State Champ Radio Features
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What is Industry Rule #4080?
I’ll answer that for you.
Record companies are shady, or at least that’s what A Tribe Called Quest tried to warn us about on “Check the Rhime” way back in 1991 off their classic album The Low End Theory.
That’s the concept of Brooklyn rapper Rome Streetz and Kansas City producer Conductor Williams‘ lead single from their collab album they dropped today. I visited the set during the second shoot day on crisp spring afternoon in Brooklyn, where Rome and Conductor were shooting a scene in which they stood in front of a white cyc background and had images depicting slavery projected on to them. The video for “Rule #4080” shows them dealing with shady record execs and visiting a plantation. One scene that sticks out, however, was when they were both in the middle of a green field which harkens back to the album’s title.
In Danny Boyle’s 1996 film Trainspotting, starring a young Ewan McGregor, the four friends take a train to the middle of nowhere in Scotland to try to enjoy the great outdoors as they try to wane themselves off heroin. “I relate to that movie, because they’re just trying to come up, it’s just a bunch of friends,” Rome told me between takes as he sat on a couch in a backroom of the creative venue House of Brooklyn. “They doing some wild s–t, but ultimately they trying to elevate all of their situations.”
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And for the most part, Rome and Conductor have become close friends on and off the court, branching off on their own from under the Griselda umbrella to put this album out on their own. “This is the spin-off. It’s like if Tommy and Cole had their own show,” Rome joked as he references the ’90s sitcom Martin, after I brought Westside Gunn and Griselda up.
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Trainspotting features 14 tracks of pure, unadulterated rap music with West Coast mainstay Jay Worthy and the Wu-Tang‘s very own Method Man serving as the only two guest appearances.
Check out our conversation below.
When did you guys first start talking about doing a full length together?
Rome Streetz: After the first couple sessions when we were in Arizona, honestly. Once I did Kiss the Ring, I just realized that I had so many records from Conductor. I just kept listening and wanted to see how I can make them doper. The first time I linked with Conductor and heard the beats that he was making, I’m like, ‘Yo, these sh—s are insane.” I was like, ‘Yo, I’ll do a whole album with Conductor,’ and when we talked about it we said, ‘Let’s do it.’
When it comes to working with Conductor, it’s a certain zone that I stay in. I can’t even describe it. I think it’s because people love what we do. That’s probably some of my best work, the fans hold it in such a high regard. I know what I gotta do. I gotta jump out the gym on this s–t. The chemistry was there the first time we linked.
What is it about Rome that you f—k with?
Conductor Williams: Rome on the rap side is just elite. He never surprises me in the fact that he’s elite, like that’s always going to be — but it’s an attention to detail. It’s like listening thoroughly to the sample, understanding where the pockets are that he can navigate. And then sometimes he chooses other pockets that he could do his thing, but he chooses the other ones. So it’s almost like Sudoku, as at a certain stage with Rome. I send a beat with intentions, and then it’s like, “Yo, which way is he gonna play this thing?” And that’s the joy that I get out of working with him. It’s a master class of street rap, but also just like pen to paper, if you just read the lyrics, it’s just as impressive. I’m just a fan of high level art, and that’s what he is with the rap s–t.
And even as a person, as we continue to like build and be in situations, in the same studios for weekends at a time, it’s just like high level detail to everything. It’s clothes, food, flavors, colors, you know, all the things. And that’s the type of stuff that I that I feel, you know? So, finally I felt like, “Man, he’s like me.” I found my group. This is like a musical cousin. I found him. Out of all the people in the world, I found a guy that understands what I’m doing. We don’t even got talk. It’s not like a chatty catty poker night, strip club relationship. It’s just like one that God set up, man. I can’t explain it.
So, when y’all first linked it, did you let him listen to a pack or did you construct stuff around him?
C.W.: I was playing beats out of a pack I had made when we were all in Arizona and we went through them, and he selected the ones he wanted. We exchanged numbers, and I was texting him beat after beat that he hadn’t heard while we were in the same room. Even when I got back home to Kansas City, I kept sending him beats.
R.S.: I probably sent some songs right back. [Laughs.]
C.W.: It was pretty organic in like, finding somebody that not only matched my output, but could match it creatively. He was just out of that mastery level where he said, “Yo, the faster you can make them, the faster I can connect.”
R.S.: He sent me a pack, I’d listen and be like, “Oh s–t, let me hop on this right now.”
Are these songs old or new?
R.S.: It’s a mix. Honestly, we have a whole batch of songs. Some new, some old.
C.W.: Some are really old. There’s songs on here that we made in Arizona that didn’t make Kiss the Ring. Just extra songs.
Why is the album called Trainspotting?
R.S.: That’s just a crazy movie… Sometimes the crazy sh— can just inspire a lot of things. Trainspotting is one of my favorite movies. It’s really left-field and weird. It’s visually striking movie, and this is a sonically striking album. Also keeping the train theme going, with Conductor.
C.W.: After the fact, they put me on. They had me watching that s–t. I was like, “What?” N—as told me to watch it. I was at the crib and I had dropped the boys off to school, and I cooked up. So, it’s like 10:30-11 and I had leftover Bar-B-Q from Gates thinking I’m gonna sit down and watch me a little show. [Laughs.]
That’s a crazy flick to watch first thing in the morning. Gotta watch that late night when you’re zooted.
C.W.: Man, he was in the toilet. There was s–t everywhere.
R.S.: That’s when I seen it the first time. Mad late, I think it was on Cinemax or something. It was a long time ago. I remember thinking, “What the f—k is this? This movie is f—king crazy.”
C.W.: Yeah, n—as f—ked my lunch up. I think I got in the groupchat that day too and was like, “What y’all got me watching?” The most cringeful part is after he smashed shorty and found out that she was getting ready for school the next day. They were just in the club, how the f—k she get in here? You smash and then the next morning, you wake up and she’s got her school clothes on. I remember just like freaking out for him. It made my stomach hurt.
The album is like the movie: It’s exciting, it’s rapid. It’s rap record after rap record after rap record after rap record and then it’s done.
Conductor Williams
Photo Rob
Did you guys talk about concepts for some of the songs? You have a song about the record industry. Then you have a couple songs about shorties on there too.
R.S.: It was more like how the beat spoke to me. I heard the beat. I’m like, what else am I gonna rap about? “Before I be a slave, I’ll be buried in my grave.” How can I relate that to my life? And it’s like, you know what? That’s the record industry, right there. You could be trying to live out your dream, but you so hasty, you might sign a f—ked up deal. You might get a f—king 20-page contract, motherf—kers will just be like, “Where’s the money? How much I’ma get? It’s a lot of clauses to how much you might get. You might get a free week of UberEats and a Supreme jacket. Sometimes what glitters ain’t always gold.
It felt like you were showing off your versatility a little bit with the subject matter.
R.S.: Even that song “Heartbreak.” It’s a conceptual joint, but it’s more so just like the beat speaks to me. Sometimes the beat will just take you in a direction, and I went with it instead of going the opposite way. Sometimes you need those joints especially if you’re making a complete album. I gotta give you that type of s–t. Everybody loves Kiss the Ring, and I feel like I went and I gave you a little bit of everything on there. I went to a lot of different places with that. I see the formula that I gotta follow when it comes to me making my own records to get the type of response from the fans that make them go, “This is insane.”
