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We now have clarity on how Madonna and 2Pac originally met thanks to Rosie Perez. The actress revealed how she introduced the two prior to them dating.
As per Page Six the Brooklyn, NY native paid a recent visit to the Drew Barrymore Show where she discussed a variety of topics relating to her storied career. Midway during the interview the White Men Can’t Jump star spoke about her friendship with the late great Tupac Shakur. She went on to say that she was the one who introduced him to Madonna. Perez stated that her original date to the 1993 Soul Train Music Awards cancelled on her 30 minutes before the event. Luckily 2Pac stepped up and escorted her to ceremony. “He said, ‘You know what, I’m going [to] go with you, we’re going [to] walk up in there, we’re going [to] act like we’re on a date, and he’s going to die,’” she explained.
While at the awards show Madonna checked in with her and asked about Pac. “She was there and she came up to me and she was like, ‘Yo, what’s up? Y’all are together?’” Rosie added. “And I said, ‘No.’ She goes, ‘Really?’ I go, ‘Yeah.’” The “Material Girl” singer asked then asked Rosie Perez to “hook [her] up,” to which she replied You got it.” Madonna and 2Pac briefly dated from 1993 to 1994 but kept their relationship relatively secret. It wasn’t until many years later the self proclaimed Queen of Pop admitted the two were an official item.
You can see Rosie Perez discuss that evening with 2Pac and Madonna below.
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Madonna is ending her critically-acclaimed Celebration World Tour in Brazil this weekend, with a one-night-only concert dubbed the “Celebration in Rio” show.
Taking place live at Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the concert will be broadcast locally on Brazilian TV but there are ways to watch Madonna’s Rio concert online outside of Brazil as well (sort of scoring a travel deal to go watch Madge in person).
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Madonna’s Brazil concert airs Saturday, May 4 at 9:45 p.m. local Brazil time (8:45 p.m. ET). Brazilian fans can watch the show on Globo TV and through its streaming service, Globoplay. Want to watch Madonna’s Rio concert from the U.S.? Use a virtual private network (VPN) like ExpressVPN, which will let you set your IP address to Brazil, so that you can livestream the Madonna concert on Globoplay for free.
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A subscription to ExpressVPN starts at just $6.67 a month. NordVPN is another solid VPN service that will let you watch Globoplay’s Madonna live feed from outside of Brazil. Sign up for NordVPN here.
You can also livestream Madonna’s “Celebration in Rio” concert online free through Sling TV. Sling is a live TV streaming service which offers Globo as part of its international plans. Sling currently has a 3-day free trial that you can use to access Globo to stream Madonna’s Rio concert online for free. Continue on with one of Sling’s monthly subscription plans or cancel before your free trial is up to avoid being charged.
Saturday’s show is sponsored by Itaú bank, and the concert will mark Madonna’s first show in Brazil since 2012. This is also a free show, and tickets will be made available to fans on a first-come first-serve basis on the day of the event.
This is the last stop on Madonna’s Celebration Tour, which is projected to rake in more than $225 million when all is said and done. The tour kicked off in London in October, before winding its way through Canada, the U.S., and Mexico City.
Madonna is performing a series of five concerts in Mexico City this week as part of her Celebration Tour, an occasion that the Queen of Pop has taken to reiterate her love for Mexican culture and one of its most iconic figures: the famous painter Frida Kahlo.
“As you know, I have a great history, a long history with Mexico,” the superstar said Saturday night at the Palacio de los Deportes during her performance of “Burning Up,” according to La Razón. “When I was a girl, I discovered Frida Kahlo. I went to the only museum that existed in Detroit, and there were Diego Rivera murals everywhere, but to be honest, I was more interested in a small picture in a corner, of a beautiful woman with her hair gathered in braids and intense eyes.”
Previously, Madonna met with the Kahlo family on Thursday at their home in the city neighborhood of El Pedregal, and wrote an emotional dedication in the guest book expressing she was inspired by the iconic painter, who she considers to be her “soul mate,” reported Mexican newspaper Reforma.
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Just as she’s been doing at different stops on her tour, the Material Girl has had special guests in Mexico during the performance of “Vogue” to judge a handful of dancers in a dance competition. On Saturday, at the first of her shows at the Palacio de los Deportes, she had Mexican comedian Guillermo Rodriguez, known as Jimmy Kimmel’s sidekick on ABC’s late-night show Jimmy Kimmel Live!
