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In a northeastern suburb of Los Angeles, a devout Radio Disney fan played tween pop’s most successful songs on repeat — and then, queuing up her cassette player, she tried to create her own track that would outshine them.
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Balancing two separate Record buttons while the radio played, Nyla Hammond synchronized the tracks by artists like Vanessa Hudgens with the recording of her own vocals harmonizing along. With one take, she reduced Disney’s brightest stars to backup singers and unwittingly cut her first cover. At that moment, Nyla XO was born.
“I was a hacker,” the singer-songwriter remembers. “I found the way.”
Nearly two decades later, in a small trailer in southwest Hollywood, Nyla was 20 minutes away from performing another cover — though this time, the stakes were a lot higher. Established stars Tinashe, Eric Nam and Natti Natasha would be assessing her delivery. A voting audience would determine her artistic potential. Extended family would watch a livestream in Puerto Rico and beyond. The 32-year-old was one of three finalists in Samsung NXT 2.0, a nationwide competition to discover the next unsigned music superstar, and she was having a panic attack.
Nyla’s mother, a classically trained singer, was greeted at the trailer door by a face streaked with tears. “Sing a song you know like the back of your hand as many times as you can,” she advised her daughter. Together, they sang Corinne Bailey Rae’s “Put Your Records On” until Nyla began to breathe easier. “I hope you get your dreams,” the mother-daughter duo sang, over and over. “You’re going to find yourself somewhere, somehow.”
And she did: That night, Nyla XO was crowned the Samsung NXT 2.0 champion during a finale that was musically rousing and personally gratifying. “I have a saying: ‘If there’s anyone who can figure it out, it’s Nyla,’ ” says Henry McDaniel, her husband, business partner and producer, known professionally as H.A.N.K. “She doesn’t quit until she finds the answer to whatever it is she’s searching for.”
H.A.N.K knew that Nyla — a descendant of Puerto Rican immigrants who was named after the birthplace of her mother (New York) and her own (L.A.) — was destined for stardom long before the NXT competition. When the pair met at Musicians Institute in Hollywood in 2012, Nyla was already multidisciplined: a classical pianist-singer who was also a graphic artist-designer. Soon thereafter, she became a director-video editor. She left college in 2013 after accepting an opportunity from *NSYNC star JC Chasez to join the lineup of an in-the-works girl group. But when the act disbanded a year later, Nyla began searching for musical work and fielding a slew of requests as a keyboardist.
In 2016, she performed in the house band of America’s Got Talent, and her hands plinked across the big screen as Nina Simone in the Zoe Saldana-starring biopic Nina; the following year, she hit the road on Betty Who’s Party in the Valley Tour. Nyla committed to finally pursuing an artistic career full time in 2018, and with the newfound freedom to indulge her creative impulses, her technical prowess took center stage.
“I call her ‘the DIY queen,’ ” H.A.N.K says. “I have watched her make full-blown music videos with a camera and piece of cloth where the result will give you the impression she spent thousands. I have seen her living room photo shoots turn into some of the most beautiful album artwork that I’ve seen. Even today, I rank the quality of my content on the scale of, ‘Would Nyla approve?’ ”
To that point, Nyla recalls the one request she had for her 16th birthday: to record a song, for real this time. Writing poetry as a reprieve in between hours dedicated to classical piano, she decided to try her hand at composing music, so she booked studio time, designed album artwork on Microsoft Word and distributed her debut single as a party favor to her classmates at her sweet 16 party. “For Who I Am,” a heartfelt coming-of-age track, was visually represented with a Clipart icon of a pink handprint.
“This is who I’ve always been,” she says with a laugh. “When I have the vision, I want to see it through.”
Nyla XO photographed using a Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 on February 17, 2023 at El Rey Theatre in Los Angeles.
Christopher Patey
As comical as the earnestness of “For Who I Am” now seems to Nyla, the song hinted at what would become her songwriting signature: unflinching vulnerability. She’ll willingly divulge her darkest moments as a means of connection, lyrically disrobing to reveal depression or plaguing self-doubt. During the pandemic, she personally reached out to each new Instagram follower to thank them for their support, often receiving perspective-shifting feedback about her artistry in exchange. While performing her original song “Perfect View,” a genre-blurring love letter to her symbiotic relationship with her husband, Nyla paused and addressed the audience at the NXT finale. “Let’s get intimate,” she said.
“For me, music is a conversation,” she explains. “Saying, ‘Flaws and all, here I am.’ It does not matter how big I get. I always want to maintain some kind of relationship with people. That’s a core value for me.”
“Lyrically, she has always had this innate ability to paint vivid pictures through her musical storytelling, and the pictures have only become more and more clear,” adds H.A.N.K. “You feel as though you were there alongside her when she wrote the song.”
With a penchant for sonic spontaneity, Nyla is reluctant to define her sound. At one point, she says, it was “Popsical” — a pop-classical amalgam. Now each original track is more of a melting pot; jazz, R&B and bubble-gum hyper-pop are all anchoring ingredients, but at any given moment, she might sprinkle in an octave-spanning vocal run or melodic rap. “Perfect View” was the result of significant “trial and error,” says H.A.N.K, resulting in a 28-hour session in the lead-up to the NXT finale. “I wouldn’t say ‘obsessive,’ but it’s borderline,” he quips.
But such perfectionism often comes at a personal cost. For Nyla, that was heightened pressure — and a perception that it could possibly all be for nothing.
“There are so many different pathways to success that it can be overwhelming,” she says. “I’ve always loved creating, but you reach a point of, ‘Is all this in vain? Does any of this actually matter? Am I supposed to be releasing more music or do more live shows?’ It can feel discouraging to feel like no one is seeing the work you’re putting in.”
After five years of drip feeding her artistic persona, NXT forced Nyla to open the floodgates. With the defined parameters of each challenge — from 10-part a cappella covers with heavenly harmonies to self-styled and -edited music videos, all using the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip4 — serving as springboards, Nyla delivered a masterclass in capturing the attention of social media users in 60 seconds or less. Her online presence became synonymous with scroll-stopping content: “I Iike this version of the song so much better!!” reads a top comment on Nyla’s performance of BTS’ “Butter.”
In the weeks leading up to the NXT finale, Nyla often visualized being named as the winner; the concept was so all-consuming, she says she would “tear up” at the thought. However, days prior to flying to Atlanta to meet her assigned artist mentor, rising Alabama rapper Flo Milli, Nyla’s grandmother died. She had been a beloved high school math teacher in Pasadena, Calif., until she was 89 and watched 26 former students become teachers themselves. Consequently, Nyla eschewed the questions she might once have had about Flo Milli’s inspirations or the industry and instead asked her if she had considered her legacy.
“We talked about how all this is great, but it can’t be what defines me as a person,” Nyla says. “My legacy will be the things I say and the music I create, the person that I am — that’s what’s going to matter the most.”
Hearing her name called as the winner of the competition, Nyla felt a sense of solace: that all those many late nights were not in vain, that her sound resonated in spite of all of the sonic experimentation and that the aspiring singer-songwriter — patiently waiting for the perfect beat before hitting Record all those years ago — had realized her dream on her terms. She knew that somewhere, another little girl would be singing over the radio, and maybe someday sooner than later, the song playing would be from Nyla XO.
“I feel relieved,” Nyla says of her win. “But mostly, I feel seen.”
Kx5, presented by Carnival, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW, on March 18.
The show was going so well. An hour into the set from Kx5 — the electronic music supergroup of genre leaders Kaskade and deadmau5 — it was, as intended, a dazzling feat of light, sound, video and the emotional punch of those elements combined. Then the power went out, and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — and the 46,000 fans assembled there on that drizzly night in December — were thrust into silent darkness.
From the front of the house, deadmau5’s longtime manager, Dean Wilson, sprinted backstage — where, he says, he found “everybody running around like headless chickens, screaming, ‘Generator’s on fire!’ ”
The generator was not supposed to be on fire. However, it had turned itself off due to overheating and was emanating smoke. Its programming had then instructed three backup generators to also shut down to avoid igniting the 17,000 gallons of diesel fuel inside. Frantic staffers worked to salvage what had been billed as a landmark live performance — one that cost “almost seven figures to design and over seven figures to execute,” says Kaskade’s manager, Ryan Henderson.
Success seemed unlikely. “When you have a major failure like that, normally something then doesn’t work,” Wilson says. “Something’s not rebooted properly. Some configuration can’t restart because it has crashed so badly.” But when deadmau5 hit the button that would, in theory, restart the show, restart it did. The performance, co-produced by Live Nation affiliate and powerhouse electronic music promoter Insomniac Events alongside both artists’ teams, set a record for the biggest ticketed global headliner dance event of 2022.
“I’ve been working in the electronic/dance space since the early ’90s,” says UTA’s Kevin Gimble, who represents deadmau5, Kaskade and Kx5. “I have been fortunate to have a lot of incredible moments throughout my career. However, nothing — and I mean nothing — can compare to the emotions that were stirred within me seeing [nearly] 50,000 people inside that building singing ‘I Remember’ in unison. Pure f–king magic.”
As Kx5, deadmau5 and Kaskade have formalized a collaborative relationship that began with the aforementioned moody 2008 classic — one of EDM’s first defining tracks, the penultimate song played during the L.A. Coliseum performance and, in dance parlance, an all-time banger. In 2009, they released a follow-up single, “Move for Me.” Now, 14 years later, they are leveling up the partnership with the March 17 arrival of Kx5’s eponymous debut album, which is being released on deadmau5’s independent label, mau5trap Recordings.
The show wasn’t just a full-circle moment for Kx5: It was one for dance music itself. In June 2010, deadmau5 and Kaskade, playing separately, were among the last electronic artists to perform at the L.A. Coliseum during what would be the final Los Angeles iteration of Electric Daisy Carnival. Produced by Insomniac and featuring then-rising acts like Avicii and Swedish House Mafia, the festival created a maelstrom of headlines (and lawsuits) when a 15-year-old girl who had snuck into the event died after overdosing on MDMA. In the aftermath, Los Angeles sent EDC packing to Las Vegas, and the venue became a no-fly zone for electronic music — and, aside from a handful of shows throughout the 2010s, most other genres, too — even as EDM was becoming a major commercial force in the United States.
“We’d heard rumors they were going to start doing more shows at the Coliseum, and I was like, ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing if we were the first electronic act to do a show back in that venue?’ ” Wilson recalls. “We were absolutely the test case.”
“Kaskade kind of straddles the line between electronic and pop music,” says Henderson of why promoters book the producer in venues where dance music might be otherwise verboten. “People don’t associate him with rave culture as much as you’d think.”
On Kaskade (left): Dior jacket and sneakers, Mouty pants, Oscar & Frank eyewear. On deadmau5: Amiri jacket, pants, and sneakers.