You mentioned in a previous interview that we did with you and Daringer that you prefer pulling up to a studio to work with a producer. How collaborative is the process when you guys are together?
R.S.: It’s literally 1-2-3. We play a beat, I just go in If I don’t have something already, I’ma figure it out. Also it’s like, who knows? We might do something tonight from the ground up.
That’s what I’m saying — so you’ll build a beat during a session?
C.W.: Yeah, I’ll come prepared with some ideas and stuff like that. But it really is like the most honest, rawest form of collaboration. This is the beat I made out of it, then he hears it and responds, then we link together to see what happens, and after that, it’s a game of what if? What if we add this, what if we put this hook on it? What if we that? That’s the most fun part — and we talked about a little bit earlier — that collaborative thing. I felt this, and I put the gospel sample on there. He heard the gospel sample and was inspired to make a record about the record industry.
Even if you were going in with a different idea, he hears it, it sparks something, and it’s like, “Let’s go in this direction.”
C.W.: Yeah, I can’t tell him how to feel. My entire ethos, in that way, is just like, kill the ego. I can’t tell him that he didn’t feel the record industry off of that. I can only tell him if something is mathematically bad, too many words in a bar that’s f—king the groove up. Stuff like that.
R.S.: Even with that song, I did have that beat for a while before I actually wrote to it because it was just one of those things where I felt like I had to say something. I couldn’t just rap. I wanted to make something conceptual like let me use the sample and bring out a message. Sometimes music is just to entertain, sometimes music is informative, sometimes music is emotional.
So, at that particular time, I wanted to make sure I said something that would stick. A lot of people that are in the music industry, and they don’t even know how the s–t works, they just want to be a pure artist, and sometimes labels take advantage of that s–t. Or, you know, sometimes people just want the money. Sometimes people are happy with living out their dream that they just want to get to it. Being in the music industry is a constant learning experience.
And you guys are with a label in Griselda that essentially figured out the indie game in the Internet era.How has that been, working with Gunn?
R.S.: It’s literally, you eat what you kill. If you ain’t out there killing s–t, you ain’t gonna eat s–t. You can’t wait for West to sit you down and be like, “This is what we gonna do?” And I feel like he don’t really f—k with people that’s waiting for him. He gonna f—k with you if you a killer on your own. He does so much, it’s like, “Listen, bro, I’m gonna throw the ball up and just dunk that s–t. And after that, keep scoring. That’s all it is. This was some s–t that we just did. We met through West, but we just spun off.
Let’s talk about the concept of the video a little bit.
R.S.: It’s basically just playing off of what I said in the song. Relating ancient slaves to modern-day slaves, because you could really just be a slave in the music industry if you sign a f—ked up deal.
And you guys shot some of it at an old plantation upstate.
C.W.: I wanted to be involved for this particular video. My folks are from the Blue Hills of Missouri. My grandfather was a sharecropper. So, some of the things in this video touched my heart so much so to where I was stuck, and Coach understood that, and kind of moved me around some scenes and made me feel comfortable. But I’m very much a part of the video.
Did you make these beasts in the crib? Do you have a studio now?
C.W.: I had a studio in Kansas City that I was renting a room out of but they sold the building, so I didn’t move everything into my basement. So, wifey and I are building a crib and we’re going to put a studio in there.
Yeah, you coming up — because you watch your old vlogs, you’re like in a basemen or an attic with a makeshift one.
C.W.: That’s the grass roots of it. I’m just making beats, and I’ve worked very hard to get very good and that shit don’t mean a studio. It means you sitting with the machine. I just need time alone to build.
R.S.: I record a lot of s–t myself in the crib, and then send it to Conductor. Because I could go off in the studio, but once I started recording at home, it’s a different level of comfortability with your creativity. If I write it right then and there, I can record it right then and there. Sometimes I’ll go to sleep and I’ll dream of rhymes. I wake up and write it, or I’ll wake up in the morning and have so much creative energy that I have to write or record right away. Sometimes I might write a rhyme, leave it for days, and be like, “Damn, I forgot how I even said this.” I like being able to knock out right then and there.
C.W.: I don’t think everybody can do that. You got to be at such a level where emotionally you can connect to what you’re thinking and you can rap anywhere, in any condition. You got to be really good to be able to one-take these records.
R.S.: It’s literally like training because I used to give myself challenges even before I had any type of notoriety. I felt like I had to be able to cook up rhymes at any given moment because when I do get to where I want to go with my career, there might be situations where I’m in the studio and it’s like, “Yeah, let’s work now. It’s not like I’ll write this when I get the idea, when I get the feeling. It’s like, nah, bro, how dope are you?”
That’s what Kiss the Ring was. All those days I was preparing to be able to go to the studio and lay something down on the spot. The beat is on right now. We’re trying to see if you really are what you sound like. Like, can you do this in front of my face? Can you hibachi this s–t? I train myself for that. You don’t just get this good overnight.
Do you mix and master your beasts yourself?
C.W.: Good side note, and I’m glad you asked that. So, the mastering tech that we used is Dave Cooley — and Dave Cooley mastered Madvillainy, Donuts, a bunch of indie rock stuff.
So you sought him out.
C.W.: I’ve been wanted to work with Dave, but unfortunately, my status wasn’t at that level yet. But when I reached out to him when I was working with Rome, I got to thinking about some of the records that to me sonically never die like Madvillainy and Donuts, I thought of Dave. And he was just ecstatic, and told me that he heard Rome on a DJ Premier track he did with West. Then he listened to what I went him, he listened to Kiss the Ring, and he listened to Noise Kandy 5. So, it was like a discovery moment for him, which gassed me more to make this record.
Do you guys have a favorite record on the album?
R.S.: It varies for me the more I listen to it.
C.W.: My favorite is “Lightworks.” And it’s my favorite because I love Dilla so much, and so I had to try to figure out how he cut the original sample of “Lightworks” to make it say what it sounds like it’s saying. I found a lot of joy in trying to be like, “Yo, how did he make it say light up the spliff?” And it’s not “light up the spliff,” it’s “light up the sky,” but you got to cut it a certain way. Dilla chopped the vowels out to make it say, “Is death real?” on “Stop.” It’s just like science and technical stuff.
My favorite track from you guys is “Chrome Magnum.”
C.W.: I think “Chrome Magnum” represents the type of music we love to make together. It don’t sound super boom-bap-ish — it’s just like industrial, ugly.
R.S.: I just like the unorthodox way that Conductor’s beats sound.
I mean, your flow is kind of like that, too, so it makes sense now that you say that.
C.W.: Another one that’s really dope that came from a fun moment. is “Ugly Balenciaga’s.” I sent it to him to try to make him laugh. I didn’t even want you to rap over it. I sent it because I just thought it was funny, and he didn’t say nothing back until he sent a song back.
R.S.: That’s one of my favorites that I’ve made.
C.W.: I was like, “N—a, you rapped on this?”
R.S.: Hell yeah.
C.W.: And he went crazy. [Laughs.]
