Magazine Feature
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The show was going so well. An hour into the set from Kx5 — the electronic music supergroup of genre leaders Kaskade and deadmau5 — it was, as intended, a dazzling feat of light, sound, video and the emotional punch of those elements combined. Then the power went out, and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum — and the 46,000 fans assembled there on that drizzly night in December — were thrust into silent darkness.
From the front of the house, deadmau5’s longtime manager, Dean Wilson, sprinted backstage — where, he says, he found “everybody running around like headless chickens, screaming, ‘Generator’s on fire!’ ”
The generator was not supposed to be on fire. However, it had turned itself off due to overheating and was emanating smoke. Its programming had then instructed three backup generators to also shut down to avoid igniting the 17,000 gallons of diesel fuel inside. Frantic staffers worked to salvage what had been billed as a landmark live performance — one that cost “almost seven figures to design and over seven figures to execute,” says Kaskade’s manager, Ryan Henderson.
Success seemed unlikely. “When you have a major failure like that, normally something then doesn’t work,” Wilson says. “Something’s not rebooted properly. Some configuration can’t restart because it has crashed so badly.” But when deadmau5 hit the button that would, in theory, restart the show, restart it did. The performance, co-produced by Live Nation affiliate and powerhouse electronic music promoter Insomniac Events alongside both artists’ teams, set a record for the biggest ticketed global headliner dance event of 2022.
Read Kx5’s full Billboard cover story here. Kx5, presented by Carnival, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW, on March 18. Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
Givenchy sweater.
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
On Kaskade: Dior jacket, Oscar & Frank eyewear. On deadmau5: Amiri jacket
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
On Kaskade: Dior jacket and sneakers, Mouty pants, Oscar & Frank eyewear. On deadmau5: Amiri jacket, pants, and sneakers.
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
Amiri jacket.
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
On Kaskade: Louis Vuitton jacket. On deadmau5: Amiri jacket.
Grooming by Christina Guerra. On-Site Production by Kayla Landrum.
A leaked album was the best thing that ever happened to Feid.
In September 2022, the Colombian singer-songwriter was headlining three consecutive sold-out hometown dates at Plaza de Toros La Macarena — Medellín’s famed bullfighting ring and concert venue — where he performed for more than 30,000 people over the course of the three shows. He was due for some much-needed rest the following Monday. But that never happened.
Instead, the artist born Salomón Villada Hoyos, 30, who also goes by the nickname Ferxxo, received an agitated call from his manager, Luis Villamizar, with the news that his album, Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo — scheduled for a December release — had, without their knowledge, arrived much earlier, in the form of a 39-minute voice note first leaked as a link on the internet.
“All my spirits dropped,” he recalls today, still sounding disappointed. “It was incomplete. It was a mess, and I felt rage — but that feeling lasted about half an hour. After that, I talked to my mom to see how we could take advantage of the situation and thankfully, we reacted quickly.”
With help from his team, producers and record label, Universal Music Latino (UML), he took matters into his own hands, working relentlessly for 24 hours to release an album that wasn’t even mixed or mastered yet. Because all 15 tracks had been leaked, Feid changed the title to Feliz Cumpleaños Ferxxo Te Pirateamos El Álbum (Happy Birthday Feid We Leaked the Album) and had his sister, who’s also his longtime graphic designer, create new cover art that acknowledged how the songs had ultimately spread: Though Universal quickly took down the initial leaked link, the audio had already been shared to DropBox and then sent wide through a chain of WhatsApp conversations. (Six of the 15 tracks had already been released as singles at the time of the leak.)
Read the full Billboard cover story here. Feid, presented by Samsung Galaxy, will perform at Billboard Presents The Stage at SXSW on March 17.
Penske Media Corp. is the largest shareholder of SXSW; its brands are official media partners of SXSW.
Image Credit: Devin Christopher
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Image Credit: Devin Christopher
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Image Credit: Devin Christopher
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Image Credit: Devin Christopher
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Image Credit: Devin Christopher
Feid photographed on January 12, 2023 at Proper Studio in Miami.
