genre hiphop
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Lil Durk remains behind bars in California, counting down the days until his trial is set to begin in October for his murder-for-hire case.
Durk’s family posted a clip to Instagram on Tuesday (April 29) giving fans an update on the Chicago rapper’s legal situation, and they claimed that the prosecution is building a case that uses his own lyrics against him.
“The recent developments in Durk’s legal case have brought a harsh truth to light: the government presented false evidence to a grand jury to indict him,” a statement from Durk’s team in the video reads. “This isn’t justice. That’s a violation of the very system that’s supposed to protect all of us.”
The clip goes on to explain that Durk has always been a vivid storyteller with his music, and his creative art shouldn’t be held against him in a court of law.
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“Durk has always used music to tell stories, to express pain to heal — and yet those same lyrics are now being used against him. We refuse to stay silent as Black artists continue to be criminalized for their creativity. Rap is art,” the video continued before calling for public support. “As a family, we are asking the public, the fans and the culture to stand with us. Stand for truth. Stand for fairness. Stand for The Voice.”
Lil Durk’s legal team continues to fight for his freedom. Earlier in April, Durk’s attorneys called for the case’s dismissal and claimed that “false evidence” was given to a grand jury.
Prosecutors are attempting to tie lyrics from Durk and Babyface Ray’s “Wonderful Wayne & Jackie Boy” to the murder of Lul Pab. While the track was released in December 2022, which would be a few months after Pab’s death, but Durk’s team says those lyrics were penned long before the shooting in January 2022.
“Told me they got an addy (go, go)/ Got location (go, go)/ Green light (go, go, go, go, go)/ Look on the news and see your son/ You screaming ‘No, no,” he raps on the track in question.
“The government told the grand jury that Mr. Banks, through specific lyrics in his music, celebrated and profited from a revenge murder that he had ordered,” Durk’s attorney, Drew Findling, said in the filing. “That claim is demonstrably false. Unless the government is prosecuting Banks on a theory of extra-sensory prescience, the lyrics could not have soundly informed the grand jury’s finding of probable cause.”
Lil Durk was arrested in Florida in October on a murder-for-hire charge hours after a few of his Only the Family associates were also indicted.
Prosecutors believe Durk plotted to have Quando Rondo killed as retaliation for the death of his friend King Von, who was murdered by Rondo’s associates in Atlanta in 2020, but the 2022 Los Angeles shooting ended up leaving Rondo’s cousin Lul Pab dead.
With Durk behind bars awaiting trial, the rapper’s team pieced together his Deep Thoughts album, which arrived in March and debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 64,000 album-equivalent units earned.
See his family’s statement below:
On its face, Kendrick Lamar and Playboi Carti seemed like an unlikely duo until King Vamp recruited K. Dot for a few features on his Music album. They hit the stage together for the first time on Tuesday night (April 29) when Lamar brought out Carti as a special guest in Atlanta to perform their […]
Riding a hot streak that has already established her among 2025’s buzziest names, Doechii lands a historic win on Billboard’s Rhythmic Airplay chart as the first artist to send her first three charting titles as a lead artist to No. 1 on the radio ranking.
The feat comes as “Anxiety” storms 6-1 to crown the list dated May 3 and was the most played song on U.S. panel-contributing rhythmic radio stations in the tracking week of April 18-24, according to Luminate, a 20% surge from the prior week. Thanks to the boon, “Anxiety” wins the week’s Greatest Gainer award, given to the song with the largest increase in play count.
Doechii, Billboard’s 2025 Woman of the Year recipient, traces her Rhythmic Airplay achievement to her first No. 1, the one-week champ “What It Is (Block Boy),” featuring Kodak Black, in June 2023. She returned to the summit in March with “Denial Is a River,” which reigned for three weeks, before “Anxiety” completed her third trek to the top spot. As noted, the trio makes Doechii the first act to send her first three entries as a lead artist to No. 1 in the 32-year history of the Rhythmic Airplay chart.
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Expanding to include lead and featured credits, Doechii is the third act in the overall club. There, she joins Ashanti, whose first two No. 1s were through featured slots on Ja Rule’s “Always on Time” and Fat Joe’s “What’s Luv?,” before her own chart-topping “Foolish,” all in 2002. The next year, Beyoncé inaugurated her solo career with three Rhythmic Airplay champs — a featured slot on Jay-Z’s “’03 Bonnie and Clyde,” and her own “Crazy in Love,” featuring Jay-Z, and “Baby Boy,” featuring Sean Paul.
Beyond the three aforementioned No. 1s, Doechii has one other Rhythmic Airplay entry in her account, a featured slot on Sleepy Hallow’s “A N X I E T Y,” which reached No. 31 in February. That track, from 2019, received a second wind thanks to TikTok-fueled virality, that in turn sparked Doechii’s own “Anxiety” single’s release.
Elsewhere, “Anxiety” leaps 10-5 on the Pop Airplay chart with a 21% rally in weekly plays and pushes 15-11 on the Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart (up 14%), and even debuts on the Latin Airplay chart at No. 50. From the developments at pop, rhythmic and R&B/hip-hop and Latin sectors, “Anxiety” explodes 9-3 on the all-genre Radio Songs chart to 45.9 million in all-format audience for the week, a 24% improvement from 37.1 million in the week prior, and enough to win the Greatest Gainer prize.
