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When BLACKPINK was gearing up for its highly anticipated debut in 2016, rising creative director SINXITY was adamant the group needed an unexpected sound to distinguish itself. Alongside the group’s explosive EDM-trap banger “BOOMBAYAH,” the young exec at YG Entertainment pushed for a secondary, simultaneous single in the minimalist-yet-emotionally tinged “Whistle” to show their wider, “magical” range to distinguish them from YG’s other female outfit, 2NE1. Nearly a decade later, BLACKPINK remains one of the most successful acts from South Korea, and SINXITY is overseeing a new female quartet made for the global stage while emphasizing that “identity and diversity are important.”
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Seven years after exiting YG Entertainment and launching AXIS as a multi-operational label, production house and creative incubator for internationally minded projects, SINXITY (neé SJ Shin) is the executive producer for the freshly debuted cosmosy. The act consists of four Japanese singers who trained in Korea under the K-pop system and sing in a mix of English, Japanese and Korean to appeal to the global pop market. Two members, De_Hana and Kamión, rose to recognition after competing on Produce 101 Japan The Girls (a local spin-off of the Korean singing competition series that created Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart-toppers JO1, INI and ME:I), are joined by relative newcomers Himesha and A’mei, respectively the eldest and youngest member, who trained in dance since childhood (while idolizing the likes of British superstar Dua Lipa and BLACKPINK’s Thai icon Lisa).
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Executing the internationally minded group brings NTT Docomo Studio & Live (the entertainment wing of Japan’s major mobile carrier) together with Sony Music Korea (the Seoul-based label that recently signed multilingual Monsta X member I.M in 2022 for his solo work). The move isn’t entirely without precedence with XG (the Japanese girl group based in South Korea that sings in English with a mix of U.S., Japanese and Korean management), or the likes of HYBE’s KATSEYE and JYP Entertainment’s VCHA girl groups (both Los Angeles-based acts sing in English but have performed across Asia and the Americas). Leading all of cosmosy’s creative and professional decisions, SINXITY proudly says this is a group where the members’ “natural talent should be what’s emphasized.”
“I really want to open up a new path for the girls for them to be able to do a lot of different genres and try different concepts,” he shares during an afternoon video call when he’s taking a break from putting the final touches on cosmosy’s first music video before it goes live at midnight. “Inevitably, people are gonna compare the girls to groups like XG, NiziU, and the other Japanese girl groups, but I want to do something for them that is new and different. Whether it’s K-pop, J-pop, pop, hip-hop, R&B, I want to incorporate various music genres and create a new path for them.”
SINXITY and cosmosy both describe the group as having a “girlish crush” concept, inspired by the girl crush image that K-pop acts like BLACKPINK, ITZY, and (G)I-DLE embody with cosmosy peppering in additional sprinkles of mystique, innocence and even a little devilishness blended into “a group that has never existed before,” according to De_Hana.
“Unlike the typical girl crush everyone knows, our concept includes both cool and cute elements,” explains Kamión, an Osaka native who spent time studying abroad. “There is also a touch of mystery, which evokes the atmosphere of Japanese horror or anime.” Meanwhile, Himesha and A’mei use “mysterious” to describe the group.
After unveiling cosmosy’s debut single “zigy=zigy” alongside its music video on New Year’s Eve, the track was released globally on Feb. 7 to kick off the first of multiple digital singles the act will drop throughout the year with an EP potentially eyed for spring. With Korean television appearances and fashion-magazine features on the horizon, SINXITY emphasizes that as important as new cosmosy content is, the next, urgent priority is to meet fans in person.
“They’re super talented, really pretty, such nice and charming girls; I really want people and fans to meet them directly,” the producer adds. “The key factor is how to meet core fans.”
Showing up to work as one’s true self and connecting to others authentically is personally important for SINXITY, who says he’s finally at ease in a professional environment where he’s comfortable to fully focus his energy on the work at hand.
“The Korean entertainment industry has become safer than in the past,” he shares. “Because I am gay, identity and diversity are very important to me and something I’m trying to build on…it’s still not widely accepted to be in the LGBT community since there are restrictions and laws for gay people, but it’s more accepted and it’s a safer, better space compared to others. But it’s still not a thing to come out and be openly gay.”
Noting the three women assisting him during this video call in Seoul, SINXITY estimates that 90 percent of the crew that works with cosmosy are women. That’s a rarity in Korean entertainment, and an even bigger percentage than AXIS’ division focused on producing Boy Love (also known as BL) television, the popular genre of same-sex drama series that boasts majority female audiences. With works including the 2022 breakout hit Semantic Error and FC Soldout currently airing, SINXITY and AXIS are inevitably shifting the norms of what and how Korean-pop entertainment operates simply in the name of creativity — and openly support other industry shakers.
“I’ve worked overseas, I’ve done a lot of projects with YG in Japan and Korea,” says SINXITY, who also worked with YG Entertainment’s actors roster during his time. “I have a unique identity, so I can’t help but talk about it and share myself here anyway. I just want to be free to create, reach more people and show them even more in these creative areas.”
SINXITY smiles before asking to include an additional note before the call wraps and he goes back to color-correcting the “zigy=zigy” video.
“One more thing: wait for NewJeans and stand up for Min Hee-jin,” SINXITY says, with a visibly surprised translator noting that he may be the first Korean executive to support the embattled former CEO of ADOR publicly. “I really admire Min Hee-jin and respect her. She’s the one and only best producer in this K-pop industry, so I really [want to] stand with her and really pray for NewJeans to have more free activities. We’re in some of the same networks, but I’m really just a fan. She’s really the one-and-only qualified producer.”
Asked to define her career so far — a career that has already seen the release of 10th anniversary editions of two pivotal albums, 2012’s Tramp and 2014’s Are We There — Sharon Van Etten says, “For me, it’s not about growing, it’s about sustaining, and I think there’s an art to that. I don’t want to do this next thing bigger or get to this next big level. It’s more about different challenges along the way.”
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With the Feb. 7 release of her seventh album, Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory, the singer-songwriter aces the challenge she set for herself while writing and recording the record: collaborating with other musicians in the process.
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Although Van Etten, 43, has worked with an array of artists that includes Angel Olsen, Courtney Barnett, Josh Homme and Ezra Furman, “I’ve been on a journey of self-discovery with how I feel about my own music and analyzing why it took me so long to trust other people with that safe space,” she tells Billboard on a Zoom call from her Los Angeles home. “I think a big part of that was when I first began writing songs, a lot of it was hiding [my music] from a boyfriend who I was scared of who didn’t like my music… I had to hide the fact that I played music or would play open mic, so it became a safe space for me. As I learned to let other people in — even just performing with me, that was a big step. This is another step of opening up and being vulnerable. I had a lot of people help me in the writing process to grow as a creative person and not be the sole owner of the performances.”
The name of the band she put together for the album and upcoming tour — Devra Hoff on bass and vocals, Jorge Balbi on drums and machines, and Teeny Lieberson on synth, piano, guitar and vocals — is a tongue-in-cheek reference to psychological research on the emotional bonds formed between individuals, especially infants and their mothers. Van Etten elaborates on the name later in this interview, but it’s not an arbitrary choice. She is the mother of a seven-year-old son and has intermittently worked towards a psychology degree with the intention of becoming a therapist.
Van Etten’s collaboration with The Attachment Theory, which was co-produced by Marta Salogni (Björk, Depeche Mode, Porridge Radio) and recorded at The Church Studios in London, advances farther into the electronic territory she explored on her last two albums. Chilled, angular ‘80s-style synth and sharp, punchy drums offset the warmth of Van Etten’s crystalline and lissome vocals, and when they meet at a song’s crescendo — as they do on “Live Forever” and “Afterlife”— it’s a real headrush.
The lyrics on this album take a few spins to absorb, in part because Van Etten doesn’t sand down the sharp corners of her subjects. One of indie music’s most sensitive empaths, she takes on the complexity of relationships (a recurring theme in her music), parenthood’s inevitable connection to the specter of mortality, and embracing what is arguably a new facet of diversity and inclusion in post-election America: the desire to coexist with those in our lives whose social and political perspectives are antithetical to ours.
How did The Attachment Theory come together?
The band has grown over the years in different ways. Devra Hoff started playing with me for warmup shows in 2018 for Remind Me Tomorrow. After Devra, Jorge Balbi joined the band. I met Jorge through Charley Damski. He was part of the writing process of this record and now plays with Lana Del Rey. I met Teeny Lieberson years ago through New York circles. She was in Here We Go Magic, she was in Teen. She has an amazing project under her own moniker, Lou Tides. It’s been shapeshifting over the years as I’ve been evolving from folk to rock to more alternative post-punk influences. The synthesizer drum-meets-machines-type marriage has been part of my listening over the years, and it’s been really fulfilling to play these songs in this way.
How did you settle on the name?
Everybody asks me, is that a psychological reference? Obviously, it’s a joke at that. I had a bandmate have a knee-jerk reaction against it, because of their actual relationship with their parents. So, we had this agreement that we’re not going to talk about attachment styles. But everyone ended up agreeing with me that we’re all from very different places and we have all these different experiences, but how incredible is it that we can come together and make something so beautiful. Also, when we’re on the road, we become a family. We have sibling connectivity tissue. They’re my chosen family. That’s something that people don’t always understand. When you go on tour, it’s fun, but it’s also really hard. But I have this family [of band members], and I know they have my back, and I have theirs. That’s a big part of why our band works, and why I trust them so deeply.