R.S.: That’s the thing. Some s–t like that is a challenge to me. A beat like that will make me go, “Okay, how am I gonna approach this s–t? How am I even gonna attack it?” Because you gotta attack it in a certain type of way to make it entertaining. I like to have no floor and somehow figure out how I’m gonna make it across the s–t.
C.W.: That’s wild.
It’s like a balance act. Are you guys planning on doing another tape together?
C.W.: I don’t know, man. My schedule is crazy, his schedule crazy. But ultimately, this is my brother, so yeah. I just don’t know when. I think the fans kind of know that too.
People been asking for a collab tape from you guys for a while.
R.S.: We’ve been making music for so long together, we have more songs than what we gave y’all.
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While stadium shows dominate this year’s live music headlines, there’s another interesting trend occurring at the arena level that’s signaling a new frontier for the live music industry – and it’s steeped in the sweet riddims of the Caribbean.
Vybz Kartel’s victorious comeback has dominated most of the conversation around Caribbean music this year, but Worl’ Boss’ two-night stint at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center came nearly a year after a string of historic headlining shows that have made Elmont’s UBS Arena New York’s hottest new venue for Caribbean acts. Elmont (a neighborhood that sits on the edge of Queens and Long Island) and Brooklyn are two New York City areas densely populated by Caribbean-Americans, which echoes the incredible impact of Caribbean immigrants across the city. You’ll find Dominicans in Manhattan’s Washington Heights; Jamaicans, Lucians and Trinis galore in Brooklyn’s Flatbush neighborhood; and at least one flag from every country in the West Indies along Eastern Parkway in BK.
Last spring (April 14, 2024) — about eight months before he made history with NPR’s very first Tiny Desk soca set – Machel Montano headlined UBS Arena for a 40-year career anniversary concert hosted by Caribbean Concerts & Sonjay Maharaj Events. Coming two years after the King of Soca teamed up with Jermaine Magras, president and CEO of Jay Upscale Marketing and Promotions, for Barclays Center’s first-ever soca headlining concert, Machel’s sold-out UBS show grossed over $885,000 from 8,350 tickets sold, according to Billboard Boxscore. That show kicked off a head-turning run of Caribbean-headlined shows at the four-year-old arena.
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Just three months after Machel lit up Elmont, Grammy-winning reggae and dancehall legend Buju Banton mounted a pair of sold-out shows that served as his first U.S. concerts since his 2011 incarceration. The two shows grossed $4.5 million from nearly 30,000 tickets sold, setting the scene for a historic close to UBS Arena’s 2024 run of Caribbean-headlined shows.
“Stepping into UBS Arena for the first time in my life was much more than I expected,” reflects Montano, who’s previously performed at NYC’s two other major arenas. “I hadn’t heard about the venue before, and I was in anticipation to see what the vibe [would] be. The production setup was wonderful, the backstage experience in the dressing rooms, the staff, everybody [and everything] was professional and on point to welcome soca music and the soca vibration.”
A few days before the world rang in 2025, iconic Haitian konpa band Carimi reunited for its first live performance in eight years at UBS Arena. Comprised of founding members Richard Cavé, Mickael Guirand, and Carlo Vieux, Carimi is something like “the Jackson 5 or the Backstreet Boys of the Haitian community,” says Magras. “They’re [their] R&B boy band.” In the nearly two-and-a-half decades since they formed in NYC back in 2001, Carimi has achieved international success through its blend of sociopolitical commentary and traditional konpa rhythms. Their 2013 Invasion LP reached No. 2 on World Albums, and their eight-album strong catalog continues to enamor konpa lovers across generations. While their Dec. 27 concert didn’t launch a full comeback, the show did mark the first U.S. arena show headlined by a Haitian act – and the band completely sold out the venue. With over 15,000 tickets sold, Carimi’s reunion show grossed over $2.4 million.
The Carimi show is an interesting nexus point for many reasons, mostly because of the band’s connection to the demographic breakdown of the Elmont neighborhood in which UBS resides. In Elmont, you’ll find a large Haitian population that’s even bigger than the already sizable number reported by the U.S. Census. The nature of cities like New York is that the census only tells a part of the story regarding the demographic breakdown of the city’s residents.
“With the Caribbean community, a lot of people tend to look at the census — but if you’re undocumented, you ain’t trying to give the government your information. It’s a benchmark, but it’s not that accurate,” explains Magras. “When we did a heat map of ticket sales for the Carimi show, a majority of people buying tickets came from Queens, in and around UBS [in Elmont].”
Now that America’s Caribbean population – spearheaded by a massive post-Civil Rights Era immigration wave, and, later, a 1980s and ‘90s wave — has established itself across several generations, they have the numbers and buying power to assert themselves as dedicated consumers in the live music space.
Before his current position as senior vice president of programming at UBS Arena, Mark Shulman spent over 25 years promoting shows across New York, including storied venues like Hammerstein Ballroom and Kings Theatre – two spots with smaller capacities that Caribbean acts often frequent. While Caribbean acts still headline those venues, alongside newly renovated music halls like the Brooklyn Paramount, their graduation from theaters to arenas signals “a maturing of the music and fan base,” according to Shulman.
“When we speak of the maturing of the audience, Caribbean shows were always late-selling events,” he explains. “Now, we’re seeing more advanced sales, and that enables the artist to plan better. They get to add a second show and plan accordingly, because the audience is being so proactive in their buying patterns.”
The original fans of acts like Carimi and Machel Montano and Buju Banton are, by and large, in more favorable economic positions than they were two decades ago. They’ve gotten to root themselves in their new homes, and they likely have the disposable income to buy pricier arena tickets. But their maturation only tells half of the story of how UBS, in particular, has become such a hotbed for Caribbean headliners.
For Valentine’s Day 2025 (Feb. 14), Grammy-nominated reggae giant Beres Hammond, Billboard Hot 100-topping reggae icon Shaggy and Grammy-winning dancehall legend Sean Paul teamed up for a joint concert that grossed over $1.6 million from 12,980 tickets sold. The following month (March 28), WAV Music Fest – featuring Spice, Dexta Daps, Chronic Law, Kranium, Skeng, Kraff and Valiant – grossed over $1.2 million from 10,360 sold. With five $1 million-grossing Caribbean-headlined shows in eight months, UBS Arena has emerged as not just a go-to spot for Caribbean acts stopping in NYC but also as a key venue in the evolution of Stateside Caribbean music consumption. And the arena’s management did it by embracing the existing immigrant population in an era where rampant gentrification seeks to stifle New York’s quintessential diversity.
Before UBS opened its doors in 2021, most arena acts across genres chose between performing at Midtown Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden and Downtown Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, which has only been around for 13 years. Prior to the turn of the decade, very few, if any, Caribbean acts were playing arena shows, period. Thanks to the increasing Stateside popularity of contemporary reggae, dancehall, soca and konpa music — and the opening of UBS — Caribbean acts are now getting an opportunity that they weren’t granted in the past.
Of course, NYC’s Caribbean population doesn’t exclusively attend Caribbean-headlined shows. If they wanted to see arena acts before 2020, those folks, who primarily live in Brooklyn (outside of downtown) and Queens, would either have to trek into the city to hit The Garden or waste away hours in downtown traffic. Thanks to its location, UBS is a venue that’s comparatively more easily accessible for the city’s Caribbean crowd. It’s also the only NYC-area arena with its own parking lot, a key draw for attendees who would rather hop in their cars than deal with the subway.
