca for a younger audience.

“I still write a poem about everything,” she says. “If I wanted to tell somebody something, I would write it in a poem. Music is me putting poem to riddims, that’s how my style of writing does be like that. I like to rhyme and use metaphors and compare things that totally don’t have anything to do with each other just to get people thinking.” 

Getting people to think beyond grooving to the music is also the primary goal for Tendaji, a Trinidadian singer, songwriter, and music who bridges traditional calypso and modern soca. With a musical profile anchored by the drums and lavways (call-and-response chants) that soundtracked stickfighting competition, Tendanji is perhaps one of the most fearless Trinidad recording artists when it comes to centering history in the music.  

His most recent release, “Doh Cry,” features a music video that showcases the stickfighting tradition in a cinematic, black-and-white aesthetic. At the end of the song, Tendaji calls out the names of stickfighting warriors of eras past, including King Kali, King Bara, King David and King Stokely, honoring their influence and highlighting how stickfighting connects the Trinidad of today to its Afro-Indigenous roots. He built the song with Rishi Mahato of Maha Productions, a prominent chutney music producer who brought some of those elements to the “strongly African, strongly Jouvay energy” of “Doh Kry,” a reminder that “Trinidad is not just one sound,” as Tendaji stresses.

“There’s a lot of music out there for Pretty Feathers Mass. There’s a lot of music out there to wine and jam on Carnival Tuesday, but there ain’t nothing for the jab jab, the blue devils, the stick fighters, etc.” he says. “When Carnival Monday comes, we ain’t looking for flowers music. We want to get into character. We want to go down inside weself. Carnival has a ritualistic element, and because of my history and involvement in the character mas so much, I try to make music that reps them as well.” 

Whether through composition, lyrics or presentation, Full Blown, Lady Lava and Tendaji are all making incredible strides in defining the future of soca – especially as the genre eyes a potential global crossover moment off the back of this season’s biggest hits. Notting Hill Carnival is still several months away, for example, but “The Greatest Bend Over” has already gotten so much traction in the U.K. that it would have entered the country’s Afrobeats charts, had it fit the appropriate sonic profile, according to a phone conversation Full Blown had with BBC Radio 1Xtra personnel two weeks ago. All three acts agree that the “crossover” will happen with foreign listeners meeting Trini soca artists on their turf. The era of concessions is over. 

“I think we’re getting braver in terms of saying things the way we say it. I don’t know if Afrobeats’ [success] helped with that, but we sing it all the time down here and don’t even know what they’re saying all the time. But it sounds good,” says Hart. “I think the same thing will happen with us and our Trini dialect. Our ‘crossover hits’ have been very few and far between. We’re starting to see that soca has more appeal.” 

As the music industry marches further into this era of increased globalization, different styles and genres that may have taken a backseat in past eras now have an opportunity to lead the charge. Trinidad is churning out soca hits that will hopefully lay the foundation for future bouyon crossover hits from St. Lucia and Dominica. 

“Even the Jamaicans — who, oftentimes, we wish we were in their shoes so we could have our genres recognized — are looking to soca now because they believe that soca is the next thing,” Hart proclaims. “Our confidence is building; we’re finding our voice and our space and realizing that if we keep it up consistently, the world will catch up to us eventually.” 

Anotr were worried. The Dutch dance duo had gained a following with a fleet, flinty style — “that minimal tech-house sound, a little edgy, a little gritty,” says Abel Balder, a singer who has collaborated with the pair. But in the summer of 2022, Anotr were readying new music that veered in another direction: Bubbly and openhearted, with scraps of live guitar and hand-played bass lines. 
“The first few months of having the music out, we didn’t put it on Beatport,” says Oguzhan Guney, one half of the duo. “And we didn’t send it out to people because we were afraid of getting judged. We were super concerned about it.”

The attempt at stealth wasn’t entirely successful: The songs, which eventually appeared on the album The Reset, were still judged — just not the way Anotr expected. They were braced for rejection; instead, “everybody started asking us to play the new stuff” during club gigs, says Jesse van der Heijden, Guney’s partner in the group. One track, “Relax My Eyes,” became a streaming hit, with more than 225 million plays on Spotify alone. As van der Heijden puts it happily, “it’s good to be proved wrong.”

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The genial duo stripped away even more of the armor on its latest album, On a Trip, released at the end of January. While there are still songs aimed at clubs, the album sees a duo known for making dance music sometimes abandon the form altogether: “We started making music that wasn’t necessarily four on the floor,” van der Heijden says.  

Once again, listeners seem happy to follow Anotr on its adventures: “How You Feel,” a giddy, sensual nu-disco single, is nearing 50 million streams on Spotify. Balder has a theory about the duo’s success: “A lot of people who go to these more edgy club nights, deep down inside, want a hug,” he says. “Maybe they didn’t know they were looking for that. And then Anotr came, and they’re like, ‘You know what? The joy and the lightness, this is what you guys need.’”

Anotr debuted on Defected Records, a dance music institution, in 2015. For years it produced stern, unflagging rhythmic workouts, sometimes moistening the dry beats with fragments of vocal samples. During the pandemic, however, the two became conscious of a gulf between the songs they were playing at home and the tracks they were producing. “We were listening to jazz, funk, soul,” Guney remembers. “[We thought], why not try to bring those two cultures together?” 

Anotr is not the first artist from the dance world to move from a programmed, sample-heavy approach to one that is heavier on live instrumentation. Daft Punk built its towering reputation as shrewd samplers before famously discarding that approach in favor of human players on Random Access Memories. Crazy P also started as a pair of sample-happy producers but later morphed: “We effectively wanted to be like a disco band,” co-founder Jim Baron told Billboard.

The inflection point for Anotr was a 2022 song titled “Vertigo.” The track was created with Balder, who had been doing sessions with the duo for years. They always got along well personally, but often landed far apart musically; Balder’s attempts to add “borderline-cheesy melodies” were always politely rebuffed. Until that year, when the duo was reenergized by its ambition to bring more funk, soul, and jazz into its productions. 

The pair recorded a racing rhythm track punctured by keening electric guitar; feeling a little reckless, Balder offered to sing on the track, even though he had never cut vocals before. By way of explanation, he remembers that “it was around 3 a.m., and we were on the couch getting high.” 

Anotr has enjoyed a number of creative breakthroughs in this state. “Relax My Eyes” was made over the course of a couple days during which the two took “long walks, smoked a lot of weed, and took mushrooms.” (Such psychedelic mushrooms feature prominently in the press release announcing the album, almost as if they were a high-profile executive producer.) Van der Heijden believes the duo has “never been as high” as they were when recording “24 (Turn It Up)(+6).” “We took a lot of shrooms, smoked a lot of weed, and the instrumental already felt really right,” he remembers. 

In February 2022, when Anotr debuted “Vertigo” during a boat party off the coast of Uruguay, Balder didn’t expect much. But the audience on the boat “exploded — people kept coming up to all of us saying, ‘Wow, that track is amazing.’” 

“Vertigo” came out on The Reset, and several tracks from On a Trip giddily improve upon that template. “How You Feel” channels impassioned Euro-disco, with guitars that flicker like candlelight and come-hither vocals from Leven Kali. That one proved to be so effective ANOTR basically remade it as “Currency,” a deft bilingual collaboration with Cimafunk and Pame. “24 (Turn It Up)(+6)” evokes David Morales’ singles from 20 years ago like “Here I Am.”

At the same time, Guney says, “we wanted to do something more downtempo and more straight-from-the-heart, instead of only feel-good music.” “Care for You” and “Bad Trip” are both stuttering, loungey funk. “Don’t Understand” also gives a cold shoulder to the pounding beats that underpin most dance tracks, and “Can’t Let It Go” is a melancholy ballad. Mushrooms sometimes helped the duo write more candid lyrics: “You’re taking these psychedelics,” Guney explains, “and they basically enhance what you feel from the inside, so you can’t hide your emotions anymore.” 

