genre hiphop

Lil Uzi Vert was reportedly hospitalized in New York City on Monday (April 21) after falling ill at a Manhattan hotel.

Billboard has reached out to the rapper’s reps for confirmation.

According to TMZ, paramedics responded to a call for Uzi — who identifies as nonbinary — during the afternoon and transported them to a local hospital for treatment.

TMZ released footage from an eyewitness video showing someone who appears to be Uzi being wheeled into an ambulance around 2:30 p.m. ET. Along with City Girls rapper JT, Uzi’s girlfriend, security also accompanied the rapper and held up black umbrellas in an attempt to protect their identity.

Details of Lil Uzi Vert’s condition are not known at this time.

On the music side, the 29-year-old has laid low for much of 2025. They have yet to put out a single, but hopped on Skrilla’s “Walking Dead” in February.

Lil Uzi returned in 2024 with their Eternal Atake 2 sequel, which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 59,000 album-equivalent units earned in the opening tracking week.

Earlier in February, Uzi made headlines by jabbing at Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts, which saw the rapper flex that their “diamonds are better lil big bro.” The post to their Instagram Story was accompanied by a photo of Hurts, but the Eagles QB has yet to respond to Uzi.

Wiz Khalifa seems to believe that the Earth is flat.

The Pittsburgh rapper is rolling out his latest album Kush + Orange Juice 2 and stopped by The Joe Budden Podcast to discuss a variety of topics — one of which is the age-old (and centuries-ago-answered) question: Is the Earth flat or round?

There’s clip floating around from the popular podcast’s exclusive Patreon episode where co-host Melyssa Ford asks Wiz straight up if the Earth is round. “I would say no,” he answered. And when she asked what shape the planet is, Wiz replied: “I just believe that we live on a flat plane, like a huge flat plane.”

He further elaborated after receiving an agreeable dap from co-host Ish and said he believes this “flat plane” theory because of how much he travels. “It’s only because I’ve traveled so much.” However, when guest host and academic Marc Lamont Hill asked him if he’s ever reached the edge of the Earth, Khalifa tried to clarify his point. “Nah, it’s not that. I think that there’s more masses than just what we see because it was one thing before and it spread out,” he tried to explain as he referred to the supercontinent Pangea.

He continued by saying that there has to be way more land mass out there that humans haven’t discovered, adding, “Because when I travel, the routes that we take and how we do it, it’s not possible to go up and down. You’re just going straight. That’s the only reason I think that.”

He also questioned space exploration in general. “I don’t believe in space exploration at all,” he admitted. “I don’t believe that they explore space as much as they say that they do.”

The subject came up because the pod has been discussing the Flat Earth Theory recently — something they’ve done in the past — and Marc Lamont Hill had gotten into it with a Flat Earther on his YouTube series Night School Debate.

For what it’s worth, the conversation wasn’t that serious and fans jokingly pointed out that Wiz used a round Earth on the cover of Kush + Orange Juice 2.

Check out our recent interview with Wiz where we talked about his run of freestyles and his latest tape.

Nearly three decades into his Hall of Fame career, Lil Wayne is set to headline NYC’s Madison Square Garden for the first time on June 6. It’s going to be a celebratory night at one of the world’s most famous arenas, as Weezy will be releasing his anticipated Tha Carter VI album the same day.

Artist pre-sale tickets will go on sale starting on Wednesday (April 23), and the general sale begins on Friday (April 25) at 10 a.m. local time on Live Nation’s website.

NYC fans will hear the live debut of many of the C6 tracks along with the other hits in Weezy’s catalog throughout the night.

Tha Carter V arrived in 2018, and it’s been a long road to the sixth installment. Wayne confirmed the June 6 release date with a throwback trailer earlier in April, which came after the initial reveal in a Cetaphil ad surrounding the Super Bowl in February.

Rolling Stone had an early listen to the album and revealed features from Miley Cyrus, MGK, Andrea Bocelli, Wayne’s son Kameron, Bono and more. Wyclef Jean is also involved, while producers include Ye and Wheezy.

Tha Carter VI will mark Weezy’s first solo album since 2020’s Funeral, which debuted atop the Billboard 200. The last three installments of Wayne’s decorated Carter series have all gone No. 1.

The New Orleans native is yet to release a single in 2025, but he’s dished out assists such as hopping on GELO’s viral “Tweaker” remix in February. 

See his announcement below:

Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) didn’t take a break from posting on X over Easter Sunday.

The controversial artist revealed to fans that he and his mentor Jay-Z had a falling-out over a lyric about him wearing the infamous red “Make America Great Again” Donald Trump hat. On the Chicago rapper’s song “Jail” from the 2021 album Donda, Jigga rapped, “Hol’ up, Donda, I’m with your baby when I touch back road/ Told him, ‘Stop all of that red cap, we goin’ home’/ Not me with all of these sins, castin’ stones/ This might be the return of The Throne.”

Apparently, Ye wanted to edit that line out, but Jay wouldn’t let him. “Why did Jay Z have to say ‘no red hat’ on Jail,” he wrote in a since-deleted tweet. “That sh– tore me to my soul. We fought about it and he told me either leave that line on there or take my verse off. Me wearing the red hat was the most stand out example of me going against ‘the program.’ Do you guys think he was instructed to say that?”

Ye started to affiliate himself with President Trump back in 2016 during the Saint Pablo Tour, when he told concertgoers that, had he voted in the presidential election that year, he would have picked Trump. Ye then started wearing the red MAGA hat around 2018, even as he faced backlash from peers and fans — one of those peers being Frank Ocean, who Ye said tried to talk him out of supporting Trump.

Last month, Ye was criticized for making comments about Jay-Z and Beyoncé’s 7-year-old kids Rumi and Sir Carter during an explosive X tirade, where West questioned the twins’ mental abilities and made unsubstantiated claims about in vitro fertilization. Suge Knight, Bey’s dad Mathew Knowles and more have spoken out against the hateful comments.

Kendrick Lamar and SZA kicked off their 39-date Grand National stadium tour in Minneapolis over the weekend, and they’re already making headlines.

Before Lamar performed his smash single and Drake diss track “Not Like Us,” he decided to have a little fun by prefacing it with a skit poking fun at the Toronto rapper’s current UMG defamation lawsuit over the record giant’s promotion of the song.

The skit in question shows the Compton rapper sitting at a table being questioned about certain dates by what sounds like a lawyer. After being asked about May 4, 2024, and February 9, 2025 — the dates when he dropped “Not Like Us” and performed it at Super Bowl halftime, respectively — Dot answered, “I don’t keep up with dates.” He was then asked if the message Drake had for him at the end of “Family Matters” helped jog his memory. “Does this ring a bell? Drop, drop, drop,” the lawyer asked, right before the crowd exploded after hearing the “I see dead people” needle drop.

Fans also pointed out that Lamar’s pgLang might have also referenced Lil Wayne‘s infamous deposition from 2012 over the controversial The Carter documentary release and one of 2Pac from 1995 where his lyrics were called into question.

Drake and his lawyers recently filed an updated version of their defamation lawsuit to include language alleging that Lamar’s Super Bowl halftime performance was malicious, saying, “It was the first, and will hopefully be the last, Super Bowl halftime show orchestrated to assassinate the character of another artist.”

For more on Kendrick and SZA’s first show, check out our list of their best moments at U.S. Bank Stadium.