Austin Hargrave
With the December show filed as a win, deadmau5 and Kaskade symbolically marked a decade-plus run during which they became two of the genre’s most successful artists. Alongside peers like Swedish House Mafia, Avicii, Calvin Harris and Skrillex, they helped create the superstar DJ template of Vegas residencies, arena shows, festival headlining and massive paychecks. To date, Kaskade’s catalog has aggregated 736 million U.S. streams, according to Luminate, and deadmau5’s has clocked 1.5 billion.
They remain two of the scene’s most elite acts, having influenced a generation of fans and artists alike. John Summit, the 28-year-old dance phenom who opened the Coliseum show, told Wilson that deadmau5’s “Ghosts ‘n’ Stuff” was the reason he started making music. (Later in 2023, Summit will release the first official remix of “I Remember.”)
But while Kx5’s out-of-the-gate success was made possible by each artist’s individual popularity and the near mythological status of their previous collaborative output, the project is more about their own enjoyment than the new creative directions some of their peers have followed as their careers have progressed.
“It was literally a product of us saying, ‘F–k it,’ ” says deadmau5, born Joel Zimmerman, in his pronounced Canadian accent. “I’m not saying we don’t love it, but we don’t need it, financially speaking. It’s just something we want.”
On this Monday afternoon in Los Angeles, deadmau5, who’s based in Toronto, sits alongside Chicago native Kaskade (real name: Ryan Raddon), who is now based in L.A. Deadmau5 makes infrequent eye contact and uses a variation of “f–k” upwards of 40 times during the 45-minute conversation. “Dude” is the interjection of choice for Kaskade, who wears reflective-lensed sunglasses.
As they tell it, Kx5 (pronounced “kay five”; the “x” is silent) is essentially the result of friendship meeting market demand and pandemic downtime. Crowds would still “freak out” when Kaskade dropped “I Remember” in his sets and, he says, “every time I’d see Joel at a festival, I’d be like, ‘Man, we should probably do something together.’ He’d be like, ‘Yeah, we probably should.’ ”
When live events paused, Kaskade called him to make it official, saying, “OK, seriously, I don’t have anything to do. Let’s do something.” They started emailing productions back and forth, with tracks taking shape as the pandemic wore on.
Kaskade photographed on February 6, 2023 in Los Angeles. Givenchy sweater.
Austin Hargrave
Kx5 soft-launched in July 2021 during Kaskade’s headlining set at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif. Produced by Insomniac and marking the first public concert at the new venue, the show sold 27,000 tickets and grossed $2.6 million, according to Billboard Boxscore. It also featured a surprise opening set from deadmau5, who returned later to play “I Remember” alongside Kaskade. (They didn’t play any Kx5 music, nor did deadmau5 don the plastic mouse helmet he has long worn during solo performances.)
Shortly after the SoFi show, UTA’s Gimble began conversations with Insomniac and Live Nation about a Kx5 play at the Coliseum. Nearly six months later, on Jan. 3, 2022, deadmau5, Kaskade and their managers met in L.A. to strategize Kx5. Discussions around the artists doing something official together had started ahead of the pandemic, when they were offered a back-to-back set at HARD Summer 2020. When that show was canceled amid lockdowns, HARD promoter Insomniac shifted the offer to EDC 2022, where Kaskade and deadmau5 decided to debut the Kx5 live show. But they still needed a lead single.
Wilson, who has managed deadmau5 since the artist launched that persona in 2006, had been sitting on a top-line demo of a song called “Escape” from U.K. songwriters Camden Cox, Will Clarke and Eddie Jenkins. Deadmau5 had been tinkering with the demo’s production but was concerned, Wilson says, that it didn’t sound “new enough” compared with his more recent output.
Nonetheless, at the January 2022 meeting in L.A., Wilson told Kaskade they had a track that might work as Kx5’s first release. “Joel looks at me like, ‘What?’ ” Wilson says. “And I play ‘Escape,’ and Ryan goes, ‘We’ve got to do that.’ ”
Deadmau5 sent parts of the song to Kaskade, who soon completed it. (“Let’s make it radio-ey,” says deadmau5 of their goal for it. “Let’s make it ‘I Remember’-ey. Strip it back, keep some of that early-2000s vibe to it.”) Released in March 2022 — three months before the debut Kx5 performance at EDC — critics and fans hailed “Escape” as a triumphant return to form, a fresh take on the dreamy, sexy yet melancholy slowburn style the duo had forged with “I Remember.”
“Escape” has garnered 47.7 million official U.S. on-demand streams. And by the time the song (featuring British singer Hayla) hit No. 1 on Billboard’s Dance Mix Show/Airplay chart in April 2022, Kaskade and deadmau5’s idea for a Kx5 EP had expanded into plans for an album. “Don’t threaten us with a good time,” the latter jokes about the project’s growth. Kaskade laughs.
In July 2022, Kaskade joined deadmau5 at his home studio in Toronto. “It ended up being a lot of hanging out, wake-surfing, chilling and talking about music,” recalls Kaskade. “We had a songwriting session that went until, like, four in the morning. I couldn’t stay up anymore.”
While they keep different hours, they agree that working together is a more streamlined process than when they record individually. “The benefit of doing it together is you get to bounce ideas off somebody else,” Kaskade says. “Usually when you’re in your own space, it’s like, ‘I think this is the end?’ With somebody else in the mix, I send it over to Joel. Like, ‘I think it’s done. What do you think?’ ” Working together, they agree, also eliminates expectations among their fans. “They don’t know what to think,” says Kaskade. “They’re like, ‘Let’s see what this is about.’ ” The resulting 10-track album is simultaneously sophisticated and tough, featuring complex and inventive progressive house productions that pulse and glow. Lyrics — largely about love and the loss of it — ride achingly pretty, often haunting melodies.
“Ryan excels as a songwriter and in arrangement and structure, where I suppose I excel in mastering, engineering and the more technical components of sound versus the idea,” deadmau5 says. “He’s got his wheelhouse, I’ve got mine, and we don’t overlap a lot. Like, I would sooner shoot myself in the leg before I’m like, ‘Here, Ryan, master this.’ ”
deadmau5 photographed on February 6, 2023 in Los Angeles. Amiri jacket.
Austin Hargrave
Their differences run deeper than their production strengths. While deadmau5 has been known to stay awake for three days straight making music, Kaskade appears to sleep regularly. Deadmau5 smokes cigarettes; Kaskade does not. Deadmau5 drinks Corona. Kaskade, a practicing Mormon, is sober. He remarks that it’s surreal to be doing an interview for the cover of Billboard. Deadmau5 announces he would rather be at home playing video games.
“I call them the odd couple,” says Wilson. “They’re yin and yang, chalk and cheese, completely different ends of the spectrum, but they ultimately have a respect for each other as producers.” And respect from deadmau5 is rare: In EDM’s heyday, he used Twitter to insult everyone from Justin Bieber (“little f–king d-ckhead”) to Disney, which in 2014 sued him over the similarities between his “mau5head” and its Mickey Mouse logo. (“Disney thinks you might confuse an established electronic musician/ performer with a cartoon mouse. That’s how stupid they think you are.”) In 2015, he published a Tumblr post about dealing with depression exacerbated by social media; his team now runs his accounts.
Deadmau5’s prickly (if, by now, predictable) nature makes his creative, and personal, alchemy with Kaskade all the more remarkable. “Joel doesn’t … he has very, very few relationships like that,” Wilson continues. “Joel’s a self-contained machine. His studio is in the middle of the house. He works predominantly on his own. He doesn’t do massive collaborations on a regular basis. But I think he likes Kx5 because it’s so different than it being all about the mouse head. There’s pressure in that, but with the two of them, you can see Joel go, ‘This is a bit of fun.’ It’s much more of the relaxed, funny Joel because he’s got a sparring partner, a foil, someone he can joke with. You can’t do that if you’re doing it on your own.”
The fact remains that Kx5 has an expiration date. The pair is scheduled to play just five more shows beyond South by Southwest, all U.S. festival sets, starting at Miami’s Ultra Music Festival in late March and ending in September at a currently unannounced East Coast event. (Although “nobody’s closing the door on what this could be in the future,” Henderson says. “There’s something special here.”)
“We can show up and crush a big event, but I’m not going to f–king hammer it until we’re both over it,” says deadmau5. “I don’t want to be f–king Siegfried & Roy over here doing 20 shows a night in f–king Vegas. We’ll just do some nice, big, iconic-looking plays, then f–king Ryan’s off Kaskade-ing and deadmau5 is out deadmau5-ing.”
Indeed, as EDM elder statesmen (relatively: Kaskade is 51, and deadmau5 is 42), they can do a one-off super pairing without relying on it for relevancy or income. (That said, the impact of Kx5 “feeds residual revenue streams” like streaming numbers and solo plays for each individual artist, Henderson says, adding that Kaskade just signed a three-year, eight-figure Vegas residency deal. “I’m not saying the Kx5 brand contributed to that,” Henderson adds, “but it definitely didn’t hurt it.”)
Kaskade (left) and deadmau5 of Kx5 photographed on February 6, 2023 in Los Angeles. On Kaskade: Louis Vuitton jacket. On deadmau5: Amiri jacket.
Austin Hargrave
But having come up, says deadmau5, “right at the turning point” when EDM was the world’s most lucrative genre, his and Kaskade’s brands are now foundational to the music’s culture, and their businesses extend well beyond streaming. “The money is in ancillary goods,” deadmau5 says. “Tangible items [like merchandise], appearances, shows, production.” He adds, “I don’t think I’m going to be f–king donning a mau5head in my 50s,” noting he may shift into managing mau5trap acts as he gets older and tours less.
But since they broke through in the EDM golden age, paths to success in the wider industry have become more difficult, making it harder for both emerging and established artists to score crossover hits. By the time Kx5 drops, eight of its singles will already be out because, says Wilson, digital service providers would only support two tracks if they were all released at once — and thus no one would hear most of the music. While deadmau5 has over 10 million fans across Instagram and Facebook, Wilson says the algorithms won’t allow communication with most of them. He also says that despite the success of “Escape” on dance radio and the $300,000 put behind its campaign — “We spent hundreds of thousands working that record. Who else has got that kind of money?” he asks — they couldn’t get the song on Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits playlist. “You break down those playlists, and they’re all predominantly major-owned acts,” says Wilson, who co-founded mau5trap with deadmau5 in 2007. “It’s a closed shop.”
Still, the strength of deadmau5 and Kaskade’s respective brands reduces the need for Kx5 to generate revenue. “They’re definitely investing more than they’re making,” Henderson says. “This whole project is for the fans. This isn’t getting these guys together, throwing them on a stage, exploiting their legacy and bringing in a bunch of money. It’s about making something special for their fans. They 100% sacrifice income to play together.”
Kaskade concedes that since corporate interests entered the mix during the EDM boom, the scene has become “more predictable” — or, as deadmau5 puts it, now “it’s all a bunch of little douche nozzles that know the trends, and how this is going to work, and you have to do it like this, and it homogenizes it all to sh-t.” The optimist of the duo, Kaskade believes there will always be an underground and the unpredictable music it fosters, but “just not like it was 20 years ago or 10 years ago, when the majors got involved.”