Rushing from elementary school with handwritten raps in her pocket, 10-year-old Alyssa Michelle Stephens would hop in her father’s “old-school cars with [24-inch] rims” and head straight to the recording studio — first in his friends’ homes, but soon enough, in professional spaces. “When we started paying for sessions, he’d say, ‘You ain’t gon’ be in here all day,’ ” the artist now known as Latto recalls. “ ‘You better have that song ready, top to bottom, one take, in and out!’ ” Even then, the Atlanta-raised aspiring MC — today a chart-topping, Grammy-nominated rapper with more than 1 billion on-demand streams in the United States, according to Luminate — was preparing for her destiny, winning high school writing competitions as a fifth grader.
Nurtured by her accountant mother and “hustler” father — both of whom she recalls living off ramen noodles during her early years — the self-proclaimed “daddy’s girl” stayed ahead of the curve, accompanying him to video shoots where rising acts like Dem Franchize Boyz and Ciara used his cars. “I just remember being so mesmerized by the whole process,” she says. “I loved the fast-paced hustle and bustle.” At 16, Latto competed on (and won) the first season of Lifetime’s hip-hop reality show, The Rap Game, under the moniker Miss Mulatto. Already, she had the foresight to recognize a bad career move when she saw one and, citing a less-than-adequate payout, turned down the show’s grand prize — a record deal with Jermaine Dupri’s So So Def Recordings — and remained independent until she signed to RCA Records in 2020, following the success of her breakthrough single, “B–ch From Da Souf.”
Read Latto’s Billboard Women in Music profile here.
Image Credit: Ssam Kim
Christian Cowan dress, Sterling King jewelry.
Image Credit: Ssam Kim
ACT N°1 gown, Hardot shoes.
Image Credit: Ssam Kim
Brandon Blackwood coat, Jessica Rich shoes, Versace eyewear courtesy of Tab Vintage, Sara Shala necklace.
Image Credit: Ssam Kim
Christian Cowan dress and shoes, Sterling King jewelry.
Image Credit: Ssam Kim
Styling by Todd White. Hair by Keshaun Williamson. Makeup by Melissa Ocasio.
Lana Del Rey practices “automatic singing.” Using the improvisational songwriting technique, she lets her voice carry over accompaniments, not commandeering where her words or melodies take her, accepting all ideas she has in the moment and editing them later. Lately, her voice has led her home, back to memories of her childhood in Lake Placid, N.Y., and to ruminations on relationships with her family and the divergent paths they’ve taken.
That subject underpins her upcoming ninth album, Did You Know That There’s a Tunnel Under Ocean Blvd (out March 24). Del Rey, 37, says she hesitantly began to unpack this subject matter with her previous album, Blue Banisters — but now, she’s ready to dig deeper. “At first I was so uncomfortable,” she says of the more personal material. “Then, by the grace of God, I just felt completely unburdened.”
As a singer-songwriter, this year’s Visionary honoree has embodied that word for over a decade. Her 2012 major-label debut, Born To Die, made her a star and defined music’s Tumblr era, as a young Del Rey toyed with both the romantic and the darker sides of the American dream. Her “world building,” as she calls it now, for her early work created a collage of beautiful and disparate images, pairing hip-hop aesthetics with references to the Kennedy family, Elvis Presley with John Wayne, and old Hollywood glamour with biker gang grit.
Since then, Del Rey has pushed musical boundaries — seamlessly peppering an album with features from Stevie Nicks to Playboi Carti (2017’s Lust for Life), reworking a Sublime cover into a contemporary Billboard Hot 100 hit (2019’s “Doin’ Time”), for instance — while achieving both critical acclaim and commercial success.
Read her full Billboard Women in Music profile here.
Image Credit: Lia Clay Miller
Image Credit: Lia Clay Miller
Image Credit: Lia Clay Miller
Image Credit: Lia Clay Miller
Image Credit: Lia Clay Miller
Image Credit: Lia Clay Miller
Image Credit: Lia Clay Miller
Image Credit: Lia Clay Miller
Image Credit: Lia Clay Miller
Hair by Sheridan Ward at Walter Schupfer Management. Makeup by Etienne Ortega at The Only Agency. On-Site Production by Kayla Landrum.