In January, Anotr were in a familiar place — nervous about putting out new music. “It’s a lot of fun trying new things until the moment where you actually know that you need to share it, and anxiety creeps up,” van der Heijden says. “But after we’ve released it, we can see people still f— with this.” 

The duo has already embarked on a country-hopping tour that takes it from Australia to South America to the U.S. and then back to Europe, with upcoming U.S. dates including March shows at Brooklyn Storehouse in Chicago’s Radius. “Now,” van der Heijden adds, “we know we can actually do anything we want.”

Depending on when you were first introduced to DPR IAN throughout his decade-plus career in entertainment so far, it may be smart to check on how exactly to address the Australian multi-hyphenate.

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Born Christian Yu in Sydney, Australia, in 1990, and known by his Korean name Barom, the future star introduced his first moniker by uploading dance videos to YouTube as B Boy B.yu — a nickname thought up by his mother to remind him to always “be you” or, in young Barom’s case, “B yu”). After high school, he embraced an unexpected swerve to debut in the K-pop industry as Rome, the leader of the boy band C-Clown. When the group split, he reclaimed Christian and used +IAN after directing music videos for the likes of BIGBANG’s Taeyang and iKON’s Bobby, before ultimately landing on his DPR IAN stage name as part of he and his Dream Perfect Regime’s independent, creative musical movement.

But for a friendly conversation like the first episode of Billboard’s The Crossover Convo, he says Ian is “perfect.”

“There are so many eras that I’ve been through and pertaining to those eras is where a lot of those names came out,” DPR IAN explains to Billboard. “Having it all laid out like that really puts a lot of things into perspective. I’ve really just been on the run and on the fly, and I haven’t been able to process a lot of these things; it’s been quite the journey.”

With a musical journey that began with a childhood obsession with progressive-music icons like Daft Punk and Moby, embracing British-pop icons like The Beatles and Spice Girls, to diving into new genres on multifaceted projects like vocalizing over icy EDM on “Do or Die” with DPR ARCTIC, while delivering a psychedelic rock experience for “Diamonds + and Pearls” on the Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings soundtrack, that features a diverse roster of superstars like Simu Lu, Anderson .Paak, DJ Snake, Saweetie, Swae Lee, BIBI, 21 Savage, Mark Tuan of GOT7 and many more.

The Shang-Chi soundtrack peaked at No. 160 on the Billboard 200 in 2021, but IAN built upon the chart momentum with his 2022 full-length Moodswings in to Order (peaking at No. 146 on the chart), which was soon surpassed by Dear Insanity EP from 2023 (No. 138).

But IAN says the music’s personal impact on listeners is more important than how much they buy or consume it.

“I’ve never really expected any of that as I was starting this,” he says in reaction to his organic chart rise. “Even if it affects one person and if it’s enough to change one person’s world for the better, that was enough for me.”

For the premiere episode of The Crossover Convo, take a journey through DPR IAN’s music history and look out for the next star to go through their global-pop music journey next month.

02/14/2025

Countless chart smashes have had the ideal tempo of 100-120 BPM over the years.

02/14/2025

Ask the members of Horsegirl — Nora Cheng, 21, Penelope Lowenstein, 20, and Gigi Reece, 22 — to describe each other using a single word, and it quickly becomes apparent that their hive mind is strong.

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“I would say that Penelope is strong-willed,” says Reece, the band’s drummer.

“I was going to say that!” Cheng, Horsegirl’s guitarist and vocalist, interjects.

“You a–hole!” Reece replies with a laugh, then adds, “I would say Nora is charming.”

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“I was going to use charming for you,” Cheng says to Reece. “Strong-willed and charming in their own special ways.”

Lowenstein shakes things up. “For Gigi, I’m going to say hilarious, and Nora, I would say, is quirky.”

Cheng: “Are you serious?”

Lowenstein: “Yep.”

Cheng: “Okay, Penelope — rude.”

Lowenstein: “Dude, quirky is sweet.”

Spend some time with the Chicago-spawned indie rockers, and you’ll conclude that all three are strong-willed, charming, quirky, wicked smart and in sync. Although Reece is Zooming in separately from Cheng and Lowenstein, who are roommates and finishing up their studies at New York University, they bounce ideas, jokes and opinions off each other with the kind of joyous ease and musicality that defines their new album, Phonetics On and On, which Matador Records will release on Feb. 14.

The album’s sound has been described as “spacious” compared to the fuzzy, saturated ’90s-style tones of their 2022 debut, Versions of Modern Performance. It is: Phonetics On and On — which was produced by Cate Le Bon and recorded at Wilco‘s headquarters and recording studio — is also lyrically and musically elemental in a way that inspires playing it on repeat. “Julie,” “2468” and “Switch Over” are among the reptile-brain pleasers — fun to sing, hard to forget — that are certain to grow Horsegirl’s fan base in the coming weeks.

Below, the trio talks about the making of Phonetics, as well as some song inspirations, and about the differences between trying to be creative in New York and in Chicago.

Where were your heads at when you were making this album?

Reece: We were thinking a lot about this period of adjusting to something new, and adjusting to something new with each other. We came from a place of being so close – in high school we were almost inseparable, and so similar as people. I feel like we’ve all gone on our own tracks, and we’ve been adjusting to those changes.

Are you all in New York?

Reece: Yeah, I live 15 minutes away from them.

Lowenstein: We were grappling with a change of place which had brought us a lot closer together, as you were saying, Gigi. I also think we had just toured on the first record for a whole summer and experienced together what being in a professional band was like. I think we were feeling really excited to reconnect with what the band is separate from all the noise — to tune everything out and find something on our own, which maybe has to do with the different sound that we ended up naturally coming across.

Cheng: Yeah, I think that a lot of the character of this album was from that break. We did a lot of growing up and having new experiences in that time just by nature of how old we were. That’s definitely part of that record.

Phonetics is the study of speech sounds. How did you arrive at that title for the album?

Lowenstein: We were really excited about using the rudiments of language, and the first things that you’re taught when you’re taught language and reading. Lyrically and instrumentally we wanted to go back to the building blocks, both in the “dah, dah, dahs” and the “do, do, dos ” of grade school and in the standard tuning of the guitar — the open E and open A chords — which were things that we were not excited about in the same way as teenagers. We thought there was something exciting about trying to make a rock record or something dancy or experimental or poppy out of those components that make up every song.

Reece: We were sitting together being like, “OK, we need a title.” We had “On and On” as something that we wanted to be part of it, and we were like, “OK, we just need a great word before that.” The reason we were drawn towards using “On and On” was because of the way those sounds went with the repetition that’s on the record. “Phonetics” immediately seemed like the perfect word.

Is the song “Julie” about an actual person?

Lowenstein: Yeah. Someone I had a crush on back in the day.

Reece: Julie is me.

Seriously?

Reece: No. I was just thinking earlier today that it would be funny if I said that.

Does Julie know the song is about her?

Lowenstein: I don’t know how into it I want to get — I wish I could tell you what you want — but Julie is me. The song is about a boy, and I feel like, yes, they know. But I’m not dying to get, I don’t know…

Granular?

Lowenstein: Yeah, totally. If you know, you know, I would say.

In terms of repetition, I also noticed that the line, “they walk in twos” appears twice. Is there any symbolism to that?

Lowenstein: It kind of happened by accident, but it was also the idea to connect two songs — one of which, “2468,” is about phonetics. Writing a rock song with repetition and basic elements. Then, the song “In Twos” is like a classic love song, with more standard lyrics. We all might have different ideas around this, but I loved the idea of connecting these two types of songs.

Reece: As we were making the record, we were thinking about the ways that different songs played off each other. The lyrics for “2468” weren’t written until we got into the studio, so it was really a moment of let’s be self-referential. It feels like it was intentional even though it was a moment that could have just passed us by.