“When you get [to Barclays], you gotta look for parking,” says Magras. “The time that it takes me to [travel within] Brooklyn is probably the same time it takes me to jump on the belt and head to UBS. I think the customer weighs all those things out.”
While consumers get to cut down on travel time, promoters and artists also get to save a few dollars when mounting shows at UBS instead of Barclays or The Garden. Promoted by George Crooks’ Jammins Events, Banton’s dual comeback shows, which cost around a million dollars each, would have been at least $500,000 more expensive had they gone up at The Garden. “You’re paying for the location and the brand, you can’t take that away from [MSG],” he said. “But it’s very expensive. UBS is a lot more reasonable, and I hope it stays that way.” As the arena continues to grow in popularity, it’s certainly likely that it’ll become more expensive to mount shows there, which is probably why UBS banks on their accommodating nature to keep artists at their venue.
Ahead of the Carimi show, Shulman “personally got on a Zoom with all the band members [to] hear their thoughts and hopes for the show and how [UBS] could accommodate them in any way possible.” Magras, whose Jay Upscale company promoted the Carimi show, seconds that sentiment, noting how willing the UBS team was to educate themselves on the band via the decks he pitched.
“[UBS] was more accommodating than probably any other venue that I’ve worked with,” he tells Billboard. “It was never ‘no’ as a final answer — they always helped find a way to make things work. [To help promote the show, they helped secure] comedians, a conference with about five media houses, the Carimi guys, lights and everything.” Crooks also echoes those feelings, saying, “Mark understands the business because he comes from doing business with a lot of Caribbean acts.”
But it’s not just Shulman’s experience that helped UBS so quickly become a stronghold for Caribbean headliners; it’s also the care he and his team take in listening to the arena’s staff, a notable chunk of whom are local Caribbean-Americans themselves.
“30% of our staff come from the local community,” Shulman says. “I would have conversations with them about soca music and reggae and konpa, and it was great to hear from them. I can [call on] my music experience, but it’s so much more validating when I can speak to members of the community who live with this music. That type of knowledge and experience can’t be replicated just by doing some research.”
UBS’ open relationship with their staff also mirrors the dynamic they’ve fostered with local vendors, navigating the present-day live music venue ecosystem with a distinctly Caribbean and community-centric approach. When Caribbean shows visit UBS, the arena rotates its in-house food and drink vendors with items that correlate to the nationality of the headlining act; they also invite local food trucks and businesses to set up activations in their expansive parking lot. It’s a relatively minor move that only makes the arena feel more “of the people” than its competitors. (Crooks acknowledges that the venue’s efficacy in this area still can vary between shows, saying he and his team head “some interaction with local vendors [for the Banton shows], but not as much as [they] would have liked to.”)
And the arena’s staff also understands the importance of not overstepping its bounds when it comes to engaging with the culture. “When you look at Caribbean people, they’re natural entrepreneurs,” notes Magras. “Once we see that there’s something big going on, we all converge and find [different] ways to make money. There [were] about 10 after-parties [for the Carimi show] — we [hosted] none. Why? Because we understand the ecosystem and what it means for other people to make money as well. We could have sold flags, but we allowed the flag man to sell his. We [also] brought in Haitian food vendors and liquors and barbeque brands.”
With two additional Caribbean-headlined shows this year – Aidonia (May 3) and Beenie Man (May 24) – UBS is looking to continue its hot streak in 2025 as various styles of Caribbean music ride a crossover wave that’s carrying the next generation of stars. From Yung Bredda’s Zess-infused soca hit “The Greatest Bend Over” and Moliy’s Billboard chart-topping Afro-dancehall smash “Shake It to the Max” to YG Marley’s reggae anthem “Praise Jah in the Moonlight” and Joé Dwèt Filé’s globe-conquering konpa banger “4 Kampé,” the 2020s are offering up a slate of stars that could be the next Caribbean headliners to grace UBS – and arenas across the country. They could even make that jump in the next 12 months, according to Shulman, as the success of Caribbean legacy acts eases promoters’ qualms about taking on younger stars – like Shenseea or Dexta Daps – looking to make the leap from support acts to headliners.
In just four years, UBS has become a preferred New York tour stop for Caribbean headliners – so much so that scheduling conflicts were the only barrier stopping the arena from hosting Kartel’s comeback shows – by leveraging its location, nourishing their relationship with the local population, and understanding the limitless potential of Caribbean talent. As the arena has established a distinct identity, it’s also helped buoy an entire region’s music, which was already creeping into a new era of Stateside crossover success.
But what about arena stops outside of New York? Last year, Buju Banton announced his Overcomer Tour, which was initially set to visit 14 arenas across the U.S. Ultimately, three shows were outright cancelled while a further five engagements have yet to have their rescheduled dates announced. Of the seven shows that he did perform on the tour, Banton grossed an average of $1.5 million per show from around 10,800 tickets sold. Notably, those seven shows visited North American cities with sizable Caribbean populations – NYC, Atlanta, Tampa, Toronto and Washington, D.C. — signaling that future Caribbean tours might not yet have accrued the power to headline arenas outside of specific areas. Nonetheless, a Caribbean act headlining seven North American arenas on a single tour indisputably marks a new era for West Indians in the live music space.
“I think the sky’s the limit [for Caribbean acts in the live music space],” stresses Shulman. “I’ve seen the growth and I’ve seen the performances. The shows are energetic, the fans are enthusiastic, and there’s an incredible vibe. It’s hard to envision any limit to just how high it can go.”
A new era of rap beef is upon us. One where diss tracks get dropped left and right, forcing curious fans to scramble around trying to catch up.
Enter Joey Bada$$.
Since the Brooklyn rapper kicked things off on New Year’s Day with “The Ruler’s Back,” there have been 22 tracks released (and counting), with a flurry of them coming after Joey’s recent “Red Bull Spiral Freestyle” verse, where he addressed the drama that he started. “Since ‘Ruler’s Back,’ they been tryna measure up,” he rapped. “Look, my name ain’t Rick, but I talk slick, don’t press ya luck/ And I ain’t taking no words back, I’m with all that (All that) But this ain’t gotta turn to nothin’ else, let’s keep it all rap.”
He then referenced Kendrick’s infamous “Control” verse from 2013 when he named names and invited his peers to a friendly competition. “First off, I could never hate the West Coast,” Joey rapped. “But since n—as comin’ for Joe, f—k it then, let’s go/ N—as must’ve forgot what Dot said on ‘Control’/ There’s still a buncha sensitive rappers in they pajama clothes, I guess/ This ain’t no East versus West, I just think that I’m the best, as a matter fact, I know.”
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And you know what? He’s right.
So far, Ray Vaughn, Daylyt, Reason, and AZ Chike have stepped up for the West Coast with a couple decent tracks here and there, but nothing really to write home about. I was into AZ Chike’s decision to step into the ring with his song “What Would You Do?,” but that effort was squashed when Joey called him “Ass Cheek” and brought along battle rap vet Loaded Lux to add insult to injury on their reply entitled “My Town.”