But while Wilson says EDM is often treated as the “poor relative” among other more visible genres in the wider industry, it remains “a great multibillion-dollar business with very successful festivals and a fan base that is very deep and that buys our tickets.”
“Is it commercially viable in terms of pop album sales? F–k no,” says deadmau5. “Is it commercially viable? Hell yeah. If it wasn’t, we wouldn’t be doing this. I’d be your stock boy at Bed Bath & Beyond.”
In the end, the L.A. Coliseum show earned $3.7 million. Kx5 didn’t have to cover the cost of a new generator.
Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
This story will appear in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Feid, presented by Samsung Galaxy, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW on March 17.
A leaked album was the best thing that ever happened to Feid.
In September 2022, the Colombian singer-songwriter was headlining three consecutive sold-out hometown dates at Plaza de Toros La Macarena — Medellín’s famed bullfighting ring and concert venue — where he performed for more than 30,000 people over the course of the three shows. He was due for some much-needed rest the following Monday. But that never happened.
Instead, the artist born Salomón Villada Hoyos, 30, who also goes by the nickname Ferxxo, received an agitated call from his manager, Luis Villamizar, with the news that his album, Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo — scheduled for a December release — had, without their knowledge, arrived much earlier, in the form of a 39-minute voice note first leaked as a link on the internet.
“All my spirits dropped,” he recalls today, still sounding disappointed. “It was incomplete. It was a mess, and I felt rage — but that feeling lasted about half an hour. After that, I talked to my mom to see how we could take advantage of the situation and thankfully, we reacted quickly.”
With help from his team, producers and record label, Universal Music Latino (UML), he took matters into his own hands, working relentlessly for 24 hours to release an album that wasn’t even mixed or mastered yet. Because all 15 tracks had been leaked, Feid changed the title to Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo Te Pirateamos El Álbum (Happy Birthday Feid We Leaked the Album) and had his sister, who’s also his longtime graphic designer, create new cover art that acknowledged how the songs had ultimately spread: Though Universal quickly took down the initial leaked link, the audio had already been shared to DropBox and then sent wide through a chain of WhatsApp conversations. (Six of the 15 tracks had already been released as singles at the time of the leak.)
On Sept. 14, just two days after it leaked, the album — powered by syncopated perreos, reggaetón swagger and chill house beats — officially came out. Feid remains unsure of who leaked the set and why. But that’s now beside the point: Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo earned him his first top 10 entry on Billboard’s Top Latin Albums chart, surging from No. 25 to No. 8 in its second week, on the chart dated Oct. 1, 2022. It concurrently became his first entry on the Billboard 200 and peaked at No. 5 on Latin Rhythm Albums. “Normal,” the set’s fourth single, also became Feid’s first Hot Latin Songs entry as a soloist, following five alongside stars like J Balvin, Nicky Jam and Karol G. The track peaked at No. 1 on the Latin Rhythm Airplay chart on Jan. 21.
To maintain momentum, Feid and his team made another swift change of plans, deciding to rebook a previously in-the-works club tour — his first headlining U.S. run — to theaters to reflect his rapidly growing popularity, and to execute the task, from booking to opening night, in less than a month. Hans Schafer, senior vp of global touring at Live Nation, the tour’s promoter, told Billboard at the time that, like the album’s assembly, “everyone worked really quickly to turn this around.” Tickets to the 14-date stint, which began Oct. 13 in Atlanta and wrapped Nov. 25 in Los Angeles, sold out in 24 hours.
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Devin Christopher
Feid has always had a clear creative vision concerning his music, which laces innovative urban beats with the essence of early-2000s reggaetón and lyrics about love. But his biggest barrier to achieving solo mainstream success for himself was trusting that intuition, rather than worrying about others’ opinions. It took years, but Feid finally realized the importance of being faithful to his core identity. And while the album leak was jarring and unplanned, the foundation he laid over more than a decade of making music allowed him to seize the opportunity and explode in popularity. With the tour, his ability to pivot quickly kept yielding successes.
“It was very special to go to the shows and see people dressed as me with green clothes, white glasses and even a gold tooth,” Feid gushes. “After the first show, I told my team, ‘Look carefully at this stage because, God willing, we will never have people as close as we do now. We will have them further and further away.” In other words, Feid expects to be playing U.S. arenas and stadiums before long.
For a teenage Feid, even playing the theaters of his fall tour would have been unimaginable.
As a seventh grader at Colegio San José de La Salle in Medellín, he discovered his passion for performing during a school talent show. Singing Daddy Yankee’s “Rompe (Remix)” with a group of friends as The Three Fathers, “I liked seeing how people were enjoying something I was doing,” he recalls. “I was shaking with nerves, but when I started to sing it all went away.”
That performance and others like it, known as colegios (school tours), are common for aspiring teen artists in Colombia, and they eventually allowed Feid to connect with Alejandro Ramírez Suárez, who would become Latin Grammy-winning producer Sky Rompiendo — and Feid’s longtime collaborator alongside Mosty, Wain, and Jowan and Rolo of production duo Icon Music.
By their early 20s, both Feid (whose moniker sounds like “faith” when spoken in Spanish) and Sky were making names for themselves in their hometown. Feid had already independently released singles such as “Bailame” and “Morena,” both of which gained traction in Latin America; Sky was the mastermind behind J Balvin’s first No. 1 chart hit, “Ay Vamos,” which peaked in March 2015.
Around then, Feid “unintentionally” fell into songwriting after Colombian artist Shako asked if he could record a song Feid had written for himself, called “Robarte Hoy.” “I was still new in the industry and didn’t even know writing for other artists was a thing,” he recalls (a year later, Shako invited him on the remix). One of the first popular tracks Feid wrote was Reykon’s “Secretos,” which ultimately led him to work with Balvin as a writer on the 2016 hit “Ginza,” nabbing Feid an ASCAP Latin award along the way.
“I started taking him to the studio when we had camps for Balvin because he has always had great chemistry,” Sky remembers. “Yes, he helped us write ‘Ginza,’ but the song where he proved himself as a songwriter was ‘Sigo Extrañándote,’ ” another track for Balvin that showcased Feid’s heartfelt, relatable lyricism. As Balvin tells Billboard, “He always brought something fresh to the table, and I always let him know of his potential.”
Suddenly, Feid’s “reggaetón music with pop lyrics” had made him the hip, on-demand songwriter that artists from Thalía to Ximena Sariñana to CNCO wanted to work with. In 2016, he signed an exclusive worldwide publishing administration deal with Universal Music Publishing Group (UMPG) through management and publishing company Dynasty Music Group, helmed by his then-manager, Daniel Giraldo, and Juan Pablo Piedrahita. Soon after, he signed his first record deal with In-Tu Linea, a label then under the Universal Music Latin Entertainment (UMLE) umbrella that was launched by industry veteran Jorge Pino and his longtime colleague Fidel Hernández as COO. Although “many labels showed their interest,” Feid says, Pino and Hernández were the only ones to make the “very special” gesture of meeting him in person.
Feid made his major-label debut with the Balvin-featuring “Que Raro,” which became his first Billboard chart entry, debuting and peaking at No. 26 on Latin Digital Song Sales and peaking at No. 16 on Latin Rhythm Airplay in 2016.
“Today, I highly value that moment that Balvin gave me — the spotlight in which he put me, the type of song it was,” he says. “It was super cool for my career, for my life, for everything I have been building. There are still people who tell me that they followed me or discovered me with ‘Que Raro.’ ”
Soon after, Feid collaborated with artists such as Maluma and Nacho; released his debut album, Así Como Suena, in 2017; received a Latin Grammy nomination for his next one (2019’s 19); and joined “The Avengers,” a collective of urbano artists that included Dalex, Dímelo Flow, Justin Quiles, Lenny Tavárez and Sech and released club bangers such as “Cuaderno” and “Quizas.” Around then, he also stopped writing music for others.
“I needed to find myself as an artist,” he says. Though Feid was gaining popularity writing for big acts, he hadn’t yet discovered his own strong artistic identity, and admits he was following the standards he observed in the industry by being “an average singer releasing average music.” As other Colombian artists of his generation such as Maluma, Karol G and Balvin skyrocketed to stardom, he wondered, “When will it be my turn?”
Then one day, after more than a decade of work, it clicked.
“I decided to take an arepa with cheese in my hand and say that I was paisa,” he proudly states, referring to the local word for someone from Medellín. “I began to be more faithful to who I am and my Colombian roots. At that moment, I opened the coolest door that I’ve ever opened, which was finding my identity and introducing El Ferxxo. It took me a long time to realize that this was what I had to do to really, really connect with people.”
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Devin Christopher
Putting his new alter ego to the test, Ferxxo (pronounced Fercho) began incorporating local Medallo slang into his lyrics, like mor (love), que chimba (how cool) and parchar (hanging out) and replacing letters in his titles with X’s to pique curiosity.
It worked. The Latin Grammys nominated 2020’s Ferxxo (Vol. 1: M.O.R.) and its Justin Quiles-featuring single “Porfa” for best urban music album and best reggaetón performance, respectively. On the strength of an all-star remix featuring Balvin, Maluma, Nicky Jam and Sech, “Porfa” earned Feid his first No. 1 hit on both the Latin Airplay and Latin Rhythm Airplay charts.
As he established his musical identity, Feid recognized that creating a visual one was similarly important. He adopted the color green (most often, a lime shade) as his trademark, starting in early 2022 with the release of the single “Castigo”: Its cover art features a green monster truck and in the music video, Feid is clad in all green.
“It reminded me of the time when I was a huge fan of artists and wanted all the merch that had to do with them. I try to put myself in the shoes of a fan so that the people who follow me have a better chance of feeling closer to me,” he says. Now, he always finds a way to wear it — the color of growth and new beginnings.
As 2021 progressed, it seemed like everything was falling into place for Feid. He inked a worldwide publishing agreement with UMPG, fully transitioned from In-Tu Linea to UML under president Angel Kaminsky’s team and opened Karol G’s Bichota U.S. arena tour.
Still, it wasn’t all smooth sailing — and in fact, his month on the road with Karol was a tough wake-up call. “I feel that 90% of people saw my show for the first time,” he says. “Coming from being a big deal in Colombia and being at the top of the charts to doing a show in Sacramento [Calif.] and having only five people yell ‘Wooo!’ was challenging for me.”
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Devin Christopher
Then, shortly after returning home, a motorcycle accident left Feid with a severely injured left knee that required a two-month recovery. But instead of wallowing in his pain (or just kicking back to watch Netflix), Feid got to work on his next album.
“There were moments of doubt and complications,” says Jesús López, chairman/CEO of Universal Music Latin America & Iberian Peninsula. “It was bad luck for his leg but good luck for his head because he was able to be calmer for a while and work more on the creativity of his album Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo.”