This album is sparer compared to the last album. How much of that was your decision and how much was Cate Le Bon’s influence?

Reece: In retrospect, if I wasn’t in Horsegirl, I’d be like “Oh, my god, Horsegirl got spacious because of Cate Le Bon.” But it really was that we chose Cate Le Bon because we had so much space in the songs we were writing and demoing. We were also experimenting more with percussion than we had before. We were playing on a glockenspiel and different tambourines and different shakers. We were clearly getting at something very playful, and our songwriting had more space in it. That was intentional. In that regard, Cate made perfect sense. She didn’t have to push us very much in terms of that because we got there on the same page about it.

Cheng: She carried our vision.

Lowenstein: She gave us confidence about our vision. When the three of us are united in an idea, no one is telling us otherwise. But because we admire this woman beyond anything else we were able to make weirder decisions with a lot of confidence because she was like, this sounds really good you guys.

Cheng: Her outside perspective was very valuable. In the studio, I had this feeling that Cate can see the future. She understands how this can work out.

Reece: We were like, “Cate is Cate. She knows everything.”

Horsegirl

Courtesy Photo

Why did you go back to Chicago to record the album when you were all here in New York?

Lowenstein: Part of it was just straight up logistics. We’re in school, and we wanted to do it during winter break. It’s nice to go home and see your family. But I also think we wanted an environment where you can tap out of everything else going on in New York. It would be crazy to imagine going to the studio and then social life resumes. We wanted to turn all of that off, and there’s nothing like going back to where the three of us are from and staying with your family. That kind of rhythm of life is really conducive to cozy, creative energy which is what we wanted. And Chicago is just — it’s really grounding for us to go home there. And we’re very lucky that Cate was down to go to Chicago in the worst month to possibly be in Chicago.

I read that the heat had to be turned off there so it wouldn’t interfere with recording?

Reece: It was so cold, but the opportunity to record at The Loft made perfect sense for us. It felt really cozy, even though we had to turn the heat off. The Wilco team seems to function like a huge family with offices. All the pieces fit together. Cate had already recorded there.

You are a truly collaborative band. That’s not easy. How do you write lyrics, for example?

Lowenstein: We are truly collaborative, which I think is rare, and I realize that the longer we’ve been in this, how rare it is. Lyrically, we work individually. The lyrics that I sing, I wrote. The lyrics Nora sings, she wrote. But the fact that we’re often singing at the same time I think speaks to [our collaborative] nature. Also, we’ve lived together so we know what each other is talking about. When we are writing lyrics, we will ask each other for advice. I think it’s sweet that both of us singing together is such a part of Horsegirl. Even though the lyrics are individual, the melodies are completely collaborative. It all comes from a place of joy, playing together which has always, I think, been the core of this band.

You’ve said in the past that you’ll return to Chicago after school is finished. Do you still feel that way?

All three: Yeah.

Why come to New York at all?

Reece: We had something so special in Chicago, but we didn’t want to remain stagnant in that. That we left at such an exciting time that came with a lot of growing pains. But I think that it made us make the record we made and brought us so much closer together. It helped us realize things about life and being a musician and being young women and being friends with each other. Maybe that would have happened if we didn’t move to New York, but I think that we wanted to come somewhere that felt bigger than Chicago because we felt very comfortable in Chicago. We needed to push ourselves.

Lowenstein: If I still lived in the same city as my family and my dear friends, I wouldn’t have been pushed to develop in the ways that I have moving away from home. I am glad that we made that choice instead of the tour-tour-tour-go-live-at-home kind of grind that you can get into when you become professional at 17. The move was important in our development as people, which impacts the music. But Chicago is a special city.

Do you feel it’s harder to be creative in New York than where you’re from?

Reece: Oh my god, yes. That’s also a huge part of why we won’t live here much longer. It is unsustainable unless you have the means for it. As indie rockers it is not our reality, at least at this point. It makes sense to come here to study and to have these experiences at this young age, but later into our 20s we want to get more into sustainable living and creative practices. Also, it’s harder to be creative in New York, just because of the social environment of it. There’s so many people, so many different cliques. In Chicago it felt like we have this scene, and it feels like an umbrella for a lot of people. Here, it feels like there’s a million different little sections. It’s hard to break in, and it feels like everybody doesn’t want to come together. Which kind of breaks my heart sometimes.

Lowenstein: It’s hard to come together here.

Reece: Yes. And then that inherently gets a little competitive. We are much more for friendly competition [as a form of] motivation.

Are you celebrities at NYU? Do your fellow students say, “That’s Horsegirl!” on campus?

Lowenstein: It doesn’t feel like we’re well known. If we are, well known, people are cool-guying us left and right. I mean, there have been moments where I had to miss class to play Coachella or something, and my teachers are like, “Wait, what?” Then my classmates are like, “Oh, I’ve heard of you,” or whatever. But beyond that, no one cares at all which is I think so healthy and important. I feel very thankful for that separation in my life. [To Cheng] Do you agree?

Cheng: Yeah, totally.

Lowenstein: Nora and I have had several classes together now at this point.

Cheng: People just think that we’re roommate friends. They don’t know about the other dimension to it. I accidentally started playing one of our songs on full blast yesterday.

Lowenstein: Last night Nora did secretly leak a Horsegirl song to the class. No one cared. It’s humbling. It’s like no one cares — and it’s important to remember that as an indie rocker. Otherwise, you start to get a big head.

Reece: When all three of us walk around, then things get a little weird. Especially if we’re at a show or something. But genuinely, these are my best friends. These are who I want to go to things with. So, it’s like — everyone else is making it weird.

Where do you see yourself in a couple of years where you’re done with school and you’re back in Chicago? Have you thought about how Horsegirl evolves?

Lowenstein: This band has been such a source of joy and creativity for us that once we graduate, we [want to] tour for real in a way that we decided not to when we chose to go to school. It’s important for us to do that and to try to live off of this, but also continue to preserve how fun it is and put our friendship first.

I also think, “Maybe one day I’ll just be a Chicago public school English teacher” — which would be a great life. Or I’ve recently been like, “Maybe I’ll go to grad school.” I don’t really know. I feel like we have a lot of different lives. Or maybe we’ll Yo La Tengo it, and be like a touring indie rock band forever.

As long as we all still feel like it’s fun. I feel like we could continue to play music together forever — just take it down a notch professionally — and I would be totally happy with that. Or maybe we’ll take it up a notch professionally. I think we’re all happy to ride it in any direction, and get another job if there needs to be another job.

Reece: Our ultimate plan is that we just want to remain friends and remain in each other’s lives in this familial way. Because there’s nobody else I have gone through or will go through what I’ve gone through with Penelope and Nora. What we have as friends is something that is really worth holding onto. If the band or anything starts to get in the way of that, then that would be the time for a change.

Are you able to support yourselves solely with your music at this point?

Cheng: It depends on the season. Penelope and I are still in school, so we are grateful to still be supported by our families.

Lowenstein: Gigi has a side job.

Reece: Oh yeah. I’m a babysitter. The most rock-and-roll babysitter in Brooklyn.

You’re on one of the most legendary indie labels of all time. Have you gotten advice from any of Matador’s veteran artists?

Reece: Advice, no. We also honestly haven’t met that many other people. But we played a Hanukkah show with Yo La Tengo, and we kicked it in the green room with them for a little bit. I felt like that was one of the most special moments we have had, because Yo La Tengo was the band we’ve all seen live the most, and it’s what we wanted to be when we started our band.

Lowenstein: Those guys knew how much their band meant to us, and they let us sit on the stairs of the stage, so we were visible from the audience. They were really thoughtful in how they treated us. They have been doing it for so long, and for the Hanukkah shows, they are playing night to night to night, and there was still such joy between the three of them.

It can be hard on tour to even introduce yourselves to the local opener who you’re running in and out. Their behavior was advice enough in terms of, I would really love to age like that as a musician. I would love to be thoughtful through and through until the very end. I hope that we can. It is challenging on tour and in this industry to maintain that. But it’s important.