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Speaking of Lux, a handful of New York rappers have stepped up to the plate in Pro Era member CJ Fly, Brooklyn rapper Kai Ca$h and Jadakiss’ son Really Jaewon. And while I dug Kai’s “Knicks in 6” record, the offerings from the East Coast heir have been mainly forgettable already — but they’ve managed to show the type of solidarity the West showed during the Kendrick and Drake battle, which I have to commend them for. Somebody else from NYC needs to drop a crazy diss record over a Cash Cobain beat or something, though. Let’s get everybody involved.
Anyway, there have been fans clamoring for the Griselda guys to get involved, but they haven’t taken the bait yet. Rome Streetz tweeted out a popular meme clip of Stephen A. Smith to express how he feels about people trying to drag him into this thing — and Benny the Butcher seems perfectly fine being a spectator like the rest of us, tweeting out earlier that he felt like Joey was “handling himself exceptionally well.”
And you know what? He’s right.
The Brooklyn rapper hasn’t dropped a full-length project since 2022 and has been focusing on a bubbling acting career in recent years. So, when he randomly dropped his Conductor Williams-produced track with a shot at the West Coast’s recent dominance, fans were taken aback. He then followed that up with a three-song EP in Pardon Me in February, which included the already released “Sorry Not Sorry” and the aforementioned “The Ruler’s Back,” and he told Red Bull that he’s planning on releasing a lot of new music this year in an interview.
If that’s the case, then he’s doing a good job with his album rollout — even if the stakes of this battle are pretty low compared to others in rap’s history. His songs “The Finals,” “My Town” and “Crash Test Dummy” are the strongest out of the bunch to me as of press time. Filing a TDEast trademark and buying the domain so that his new battle releases can live there was also a nice touch.
Call it East Coast bias, or maybe blame it on the Knicks being in the Eastern Conference Finals — but Joey is winning this thing so far, and I’m not sure it’s been close.
Rico Nasty is done waiting for permission. The rage-rap innovator, known for bending genre and unapologetically redefining feminine rage, has just dropped her new album LETHAL via Fueled By Ramen (May 16).
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And true to its name, LETHAL is explosive, expansive and razor-sharp, a sonic evolution that fuses her iconic “sugar trap” roots with searing rap-rock chaos and surprising softness.
“It’s like we did the experimentation, and it kind of mixed up the potions of everything that came before,” Rico tells Billboard. “And now we’ve built this bionic titanium steel brick house of a b***h. Yeah. She’s just standing there like — please, want it”.
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The project comes after a transformative year for Rico. She cleared out her emotional closet, cut ties with her previous team, and — in the middle of a solo phase — got the call to perform with Paramore, leading to her new management. The clarity that followed is embedded in every layer of LETHAL, which was executive produced by GRAMMY-nominated Imad Royal.
“I had that pit in my stomach and I was like, I should just do it — what’s the worst that could happen?” she says about leaning harder into rock. “Once you start making music for other people, it takes the fun out of it. I had to grow up and evolve and realize I don’t really care about people’s approval anymore”.
From the shoulder-shrug defiance of lead single “TEETHSUCKER (YEA3X)” to the raw emotional core of tracks like “Smile,” Rico balances rage with vulnerability.
“It’s about my kid. I could be going through so much, and he always makes me laugh… In parenting him, I lowkey learned how to parent myself,” she says of “Smile,” a track inspired by her son. “Even though I’m talking about my kid, I’m also talking about seeing my kid and realizing, wow, he’s so much like me. And I’m still a child, like within my own right. In parenting him, I lowkey feel like I’ve learned how to parent myself too”.
But don’t get it twisted — LETHAL isn’t about playing nice. “Some people just don’t have the same morals as you, and that’s OK. That don’t make them a bad person,” she explains. “But when you stick your arm out for people and they don’t reciprocate, it can create resentment. I’m not going to let that harden me, though. I’m still going to be me”.
And that’s exactly what LETHAL captures: a fully-realized Rico, unfiltered and unbothered. She’s not looking to be copied — she’s looking to connect.
“I definitely did trailblaze this, and I’m not taking any other answer… From the fashion to the hair, the makeup—I definitely own it,” Rico declares.
“I want people to listen and feel free. Like, I’m not the only one who feels like this. I’m not the only person who sees this s–t. I’m not the only person who feels like the whole world revolves around me”.
If you have ever felt an unfamiliar ache somewhere deep inside – born of yearning, heartbreak or some other kind of romantic grief – then Matt Maltese probably has a song for that. His debut LP Bad Contestant, released via Atlantic Records in 2018, mixed piercing personal reflections with surreal, writerly metaphors involving lucid dreams, fish, wartime food rations and chocolate-based sexual exploits, all atop a warm guitar and organ combo.
At the apex of the record was the swooning ballad “As the World Caves In,” an apocalyptic depiction of an imaginary love affair between Donald Trump and former British prime minister Theresa May. The track experienced an unprecedented resurgence in 2021 when it broke into the U.S. Spotify Charts (No. 90) off the back of sudden TikTok virality, leading to Maltese finding new, unlikely fans in Doja Cat and BTS member V.
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It was the album’s dark humor, and how its author divulged his gnarliest impulses across 11 tracks, that set it apart upon release. Here, Maltese crafted narratives that feel immersive, brutal and soberingly real — though seven years on, he looks back on that era as a time where he felt “overwhelmed” by what the moment required from him: signing with a major label, topping “Ones to Watch” lists, putting out jaunty baroque-pop in a landscape that was dominated by post-punk acts.
It’s a feeling that first began gnawing at Maltese when he was deep in the songwriting for Hers (due May 16), his fifth studio album and most vulnerable and engrossing work to date. “I used to have lyrics that were often outrageous, which came from a combination of thinking I was smarter than I was while also not really knowing myself yet. I could never fully cry about something without being sarcastic at the same time,” he tells Billboard U.K. “But now, I’ve realised that I don’t get a kick out of being ‘shocking’ in my writing anymore.”
When we meet Maltese in a busy central London café, he is soft, eloquent and deadpan in conversation, often laughing when he makes such pronouncements – which repeatedly come with an explicit caveat about how privileged he is to do what he does. Spring is breaking through, and the glass-walled corner we find ourselves in lets in ample light. “At the start [of the creative process], I thought, ‘No one is in desperate need of a new Matt Maltese album. I knew it was worthwhile when I began producing it solely for myself,” he says, smiling.
He’s right in a way. Maltese has grown into a stunningly prolific musician with over a billion combined Spotify streams to his name. Alongside five full-length records (including Hers), he has released four EPs alongside 2024’s Songs That Aren’t Mine, a collection of covers of tracks by a diverse cast of musical inspirations, from Sinead O’Connor to Sixpence None the Richer. The record also featured vocal takes from rising acts Liana Flores, Dora Jar and Searows, the latter whom is signed to Maltese’s own imprint Last Recordings On Earth (via a partnership with Communion Records).
Elsewhere, he has quietly become an influential figure in the U.K. scene as a label boss and songwriter. He’s spent time working with Grammy winner Laufey, as well as British sensations Celeste, Jamie T and Joy Crookes; Maltese has also been sought out by newer names such as Etta Marcus and Matilda Mann. Despite being dropped by his label shortly after the release of Bad Contestant, he’s managed to spin that moment into a positive and collaborative ethos, one that has carried him through a trajectory that has been anything but conventional.