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You have increasingly used synthesizers in your music, but I was also wondering if recording at The Church, which Eurythmics’ Dave Stewart once owned and where they recorded Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) influenced the sound.
The songs were already written before we went to that studio, but they definitely led to us wanting to be, number one, in a room where we could be in a like space. Number two, I definitely wanted to record in London, and three, it’s one of Marta Salogni’s favorite studios. Number four, the history of the space concreted our decision to work there. In recording there, we definitely conjured the spirits. We all but had seances in there. You can feel the energy as soon as you approach the building.
Why did you want to record in London?
The demos really spoke to us as being all these U.K.-based influences, like Procure, Joy Division, Kate Bush. Yes, there are other influences in there — like Nine Inch Nails, and I can hear Pylon. That era to me is deeply rooted in the U.K., and I’ve never worked overseas. I’ve never had a destination record. It’s always been the New York area, L.A. area. And I wanted to push myself to try new things. I try to do something different every time I make a record.
Where was your head at when you were writing these lyrics?
The writing process started when I was still on the road with We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong. That was our first tour back after COVID. Also, life things were happening. I was thinking about aging parents, being an older parent and feeling distance from my family, while also having conversations with my band. For the first time, I found myself writing lyrics that weren’t just about my personal life but about conversations that we were having as a group. I tend to write very much alone. I usually already have the structure and ideas for instrumentation, and then I share them with other people. In this process, since we were writing together, it wasn’t just about structure. It was about subject matter, and one of the articles I read while we were writing was this article about the process of reverse aging and the technology there.
There was this study done in the U.K on mice. By injecting them with this serum it replicated cells and helped regenerate cells. I think they proved that after the age of 50 you can reverse aging with this technology. But if you take it beforehand it could have the reverse effect. And so, the movie Death Becomes Her came right into my mind. I was having this conversation with Devra, and we started talking about, “If you could live forever, would you? And what kind of world would that be?” After that conversation, we wrote “Live Forever” in one sitting.
Based on personal experience, when you become a parent, mortality looms large in your head. My son is an adult now, and doing fine, but I worry about what happens when I’m gone — and even before that, how do I not become a burden to him when old age kicks in?
It’s a reality. I learned a new term recently, called the Sandwich Generation. Since people are having kids later in life, they’re in the position of being working parents while taking care of their own parents. You’re kind of caught in the middle. We’re asking these bigger questions in our lives, not just of ourselves but where our responsibilities lie.
Speaking of parenthood, in “Southern Life (What It Must Be Like), you sing, “My hands are shaking as a mother trying to raise her son right.” Can you talk a little bit about the meaning of that song?
Devra Hoff is the bandmate that I talk to about lyrics. She helped me write the song “Something Ain’t Right” I remember her saying, “Be careful with these lyrics because people are going to think you hate on the South.” I’m like, “I don’t hate on the South!” She’s like, “I know you but you’re going to have to speak to this idea because people are going to ask.
And here we are.
I have in-laws from the South. I lived in Tennessee. It was a major turning point in my life, and it changed me for good and bad. I’m a Jersey Girl moving to Tennessee, and I learned very quickly what the South was. As I tell my son all the time, it’s a different kind of diversity when you have to be around people that don’t have the same ideals as you. You don’t avoid it. You try to surround yourself with people of all different ideologies and hopefully have discourse. I think about my upbringing. I think about where I’ve lived over the course of my life, and the different people that I’ve met. It’s learning how to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. That’s really what “Southern Life” is. It’s the other side.
I’m also struck by the lyrics to “Trouble.”: “I don’t want to lose your love against your will/ Blow you kisses and take a pill/ To kill.”
It’s semi-connected to “Southern Life.” Without defining it too much, the narrative is that same feeling of when you go back home, you’re visiting family and there are things you just can’t talk about — things that in my past define the experiences I’ve had in my life that I’m not able to talk about with people that know me better than anyone. It’s like this burning hole.
You’ve put your finger on something elusive that I think a lot of people feel. I was born in Ohio and moved to New York City when I was young. I know exactly that feeling when I go back to visit.
I feel like that with other friends, where there’s always this place where you can’t go with them. And it hurts. You don’t share it, out of respect for the other person sometimes. It’s some kind of love, but it comes with pain and discomfort.
I’ve noticed that you are connecting more often to your fans in a direct way through emails, posts and playlists. What’s your perspective on the way social media has changed promoting your music?
I listen to the people that I work with. I trust all my circles — label, management, publicists. We’ve been working together for 12 years or something, and I feel like we’re all trying to learn and change and adapt. A lot of it is about authenticity and speaking to people like a real person. Being a parent and working, I also feel like who has the time to constantly engage in this way. I want to do it authentically but then if you share too much it’s also security stuff. You don’t always want people to know where you are and exactly when you’re there. I have to learn how to walk this line of being authentic and protective.
I also don’t want to bombard people. After attempting to be a publicist back in the day, I don’t want to be that fly in your ear. I want to have something to say and not just to pop up in your stories or whatever. I also want to share things that I’m interested in and to shine a light on things I think are special. But it’s time consuming, and sometimes I want to say, “F–k it all. I’m going to make music, there will be an album, I will tour it, and I exist.”
I don’t know if it’s my age or just the feeling of losing time as I get older. How much time is spent in the sharing process is daunting. I know how the industry works enough to be like, I’m not Beyoncé; I can’t just put out a record and be like, “I’ll see you.” And not only do I need to make a living for family, but also my band and everyone I work with. There’s a team of 40-50 people depending on me to back it up.
You’re doing three shows in the States at the beginning of February, then heading to Europe?
Yes. I’m doing my first three warmup shows in Westerly, Rhode Island, Woodstock [N.Y.] and my first headline Jersey show at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park. There will be so many Van Ettens there. I’m just warning you. I’m looking forward to connecting with fans again, and I get to play with my friend, [Jessica Larrabee] She Keeps Bees, who I came up with in the early New York Days. Then we’ll go to Europe because since the record was made in the U.K., I wanted to quickly go there and honor them. The U.K. and Europe run is only like two weeks. Then we come back and do a full U.S. tour.
Will there be jamming?
[Laughs.] There will definitely be jamming, and as we get more comfortable with these songs in a live setting, and I’ll have a shred or two.
Your collaboration with Ezra Furman on Sinéad O’Connor’s “Feel So Different” for the Transa album is quite beautiful. How did that come about?
It was wild because at the time, I had just been sent this manuscript for Allyson McCabe’s book, Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters. When I was reading it, Sinéad was still alive, and I gave a quote for the back of the book, which was from the perspective of how the industry basically abandoned her. Anyway, I’ve been a fan of her work and covered “Black Boys on Mopeds” when I was on tour for Remind Me Tomorrow.
Then the Red Hot Organization reached out to me to do a collaboration with somebody, for Transa. They were partnering artists with people in the LGBTQ community, and Ezra and I have been in the same circles for a long time. Though we have high-fived on the internet over the years, we’ve never met in person. I felt like her punk rock ethos and vulnerability, and being a parent, would be creatively a perfect match. She was open, and I sent her that song immediately because I felt like in the climate of the world today it was almost like a plea. While we were recording it back and forth long distance, we found out Sinéad had died. So, I felt like this was not just for the LGBTQ community and a plea to the world. It was also a prayer for Sinéad.
You’re at a point in your career where you’re celebrating the significant anniversaries of landmark albums for you. How do you feel about that, and that up-and-coming artists like Nülifer Yanya are now citing you as an inspiration?
I mean, some days I don’t feel that old, and I don’t feel like I’ve done enough yet to really reflect. I know that in general it’s going to get harder and harder for me to do music in the way that I wish I could, but I also feel like I’m not near the end of creating and hopefully I’m not even halfway through my career.
Someone had asked me recently about writing a memoir, and I’m like, “I’m not that old — I don’t have an arc yet.” For me I’m on the slow ramp. I’m like, “How much longer can I do this and how can I challenge myself?” If younger artists are inspired by whatever it is I do, then that’s amazing. I’m inspired by so many people that have been doing it way longer than me.
Dressed to the nines, bottle-blonde hair coiffed, black cab parked across the street. Rebecca Lucy Taylor — a.k.a. Self Esteem — is stepping outside the front door of her London flat, heading to “one of them fancy ‘dos,” when mild calamity strikes. Attached to the collar of her gown is a large, grey, electromagnetic security tag – one that would take a delicate operation to remove. Grey skies and a dash of brolly-ruining wind certainly aren’t helping the situation, either.
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“I just stood there like, ‘F–k this. When will it not be like this?,” she says, recalling the memory. To help illustrate what it felt like in the moment, Taylor talks with her palms pressed against her head. “I have a saying for times like this, like when you get toilet paper on your shoe: ‘That’s very Self Esteem.’
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“There’s part of my ego that wants to tell myself all of this is not a f–king joke,” the Rotheram-raised artist continues. ”But then I also can’t help but be present in reality. What would have helped me was if one of the indie girls I used to look up to and be intimidated by had just… farted, or something. That would have been amazing!”