“The revolution ‘bout to be televised, you picked the right time but the wrong guy,” proclaimed Kendrick Lamar atop the hood of a black GNX at the onset of his Super Bowl LIX halftime show performance on Sunday night (Feb. 9).
Lamar’s referencing (and revising) of Gil-Scott Heron’s landmark 1971 recording “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” and his misgivings at being propped up as a leader in this century’s fight for justice cast his halftime performance squarely in the “I am not your savior” light of 2022’s Grammy-winning Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. But his performance also tested the limits of how much we should praise and applaud subtly subversive imagery during an increasingly fascistic period that calls for more drastic measures, let alone bigger and bolder statements. His rousing, technically impressive performance also raised the question of how much revolution Kendrick could possibly hope to represent, spark, or speak for while being platformed on a stage meant first and foremost to serve the pre-existing establishment.

Three short years after performing cuts from his first two major label studio albums at the Dr. Dre-curated 2022 Super Bowl halftime show, Lamar was named the first solo rapper to ever headline the show. Entering the Superdome as rap’s undisputed king following last year’s explosive and historic battle with Drake, Lamar also boasted five of the 30 biggest songs in America on that week’s Hot 100. His GNX album remained parked in the uppermost reaches of the Billboard 200, and his forthcoming SZA-assisted Grand National joint tour will take him to stadiums across North America (and now the U.K. and Europe) for the very first time. And, of course, there’s also the matter of the prior Sunday’s Grammys (Feb. 2), which found Lamar sweeping all five categories he was nominated in for “Not Like Us,” including record and song of the year – his first General Field wins, and just the second time a hip-hop song has triumphed in either category.

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With 13,000 voting members of the Record Academy crowning a vicious diss track the best-written and produced song of the year, Lamar entered new territory for a rapper. With the self-deconstructing Mr. Morale in his rearview and the Super Bowl on the horizon, Lamar would bring his career-long battle between his politics, his celebrity and his personhood to his biggest stage yet – the final boss level of the video game that would unfold throughout his performance, if you’re willing to extend him that much credit.

In the first 30 seconds of his set, Lamar established his “great American game” metaphor in several different ways. As the camera captured a wide shot of the audience light displays in the stadium, the field lit up in the square-triangle-X-circle button combo of a standard PlayStation controller. The visual helped him move from set to set intentionally – only the two SZA collaborations are performed on the button stages – while also driving home the fact that we’re all getting played by America, some of us in multiple ways at the same time.

But no matter how big e-sports and video games get, this is the Super Bowl — and we’re on a football field, a setting that has an unsettling yet unmistakable connection to the slave plantation. “The power relationship that had been established on the plantation has not changed,” journalist William C. Rhoden writes of professional sports in his illuminating book Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete. “Even if the circumstances around it have.” In a 2018 episode of The Shop, LeBron James called NFL team owners “old white men” who have a “slave mentality” towards players. Three years later, in his 2021 Colin in Black and White Netflix series, former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick likened the NFL draft to slavery. From the slave plantation to mass incarceration, one of America’s favorite pastimes – or games, if you will – is figuring out how to exploit and control Black labor. Later in Kendrick’s show, the set morphed into a prison yard, again underscoring that history.

Here’s the thing: nearly a decade after Ava DuVernay’s prison-industrial complex-explaining 13th documentary and half a decade after summer 2020 protests following the murder of George Floyd seemed to signal a cultural tipping point, the imagery of scores of Black male dancers forming an American flag – albeit one split down the middle, with Kendrick as something of a neoliberal aisle-crossing Moses figure in the center – feels more tired and trite than poignant. If that’s too harsh a reading, perhaps you could say that Lamar is levying his braggadocio against both the NFL and America. He’s telling these institutions to “be humble,” while explicitly centering the Black men who provide them their strength, notoriety and wealth.

If the great American game has always been the ruthless exploitation of Black people, then the great Black American game is finding ways to continue to exist and thrive in America despite all the contradictions that brings. This is the tension that complicates Lamar’s halftime performance and, ultimately, makes it one of the most compelling ones in the tradition’s history. Can subversive images of Black Americana and calls for “revolution” hold any water when they’re broadcast on the country’s most commercialized and capitalistic stage?

In a nod to the Uncle Sam character of 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly and the Dolomedes character in Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq (2015), Lamar tapped America’s favorite Black uncle to narrate the show. Oscar-nominated acting legend Samuel L. Jackson – dressed as Uncle Sam, the centuries-old personification of America — played a nervous elder preoccupied with the false promise of respectability politics, serving as narrator and helping the set transition between its two modes: GNX-induced myopia and classic crowd-pleasers like “Humble” and “DNA.” Together, Lamar and Jackson blended Uncle Sam with Uncle Tom, a term originating from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin that refers to Black Americans who willingly betray their community in favor of bowing to white Americans.

But before Lamar and Jackson extrapolate that discography tension for a larger commentary on being Black in America, Lamar momentarily sidesteps the game metaphor in the set design, opting to begin rapping an extended snippet of an unreleased GNX track.

Once Lamar descended from the car’s hood to begin “Squabble Up” — his most recent GNX Hot 100 chart-topper – he finally introduced the meatiest part of his “great American game” metaphor, navigating life while being Black in America. For Lamar, after spending most of his catalog exploring that tension in the context of his childhood and personal life, the Super Bowl was a chance to play with those contradictions in the context of his position as one of the preeminent artists and performers of our time. Guided and deterred by Uncle Sam Jackson’s pleas for hits like “Humble” and more palatable fare like “All the Stars,” Lamar’s setlist wove through his most universal anthems and chilly L.A.-heralding GNX deep cuts like “Peekaboo,” which featured some of the most impressive camerawork of the night. The theatrical approach was a fresh one for the Super Bowl halftime show — and a choice that saved the set from crumbling under the weight of its own subtlety.

After all, Uncle Sam Jackson dangled the point in front of 133.5 million viewers when he said: “Too loud! Too reckless! Too ghetto! Mr. Lamar, do you really know how to play the game? Then tighten up!”

By the time he got to “Man at the Garden,” Lamar’s backup dancers were dressed in red, white or blue monochromatic fits to assist his attempts at subverting the iconography of the American flag. During “Garden,” the group of men that surround Lamar don light wash jeans, white sweats, and no beanies – letting their afros, locs, and beaded braids shine alongside their golden grills. This is Black Americana through Lamar’s lens and it’s the most beautiful part of the show; the brotherhood and joy in this scene feel almost antithetical to how the world has been socialized to perceive Black male features and fashion. It’s not necessarily revolutionary, but it would be petty to not acknowledge the power of seeing this image of Black American men on a field that makes money off the battering of their bodies as a slew of white owners hold near-total control of the capital they generate.

Then again, what’s the value of this image if it’s being broadcast during an NFL-sanctioned performance? If the institution that’s allegedly being critiqued is willfully allowing that “critique” to air around the world, doesn’t it mean that they’re in on it? Or that they’ve deemed the critique too harmless of a threat to waste resources trying to thwart? The answer is clearly, “Yes” – as evidenced by the performer who was promptly tackled and detained by security after flashing the Flags of Palestine and Sudan during the performance; he’s now banned from NFL events and venues for life.

Of course, the song on everyone’s mind – including Lamar’s since he pulled two fake-outs set to the track – was “Not Like Us.” Uncle Sam Jackson tried his best to keep things “nice and calm” as “America wants,” but Lamar went for the jugular – because that’s what America really wants. This is the same country that elected a president (who was in attendance Sunday night) with chillingly fascistic tendencies, and the ones that turned “Not Like Us” into a billion-streaming multi-week chart-topper. He’s the first solo rapper to headline the Super Bowl halftime show and he kicked things off rapping unreleased music – clearly, Kendrick was not interested in following the usual headliner rules. And, yes, “Not Like Us” is his biggest pop hit, but it achieved that status while being a mid-battle diss track; K.Dot already reconfigured the pop game with the song’s success. So let the diss track ring.