Hunkered down with his leg in a cast, Feid organically started engaging more with fans on TikTok. He would flirtatiously react to viral videos in his suave Medallo, create simple dance challenges for his music, tell jokes and, most importantly, preview tracks he was working on, like “Normal.” On TikTok, he realized, it was easier to promote himself (and go viral) than through an interview with a major news platform, and it became one of his biggest marketing tools, attracting new fans outside Colombia in places such as the United States, Mexico and Spain. (Feid now has more than 7.5 million TikTok followers.)
But it wasn’t until two trips to Mexico in 2022 that Feid truly noticed the effects of his social media presence. When he arrived in May for a festival in Monterrey, thousands of fans greeted him at the InterContinental Presidente hotel in Mexico City, prompting Feid and his team to schedule shows of his own in the country. In August, the three resulting headlining gigs — at Auditorio Nacional (Mexico City), Auditorio Citibanamex (Monterrey) and Auditorio Telmex (Guadalajara) — sold almost 20,000 tickets and grossed nearly $1 million, according to Billboard Boxscore. Previously, Feid had only performed in Mexico as a surprise guest for other artists.
“I feel that everything has been gradual in my career, but this was definitely an alert to us that something was happening,” he says with a laugh. “I still don’t want to realize what’s happening. I just want to keep making my music, be with my family, eat frijolitos (beans) and relax, but I can say that Mexico was that moment when we all wondered, ‘What’s going on?’ ”
Today, speaking with me in Miami’s hip Wynwood neighborhood, fame doesn’t seem to have changed Feid — and he’s embracing his paisa identity more than ever. He’s wearing his laid-back, go-to uniform of shorts, sneakers, baseball cap and graphic T-shirt and proudly rocking the first-ever backpack from his collaboration with Bogotá-based brand Totto. He’s polite and warm, arriving early for his Billboard photo shoot (“People’s time is valuable”) and greeting everyone in the room with a chiseled smile and a tight hug. “Que más mi reina? Todo bien?” he asks me — “All good, my queen?”
While it may have taken some extra time to get here, Feid’s down-to-earth appeal is central to why, finally, he’s prospering. Feid attributes his success to “the perfect timing of God,” but those around him know there’s a bit more to it.
“He is real and authentic,” says his manager, Villamizar. “In his music, what he writes, what he says. The DNA of all this success is him and people notice and feel it.”
“He has a lot of perseverance and a lot of persistence that few have,” says Balvin. “Many [artists] would have gotten out of the way by now, but he was always there. Now he is living his best moment, and I’m sure many more blessings will come his way.”
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Devin Christopher
Late last year, Feid released his second collaboration of 2022 with Yandel, and he’s carried that momentum into 2023, earning his first Hot 100 entry with the Ozuna-assisted “Hey Mor” and embarking on his first proper Latin American trek, the sold-out Ferxxo: Nitro Jam Tour promoted by CMN. He’ll headline Chicago’s Sueños Music Festival in May and tour Europe this summer, all while working on his next album. Its “whole concept has to do with how I went from being in the shadows as a composer to everything I am achieving now [as an artist],” he explains.
Feid is covered in tattoos, but one on the right side of his neck is particularly noticeable. In cursive, it reads: Nunca olvides porque empezaste (never forget why you started) — a reminder to stay grounded. “Fe,” or faith, is at the core of what got him here, and what will keep him going forward.
“From the beginning, it was [my dream] to have a vision that only I could have and could spread to people and also surround myself with a team that understood what I wanted to do,” he says. “I have always had a lot of faith in myself and my career — and that is why Ferxxo is called ‘Feid.’ ”
Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
This story will appear in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Lil Yachty, presented by Doritos, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW on March 16.
Someone has sparked a blunt in the planetarium.
It may be a school night, but no one has come to the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J., to learn. Instead, the hundreds of fans packed into the domed theater on Jan. 26 have come to hear Lil Yachty’s latest album as he intended: straight through — and with an open mind. Or, as Yachty says with a mischievous smile: “I hope y’all took some sh-t.”
For the next 57 minutes and 16 seconds, graphics of exploding spaceships, green giraffes and a quiet road through Joshua Tree National Park accompany Yachty’s sonically divergent — and at this point, unreleased — fifth album, Let’s Start Here. For a psychedelic rock project that plays like one long song, the visual aids not only help attendees embrace the bizarre, but also function as a road map for Yachty’s far-out trip, signaling that there is, in fact, a tracklist.
It’s a night the artist has arguably been waiting for his whole career — to finally release an album he feels proud of. An album that was, he says, made “from scratch” with all live instrumentation. An album that opens with a nearly seven-minute opus, “the BLACK seminole.,” that he claims he had to fight most of his collaborative team to keep as one, not two songs. An album that, unlike his others, has few features and is instead rich with co-writers like Mac DeMarco, Nick Hakim, Alex G and members of MGMT, Unknown Mortal Orchestra and Chairlift. An album he believes will finally earn him the respect and recognition he has always sought.
“I did what I really wanted to do, which was create a body of work that reflected me,” says a soft-spoken Yachty the day before his listening event. “My idea was for this album to be a journey: Press play and fall into a void.”
Sitting in a Brooklyn studio in East Williamsburg not far from where he made most of Let’s Start Here in neighboring Greenpoint, it’s clear he has been waiting to talk about this project in depth for some time. Yachty is an open book, willing to answer anything — and share any opinion. (Especially on the slice of pizza he has been brought, which he declares “tastes like ass.”) Perhaps his most controversial take at the moment? “F-ck any of the albums I dropped before this one.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
His desire to move on from his past is understandable. When Yachty entered the industry in his mid-teens with his 2016 major-label debut, the Lil Boat mixtape, featuring the breakout hit “One Night,” he found that along with fame came sailing the internet’s choppy waters. Skeptics often took him to task for not knowing — or caring, maybe — about rap’s roots, and he never shied away from sharing hot takes on Twitter. With his willingness and ability to straddle pop and hip-hop, Yachty produced music he once called “bubble-gum trap” (he has since denounced that phrase) that polarized audiences and critics. Meanwhile, his nonchalant delivery got him labeled as a mumble rapper — another identifier he was never fond of because it felt dismissive of his talent.
“I came into music in a time where rap was real hardcore, it was real street,” he says. “And a bunch of us kids came in with colorful hair and dressing different and basically said, ‘Move out the way, old f-cks. We on some other sh-t.’ I was young and I didn’t really give a f-ck, so I did do things that may have led people to the assumptions that I was a mumble rapper or a SoundCloud kid or I don’t appreciate the history of hip-hop. But to be honest, I’ve always been so much more than just hip-hop.
“There’s a lot of kids who haven’t heard any of my references,” he continues. “They don’t know anything about Bon Iver or Pink Floyd or Black Sabbath or James Brown. I wanted to show people a different side of me — and that I can do anything, most importantly.”
Let’s Start Here is proof. Growing up in Atlanta, the artist born Miles McCollum was heavily influenced by his father, a photographer who introduced him to all kinds of sounds. Yachty, once easily identifiable by his bright red braids, found early success by posting songs like “One Night” to SoundCloud, catching the attention of Kevin “Coach K” Lee, co-founder/COO of Quality Control Music, now home to Migos, Lil Baby and City Girls. In 2015, Coach K began managing Yachty, who in summer 2016 signed a joint-venture deal with Motown, Capitol Records and Quality Control.
“Yachty was me when I was 18 years old, when I signed him. He was actually me,” says Coach K today. (In 2021, Adam Kluger, whose clients include Bhad Bhabie, began co-managing Yachty.) “All the eclectic, different things, we shared that with each other. He had been wanting to make this album from the first day we signed him. But you know — coming as a hip-hop artist, you have to play the game.”
Yachty played it well. To date, he has charted 17 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, including two top 10 hits for his features on DRAM’s melodic 2016 smash “Broccoli” and Kyle’s 2017 pop-rap track “iSpy.” His third-highest-charting entry arrived unexpectedly last year: the 93-second “Poland,” a track Yachty recorded in about 10 minutes where his warbly vocals more closely resemble singing than rapping. (Let’s Start Here collaborator SADPONY saw “Poland” as a temperature check that proved “people are going to like this Yachty.”)
Beginning with 2016’s Lil Boat mixtape, all eight of Yachty’s major-label-released albums and mixtapes have charted on the Billboard 200. Three have entered the top 10, including Let’s Start Here, which debuted and peaked at No. 9. And while Yachty has only scored one No. 1 album before (Teenage Emotions topped Rap Album Sales), Let’s Start Here debuted atop three genre charts: Top Rock & Alternative Albums, Top Rock Albums and Top Alternative Albums.
“It feels good to know that people in that world received this so well,” says Motown Records vp of A&R Gelareh Rouzbehani. “I think it’s a testament to Yachty going in and saying, ‘F-ck what everyone thinks. I’m going to create something that I’ve always wanted to make — and let us hope the world f-cking loves it.’ ”
Yachty says he was already confident about the album, but after playing it for several of his peers and heroes — including Kendrick Lamar, J. Cole, Post Malone, Drake, Cardi B, Kid Cudi, A$AP Rocky and Tyler, The Creator — “their reactions boosted me.”
Yet despite Let’s Start Here’s many high-profile supporters, some longtime detractors and fans alike were quick to criticize certain aspects of it, from its art — Yachty quote-tweeted one remark, succinctly replying, “shut up” — to the music itself. Once again, he found himself facing another tidal wave of discourse. But this time, he was ready to ride it. “This release,” Kluger says, “gave him a lot of confidence.”
“I was always kind of nervous to put out music, but now I’m on some other sh-t,” Yachty says. “It was a lot of self-assessing and being very real about not being happy with where I was musically, knowing I’m better than where I am. Because the sh-t I was making did not add up to the sh-t I listened to.
“I just wanted more,” he continues. “I want to be remembered. I want to be respected.”
Last spring, Lil Yachty gathered his family, collaborators and team at famed Texas studio complex Sonic Ranch.
“I remember I got there at night and drove down because this place is like 30 miles outside El Paso,” Coach K says. “I walked in the room and just saw all these instruments and sh-t, and the vibe was just so ill. And I just started smiling. All the producers were in the room, his assistant, his dad. Yachty comes in, puts the album on. We got to the second song, and I told everybody, ‘Stop the music.’ I walked over to him and just said, ‘Man, give me a hug.’ I was like, ‘Yachty, I am so proud of you.’ He came into the game bold, but [to make] this album, you have to be very bold. And to know that he finally did it, it was overwhelming.”
SADPONY (aka Jeremiah Raisen) — who executive-produced Let’s Start Here and, in doing so, spent nearly eight straight months with Yachty — says the time at Sonic Ranch was the perfect way to cap off the months of tunnel vision required while making the album in Brooklyn. “That was new alone,” says Yachty. “I’ve recorded every album in Atlanta at [Quality Control]. That was the first time I recorded away from home. First time I recorded with a new engineer,” Miles B.A. Robinson, a Saddle Creek artist.