Taylor has learned how to take such indignities with humour and good grace. There was the time, she says, that she walked the BRITs red carpet to a muted response. Or when her sublime second LP Prioritise Pleasure narrowly missed out on the Official U.K. Charts’ top 10 in 2021, landing at No. 11. (“That was the most ‘me’ thing ever.”) Leaving the following year’s Mercury Prize ceremony – which was already hastily rescheduled following the passing of Queen Elizabeth II – empty-handed, meanwhile, was “another ‘no, not quite you’ moment.’” When asked in a subsequent Standard interview about what she collects for a hobby, Taylor playfully responded: “Awards you get for being nominated for something, but not quite winning them.”
There was a time back there, shortly after the pandemic began to wind down, when Taylor was everywhere in the U.K.’s music press. Prioritise Pleasure, with its big, ambitiously constructed choruses that contextualized vivid emotional flashpoints in Taylor’s life, was met with unanimously glowing reviews, leading to its author being subjected immediately to weighty predictions about her future. Along with Taylor’s rich voice, the record shone through its fluorescent electro flourishes and euphoric pop feel. Predecessor Compliments Please (2019) was much more of a cult concern, introducing a promising new star content looming in the wings.
Taylor has gone from existing as an underground darling to being recognized as a pre-eminent alt-pop icon. Though her singles rarely scale the charts, they remain ubiquitous at major festivals (Glastonbury, Green Man, Parklife) and in safe spaces for her devout LGBTQ+ following. There are many jobs, too, that comprise her career – she’s also a West End actress (Cabaret), video director, theatre composer (Prima Facie), panelist, radio host, TV personality – to the point that it feels like she’s hardly disappeared since her last record. This level of graft and visibility has earned her widespread industry recognition and a dazzling public reputation.
“There’s long been this weird underdog [reputation] that has echoed around me,” she says.
This back-and-forth internal monologue plays out through her forthcoming third LP, A Complicated Woman (due April 25). It contains plenty of epic, thrillingly weird music that only Taylor could create: songs about transcending fear and blowing up your life set against glowing choral melodies (“Focus Is Power”) and thumping club beats (“Mother”).
“Musically, my album sounds mental,” she jokes. “Sometimes, I think, ‘You f–king idiot. You should have just made a shoegaze album that would do well on [radio station BBC] 6Music.”
Across the new record, there’s a sense that Taylor is reckoning with her humor, dreams and anxieties while charting the next stage of her evolution. By the time she returned home after the Prioritise Pleasure tour, she says she found her world had changed, and not in the way you usually associate with an acclaimed album. “Not having a day off in almost two years” had left her feeling burnt out, and she was unable to commit to any hobbies or day-to-day routines.
At the start of creating A Complicated Woman, Taylor felt alienated from her own feelings – a strange paradox, perhaps, for an artist who has never minced her lyrics and one whose powerful live shows, for many, feel like akin to a spiritual reverie. “For me, this has absolutely been the hardest album yet,” she says. “I was saying ‘yes’ to every offer that came my way, so it was written from a place of almost being against my will. It felt like teeth being pulled at times. It was difficult and complicated.”
She picks up and puts down a cup of tea without drinking. “Though it also saw my defiance meet my depleting, ‘I want to give up’-ness, which I think you hear in the record,” she continues. “That’s how the whole [creative] process has been for me: a sense of ‘F–k this’ as well as me saying to myself, ‘Come on, woman!’”
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To hear Taylor discuss these contrasting mindsets feels very fitting. Because for A Complicated Woman, she has decided to embrace the mechanisms of the industry around her in a new way entirely. Having released her first two solo records via indie label Partisan [Idles, Laura Marling], she recently signed with Polydor, a move that places her on the brink of the big time – 15 years after she first started putting out music as one half of now-defunct indie duo Slow Club.
We meet in Universal’s north London HQ; after pulling Billboard UK in for a swaying bear-hug, Taylor slouches on a long sofa for our conversation, wearing a soft grey hoodie, trainers and a pinch of makeup. Despite her formidable onstage presence, Taylor radiates self-effacing candour and she is transparent about her business rationale.
“I feel as though I’ve done my end of the deal,” she says of her decision to step up to a major label. “What has been frustrating about the music industry for me is: I’ve done everything to the best of my ability and have worked flat out, and then my life has been spent watching artists supersede me over and over again. You know, I’m older now, so it doesn’t bother me – like, it all comes down to money and the people who can market you. I know now that getting signed doesn’t mean you’re gonna be a huge artist, but anything that helps bolster my work makes me feel hopeful.”
It’s this steadfast approach that has helped Taylor to understand the deeper roots of the unhappiness that cast a shadow over the road to album three. Having weathered a breakup and a more gradual, but eventually near-debilitating depression, she went into writing sessions wanting to rebuild herself after these experiences. Last summer, she enjoyed holidays in Dubrovnik and Crete, occasionally jotting down lyrics while she was away but otherwise remaining off-grid. In the capital, meanwhile, she remains heavily immersed in the arts and the world of drag, both of which have helped shape her musical M.O.
Later in the year, Taylor had an emotional epiphany while watching the Robbie Williams biopic Better Man. She’s effusive as she explains how its warts-and-all tale – which charts Williams’ working-class childhood in Stoke-on-Trent, through to the fallout of his departure from Take That and resulting substance abuse issues – stirred up feelings in her about her own journey, despite having gone through different hardships.
The film sees Williams, represented via a CGI monkey, start to reconnect with childhood friends after briefly hitting pause on his solo career. Taylor says that she recently made the same move, as part of wanting to envision a more sustainable future for herself in the industry. The resulting insights she’s gleaned about her relationships and mental health are encapsulated within A Complicated Woman’s core objective of accepting how it feels to be a flawed, vulnerable public person.
“None of this is about me wanting to be a c–-ty little pop star anymore. It’s sort of deeply embarrassing to me to remember the version of myself who wanted to be famous.” Taylor says. “This whole journey has taught me that what’s important is people and community. That’s what the music means to me.”
A Complicated Woman’s conclusion seems to be that hope is still worth fighting for. The melodies are adventurous, and the contradictions of Taylor’s inner psyche loom large, as she confronts both her shadow self and ego. A loud, nail-paint emoji-esque articulation of desire and asserting agency in the bedroom, “69” finds her looser and more liberated than ever. And then there are more poignant tracks like “The Curse,” which navigates despair and exhaustion with an unvarnished frankness.
Recording the latter in the height of 2024’s Brat summer – where Charli XCX’s “365 partygirl” energy felt ubiquitous – caused a minor moral dilemma for Taylor, she laughs: “I felt so embarrassed when I was making my album. I f–king love Brat, but there I was in the studio making my songs like, ‘Get up and try your best! Maybe try and drink less!’”
Taylor is looking forward to seeing her own personal ambitions evolve as her profile continues to rise. Maintaining a private life is at the top of the agenda, and she wants to remain engaged with and curious about what’s around the corner. New opportunities are keeping her “booked and blessed,” while she is working towards buying a flat and has also written a new book.
In the pipeline is A Complicated Woman Live, a “quasi-theatrical” performance art show. Directed by the Tony award-winning Tom Scutt, the run (Apr. 16-19) will see Taylor perform tracks from her back catalogue at London’s Duke of York Theatre. She remains tight-lipped about what the set-up will look like, beyond that she sees it as “my version of [David Byrne’s] American Utopia,” and will be backed by an 11-women band.
“I want women to leave these shows and go, ‘I’m not scared about getting older, f–cking bring it on,’” says Taylor. “I want queer people to feel like that too. And I want straight men to feel really worried and scared.”
Taylor will enter this new era, too, with a stronger self-preservationist streak. Her hope is to keep the goalposts firmly in one place, knowing that she feels at peace with her relative obscurity on the world stage. “Everyone’s telling me, ‘You should go to America,’” she says with a sigh. “Obviously it’d be nice because of the sheer money there is to be made out there, but Slow Club toured America so many times. I can’t go back to playing to like, 50 people!”
Well, remember Better Man? Robbie didn’t ever quite crack the States, Billboard UK posits. “Exactly,” Taylor responds. She smiles. “And that’s okay.”
The shimmering high point of Crazy P’s 2024 album Any Signs of Love is a song called “Human After All.” It’s a showcase for lead singer Danielle Moore, who erects small towers of harmonies, repeatedly layering her burnished, breathy voice over a motoring beat. While the bottom of the track is pure, high-octane propulsion, the top is fluffy and lavish, like a racecar covered in frosting.
“She loved looping herself up, and she loved the idea of creating something dynamic from lines which are just looping over and over,” says Jim Baron, one of Crazy P’s co-founders. They had tried the effect years before, on 2011’s “Wecanonlybewhoweare,” but wanted to take another crack at it. “You get all these counterpoints from all these different lines working together, tracked up, to give a really smooth sort of feel,” Baron continues. “She loved that.”
Moore had been Crazy P’s singer for more than two decades. She died at age 52 in August, roughly three months before “Human After All” came out on Any Signs of Love. (In January, her family said the cause of death was suicide.) “Danielle is irreplaceable,” Baron says solemnly — she was not only a cool-but-stirring presence on club-ready gems like “Give It Up” and “Cruel Mistress” and “Clouds,” but a dynamic performer who scaled the DJ booth to dance and sing as co-founder Chris Todd played behind her at a 2023 show in Brooklyn.