Ivy Queen arrives in full color-coordinated regalia — a form-fitting, floor-length dress in lemon hues that match her long, yellow-tipped acrylic nails and the curly, beach blonde locks that reach her waist. Standing still and ramrod straight, her eyes surveying the room from under impossibly long lashes, she has the bearing of, well, a queen.
It’s a far cry from nearly 25 years ago, when Martha Ivelisse Pesante Rodríguez, then 25, walked into the San Juan, Puerto Rico, studios of The Noise, the all-male rap collective formed by the pioneering DJ Negro, who sized her up: a country bumpkin from the island’s west side, her tiny frame dwarfed by oversized jeans and a T-shirt, hair tied in “500 braids,” lips painted blue, nails like talons.
“What’s your name?” he asked. “Ivy Queen,” she replied, without hesitation. “I have a song called ‘Somos Raperos, Pero no Delincuentes’ [‘We Are Rappers, Not Delinquents’].” Overcome by shyness, she then flipped the mic around and rapped, facing the wall. But even with her back to him, DJ Negro was impressed. “Welcome to The Noise,” he said. “You know we don’t have girls here, right? You’re the first one.”
It was 1995, a time when the Puerto Rican airwaves were dominated by glamorous, big-voiced pop divas like Ednita Nazario and Yolandita Monge, and when reggaetón and rap were still underground movements dominated by men.
“When I started in this music industry, I didn’t look like I look right now,” says Ivy Queen, noting she was relentlessly criticized for her deep voice, her fashion choices and her staunch refusal to exploit her sexuality.
Read Ivy Queen’s full Billboard Women in Music profile here.
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
Image Credit: Austin Hargrave
It’s 9:15 a.m. in Seoul, and most of the nine members of TWICE have just woken up. They’re barefaced, dressed casually and cozily in warm knits and sweatshirts; Chaeyoung still wears her parka hood, her blonde hair peeking out of the bottom. Nayeon, seated next to her, cleans her glasses with her shirt sleeve. Tzuyu, however, is alert and attentive. When I ask (through a translator) who’s the early riser of the group, everyone points to her.
This morning, the women of TWICE look more like students who’ve arrived at an early-morning class than the wildly popular K-pop girl group they are. But for their globe-spanning cohort of fans (known as ONCE), this is a familiar sight. The group’s long-running YouTube reality and vlog show, TWICE TV, along with other online vlog content, have gone behind the scenes with the act since its 2015 debut. Over the past seven-plus years, fans have followed along as Nayeon, Jeongyeon, Momo, Sana, Jihyo, Mina, Dahyun, Chaeyoung and Tzuyu (who range in age from 23 to 27) have recorded music; toured across South Korea and Asia; attended award ceremonies; debuted their first-ever English-language single, “The Feels”; and, last year, played and sold out U.S. arenas, a still-rare feat for K-pop artists.
“That was our first time having a concert of that scale, so it was really shocking for us to see so many fans in the U.S.,” says Jihyo, recalling TWICE’s two nights in May 2022 at Los Angeles’ Banc of California Stadium.
Read TWICE’s full Billboard Women in Music interview here.
Image Credit: Sunhye Shin
Nayeon
Image Credit: Sunhye Shin
Jeongyeon
Image Credit: Sunhye Shin
Momo
Image Credit: Sunhye Shin
Sana
Image Credit: Sunhye Shin
Jihyo
Image Credit: Sunhye Shin
Mina
Image Credit: Sunhye Shin
Dahyun
Image Credit: Sunhye Shin
Chaeyoung
Image Credit: Sunhye Shin
Tzuyu
Image Credit: Sunhye Shin
Standing, from left: Tzuyu, Sana, Chaeyoung, Nayeon, Jeongyeon and Jihyo. Seated, from left: Momo, Dahyun and Mina. On-Site Production by Stacy Nam.