“At the beginning of my career, I was acting like Noel Gallagher when it came to the topic of co-writing,” he explains. “I used to think, ‘What a joke, who needs people to help them write?’. I was really quite snobbish about it. But then, things shifted when I turned a corner after having had my ‘period of failure’ by getting dropped. It was the ego knock I needed.”
In his early 20s, Maltese used an exaggerated version of himself as a Trojan horse to share his deepest feelings. Now, he understands that music is the place where he can find clarity and optimism. It’s what enables him to tell the truth and not let discomfort get the better of him.
This shift in mindset manifests itself in the cover art for Hers’ lead single, “Anytime, Anyplace, Anyhow,” which shows Maltese immersed in a moment of passion with his partner. At times he strips back the track’s gorgeous, tumbling arrangements – which, sonically, feel flush with the jitters of new love – to reveal little more than a gentle guitar. It forces listeners to consider his playful albeit blunt language, full of a sense of a worldview having been upturned: “I’m apoplectic looking at the stars/ They look like you with your top off.”
Maltese views Hers as a warts-and-all project about allowing yourself to fall in love when you are a wounded cynic. “It felt really good, for the first time, to sing about the physical side of being in a long-term relationship,” he says, stewing over a pot of tea. “So much of this record felt like I was dipping my toe into a whole new pool of emotion.”
Hers marks the first record that Maltese has produced entirely himself since 2020’s hushed and reflective Krystal. Across the LP, he is joined by friends from Wunderhorse (drummer Jamie Staples) and Gotts Street Park (guitarist Joe Harris) to flesh out his acoustic arrangements. “Pined for You My Whole Life” starts hazily, cracking open into a R&B-flecked melody two-thirds of the way through. “Always Some MF,” which tackles jealousy and deceit, sounding increasingly despairing before an enjoyably rambling piano solo takes over.
When Maltese takes these songs to stages across the U.K. and US through the fall, he says will do so without big displays or sets. Since becoming an independent artist, he has graduated to bigger venues year upon year (a night at London’s iconic Roundhouse is in the diary for November), but he would rather talk about the marvel of collaborative spirit than accolades.
“Getting out of my own head and supporting the visions of others has only pushed me further,” he notes. 2024 bore witness to two major milestones: his stage composition debut and the launch of the aforementioned Last Recordings on Earth. The former saw him partner with the Royal Shakespeare Company, writing music for a production of Twelfth Night. The latter, meanwhile, has allowed Maltese to share the learnings of his early career with Searows and new signee Katie Gregson-Macleod, a singer-songwriter from the Scottish Highlands.
Last year, Gregson-Macleod was dropped by a major label over creative differences, or “things that were not compatible with my vision of my life,” as she put it in a nine minute-long clip posted to TikTok in January. In the following weeks, she met Maltese for a coffee in London; the pair bonded over the parallels in their respective artistic journeys, leading to her landing a new deal through which she is releasing her Love Me Too Well, I’ll Retire Early EP in July.
From The Snuts to STONE and Crawlers, a series of U.K. indie and rock acts have similarly spoken out about struggling to fit into the major label system due to shifting commercial expectations, all having chosen to take the independent route in order to rebuild their respective careers. “Knowing our shared experiences, I felt at peace with stepping back into a label partnership if it was Matt at the helm,” Gregson-Macleod tells Billboard U.K. over email.“I just feel at ease, and confident with him by my side. For one, working with a songwriter I respect as much as Matt inspires me to constantly challenge myself. But also, there’s this quiet understanding, unwavering support and trust in me from his end that is really quite rare in this industry.”
Labelmate Searows (born Alec Duckart) concurs: “Matt’s kindness, talent, drive and humour have proven to me that art and passion can be your life’s work and you don’t have to sacrifice who you are in order to be successful. I have been so lucky to have his friendship and guidance, and understanding of who I want to be as an artist.”
Maltese attests maintaining a busy schedule to a work ethic gleaned from growing up with his Canadian parents in Reading, who would encourage him to travel into the capital as a teenager to pursue music further. Over time, he fell in with an emerging punk scene in south London, which furnished him with a close group of musicians (Goat Girl, Shame, Sorry) despite being worlds apart in sound and aesthetic from his peers.
“I was given a sense [by journalists] of being part of a quite elite group,” he recalls. “I was surrounded by all of these wonderful bands. We were all hanging out together, feeling like we were part of something special, and it’s really easy to get drunk on that – especially when you’re being given cultural capital.”
Press duties, in other words, became what Maltese had to do to help fulfill his passion of working with other creative people. He recalls, at age 18, being asked by a BBC radio station to record a cover of John Lennon and Yoko One’s “Happy Xmas (War Is Over),” only to turn the offer down in fear of “being seen as a sell-out” unless he was able to rework the song to his own pleasing.
He sighs at the memory. “It’s decisions like that that make me want to pull out my own skin. Though I look back and realize I was just a kid with an inflated sense of self, who was getting attention from lots of different angles. It’s been a process of reckoning with that time, really.”
Hers is marked by this exploration, of learning to loosen up and let go. Though Maltese says he still struggles to listen to his earliest material – particularly the jaunty and gruesomely funny “Guilty” – it’s his ongoing evolution that has taught him to remain curious, to never stay in one place for too long. For all his palpable excitement about the future, Maltese is feeling an equal amount of compassion towards where he’s been and what it has taught him.
“As you get older, you realize that everyone is flawed as hell. It’s a choice to not live in bitterness, particularly as someone that has had to re-angle the lens in which they view their own insecurities,” Maltese offers. “But weirdly, falling in love helps with all of that. It really does.”
Back during the summer of 2021, Adam Duritz said he was in the process of “tightening up” the songs for the follow-up to Counting Crows’ then-new Butter Miracle, Suite One EP. “When it’s right, we’ll get in and record them and put them out, and then play them (live), which is always the best part,” he told us.
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But Duritz didn’t expect to take four years, almost to the day, for that to happen.
Butter Miracle, The Complete Suite Sweets! comes out Friday (May 9) as Counting Crows’ eighth full-length studio album. It includes the four songs from Suite One, plus an additional five — the four Duritz was talking about during 2021, plus the opening “With Love, From A-Z,” which came later. He and the band are certainly happy with the result, but Duritz acknowledges it did not come easily.
“I really thought I’d finished the (new songs),” Duritz, who’d written the material at the same friend’s farm in England where he composed the Suite One songs, tells Billboard via Zoom. On the way back home to New York, he stopped in London to sing on Gang of Youth’s 2022 album Angel in Realtime, which he calls “one of my favorite things anyone’s done in the last 10 years.” That, in turn, changed his perspective on what he thought was going to become Suite Two.
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“I was suddenly thinking these songs I just finished aren’t good enough,” Duritz acknowledges. “They’re missing some stuff.” He felt one, “Virginia Through the Rain” was “perfect,” but the others were lacking. “I kind of had lost confidence in them,” Duritz notes, “and I sat on them for a good two years. then I wrote ‘With Love, From A-Z’ here (in New York) and thought, ‘That’s great — now I have to figure out what to do with this, ’cause it needs to go on a record right away!’ I’ve got to shit or get off the pot on these songs.”