“When you go to a Madonna concert and she CALLS YOU UP ON STAGE!!!,” says a shared post from Rodriguez and Kimmel on Instagram with a video of the moment in the show.
The second guest was Cuban actor Alberto Guerra, who lives in Mexico. He shared the moment on his social media, along with some snapshots to immortalize the moment. “Thank you Madonna, for giving me the memory of a night that will live forever in my heart,” the actor wrote in English on Instagram.
On Tuesday (April 23), the surprise guest was Mexican influencer Wendy Guevara, a trans actress who won Televisa’s reality show La Casa de los Famosos in 2023, and who was greeted with cheers from the audience when she got onstage. “And a dream come true,” Guevara captioned a photo of her with Madonna on Instagram.
Madonna’s final performances in Mexico City are on Wednesday and Friday. It’s unknown if she will have more guests at press time.
Fans attending Madonna’s The Celebration Tour stop in Chicago Friday night (Feb. 2) got to hear something the Queen of Pop has never done before: perform her 1992 No. 1 Billboard Hot 100 hit “This Used to Be My Playground” live. (Well, a bit of it, at least.)
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The song was written by Madonna and Shep Pettibone for the 1992 film A League of Their Own. Madonna co-starred in the baseball comedy-drama as “All the Way” Mae Mordabito, and the song played over the film’s end credits. Until last night, it was the only one of her 12 No. 1 Hot 100 hits that she had never performed live.
During the concert at The United Center, Madonna reminisced about filming the movie, which was a fictionalized story about the real-life All-American Girls Professional Baseball League.
“I hope that you guys remember,” she told the audience, “I made a film called A League of Their Own, and I had to learn how to play baseball in this city. I was here for months! And, um, I kinda sucked in the beginning, but I got good. I got good at it. All the Way Mae, that’s right. Remember her? I learned how to play baseball in this goddamn city! And do you remember the song? While we’re taking a trip down memory lane in my retrospective [show].”
She then sang a few lines, a cappella, of the beginning of “This Used to Be My Playground,” with the crowd’s help, telling the audience, “Aww, bless you,” after they joined her. She then joked, “I thought only 10 of you would know it. Turns out 20 of you knew it. I’m just kidding.”
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“I have very fond memories of this city, I’m just saying,” she said.
In addition to topping the Hot 100 for one week in 1992, “Playground” reached No. 2 on the Radio Songs chart and No. 4 on the Adult Contemporary airplay chart. It would also go on to score a Golden Globe Award nomination for best original song. In 2023, it ranked as Madonna’s 19th-biggest song of all time on the Hot 100 chart.
Fun fact: In 2019, Billboard asked Madonna to consider performing three songs on her then-upcoming Madame X Tour — her three Hot 100 top 10 hits that she, at that point, had never performed live before. They were “This Used to Be My Playground,” “I’ll Remember” and “Rescue Me.” During preparations for the Madame X Tour, she rehearsed “Rescue Me,” but ultimately included it in the show as a pre-recorded spoken word interlude while she was offstage.
Could a momentous Madonna reunion with two of her former longtime backing singers be in the works? This week, the Queen of Pop plays a trio of shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden for The Celebration Tour (Jan. 22, 23 and 29). And, perhaps not so coincidentally, Donna De Lory and Niki Haris – who were seen in the Madonna documentary Truth or Dare and in the iconic video for “Vogue” – are performing two of their own shows together just up the street from the Garden on Jan. 27-28.
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While the ladies have not worked together in years, could there be any plans for Madonna to drop by one of De Lory and Haris’ gigs at The Green Room 42, or for them to appear onstage with Madonna at The Garden?
Well, De Lory and Haris join the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast this week (listen to their chat, below) to discuss that possibility, and more.
“I have no right to give any information that is not completely confirmed as of this moment,” Haris very carefully tells the Billboard Pop Shop Podcast with a laugh. “With that said, we take joy wherever we can find it — if it’s on our stage, at Madison Square Garden, wherever the joy is. In [Madonna’s] living room. … The bottom line is, we’re in town. … We may just go grab a coffee together. Who knows?”
De Lory adds: “No matter what, we’re just gonna have a great time.”