“Anxiety,” initially a standalone single, was added to the digital and streaming editions of Doechii’s Grammy Award-winning mixtape, Alligator Bites Never Heal, in March. The hit single’s inclusion has helped the project break barriers of its own, including its first time in the top 10 of the Billboard 200 this week.
Ye’s (formerly Kanye West) Donda 2 album is on streaming services for the first time. West premiered the sequel in February 2022, and the project had only been available on the Stem Player until Wednesday (April 30).
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As of press time, Donda 2 is available on YouTube Music and Spotify, but is yet to hit Apple Music. The project is loaded with 18 tracks and guest appearances from XXXTENTACION, Don Toliver, Migos, Jack Harlow, Travis Scott, Playboi Carti, Baby Keem, Future and more.
Future served as the album’s executive producer and the cover art remains the same, showcasing Ye’s childhood home on fire.
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West originally premiered the album with a listening party inside Miami’s LoanDepot Park in February 2022, but many of the tracks were unfinished and never made it to streaming services as Ye focused on the Stem Player technology.
Ye also threw in cuts like “City of Gods” featuring Fivio Foreign and Alicia Keys, which arrived just prior to the Donda 2 listening party, and served as the lead single for the Brooklyn drill rapper’s B.I.B.L.E. album. The track reached No. 46 on the Billboard Hot 100.
“530” was one of the unfinished standouts on Ye and Ty Dolla $ign’s Vultures 2 album, but West felt strong enough about the cleaned-up version to include it on Donda 2‘s streaming release.
Kim Kardashian’s 2021 Saturday Night Live monologue is still included on “Sci-Fi.” “I married the best rapper of all time,” she can be heard saying to start the track. “Not only that, he is the richest Black man in America. A talented, legit genius who gave me four incredible kids.”
West has been holed up in Spain for much of April. A masked Ye hosted a live stream premiere for Donda 2 with popular streamers Digital Nas, Sneako and N3on on Tuesday night (April 29).
West has been under fire in recent months for controversial X rants filled with hate speech. On the music side, he released a visual edition of his Bully album in March.
Listen to Donda 2 below.
Don Toliver and Doja Cat are dropping their new collaboration “Lose My Mind” from the F1 movie soundtrack this week. The two are heard harmonizing on the hook “So why don’t we just lose my mind?” in the hi-tech video clip that was shared on Instagram by the Formula 1, F1 movie and F1 album […]
Latto headlined Syracuse University’s Block Party 2025 over the weekend, and she got around to posting some pictures from her time on the central New York campus on Tuesday (April 29). While she’ll always be Big Mama, Latto went by Big Daddy in Syracuse as she rocked a throwback ‘fit that went diamond in the […]
Did you know Ben Affleck and Jon Bernthal were hip-hop heads?
As the two actors promote their film The Accountant 2, they sat down with Complex for their “GOAT Talk” series and the topic of Rap Mount Rushmore came up, with Ben offering up some interesting picks.
“I think Lil Wayne should be on there,” he said. “You were talking about Eazy-E today. We were talking about back when we were young. I mean, you know, a lot of talk about, ‘Well, Slick Rick.’ And then of course, there’s Kendrick right now.’”
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Ben seemed to feel put on the spot and was throwing out names off the dome, but when Jon asked him to confirm, the Armageddon actor answered, “Yeah, I mean, I kinda at random, but, yeah I’d take that Mount Rushmore. I’d take that,” before also bringing up Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg.
Bernthal essentially agreed with Ben’s picks, but replaced Slick Rick and Lil Wayne with the Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac while also acknowledging that he liked the idea of Affleck putting Weezy on his.
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“I mean, I think you need Biggie on there. You need 2Pac on there,” The Punisher actor said. “But I’ll put Eazy on there and Kendrick, but I love that you put Lil Wayne on there.”
Ben then said that ‘Pac is probably his pick for greatest rapper ever before telling a funny story of his son asking him if he ever heard arguably the greatest diss song of all-time. “My son played me this song the other day,” he joked. “And he’s like, ‘Yo, you heard this?’ And he played me “Hit Em Up.” And I was like, ‘Have I heard this? Mothe—-er, I had a whole f—in’ life that I lived before you were born.’”
You can check out the full video below.
YK Osiris says he hasn’t dropped any new music out of fear of “humiliation.” In a livestream with Lil Rodney Son on Monday (April 28), YK Osiris opened up about why he hasn’t dropped anything new, and said he’s scared of embarrassment. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and […]
Nelly shared his thoughts on President Donald Trump’s first 100 days in office before stepping on stage for his Stagecoach performance. In a quick interview with Fox News Digital prior to his Stagecoach set on April 26, Nelly called himself a “glass half-full type of guy” when speaking on Trump’s first 100 days back in […]
On the heels of delivering Kush + Orange Juice 2, Wiz Khalifa is hitting the road. Wiz and Sean Paul announced the Good Vibes Only Tour on Tuesday (April 29), which will feature DaBaby as a special guest performer. The 15-date amphitheater run will go through North America this summer, kicking off on July 6 […]