The solution, he found, was to gather some of his bandmates — multi-instrumentalist David Immergluck, bassist Millard Powers and drummer Jim Bogios — to his home New York and woodshed those songs that had been put aside.
“The problem was that my sort of ambition for what they should sound like outstripped my ability to actually play them on the piano,” Duritz says. “I’m really good at arranging and singing, no doubt. I’m great at being in a band, but I’m not the player some of the other guys are, or that a lot of other songwriters are.
“So the guys came to the house and we went through them one by one and we loved them. They became great…and then we went into the studio only a few weeks later and knocked the record out in 11, 12 days — It’s by far the fastest we’ve ever recorded (an album) — but it took forever to do it!,” he adds with a laugh.
The Complete Sweets! new songs certainly demonstrate the merits of that extra effort. Taken as piece with the Suite One tracks they offer a Counting Crows amalgam, from the Band-like earthiness of “With Love, From A-Z” and “Virginia Through the Rain” to the sweeping, string-laden build of “Under the Aurora,” the power pop of the single “Spaceman in Tulsa” and the gritty guitar rock of “Boxcars,” which Duritz says was particularly challenging until he brought the other players in.
It is not a narrative, but The Complete Sweets! is certainly a conceptual whole. “I wasn’t trying to write a specific story,” Duritz notes. “But (the songs) just sort of fit together for me. I just felt like this was a little world I was creating, and it felt very fertile.” The songs find him expressing himself mostly through characters — which he started in earnest on 2014’s Somewhere Under Wonderland — than in the angsty first-person that was once Duritz’s stock in trade. In particular, the protagonist of “Spaceman in Tulsa” is clearly there in Suite One’s “Bobby and the Rat Kings,” which is the closing track on The Complete Sweets! and links the two groups of songs together.
“It’s definitely thematically tied together; I think (the ‘Spaceman’) did end up in ‘Bobby and the Rat Kings’ for sure,” Duritz acknowledges. “But I think even without that, that song would work even if there was no connection. But I wanted the connection to be there, ’cause I was vibing on that. I was digging writing about Bobby on this record. I think there are a lot of us like that in the arts who grew up wondering if we had a place in the world, wondering how we were going to fit in. We felt different from other people. We field weird.
“I think there’s a world of people who work in our heads, and when we find that it’s like we get to be the butterflies instead of just the caterpillars.”
Counting Crows asserted its place in the world during the 90s, after Duritz and guitarist David Bryson began working as an acoustic duo in the San Francisco Bay Area. With its filled-out lineup, Counting Crows generated buzz by playing in Van Morrison stead’s at his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction during January of 1993 — seven months before the release of its seven-times-platinum debut album, August and Everything After and its band-defining hits “Mr. Jones,” “Round Here” and “Rain King.” Since then, Counting Crows has sold more than 20 million records worldwide and was nominated for an Academy Award for “Accidentally in Love” from Shrek 2 in 2004.
This year, meanwhile, marks the 20th for the current lineup, since “new guy” Powers joined in 2005.
“I always wanted to be in a band and stay together,” says Duritz. And even though he’s worked outside the band on a variety of projects — with the Wallflowers, Ryan Adams and other acts as well as films such as Josie and the Pussycats and The Locusts, and running a couple of record labels — Duritz contends that, “I never wanted to be a solo artists. I have no interest in that shit. It’s a hard thing to stay together as a band, and it’s not surprising to me we’ve lost a couple people over 30 years, but right now it feels like we can go on forever — except I know that nothing works that way, y’know?”
Nevertheless, Counting Crows is gearing up for its Complete Sweets Tour!, which kicks off June 10 in Nashville and runs through Aug. 23, with Gaslight Anthem supporting. And while forever seems like a big word, Duritz feels confident that the band will be with us for quite a while longer.
“I’m not tired of it at all,” he says. “There were points where I was having more trouble with myself emotionally, and the band’s stress was just too much. But our manager’s great now. Our lawyer’s great. I totally trust everybody. All that stress is gone. The band is so stable and great, and we’re still killing it.
“So we’re on our way again. Things feel good. Everyone seems to be in a really good place. It’s a happy time — and,” he adds with another laugh, “if even I can be happy, what’s to stop everyone else from being happy, right?”
In July 2020, on the brink of a major life change, English Teacher’s Lily Fontaine laid down a statement of purpose for the journey that lay ahead. “It is less than three weeks until I move back to Leeds to try and become a rock musician,” she wrote in an edition of indie magazine Come Play With Me. “I hope that if I succeed, a young Black girl might see me and think she can be [successful] too one day.”
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Having recently graduated from Leeds Conservatoire, where the Colne-raised songwriter met her future bandmates, these were the words of a young woman ready to transform the way she envisioned her life. Within four years, she and the rest of English Teacher would go on to experience a watershed moment at the iconic Abbey Road Studios, where the group scooped the prestigious Mercury Prize last September for its richly charismatic debut album This Could Be Texas.
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“We just thought we’d make a band,” said Fontaine during the band’s acceptance speech, lost for words at the magnitude of the accolade. The four-piece thanked the venues and charities that had supported during their early days in Leeds, struggling to find the words to express their gratitude. It was a deeply affecting moment, one that speaks to the tenacity, talent and passion that has fueled them to these heights.
“I can barely think about the [Mercury Prize] night without getting emotional,” says guitarist Lewis Whiting, speaking to Billboard UK via Zoom. “We could barely speak when we won. Maybe we should just keep up our own trend of never having a winners’ speech at the ready!”
Winning the Mercury Prize may have helped English Teacher sail to the forefront of the next wave of British guitar music, but its the uniform strength of their impassioned live show that has made them breakout stars. The band will kick off a summer of touring – including appearances at Glastonbury and Green Man – by topping the bill of Billboard U.K.’s Live experience on May 16. Headlining The Deep End venue, Brighton, as part of The Great Escape 2025, it will be joined by a series of rising artists, including Westside Cowboy, the latter for whom Whiting has recently worked with as a producer.
Following an appearance in the 2021 virtual edition of The Great Escape due to COVID restrictions, English Teacher performed at the weekender the following year in support of its Polyawkward EP. Around this time, the outfit’s quirky, lightly rumbustious songs began to resonate across British press and radio; accessible while containing a marked dose of strangeness, Fontaine’s songwriting – at once emotionally raw and witty – boasted a strong multi-generational appeal.
That EP invited a bigger audience into English Teacher’s world, preceding an inexorable rise. Now, having earned first BRIT Award nomination and bagged Fontaines D.C. support slots this year, Whiting discusses how it feels for the band to be playing to increasingly frenzied crowds while working on “tighter and more focused” new music in the background.
You have a storied history with The Great Escape. Looking back at those earlier gigs, how does it feel to think about the band that you were then?
There wasn’t a single part of me that thought we’d be anywhere near where we are now as a band. Those early gigs feel like a different lifetime, for sure – a lot has changed since those early appearances at The Great Escape. I remember the 2022 edition of the festival felt like quite a significant kind of turning point for us. At the time, it felt like things had started falling together for us, and we were like, “D–n, people are actually coming to our shows, something is happening here!”
What memories do you have of the festival over the years?
