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The death of Tupac “2Pac” Shakur remains unsolved but a development in the case sparked an investigation that might uncover additional details. Las Vegas police say they searched a local home and also mentioned a person of interest allegedly connected to 2Pac and his tragic passing.
Local outlet KLAS reports that Las Vegas police detectives entered a home this past Monday (July 17) after presenting a search warrant in Henderson, Nev. The warrant also had a name of an individual named Duane Davis, who also goes under the alias Keffe D.
According to sources speaking to the outlet, the warrant was to obtain any information, including notes, photos, and the like, in connection to 2Pac’s 1996 shooting death. The list of items taken from the home is not known to the public.
The home in question is currently occupied by unnamed residents who reportedly told reporters to leave their property and also seemingly threatened violence after those individuals sought to seek out any information into the search and ongoing investigation.
2Pac died after he was shot on September 7 of 1996 after leaving a Mike Tyson fight at the MGM Grand Plaza. The rapper and actor succumbed to his wounds on September 13 of the same year.
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On Tuesday in Las Vegas, July 4th fireworks weren’t the only things lighting up the sky. For the first time ever, the external dome of The Sphere — a new venue opening this September on the Las Vegas strip — was animated in a dynamic visual display demonstrating the full capacity of what this dome, Exosphere, can do.
During the display, Exosphere was lit with an American flag motif, lit as the moon, as fireworks and as other wild visuals.
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“The Exosphere is more than a screen or a billboard — it is living architecture, and unlike anything that exists anywhere in the world,” Guy Barnett, The Sphere’s svp brand strategy and creative development, said in a statement. “Last night’s show provided a glimpse of the Exosphere’s captivating power, and the possibilities for artists, partners, and brands to create compelling and impactful stories to connect with audiences in new ways.”
Exosphere is a 580,000 square foot programmable LED exterior made up of roughly 1.2 million LED “pucks,” each spaced eight inches apart. Each puck is made of 48 LED diodes, and every diode is able to to display 256 million different colors. Exosphere’s July 4 show was the beginning of programming that will continue throughout this month.
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Built and operated by Madison Square Garden Entertainment, The Sphere officially opens this September with a residency from U2. This residency, U2:UV Achtung Baby Live At Sphere, will feature the band playing its 1991 classic LP Achtung Baby, with shows extending from September through December.
For concerts, the MSG Sphere at The Venetian can hold 20,000 standing spectators or 17,500 seated guests, with 23 VIP suites. Connected to the Venetian Resort via a 1,000-foot-long pedestrian bridge, The Sphere will include 160,000 square feet of video viewing space and state-of-the-art spatial audio.
“Sphere’s Exosphere is a 360-degree canvas for brand storytelling that will be seen around the world, offering our partners an unparalleled opportunity to become part of the greatest show on Earth,” said David Hopkinson, president and chief operating officer of MSG Sports. “There’s nothing comparable to the impact from displaying innovative brand and immersive content on the world’s largest video screen. The extraordinary experiences we can create are only limited by imagination, and we’re thrilled to finally share with the world the spectacular potential of the Exosphere.”
See more photos of the Exosphere below:
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50 Cent has just leveled up with his wine and spirits business. He has struck a deal with the with Las Vegas Golden Knights.
As spotted on TMZ the Queens, New York native has brought his brands to Sin City in stunning fashion. This week, he announced that Le Chemin du Roi Champagne and Branson Cognac are now the official cognac and champagne of the newly crowned National Hockey League champions.
“The multi-year partnership will highlight the award-winning Branson Cognac and Le Chemin du Roi Champagne throughout upcoming seasons. The two spirits will be labeled as The Official Champagne and The Official Cognac of the Vegas Golden Knights. Product from Sire Spirits was in the locker room during the team’s celebration as 2023 Stanley Cup Champions” the official press release read.
