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In early December, Island Records co-chairmen/co-CEOs Justin Eshak and Imran Majid traveled to the north coast of Jamaica to visit the 87-year-old founder of the label they now run, Chris Blackwell. The executives were coming off one of the best years in Island’s recent history, and three weeks before their visit, two of Island’s recent breakthroughs, Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan, both scored Grammy nominations in the categories of record, song and album of the year and best new artist — the first time in history a label had two acts nominated for each of those honors in the same year.
That wasn’t the reason for the trip, however. It was about “respect,” Majid says. The two had visited Blackwell at his Goldeneye resort in 2021, before they officially took over Island at the beginning of 2022, to meet him and pay homage to the institution he had launched in 1959, which became the label home of Bob Marley, U2, Cat Stevens and Grace Jones.
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This time, “It kind of felt like visiting family or a friend,” Eshak says. “As opposed to last time when we were like, ‘Oh, f–k!’ ”
During those three years, Eshak and Majid have taken Island from a label with an illustrious past but moribund present to one of the premier destinations for artists to break — and 2024 was when it all came together. First came Carpenter, who scored her first top 40 hit on the Hot 100 in January with “Feather” before steadily building momentum through the spring. “Espresso,” her first top 10, followed, and by June, Carpenter had her first No. 1 with “Please Please Please.” At the end of August, her album Short n’ Sweet debuted atop the Billboard 200.
Roan’s ascent was almost simultaneous, fueled by strong word-of-mouth and a series of increasingly bigger festival appearances that crested in the summer, when her single “Good Luck, Babe!” reached No. 4 on the Hot 100; her album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, climbed into the top five of the Billboard 200; and she broke an attendance record for her Lollapalooza performance in Chicago. So when the Grammy nominations arrived, Island’s chief executives were not surprised. “Once the two of them started to control the zeitgeist,” Eshak says, “it just felt like the appropriate result.”
From the outside, the rise of the two artists — one a former Disney star who refashioned herself through clever live shows and radio, the other a budding queer pop icon who had been dumped by the major-label system early on and rebooted her career by touring and building a fan community — appeared to have reached that point through different paths. Eshak and Majid don’t see it that way. “You almost had to be at the shows before the success to understand,” Majid says. “That was what we bet on really early — [they were] artists that had such an engaged fan base from touring, streaming almost came secondary to that. At one point we were like, ‘Once this hits the masses, it could have a global impact.’ ”
By mid-2024, the narrative was set: Carpenter and Roan were leading a roster of artists who built cross-sectional fan bases that pushed beyond typical genre or cultural tropes. And for the first time in years, Island Records had returned to the roots Blackwell had nurtured in the latter half of the 20th century — a label where artists felt comfortable, heard and supported, and where good music was more important than commerciality.
Which is not to say that Island hasn’t succeeded commercially. The label ended 2024 with a 2.49% current market share — quadrupling the 0.62% it had in 2023. Island’s market share is included under Republic Records, but broken out on its own, it is the ninth-best of last year despite a wide reorganization at Universal Music Group in February that included extensive layoffs that affected all labels at the company.
Eshak and Majid’s greatest achievement, then, was to take a label with 30 dedicated employees (sharing some services like radio and marketing within REPUBLIC Collective) and create a culture that let its artists and staff flourish creatively, commercially and artistically.
They are now reaping the rewards. As 2024 wound down, new signees Gigi Perez and Lola Young landed their first Hot 100 hits, “Sailor Song” at No. 22 and “Messy” at No. 54, respectively.
Now, some in the industry are comparing Eshak and Majid’s success to that of John Janick’s at Interscope, which has turned young artists like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo into superstars at a time when it’s becoming increasingly difficult to break artists.
The trick is to maintain that success and future-proof against inevitable cold streaks. “What humbles you is when you think you have magic and it doesn’t work,” Majid says. “Justin and I are fortunate that we have 20 years of experience of what we think the right attitude to have is and what is not.”
“We just feel like there’s a new wave of artists that fit our ethos and that we can plug into what we do and give them a bespoke campaign,” Eshak says. “And we feel like we have the team. It felt really great going to Jamaica. Imran and I were sitting there like, ‘Our team’s got this.’ ”
This story appears in the Jan. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Kai Cenat — the eternally upbeat streamer whose profile has exploded in recent years to make him the most popular personality on the Amazon-owned Twitch platform — is taking a moment to think.
In the five years or so since he’s become a full-time content creator, Cenat has had some of the most famous hip-hop artists, athletes and actors come to his house to drop in and join the “chat,” the affectionate word he uses for any of the 700,000-plus people who subscribe to his channel. He’s thinking over whether he can recall a favorite moment among so many, but it’s tough. It wasn’t when SZA and Lizzo stopped by together in the fall, nor when NBA All-Star Kyrie Irving taught Cenat’s friends and family how to play basketball. It would be reasonable to think it might be one of the many times Kevin Hart, one of his idols, swung by to kick it during the holidays.
Sitting in the basement room of his mountainside Georgia mansion, the 23-year-old needs a beat or two to consider the options. The room is a temple of adolescence, with pictures of his favorite basketball players, vintage arcade machines like Pac-Man and a gaming racing wheel. He has a huge walk-in closet and a king-size bed, both of which are being used by his three-person styling team. The only part of the room that hints at some sort of professional living there is the desk at one end that contains the computer and camera setup that power his streaming empire. Dressed in a BAPE hoodie and stonewashed denim that make him look like he’s straddling sartorial eras, Cenat finally settles on an answer: The May weekend last year when Drake and Kendrick Lamar dropped a total of four songs, three of them back to back.
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“That was the most fun experience I’ve had,” he says with a smile bright enough to power a Tesla. “I’m not going to lie.” It’s tough to tell if he’s actually super excited or just trying to manage his constant and unbridled childlike energy.
“We never experienced something like that,” he explains. “It was a good week. Everybody had their opinions. I was literally hopping on stream and had like 60,000 viewers. As soon as they dropped, my s–t was spiked to like 100,000.”
When it came to the beef that ended up taking over hip-hop for the better part of 2024, most popular streamers took sides or called winners, and Cenat was no different. “I’m cool with Drake,” he says. “So people would expect me to be on Drake’s side.
“But I’m not going to lie,” he continues. “Kendrick won that battle. It was good. I loved every second of it. I was just appreciating the moment. Like, bro, we got bangers right now that’s dropping back to back and everybody’s talking about them. It was definitely fire.”
Kody Phillips top, Louis Vuitton pants, AMIRI hat, Jacob & Co. watch.
Andrew Hetherington
For a person who makes a living by staring straight into a camera for hours on end and connecting with strangers, appearing truthful and genuine is crucial — and it’s one of Cenat’s superpowers. It’s what has allowed him to not only become the most popular streamer on Twitch, but also the most popular streamer in hip-hop and, arguably, one of the most powerful people in all music. No other streamer has been able to corral as many artists to be a part of their online world as Cenat has — and very few have earned the cultural respect from fans and artists that he has. His words hold so much weight that he’s able to materially affect the careers of the superstars his fans care about. That’s why during that weekend in May, Drake told Cenat to “stay on stream” before dropping his “Family Matters” dis track — he knew a good review from the jovial streamer would bode well for him not only in his sales, but in his battle with Lamar. But it’s also why, after the streamer said Drake’s “The Heart Part 6” was weak, Drake allegedly blocked him.
That’s just one of many major moments Cenat has driven for music’s biggest stars over the past few years. He’s had spats with Nicki Minaj, Blueface and Ye, though he eventually made up with all of them. (Minaj even gifted him a pink throne that he proudly keeps in his bedroom and doesn’t let anyone sit on.) Most recently, while on a stream in early January, he panned Lil Baby’s highly anticipated fourth album, WHAM, even questioning why certain songs were added to it. WHAM trended on X — mainly due to jokes about Lil Baby being washed. While it’s unfair to attribute to Cenat the initial negative reaction Baby’s album received on social media, he had a significant hand in spreading the sentiment that it wasn’t Baby’s best work. That’s just the power Cenat holds in 2025: He’s a self-made institution. Like EF Hutton, when Cenat talks, people listen.
All of that has made him, for all intents and purposes, the closest thing Gen Z has to 106th & Park or TRL, the erstwhile midday live-music shows that used to air on BET and MTV and were appointment viewing for any fans wanting updates on their favorite artists. Cenat’s stream is now the main place to tune in to see artists having fun and feeling comfortable enough to let loose and relax. “Yeah, people will be saying that,” he says with an impish grin. “For everyone to come to play music or just have a fun interaction, it means a lot to me, honestly, because I didn’t think, out of everybody, they would want to come over to my house. I still haven’t got to like really let it sit in and really let it digest, but it does mean a lot to me, and I’m just having fun as I go on.”