For years, De Lory and Haris were behind Madonna — supporting the superstar on the road, during television performances on the Grammy Awards and MTV Video Music Awards, and singing on many of her albums and singles. The pair joined Madonna on four tours between 1987 and 2001, with De Lory continuing to perform on two more Madonna tours in 2004-06. Their voices can be heard on many Madonna recordings released from 1987-98, including the Like a Prayer, I’m Breathless and Erotica albums, and singles such as “Vogue,” “Cherish,” “Deeper and Deeper” and “Nothing Really Matters.”
So, with so much recording history behind them, would De Lory and Haris be open to recording with Madonna, on record and in the studio for a song, if the opportunity presented itself?
“I feel for myself,” De Lory says, “and I feel for Niki as well, we would love that. We would love that. And I know that the magic that was always there would be there. … It would be sweet if that happened. … We just all have a great blend and great energy, and that will always be there.”
“I’d love to just sit around a room,” Haris says, “have [Madonna] grab her guitar, Donna go to the keyboard, and let’s just do what we love to do. … God, we just like to sing together. I would rather just sing without an agenda. Just sing.”
While De Lory and Haris are best-known for backing Madonna for years, they’ve also had their own solo careers, and also provided backing vocals individually on albums from the likes of Belinda Carlisle, Whitney Houston, Santana and Selena. In 2016, the pair came together to work on their first album, the Two Friends EP, which was released in 2017. Since then they have continued to release stand-alone tracks, and have hopes of releasing further new material, perhaps setting up camp in Nashville to work with a producer/songwriter to collaborate on new music.
During our chat with De Lory and Haris, we also asked the women about why they think “Vogue” has endured through the year, and influenced such artists as Beyoncé (with the “Vogue”-infused Queens Remix of “Break My Soul”) and Ariana Grande (with her house-inspired “Vogue” cousin “Yes, And?”).
De Lory says: “I knew when we went in to do those vocals at that session, it was a fresh sound… the music was so powerful.” Haris says that we’re in a “society that now is celebrating voguing, celebrating being a drag queen, celebrating [drag] houses … you just have a bigger audience that’s being more accepted” and adds that “‘Vogue’ is such an infectious kind of energy… it’s celebratory.”
Also on the new edition of the Pop Shop Podcast, we’ve got chart news on the debut of Grande’s “Yes, And?” atop the Billboard Hot 100, and how 21 Savage and Kali Uchis make splashy debuts on the Billboard 200 albums chart. Plus, we’re discussing news of Billy Joel soon dropping his first pop single in years, a new Justin Timberlake album on the horizon, and the music-related nominees at the 2024 Academy Awards.
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 managing director, charts and data operations, 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.)
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Madonna kicked off her music career in the early 1980s and she has remained a fixture on the charts and touring circuit well into the 21st Century. However, a new video featuring the “Queen of Pop” has X users both slamming her for being a woman of a certain age with others praising her for doing so at this stage of life.
Madonna, 65, is currently on her North American The Celebration Tour, which honors her four-decade career in music. From what has been reported, the singer and actress has been wowing crowds with her hits and performances, but a clip posted by an X user has taken hold on the social media network.
An X user named @JebraFaushay clipped a TikTok video from the @madonnalivepop408 account of the singer performing “Ray Of Light” in a silver suit while holding a bar. While the clip makes it seem like Madonna is using the bar to support herself, it appears to be a safety precaution as another video shows the “Like A Virgin” star performing on an elevated and mobile pedestal.
As the ageist comments rolled on in droves on both TikTok and X, Public Enemy frontman Chuck D was among the many to defend Madonna for having the moves and energy to rock a crowd at her age while mentioning her use of pilates to stay in shape.
“At 63 i know i can bike better than i ever did and Pilates aint easy but i give it to @Madonna for pushing the bars … @FlavorFlav is taking Pilates too and hes 64. So ageism sometimes gets like racism both ways if you let it. For anyone over 50 the rule is either you do the songs or the songs do you. @Madonna has some hard songs to perform in her catalogue,” Chuck D wrote.
Check out some of the other reactions below.
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Photo: Kevin Mazur / Getty
When Madonna was forced to reschedule her 84-date Celebration Tour on Wednesday after she was stricken with a bacterial infection and hospitalized in the ICU, concern immediately turned to the pop superstar’s health (luckily, she’s expected to make a full recovery). But for industry watchers, the postponement also raises an interesting question: Just how much does it cost to reschedule a tour of that magnitude?