In addition to the co-branding rights and in arena placements, both parties will partner to bring good to the Las Vegas community through 50 Cent’s G-Unity Foundation. Founded in 2003, the nonprofit empowers children and youth in America’s cities to develop the confidence, strength and skills to win in life. Last year, Jackson announced the G-Unity Business Lab with the Houston Independent School District. The after-school entrepreneurship program, which enrolled students from Wheatley, Worthing and Kashmere high schools, offers the chance to learn core business values and teaches practical skills to develop business ideas with input from area business leaders, corporations and visiting professors including Jackson.
50 expressed his enthusiasm regarding the deal in a formal statement:
“I’m excited for Sire Spirits to close its first NHL partnership deal with the Vegas Golden Knights,” he said. “Branson Cognac and Le Chemin du Roi Champagne are championship brands for winning teams. Bill Foley and his entire team know how to win and are the perfect partners for my brands and for me to extend my charitable efforts in the Las Vegas community through the G-Unity Foundation. Hockey is an exciting sport and Las Vegas is a top market for entertainment. I look forward to working closely with the entire Golden Knights Organization.”
This is the Las Vegas Golden Knight’s first Stanley Cup win.
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Less than five hours before Garth Brooks kicks off his new Las Vegas residency at The Colosseum at Caesars Palace on Thursday night (May 18), he swears he doesn’t know what his first song will be.
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But the superstar loves flying without a net. “It’s exciting, right?” he says, talking to Billboard in the afternoon before Garth Brooks/Plus ONE opens. “But still, you’re not in this business as long as I‘ve been without having some kind of sense about you. So the net is the people that come see us. They’ve got me. They want to see me fly without a net because they’ve got me if I fall, but I think they like it as much as I do.”
And, he adds, making it up as he goes along is a chance to learn something new about himself as a performer more than 30 years in. “I don’t want to go to a gig, check the boxes and say good night. I want to come off the stage knowing something about me that I didn’t know when I came out there,” he says.
The run comes nine years after his five-year residency at Wynn’s Encore Theater concluded in 2014. Like that show, Garth Brooks/Plus ONE is largely a one-man show, but the Plus ONE gives him latitude to bring different guests up every night. His band will be seated in the audience, so when the mood strikes, he can bring them up to do a full-throated, muscular version of a song like “Callin’ Baton Rouge,” rather than a stripped-down acoustic set. Or his wife Trisha Yearwood could join, as could other entertainers. But as he also explained, the music is the ultimate Plus ONE that has been with him his whole life.
As much as he plans to hit the stage without a plan, Brooks does know that there are songs that people are coming to hear, and “99% of those are going to be Garth Brooks songs,” he says. So, unlike the Wynn show, which relied heavily on songs by artists like James Taylor, Cat Stevens and Bob Seger, who influenced him, it sounds like this show will still include vital covers since Brooks is a veritable human jukebox, but that more of the songs will come from his own voluminous catalog.
Attendees must lock up their phones and no videoing or taping is allowed during the show. Brooks says that gives him the freedom to perform previously unreleased material or songs that he is still in the process of writing. In fact, he vowed to play something brand-new the first evening. “It’s a laboratory,” he says.
He landed at Caesars after having serious discussions with a number of Las Vegas venues and a long courtship. “[Caesars executives] traveled to Nashville. We talked over dinners. We didn’t talk about business, we talked about children, talked about stuff like that. They made it sound very much that they were very interested in phone calls, texts,” he says. “They were going through some other stuff with some of their other entertainers, and when you would talk about that, their immediate response was, ‘We’re focused on you. This is a goal for us.’ It made you feel very wanted. And to be honest with you, it wasn’t an inexpensive deal for them. So they have gone above and beyond, which is very sweet, but it’s like Steve Wynn said: ‘Now all the pressure is on you.’ Now it’s up to you to get out there and hopefully make them feel it was worth it.”