The September day that Becky G learned she had scored her first No. 1 as a solo artist on Billboard’s Latin Airplay chart, with “Bailé Con Mi Ex,” she woke up her fiancé, the soccer star Sebastian Lletget, with tears in her eyes. “He was like, ‘Is everything OK? Why are you crying?’ ” she remembers. “A lot of people like to say I’m only successful because of my collaborations. To be able to prove myself as an artist and carry my own weight was important for me. To show the world that whichever way, collaborations or alone, I’m good.”
That solo feat is just one of many points of pride for the 25-year-old Mexican American artist and businesswoman, born Rebbeca Marie Gomez, these days. In 2022, she earned her first No. 1 on the Latin Pop Albums chart with the 14-track Esquemas, and another album — her first regional Mexican set — is due to arrive later this year. Come April, she’ll have “a huge opportunity to reintroduce myself to the world” when she plays Coachella under her own name for the first time.
All the while, Becky G has used her platform to help elevate the women around her. “This industry has really tried to condition women to see each other as competition. We’ve had to survive these very male-dominated spaces because of that ‘there’s only one seat at the table’ mentality. So we’re looking at each other like, ‘Who’s going to get it?’ [But] at my table, everyone is welcome,” she says firmly. “When I open the door, I’m going to leave it open and make sure everyone gets in.”
Read Becky G’s full Billboard Women in Music profile here.
By the time Lainey Wilson showcased for BMG Nashville staff in 2018, she was at a crossroads. She had already been in Nashville for over five years after leaving her small Louisiana hometown of Baskin and was struggling to fit in. Her heavily accented, twangy country vocals and Southern swagger weren’t in fashion as the genre leaned more toward pop, but her attempts to accommodate that style weren’t working either. So she doubled down on her tough-but-vulnerable authenticity. With that attitude, she sang, “She’s a soldier/When I hold her/Up in the air” in her defiant “Middle Finger.” “Take that, Nashville,” she thought.
Wilson, now 30, laughs when she remembers that time. “I just got to a certain point where I’d been in Nashville for so long [and] my give-a-damn was a little busted. I felt like, ‘Why not just say what I want to say how I want to say it?’ That’s one of the thoughts that really set me free.”
That fearlessness — and her robust, honest voice — captivated BMG Nashville president Jon Loba, who had been turned on to Wilson by another artist on his roster, Jimmie Allen.
“[She had] this absolute confidence. And it was an amazing vocal and, even at that time, amazing songs,” says Loba, who immediately signed her to Broken Bow Records. “But it was her narrative in between the music [where] you really got a sense of who she was: this strong woman from a small town in Louisiana who did not want to compromise who she was.”
Read Lainey Wilson’s full Billboard Women in Music story here.
When Kim Petras emerged from beneath Sam Smith’s layered pink tulle gown on Saturday Night Live in January, it was a perfect visual metaphor for her presence on the Hot 100 chart-topper they were performing, “Unholy.” Cooing and belting about her virtues as a no-hassle, dirty-chic sugar baby, Petras was magnetic — the hit’s secret weapon, revealed.
Two weekends later, at the Grammy Awards, Petras had an even more definitive moment in the spotlight. “Unholy” won best pop duo/group performance, and, at Smith’s behest, Petras accepted the award, exuding joy and liberation in a speech that became a high point of the night. “I just want to thank all the incredible transgender legends before me who kicked these doors open for me so I could be here tonight,” said the German singer, who in that moment became the first out trans artist to ever win a major-category Grammy.
Changing the game has become habitual for the dance-pop devotee, who signed to Republic in summer 2021. In October, “Unholy” made Petras and Smith the first openly trans and nonbinary artists, respectively, to top the Hot 100 in its 65-year history. When Madonna introduced their performance of “Unholy” at the Grammys, thanking a new generation of “rebels out there, forging a new path and taking the heat for it,” it felt like both a coronation and vindication for Petras, who, since her 2017 arrival, has always carried herself like a main pop girl but has only recently started to be treated like one.
Read the full interview with Billboard Women in Music’s 2023 Chartbreaker here.
During the first of his two sold-out stadium shows in November in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Bad Bunny lost his voice.