And while they did put the finishing touches on the album in Texas, they also let loose. “We had a f-cking grand old time,” SADPONY says. “We had about 50 people all throughout these houses and were driving in these unregistered trucks, like cartel trucks, around this crazy pecan farm. Obviously, we were all having some fun making this psychedelic record.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
Yachty couldn’t wait to put it out, and says he turned it in “a long time ago. I think it was just label sh-t and trying to figure out the right time to release it.” For Coach K, it was imperative to have the physical product ready on release date, given that Yachty had made “an experience” of an album. And lately, most pressing plants have an average turnaround time of six to eight months.
Fans, however, were impatient. On Christmas, one month before Let’s Start Here would arrive, the album leaked online. It was dubbed Sonic Ranch. “Everyone was home with their families, so no one could pull it off the internet,” recalls Yachty. “That was really depressing and frustrating.”
Then, weeks later, the album art, tracklist and release date also leaked. “My label made a mistake and sent preorders to Amazon too early, and [the site] posted it,” Yachty says. “So I wasn’t able to do the actual rollout for my album that I wanted to. Nothing was a secret anymore. It was all out. I had a whole plan that I had to cancel.” He says the biggest loss was various videos he made to introduce and contextualize the project, all of which “were really weird … [But] I wasn’t introducing it anymore. People already knew.” Only one, called “Department of Mental Tranquility,” made it out, just days before the album.
Yachty says he wasn’t necessarily seeking a mental escape before making Let’s Start Here, but confesses that acid gave him one anyway. “I guess maybe the music went along with it,” he says. The album title changed four or five times, he says, from Momentary Bliss (“It was meant to take you away from reality … where you’re truly listening”) to 180 Degrees (“Because it’s the complete opposite of anything I’ve ever done, but people were like, ‘It’s too on the nose’ ”) to, ultimately, Let’s Start Here — the best way, he decided, to succinctly summarize where he was as an artist: a seven-year veteran, but at 25 years old, still eager to begin a new chapter.
He dug into his less obvious influences: In 2017, he listened to Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon for the first time. “I think that was the last time I was like, ‘Whoa.’ You know?” He believes Frank Ocean’s Blonde is “one of the best albums of all time” and cites Tame Impala’s Currents as another project that stopped him in his tracks. All were fuel to his fire.
Taking inspiration from Dark Side, Yachty relied on three women’s voices throughout the album, enlisting Fousheé, Justine Skye and Diana Gordon. Otherwise, guest vocals are spare. Daniel Caesar features on album closer “Reach the Sunshine.,” while the late Bob Ross (of The Joy of Painting fame) has a historic posthumous feature on “We Saw the Sun!”
Rouzbehani tells Billboard that Ross’ estate declined Yachty’s request at first: “I think a big concern of theirs was that Yachty is known as a rapper, and Bob Ross and his brand are very clean. They didn’t want to associate with anything explicit.” But Yachty was adamant, and Rouzbehani played the track for Ross’ team and also sent the entire album’s lyrics to set the group at ease. “With a lot of back-and-forth, we got the call,” she says. “Yachty is the first artist that has gotten a Bob Ross clearance in history.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
From the start, Coach K believed Let’s Start Here would open lots of doors for Yachty — and ultimately, other artists, too. Questlove may have said it best, posting the album art on Instagram with a lengthy caption that read in part: “this lp might be the most surprising transition of any music career I’ve witnessed in a min, especially under the umbrella of hip hop … Sh-t like this (envelope pushing) got me hyped about music’s future.”
“People don’t know where Yachty’s going to go now, and I think that’s the coolest sh-t, artistrywise,” says SADPONY. “That’s some Iggy Pop-, David Bowie-type sh-t. Where the mysteriousness of being an artist is back.”
Recently, Lil Yachty held auditions for an all-women touring band. “It was an experience for like Simon Cowell or Randy [Jackson],” he says, offering a simple explanation for the choice: “In my life, women are superheroes.”
And according to Yachty, pulling off his show will take superhuman strength: “Because the show has to match the album. It has to be big.” As eager as he was to release Let’s Start Here, he’s even more antsy to perform it live — but planning a tour, he says, required gauging the reaction to it. “This is so new for me, and to be quite honest with you, the label [didn’t] know how [the album] would do,” he says. “Also, I haven’t dropped an album in like three years. So we don’t even know how to plan a tour right now because it has been so long and my music is so different.”
While Yachty’s last full-length studio album, Lil Boat 3, arrived in 2020, he released the Michigan Boy Boat mixtape in 2021, a project as reverential of the state’s flourishing hip-hop scenes in Detroit and Flint as Let’s Start Here is of its psych-rock touchstones. And though he claims he doesn’t do much with his days, his recent accomplishments, both musical and beyond, suggest otherwise. He launched his own cryptocurrency, YachtyCoin, at the end of 2020; signed his first artist, Draft Day, to his Concrete Boyz label at the start of 2021; invested in the Jewish dating app Lox Club; and launched his own line of frozen pizza, Yachty’s Pizzeria, last September. (He has famously declared he has never eaten a vegetable; at his Jersey City listening event, there was an abundance of candy, doughnut holes and Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon Pop-Tarts.)
But there are only two things that seem to remotely excite him, first and foremost of which is being a father. As proud as he is of Let’s Start Here, he says it comes in second to having his now 1-year-old daughter — though he says with a laugh that she “doesn’t really give a f-ck” about his music yet. “I haven’t played [this album] for her, but her mom plays her my old stuff,” he continues. “The mother of my child is Dominican and Puerto Rican, so she loves Selena — she plays her a lot. [We watch] the Selena movie with Jennifer Lopez a sh-t ton and a lot of Disney movie sh-t, like Frozen, Lion King and that type of vibe.”
Aside from being a dad, he most cares about working with other artists. Recently, he flew eight of his biggest fans — most of whom he has kept in touch with for years — to Atlanta. He had them over, played Let’s Start Here, took them to dinner and bowling, introduced them to his mom and dad, and then showed them a documentary he made for the album. (He’s not sure if he’ll release it.) One of the fans is an aspiring rapper; naturally, the two made a song together.
“I want to be Quincy Jones,” Yachty near whispers. Last year, he co-produced a handful of tracks on the Drake and 21 Savage collaborative album Her Loss. And recently, he features on two Zack Bia tracks, one of which he produced, for Bia’s upcoming album. Six months ago, he started living by himself for the first time. “I wish I did it sooner. I wake up, play video games and then I go to the studio all night until the morning,” he says. “That’s all I want to do.” Since finishing Let’s Start Here, Yachty claims he has made hundreds of songs, some experimenting with “electronic pop sh-t” that he can only describe as “tight.”
Lil Yachty photographed on January 25, 2023 at Shio Studio in Brooklyn.
Peter Ash Lee
Yachty wants to keep working with artists and producers outside of hip-hop, mentioning the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and even sharing his dream of writing a ballad for Elton John. (“I know I could write him a beautiful song.”) With South Korean music company HYBE’s recent purchase of Quality Control — a $300 million deal — Yachty’s realm of possibility is bigger than ever.
But he’s not ruling out his genre roots. Arguably, Let’s Start Here was made for the peers and heroes he played it for first — and was inspired by hip-hop’s chameleons. “I would love to do a project with Tyler [The Creator],” says Yachty. “He’s the reason I made this album. He’s the one who told me to do it, just go for it. He’s so confident and I have so much respect for him because he takes me seriously, and he always has.”
Yachty is now hoping everyone else does, too. “I just want people to understand I love this. This is not a joke to me. And I can stand with my chest out because I’m proud of something I created.”
Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
This story will appear in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
In Billboard’s new monthly emerging dance artist spotlight we get to know Rêve, the Montreal-repping artist bringing dreaminess and raw songwriting to the dancefloor.
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The Occasion: Canada’s Juno Awards, taking place next Monday (Mar. 13), where Rêve is nominated in three categories: breakthrough artist of the year, best dance recording of the year (for “CTRL + ALT + DEL”) and the fan choice award.
The Origin: The Montreal-raised artist, born Briannah Donolo, began songwriting as a child, using her pen and piano as a form of therapy. In 2014, a video of her singing of the U.S. and Canadian national anthems at a Canadiens hockey game went viral, leading to instant media and music industry attention. Despite seemingly reaching the spotlight, she says she still needed time to figure out who she was as an artist.
Rêve did some of that soul-searching in local nightclub, Velvet, which she describes as dungeon-like with candles lining the walls. It was there that she first experienced club music in its purest form, on a proper sound system. “There were no bells and whistles, just the music and the way that it connected the people in the room,” she tells Billboard. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is one of the most powerful things that I’ve ever felt.’” It ultimately shaped her direction going forward.
To get closer to the music industry, Rêve moved to Toronto at the beginning of 2020 and worked studio sessions to refine her writing and sound. During the first month of COVID lockdown, she met and instantly clicked with production-songwriting duo Banx & Ranx (Dua Lipa, Blackpink, J Balvin) over Zoom. “When we got together [in person], there was this unspoken energy in the room that really flowed,” she recalls.
Many joint sessions later, Banx & Ranx co-signed Rêve to Universal Music Canada via their label 31 East. In July 2021, she made her major-label debut with “Still Dancing.”
The Sound: Taking a cue from one of her biggest influences, Robyn, Rêve aims to make music that, she says, “moves your heart as much as it moves your feet.” “Still Dancing” perfectly captures this balance: the quarantine anthem pairs lyrical longing for the communal clubbing experience (“I don’t know who needs to hear this; we came here to get some healing… f–k, we’re sad, but we’re still dancing”) with a dark, sultry groove and euphoric piano build.
That raw songwriting is key to Rêve’s overall catalog — whether it’s vulnerable, sexual or fun and carefree, it’s unapologetically her. On a wider scale, Rêve pulls from early-2000s pop and R&B and classic ‘90s dance music — clock the nod to The Bucketheads’ 1995 hit “The Bomb (These Sounds Fall Into My Mind)” on “Skin 2 Skin” — yet her sound is still fresh and modern. Her name is French for “dream,” which also reflects how she views her music: “dreamy, ethereal, transformative — and dance/electronic and all of its sub-genres are the glue that keeps it together.”
Key Tracks: “CTRL + ALT + DEL,” released in Sept. 2021, was Rêve’s first major hit. Written during the first wave of the pandemic, she says it brought a fun, lighter mood to previous sessions marked by heaviness and uncertainty: “[Banx & Ranx and I] spent the next couple hours talking about how much we missed going out — not for the drinks, not for the boys or the girls, just to be there with a really good sound system and vibes and listen to music.”
The song hit multiple Canadian singles charts (AC, Hot AC, CHR/Top 40, Top 100), including a 29-week stint and No. 38 peak on the latter, and was certified platinum in June. To date, it has over 44 million streams between Spotify and YouTube. Rêve pins the success of “CRTL + ALT + DEL” to its earworm melody. “It drove us nuts,” she says with a laugh. “I was like, ‘This is a good thing.’”