Brooks has always been sensitive to ticket pricing, with his tickets to his non-Vegas shows rarely exceeding $100. But the tickets for this run go as high as $2,500 face value for the front row and are $10,000 for a pair on the secondary market. With no seat more than 145 feet from stage, the lowest ticket price in the 4,100-seat venue is $99 and tickets average out around $350. Brooks says he will continue his long tradition of “stubbing,” where crew members move fans from the farthest seats to a closer location for free.
“What I love about these guys, too, was we said, ‘Hey, look, it shouldn’t just be for the rich to enjoy. Let us still do our stub thing that we do.’ And they have allowed us to do that,” he says. “You understand that for them to make their money back, things have to happen in certain ways. But at the same time, we get to keep our same traditions as well. And my promise to everybody else, too, is if this is too expensive, I get it. We’ll do a dive bar somewhere for free. Or we’ll go play somewhere and hopefully get the ticket prices more around your thing.”
With the 2023 run of 27 shows already sold out, Brooks announced 18 new Colosseum dates for 2024 earlier Thursday. Fans who signed up through Ticketmaster’s Verified Fan program for 2023 and were locked out will get first dibs on 2024 tickets. The new Verified Fan on sale date is May 31.
The price tag on opening the much-anticipated Sphere arena in Las Vegas is now at a whopping $2.3 billion after the company added an additional $125 million recently, according to documents filed with the SEC on Wednesday (May 10).
That’s more than $1 billion increase from the original projection of $1.2 billion when the Sphere was first announced in 2018, although industry experts say the more realistic estimate came the following year when architects from architecture firm AECON estimated the actual cost of the project would likely be $1.7 billion.
The project’s price has continued to rise since breaking ground in 2021 due to negative effects on the construction business caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the the one-of-a-kind entertainment complex’s unusual nature and design. Company officials cited the “overall complexity of the project” for the current increase while noting they had made “significant progress,” including completing the “LED installation on the Exosphere earlier in the third quarter” that will allow the venue to make dramatic design and appearance changes at the push of a button. Company officials have also made significant progress building out “the venue’s interior spaces, including the suites and hospitality areas,” the filing states.
U2 will open the venue on Sept. 29 with a five-week, 17-show run that has already generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales with tickets averaging between $1,200 to $1,500 apiece.
On March 30, Madison Square Garden Entertainment finalized plans to spin off its live entertainment business, and launch a new company called Sphere Entertainment Co. that included the Sphere venue, as well as its MSG’s sports television network MSG Networks and Tao Group Hospitality. Shortly after, the company sold its majority interest in Tao Group to Mohari Hospitality for about $300 million.
As of Tuesday, the Sphere Entertainment Co. had over $230 million in cash available, according to the SEC filing, thanks in part to the Tao Group sale, as well as $65 million in funds in a delayed draw term loan facility with Madison Square Garden Entertainment Corp. The recently spun-off company reported revenues of $363.3 million for its first quarter as Sphere Entertainment Company — a 3% increase of $10.8 million as compared to the same business sectors in prior year quarter. The company reported a 1.1% decrease in operating loss to $70.3 million and a 2.1% increase in adjusted operating income to $19.4 million.
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The rumor mill is swirling after Nelly and Ashanti were spotted holding hands following the boxing match between Gervonta Davis and Ryan Garcia, where the two were together ringside, according to Page Six.
While the duo have not confirmed that they are seeing each other again, fans are already celebrating on social media.
“Awww. Nelly and Ashanti are back together I’m here for it. They both aged beautifully,” one wrote.
Even fellow celebs got into the mix with fellow rapper Bow Wow writing in the comments section of an Instagram post from The Shade Room.“Yo mo! I know we not seeing eye to eye either really but from lil bro to big bro STOP PLAYING AND MARRY THIS WOMAN BRO!” fellow rapper Bow Wow wrote in the comments section of an Instagram post from The Shade Room. “You like 50 sit yo old ass down this your queen.”
The couple has been romantically linked on and off since the 2000s and this isn’t the first time that fans have hoped for a reunion. In December 2022, the pair performed their hit, “Body On Me,” in front of an audience where they were smiling and grinding on each other on stage. Later that month in an interview with Andy Cohen, Ashanti said she was surprised by the positive reaction from fans.