And with a seismic medley of “Not Like Us” and “TV Off” — which featured a classic hip-hop moment in star producer Mustard’s surprise appearance – Lamar closed his show and declared “game over.” “It’s a cultural divide, Imma get it on the floor/ 40 acres and a mule, this is bigger than the music/ Yeah, they tried to rig the game, but you can’t fake influence,” Kendrick spat before finally launching into Drake-obliterating diss.

If this was just about the music, he would’ve played more hits. If this was just about Drake, he would’ve at least alluded to “Like That.” This was about seizing this historic moment to make as much of a statement as he could within the parameters set by the NFL, Apple Music, and the myriad networks airing the show. 160 years ago, Union General William Sherman proclaimed that plots of land no larger than 40 acres would be allotted to freed families. That promise was eventually reversed by President Andrew Johnson following the Civil War, and almost all of the reallocated land was returned to its pre-war white owners during Reconstruction. That shot to the heart of Black economic power and independence still rings today, and it’s a theme Kendrick explored heavily on Butterfly, hence the reappearance of that album’s Uncle Sam character.

When Lamar raps about the game being rigged and faking influence, he’s talking about shady music industry tactics, the very concept of the American dream, and, of course, Drake himself. And it’s that context – a Black American man who’s one of hip-hop’s most dedicated practitioners knocking out the Canadian actor-turned-rapper who helped change the face of hip-hop for better and for worse – that made the Super Bowl performance of “Not Like Us” such an astounding watch. Kendrick spent the past year telling us that he wanted to “watch the party die” because he feels hip-hop is under siege by people who aren’t part of the culture. On Sunday night, he was itching to get it back in blood on the Super Bowl stage.

After ripping through “TV Off,” Lamar flashed a s–t-eating grin and mimed clicking the power button on a TV remote. Immediately, the camera angle switches back to a wide shot of the stadium with the phrase “game over” written in lights. Kendrick told us he deserved it all, and he won it all. The Super Bowl halftime show game as we’ve come to know it is over, the Drake beef is over, the literal performance is over and the game of respectability politics that have hounded Black Americans for centuries are, in theory, now over.

But does it really work like that? Do any of these messages or images – like the “stars” of the American flag turning into brainwashed troops — really land when they’re being mounted during an event that consciously traded real action and change for the platitudes of musical and artistic representation? Don’t these images also lose their bite when they’re all rolled into a performance that is first and foremost an extended promotional spot for GNX (physical copies of the November release started shipping this weekend), SZA’s extended version of SOS: LANA (released hours before the halftime show) and their co-headlining Grand National Tour?

Maybe this all works if the “revolution” being televised is a Black capitalist rally. We’re aware Kendrick isn’t our savior, but if he’s going to televise self-proclaimed “revolutions,” are we in the wrong for expecting something more? And maybe that’s why he told us to “turn this TV off”; he made it clear from the onset that he was “the wrong guy” for this “revolution.” Lamar himself will not lead us to liberation – and he may never explicitly say anything or create any art that even gestures towards the harsh physical realities of that – but the images and covert messages in his performances (and his own pervasive commercial success) will hopefully spark something inside his younger viewers to begin their own self-liberation journeys in search for a brighter and more just future.

But doesn’t that sound like something we’ve been saying for too long? It’s definitely reminiscent of the conversation around Beyoncé’s 2016 Black Panther-nodding halftime performance. We can applaud Lamar for taking the risk to say anything at all within this moment of his peak commercial dominance, but we also don’t have to act as if it was genuinely revolutionary – because it simply can’t be in its present context. And that’s the conundrum Lamar had to maneuver as a Black performer in a historically white space on Sunday night.

Kendrick Lamar’s exploration of the great American game helped further expose the paradoxes of his own stardom and artistic ethos, but it also allowed him to revolutionize and remodel what can be done at a Super Bowl halftime show – even if none of it will actually set us free or give way to real, material change. He broke, rewrote and played by the rules all at the same time. And that’s the truest Black American game of all, finding a way to exist and thrive in a tsunami of contradictions.

The NBA All-Star Game — where the greats from the league’s two conferences face off every February — has been a staple of every professional basketball season since 1951 (outside of 1999, due to the lockout-shortened season). But as Carlton Myers, the NBA’s senior vp/head of live production and entertainment points out, “The NBA is […]

In the same way every pro sports championship run looks a little different, so do the ways teams integrate music into their winning formulas. For some, it’s finding the perfect locker room jam; for others, its giving new meaning to the music of a hometown hero.
But for all of them, music provides an X factor that could well make the difference on game day.

Boston Celtics2024 NBA Champions

BIA at halftime of game two of the 2024 NBA Finals in Boston on June 9, 2024.

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Widely considered the most successful franchise in NBA history, the Celtics called on their community during the 2023-24 season when competing for their now league-leading 18th championship. For the season’s marketing campaign, Different Here, “We wanted to focus on showcasing local musical artists and what makes Boston’s culture different,” says Carley Lenahan, Celtics director of live production and entertainment. “Connecting with our community and fans is integral to the support they show the Celtics, and the support and energy from our fans during a championship run is everything.”

On opening night of the 2023-24 season, the Celtics launched their Local Artist Halftime Series with performances by Boston-based hip-hop stars Esoteric and Latrell James and Roxbury native Oompa. “During a championship run, the home court advantage is key to a successful series, and we understand how important it is that the players can feed off the atmosphere and energy in the arena,” Lenahan says. Throughout the season, the nine artists from the Boston area were featured across seven Local Artist Halftime Series shows, culminating in Medford, Mass., native BIA’s performance at game two of the NBA Finals.

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“As a lifelong Celtics fan, I’ve been going to games since I was 10,” BIA says. “The opportunity to perform my music on the iconic parquet floor in front of my hometown crowd and my all-time favorite team was truly an honor and a full-circle moment.”

Kansas City Chiefs2023 and 2024 Super Bowl Winners

Mecole Hardman Jr. (second from right) celebrates with Patrick Mahomes (right), Travis Kelce (second from left) and Jawaan Taylor (far left) after catching the game-winning touchdown pass at the 2024 Super Bowl LVIII in Las Vegas on Feb. 11, 2024.

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Many sports franchises lean on hometown artists to galvanize their teams, but the Kansas City Chiefs find musical inspiration in a different place: their locker room.

Amid the run-ups to the Chiefs’ back-to-back Super Bowl wins in 2023 and 2024, artists like 50 Cent, Future and YoungBoy Never Broke Again were constantly on shuffle to motivate the team during marquee postseason matchups. “I feel like in-season, it’s kind of a variety. We got multiple artists [that we listen to] depending on who is new and who is hot then,” Chiefs All-Pro cornerback Trent ­McDuffie says. “The postseason, we get back to the classics. We go old school.”

According to McDuffie, one new song has made its way through the cracks since the team won it all last year: BossMan Dlow’s “Get In With Me,” which has become a beloved anthem for players and coaches alike in the locker room. A close second? “Tweaker,” the current viral hit from LiAngelo “G3 GELO” Ball (himself a former pro-baller). But only two players have the privilege of managing the team’s turn-up tunes. “We’re strict on who can control the aux,” McDuffie says. “Most of the time, it’s either Jawaan Taylor or Chris Jones.”

Los Angeles Dodgers2024 MLB World Series Winners

Ice Cube opened game two of the 2024 World Series in Los Angeles on Oct. 26, 2024.

Harry How/Getty Images

The 2024 MLB World Series faceoff between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees couldn’t have been more high stakes. And to commemorate the East-West matchup between two of the biggest sports markets, the MLB tapped two beloved music stars — New York native Fat Joe and Los Angeles icon Ice Cube — to perform at their respective home fields.