A more recent song, “Whitney,” released in Oct. 2022, is coming for its throne. The lyrics were inspired by a dish towel in her mom’s kitchen. “[It] had something very Hallmark on it, like, ‘Dance like nobody’s watching, sing like nobody’s listening’” she says. “I was like, ‘What if I tweak it?’” She name-checks icons such as Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston and Marilyn Monroe to express her desire to live life fully present and not, as the song goes, “grow too old before my time.”
Like “CTRL + ALT + DEL,” “Whitney” is making a splash on the charts. It’s Rêve’s first top 10 hit on any U.S.-based Billboard chart (Dance/Mix Show Airplay) and has netted two more top 10 placements on Canada’s CHR/Top 40 and Hot AC, as well as a top five first (No. 4) on Canada AC. Rêve herself is holding steady at No. 3 on the Canada Emerging Artists chart.
Signed To: 31 East / Universal Music Canada
Managed By: Andrew Kennedy & Pat Murphy, CARE OF Management
Management Strategy: “Our strategy with Rêve has been to stay consistent with her releases; drip feeding singles, collaborations, and remixes to keep her footprint growing across all DSPs and social channels,” write Kennedy and Murphy. “Rêve is an incredible artist and songwriter, and it’s imperative to us that her unique POV is distilled into all of the creative… from the artwork to the live show and so on.
“For audience growth, we’re looking holistically at all of the potential drivers to ensure that there is strategy employed across all platforms and DSPs. This strategy looks different on platforms like TikTok than it does on radio, but it all comes down to finding the core fans and converting them consistently day by day.”
First Record That Made Her Love Dance Music: Rêve credits her mom for her early love of dance music, having grown up on the synth-based sounds of Eurythmics, Depeche Mode and Madonna. The latter’s 1998 album Ray of Light, especially, was a record she wore out from playing it on her Discman at school.
“I’ll never forget the way that it made me feel,” she says. “It made me feel like I could be anybody. It was like, this escapism… It’s very rare you have these artists that become even more interesting to you as you grow up. I loved Madonna’s music from the time that I was a child, but growing up trying to break into the music industry — what she did was just truly so incredible on so many levels.”
Advice Every New Dance Artist Needs to Hear: “Don’t worry about trying to copy who’s hot right now. Make things that make you feel something, that get you giddy inside, even though they might not be what’s trending right now. Just do things that feel good to you, and chances are it’s gonna feel good to somebody else.”
Why She Makes Music: “I make music because it’s at the core of everything that I do. I feel like we’re put on this earth to connect to it on the deepest level. I think I was put on this earth to connect to people and to myself through it. It just feels like the most authentic thing to me.”
Up Next: In addition to multiple Juno nominations, Rêve will be performing on the award show’s live broadcast alongside Banx & Ranx and label mate Preston Pablo. Consider it a warm-up to her first-ever headline shows at Toronto’s Access Club (Mar. 23) and Montreal’s Le Studio TD (Mar. 25). A debut album is scheduled to arrive later this year.
“You’ll hear so many different sub-genre influences within it,” Rêve says. “There’s drum and bass, traditional dance-pop, breakbeat, a little bit of acid… It’s basically my love letter to dance music, and really, to Montreal.”
In February, Mimi Webb brought her mother to the 2023 Brit Awards, where she was nominated for best new artist. She lost to Wet Leg, but days later, Webb was still beaming over meeting Harry Styles at the ceremony instead of being fazed by the defeat — as she saw it, she had too much more to look forward to.
On March 3, the charismatic rising pop star released her debut album, Amelia, which includes pop radio hits like “House on Fire” and “Red Flags.” The 12-track project, which juxtaposes power-pop songs with catchy confessionals, is the culmination of a yearslong plan that prioritized career development and patience — and rewarded Webb’s drive.
“I always loved being center stage,” the 22-year-old born Amelia Webb recalls of growing up in Canterbury, England. She started music lessons when she was 12 and became active in her school’s band nights. “That’s where I was able to grow more as a musician and find that love for it. That’s when I decided, ‘Right. I’m going to go for it.’ [There was] no backup plan.”
By 16, Webb moved out to attend Brighton Music College. She didn’t stay long: That same year, she scored a manager in music and tech entrepreneur Rob Ronaldson, who was quick to set up studio time and label meetings in Los Angeles. “I just didn’t have time to do college. I had to drop out,” says Webb, speaking quickly as if to match the pace of her ascent. “I learned so much to the point where I took things into my own hands and went out there and just did it.”
From the start, Ronaldson foresaw Webb’s cross-continental appeal and aimed for a record deal abroad rather than signing in the United Kingdom. The approach aligned with Webb’s own goal: “Break worldwide.”
In 2019, she signed a deal with Epic Records, forming an immediate bond with Ezekiel “Zeke” Lewis, the label’s executive vp of A&R. And in 2020, Best Friends Music’s Brandon Goodman signed on as Webb’s stateside co-manager. Still, she continued to grow her domestic fan base, landing a U.K. hit every year since breaking first on TikTok with the impassioned “Before I Go,” a song Charli D’Amelio used to soundtrack a video on the app. (D’Amelio soon after helped Webb create her own account.)
Coperni jacket, Justine Clenquet earrings.
Rosaline Shahnavaz
And in 2021, “Good Without,” from Webb’s debut EP, Seven Shades of Heartbreak, crossed the pond and became her first entry on Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart, followed by “House on Fire” in 2022. She started 2023 completing a hat trick, as the rousing “Red Flags” became her third entry on the list, peaking at No. 29. The success was steady, but to Webb, who was writing incessantly and building her following on social media, it was a whirlwind. “When I look back, I had no clue what I wanted to really do as an artist — till now.”
On Amelia, Webb introduces the world to her two selves: the chill homebody Amelia and the pop powerhouse Mimi. “With this album, I really wanted to get the mixture of both [my] worlds — get those ballads in, but also get the uptempo, fun songs in there as well,” she says.
Webb officially started working on Amelia last April, finishing the bulk of it in under six months, she estimates. “I had a lot of songs in the bag,” she says, noting that she wrote the wishful “See You Soon” four years ago, while she co-wrote newer songs like “Red Flags,” “Roles Reversed” and “Last Train to London” in one week with Connor and Riley McDonough (who last year scored a Billboard Hot 100 top 10 with Joji’s “Glimpse of Us”).
And even though Webb is embracing her offstage persona, she’s grateful for her foresight in creating a moniker, comparing it to a wall. “I think it was a way of protecting [myself],” she says, “and also feeling that confidence to go onstage and not worry about what’s going to happen.”
She admires peers like Tate McRae, whom she opened for on tour, and praises the dominant onstage presence of Dua Lipa, an artist she has “completely fallen in love with” — and one with whom she shares a milestone. “Red Flags” made Webb the first British female artist since Lipa (who was also a U.K. star before crossing over to the United States) to chart two singles in the top 15 of the U.K. Official Singles Chart before releasing a debut album. “I’ve taken a lot of inspiration from how she has done the steps and built from scratch, doing the small shows to the big arenas,” Webb says.
That slow climb is exactly how Webb and her team have arrived at this moment: a hit single leading into a debut album leading into a U.K. and European headlining tour. What will follow, the artist hopes, is U.S. stardom.
“For the last two-and-a-half years, we have been focused on the recording and artist-development process,” Epic chairman/CEO Sylvia Rhone says. “By releasing music and content consistently, coupled with touring, it has allowed her to mature as an artist and build a loyal and global audience.”
“I’m definitely excited for people to get to know Amelia and to tell the story of growing up and how intense everything feels,” says Webb. “I just want people to really get to know me more as an artist — and as a person.”
Mimi Webb photographed on February 24, 2023 at zēphyr in London.
Rosaline Shahnavaz
This story will appear in the March 11, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Like many stans of music’s superstars, Dre’s devotion to Ni’Jah is boundless. She’ll battle internet trolls and haters. She’ll max out credit cards for stage-side concert tickets. She lives and breathes her adoration. And, as it turns out, she’ll kill for it, too.
Dre is a fictional character (Ni’Jah is as well — though the latter bears a more than passing resemblance to Beyoncé). But as portrayed by the captivating Dominique Fishback on Swarm – the much-awaited Amazon Prime series from co-creators Donald Glover and Janine Nabers, debuting March 17 on Prime Video – Dre feels all-too unsettlingly real. And the world of Swarm, like much of Glover’s distinctive creative catalog, is a just-this-side-of-reality genre-mash of eerie, unexpected, and playful thrills.
Dominique Fishback in “Swarm”
Courtesy of Prime
Swarm premieres mere months after the conclusion of Glover’s widely beloved Atlanta — but he and Nabers, who is the series’ showrunner, began work on it much earlier. “He called me and was like, ‘I really want this to be the first show that has my name on it with yours after Atlanta,” says Nabers, a writer, producer and collaborator of Glover’s on seasons 3 and 4 (she is also a playwright).
A character-study at its core, Swarm feels like a darker sister to Atlanta. As in all Glover’s work, every detail of Swarm is purposefully chosen — from the years in which it’s set (2016-2018, when social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram were firmly established as central to the pop culture conversation) to its tongue-in-cheek references to real world events (stripper altercations, high-profile infidelity, trespassing fans) and people (Ni’jah’s fanbase, the titular swarm, is a Beyhive by any other name).
The casting choices, too, are intentional. Actors including Chloe Bailey, Paris Jackson, and Damson Idris were selected in part because they, as Nabers puts it, “have their own swarm of people around them.” The most important casting choice of all, of course, was who would play Dre herself.
Dominique Fishback in “Swarm”
Courtesy of Prime Video
“Presence was really important,” says Fishback of her approach. “If I tried to map out Dre, I wouldn’t be able to play an authentic character because she isn’t that. It became a thing where I would do something really weird and I would try to get a reaction out of Donald. If I could get him to be like, ‘Huh, that was strange,” then I was doing something.”
That odd, off-putting otherness is key to Fishback’s performance. “We didn’t really go into the psychology of the character, Janine, Donald and I,” she continues. “It was really just trust.” Dre is unpredictable and erratic — a split moment observation in an elevator shifts her focus, sparing a would-be victim; the fluidity and speed with which she concocts false-but-believable tales is terrifying — and Fishback, who’s accustomed to psychologically delving into her characters (often through journaling), dialed into that strange.
“I really wanted to stretch myself as an actor,” says Fishback, who says she’s always been inspired by transformative performances like Charlize Theron’s in Monster. She relished the opportunity to embody a likely-to-be-misunderstood character.
Dominique Fishback in “Swarm”
Courtesy of Prime Video
Dre is crafted to be quite singular both within the show’s world and as a protagonist on television now. Nabers likens the pilot to “the origin story of a villain,” and considers Dre “very much an alien in any situation she’s put in.” Nonetheless, the show also hinges on Dre’s existence as one member of a giant whole: The Hive, Ni’Jah’s aptly named fanbase. And Dre’s relationship to music is what’s meant to most resonate most with audiences. As Nabers notes, “Every person in the world has some sort of connection to music. So that was a very strong way in which we wanted to lead the audience into this character. The language she speaks is this star’s mythology.”