Building a platform to rival the biggest cable music stations of the 1990s and early 2000s should take at least a decade — but it’s important to understand how quickly all this has happened. Cenat, who first started posting on YouTube in 2019, is not an overnight success. But considering how integral he’s become to the cultural fabric, you could be forgiven for thinking he’s been ingrained in the hip-hop internet landscape forever.
Before first appearing on the platform, the Bronx-born creator had moved to Georgia at a young age with his mother and siblings, living in a homeless shelter while his mother worked multiple jobs to create a better life for them. It was tough, but Cenat says with his trademark positivity that he doesn’t remember those times as rough or bad. The family eventually made its way back to New York, and Cenat enrolled at SUNY Morrisville to study business administration. In search of a creative outlet, he started posting funny skits on YouTube. For Cenat, the decision was a no-brainer: “I watched YouTubers growing up — that’s why I understand it so well.”
Andrew Hetherington
Andrew Hetherington
Mainly filmed in his dorm room and around campus, Cenat’s skits were low-rent affairs with minimal costumes or production where he came off as a slapstick comedian in the tradition of Martin Lawrence. His most viewed videos were his challenges, like the popular “Try Not To Laugh Challenge” that he still does to this day and clips like the Extreme Ding Dong Ditch series, which sounds crazy but was just Cenat and his friends playing the childhood game in different locations. They didn’t get massive traction, but they caught the eye of fellow Bronx-bred creator Fanum, who invited Cenat to join the AMP (Any Means Possible) collective of YouTube creators. Soon, Cenat was posting videos at an increasingly rapid pace, as well as appearing in clips by other AMP members.
By 2021, Cenat was ready to branch out from YouTube and grow his audience another way. He decided to try livestreaming and landed on Twitch, the platform Amazon acquired in 2014, as his new home. At the time, it was being used mainly by gamers to livestream gameplay while avid fans watched like a professional sport. Cenat enjoyed playing video games, but his first foray onto Twitch was through what are known as “just chatting” streams, where he’d sit down with a camera on his desk and, yep, just talk with his audience. By the end of his first day on Twitch, he had 5,000 followers. By the end of his first month, he had 70,000. The next month, 140,000 people tuned in.
Despite Cenat’s brand now being so closely associated with hip-hop, he didn’t start producing music content, really, until he started streaming. “When I started streaming, most of my content was blowing up based off me just reacting to different songs and listening to albums when they drop and just enjoying it for what it was and just saying, like, my opinions on it,” he remembers. “And then, like, people just loved it.”
In fact, he didn’t even listen to rap until he was a teenager. Growing up, “I did straight Michael Jackson up until high school” — which is when Cenat became a fan of a hometown hero who was then dominating the charts: A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie. “That was my real transition,” he says. “I went from Michael Jackson to A Boogie, and I explored from then on.”
His musical exploration has fueled his Twitch channel’s growth: Thanks to his Mafiathons — monthlong 24-hour streaming marathons that he’s held with some of the most famous names in music, sports and entertainment — Cenat now has the most subscribers on Twitch (728,535 at press time) and holds its record for the most concurrent streamers at 720,000. He’s now also one of the richest streamers in the world, according to Forbes, which estimates his 2024 earnings at around $8.5 million. (Cenat declined to comment on his earnings.)
Andrew Hetherington
His manager, John Nelson, credits these streaming marathons with cementing the Kai Cenat brand. “His first 24-hour stream [in January 2023] is really when his trajectory went off,” Nelson says. “And it’s interesting — I believe it was that one that ended with Ice Spice [on camera]. Funny, because both of them took off at that same time. Two New York kids. And, you know, they were both very popular then, but they weren’t the megastars that they are today.” Each of Cenat’s Mafiathons has helped him not only grow his audience but also break Twitch records; the most recent, in November, featured a who’s who of pop culture that included Serena Williams, GloRilla, Sexyy Red and Druski that helped him break the record for most subscribers, with more than 340,000 new people paying $5.99 to join Club Cenat.
Yes, more than 720,000 people pay money to watch a 23-year-old talk about whatever comes to mind and prank his best friends. But why, exactly?
“I just think it’s the creativity,” Cenat says. “This is just the vibe I give off, like on my stream. I try to make it as fun as possible. And being able to, like, break ice with anybody who comes on.”
It’s the creativity, sure. But it’s the combination of that creativity with his comparatively radical sincerity that has endeared him to Fortune 500 companies like McDonald’s, T-Mobile and Nike. It’s also what drew the likes of Snoop Dogg, the veritable hip-hop pitchman who’s able to move between disparate worlds, to tap the young star to work together. And it’s the reason Hart, the blockbuster comedian who has mastered the art of multimodal content more than perhaps any other superstar, took a liking to him over any other streamer of the moment.
Cenat, much like Snoop and Hart, has built a brand on being genuinely unproblematic, which, combined with his affable demeanor, has appealed to an unusually large swath of people. Unlike several other popular streamers, he hasn’t delved into the incel echo chamber side of streaming culture that has, in part, been popularized by Twitch competitor Kick. The Australian-based streaming platform reportedly offered Cenat $60 million to switch to Kick, but he turned it down.
When asked why, Cenat struggles to articulate a clear metaphor. “Say, for example, you go to Steph [Curry] and you’re like, ‘Hey, man, we want you to be a running back [in] the NFL. You’re so good at basketball, but we want you to just leave everything behind right now and go to NFL football and be a running back,’ ” he says. “It doesn’t make sense! I’ve been on Twitch. I’ve built a core community. Kick is not my home. My home is definitely Twitch. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. That’s what I live by.”
Andrew Hetherington
Andrew Hetherington
And, unlike a number of popular streamers, he’s managed to stay clear of the political discourse that dominated the conversation in 2024. “It’s just because I don’t understand it. Some people say I should just do some research on it and, like, inform myself,” Cenat explains. “Now, I’m living in America, so it’s good to know what’s going on in politics. But like, I’m just not educated enough to speak on that.”
On the early January day I sit down with Cenat, Adin Ross, the superstar Kick streamer who famously interviewed President Donald Trump and gifted him a Tesla Cybertruck, made a statement apologizing for “raising a toxic community” on the platform and vowed to do better. “I want to rebuild,” Ross said. “I want to actually completely revamp and reset everything. I want to go back to stuff that matters. With that being said, every stream that I do, especially at this point, until I say something else, is going to be something that’s heartwarming and something that’s meaningful.”
Sounds a lot like Cenat, doesn’t it? He brushes off the idea. Cenat believes a fan base is a reflection of the creator. “So if you feed it nonsense, you’ll get nonsense. [Ross] realized what happened and now he’s trying to make a big change.”
But regardless of how he frames it, Cenat still has major clout. On Aug. 4, 2023, a full-on riot ensued in New York’s Union Square when he announced to his massive audience that, to celebrate his first streaming marathon, he would be giving away PlayStation 5 consoles and gift cards there. But he didn’t have a permit. Around 3 p.m., large crowds started to form in Union Square, and police took notice when people began to destroy public and private property. The New York Police Department called in 1,000 officers to the scene — and then all hell broke loose. Cars were destroyed, store windows were broken, and seven people were injured, including three NYPD officers. Over 60 people were arrested, half of them minors. It was a rare dark day for Cenat — but it proved just how big his brand and celebrity had gotten.
In 2023, Cenat and his small team — his assistant/production partner Brianna Lewis, his videographers and manager Nelson — traveled to Nigeria. And when they stopped by Makoko, a small, impoverished waterfront settlement on the outskirts of Lagos, they realized they were out of their depth.
The village didn’t have broadly available internet like the city itself, so Cenat couldn’t stream. But what really caught him off guard was the state of the Makoko Children Development Foundation School and Orphanage. “I went over [to Nigeria] just to go visit it, see how it is, and I went out where I just seen things that I was like, damn,” he says. He decided then and there to at least try to help improve the town. “I stumbled across this school that they had in this very small school building. These small classes and the kids were so eager to learn even in the condition that they were in. Don’t get me wrong: When I went to Nigeria, I seen beautiful parts. They got great big houses, fire cars — like, Nigeria is beautiful. [But] the place where I went to was Makoko.”
His first plan was to just fund some renovations to the school, but soon that didn’t feel like enough. So he decided to give 20% of his earnings from his November Mafiathon 2 to build a brand-new school in Makoko. “Hopefully it comes out exactly like what I’m imagining,” he says. “They said it’s going to be done this year probably, and I want to go back to Nigeria and see how it is and [have] like a grand opening. I want to be able to stream that.”
Andrew Hetherington
Cenat’s work in Makoko offers a window into how he envisions his future. He has dreams of doing more with the streaming format, but also, maybe, leaving it all together. Though he loves streaming, he wants to act in and direct movies. (Not TV, though: In his words, “No one watches TV anymore.”) Hart, whom he now calls a friend, has been helping him prepare for that next stage of his career; Cenat won’t share specifics, but says Hart has given him certain movies to watch and has been advising him. “I would love to be in movies and stuff; he definitely pushes me,” Cenat says. “He tries to connect me to the right people that direct and write movies and produce them.”