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Crazy P started roughly 30 years ago when Baron and Todd were introduced by mutual friends at the University of Nottingham. The two shared a multi-instrumentalist background — over the years, they’ve got credits for playing bass, guitar, keyboards, and more — and a taste for house music.
When they met, it was an energizing time in the U.K. for house heads. “We’d had a lot of brilliant American releases, but there was no real U.K. scene in the early 1990s,” Baron says. “It wasn’t until the mid-1990s that we got our act together.” Both men gravitated towards labels like Paper Recordings — who would later release their first two albums, when they went by Crazy Penis — and Nuphonic, companies which specialized in a sound Baron describes as “still underground, but with more of a more disco-y tinge.”
The pair wanted their music to sound like it was played live. There was just one problem: They didn’t have the equipment to make that happen. Luckily, thanks to technological advances, “sampling had become a bit more affordable,” Todd says. So they “pilfered some record shops” — a much cheaper endeavor in the 1990s than it is today — to find material to slice and dice, creating the building blocks for their productions.
Their debut album, 1999’s A Nice Hot Bath With, was appealingly loose, if a little meandering. But determining what the live Crazy P experience would look like proved challenging. “We had done a couple of tentative gigs where it was me and Jim basically taking our studio out to the club,” Todd explains. “We did about two of those and realized that’s not really the way forward.”
Around this time, Todd and Baron met Moore going out in Manchester. “We would end up going back to her house for the after party,” Todd remembers. “She was a personality and a talent — she would sing often.”
They subsequently decided to invite Moore to join the group as a vocalist, along with another on-and-off collaborator, Tim Davies, on bass and Matt Klose, a friend from college, on drums. “We effectively wanted to be like a disco band,” Baron says. “And you’re never going to successfully do that with two blokes.”
The Wicked Is Music was their first album to feature contributions from all the newcomers, and also the first where the group cracked the code on dancefloor heaters. Opener “There’s a Better Place” pairs a frisky bass line with an excerpt from Gene Wilder’s Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory song “Pure Imagination,” adding a fantastical edge to the driving beat. Better still: “You Are We,” a house cut, crisp and sweet as a candied apple, which pulls its vocals from “Until,” the heartwrenching final track from the Bee Gees’ 1979 album Spirits Having Flown.
Adding Moore and co. gave Crazy P a new way to write songs, and a different arsenal of sounds to draw from. Some of the group’s most enduring tracks remained sample-based house: “Like a Fool” (2015), with its commanding beat and rueful vocal, could have appeared on The Wicked Is Music right after “You Are We.”
“Night Rain” (2019) on the other hand, requires live-band textures to summon the spirit of late 1970s Los Angeles studio pop, seamless and casually virtuosic. And “Heartbreaker” (2011) exists somewhere between those poles: The vocals are samples of two dynamite singers, Aretha Franklin and James Brown, but the bass line sounds like something from a stadium rock show. (Baron, who played the riff, hears New Order.)
“The samples were still a part” of Crazy P’s sound, Baron acknowledges, “but we had the means to record everything that we wanted to.” “We started getting together and jamming in the studio,” Todd adds.
This proved an early test for Moore — one that she passed with flying colors. “It’s so difficult to set up in a room as a singer and jam [with a band],” Baron notes. But Moore “had a real talent for it. We’ve had a few of those four-hour, five-hour sessions where you come out and the song is kind of done. I haven’t worked with many singers who can do that. She was always quick off the mark with melody and lyrics.”
When Crazy P started work on Any Signs of Love, Moore wanted to incorporate “some tougher, edgier stuff,” as Baron puts it. “You want every record to develop from the last one,” he adds. “And she made a comment akin to, ‘Let’s stick it up ’em.’”
As a result, the synthesizers are noticeably chillier. The title track sounds like it was blessed by Giorgio Moroder in 1978, while “The Revolution Will Not Be Anything” incorporates some of the spidery textures of early Chicago house. The biting electronics come through all the more clearly because Crazy P pared back their production style. “Me and Toddy are famous for throwing the kitchen sink in there,” Baron says. “This record doesn’t sound like that. There’s loads of space in it.”
Any Signs of Love came out at the end of November. Todd and Baron are happy to share fond memories of working with Moore, but reticent when it comes to discussing her tragic death, and somber when asked about the group’s future without its longtime public face. (In addition to fronting Crazy P onstage, Moore often took the lead in interviews as well.) Releasing an album provides “a little bit of breathing space to work out what we’re going to do,” Todd says. “There’s no plan.”
He’s played a few DJ gigs back to back with Baron, including one seven-hour long set in Liverpool; “it’s been good to have something to focus on.” And the band has several festival gigs booked this summer, including Gottwood and Wild Wood in the U.K. and Love International in Croatia.
Whatever Crazy P becomes moving forward, Baron adds, “it will be different.”
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Kai Cenat — the eternally upbeat streamer whose profile has exploded in recent years to make him the most popular personality on the Amazon-owned Twitch platform — is taking a moment to think.
In the five years or so since he’s become a full-time content creator, Cenat has had some of the most famous hip-hop artists, athletes and actors come to his house to drop in and join the “chat,” the affectionate word he uses for any of the 700,000-plus people who subscribe to his channel. He’s thinking over whether he can recall a favorite moment among so many, but it’s tough. It wasn’t when SZA and Lizzo stopped by together in the fall, nor when NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving taught Cenat’s friends and family how to play basketball. It would be reasonable to think it might be one of the many times Kevin Hart, one of his idols, swung by to kick it during the holidays.
Sitting in the basement room of his mountainside Georgia mansion, the 23-year-old needs a beat or two to consider the options. The room is a temple of adolescence, with pictures of his favorite basketball players, vintage arcade machines like Pac-Man and a gaming racing wheel. He has a huge walk-in closet and a king-size bed, both of which are being used by his three-person styling team. The only part of the room that hints at some sort of professional living there is the desk at one end that contains the computer and camera setup that power his streaming empire. Dressed in a BAPE hoodie and stonewashed denim that make him look like he’s straddling sartorial eras, Cenat finally settles on an answer: The May weekend last year when Drake and Kendrick Lamar dropped a total of four songs, three of them back to back.
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“That was the most fun experience I’ve had,” he says with a smile bright enough to power a Tesla. “I’m not going to lie.” It’s tough to tell if he’s actually super excited or just trying to manage his constant and unbridled childlike energy.
“We never experienced something like that,” he explains. “It was a good week. Everybody had their opinions. I was literally hopping on stream and had like 60,000 viewers. As soon as they dropped, my s–t was spiked to like 100,000.”
When it came to the beef that ended up taking over hip-hop for the better part of 2024, most popular streamers took sides or called winners, and Cenat was no different. “I’m cool with Drake,” he says. “So people would expect me to be on Drake’s side.
“But I’m not going to lie,” he continues. “Kendrick won that battle. It was good. I loved every second of it. I was just appreciating the moment. Like, bro, we got bangers right now that’s dropping back to back and everybody’s talking about them. It was definitely fire.”
Kody Phillips top, Louis Vuitton pants, AMIRI hat, Jacob & Co. watch.
Andrew Hetherington
For a person who makes a living by staring straight into a camera for hours on end and connecting with strangers, appearing truthful and genuine is crucial — and it’s one of Cenat’s superpowers. It’s what has allowed him to not only become the most popular streamer on Twitch, but also the most popular streamer in hip-hop and, arguably, one of the most powerful people in all music. No other streamer has been able to corral as many artists to be a part of their online world as Cenat has — and very few have earned the cultural respect from fans and artists that he has. His words hold so much weight that he’s able to materially affect the careers of the superstars his fans care about. That’s why during that weekend in May, Drake told Cenat to “stay on stream” before dropping his “Family Matters” dis track — he knew a good review from the jovial streamer would bode well for him not only in his sales, but in his battle with Lamar. But it’s also why, after the streamer said Drake’s “The Heart Part 6” was weak, Drake allegedly blocked him.
That’s just one of many major moments Cenat has driven for music’s biggest stars over the past few years. He’s had spats with Nicki Minaj, Blueface and Ye, though he eventually made up with all of them. (Minaj even gifted him a pink throne that he proudly keeps in his bedroom and doesn’t let anyone sit on.) Most recently, while on a stream in early January, he panned Lil Baby’s highly anticipated fourth album, WHAM, even questioning why certain songs were added to it. WHAM trended on X — mainly due to jokes about Lil Baby being washed. While it’s unfair to attribute to Cenat the initial negative reaction Baby’s album received on social media, he had a significant hand in spreading the sentiment that it wasn’t Baby’s best work. That’s just the power Cenat holds in 2025: He’s a self-made institution. Like EF Hutton, when Cenat talks, people listen.
All of that has made him, for all intents and purposes, the closest thing Gen Z has to 106th & Park or TRL, the erstwhile midday live-music shows that used to air on BET and MTV and were appointment viewing for any fans wanting updates on their favorite artists. Cenat’s stream is now the main place to tune in to see artists having fun and feeling comfortable enough to let loose and relax. “Yeah, people will be saying that,” he says with an impish grin. “For everyone to come to play music or just have a fun interaction, it means a lot to me, honestly, because I didn’t think, out of everybody, they would want to come over to my house. I still haven’t got to like really let it sit in and really let it digest, but it does mean a lot to me, and I’m just having fun as I go on.”