Following a 1-0 series lead against the Yankees, Cube performed his 1993 classic “It Was a Good Day” from the pitcher’s mound at Dodger Stadium. Rocking Dodgers gear from head to toe, his performance enlivened the home team, which not only secured a game-two win but the overall series in five games. All-Star Kiké Hernández thanked Cube during the team’s championship celebration at Dodger Stadium, telling the thousands of fans in attendance, “Ice Cube came out with his performance in game two, and we didn’t even play [because] we already won it.”

“As a lifelong Dodgers fan who grew up watching them battle from the ’70s to the ’80s, that was a next-level dream come true,” Ice Cube tells Billboard. “To feel the energy of 52,000 fans going wild was otherworldly and contagious. You could feel it in the air. The crowd, the players — everybody was hyped. It was the perfect recipe for a win, and we all knew it at that moment.”

New York Liberty2024 WNBA Champions

Fat Joe at halftime of game five of the 2024 WNBA Finals in New York on Oct. 20, 2024.

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Following a devastating championship loss the year prior, the WNBA team entered the 2024 season determined to bounce back — and understood the critical role its fans would play in that journey. Those hometown supporters turned out to include not only the spirited crowds flocking to Barclays Center for games, but local hip-hop legends like Fat Joe, Ja Rule and Jadakiss.

“Everything we do needs to have a through line of authenticity,” says Liberty chief brand officer Shana Stephenson, who spent the season recruiting homegrown New York talent to perform at home games. “Sometimes, there might be a pop artist who is a big name at the moment, but I might not want to book them because I don’t know if our crowd will resonate with their sound.”

After dominating the regular season and securing home court advantage throughout the WNBA playoffs, Stephenson leveraged her love for hip-hop to propel the team’s championship run. With its title hopes hanging in the balance, Stephenson enlisted the help of Liberty fan and basketball aficionado Fat Joe to ignite the energy for the crucial game five.

“Everybody knows ‘Lean Back,’ right? My dad can sing it. He leans back when it comes on. That’s an anthem,” Stephenson says.

In the end, her plan was a key element in helping the team achieve its historic championship win in October. “That’s the beautiful thing about music and sports: It can unite people in a beautiful and powerful way,” Fat Joe says. “One time for the Liberty Ladies.”

This story appears in the Feb. 8, 2025, issue of BIllboard.

When WWE Superstar Damian Priest learned that one of the biggest matches of his career would be held in Puerto Rico, he was overjoyed. For Priest, who was raised in Vega Baja, a small town just 26 miles from San Juan, it was more than a match — it was a long-­awaited homecoming. But for this no-holds-barred San Juan Street Fight, the former World Heavyweight Champion would be lacing up his boots to face an unusual opponent: one of music’s brightest stars and arguably Puerto Rico’s favorite son, Bad Bunny.

“Here he is doing all these moves and being able to take them,” Priest recalls of the May 6, 2023, barn burner, where he lost by pinfall. “The fact that he could take all these hits and get back up — and I know he was in a lot of pain — that drive to succeed and entertain, he has it, like we all do.”

Bad Bunny actually made his WWE debut in January 2021, at the Royal Rumble in St. Petersburg, Fla., where he faced off against former WWE and UFC heavyweight champion Brock Lesnar. That April, he showcased more daredevil moves and aerial tactics — and turned skeptics into believers — at WrestleMania. And since then, he has continued to solidify his heavyweight status in the wrestling world with his unwavering passion for the craft.

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“Music and WWE have always run parallel,” Priest says. “When I describe how to make it in this business through the grind and the struggle, it’s always easier to explain it to musicians because they get it. It’s the same grind. You start performing in front of little to nobody in these greasy clubs, try to get noticed and then build up a reputation and a bit of a following. Hopefully, you get noticed by a record label or an artist who puts you on a tour, [and] it’s the same thing here.”

Bad Bunny and Damian Priest wrestle during the WWE Backlash at Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot on May 6, 2023 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

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Though the WWE has been around for 70 years, the wrestling conglomerate is enjoying a renaissance — and the music industry has played a significant role in its post-pandemic resurgence. WWE president Nick Khan, who joined the company in 2020, has been at the forefront, connecting the dots between music and the WWE by bringing artists like Bad Bunny, Travis Scott, Metro Boomin, Cardi B, Meek Mill, Jelly Roll and Sexyy Red to collaborate with the ­company. Whether through actual matches, live TV segments or commercials for future premium live events, the strategic pairing has brought a fresh and diverse audience to WWE while elevating these artists’ status in the wrestling world.

In early January, WWE officially partnered with Netflix to present Monday Night Raw, its 34-year-old flagship show and the longest-running weekly episodic program without reruns in TV history. (The show most recently aired on USA Network from 2005 through the end of 2024.) The three-hour star-packed extravaganza featured wrestling immortals The Rock, John Cena and Hulk Hogan, and celebrities from Vanessa Hudgens and Tiffany Haddish to Travis Scott, Wale and Blxst attended. But unlike his peers, Scott wasn’t just a spectator — he escorted WWE Superstar Jey Uso ahead of his match. Scott — whom WWE chief content officer Paul Levesque (aka wrestler Triple H) gifted a Hardcore Championship belt during the rapper’s ComplexCon performance last November — wore the title draped around his shoulders and fed off the crowd’s electric energy as his own “Fein” reverberated throughout Los Angeles’ Intuit Dome. Sunglasses on and joint in hand, Scott sauntered out alongside Uso with the aura of a ’90s wrestler — a picture-perfect moment for both stars.

“The energy out there was crazy,” Scott tells Billboard. “I was talking to Triple H and was like, ‘Yo. This s–t is wild.’ In my shows, I try to create that maximum energy level and have the people feel they can reach the highest level of ecstasy as far as being happy and free. And in those environments — things like wrestling, and even in sports where the characters can be so free and create this livelihood for kids, adults and families — it’s dope.”

“When I found out I was coming out with Travis, I asked him, ‘Are you ready? Because this s–t is about to pop off,’ ” Uso adds. “I just didn’t expect that the brother was about to light one up before we walked out. He can do what he wants to do.”

This wasn’t the first time Uso had rubbed shoulders with a hip-hop superstar. Last April, at WrestleMania 40, he and Lil Wayne walked down the entranceway together at Philadelphia’s Lincoln Financial Field before a roaring crowd as the rapper’s “A Milli” and Uso’s entrance theme, “Main Event Ish,” played. It was a surreal moment for Uso: Before his WWE debut in 2007, he’d wrestled on the independent circuit alongside his twin brother, Jimmy, and they’d chosen Wayne’s 2004 hit “Go DJ” as their entrance music.

“We all grew up on Wayne in the late ’90s and early 2000s,” Uso says. “I’m talking about when he was with Hot Boyz and all that. It’s crazy how life comes full circle.” Before they walked out, Uso even cajoled Wayne into wearing some Uso merchandise: “He was real dope and cool with everything. He asked if I needed anything from him, and I said, ‘S–t, brother. Can you wear these “YEET” glasses for me? Here, put these on.’ ”

As artists rush to step inside the squared circle, wrestlers are moving with similar intention toward recording studios. Compelling entrance songs are vital in developing their characters, and since the ’90s, revered WWE Superstars like “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, The Rock and The Undertaker have placed fans in a choke hold with not only their iconic visual presentation but also their magnetic theme music. At the heart of those entrance songs is former WWE composer Jim Johnston, who used popular ’90s genres like hip-hop and rock to create songs based on the wrestlers’ characters.

For Austin, famously known as “The Texas Rattlesnake,” his hard-rocking entrance song, “I Won’t Do What You Tell Me,” became known for its glass-shattering sound effects. Austin didn’t record vocals for it, but Cena, whose earlier wrestling persona was a punchline-driven rapper, stepped inside the booth and rapped his “The Time Is Now.” That bold move paved the way for future superstars like Uso and Priest to infuse their entrances with their own personalities, adding a fun new element for fans to enjoy.