Would he leave streaming behind for Hollywood? Perhaps — but not right now. “Our good friend, [YouTube superstar] Mr. Beast, was like, ‘Why would you use something that you’re so good at to catapult you into another category? Just be completely dominant in the category that you’re in right now and just take over that.’ And I’m like, ‘Damn, he does make a good point.’ ”
His current solution to the conundrum: eschew Hollywood entirely and produce a movie on his own. “I want to be able to, like, put it out to the world,” he says. “I’m going to take a hit financially. But like, I want to be able to put it out to the world and just see if a company will pick it up.”
For the moment, Cenat remains laser focused on streaming. After all, his is one of the only streams that can genuinely help (or hurt) an artist’s career, at least in his mind. When Cenat panned GloRilla’s 2023 single “Cha Cha Cha” with Fivio Foreign, the Memphis MC blocked him on social media. He felt he was just being honest. “If there’s some bad music, I’m going to let you know it’s bad,” he says. However, according to Cenat, after their dustup, Glo glowed up. “We’re good friends now. And ever since I told her that one song was bad, she’s been making hits!” He’s not wrong. Ever since that spat, Glo has notched five songs in the top 40 on the Billboard Hot 100.
And when the biggest names in entertainment are DM’ing and texting you to ask to visit your crib and hop on your stream, what could possibly measure up next? Going bigger — even bigger than the movies. “I want to go to space!” Cenat exclaims. “I want to be the first human in space to float around, [stream] and talk my talk to my chat and then come back down to Earth.”
He’s serious, too. He wants to do everything he wanted to do as a kid, living and dreaming in that homeless shelter. “I want to have the whole Avengers on my stream one day,” he says with the enthusiasm of a middle schooler. “I really believe that’s going to happen one day.”
This story appears in the Jan. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Alex Warren is in the middle of packing when he logs on to Zoom, sitting in a bedroom with only a bed and some taped-up boxes behind him. It’s just before the holidays, and the pop singer-songwriter is preparing to move from Los Angeles to Nashville with his wife (and fellow Internet personality) Kouvr Annon. “We’re young,” he reasons, “so let’s go experience some other things and see what we like.”
The 24-year-old is accustomed to whirlwind life changes. His latest single, the piano-backed ode to resilience “Burning Down,” became his first Billboard Hot 100 hit in October, and signaled his breakthrough as a musician. Prior to making music his full-time gig, from late 2019 to 2022, he and Annon were major players in Hype House, a popular group of TikTok content creators that frequently collaborated and lived together. (They both starred in the 2022 Netflix docuseries of the same name, which lasted one season.)
Even before the Hype House disbanded the same year, Warren had already begun to pivot into a music career, a passion of his since he began playing guitar as a child. He released his aching, guitar-driven debut single, “One More I Love You” as an independent artist in June 2021, and the track quickly drew a following on streaming platforms. With a manager already in tow — Odd Projects’ Brian Sokolik, whom he first met four years ago through a former agent — the two began to field major label offers. Warren signed with Atlantic Records in 2022.
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“We were looking for a label that really understood Alex as a person and would teach him what works best,” Sokolik recalls. “Our first meeting with Atlantic, it was pretty obvious that it was home. They came in and were brutally honest about what was good and what wasn’t, but in a really productive, constructive way.”
Austin Hargrave
In the months that followed, Warren’s life, both professionally and personally, continued to accelerate: he dropped his first single under Atlantic, “Headlights,” in August 2022, and followed it with “Chasing Shadows” that December. He then kicked off 2023 by proposing to Annon before embarking on his first headlining tour. He continued releasing more singles through last year all while maintaining his content creation career, pumping out daily TikTok videos and Instagram Reels.
Over time, Warren has become more comfortable with his music reflecting his challenging upbringing. His father passed away when he was nine years old, after which he lived with his mother, who struggled with alcoholism and died in 2021. She kicked Warren out of the house just after he turned 18, and he spent the next five months homeless. Reflecting today, he’s grateful to be able to channel such painful experiences into his music.
“I recently started doing this thing where I write about those [experiences], and I try to take control in a way,” he says. “For me, something really beautiful is taking something so sad and dark, and what most would view as something that ruined their life, and turn it into something that can help people.”
Alex Warren photographed December 19, 2024, in Los Angeles.
Austin Hargrave
Last May, during a set of studio sessions in Los Angeles, Warren felt particularly inspired by such memories, and began to write with collaborators Adam Yaron, Cal Shapiro and Mags Duval. The result was “Burning Down,” which came together in just a day, among other tracks over the course of the productive week.
“I’ve always let people walk all over me, and ‘Burning Down’ was a song I always wanted to write, but never had the balls to do it,” he says of his biggest hit to date, released on Sept. 20, one week ahead of his debut album, You’ll Be Alright, Kid (Chapter 1). Warren’s deep, husky voice frees himself from the blame of an unhealthy relationship over a stomping piano beat.
He put his social media savvy to good use to bolster the song’s hype leading up to its release, posting a number of videos to his 16 million TikTok followers lip synching to the song with Annon. From Warren’s perspective, there’s no gimmick in getting his followers — whom he affectionately calls his “friends” — to listen to his music.
“The drawback for a lot of musicians is that they don’t necessarily understand social media,” he says. “In my career, I have been so open with my friends who follow me. They know everything about me and we’re so connected and I love that. I’m thinking of these people while I’m writing these songs, because I’m thinking about what I would want to hear if I was still going through that.”
“He knows what his fans want and will respond well to,” Sokolik adds. “Alex will tell me, ‘I have an idea for a video. I’m going to tease this and see how people respond to it.’ If they respond the same way we are, then full steam ahead — and that’s exactly what happened.”
“Burning Down” became Warren’s first Hot 100 entry, debuting at No. 76 on the Oct. 5-dated chart, and reaching No. 69 the following week. As the song continued to build both on streaming platforms and at radio, Atlantic’s A&R team reached out to Joe Jonas’ team to gauge interest in a potential remix. Jonas was already a fan. “He told us he heard the song, had it saved to a playlist on Spotify and wanted to jump in and do it with us,” Sokolik recalls.
The “Burning Down” remix arrived in December, with Jonas and Warren trading lines during verses before blending together seamlessly in the chorus. In the week following its release, the song (in all versions) was up 70% (Dec. 6-12) from the week before to 6.2 million U.S. official U.S. streams, according to Luminate. Since the arrival of the remix, “Burning Down” has also lifted on multiple radio-based Billboard charts: in January, the single hit new highs of No. 25 on Pop Airplay and No. 31 on Adult Pop Airplay.
Ahead, Warren is booked for a world tour that kicks off in February in Europe — and he has plenty of songs to come, teasing an impending Chapter 2 installment of his debut album. “I’ve always dreamed of this moment,” he says.
“There are very few people I’ve met in my life who are willing to do whatever it takes,” adds Sokolik. “Alex is one of those people. Whatever he puts his mind to, he will accomplish.”
Brian Sokolik, left, and Alex Warren photographed December 19, 2024, in Los Angeles.
Austin Hargrave
This story appears in the Jan. 25, 2025, issue of Billboard.
When Evan Lo walked onto an in-progress livestream by Kai Cenat, the Twitch juggernaut with some 15.8 million followers, and his influencer pal Fanum on Nov. 16, 2024, they received the guitar-wielding stranger with a friendly, split-second greeting. But when he began strumming the vibey opening chords of his viral track “Swimming,” the streamers halted. A look of starstruck bliss crossed Fanum’s face, while Cenat — after a quick online search to confirm his guest’s identity — began screaming: “Oh, my gosh! It’s him! Yo, you a GOAT!”
Flawed Mangoes photographed December 5, 2024 in New York.
Justin J Wee
The GOAT in question is better known as Flawed Mangoes, a Boston-based musician whose gently expressive guitar work and mesmerizing, ambient loops have soundtracked a slew of content creators’ motivational speeches and uplifting memes. Dubbed “hopecore,” this positivity-focused music has gained traction as a tonic to social media’s often toxic offerings — and based on his comment sections, Flawed Mangoes has helped many a bro tap into their sensitive side. Sure enough, before Lo left the livestream, he played that comfort-food instrumental while another guest, the Chicago rapper G Herbo, gave an inspirational speech — and Herbo’s young son was left wiping away tears.
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“It was so chaotic,” Lo says, chuckling. “Like, ‘Am I overwhelming this kid right now?’ But watching the video [later], it was a wholesome thing … It’s very surreal to think that people are actually having significant moments [with my music].”
Flawed Mangoes photographed December 5, 2024 in New York.
Justin J Wee
Justin J Wee
This digital cover story is part of Billboard’s Genre Now package, highlighting the artists pushing their musical genres forward — and even creating their own new ones.