Building a platform to rival the biggest cable music stations of the 1990s and early 2000s should take at least a decade — but it’s important to understand how quickly all this has happened. Cenat, who first started posting on YouTube in 2019, is not an overnight success. But considering how integral he’s become to the cultural fabric, you could be forgiven for thinking he’s been ingrained in the hip-hop internet landscape forever.
Before first appearing on the platform, the Bronx-born creator had moved to Georgia at a young age with his mother and siblings, living in a homeless shelter while his mother worked multiple jobs to create a better life for them. It was tough, but Cenat says with his trademark positivity that he doesn’t remember those times as rough or bad. The family eventually made its way back to New York, and Cenat enrolled at SUNY Morrisville to study business administration. In search of a creative outlet, he started posting funny skits on YouTube. For Cenat, the decision was a no-brainer: “I watched YouTubers growing up — that’s why I understand it so well.”
Andrew Hetherington
Andrew Hetherington
Mainly filmed in his dorm room and around campus, Cenat’s skits were low-rent affairs with minimal costumes or production where he came off as a slapstick comedian in the tradition of Martin Lawrence. His most viewed videos were his challenges, like the popular “Try Not To Laugh Challenge” that he still does to this day and clips like the Extreme Ding Dong Ditch series, which sounds crazy but was just Cenat and his friends playing the childhood game in different locations. They didn’t get massive traction, but they caught the eye of fellow Bronx-bred creator Fanum, who invited Cenat to join the AMP (Any Means Possible) collective of YouTube creators. Soon, Cenat was posting videos at an increasingly rapid pace, as well as appearing in clips by other AMP members.
By 2021, Cenat was ready to branch out from YouTube and grow his audience another way. He decided to try livestreaming and landed on Twitch, the platform Amazon acquired in 2014, as his new home. At the time, it was being used mainly by gamers to livestream gameplay while avid fans watched like a professional sport. Cenat enjoyed playing video games, but his first foray onto Twitch was through what are known as “just chatting” streams, where he’d sit down with a camera on his desk and, yep, just talk with his audience. By the end of his first day on Twitch, he had 5,000 followers. By the end of his first month, he had 70,000. The next month, 140,000 people tuned in.
Despite Cenat’s brand now being so closely associated with hip-hop, he didn’t start producing music content, really, until he started streaming. “When I started streaming, most of my content was blowing up based off me just reacting to different songs and listening to albums when they drop and just enjoying it for what it was and just saying, like, my opinions on it,” he remembers. “And then, like, people just loved it.”
In fact, he didn’t even listen to rap until he was a teenager. Growing up, “I did straight Michael Jackson up until high school” — which is when Cenat became a fan of a hometown hero who was then dominating the charts: A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. “That was my real transition,” he says. “I went from Michael Jackson to A Boogie, and I explored from then on.”
His musical exploration has fueled his Twitch channel’s growth: Thanks to his Mafiathons — monthlong 24-hour streaming marathons that he’s held with some of the most famous names in music, sports and entertainment — Cenat now has the most subscribers on Twitch (728,535 at press time) and holds its record for the most concurrent streamers at 720,000. He’s now also one of the richest streamers in the world, according to Forbes, which estimates his 2024 earnings at around $8.5 million. (Cenat declined to comment on his earnings.)
Andrew Hetherington
His manager, John Nelson, credits these streaming marathons with cementing the Kai Cenat brand. “His first 24-hour stream [in January 2023] is really when his trajectory went off,” Nelson says. “And it’s interesting — I believe it was that one that ended with Ice Spice [on camera]. Funny, because both of them took off at that same time. Two New York kids. And, you know, they were both very popular then, but they weren’t the megastars that they are today.” Each of Cenat’s Mafiathons has helped him not only grow his audience but also break Twitch records; the most recent, in November, featured a who’s who of pop culture that included Serena Williams, GloRilla, Sexyy Red and Druski that helped him break the record for most subscribers, with more than 340,000 new people paying $5.99 to join Club Cenat.
Yes, more than 720,000 people pay money to watch a 23-year-old talk about whatever comes to mind and prank his best friends. But why, exactly?
“I just think it’s the creativity,” Cenat says. “This is just the vibe I give off, like on my stream. I try to make it as fun as possible. And being able to, like, break ice with anybody who comes on.”
It’s the creativity, sure. But it’s the combination of that creativity with his comparatively radical sincerity that has endeared him to Fortune 500 companies like McDonald’s, T-Mobile and Nike. It’s also what drew the likes of Snoop Dogg, the veritable hip-hop pitchman who’s able to move between disparate worlds, to tap the young star to work together. And it’s the reason Hart, the blockbuster comedian who has mastered the art of multimodal content more than perhaps any other superstar, took a liking to him over any other streamer of the moment.
Cenat, much like Snoop and Hart, has built a brand on being genuinely unproblematic, which, combined with his affable demeanor, has appealed to an unusually large swath of people. Unlike several other popular streamers, he hasn’t delved into the incel echo chamber side of streaming culture that has, in part, been popularized by Twitch competitor Kick. The Australian-based streaming platform reportedly offered Cenat $60 million to switch to Kick, but he turned it down.
When asked why, Cenat struggles to articulate a clear metaphor. “Say, for example, you go to Steph [Curry] and you’re like, ‘Hey, man, we want you to be a running back [in] the NFL. You’re so good at basketball, but we want you to just leave everything behind right now and go to NFL football and be a running back,’ ” he says. “It doesn’t make sense! I’ve been on Twitch. I’ve built a core community. Kick is not my home. My home is definitely Twitch. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s what I live by.”
Andrew Hetherington
Andrew Hetherington
And, unlike a number of popular streamers, he’s managed to stay clear of the political discourse that dominated the conversation in 2024. “It’s just because I don’t understand it. Some people say I should just do some research on it and, like, inform myself,” Cenat explains. “Now, I’m living in America, so it’s good to know what’s going on in politics. But like, I’m just not educated enough to speak on that.”
On the early January day I sit down with Cenat, Adin Ross, the superstar Kick streamer who famously interviewed President Donald Trump and gifted him a Tesla Cybertruck, made a statement apologizing for “raising a toxic community” on the platform and vowed to do better. “I want to rebuild,” Ross said. “I want to actually completely revamp and reset everything. I want to go back to stuff that matters. With that being said, every stream that I do, especially at this point, until I say something else, is going to be something that’s heartwarming and something that’s meaningful.”
Sounds a lot like Cenat, doesn’t it? He brushes off the idea. Cenat believes a fan base is a reflection of the creator. “So if you feed it nonsense, you’ll get nonsense. [Ross] realized what happened and now he’s trying to make a big change.”
But regardless of how he frames it, Cenat still has major clout. On Aug. 4, 2023, a full-on riot ensued in New York’s Union Square when he announced to his massive audience that, to celebrate his first streaming marathon, he would be giving away PlayStation 5 consoles and gift cards there. But he didn’t have a permit. Around 3 p.m., large crowds started to form in Union Square, and police took notice when people began to destroy public and private property. The New York Police Department called in 1,000 officers to the scene — and then all hell broke loose. Cars were destroyed, store windows were broken, and seven people were injured, including three NYPD officers. Over 60 people were arrested, half of them minors. It was a rare dark day for Cenat — but it proved just how big his brand and celebrity had gotten.
In 2023, Cenat and his small team — his assistant/production partner Brianna Lewis, his videographers and manager Nelson — traveled to Nigeria. And when they stopped by Makoko, a small, impoverished waterfront settlement on the outskirts of Lagos, they realized they were out of their depth.
The village didn’t have broadly available internet like the city itself, so Cenat couldn’t stream. But what really caught him off guard was the state of the Makoko Children Development Foundation School and Orphanage. “I went over [to Nigeria] just to go visit it, see how it is, and I went out where I just seen things that I was like, damn,” he says. He decided then and there to at least try to help improve the town. “I stumbled across this school that they had in this very small school building. These small classes and the kids were so eager to learn even in the condition that they were in. Don’t get me wrong: When I went to Nigeria, I seen beautiful parts. They got great big houses, fire cars — like, Nigeria is beautiful. [But] the place where I went to was Makoko.”
His first plan was to just fund some renovations to the school, but soon that didn’t feel like enough. So he decided to give 20% of his earnings from his November Mafiathon 2 to build a brand-new school in Makoko. “Hopefully it comes out exactly like what I’m imagining,” he says. “They said it’s going to be done this year probably, and I want to go back to Nigeria and see how it is and [have] like a grand opening. I want to be able to stream that.”
Andrew Hetherington
Cenat’s work in Makoko offers a window into how he envisions his future. He has dreams of doing more with the streaming format, but also, maybe, leaving it all together. Though he loves streaming, he wants to act in and direct movies. (Not TV, though: In his words, “No one watches TV anymore.”) Hart, whom he now calls a friend, has been helping him prepare for that next stage of his career; Cenat won’t share specifics, but says Hart has given him certain movies to watch and has been advising him. “I would love to be in movies and stuff; he definitely pushes me,” Cenat says. “He tries to connect me to the right people that direct and write movies and produce them.”