“It helps to have someone like [Slayer’s] Kerry King play guitar on my track,” says Priest, whose character has a darker, goth-like personality. “It’s pretty cool. While doing my own vocals on my song is pretty simple, it’s cool because it comes from me and what I wanted to say and feel during certain moments. People can bop their heads to it, and it adds to that aura.”

Bad Bunny, representing Latino World Order, takes the ring as he prepares to wrestle Dominik Mysterio during the WWE SmackDown at Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot on May 5, 2023 in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Gladys Vega/ Getty Images

Uso’s hip-hop-influenced “Main Event Ish” is arguably the WWE’s most popular entrance song, with a simple but fiery hook (“It’s just me, Uce”), his unbridled energy and sharp ad-libs. His signature wave — now a staple at all WWE shows where he’s competing, in which he climbs the top rope and waves his hands up and down, controlling the crowd like a hip-hop maestro — accompanies the song.

“I flew to New York one day, sat [down with the writing team], put it together, knocked it out and it was on TV the next week,” Uso says of the track. “I knew I wanted to get on there and bring the energy. We always been musical, my whole family. We got hidden talents the world don’t know about.”

And as WWE enters WrestleMania season — with arguably its deepest roster since the ’90s — more musicians are looking to walk down the entrance ramp and pose a challenge, just like Bad Bunny first did four years ago. Fortunately for Bad Bunny, he had a great teacher in Priest, who, prior to their one-on-one showdown in Puerto Rico, served as his in-ring mentor and tag-team partner at WrestleMania 37, where they were victorious.

“A good match with another good wrestler is expected,” Priest says. “What I did with Bad Bunny was magic because nobody expected it. That’s not something you get to do all the time. I don’t know if I’ll ever get that chance again.”

This story appears in the Feb. 8, 2025, issue of Billboard.

Late last year, The Cut’s Cat Zhang ran an explainer on the word “khia” — a phrase that exploded in popularity online as longtime left-of-center artists (Chappell Roan, Tinashe, Charli XCX, etc.) had major mainstream moments after years of build-up and fan anticipation. As host of music podcast Pop Pantheon DJ Louie XIV relays in Zhang’s piece, “A ‘khia’ is a pop girl who people talk about, but who no one seems to care about culturally.” This definition works: It specifies the group of performers most likely to be hounded with the term (women in popular music), and its focus on cultural conversation nods to “khia” being a status that an artist can shift in and out of.

Out of “khia” spawned the “khia asylum,” a figurative purgatory for pop girls who are lighting up neither the charts nor social media timelines. Their albums get greeted with limited fanfare and only their most dedicated stans seem to care about anything they’re doing. But artists aren’t locked in the “khia asylum” forever. With the right single or era, an artist can escape the khia asylum they’re supposedly stuck in, like Charli (Brat) and Tinashe (“Nasty”) did last year. Nonetheless, an underperforming album or run of singles can render even seemingly infallible artists to the khia asylum – like, say, post-Radical Optimism Dua Lipa.

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Zhang’s explainer is a great snapshot of the zaniness of online communities built on the constant dissection of pop culture, but it unfortunately belies the racist roots of how terms like “khia” come to be, and who and what they’re now most used to describe. “Khia” was first levied as an insult online back in 2014; Nicki Minaj stan accounts sneered at a fan’s overwhelmed reaction to meeting the real-life Khia herself. In the years that followed, the tweet became more of a meme than the individual term “khia,” but that started to change last year – especially as debates over the merits of different kinds of hip-hop dominated mainstream discourse.

“Khia” isn’t just a random word, though — it’s the first given name of Billboard-charting rapper Khia, most famous for her 2002 Billboard Hot 100-charting cult classic “My Neck, My Back” (No. 42) and her 2006 “So Excited” collaboration with Janet Jackson (No. 90). According to Luminate, “My Neck, My Back” has earned over 217.9 million official on-demand U.S. streams, while its parent album, the RIAA Gold-certified Thug Misses, has shifted over 618,000 U.S. album sales and reached No. 33 on the Billboard 200. But the numbers are the least interesting thing about Khia and “My Neck, My Back.” Her infectious flow and effusive lyrical ode to cunnilingus and anilingus are key building blocks for the p—y rap subgenre; she and her music have served as an enduring reference point for some of the biggest female rappers of this current class.

In 2017, two-time Grammy-nominated rapper Saweetie freestyled over “My Neck” for her debut single, “Icy Girl,” which eventually reached No. 16 on Rhythmic Airplay. The same year, Miami rap duo City Girls called on Khia’s classic for their own debut single, “F–k Dat N—a,” which later served as the fifth single from Quality Control’s Control the Streets, Volume 1 compilation. During this year’s Grammy telecast (Feb. 2), Dove aired a commercial soundtracked by a remake of “My Neck” courtesy of Grammy-nominated rapper Chika. In the past decade, the song’s influence has even stretched outside of hip-hop, with artists like Miley Cyrus and Elle King delivering covers of the X-rated anthem. Many artists dream of putting out just one song that achieves a fraction of the commercial success and cultural resonance of “My Neck, My Back” — and yet the name of the artist behind that very song has now become synonymous with being an act of little to no viability or significance. (A representative for Khia did not respond to Billboard‘s request for comment at the time of publication.)

That’s not right. Knowing how sinister this industry can be to Black female artists, it’s wholly disrespectful to condense Khia’s career and impact into a euphemism for flopping. Not only is she an artist who’s greatly contributed to her genre and left an undeniable legacy, but she’s also a person. And that’s her real birth name, by the way. To strip her name from her and contort it into a term that is most often used to degrade artists who look like her is simply dehumanizing. The fact that so many users weren’t even hip to the correct pronunciation of her name says it all.

“Khia” isn’t the only problematic term that’s recently gained popularity online. Some of these phrases have been percolating for years, but they’ve started popping up more frequently in the wake of Lamar’s triumph over Drake last year and Doechii’s Alligator Bites Never Heal-fueled mainstream rise. Throughout their careers, both Lamar and Doechii – former and current TDE affiliates, respectively – have been vocal about their deep love and respect for the roots of hip-hop and the importance of protecting its sanctity. Inside and outside of their music, they, for many, exemplify the essence of hip-hop for later generations.

In “Man at the Garden” (No. 9), a Hot 100 top 10 hit from his late 2024 surprise album GNX, Lamar soliloquizes, “How annoying, does it angers me to know the lames can speak/ On the origins of the game I breathe? That’s insane to me.” Last year, Doechii – after smartly introducing her mixtape with a single that uses boom bap to call out the hypocrisy of male rap gatekeepers and fans – wrote on X: “Don’t let these people brainwash you into disconnecting from the soul of hip hop by convincing you it isn’t cool or it’s ‘too deep.’” Nonetheless, in recent months, their mutual conscientiousness – and use of explicitly Black genres like jazz and boom bap — has been perceived as being condescending, preachy and just plain unfun, giving way to the continued use of insulting terms meant to specifically disparage their devotion to hip-hop traditions.

One of the more unfortunate things about discussing anything online this deep in the Internet Age is that everything gets flattened. And that really sucks for our more dynamic artists. Through the beef, Lamar became generally representative of traditional, lyricism-centered hip-hop, while Drake became the poster child for more fun, danceable, easily digestible tunes. Of course, the full scope of both of their catalogs is far more nuanced, but both rappers played into those perceptions during their beef.“Euphoria” finds Lamar promising Drake, “Keep makin’ me dance, wavin’ my hand, and it won’t be no threat,” and in “Family Matters,” Drizzy describes K.Dot’s style as, “Always rappin’ like you ’bout to get the slaves freed.” That “Family Matters” line, in part, gave way to the increased use of another gross term – this time, one used to describe music that embodies the foundational spirit of hip-hop.