It’s impossible to come up with a solid number given all of the moving parts involved in a tour of this scale, particularly without having access to any insurance policies or contracts with venues and vendors. But postponing that large of a tour just over two weeks short of the July 15 opener at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver, Canada — and then rescheduling it — will nonetheless amount to a huge endeavor requiring hours of phone calls, disruptions to people’s lives and plenty of sunk costs for venues, show crew members, ticket buyers and Madonna herself.
Live Nation and Madonna’s touring team have already spent millions on equipment and infrastructure. While much of the show is custom-built and designed, there are plenty of production pieces — from speakers to staging — that are rented from major backline companies. The tour has also chartered buses and trucks and rented venues, which are expenditures that require deposits with varying costs depending on demand and availability.
Live Nation and the Madonna tour will have to pay some of these deposits, especially for those high-demand items that can’t be redirected toward other tours. In some cases, they will also be on the hook for venue deposits for canceled shows, although most venues will waive the cost to maintain a good relationship with Live Nation, which brings many arenas most of their touring content.
The largest group impacted by the postponement will be the approximately 1.2 million fans who purchased tickets for the tour, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue. Some fans booked airline tickets, hotel rooms and rental properties around the tour, and some of those purchases will be deemed non-refundable. Those fans will have to make new plans after the rescheduled Madonna dates are announced, likely sometime in the next few weeks. Those who can’t attend might be able to get a refund, depending on what Madonna’s team decides, or sell their tickets on either a fan-to-fan exchange for face value or on a ticket resale site like StubHub or Vivid Seats.
The largest human costs will be borne by a much smaller group: the men and women working as roadies, touring professionals and support staff for the tour. With just over two weeks to go before opening, most positions on the tour have been filled, and many have started work building sets, editing content and rehearsing. As independent contractors, rescheduling the tour means their pay will be interrupted too, potentially leaving hundreds of people unemployed when they had planned to be working. While many, depending on the state, will receive a small severance and qualify for limited unemployment benefits, the disruption caused by the postponement will almost certainly mean that many touring professionals will not generate the income they had budgeted for this year and will now have to spend the months they thought they had secure employment looking for new work.
Fortunately, because the concert business is currently so strong at the highest level, there are more work opportunities in touring now than ever before, and some crew members will be able to immediately find replacement gigs. Others, however, will have to wait months until the rescheduled Madonna tour launches.
For the touring operation itself, the costs of the postponement could easily add up to millions of dollars. But the Celebration Tour has been so successful — more than 600,000 tickets were sold the first day tickets went on sale — that it will still amount to a huge financial windfall for Live Nation and Madonna when the tour eventually hits the road. That doesn’t mean it’ll be easy for everyone getting there
Madonna is going into the archives! The Queen of Pop took to Instagram on Monday (April 24) to share photos of some of her most beloved career looks that she recently rediscovered in her extensive storage space.
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“A trip to my archives is always a nostalgic trip down memory lane,” she wrote alongside a series of photos with some of her most iconic throwback pieces of clothing. “If I think about my journey through music over the last 4 decades— how could I not think about all the incredible clothes I got to wear and all the amazing designers I was lucky enough to work with!!”
The slideshow features a number of Jean Paul Gaultier-designed cone bras that Madge famously wore throughout her 1990 Blonde Ambition tour. “When I was a little girl I remember my mother was always cold. Partly because she was sick but also because she never had a coat,” Madonna continued her message. “She always spent what little money we had on our coats and I remember standing outside waiting for the schoolbus With my mother shivering in the cold in the middle of winter!! Years later when I became successful my mother’s sister said to me, ‘Now You can buy all the coats your mother couldn’t buy for herself!’”
The “Vogue” singer continued, “The journey from the memory of my shivering mother in Winter to me shivering in the over air-conditioned storage space where all my costumes are stored is quite remarkable! I am overwhelmed with gratitude. Every time I put on an incredible coat I think of my Mother. I hope she likes my taste in costumes but most of all i hope she’s warm!”
Madonna is less than three months away from kicking of her Celebration Tour, honoring her four decades of hits, on July 15 at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver.
See her post below, and check out the full list of Celebration Tour dates here.