“My reaction was, ‘Wow.’ It was a lot of comments and a lot of people wanting that [us back together],” she said at the time, “What I will say is, we’re in a better place. You know, ’cause before, it was like [mimics fighting]. But we’re cool now. Yeah, we have some conversations, you know. So it’s cool.”
Cohen pushed the subject asking, “But you’re not getting back together?” The singer struggled to find words, simply responding, “I mean, I don’t…”
Fans on Twitter are celebrating the possible reunion with one making comparisons to the rekindled relationship between Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez which finally resulted in their marriage more than a decade after they broke up.
One user said that there was one person who really deserves the credit for the reunion.
Live Nation is facing a lawsuit from three people who say they were injured at last year’s Lovers & Friends Music Festival in Las Vegas, during a stampede triggered by false reports of gunfire.
In a complaint filed last week in Los Angeles, plaintiffs Carla Thomas, James Thomas and Aaliyah Aguilar claimed that Live Nation had “failed to take basic, reasonable steps” to protect them from such an incident.
“Plaintiffs screamed for help from the event organizers and security, but none came,” lawyers for the trio wrote. “Plaintiffs screamed for emergency medical care for their injuries, but none came.”
The two-day Lovers & Friends festival, held over a weekend last May, featured several R&B and rap artists, including Usher, Ludacris and Ne-Yo. But performances were briefly halted that Saturday when a large group of panicked attendees fled the venue over rumors of gun shots. Police later said that there was no evidence that a shooting took place.
Stampedes amid false reports of gunfire have cropped up several times in recent years. Fans suffered injuries during gunfire panics at a Future concert in Brooklyn in 2017, at Lil Wayne and Cardi B concerts in 2018, and at the 2019 Rolling Loud festival in Miami. Just last month, three fans were killed during a stampede at a GloRilla concert in western New York reportedly sparked by fears of a shooter.
In their lawsuit, Thomas, Thomas and Aguilar claimed that the rush at Lovers & Friends was triggered by a “loud noise,” causing a “sea of people” to surge toward them. They said they were “pushed, smashed, dragged, kicked, stepped on, trampled and crushed to the ground” during the incident, causing them “serious injuries” and emotional distress.
And their lawyers say that Live Nation is to blame – specifically, that the company was negligent in how it planned and operated the festival.
“Defendants failed to employ adequate, properly trained, monitored, and supervised reasonable security, safety and medical provision measures,” they wrote. “Defendants failed to provide a safe venue, one that provided adequate signs and warnings that would have guided the crowd into a particular emergency exit route in the event of an alarm or emergency.”
Such lawsuits are common after incidents in which fans are injured at concerts, but they’re not easy to win. Lawyers for the accusers will need to show that the incident was something Live Nation could have seen coming, and that it failed to take specific steps that would have prevented the injuries suffered by their clients.
A rep for Live Nation did not immediately return a request for comment on Tuesday.
There’s never a dull moment in Las Vegas, but this past weekend was a particularly jam-packed one for Sin City.
Taylor Swift brought The Eras Tour to Allegiant Stadium for two nights, Adele performed the last two nights of her Weekends With Adele concerts at Caesars Palace’s Colosseum (and announced that she’ll be back in June for more), Maroon 5 opened their hits-packed Dolby Live at Park MGM residency, and Kelly Clarkson announced a string of dates around her next album Chemistry starting in late July at Planet Hollywood’s Bakkt Theater.
5 Best Moments From Maroon 5’s Hits-Packed Las Vegas Residency
03/28/2023
On the new Billboard Pop Shop Podcast, Katie & Keith are breaking down all the Vegas action — including our very own Pop Shop field trip to see T-Swift and Katie’s review of Maroon 5’s opening weekend. Listen below:
Also on the show, we’ve got chart news on how U2 becomes just the fourth group with new top 10 albums on the Billboard 200 in every decade from the 1980s onward, how Coi Leray and Bailey Zimmerman score their first top 10s on the Billboard Hot 100, and how Swift scores an impressive seven albums in the top 40 of the Billboard 200 for the first time.