Despite being a naturally “introverted, shy person,” the thoughtful, easy-going Lo is quietly embracing his status as hopecore’s de facto poster boy. “In my head, it was never ‘I want this to be motivational and inspiring,’ ” he says. “[My music is] toeing the line between melancholy and happy in that bittersweet sort of way. I guess a lot of people identified with both sides.” In his estimation, a Flawed Mangoes fan is someone looking to “slow down and take time” for personal wellness: “I think people who can relate to needing that sort of energy in their life tend to gravitate toward my music.”
After signing with APG Music in April and releasing EP The Unwavering Hand in September, the 27-year-old is getting more comfortable showing his face to the world. He’s even preparing to spotlight his own vocals on an upcoming album in 2025, though he’s quick to manage expectations. “What inspires me the most is hearing singers who clearly aren’t very good at singing but do it anyway and really commit. Their lack of formal singing training becomes a character of the music itself. That’s really inspiring to me as someone who’s a very mid singer,” he adds with a sheepish smile.
This story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.
The night of Oct. 20, 2024, was full of firsts for Xavi. The 20-year-old Mexican American singer-songwriter gave his first televised performance of his breakout hit, “La Diabla,” at the Billboard Latin Music Awards, where he also won his first trophy, for artist of the year, new. And this occurred just eight days after he released his celebrated debut album, Next, which became his first top 10 on any albums chart.
“I’m still processing it,” Xavi says today. “It’s something that I didn’t really expect, but it’s a blessing. My grandpa and my whole family would always talk about this type of stuff; it was their dream to make it in the music industry. I’m really trying to push their dreams forward.”
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Jennifer McCord
This digital cover story is part of Billboard’s Genre Now package, highlighting the artists pushing their musical genres forward — and even creating their own new ones.
It was a fitting, and familiar, flurry of events for the young artist. After the August 2023 release of “La Víctima,” “La Diabla” followed in November and took off in 2024, helping maintain Xavi’s momentum and quickly establishing him as one to watch.
“La Diabla” has since tied for the second-longest-reigning title of the year on the Hot Latin Songs chart, dominating for 14 weeks. (“La Víctima,” Xavi’s first chart entry, peaked at No. 2.) By the end of 2024, Xavi had placed nine songs on the tally while Next debuted at Nos. 6 and 9 on the Regional Mexican Albums and Top Latin Albums charts, respectively. But Xavi’s greatest accomplishment in a year of many is the spread of his hybrid subgenre: tumbados románticos.
Xavi photographed December 3, 2024 in Los Angeles.
Jennifer McCord
Jennifer McCord
With his pioneering blend of the musicality of corridos tumbados with the melodies of sad sierreño, Xavi has paved a clear path for himself to explore other genres, too. Growing up between Sonora, Mexico, and Phoenix, his mother would wake him up with music by Vicente Fernández and Selena, but he says coming to the United States was “a whole different world” and he quickly became a fan of artists like Justin Bieber and Daniel Caesar. Now he’s eager to explore all kinds of sounds — sometimes simultaneously.
“We’re talking about R&B, we’re talking about música mexicana. When you get all those elements and put them into one, it literally becomes its own — it brings out this new sound,” he says. “Since it’s something new and we’re getting to the bottom of it, it’s done with so much love and patience. We do it with a lot of passion.
“The studio is a kitchen, you know?” he continues. “And we’ve just been working on the sound of the fusion because there’s a lot of styles out there. But what happens when you put two, or three, or four or five genres into one song? It’s a fusion of corridos — I don’t want to say we invented it, but we definitely brought something new.”
This story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.
The future of country music has an old-school sound. Newcomer Zach Top is leading a neo-traditional revival thanks to his debut album, 2024’s Cold Beer & Country Music, which brims with his distinct twang and songs inspired by country music that was popular three and four decades ago. Diana King Diana King Growing up in Sunnyside, […]
These managers on the rise have helped the biggest breakout artists, songwriters and producers of the past year navigate major wins and milestones, from opening for superstars and selling out headlining arena shows to earning Grammy nods and topping the charts — with some even making history. Introducing: Billboard‘s 2025 class of Managers to Watch.
Abas Pauti, Jared Cotter
Ages: 27, 43Companies: American Dogwood, RangeKey clients: Shaboozey, Paul Russell
“It wasn’t until I met Shaboozey where the thought of artist management became a serious career aspiration for me,” says Pauti, noting that the chart-topping artist gave him “confidence” to succeed in the role. As for Cotter, after entering the industry as a songwriter, he soon became “disenchanted, but still wanted to be a champion for artists.” Together, Pauti and Cotter have helped Shaboozey and Russell deliver breakout hits with the former’s record-tying 19-week Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 smash, “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” and the latter’s viral hit “Lil Boo Thang.” Pauti says, “To know I played a role in helping both my clients get their records heard and loved from people across the globe will always be my greatest success.”
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Abas Pauti, Shaboozey and Jared Cotter
Allan Pimenta
Alex Lunt
Age: 31Company: Type A ManagementKey clients: Dasha, Beauty School Dropout, Dalton Davis, Anthony Ortiz
Since starting his management career a decade ago, Lunt has learned that “it is crucial to surround yourself with knowledgeable colleagues you can trust.” Last year, that approach paid off with country newcomer Dasha, who celebrated a trio of firsts: debuting on the Hot 100 with her viral hit “Austin,” performing at the CMT Awards in April 2024 and to a packed stadium at CMA Fest in June. Lunt says, “The best feeling has not been any accolade, but celebrating the success with a group of incredibly talented and passionate people.”
Alex Lunt and Dasha
Courtesy Alex Lunt
Amy Davidson
Age: 30Company: Volara ManagementKey clients: Sabrina Carpenter, Marina Diamandis, RIAH
Davidson has worked alongside Volara founder Janelle Lopez Genzink from day one, but, as Davidson says, the past 12 months in particular “have been nothing short of a fever dream as we’ve effectively checked off almost every item on our collective bucket lists.” Such items included Sabrina Carpenter scoring her first Hot 100 chart-topper with “Please Please Please” (while “Taste” and “Espresso” hit Nos. 2 and 3, respectively) and first Billboard 200 No. 1 album, Short n’ Sweet; an arena tour; a Saturday Night Live performance; and six Grammy nominations. Plus, Volara celebrated signing Marina Diamandis to its roster. “Effective management starts at the core of why you are there in the first place: to listen and respond to an artist’s needs,” Davidson says. “Understanding that an artist is a person with life happening outside of work is key for me.”
Janelle Lopez Genzink, Sabrina Carpenter and Amy Davidson
Christopher Polk for Variety
Christina Li, Michael Lewis
Ages: 29, 29Company: Nonstop ManagementKey clients: JKash, Michael Pollack, Ali Tamposi, Jake Torrey
Li says working as an assistant to hit-maker JKash “was a crash course in the music industry,” while Lewis feels “incredibly fortunate to call [him] a mentor.” The two also count Nonstop founder Jaime Zeluck Hindlin and president Bianca Minniti-Bean for being instrumental in their careers so far, guiding them through a major 2024 that kicked off with Michael Pollack winning his first Grammy: record of the year, for co-writing Miley Cyrus’ “Flowers.” Other highlights included Pollack and Ali Tamposi co-writing two original songs with Maren Morris for animated film The Wild Robot and Jake Torrey co-writing Marshmello and Kane Brown’s “Miles on It,” which made history as the first single to enter the top five on both Hot Dance/Electronic Songs (No. 1) and Hot Country Songs (No. 4).
From left: Christina Li, Michael Pollack and Mikey Lewis.
Jaynie Karp
Christopher Milano
Age: n/aCompany: The Vision ManagementKey clients: 4Batz, Bear Bailey, Guwop Reign
Milano “learned the ups and downs” of music management after meeting Akon and his brother Bu Thiam through the Bay Area’s “underground scene.” So when he met R&B singer 4Batz in 2023, he says, “opportunity met preparation.” In 2024, the pair celebrated a breakout year as the artist debuted across several Billboard charts — including the Hot 100, Hot R&B Songs and Rhythmic Airplay — with “Act ii: date @ 8,” which featured Drake on the remix. “We preach artist development at The Vision, and young artists who blow up fast don’t usually understand that process,” Milano says. “So it’s important to not only sign talented artists, but someone who’s willing to listen and wants to learn.”
Christopher Milano and 4Batz
Maurice Tyrone Holloway
Haley Evans
Age: 27Company: Mega HouseKey clients Peter Fenn, Casey Smith, Caroline Pennell, Mon Rovîa
While attending the University of California, Los Angeles, Evans spent Friday nights working at Ricky Reed’s Nice Life studio. “[I] became incredibly inspired by the way Ricky built intricate worlds with the artists he worked with while simultaneously building his own businesses,” Evans says. She continued to “learn from the best,” including Mega House co-founders David Silberstein and Jeremy Levin, who hired her in 2020. In March 2024, Evans was promoted to president as her client Peter Fenn celebrated the success of Myles Smith’s “Stargazing,” which hit No. 1 on the Rock & Alternative Airplay chart in December. “With new artists breaking online every day, the biggest challenge for songwriter-producer managers is helping guide clients to choose the right projects to focus their time and energy on,” she says. “Other than that, it’s getting our clients fairly compensated for their work — songwriters especially.”