Would he leave streaming behind for Hollywood? Perhaps — but not right now. “Our good friend, [YouTube superstar] Mr. Beast, was like, ‘Why would you use something that you’re so good at to catapult you into another category? Just be completely dominant in the category that you’re in right now and just take over that.’ And I’m like, ‘Damn, he does make a good point.’ ”
His current solution to the conundrum: eschew Hollywood entirely and produce a movie on his own. “I want to be able to, like, put it out to the world,” he says. “I’m going to take a hit financially. But like, I want to be able to put it out to the world and just see if a company will pick it up.”
For the moment, Cenat remains laser focused on streaming. After all, his is one of the only streams that can genuinely help (or hurt) an artist’s career, at least in his mind. When Cenat panned GloRilla’s 2023 single “Cha Cha Cha” with Fivio Foreign, the Memphis MC blocked him on social media. He felt he was just being honest. “If there’s some bad music, I’m going to let you know it’s bad,” he says. However, according to Cenat, after their dustup, Glo glowed up. “We’re good friends now. And ever since I told her that one song was bad, she’s been making hits!” He’s not wrong. Ever since that spat, Glo has notched five songs in the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100.
And when the biggest names in entertainment are DM’ing and texting you to ask to visit your crib and hop on your stream, what could possibly measure up next? Going bigger — even bigger than the movies. “I want to go to space!” Cenat exclaims. “I want to be the first human in space to float around, [stream] and talk my talk to my chat and then come back down to Earth.”
He’s serious, too. He wants to do everything he wanted to do as a kid, living and dreaming in that homeless shelter. “I want to have the whole Avengers on my stream one day,” he says with the enthusiasm of a middle schooler. “I really believe that’s going to happen one day.”
This story appears in the Jan. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
When Evan Lo walked onto an in-progress livestream by Kai Cenat, the Twitch juggernaut with some 15.8 million followers, and his influencer pal Fanum on Nov. 16, 2024, they received the guitar-wielding stranger with a friendly, split-second greeting. But when he began strumming the vibey opening chords of his viral track “Swimming,” the streamers halted. A look of starstruck bliss crossed Fanum’s face, while Cenat — after a quick online search to confirm his guest’s identity — began screaming: “Oh, my gosh! It’s him! Yo, you a GOAT!”
Flawed Mangoes photographed December 5, 2024 in New York.
Justin J Wee
The GOAT in question is better known as Flawed Mangoes, a Boston-based musician whose gently expressive guitar work and mesmerizing, ambient loops have soundtracked a slew of content creators’ motivational speeches and uplifting memes. Dubbed “hopecore,” this positivity-focused music has gained traction as a tonic to social media’s often toxic offerings — and based on his comment sections, Flawed Mangoes has helped many a bro tap into their sensitive side. Sure enough, before Lo left the livestream, he played that comfort-food instrumental while another guest, the Chicago rapper G Herbo, gave an inspirational speech — and Herbo’s young son was left wiping away tears.
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“It was so chaotic,” Lo says, chuckling. “Like, ‘Am I overwhelming this kid right now?’ But watching the video [later], it was a wholesome thing … It’s very surreal to think that people are actually having significant moments [with my music].”
Flawed Mangoes photographed December 5, 2024 in New York.
Justin J Wee
Justin J Wee
This digital cover story is part of Billboard’s Genre Now package, highlighting the artists pushing their musical genres forward — and even creating their own new ones.
Despite being a naturally “introverted, shy person,” the thoughtful, easy-going Lo is quietly embracing his status as hopecore’s de facto poster boy. “In my head, it was never ‘I want this to be motivational and inspiring,’ ” he says. “[My music is] toeing the line between melancholy and happy in that bittersweet sort of way. I guess a lot of people identified with both sides.” In his estimation, a Flawed Mangoes fan is someone looking to “slow down and take time” for personal wellness: “I think people who can relate to needing that sort of energy in their life tend to gravitate toward my music.”
After signing with APG Music in April and releasing EP The Unwavering Hand in September, the 27-year-old is getting more comfortable showing his face to the world. He’s even preparing to spotlight his own vocals on an upcoming album in 2025, though he’s quick to manage expectations. “What inspires me the most is hearing singers who clearly aren’t very good at singing but do it anyway and really commit. Their lack of formal singing training becomes a character of the music itself. That’s really inspiring to me as someone who’s a very mid singer,” he adds with a sheepish smile.
This story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.
01/13/2025
There’s plenty of prospects to get excited about this year.
01/13/2025
In July, Jamaica’s most influential living artist walked out of a Kingston prison after 13 years, drove straight to his mother’s house for a tearful reunion over steamed fish and okra — and dove immediately into preparations for Freedom Street: his first performance since his release, and the biggest concert the country would see in nearly 50 years.
Locked up for the murder of Clive “Lizard” Williams, Vybz Kartel went away as a 35-year-old man at the height of his career with seven children, two of whom would make their own musical debuts in 2014. But even behind bars, he never stopped making music — managing to secretly record and release five projects that would reach the top 10 of Billboard’s Reggae Albums chart.
“Being in prison, you can’t feel sorry for yourself. I didn’t have time to do that. I had kids to feed. I had family to take care of. I had health issues, too,” Kartel tells Billboard in a private room at Downsound Records, the live-entertainment producer behind Freedom Street, in Kingston. “There was no time to be weak. You just fight the case and do the right thing.”
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Now, just days before Freedom Street — his New Year’s Eve show that will draw over 35,000 people to Kingston’s National Stadium — Kartel tells me he’s been holding daily three-hour rehearsals to ensure a “Taylor Swift- or Madonna-style” show while he records a new album at several studios, including one his children built for him while he was away. As I follow the Teacha around Kingston over the course of a sunny December day, fans of all ages stop him to profess their love and grovel for selfies — and if they aren’t trying to get his attention, they keep their eyes glued to him and hum whatever song of his comes to their minds.
It’s no exaggeration to say that Vybz Kartel is the most influential Jamaican recording artist since Bob Marley. But understanding Kartel’s singular career means grasping that his pop stardom and underground dominance have always worked in tandem. For every song of his that became a global mainstay, one of his raw, evocative mixtapes simultaneously ruled the streets of Kingston. Born Adidja Azim Palmer in Portmore, Jamaica — a coastal municipality about 15 miles outside of Kingston — Kartel has racked up 1.58 billion official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate, making him one of dancehall’s commercial giants. But his countless controversies and towering sociopolitical influence have also made him a divisive cult figure.
His ’90s Alliance era cemented him as one of dancehall star Bounty Killer’s protégés and the genre’s fastest-rising star, wielding an impressive songwriting approach that blended his private and public personas through riveting gangster narratives and sexually explicit anthems. In the early to mid-2000s, Black Kartel reigned, with spunky, lewd hits like “It Bend Like Banana” launching his near-absolute rule over Jamaican society, which culminated in a seismic yearslong beef with fellow dancehall star Mavado (born David Brooks). By the dawn of the ’10s, White Kartel — by this point, the skin-bleaching he controversially sung of in 2011’s “Cake Soap” had visibly altered his skin tone (and spawned a new nickname) — had achieved several bona fide global crossover hits despite Jamaica’s banning of “daggering” songs (extremely sexually explicit tracks).
Fittingly, the Kartel I meet today is clearly a changed man. This newest iteration of Kartel is calmer and more collected; he seems firmly in his Unc era — cream Amiri beanie, custom tour T-shirt and a naughty joke always in his back pocket. His excitement for his upcoming show beams through the black sunglasses he never takes off, and the reverent air of gratitude around him is unmistakable. Kartel and his co-accused — Shawn Campbell, Kahira Jones and Andre St. John — have always maintained their innocence, and their second chance at freedom was hard-fought. According to a unanimous Court of Appeal ruling in summer 2024, the trial judge marred the original guilty verdict by allowing the jury to proceed despite knowing that one juror had attempted to bribe the others.
“Towards the end of my incarceration, I started connecting more with God. That’s why I tattooed ‘love God’ on my forehead,” Kartel reveals. “Nobody can tell me that God isn’t real. Ten years ago, I would have been saying something else, but God is real.”
Destinee Condison
Kartel’s return marks the start of a new era for both him and dancehall at large. In a Downsound Records rehearsal room, a poster displays five different Kartels with varying hairstyles, fashions and skin tones, each representative of a different chapter of his illustrious career. But whether he’s sporting a New York fitted or showing off his locs, the 48-year-old man known to his fans as Worl’ Boss has always been a chameleon, unafraid to alter his appearance to deepen his own mythos.
Inspired by dancehall icon Ninjaman and uncles who “used to DJ around the sound system,” Kartel began “writing 10 to 15 songs a day” as a teenager and released his debut single, “Love Fat Woman,” in 1993, which eventually landed him a spot in The Alliance, a group of dancehall DJs. “I’ve been fascinated with writing ever since I found out Babyface wrote [Karyn White’s 1989 hit] ‘Superwoman,’” he recounts. “As a kid, I was like, ‘How does a man write a song for a woman?’”