“I can’t get behind that slave music Kendrick make,” one user wrote on X three days after GNX – widely considered to be the Compton rapper’s least conceptual LP – dropped. When Lamar released “Watch the Party Die,” his first post-“Not Like Us” song, on Instagram, another user facetiously posted, “What was Kendrick talking about in that diss ion feel like listening to slave music right now…” Because Kendrick explored the cross-generational and cross-cultural impact of slavery on records like 2015’s To Pimp a Butterfly, suddenly all of his music was “slave music.” Butterfly also houses the Grammy-winning “Alright,” one of the biggest protest anthems of the Black Lives Matter era; in one X post that’s been viewed over 20.5 million times a user dismissed Kendrick’s entirely catalog on the basis of that song, writing, “Drake held us down for 15 summers and [y’all] turned on him for a guy that make protest music.”

After Doechii went viral for a self-choreographed Late Show performance of “Denial Is a River” and “Boiled Peanuts,” another user wrote, “Making [that] Harriet Tubman music is the cheat code to getting respected in rap.” That post – which racked up over 8.4 million views — caused such a fracas that even Ebro Darden, host of Apple Music’s Rap Life podcast, commented: “When you get into uplifting Black people… don’t we continue to be reminded that [the mainstream] don’t want that from Black people – specifically in hip-hop? And then [people are] calling it ‘Harriet Tubman rap,’ like, what? [That sector of the world] exists but allowing that to shape our conversations around what we as hip-hop deem to be spectacular… we’re playing ourselves.”

There are plenty of other terms like these entering too-common usage: “plantation tunes,” “Negro spiritual music,” “Mufasa music,” “twerk slay mama music,” etc. At the top of the new year, an X fan account wrote, “Watching Doechii become a shea butter artist is actually sad”; here, the term “shea butter” is a dog whistle for Black Americans in online circles. Some of these terms spawned from intracommunal discussions that spilled over into general online conversation, and others are likely to have been pushed by bot accounts – often specifically targeting dark-skinned Black artists. None of them are helpful or interesting descriptors for music, and all of them are disrespectful to Black history.

It is absolutely disgusting to invoke Harriet Tubman’s name or anything related to the Transatlantic slave trade as a way to disregard and denigrate Black artists and their work. One of the gravest sins in human history, the centuries of death, rape, cannibalism, subjugation, exploitation and discrimination of Black people by way of the slave trade and its heinous offspring are horrors that we will never completely understand. Those ancestors are to be venerated and eternally respected, not used as shorthand for the disparagement of their descendants’ art, which often explicitly exalts their history.

The first couplet of Alligator Bites is “Let’s start the story backwards/ I’m dead, she’s dead, just another Black Lives Mattered”; by track three, Doechii’s naming songs after boiled peanuts, a popular snack in the Southern U.S. brought to the region via enslaved Black people from West Africa. People often point to Butterfly as Lamar’s opus in terms of sociopolitical commentary, but we can also just give GNX’s “Reincarnated” a spin: Over a sample of 2Pac’s “Made N—az,” Lamar connects the lives and stories of (presumably) blues singer-songwriter and guitarist John Lee Hooker, a Billie Holiday-esque Chitlin Circuit character, Lucifer and himself. History and legacy drive key aspects of both Lamar and Doechii’s recent releases; it’s particularly sinister and sickening to flip those artistic choices as ploys for approval from white critics and awards bodies.

And let’s say either artist really was making music informed by work songs and Negro spirituals. What’s wrong with that? Why is that a bad thing — especially when those songs provided the foundation for the evolution of American music in the centuries that followed? All these terms do is reduce Black experiences into inaccurate archetypes and further devalue the Black roots of countless genres. And once it became fair game to make light of slavery, it became easier to introduce more of these bits of coded language into contemporary discourse.

A Pitchfork review of In Pieces, Chlöe’s 2023 debut solo album, described “Have Mercy,” her debut solo single, as “a song from the Empire soundtrack… something Lucious Lyon would come up with.” From that point, “Empire music” became a popular online term to describe Chlöe’s sound – which largely comprises of the same uptempo R&B-pop tracks people endlessly moan and groan for across social media. If “Empire music” was code for dismissing uptempo contemporary R&B from Black female artists, “lash tech music” was code for dismissing its downtempo counterpart. People have used the term to describe music from Summer Walker, Jhené Aiko, Chlöe, and even Skilla Baby’s songs dedicated to his female fanbase.

Granted, both of these terms primarily originated in Black circles. A Black writer reviewed In Pieces for Pitchfork, and a lot of Black lash techs really did listen to a lot of Summer Walker and the like. The issue is that there are no real community boundaries in online discourse – particularly on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) – so non-Black users then adopt these phrases (often hiding behind profile pictures of Black celebrities or fictional characters) with an incomplete understanding of the irony and humor Black people use amongst themselves. “Empire music” and “lash tech music” became outright pejoratives instead of unserious inside jokes.

The “Empire music” phenomenon is particularly interesting – because the show spawned legitimate Billboard hits. The first season’s soundtrack peaked atop the Billboard 200 and a handful of its songs landed on the Hot 100, including the Estelle-assisted “Conqueror” at No. 42. The soundtrack even finished at No. 9 on Billboard’s 2015 Year-End Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums ranking. And while the music wasn’t necessarily paradigm-shifting and made for TV – which is arguably the real joke of the “Empire music” quip — it clearly connected with audiences. Once users unfamiliar with Empire’s cultural cachet got a hold of the term, the irony and humor were permanently replaced by disdain disproportionately geared toward Black women in R&B and pop. The term became an additional tool of limitation in an industry that goes out of its way to obstruct Black women’s potential.

In response to an X user’s New Year’s wish for “more uptempo R&B” in 2025, rising pop star Jae Stephens wrote “No one will do it [because] everyone’s quick to label it ‘empire/star music!’” It’s heartbreaking to read those words from a burgeoning Black pop star, especially when a white pop girl like Tate McRae can drop uptempo R&B-inflected pop bangers and be hailed as Top 40’s next messiah by the very same crowds that will write off Black pop girls with the aforementioned dog whistles.

Last year, we watched the CMAs completely ignore Cowboy Carter while celebrating F-1 Trillion, Post Malone’s country crossover album from the same year. We saw, at the highest level, how Black artists – and Black women, in particular – are denied the ability to move through genres as freely as their white peers. Chlöe, whose music traverses a range of genres, touched on this in a Nylon cover story last year as well. “Any music I do will easily and quickly be categorized as R&B because I’m a Black woman,” she said. “If someone who didn’t have my skin tone made the same music, it would be in the pop categories.” Why continue to use verbiage that not only disrespects their art, but also makes it harder for Black pop stars to break into and thrive in predominantly white top 40 spaces?

It was a wonderfully discombobulating experience reading this X post from Stephens. “Give a khia a chance,” she wrote to Charli XCX in a post quoting Pop Crave’s observation that “Hello Goodbye” is the only Brat song without a remix. That wasn’t the first or last time Stephens had used the term – and who can blame her? It’s a popular term that’ll help her visibility in the algorithm – but what does it say about the state of music, its business and accompanying discourse if we are at the point where a rising Black female pop star is using a term that bastardizes the given name of Black female rapper (even if ironically) in an attempt to gain more notoriety amongst pop listeners? It’s easy to disregard these terms and discussion of their respective merits as “chronically online,” but how we discuss music and artists on the Internet has a direct impact on how we discuss them in real life, which, to a degree, then influences which artists the industry chooses to support.

Above all, “khia,” “slave trade music” and the like are simply unintelligent ways to describe music. We deserve better and smarter conversation from ourselves – especially when we have so many Black and non-white mainstream artists putting out art that deserves genuine, thorough consideration and can’t be easily summarized or dismissed with insulting and derogatory terms like these. We have access to far too much music history to settle for grounding our experiences and responses to music in such thinly veiled racist coded language.