Haley Evans and Peter Fenn
Olivia McDowell
Hayley Corbett
Age: 28Company: Punchbowl EntertainmentKey clients: Megan Moroney, Kristian Bush
At 15, Corbett started working with the Grammy Foundation as a volunteer, “networking as much as possible in New York and L.A., which is where I first became aware of artist management as a career,” she says. That commitment more than prepared her for Megan Moroney’s takeoff, which in 2024 included opening stadiums for Kenny Chesney and winning the Academy of Country Music Award for best new female artist of the year and the Country Music Association Award for new artist of the year. “One key to managing effectively is being intuitive to your clients’ needs, wants and dreams while being able to implement strategy that allows for continued growth,” Corbett says. “The biggest challenge for managers is avoiding burnout and oversaturation.”
Megan Moroney and Hayley Corbett
Mason Goodson
Holt Harmon, Parker Cohen
Ages: 31, 30Company: MetatoneKey clients: John Summit, Layton Giordani, Max Styler, Ranger Trucco
After a couple of years working in the label sector of the industry, Harmon was craving a longer-term partnership with artists. Similarly, Cohen “hit a ceiling of my own” on the events side of the business. “I wanted to work on building projects from the ground up,” he says. “Artist management quickly became the no-brainer to satisfy those needs.” They accomplished that goal with the success of John Summit, from releasing his debut album, Comfort in Chaos (which peaked at No. 2 on Top Dance/Electronic Albums), to his sold-out performances at New York’s Madison Square Garden and the Kia Forum in L.A. “One of the most valuable things we’ve learned along the way is that we are not the artist,” Harmon says. “It is not our project or vision, ultimately, and instead of trying to make it ours, we’ve placed our focus into being the best catalysts possible for them.”
From left: Holt Harmon, John Summit and Parker Cohen.
Ethan Garland
Jacob Epstein
Age: 34Company: Lighthouse Management & MediaKey clients: H.E.R., Towa Bird, Petra Collins
From a young age, Epstein was “obsessed” with both music and film — his management roster also includes Paul Rudd — yet as he puts it, “I knew I didn’t want to be the star. I wanted to be the engine and person breaking down the doors for those artists and guiding and architecting those creative decisions.” Today, he says even the smallest wins make him as proud as his artists’ biggest moments, which most recently include rocker Towa Bird capping off 2024 by opening at Los Angeles’ Kia Forum for Billie Eilish. “Only do this job if you truly are passionate about art and culture,” he cautions. “It’s too difficult if that love for it isn’t there.”
Jacob Epstein and Towa Bird
Alex Fleck
Jeff Burns
Age: 35Company: Reynolds MGMTKey client: Benson Boone
For Burns, the best part of Benson Boone’s breakout year has been “watching [him] love his career… He’s funnier, can sing and backflip better, is nicer and more humble than everyone — he has it all.” Such assets have helped Boone score a No. 2 hit on the Hot 100 with “Beautiful Things” and a Grammy nod for best new artist. For Burns, it’s all about not getting lost in the “million little things” and focusing on what matters most: “making the best music, marketing it better than anyone else, doing the best shows and staying happy and healthy.”
Jeff Burns and Benson Boone
Kevin Mazur/Getty Images
Justin Greenberg, Joe Izzi
Ages: 32, 38Company: Ocean AvenueKey client: Addison Rae
Three years ago, Greenberg and Izzi, along with their partner and Ocean Avenue co-founder, Sharon Jackson, left WME for management, launching with a roster that includes multihyphenate Addison Rae. Her 2024 single “Diet Pepsi” marked her major-label debut on Columbia and became her first Hot 100 entry; earlier in the year, Rae teamed with Charli xcx on a remix of “Von Dutch.” Greenberg and Izzi believe having “a deep understanding of your artists’ vision” is key to cutting through. “It’s not about us — we’re just here to make it happen.”
Lucas Barbosa
Age: 30Company: Habibi ManagementKey clients: Grupo Frontera, Mora, Tommy Torres
As a 17-year-old in Colombia, Barbosa helped an artist friend with “various tasks” before becoming his full-time manager; later, he launched his own company dedicated to producers and songwriters, who scored placements with Eladio Carrión, Maluma and Anitta. “That gave me the opportunity to expand my network,” Barbosa says. Now he’s helping his artists expand their fan bases, including Grupo Frontera, which toured arenas across the United States and Mexico last year. “We’ve taken the time as a company to build [our artists] from the ground up, ensuring that every step of the way is intentional and aligned with their artistic vision,” Barbosa says.
Lucas Barbosa (middle) with Alberto Acosta (left) and Juan Javier Cantú of Grupo Frontera.
Phraa
Luke Conway
Age: 29Company: Trade Secrets MGMTKey clients: Teddy Swims, Lø Spirit, Father of Peace
“I’ve always wanted to be involved in music one way or another,” says Conway, who spent high school in the metal and rock scenes, making merchandise for bands, directing music videos and planning DIY tours. His first management gig helped him “self-educate on every aspect of this business,” which today has helped him guide Teddy Swims through his breakout year. After “Lose Control” topped the Hot 100 in March 2024, the smash hit finished at No. 1 on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 Songs chart. Conway says, “This year has been a nonstop roller coaster, but everyone on the team has stepped up and delivered at a superstar level.”
Teddy Swims and Luke Conway
Bryce Hall
Mariana López Crespo
Age: 27Company: 1k DojoKey clients: Young Miko, Mauro
“To be honest, I never imagined I’d be involved as a manager in the music industry,” López Crespo says. “The opportunity came from acknowledging the potential around me and gaining confidence to develop it.” That combination has led to a major year for urbano star Young Miko, who started 2024 with her now-Grammy-nominated debut album, att. (which debuted at No. 9 on Top Latin Albums, her first entry on any Billboard albums chart), and in the spring made her Coachella debut following a sold-out U.S. tour. “However,” López Crespo says, “being able to build a solid team around creatives in Puerto Rico and providing them the resources to keep developing on a bigger scale has been the biggest blessing and main reason to keep working toward success.”
Young Miko and Mariana López Crespo
Christopher Polk for Variety
Max Gredinger
Age: 33Company: Foundations Artist ManagementKey clients: Laufey, mxmtoon, rainbolt, Ricky Montgomery
Inspired by managers Scooter Braun and Dan Weisman, Gredinger started managing acts as a high school student “and never stopped,” he says. In 2023, he was named partner at Foundations, and the following year, he and Laufey experienced a string of wins — he’s most proud, however, of her August performance at The Hollywood Bowl with the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which was released as a concert film in IMAX theaters worldwide. “Her ambition and goal of bringing classical and jazz music into the mainstream, and seeing that manifest in front of 17,000 people in her adopted home market and then in theaters, was unforgettable,” he says.
Laufey and Max Gredinger
Junia Lin
Maytav Koter
Age: 32Company: Good CompanyKey clients: Hayley Gene Penner, Buddy Ross, Andrew Sarlo, Spencer Stewart
After starting her career in publishing working for Justin Shukat at Primary Wave, Koter “discovered my passion for the songwriting community.” In 2019, she launched her own company “rooted in empathy and a long-term approach… I set out to create a family.” Last year, she joined client Buddy Ross at the Ivor Novello Awards, where he was nominated for his work on Fred again.. and Brian Eno’s track “Enough.” “I am deeply invested in [my clients’] lives beyond their careers,” Koter says, “which allows for more trust and transparency in our business relationship.”
From left: Spencer Stewart, Buddy Ross, Hayley Gene Penner (in front), Maytav Koter, Andrew Sarlo and Mona Khoshoi.
Kendra Hope
Nick Bobetsky
Age: 44Company: State of the ArtKey clients: LP, Livingston, Em Beihold, Debbii Dawson (Previously: Chappell Roan)
Bobetsky enjoyed a front-row seat for former client Chappell Roan’s rise, which he calls “a huge success not just because of the size it grew to, but because of how we did it differently with strategy that isn’t customary to the mainstream music business. It also helped that she’s a one-of-a-kind, generational artist.” After releasing her debut, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, in 2023, the album grew into a Billboard 200 top 10 mainstay while 2024 single “Good Luck, Babe!” became her biggest hit, climbing to No. 4 on the Hot 100 and scoring two of her six Grammy nods, for record and song of the year. Meanwhile, Dawson scored a breakout hit with “Turn the TV On” and opened on tour for Orville Peck. As Bobetsky says, “Patience is key to getting it right on an artist’s own terms.”