The Billboard Pop Shop Podcast is your one-stop shop for all things pop on Billboard’s weekly charts. You can always count on a lively discussion about the latest pop news, fun chart stats and stories, new music, and guest interviews with music stars and folks from the world of pop. Casual pop fans and chart junkies can hear Billboard’s executive digital director, West Coast, Katie Atkinson and Billboard’s senior director of charts Keith Caulfield every week on the podcast, which can be streamed on Billboard.com or downloaded in Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast provider. (Click here to listen to the previous edition of the show on Billboard.com.)
Behati Prinsloo is supporting her husband Adam Levine as Maroon 5 kicked off their Las Vegas residency over the weekend, and the supermodel took to Instagram to document some adorable behind-the-scenes moments.
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The snaps featured the couple’s two daughters, 6-year-old Dusty Rose and 4-year-old Gio Grace, playing around backstage and watching their dad perform, as well as gorgeous selfies of Prinsloo. One of the photos gave the tiniest peek at the duo’s newborn baby, in which the child’s feet are seen laying on his mother’s legs.
Neither Levine nor Prinsloo have publicly announced the baby’s sex or name. “It’s zoned defense, as they say. It’s awesome,” the musician previously told Ryan Seacrest of being a father of three during an recent appearance on On-Air With Ryan Seacrest. “I love the chaos. I embrace the chaos.”
The Victoria’s Secret model shared the news that she and the “Moves Like Jagger” singer were expecting back in September, when she posted a casual photo on Instagram showing off her baby bump. However, the exciting news was somewhat overshadowed by a texting scandal involving Levine last fall, in which Instagram model Sumner Stroh shared alleged flirtatious messages exchanged between her and the singer. Stroh claimed she and Levine saw each other for a year and that in June, Levine asked if it would be OK to name his baby “Sumner” if it was a boy — just a few days after it was confirmed that Prinsloo was pregnant with the couple’s third child.
Levine denied having an affair, but took responsibility for having “poor judgement in speaking with anyone other than my wife in ANY kind of flirtatious manner.”
With two decades of steady pop radio hits under their belts, Maroon 5 are a perfect fit for a Las Vegas residency, breezing through a tight 20-song setlist during night 2 of their Dolby Live at Park MGM opening weekend on Saturday (March 25).
Adam Levine drives the energy of the hour-and-a-half show — never staying in one place for too long as he constantly moves across the stage and darts closer to the crowd on an X-shaped catwalk, wearing a series of tattoo-bearing outfits (or just no shirt at all). But it’s truly a full-band showcase, with spotlights on founding guitarist James Valentine’s shredding solos, a jamming song led by keyboardist PJ Morton, and a trio of brass players adding vibrant horns throughout.
Even if you don’t know Maroon 5’s catalog front and back, the most casual pop fan will recognize the Billboard Hot 100 mainstays that make up the setlist, including a host of collaborations that Levine takes on solo, whether he’s singing the Christina Aguilera verse on “Moves Like Jagger,” pulling double-duty on the SZA duet “What Lovers Do,” or performing rap-free versions of songs with Wiz Khalifa (“Payphone”) or Gym Class Heroes (“Stereo Hearts”). The one rapper we did hear on Saturday night was Cardi B, whose intro to the seven-week Hot 100 No. 1 “Girls Like You” was broadcast ahead of the second track of a three-song encore.
What else can you expect from Maroon 5’s new M5LV residency? Below, find Billboard’s five favorite moments from opening weekend.