That music is stitched into the show with a deft hand by Glover, who created fictional Ni’Jah songs that sounded believable as a pop star’s repertoire. Ni’Jah’s lyrics become the words through which Dre’s world is expressed. As Dre grapples with grief, following a pivotal loss in the first episode, the audience sees that world grow more and more chaotic — and is forced to confront questions about how art, and music in particular, can function as both healer and trigger, swaying our own emotional navigation.
“Music has saved my life,” says Bailey, who plays Marissa, Dre’s sister, roommate, and best friend. “If you’re going through pain and you don’t know how to articulate that or share it with anyone around you, you can find a song that articulates exactly how you’re feeling. The sonics match the frequency of what you’re feeling. Even when you’re happy, it’s the heartbeat.”
Ni’Jah’s superstar presence enraptures and haunts Dre through diegetic music, but also through trending topics and the resulting Twitter wars we see onscreen. We only get glimpses of the icon herself — another intentional choice, Nabers explains, though she stops short of calling the character a Beyoncé stand-in.
Dominique Fishback in “Swarm”
Courtesy of Prime Video
“For us, it was really about finding the feeling that someone gives to Black women in America,” she says. “If you ask [Black women] who is the representation of them in the words of music and song and unapologetic Black girl realness, everyone’s gonna have different answers. It’s really about allowing us to see that Ni’Jah is that person for Dre. We can understand that the feeling is something like” — she pauses, letting my mind fill in the blank— “who we’re familiar with. We’re putting ‘I feel that for this person’ onto that face. That’s what we’re really trying to do with this story.”
In our hyperconnected world, the breadcrumbs such a star leaves for their fans in their art — hinting at intimate details of their “real” lives — can set a superfan’s mind into overdrive, and Dre’s story is an uncanny consideration of the emotional and mental toll that can take, especially amid the hyper-aggressive realm of fan armies on the internet. “I guess in the normal world it would be considered hatred,” Glover has said of that behavior, “but on the internet it’s just talk.” In Swarm, he imagines what might happen if those armies stepped into the real world, like the packs of gangs in cult-classic The Warriors. Or even just one troubled superfan, desperate to be seen by the deified artist at whose altar she worships.
“I try to be a clear vessel,” says Fishback. “Dre really dips into her wounded masculine, her wounded feminine, her dark feminine energy.”
Fishback is known as a chameleon onscreen. In roles on shows like The Deuce and Show Me a Hero, as well as in films like Judas and the Black Messiah, her magnetic presence has long made her a standout in ensemble casts. “She’s incredible. She is vulnerable, and fierce, and willing to jump into it all,” says Amazon Studios’ head of television, Vernon Sanders. “She was the only choice.” As Dre, Fishback showcases both her range and her masterful ability to get under the audience’s skin — she’s a presence tangible beyond the screen.
“A lot of times we don’t get to express that rage or that hurt or that pain, especially on camera — and I got to express it through Dre,” Fishback says. “I got to be raging and scream. When you’re taught TV work in school they’re like, ‘Don’t move from the camera. Make sure the camera can see you.’ You get so trapped by the frame.”
Playing Dre wasn’t all dark side of the mind, Fishback allows. “There are heavy things but she’s a lot of fun too!” she says. “I learned a great deal from Dre. How to march to the beat of my own drum — period. Her drum’s got a different rhythm from mine. However, I can understand what it’s like to decide that this is me, this is how I move through the world, this is what I care about. And I’m passionate about what I care about. As an artist, she gave me even more freedom. I had to just trust my instrument and trust the process.”
Dominique Fishback in “Swarm”
Courtesy of Prime Video
As a producer on the show, Fishback (who is also a writer in her own right) was also able to advocate for both Dre’s character and the cast and crew. She requested a therapist on set, watched dailies to track the evolution of the project as a whole, and insisted on reinstating cut scenes that she felt were essential to character development. And she had present allies in both Glover and Nabers.
“I was the only Black female [executive] producer on the show,” says Nabers. “We were very much a united front in that to create a safe space. Anytime we needed Donald, or any producer, they would show up. It took a village to make this show safe and to keep it moving, and that’s what we did. I’m really proud of that.” Sanders mentions that “part of the sell for [Amazon] was having Janine’s voice with [Glover’s],” considering the explicitly Black female lens through which Swarm’s story is told.
That lens is new territory for Glover, who has been criticized before for appearing hostile to Black women’s perspectives in particular. In April of last year, he came under public scrutiny when — as part of an Interview profile in which he interviewed….himself — he asked, “Are you afraid of Black women?” and then danced around his imagined interviewer-self not to answer.
At the time, Swarm was in the midst of shooting — begging the question of whether Glover was perhaps, in some way, teeing up the subject for discussion around this project, with its two central female characters embodying powerful archetypes: Ni’Jah, an icon of ethereal, otherworldly proportion, and Dre, an outcast wielding frightful agency.
Glover and Nabers poke and prod at similarly layered questions through Swarm — including the many potential meanings the title itself can take on. Whether or not you feel empathy for Dre, her perspective is overwhelmingly the one the audience must take, and Fishback’s grounded performance — not in reality or Dre’s mind, but her heart — is all-consuming. “You can have [a] swarm in any kind of way. Swarming thoughts that get into your mind…” Fishback muses. “Yes, it’s about this girl who is part of this ‘swarm’. But we also hope that people watch it and swarm to the project, because we can dialogue. It can be about the human condition.”
At the Eurovision 2023 Song Contest in May, 37 countries will participate, but only one nation is sending their act to the competition in Liverpool while their country is fighting a war. Tvorchi, the electronic music duo from Ukraine, has been recording and rehearsing while their homeland is under attack by forces commanded by Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In the weeks of early preparation and national competitions, the duo – producer Andrii (Andrew) Hutsuliak and vocalist Jimoh Augustus Kehinde (a.k.a. Jeffery Kenny) – ran from shelter to shelter to avoid unpredictable drone and missile strikes and weathered intermittent electricity outages. And while most countries vying for the Eurovision crown hold their national finals in theaters or arenas, Ukraine’s live broadcast for the 2023 contest took place in December at an underground metro station that has been used as a bomb shelter, with trains passing on both sides of the stage.
“We didn’t imagine this might happen, that any minute you could be killed by missiles,” co-founder Hutsuliak tells Billboard via Zoom. “In the first week of war, we had a lot of emotions, and we transferred all those emotions into how we can help our country and how to be more productive.”
The war affected the participation of Tvorchi (“creative” in Ukrainian) in Ukraine’s national final to determine which song would go to Eurovision, forcing the duo to do some recordings in shelters “There are the times we just grab the equipment and to go to the shelter and wait for the air (sirens) to turn off,” he says. During Tvorchi’s preparations in Kyiv, one day they were shooting video when an alarm sounded signaling a drone strike and missile attack, recalls Hutsuliak. “We ran to the shelter and were sitting there for four hours.”
With many power plants destroyed by Russian attacks, Ukrainian officials have conserved electricity by periodically shutting it off. “When you hear the alarm and the missiles strike, the electricity can go off,” says Hutsuliak. “We look for generators and big power banks where you can plug your laptop in there and charge your devices and go on.”
Since winning Ukraine’s national final, Tvorchi has focused on preparing its music and trying to tune out the dangerous conditions that threaten their lives. “We’re not physically participating in rehearsals yet,” says Hutsuliak. “We’re trying to get the music done as quickly as possible then we can move on to the choreography and trying out costumes and rehearsing for the show on stage.”
U.K. Steps Up To Host Despite Ukraine’s 2022 Eurovision Win
By tradition, the country that wins Eurovision hosts the competition the following year. In 2022, Ukraine won with The Kalush Orchestra’s “Stefania.” While Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said he wanted his country to host the 2023 contest, the European Broadcasting Union selected the U.K. as substitute host, deeming it too dangerous to have the annual event in Ukraine.
“We are thankful that Britain is going to organize this and make it happen,” says Hutsuliak. The promos for the 2023 Eurovision will feature the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag inside the traditional heart-shaped logo, even though the competition is being held in the U.K.
Tvorchi and the delegation from Ukraine will have to travel from their besieged country to Liverpool, where the Eurovision final will be held on May 13 at the M&S Bank Arena. The duo has already been to London for a performance at the O2 Arena last fall, held to raise funds to buy military equipment for Ukraine.
While the country is under attack by air, there are no flights coming in or out of Ukrainian airports. “We can only travel by car or train,” says Hutsuliak. “Before Putin’s invasion, it took four or five hours to fly to London. [For the O2 performance] it took us 24 hours to get there. We traveled by car to the airport in Krakow, Poland and then we flew to Warsaw. Then we caught another plane to London.”
Even in London, the electronic duo struggled to avoid the feeling of trauma. “You hear a plane flying overhead and you get scared or anxious for no reason,” says Hutsuliak. “But it was nice to meet Ukrainians who lived in our country before the invasion, and it is nice to interact with them. There are Ukrainian people who live in Berlin, in London, in Portugal and in Spain and we appreciated sharing emotions and being in the moment.”
Both members of Tvorchi say it is important to continue making music and appearing on a global platform such as Eurovision. “We’re grateful for the opportunity to spread our message as well as represent the country,” Kenny tells Billboard. “Ukrainians don’t want to be pitied,” adds Hutsuliak. “You need to look at us and get inspired, be united and help so we can help you tomorrow.”
The duo has raised money for the Ukranian army and urges others to donate money and equipment, and to stream music from Ukrainian artists. (Among the platforms receiving donations is one organized by President Zelensky, United24.)
Tvorchi’s song for Eurovision, “Heart of Steel,” was inspired by the siege of Azovstal in Mariupol when the Ukrainian army defended the steel and iron works there, holding out for 82 days under brutal conditions before finally surrendering in May. The lyrics are also a warning about nuclear warfare. Tvorchi is keenly aware that Eurovision was originally created to peacefully unite the nations of Europe several years after the end of World War II.
“Heart Of Steel” is not Tvorchi’s first song inspired by the conflict with Russia. In the first months after the invasion began, they wrote a song called “Boremosia” whose lyrics include:
We fight and will win over everyone
the bullets are flying but we are strong
we fight, the worlds are divided
the voices for freedom have become as one
Last June, Tvorchi performed “Boremosia” for army soldiers in a camp, on a stage atop a big truck. “They opened the place where they usually store some ammunition,” says Hutsuliak “It was very valuable for us to be there to talk with the [soldiers] and support each other, to share the emotions and just be in the moment.”