Debbii Dawson (left) and Nick Bobetsky
Ruby Anton
Sam French
Age: 34Company: Mixed ManagementKey clients: Ian, Jasper Harris, bülow, Henry Kwapis
While working in publishing at APG, French “fell in love with the process of connecting writers and producers with artists and having a front-row seat to watching big records come together.” In 2022, he became a partner at Mixed and has since watched that play out time and time again. In 2024, songwriter-producer Jasper Harris worked on Camila Cabello’s C,XOXO, Charli xcx’s brat and more. Meanwhile, newcomer rapper Ian’s “Magic Johnson,” which peaked at No. 1 on the Bubbling Under Hot 100, was among the U.S. Top 10 TikTok Songs of 2024. “There’s a lot of noise right now, and it’s very loud,” French says. “Focus on what you can control and what you believe in.”
Sarah (Muise) Scardilli
Age: 35Company: Muise ManagementKey clients: Shygirl, COBRAH
While studying international business, Scardilli says she “spent 75% of my time partying across the U.K. and making friends with DJs and promoters.” After college, she landed a job with a Bristol, England-based management firm as its first full-time employee: “I was given responsibilities very early on — jetted to Ibiza two days after my first day at work, and the rest is history.” She formed Muise Management in 2019 and watched her artists reach new heights last year, as Shygirl was an opener on Charli xcx and Troye Sivan’s Sweat Tour and COBRAH’s “Brand New Bitch” scored a key synch in Kinds of Kindness. Scardilli describes the latter as “a powerful moment where underground club culture met mainstream audiences.”
Sarah (Muise) Scardilli with Shygirl (left) and COBRAH (right).
Courtesy Shygirl; Axel Ahlgren
Stephen Timothy Nana
Age: 37Company: n/aKey client: Asake
While Asake’s third album, Lungu Boy, spawned the chart-topping “Active,” featuring Travis Scott (which topped Billboard U.S. Afrobeats Songs), Nana considers Asake’s arena tour, which included stops at London’s O2 Arena and New York’s Madison Square Garden, their biggest success of 2024. “Not because of output, but because of the work ethic and ability of Asake to stay focused, determined and disciplined,” Nana says. “It’s not every day you get creatives who have achieved so much and still be human.”
This story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.
There’s definitely been moments where I wished I could be in two places at the same time,” says Brandon Creed, reflecting on a year filled with culture-defining moments across his company’s roster. He’s gotten close — in early March, he had to be on separate coasts within 48 hours.
On March 8, Ariana Grande released her critically praised seventh album, Eternal Sunshine. On March 9, she was the musical guest on Saturday Night Live in New York — Creed was there. On March 10, Grande presented an Oscar at the 96th annual Academy Awards in Los Angeles, where client Mark Ronson was also performing in the night’s biggest spectacle: a star-studded live debut of Ryan Gosling’s Barbie song “I’m Just Ken” — Creed was there, too.
“It was definitely a tiring weekend,” says Creed, 47. “Thankfully, I think my relationship with all my artists is such that we have a great team so they’re always supported wherever they are.”
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His Good World team is a tight-knit group of savvy managers — including Dani Russin and Tyler Reymore, both of whom have been by his side for over a decade, along with Anika Capozza, Chris Pepe and Emma Anderson (among others). In 2023, when Creed left his position at Full Stop, the superstar management firm his own Creed Company merged with in 2017, his crew followed. After six years, Creed craved the kind of company he had launched his management career with when he had founded Creed Company in 2010 and set out to create the newer, more matured version of exactly that.
In August 2023, Creed established Good World Management with a high-profile roster including Charli xcx (co-managed with Sam Pringle and Twiggy Rowley), Troye Sivan, Ronson and Tame Impala (co-managed with Jodie Regan). His first new signing was Demi Lovato, followed by Grande.
“I was excited by the challenge of it, honestly,” he says of launching a new venture. “Creed Company was born out of [necessity] — I was an executive at a record company and started managing on the side.” With Good World, Creed has much more experience, but the same drive. “We’re trying to keep it familial and small and build accordingly, based on what we need.”
Creed got his start in the industry as music executive Tom Corson’s assistant before becoming one of the first employees of Clive Davis’ J Records, which he describes as “like going to grad school.” From there, he says, “management found me” when he met Bruno Mars and his writing partner, Philip Lawrence. “I watched Clive launch Alicia Keys and position superstars,” Creed says. “What he did and what he looked for, I took it and applied it as best I could.”
Since its beginning, Good World has celebrated one industry-rattling moment after another, from Charli graduating to arena headliner with her and Sivan’s in-demand Sweat Tour to Grande conquering new territory with Wicked. Such year-defining victories have helped Creed and Good World earn Billboard’s first Manager of the Year honor. Here, he and his team reflect on what Creed calls “the longest fastest year.”
Joel Barhamand
When you think back to launching Good World, what stands out?
Brandon Creed: We were in the midst of Barbie summer with Mark, and that was an amazing experience. And Troye had just [released the single] “Rush.”
Dani Russin: It was a show-must-go-on sort of thing. We didn’t have the luxury of pausing. We were grateful that essentially our whole roster came with us, so we just had to keep working. This was a really welcomed exclamation point on the summer.
Anika Capozza: We’ve always been really small and mighty, so when we moved over here, it was all hands on deck on every level. Like, “What snacks are we getting?” Things that you don’t think about at a big company when you walk in and everything is all set up. But it made it fun.
Tyler Reymore: Coming back into a house and it feeling so warm and cozy and down to earth, you take a big breath. That was what Creed Company was years ago.
Russin: In a lot of ways, it feels like we were getting back to how we started.
Dani, you’ve worked with Brandon the longest, since 2009. What drew you to his management style?
Russin: Brandon is very keen. He can read people, he’s a great decision-maker, and he has a very diplomatic management style. In this office, and in every office we’ve worked in, it’s definitely like good ideas can come from anywhere. We’ve always fostered an environment where we promote within. And we don’t really have ranks, but to the extent that we do, it’s been somebody that’s interned with us.
Chris Pepe: I’d actually left management for a bit and was the one person who didn’t come along, and I always looked from afar like, “If I were to ever get back into management, this is the team I’d want to be on.” There’s a lot of trust here.
Capozza: I started as a receptionist and then was an assistant and then a manager, and I’ve really been with Brandon my entire career in the music industry. What drew me the most is it didn’t feel like there was ever a ceiling for any of us. He allows us the ability to grow and take charge and be assertive and have a presence in the room.
Emma Anderson: I started as his assistant and always felt like he trusted me, so that gave me confidence. When we were leaving Full Stop, a lot of my friends were like, “This is a huge risk.” And I was like, “Not really.” I never have felt like I’ve been put in a box here.
Reymore: Brandon has always exuded such a quiet confidence, and it’s something I’ve always admired. When I first started working with him at Creed Company, he was in the living room with the other managers. It makes you want to work harder for someone who really values and sees you peer to peer.
You named the company Good World. What’s a moment this year where, commercial success aside, you felt the positive impact?
All: Sweat.
Creed: It was a scary proposition at first because it’s two of our artists; if it doesn’t go right, that’s high stakes. But they have so much respect for each other, they wanted to build and create something really unique. They dove in and did that.
Russin: Brandon had the idea for Sweat, and it was definitely like, “Avengers, assemble…”
Creed: With some resistance. It took us a while…
Russin: Listen, you said it, not me.
Where was the resistance coming from?
Creed: It was an idea over the last few years [that] just never lined up. And then when we were planning Troye’s tour and talking about Charli’s, we pitched it and…
Russin: It was now or never.
Creed: And there was a lot of blind faith. Each artist questioned whether it was the right thing for them to do in this moment, and rightfully so. We had to move some things and plotted it out and gave the tour time to sell and then everything kicked in with Brat Summer, and it really took off.
Russin: And then how that impacted in the real world, when we would go to these shows and watch [our] friends, their friends, the wider industry enjoy themselves…
Pepe: I remember that video you sent in our group chat. The lights were on after the show ended and the energy on the floor of the crowd beaming, dancing, still having a party. It was one of those “Oh, this is why we do this” moments.
Creed: That’s another thread, and it might be corny, but there is so much positivity and light, especially now when we really need it. It’s an honor to help get that into the world. I mean, Mark on the Oscars. I remember Steven Spielberg walking into the room after and he was like, “I’ve never seen anything like that on this stage.”
How has it felt to watch Charli enjoy her biggest year?
Creed: We’ve been working with Charli since 2018. I remember going to see her at a rave in London and it was like a smack in the face. It was coming off the Pop 2 era, and then we went right into the Charli phase. But to see her grow, it’s so gratifying — and slightly vindicating, just because we knew it. To see the world jump in on this has been a career highlight for me because she deserves it, and to be doing it so unapologetically is just incredible.
Ariana Grande also had a major 2024. When you start working with an artist who is already a superstar, how do you find your rhythm?