Two major factors ignited Kartel’s mainstream ascent in 2003: The release of his debut album, Up 2 Di Time, and a contentious clash with Ninjaman at Sting, Jamaica’s longest-running one-night-only reggae/dancehall showcase. At the time, Sean Paul was leading the early 2000s stateside dancehall crossover wave, but Kartel’s gritty “gun tunes” and X-rated “gyal tunes” were a far cry from the sugary-sweet riddims that made their way to top 40 radio. He smartly gilded his edgier lyrics with slick wordplay and head-spinning flows; Kartel could, and still can, dictate Jamaica’s culture with the flip of a single phrase. But some of those lyrics courted levels of controversy that threatened his — and the genre’s — continued crossover: In 2004, the U.K. Music of Black Origin Awards revoked Kartel’s nomination for best reggae act, alongside fellow Jamaican dancehall artist Elephant Man, over homophobic lyrics — a longtime point of tension in the genre as a whole. Twenty years later, speaking to Billboard, Kartel alludes to an evolution in his point of view: “The world has changed, and sometimes, you got to change with the times.”
By 2006, Kartel’s highly publicized split with The Alliance culminated in him joining the Portmore Empire — a collective of artists hailing from the neighborhood and signed to his Adidjahiem Records, which he’d established three years prior — leading to a feud with The Alliance’s Mavado, who took it upon himself to reply to Kartel’s disses. From 2006 to 2009, Kartel and Mavado lobbed searing disses at one another over the hottest riddims; Kartel even once carried a coffin with Mavado’s name on it onstage. Jamaica’s youth divided themselves between the camps — Kartel’s Palestine-referencing Gaza crew and Mavado’s hood-repping Gully clan — and, in certain cases, committed street violence in their names. On Dec. 7, 2009, in an effort to end that strife and unite the country’s youth, the two officially ended their feud with a joint performance; the next day, both met with Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding.
Like any good dancehall clash, the Gaza-Gully feud only boosted Kartel’s popularity. Buoyed by its irresistible interpolation of Ne-Yo’s “Miss Independent,” Kartel and Spice’s intensely carnal “Ramping Shop” duet reached No. 76 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart in 2009, marking both artists’ charts debut. His crossover continued with 2010’s “Straight Jeans & Fitted” and “Clarks,” the latter a team-up with Popcaan, Kartel’s most successful protégé — a testament to his influence on late-’10s dancehall crossover artists. But as Kartel finally started to snag true crossover smashes, he continued oscillating between being dancehall’s global face and an underground provocateur: In 2011, he became the first musician to receive an artist-specific ban from Guyanese radio.
Kartel calls Lil Wayne his “favorite rapper,” and his life outside the studio mirrored that of the hip-hop legend in 2011. Charged with two separate murder counts, Kartel was found not guilty of murdering Jamaican businessman Barrington Burton by one jury, while a different jury found him guilty of the murder of Clive “Lizard” Williams. On April 3, 2014, Kartel was sentenced to life in prison after a 65-day trial, one of the longest in Jamaica’s history.
While incarcerated, Kartel clandestinely recorded — with the help of an iPad and his producer, Linton “TJ” White — a litany of projects, including 2016’s King of the Dancehall, which spawned “Fever,” arguably the biggest dancehall crossover hit of the latter 2010s. “Fever” entered two Billboard airplay charts and has earned over 104 million official on-demand U.S. streams — a win for Jamaica in a year when non-Jamaican artists such as Drake and Justin Bieber had propelled dancehall back onto top 40 radio. But between his incarceration and dancehall’s nonstandardized approach to music distribution (compilations of years-old singles tend to lord over regular studio album cycles), Kartel’s impressive consumption numbers don’t paint the full portrait of his cultural impact.
“Freedom Street [will] bring dancehall back as a serious contender in the international market,” says Downsound Records owner and CEO Joe Bogdanovich, who also notes that 700 police officers and private security workers were enlisted for the event. “[Kartel] is more conscious of good over evil and he’s doing something really positive for the youth and himself. That kind of positivity is going to make Jamaica uplift fans around the world.”
Destinee Condison
The concert — which featured explosive appearances by Spice, Popcaan, Busta Rhymes and more dancehall heavyweights — set the stage for Kartel’s incredibly busy 2025. A deluxe version of his 2015 Viking (Vybz Is King) album is due later in January, while a proper comeback album is currently in the works. “Kartel won’t say nothing. Then, tomorrow, he drops a banger that he recorded last night or the day before,” producer Cordell “Skatta” Burrell jokes. “So there’s not much I can say!”
Outside of the studio, Kartel can finally focus on the kinds of major life activities he couldn’t address in prison — like treating his Graves’ disease and wedding planning (he got engaged in November). The evolved, post-incarceration Kartel is ready to reclaim his throne — but don’t expect a run for Parliament. “Everybody loves me on both sides — I want to keep it that way!” he quips.
“Freedom Street is about Vybz Kartel’s journey for the past 13 years,” Worl’ Boss explains. “The concept is me coming out of prison, the road to that freedom and celebrating with the fans as I go into the new year a free man. We were planning this concert before I even got released. I’ve been prepping for this concert since birth.”
What was your first time back in the studio like after you were released?
The first song I recorded when I came out was at my house. When I got arrested, my kids were [so small]. Now, I’m out and recording in a studio that my children built.
How exactly did you record while incarcerated?
Initially, I figured out how to record using an iPad but a lot of times, the sound was metallic because the cell didn’t have padding like a recording studio. The sound bounced all over the place. Then, I figured out that I could use my mattress as a sponge over my head.
Me and Linton “TJ” White produced the riddim for “Fever.” At the time — don’t come for me! — I used to love watching Gossip Girl and Vampire Diaries. Every time this show ended, a voice would say, “XOXO, Gossip Girl,” so that’s where I got the concept from to start “Fever” with “XOXO, my love is very special.” I recorded the song line by line, looking outside to see if anyone was coming. One line, look outside; two lines, look outside. It was necessary at the time to do what I love most. I would send the iPad out to TJ and then he got it mixed by Dunw3ll and the rest is history.
The entire process probably took a half hour. If I was in a studio, it would take maybe five or six minutes.
Did you ever get caught?
Never. I had people in other cells. If someone was coming, they would knock on the grill. [The guards] found a recording device lots of times, but they never caught me in the act of recording.
Were you aware of just how big “Fever” was even while you were away?
Not initially, but when we released the video and the numbers started going up, I [understood]. I wanted to shoot a video for “Colouring This Life,” but TJ thought how I was flowing on “Fever” was tough. I was like, “Alright, do whatever, man,” and he shot the “Fever” video. Bro, in a few months… Jesus Christ! I was like, “Good choice!” (Laughs.)
Being in prison, you can’t feel sorry for yourself. I didn’t have time to do that. I had kids to feed. I had family to take care of. I had health issues, too. There was no time to be weak; you just fight the case and do the right thing. It was crazy seeing the impact the song had, especially when it [got certified] gold [by the RIAA].
How far into your sentence were you when you started recording new material?
In 2013, we started running out of prerecorded material, so we started recording new songs. I dabbled in it one time in 2012 with “Back to Life,” but the quality [wasn’t the best]. Young people were in the comment sections of the new songs like, “No way Kartel can see the future!” (Laughs.) They knew what was up.
What went through your head when you learned your sentence was overturned?
We had been fighting for so many years, so the feeling was overwhelming. The other guys I was charged with started getting ready and putting their clothes on, but then the judge said, “The case is overturned, but we are sending it back to Jamaica [from the United Kingdom] to let them decide if they’re going to retry the case or throw it out.” I was just listening because, as a ghetto yute, I’m used to disappointment. I don’t get excited too quickly. It’s never over till the fat lady sings, right? I was sitting with my legs crossed in my cell, listening to the radio and talking to my lawyer on my cell in my cell — get it? (Laughs.) He was like, “Yo, I think this is it,” and I said, “I’m going to put my clothes on.”
Immediately as I hung up, it was like an earthquake. [The decision] came over the radio and everyone in the prison was listening. Imagine 2,000 people shaking the bars and rumbling and celebrating — that’s when I knew, “Yeah. This is it.” I put my clothes on, jumped up, they came for me, I packed and left. I didn’t even bring anything with me; I gave my sneakers and TVs and stuff to the guys still in there.
What was the first meal you had after your release?
Steamed fish with okra. My mom made it for me. I went to her house first before I went anywhere else. It was a tear-jerking moment; tears of joy, and, in a sense, tears of sadness to know that I missed out on so much with my mother and my kids. [Kartel has five sons and two daughters.] My mom didn’t say anything to me when I went away because I never made her come visit me. It’s not her fault that I was in there. Why would I want her to see me in that place? I only saw her once during my incarceration; I was so sick that they had to take me to the hospital. I said to the superintendent, “Can you grant me a special visit, so I can see her?” And she and my dad came to the hospital.
How does present-day Kartel compare to the man that went away 13 years ago?
The Vybz Kartel of now is more chill and more mature. He’s more laid-back. The one that went in was a beast. I’m still a beast musically, but Iooking back at my personal evolution, I like who I am now. The Vybz Kartel of old gave me musical fame and fortune, so I don’t have any regrets about him. But I don’t want to go back to that Kartel. I’m good right here. That evolution was something I never knew I needed, but I did — especially having faith in God and believing and seeing him work.
I was born in the ’70s, so of course I grew up going to church. I started going around 11 years old, and, like most Jamaicans, when you reach a certain age, you start to fuss about going. I haven’t been to church yet since I’ve come home; every day my mom is asking me, but I’m going soon, mom!