Madonna is taking her massive Celebration Tour to Mexico. The icon revealed that she will be stopping to perform in Mexico City on January 25, 2024, marking her first non-U.S. or Europe dates of the tour.
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Tickets for the new date at Palacio De Los Deportes will go on sale on Friday (April 21) at 11 a.m. local time here. Legacy members of Madonna’s official fan club will have access to a pre-sale beginning on Monday (April 17) at 1 p.m. local time. CitiBanamex cardmembers’ presale begins on Thursday (April 20) at 11 a.m. local time.
The Celebration Tour — which will honor her four decades of hits — is set to span from July 15 all the way through Dec. 1. The first North American leg of the tour will kick off Saturday, July 15, at the Rogers Arena in Vancouver and will make additional stops in Phoenix, Detroit, Atlanta, Toronto, Montreal and more before concluding at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Oct. 8. The tour’s European leg will pick up with a pair of dates at The O2 arena on Oct. 14-15 and will make stops in Paris, Barcelona, Milan, Berlin and more before concluding in Amsterdam on Dec. 1 at the Ziggo Dome. The tour then picks back up in Brooklyn on Dec. 13, and stretches through Jan. 20 in Phoenix, Ariz. As previously announced, Bob the Drag Queen will be a special guest on the tour.
“This is a good time for me — I’m gathering ideas, getting inspired, hanging out with creative people, watching films, seeing art, listening to music,” Madonna shared of getting back onstage in a recent feature with Vanity Fair.
Pop icon Madonna won’t allow a troubling trend of state legislation targeting the LGBTQ+ community impede her career-spanning Celebration Tour, announcing plans to perform in Nashville just weeks after Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed a law restricting drag shows in the Volunteer State.
Tennessee Senate Bill 3 creates a new felony offense for anyone engaging in an “adult cabaret performance” on public property or in any location where the performance “could be viewed by a person who is not an adult.” In announcing her plans to perform at the Bridgestone Arena on Dec. 22 — one of nine new shows added to the sellout tour that now stretches to 80 dates across North America and Europe — Madonna and tour opener Caldwell Tidicue, who performs as Bob the Drag Queen, seem prepared to confront and possibly break the law. Maybe.
Madonna addressed the issue in a press release announcing the Nashville show, among others.
“The oppression of the LGBTQ+ is not only unacceptable and inhumane; it’s creating an unsafe environment; it makes America a dangerous place for our most vulnerable citizens, especially trans women of color,” she said. “Also, these so-called laws to protect our children are unfounded and pathetic. Anyone with half a brain knows not to f–k with a drag queen. Bob and I will see you from the stage in Nashville where we will celebrate the beauty that is the queer community.”
Madonna noted that there are over 100 anti-LGBTQ+ bills currently making their way through various state legislatures around the country, with the longtime activist committing to donating a portion of proceeds from her to show to support trans rights organizations.
Madonna has performed in Nashville just once as part of a major tour — in 2016 on the Rebel Heart trek, selling out the Bridgestone Arena and grossing $1.5 million, according to Billboard Boxscore.
Besides the new Music City show, Madonna also announced two new dates on the East Coast, a new run of shows in California and tour stops in Las Vegas and Phoenix. The Celebration Tour has sold out over 40 shows and counting across Toronto, Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and more.
Citi cardmembers and fan club members will have access to presale tickets for the new dates starting tomorrow at noon local time through Thursday at 6pm local time. The general on sale for most of the shows starts on Friday (March 31) at 10am local time on Madonna’s website, while the Philadelphia date goes on sale at noon.
Fans can also purchase VIP Packages, which may include premium tickets, behind the scenes tours, group photos on-stage, a pre-show reception and more.
New Dates for The Celebration Tour
Dec. 18 Washington, DC Capital One ArenaDec. 20 Philadelphia, PA Wells Fargo Center – On Sale at 12pm Local Time 03/31Dec. 22 Nashville, TN Bridgestone ArenaJan. 7 2024 Los Angeles, CA Kia ForumJan. 8 2024 Los Angeles, CA Kia ForumJan. 11 2024 Palm Springs, CA Acrisure ArenaJan. 13 2024 Sacramento, CA Golden 1 CenterJan. 15 2024 San Francisco, CA Chase CenterJan. 18, 2024 Las Vegas, NV MGM Grand Garden ArenaJan. 20, 2024 Phoenix, AZ Footprint Center