Creed: We definitely hold and make space for that. We’re not [a company that’s] going to come in and be like, “This is how we do it,” and change everything. Right before [signing Grande] we had just signed Demi [Lovato], another huge artist that has been around for a long time with a lot of success. It’s really turning on the empath and figuring out how they work and how you fit in and just watching and learning. And Ariana had an existing team around her: Justin Adams, Ray Rock and Grace Segundo. I just fit myself in there and took cues from her and them and we got into a rhythm, but it takes a minute.
Will Good World sign more talent?
Creed: We are extremely discerning with any artists at this stage. We have room, don’t get me wrong, for the right thing, and we would build accordingly. I think the developing-artist space is extremely challenging right now, especially for managers. Especially for a young manager, it’s hard to make money. So our focus is definitely on the more established artists and ones that have built an audience. But, you know, there are no rules.
Would you sign actors to the roster?
Creed: I would absolutely be interested in that. It’s about the person. It’s about being inspired by what they want to do. What we love is all of our artists want to do more than be an artist. Most of them act; Mark is scoring soundtracks and writing a book. [Ariana] got a Golden Globe nomination. That [was] amazing to see her get recognized. Troye and Demi have their own acting credits. I do particularly love the film and TV space. Charli’s pursuing that with a lot of success right now. That is exciting and inspiring to me, getting to be in all these different scenarios.
How do you prepare an artist, and yourselves, for their biggest year?
Russin: We have an extreme amount of patience when it comes to not skipping steps and [having the] “This could take 10 years” conversation. We’re prepared for that. And I don’t know that we feel that there’s as much gratification in the instant moment. We really try to set things up so that we’re building the road to get there along the way. So when it comes, they’ve done their 10,000 hours — as have we.
What challenges do managers face today?
Creed: It’s really hard for young managers. Artists are looking around at what others have and what others are doing, and they’re under a tremendous amount of pressure themselves. So when they feel that, they put the pressure on their person that’s right there — and that’s their manager. So I do think malleability is important and understanding how to shape teams around each artist and support them. And [more] humility and less ego is important.
Pepe: I work across Demi and she’s working on her album right now, and a key thing of our process has been allowing her to take that time that she needed and even encouraging it, because she is used to an industry that wants more and more and more. Encouraging that patience and investment in art, that has been honored this year in a big way after the pendulum swing of TikTok short form.
Creed: Impatience is a real challenge. One of our biggest challenges as well is the toxicity of fandom now. I feel like half the time we are being told how to do our jobs by [social media], and that is an exercise of our patience because our artists are also seeing it — not saying they react to it, but it’s a challenge across the board.
Russin: The sense of ownership over an artist’s body, their being…
Creed: Their decisions… Look, we are grateful for the fans; that’s why we’re all here. But there are boundaries that I think get broken quite often.
What would you tell someone wanting to enter artist management?
Russin: The barrier of entry is actually quite fuzzy. If you want to be a manager, you manage somebody. I’m not saying you’re a good manager… It’s a lot of head down, fly on the wall, behind the scenes, unglamorous, ungratifying work at first. If you don’t have a desire to be of service, this is probably not the area for you.
Reymore: As long as you are focusing on supporting artists and music that you care so deeply about, that’s going to make the late nights and the weekends feel like joy.
Pepe: [Get] as much hands-on experience as you can, even if it’s an artist that is local to your community, especially if you’re talking about someone in high school or college who’s wanting to do this. I didn’t have any connections. I started by working at CAA, and that led me to meeting managers, and that led me to my first management job. Our mindsets these days are quick payoffs. But it’s a lot like, “What are the first things you can do to get to where you want to be?”
Capozza: It’s the same philosophy we use for artists, I’m realizing: not skipping steps.
Creed: I was an intern, I was an assistant. I say this to every intern that comes here: Cultivate relationships with your peers because that’s who you’re going to grow up in the business with. They’re the ones that will be head of the label one day or whatever direction the person goes.
Russin: The assistant mafia… Don’t burn bridges, because everyone sticks around.
Creed: It is real, and you don’t think that when you’re trying to get into the business. You think you got to get to the top man or woman, but it’s really the support group that is going to let you enter — or you find a genius artist and grab on.
Capozza: I remember you saying that when I started: Don’t look up. Look around you.
Looking ahead, what goals do you have for yourself and the company?
Creed: Ariana’s [year] is pretty mapped out. We know where she is going to be and what she’s going to be doing for the majority of the year. Same with Charli; Brat Summer, Fall, Winter is going to continue. Troye is going to be in a creative year, hopefully making his next record. We’re in the planning stages for Tame Impala. Demi hopefully will be starting her next era midway through the year. Mark’s going to hopefully kick off a new artist era; hopefully the book he’s been writing will come out. Nothing is planned, but everyone’s going to be busy. And then we’ll map out 2026… The goal is to continue doing what we’re doing. I’ve been really fortunate to have a breadth of experiences over the years with such incredible artists and artistry and moments in time — that makes it fun. And there’s been times where it hasn’t been fun and I’m like, “Maybe I need to do something else.” And then something clicks and I get reengaged, and that’s what’s happened this year.
This story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.
As Billboard publishes its 137th volume throughout 2025, stay in the know on the magazine’s print schedule for the year, along with each issue’s corresponding theme. This is an updating post, so be sure to check back for any changes.
Issue Date: Jan. 11, 2025Theme: Managers to Watch/Quarter-Century Charts
Issue Date: Jan. 25, 2025Theme: The Billboard Power 100
Issue Date: Feb. 8, 2025Theme: Sports*This issue will include Top Music Venues
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Issue Date: March 8, 2025Theme: SXSW/Branding Power Players
Issue Date: March 22, 2025Theme: Women in Music
Issue Date: April 19, 2025Theme: TBD*This issue will include Top Music Lawyers
Issue Date: May 10, 2025Theme: AAPI Heritage Month/40 Under 40*This issue will include International Power Players
Issue Date: May 31, 2025Theme: Country Power Players
Issue Date: June 7, 2025Theme: Indie
Issue Date: June 21, 2025Theme: Pride
Issue Date: July 19, 2025Theme: Fashion
Issue Date: Aug. 16, 2025Theme: Fall Music Preview
Issue Date: Aug. 30, 2025Theme: R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players
Issue Date: Sept. 27, 2025Theme: Latin Power Players
Issue Date: Oct. 4, 2025 (Double Issue)Theme: Grammy Preview/Producers
Issue Date: Oct. 25, 2025Theme: Touring*This issue will include Top Music Business Schools
Issue Date: Nov. 15, 2025Theme: BBMAs*This issue will include Top Business Managers
Issue Date: Dec. 6, 2025Theme: Grammy Voter Guide
Issue Date: Dec. 13, 2025Theme: No. 1s/Year in Music
Jennie’s to-do list is growing by the minute. For the last year, the pop star has been so consumed with the launch of her own label and arrival of her highly anticipated solo debut album — plus, now, the impending reunion of Blackpink, the globally renowned K-pop quartet she is part of — that she hasn’t had a moment to envision her ideal release-night party. That is, if she even has time for one.
“I like planning parties. I like creating an album,” Jennie says. “It’s fun, but sometimes it gets hard. I’m just trying to make sure everything is perfectly done.”
Sitting on a cozy couch in a small back room of a photo studio in Seoul’s Gangnam district, Jennie’s post-shoot look on this late-October afternoon calls to mind Gossip Girl “It” mom Lily van der Woodsen after a particularly tiring day. Leaning back in matching black pants and zip-up hoodie after hours spent staring at a camera, Jennie slides on a pair of dark-lensed Gentle Monster sunglasses to give her eyes, and perhaps herself, a bit of a break. (She partnered with the eyewear brand in April 2024 on her own line, Jentle Salon.)
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The 28-year-old appears at ease despite the chaos swirling around her. She’s also strikingly self-aware, which seems to be both freeing and consuming for her — she knows the pursuit of perfection is exhausting and never-ending, and yet she’ll settle for nothing less. Recently, this has manifested in the secrecy surrounding her upcoming album, which for the self-described “workaholic” is far from manufactured marketing mystique. Rather, it may well be a way to buy time until she feels the project she has dreamed of for so long is as close to perfect as possible — even as pressure to release it builds.
“It’s not nice to be someone who’s always like, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t say anything,’ ” she says of the album she began working on in early 2024 — and that the world still knows very little about. “I want to say I’m almost there,” she offers. One of her biggest takeaways from the process? “I’m just going to say, ‘I don’t do well with time,’ ” she says with a laugh.
Jacquemus top and AREA hat.
Songyi Yoon
Since Jennie became a YG Entertainment trainee at 14 and a Blackpink member at 20, her career has been clearly defined and carefully handled — a meticulous approach that has yielded historic results and global fame. In 2019, Blackpink became the first K-pop girl group to perform at Coachella, and just four years later, the first Asian act to headline the festival. And the group — rounded out by Lisa, Rosé and Jisoo — made history in 2022 as the first South Korean girl group to top the Billboard 200, with its celebrated second album, Born Pink.