Rushing from elementary school with handwritten raps in her pocket, 10-year-old Alyssa Michelle Stephens would hop in her father’s “old-school cars with [24-inch] rims” and head straight to the recording studio — first in his friends’ homes, but soon enough, in professional spaces. “When we started paying for sessions, he’d say, ‘You ain’t gon’ be in here all day,’ ” the artist now known as Latto recalls. “ ‘You better have that song ready, top to bottom, one take, in and out!’ ” Even then, the Atlanta-raised aspiring MC — today a chart-topping, Grammy-nominated rapper with more than 1 billion on-demand streams in the United States, according to Luminate — was preparing for her destiny, winning high school writing competitions as a fifth grader.
Nurtured by her accountant mother and “hustler” father — both of whom she recalls living off ramen noodles during her early years — the self-proclaimed “daddy’s girl” stayed ahead of the curve, accompanying him to video shoots where rising acts like Dem Franchize Boyz and Ciara used his cars. “I just remember being so mesmerized by the whole process,” she says. “I loved the fast-paced hustle and bustle.” At 16, Latto competed on (and won) the first season of Lifetime’s hip-hop reality show, The Rap Game, under the moniker Miss Mulatto. Already, she had the foresight to recognize a bad career move when she saw one and, citing a less-than-adequate payout, turned down the show’s grand prize — a record deal with Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def Recordings — and remained independent until she signed to RCA Records in 2020, following the success of her breakthrough single, “B–ch From Da Souf.”
Christian Cowan dress and shoes, Sterling King jewelry.
Ssam Kim
Today, studio costs are no object to Latto, 24, who locks herself in the booth, pumping out 10 songs at a time about quarrels with her man or whatever inspires her on a given day. That tireless approach — Latto says she has hundreds of unreleased tracks stockpiled — has paid dividends, most notably with her massive 2021 hit, “Big Energy.” The song established Latto as a mainstream force — even if its mere existence was by no means a foregone conclusion.
“I heard my A&R and management whispering, debating on whether or not to play this beat for me,” Latto recalls. “It was just so different from everything else that I’ve done. They were hesitant on how I would react.” In the end, she loved the beat, despite not recognizing its biggest draw: a snippet of “Genius of Love,” the 1981 Tom Tom Club song famously sampled on Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy.”
“It ended up working in my favor,” she says. “I feel like that’s what kept it so ‘Latto.’ ” Still, the track’s eventual success surprised her. “I could feel the potential of the song and how commercial it was,” she continues, “but I definitely didn’t think it would be Grammy-nominated.”
Latto photographed on January 18, 2023 at The Paramour Estate in Los Angeles. Brandon Blackwood coat, Jessica Rich shoes, Versace eyewear courtesy of Tab Vintage, Sara Shala necklace.
Ssam Kim
For Latto, those wins paled in comparison to another “Big Energy” achievement: Carey herself called Latto’s management and chatted with the rapper for over an hour, leading to her appearance on the track’s March 2022 remix. “She was just embracing me and telling me she loves everything I’m doing,” Latto gushes. “It was a super out-of-body experience.”
Since “Big Energy” and Carey’s assist, Latto has positioned herself as rap’s biggest sweetheart. This year’s Powerhouse exudes warmth as she melts into her seat at Los Angeles’ Paramour Estate for her Billboard interview, flashing a bright white smile that contrasts with her painted-on, fire-engine red pantsuit. “You have to [ask yourself], ‘What am I going to sound like? What am I going to rap about? What will my beats sound like? Where’s my lane in the industry?’ ” she explains of her meticulously planned path. “Once you figure that out, you figure out the business side. Otherwise, you’re going to be high and dry when your 15 minutes are up.”
After breaking with “B–ch From Da Souf,” Latto diligently ensured her career would last. First, she changed her moniker from Mulatto to Latto, following controversy around the word’s connections to colorism. “New crib, new whip, new name/I’m still that b–ch,” she roared on her first single with RCA, “The Biggest,” adding on Instagram that the new name signified “a new chapter” and “good fortune, spiritually and financially.”
Her predictions came true, as “B–ch From Da Souf” became her first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 (peaking at No. 95) and both it and its follow-up, the Gucci Mane-featuring “Muwop,” went platinum. Her second album with RCA, 777, debuted at No. 15 on the Billboard 200, and within two years, she’d hit No. 3 on the Hot 100 with “Big Energy.”
ACT N°1 gown.
Ssam Kim
Since then, the rapper has received widespread support from women artists including Queen Latifah, Trina, City Girls, Cardi B, SZA, Remy Ma and Lizzo, who tapped Latto to support both North American legs of her Special arena tour. “I get a lot of love,” she says with an exuberant smile. “Real recognize real.”
And Latto intends to pay it forward, gushing over other newcomers like Flo Milli, Lola Brooke and GloRilla. “My No. 1 thing has been being a girl’s girl,” she explains. “I utilize my power in uplifting others on my way up. When you see Latto do a feature with an upcoming female rapper, I don’t charge them. The label got to cover the glam, but I don’t profit off that.”
Considering her youth, Latto has also displayed considerable foresight and grace thus far, which she attributes to the “get-it-out-the-mud” mentality she inherited from her teen parents. “[That’s why] I know what I want,” she adds.
Still, her cool under pressure has been tested. Last year, the rapper — like many her age, a fan of Nicki Minaj’s since childhood — became embroiled in a bitter Twitter battle with the rap legend, who had expressed frustration with the Recording Academy following its categorization of “Super Freaky Girl” as a pop song when considering it for the 2023 Grammys. “If [‘Super Freaky Girl’] has 2B moved out RAP then so does Big Energy!” Minaj wrote in a tweet that led to a blowout fight with Latto, who posted a recording of a phone call they’d had.
“It’s difficult navigating through situations like that because there’s a disconnect. I will look at myself as a fan of someone and they will view [me] in a whole different light,” Latto explains today. “It’s disappointing. You just got to take it to the chin and keep pushing.”
Brandon Blackwood coat, Jessica Rich shoes, Versace eyewear courtesy of Tab Vintage, Sara Shala necklace.
Ssam Kim
So when social media drama next reared its head — late last year, more than 100 of Latto’s unreleased songs were leaked without her knowledge, including tracks that would become massive hits for rappers Coi Leray and BIA — she responded with restraint, simply posting a trio of photos captioned “Trending.”
“I had to stop using my age as an excuse, because I [was] like, ‘I’m not nobody momma, I’m not nobody teacher. I’m not raising your kids.’ But unintentionally, you are,” she says now. “They look up to you. So I try to put my best foot forward.”
Now, she’s focused on a new “authentic” chapter in her career. “Because I started rapping so young, I’ve had a lot of other cooks in the kitchen,” she says. “So now I’m taking control back.” That means exploring new sounds, releasing her latest single, the pop-centric “Lottery,” while staying true to her hip-hop roots.
“The content I’m about to roll out is a whole fresh new leaf,” says Latto. “I genuinely love to see the new wave of female rap, and I’m honored to be a part of it.”
Christian Cowan dress, Sterling King jewelry.
Ssam Kim
This story will appear in the Feb. 25, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Lana Del Rey practices “automatic singing.” Using the improvisational songwriting technique, she lets her voice carry over accompaniments, not commandeering where her words or melodies take her, accepting all ideas she has in the moment and editing them later. Lately, her voice has led her home, back to memories of her childhood in Lake Placid, N.Y., and to ruminations on relationships with her family and the divergent paths they’ve taken.
That subject underpins her upcoming ninth album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (out March 24). Del Rey, 37, says she hesitantly began to unpack this subject matter with her previous album, Blue Banisters — but now, she’s ready to dig deeper. “At first I was so uncomfortable,” she says of the more personal material. “Then, by the grace of God, I just felt completely unburdened.”
Lia Clay Miller
As a singer-songwriter, this year’s Visionary honoree has embodied that word for over a decade. Her 2012 major-label debut, Born To Die, made her a star and defined music’s Tumblr era, as a young Del Rey toyed with both the romantic and the darker sides of the American dream. Her “world building,” as she calls it now, for her early work created a collage of beautiful and disparate images, pairing hip-hop aesthetics with references to the Kennedy family, Elvis Presley with John Wayne, and old Hollywood glamour with biker gang grit.
Since then, Del Rey has pushed musical boundaries — seamlessly peppering an album with features from Stevie Nicks to Playboi Carti (2017’s Lust for Life), reworking a Sublime cover into a contemporary Billboard Hot 100 hit (2019’s “Doin’ Time”), for instance — while achieving both critical acclaim and commercial success. She has earned six Grammy nominations and holds the record for most No. 1s on Billboard’s Alternative Albums chart. And somehow, each week, it seems a new song from her vast catalog gains traction on TikTok. (“West Coast” and “How To Disappear” are two recent breakouts.) Younger artists often cite her as an inspiration — including Billie Eilish, whom Del Rey now calls “my girl. It makes me feel comforted that music is going in such a good direction.”
Lia Clay Miller
Since 2019, you’ve released four albums. Is it fair to say you have more creative energy than ever?
I think it might look like that! It’s funny because I keep telling people, “I haven’t worked in three years,” but really I just haven’t done shows in three years. As soon as I start getting ready for a show, that’s when it feels like work.
How has your process changed since Born To Die came out?
Eleven years ago I wanted it to be so good. Now, I just sing exactly what I’m thinking. I’m thinking a little less big and bombastic. Maybe at some point I can have fun creating a world again, but right now, I would say there’s no world building. This music is about thought processing. It’s very, very wordy. I’m definitely living from the neck up.
Lia Clay Miller
Can you remember what it felt like creatively when you were just starting out?
I think back to the beginning, being in New York. I would just go to a little deli by Grand Central and all you had to do to sit at the table for hours was buy a black coffee. I remember thinking, “I’m doing it. I’m living it.” It was all very thrilling. I was so psyched back then.
You recently featured on Taylor Swift’s “Snow on the Beach.” What was collaborating with her like?
Well, first of all, I had no idea I was the only feature [on that song]. Had I known, I would have sung the entire second verse like she wanted. My job as a feature on a big artist’s album is to make sure I help add to the production of the song, so I was more focused on the production. She was very adamant that she wanted me to be on the album, and I really liked that song. I thought it was nice to be able to bridge that world, since Jack [Antonoff] and I work together and so do Jack and Taylor.
Who do you consider to be a visionary?
Joan Baez. I sang with her recently. She gave me a challenge: She said, “Go down a little road and look for a left turn and find my house [in Northern California]. If you find it and can play ‘Diamonds and Rust’s’ high harmony, I’ll come to Berkeley with you and sing.” So my sister and I rented a car and searched for the house. I was very nervous. I don’t play guitar that well, but I learned the first three chords and sat across from her, [and when] we stopped playing, she was like, “Great, I’ll see you at Berkeley.”
And another visionary to me is Cat Power. I had heard that she would run offstage when she wasn’t feeling it or just turn her back to the [audience] and keep playing. That’s when I knew I could probably do this.
Lia Clay Miller
This story will appear in the Feb. 25, 2023, issue of Billboard.