The Greatest-Hits Setlist
Maroon 5 have 32 Hot 100 hits — including four No. 1s and 15 top 10s — so they had a deep bench of music to choose from. In the end, the 20-song setlist was heavy on their hits, aside from two covers (we’ll get to those in a second) and one showcase for keyboardist PJ Morton, a Grammy-winning R&B singer/songwriter in his own right. The result was a nonstop string of songs that anyone who has listened to pop radio in the last 20 years would instantly recognize regardless of their level of fandom, which made for the perfect communal Vegas dance party in the crowd. (According to setlist.fm, there were a couple of small changes between the first two nights, with the night 1 crowd getting the 2017 Future collab “Cold” and 2012’s ‘Daylight,” while night 2 included the 2017 SZA team-up “What Lovers Do.”)
A Pair of Sky-High Covers
Levine picked two cover songs tailor-made to show off his famous falsetto, starting with “Wanna Be Your Lover” by Prince (whose “Kiss” was also the last song fans heard before the concert kicked off) and ending the pre-encore setlist with the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive.”
The Tribute to Their Late Manager
The most poignant moment of the night was when the band remembered their late manager Jordan “Jordi” Feldstein, a childhood friend of Levine’s and the brother of Jonah Hill and Beanie Feldstein who died in 2018 at age 40 from a heart attack. A video package showed photos of Levine and Feldstein as small kids and then in their early days as a band guided by Feldstein’s management.
Ahead of playing “Memories,” their 2019 tribute to Feldstein that peaked at No. 2 on the Hot 100, Levine explained the mission behind the track. “My goal is that every crowd who sees this residency fully understands that that song is about that man right there,” he said. “And that’s what that song is about for us. But what I think is so beautiful about the song, as it gained popularity over the years, it meant something different, it’s for a different person for everyone who loved the song. So it’s an extremely special song that we can have as a band that we can share with everybody. So we just want to say thank you for sharing it with us. Sometimes it’s not the easiest thing, but it makes it all that much more easy when we share it together.”
The In-Crowd Moment & A Note to Usher
When Levine and guitarist James Valentine emerged to kick off the three-song encore, they weren’t onstage anymore; they were sauntering through the crowd, between the first and second sections of fans in the lower level. They ended up settling into a particular spot in the aisle that just happened to have a small platform for the frontman to stand on. Levine acknowledged that the space was originally created for Usher’s Vegas residency but that he would borrow for the night. He even brought out a Sharpie to leave Usher a note for when he returns to the Dolby Live theater for new residency dates in April.
“What should I say?” he asked the crowd before beginning his permanent-marker message. “‘Dear Usher: You’re so, so, so, so, so, so cute. Thanks for letting me use your little stumpy stair thing. I love you and you’re sexy. Love, Justin Timberlake.’ Perfect! I really did sign it Justin Timberlake.” We’ll see if Usher gets the message next month, As Levine said: “If they erase it I’ll be pissed.”
‘This One’s Always for You, B’
On Saturday night, Levine made a small shout-out to his wife of almost nine years, model Behati Prinsloo, introducing the 2013 top 10 Hot 100 hit “Love Somebody” by saying, “This one’s always for you, B.” Levine steered clear of referencing the texting scandal that made headlines last fall, but during Friday’s opening night, Prinsloo and the couple’s three children were in the building, with Levine saying onstage, “They’re everything, all that matters to me in the whole world. I love you guys. My kids have never been up this late in their entire f—ing lives. They’re falling asleep.”
The Full Setlist for Night 2
AnimalsOne More NightThis LoveStereo HeartsHarder to BreatheSunday MorningPayphoneWhat Lovers DoMakes Me WonderWanna Be Your Lover (Prince cover)Heavy (PJ Morton with Adam Levine)MapsMemoriesDon’t Wanna KnowLove SomebodyMoves Like JaggerStayin’ Alive (Bee Gees cover)ENCOREShe Will Be LovedGirls Like YouSugar
Upcoming Dates for Maroon 5’s M5LV Residency
March 29March 31April 1April 5April 7-8July 28-29Aug. 2Aug. 4-5Aug. 9Aug. 11-12