Destinee Condison
How has Kingston changed from when you first went away?
The roads look different. The other day, my fiancée [Sidem Öztürk] had to tell me where to drive, and I’m like, “You’re from England!” But she’s been here for two years while I was locked down, so she got to know the place. Even on the highway going to the country, she had to drive me. It’s like relearning your own country. It’s fun, though! The other day, I literally got lost. I couldn’t believe it. I eventually figured it out, but so much has changed.
In hip-hop, there have been a few instances where prosecutors tried to use artists’ lyrics against them, which has sparked interesting debates about music censorship. Do you have any thoughts?
I don’t think art should be censored for the artist. It should be censored for the consumer. For example, “Vybz Kartel does adult songs, don’t let your kids listen.” But you can’t tell me that, because your children have ears, I can’t sing what I want to sing. That’s rubbish. The same shop that sells sweets also sells alcohol. If you catch your 10-year-old son drinking a beer, you’re not going to run to the beer-maker like, “What the hell are you doing?” So, if you catch your child listening to Kartel, don’t come to me. That’s a “you” problem.
Drake has called you one of his “biggest inspirations.” How do you think he handled his feud with Kendrick Lamar last year?
I’m not a fan of Kendrick. I don’t even listen to Kendrick, so I wouldn’t know. What does he rap? I saw it on the internet, but no disrespect to the dude, I hear him, but I don’t listen to him. Drake is more in tune with Jamaica and the culture. Drake is a better and bigger artist.
When did you and Mavado last speak?
When I came out! But we spoke a lot of times while I was inside. His son is also in the same prison that I was in. His appeal is coming up next year. Our sons grew up together, were in the same class at school and went to each other’s houses for birthdays. They’re still friends to this day. Me and David cool.
Since you went away, Afrobeats has exploded in global popularity. How in tune with that world are you?
Shatta Wale, Wizkid and Burna Boy are my three favorite Afrobeats artists. I like Tems too. Afrobeats is nice, you can just vibe to it. I think Buju Banton was saying something [controversial] about it [during an interview last year], but I understand where he’s coming from. Buju is a dancehall/reggae artist, so he’s going to be singing more conscious stuff about society. But there is a space for happy, fun music.
Destinee Condison
How can dancehall score another crossover moment?
What they do now is called trap dancehall, so it’s going to take a minute for the big markets to get used to it. It’s the kids’ time now. I like Kraff Gad and Pablo YG. Once the sound catches on in mainstream markets — London, New York, Toronto — I think they will have success.
There was a big thing a few years ago — I was even a part of it — with older artists saying, “This music is not going to go anywhere!” The music that runs the place is dictated by the kids at all times. That doesn’t mean the legends can be removed, but don’t fight the kids. Let them do what they’re doing.
I think the lyrics could [also] be a bit more tolerant and less X-rated. Says Kartel! (Laughs.) Afrobeats made such a big global impact because it can be played anywhere and for all ages. The lyrics need to be more commercialized and more tolerant, and sky’s the limit. Jamaica gave the world five genres: reggae, rocksteady, ska, mento and dancehall. We had hands in creating hip-hop and reggaetón. We’re not short of talent.
You’re nominated for your first Grammy, for best reggae album for Party With Me. How does it feel to finally earn that recognition?
If I wasn’t incarcerated, I would have been nominated already. But I understand, why would they want to nominate a dude in prison? I know if I wasn’t arrested, based on the trajectory that my career was on, I would have definitely won. But I’m very, very grateful.
[The 2024 Party With Me EP] was done in prison. I was under a vibe and got some beats from [producer] Din Din. It was getting closer to crunch time because the case was now in England. I was writing to keep my mind occupied, ended up with these songs and said, “Let me just put them on a little EP.” Bam, Grammy.
How’s the process of organizing your catalog been going?
Slowly but surely. I’m going to shoot videos for a lot of those songs I released while in prison. I’m in talks right now with a few American companies that want to give me a distribution platform so I can sign artists and get Jamaican dancehall music released in a more standardized way. We’re also working on a new album.
Destinee Condison
When will you be back in the United States?
We put the documents in. It would be a good look for all of us who are nominated to be at the Grammys. I’m headlining Wireless Festival in England this year. I’m already booked for some German shows in July. My No. 1 market was always America, but, over the last two years, my biggest streaming market is now the U.K. My fiancée is from the U.K. too. [The couple met during his incarceration in 2015 after she found him by “stalking his babymother’s Instagram”; he moved her to Jamaica in 2022.] I think that has a lot to do with the love, like, “Oh, wow. He’s dating one of us.”
When’s the wedding?
We wanted to do it in January on my birthday, but we’re going to wait because of unforeseen circumstances. Maybe Valentine’s Day. I’m such a romantic, right?
How did you prepare for Freedom Street?
We did roughly three hours of rehearsal each day, but the first one was four hours and eight minutes — and we still didn’t DJ half of the songs. We sacrificed around 1,000 songs and ended up down to three hours. And that’s just like my performance. Everybody and their mom wanted to come. And I have no problem with that anyway, because it’s New Year’s! Let’s ring it in in a star-studded manner.
Where are you most excited to perform?
The entire Caribbean and New York — that’s Jamaica outside of Jamaica.
Speaking of New York, would you ever hop on a song with Cardi B? She recently jumped to your defense when people criticized your post-release appearance.
I love Cardi! We got a song coming out next year. We are actually in the process of writing it. Even if I have to walk, I’m performing that song in New York!
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With a career spanning over four decades, Abdul Majeed Abdullah has become a cornerstone of Arabic music, and his influence shows no signs of fading. Revered as “The Prince of Tarab,” Abdullah continues to captivate audiences with his unparalleled artistry, bridging generations and defining the sound of Khaleeji music while shaping the broader Arabic music landscape.
For Abdullah, 2024 was yet another landmark year, as the inaugural Billboard Arabia Music Awards in Riyadh, Saudia Arabia, honored the iconic artist with multiple awards. At this groundbreaking event — a milestone for the region that took place at King Fahad Cultural Center on Dec. 11 — he received artist of the year in the Khaleeji dialect genre and top male artist in the Khaleeji dialect, alongside a prestigious lifetime achievement award, which recognized his profound and lasting impact on the Arab music world and on Khaleeji music in particular.
The ceremony celebrated the rich diversity of Arabic music, showcasing a wide array of subgenres, including the winners from Billboard Arabia’s various dialect charts: Khaleeji, Egyptian, Moroccan and Levantine. The awards also highlighted distinctive local cultural genres such as Mahraganat, a progressive and energetic contemporary iteration of Egyptian shaabi (popular folk) music, and Shelat, an evolving genre that has transformed from a poetic tribal chant to drive a new wave of Khaleeji music. In addition, the event spotlighted the dynamic rise of Arabic hip-hop and Arabic indie sounds, where global musical influences merge seamlessly with Arabic lyricism, creating a vibrant fusion of styles that reflects the evolving regional landscape. Sherine Abdel Wahab, recognized as a Global Force honoree at Billboard’s Women in Music event in March, was named artist of the year at the Billboard Arabia Music Awards.
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Since the launch of the Billboard Arabia charts in December 2023, Abdullah has consistently appeared on both the Billboard Arabia Hot 100 and Billboard Arabia Artist 100 charts. His track “Ya Ibn Al Awadam” from the 2021 album Aam Mouazy marked his debut on the charts, where it remained for nine weeks. Later in the year, he returned to the charts with songs from his latest album, including “Haki Wajid” and “Ya Meniti,” and with his pre-album single, “Lak Saqni Al Rab.” Throughout 2024, his presence on the Artist 100 chart was particularly remarkable: He only missed one week on the list, underscoring his enduring popularity and influence, and cementing him as the artist for Billboard Arabia to spotlight for this year’s Global No. 1s series.
With the launch of Billboard Arabia’s subgenre charts in August, which featured various musical genres and dialects, Abdullah quickly emerged as the dominant force in the Khaleeji category. He made an impressive debut, securing 11 songs on the Top 50 Khaleeji dialect chart in its first week. His record peaked at 12 songs in a single week, and throughout the year, the number of his songs on the list never dropped below seven — remarkable consistency and dominance that earned him the artist of the year - Khaleeji dialect award in 2024.
It’s noteworthy that Abdullah’s songs featured on Billboard Arabia’s Top 50 Khaleeji chart span four different decades. His track “Sahit Jamra,” from the 1990s, made an appearance, as well as “Insan Akthar” from the early 2000s. Additionally, his song “Ruh Al-Ruh” from the 2010s, along with multiple tracks from his album A Parallel World and his latest release, reflect his continued relevance and influence in the current decade. Meanwhile, Abdullah’s recognition with the inaugural lifetime achievement award honored his extraordinary career and lasting impact on the Khaleeji and Arabic music landscape. Over the past four decades, he has remained influential, continuously releasing music and performing to sold-out audiences. His most recent album, Abdul Majeed Abdullah 2024, further cemented his legacy, achieving widespread popularity and showcasing his ability to innovate within his genre. The honor celebrated Abdullah not only for his artistic excellence but also for his profound and enduring influence on the cultural consciousness of the Arab world.