When we first went to The Great Escape, I think there was a collective kind of giddiness among the band. At that point, we’d never properly experienced a festival like that, so we were pretty over the moon with the response we got from the crowds there. We made some friends along the way, including [the band] Sprints, who we are still close with now. A lot of my memories from The Great Escape revolve around bumping into people around Brighton; it often feels like you’re walking past you know every two minutes!
Since you won the Mercury Prize, have you been surprised by anything that’s changed in your life?
Last year was absolutely huge for us, which is something I am still adjusting to. So many elements of our lives have changed: there’s been an extra layer of public attention on us, which we obviously have never experienced before. It all still feels quite alien, but 2024 was one of the best years of my life. Looking back, it feels like something new happened for us each week.
Given that it’s been a pretty mental 12 months, I think as a band, we’ve been making more of a conscious effort to check in and see where everyone’s at [mentally]. All our lives are now so different, more chaotic and busy, so it’s been really important to keep tabs on each others’ well-being – especially as we are on the road far more often.
How has touring extensively impacted your sources of inspiration for writing the next album?
This has definitely been a big thing for us. A lot of the first album was about the idea of home and all of the emotions that come entangled with that. There’s still a lot of the second album to still be written but we’ve all been through so many changes – and so many new experiences gained through travelling and touring – that I feel will definitely feed into the music too. We’re in a very different place to where we were at for the debut.
Has the meaning of some of your older material changed for you over time?
100%, which is actually a really nice feeling. It’s interesting — because I’m not the lyricist for the band, but as we’ve been on tour, I’ve found that my personal meanings of some of the songs have changed quite a bit. “Mastermind Specialism” is one that really stands out, as it’s a song about indecision; when we play it, I find that I start thinking about all the little decisions that have led us up to this point as a band. “Nearly Daffodils” is another one, as it’s about a relationship that could have been, and all the changes you can go through in life in quite quick succession.
Which song have you written that still gives you goosebumps?
“Albert Road” has really taken on a new significance, however – it’s become sadder! Sometimes, in a live setting, it gets me good. It makes me think of home and I end up feeling reflective about our journey so far. There’s definitely been a couple of pivotal moments over the last year, where we have all looked at each other on stage and started welling up.
How did it feel to walk your first major red carpet at The BRIT Awards this year?
The whole experience was so ridiculous and surreal that I found it really entertaining. It was an honour to be f-king nominated for a BRIT in the first place, that was crazy and something I never, ever expected. It was mad, too, seeing all these celebrities walking around. We got chatting to JADE, she’s so sound. We very briefly said hi to Louis Theroux, too; I felt really shy in his presence — as he is so cool, I almost felt like I had no business talking to him!
You recently worked with Westside Cowboy, who will be joining us at Billboard U.K.’s Live experience at The Great Escape. What attracted you to working with them?
I love everything about that band. Sonically, they’re very much on my street and I really like the confidence with which they approach their songwriter. I admire how they don’t overcomplicate things. They’re fans of Big Thief, but I also feel as though there are elements of Lou Reed, Pavement and The Velvet Underground in their music; they write really concise, strong songs, which is super refreshing.
I first met them when they were playing a gig at Soup Kitchen in Manchester. I became a fan immediately and just knew I had to find a way to work with them. They have some brilliant material in the pipeline which really shows off the range of what they can do together as a band.
How does production allow you to use your skills differently?
It’s still an ongoing journey but one that I have really enjoyed. I’ve always been in bands, and I’ve engineered plenty of demos, but I have never really dived into being a producer in my own right until now. It’s something I would love to do more of in the future, and it’s also nice to take a step outside [of being in English Teacher] and build the confidence to forge a different creative outlet for myself. It feels like opening a different part of your brain, it’s very rewarding.
With dozens of live dates in the pipeline, what mindset are you approaching the rest of the year with?
The main aim is to start road-testing some new songs at festivals. We’re deep in writing mode at the moment, it has been non-stop for us. The [creative] process has been great, if a little fragmented; we all don’t really live in the same city anymore, and we are still figuring out what we want some of this album to sound like. Overall, however, I am feeling really positive.
Personally, I think I’m going to be more happy with the second album than the first one. They’re still in the early stages, but we’ve had a couple of ideas that we perhaps intended to make work in the past, though they feel a little more refined. For me, that’s what I want to get out of the second album: for the first record, we threw a lot of things at the wall, but I like the idea of these songs being a little tighter and more focused. It’s like a puzzle: when you figure out the way the pieces should fit together, it’s so satisfying. That feeling is what keeps you going.
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Source: Theo Wargo / Getty
Andre 3000 knows how to make an entrance. The fashion-forward rapper hit the 2025 Met Gala carpet literally wearing a piano on his back—and he wasn’t the only Hip-Hop favorite flexing on the red carpet, which was actually blue.
As HHW has previously noted, the 2025 Met Gala’s theme was “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” was directly inspired by Monica L. Miller’s, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity. Black Dandyism has a rich history and amounts to Black people going all out in expressing their creativity, and giving white supremacy the finger, and asserting their humanity by donning some epically fresh clothing.
Source: Arturo Holmes/MG25 / Getty
The evening’s celebrity co-chairs were Colman Domingo, Lewis Hamilton, A$AP Rocky and Pharrell Williams and they all understood the assignment, delivering some stunning looks. But 3 Stacks may have stolen all their shine thanks to his choice in attire. Coincidentally, shortly after the OutKast rapper hit the carpet in a Burberry-designed outfit, his label Epic Records released his new album called 7 piano sketches—thus the big ass (relatively) piano on hos back. Don’t expect any new fire rap verses though, since as the title implies, it’s strictly Andre 3000 on the keys.
Nevertheless, 3 Stacks still have some heavy competition as Future, Doechie and Pusha T are just some of the Hip-Hop heavyweights who understood the night’s assignment brought the sartorial fire to the event.
See for yourself in the gallery.
Where do you even store a portable piano like that?
1. Pusha T – The 2025 Met Gala Celebrating “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”
Source:Getty
Malice’s brother came through in a burgundy, double-breasted Louis Vuitton suit outfitted with crystals. Those pants are flared. Got it? Flared.
2. Pharrell – The 2025 Met Gala Celebrating “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”
Source:Getty
You might have thought Pharrell phoned it in with the well-tailored suit. Until you look closely and realize those are pearls—15,000 of them reportedly. He had to go all out considering his wife, Helen Lasichanh, also came to slay.
3. A$AP Rocky – The 2025 Met Gala Celebrating “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style”
Source:Getty
Pretty Flacko was repping Harlem, and his wife Rihanna is expecting baby no. 3.
4. The 2025 Met Gala Celebrating “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” – Street Sightings
Source:Getty
Actor Colman Domingo is ours. That is all.
5. The 2025 Met Gala Celebrating “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” – Street Sightings
Source:Getty
Domingo’s initial red carpet look was giving Soulsonic Force vibe, and we were here for it.
6. The 2025 Met Gala Celebrating “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” – Arrivals
Source:Getty
Andre Benjamin was styled by Law Roach and the piano was credited to Burberry in collaboration with benji bixby, the latter of which is the latest evolution of 3000’s OG Benjamin Bixby clothing line.
7. Future
Future Hendrix’s locks are gone and he stepped out in a new hairdo.