Yet that well-paved path to stardom also offered Jennie little time to explore her own creative voice. From Blackpink’s 2016 debut through 2023, she released just two solo singles, both through the group’s label, YG: the aptly titled Korean-English “Solo” in 2018 and the dance-pop “You & Me” in 2023, the latter of which peaked at No. 1 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. chart. All the while, Jennie was growing eager to piece together “the puzzle of my dreams,” as she calls her solo-album-to-be. So in 2023, when Blackpink re-signed with YG for group activities and its members became free agents for the first time in their careers for solo activities, she jumped at the chance.
“While I was on my last Blackpink tour [it wrapped in 2023], I couldn’t stop myself from starting to plan ahead. I’m just like that,” she says. “I listed out the things that I want in my life and started pinpointing, or prioritizing, what’s my very next step. And instantly, I was like, ‘I still haven’t accomplished the dream of releasing a solo album.’ I wanted to satisfy myself by achieving that goal.”
With a clear runway, she set out to do just that. In December 2023, she announced her own independent label, OddAtelier (commonly referred to as OA). At the start of 2024, she began her “album journey” in Los Angeles, where she says she worked on “99%” of the project, whose title has yet to be unveiled. By September, she announced a partnership with Columbia Records, and in October, she released the album’s fierce and sassy lead single, “Mantra,” which peaked at Nos. 2 and 3 on the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. and Billboard Global 200 charts, respectively.
“It’s been a long process because American artists, they usually take a few years to make one album, but we have time limitations because [this year] she’s got to go back into Blackpink activities again,” says Alison Chang, OA’s head of global business and Jennie’s self-described “right hand.” “She really wanted to show her artistry through this album, and in the beginning, we were meeting producers and writers who she didn’t really match with. I think finding her sound throughout this process was kind of hard, and landing with ‘Mantra,’ that took a very long time. Just finding that first perfect single to let the world know this is the start of her solo career.”
And while Jennie’s years as a trainee prepared her for nearly every aspect of stardom, nothing could have braced her for the pressure and responsibility that comes with being truly in charge.
“The thing is, even back in the [trainee] days, I was never OK with what other people approved. I would check on every single team like, ‘Can I look at other options?’ ” she recalls. “So I am used to the process, but it’s more of a mental thing. The idea of ‘you’re on your own, make the right decision.’ And sometimes that’s the scariest feeling. Sometimes I wake up like, ‘I don’t want this overwhelming control.’ ”
“Just touched down in L.A.,” Jennie sings on “Mantra,” later noting, “We’ll be 20 minutes late ’cause we had to do an In-N-Out drive-by” — and days after its release, she found herself back in town.
She was there to perform the playful pop hit on Jimmy Kimmel Live! — her solo U.S. TV debut — and it was the first time in a long time she had seen her fans, who gathered en masse for the appearance. “Mantra” “was a good start for her because it [showed the] things people still expect from Jennie — she’s dancing and she’s singing and rapping at the same time,” Columbia vp of A&R Nicole Kim says.
Later that night, it was Jennie’s turn to be a fan: She attended Charli xcx and Troye Sivan’s Sweat Tour and snapped pics with Charli, Sivan and her pal and The Idol co-star Lily-Rose Depp. Jennie made her TV acting debut on the shocking 2023 drama about an aspiring pop star (Depp) and her controversial relationship with a producer (The Weeknd); Jennie’s collaborative single with Depp and The Weeknd, “One of the Girls,” became her first appearance on the Hot 100 under her own name.
Jennie feels “more freedom” in L.A. compared with her native Seoul, saying, “I could definitely go out and eat whenever I want to, wherever I want to,” but adds that the biggest difference between the two cities is who surrounds her. “I learn a lot from people [in L.A.]. It’s a great environment, especially for people in music, to meet people that can inspire you.” (She was back in November for Tyler, The Creator’s Camp Flog Gnaw Carnival, where she made a surprise appearance during Matt Champion’s set to perform their 2024 collaboration, “Slow Motion,” and posed with Doechii backstage. In April, she’ll return to California to make her solo debut at Coachella.)
It’s why, Jennie says, recording most of her album in L.A. was “very intentionally done. I just really wanted to throw myself out there to experience it. [In Seoul], I was so comforted in an easy environment that I created a long time ago, and I didn’t enjoy it. I was like, ‘No, if this is your career and if this is your life, explore and learn.’ I kept telling myself that.”
Alexander McQueen coat, David Koma top and Coperni bottoms.
Songyi Yoon
Jennie had worked with just one producer, acclaimed K-pop veteran Teddy Park, prior to her debut album — so when it came time to build a new creative network in a new city, she says the process was “rough.”
“I struggled a lot in the beginning,” she admits. “A few months, I would say, was just me throwing myself out there, walking into rooms filled with new people. I just had to keep knocking on the door, like, ‘Is this it?’ ‘Is this it?’ and then eventually, we got to a point where I found a good group of people that I linked with, sonically and as friends.” (“Mantra” was co-written by songwriters affiliated with management, recording and publishing company Electric Feel such as Billy Walsh, Jumpa and Claudia Valentina, among others, and was mostly produced by El Guincho, known for his work with Rosalía and Camila Cabello, among other left-of-center pop girls.)
Jennie spent six years as a YG trainee before being placed in a group — the longest of any of Blackpink’s members — and while working on her solo album, she reflected on those early days, especially her individual tastes. Back then, she had time to listen to “so much music,” she recalls. “I can’t explain how much that helped in terms of the beginning era of making this album. I never really had a chance to look back at myself [during Blackpink’s rise], so [this process] was a time to really be like, ‘What was I interested in back then?’ Those times played a big role to get it started.”
So did her childhood. Born in South Korea as Jennie Kim, she recalls her mother playing a lot of ’90s pop music, which she says was “rare” for anyone living in Korea at the time. “She had a big passion for Western culture, too,” Jennie says. “She would be playing Norah Jones and Backstreet Boys … Naturally, I was drawn to R&B and, of course, Korea is known for its K-pop culture. So that was also very familiar. I was just always into the idea of music.” (Jennie says she and her mom still “live super close to each other,” allowing them to see each other often.)
Markgong top
Songyi Yoon
From a young age, Jennie also craved independence. Following a vacation when she was 10 with her mom to Auckland, New Zealand, Jennie spent the next five years there attending school and participating in a homestay with a Korean family. That’s primarily where she learned English and where she ideated her alter ego of Ruby-Jane, inspired by the desire for a middle name like her new friends all had. “I feel like I am great at creating different characters within myself,” she says. “I like that about me.”
These characters, it seems, all come to play on her upcoming debut (along with a few features she’s hesitant to share more on just yet). “I intend to complete myself as Jennie Ruby-Jane, for that to be a whole person, in a way,” she reveals. “You’ll definitely know what I mean once the album drops, but because I’m playing with a lot of different genres and elements — I’m rapping here, I’m singing here, I’m harmonizing here, I’m talking here … The overall sound was me making sure I like every single [song]. I didn’t want to be forced into putting a song onto my album — that’s what I really fought for. And I was lucky to have all these people believe in me and support me so I could get to a level where we were like, ‘Wow. I think we’re ready.’ ”
When it came to her new label, Jennie knew what she wanted in a name: something that looked and sounded pretty, that represented herself and her team — but that wasn’t so specific it would box them in. “I wanted it to be [a name that signifies] we’re open to do anything,” she says. “I didn’t want anyone to label what we were.” OddAtelier, named for the French word for a collaborative workshop or studio, “just made sense,” she says. “Atelier is a place where we create art.”
Still, soon after deciding to launch it in late 2023, Jennie took a look at herself in the mirror and thought, “ ‘Do you realize the choice that you’ve made?’ It was really an all-or-nothing situation,” she says. “I didn’t one day decide I want to make a label for myself. For me, building the relationship with my team, we started dreaming together, naturally. Because a lot of them I’ve worked with for a long time. So when we had a chance to go our individual way, I thought that would be like six years in the future. I didn’t think it would be so soon. So I got the courage to start my independence in life, and every step of the way has been a learning process for me. I’m studying this whole new world. Now that it’s been a year, I can say I’m glad I was brave enough to have started this label. I couldn’t be more proud.”
As for whether she plans to sign other artists to OA, her response makes clear how overwhelming a moment this is: “I’ve been getting this question left and right, and my answer is ‘Please, I am so busy on this album. Let’s not even get my brain on that path just yet,’ ” she says while laughing through a polite sigh.
Chang, OA’s global head of business, met Jennie in 2019, when she was working with YG Entertainment USA handling licensing, merchandising and intellectual property for acts including Blackpink. The two “just hit it off,” Chang says. “We formed this bond, and then from there, we just saw each other every day, and it evolved into managing her stuff along with Blackpink. We went on tour together, and then [in 2023], she was like, ‘Hey, I want to create OA.’
“From the day I met her, I just knew, ‘Wow, this girl is so smart,’ ” Chang continues. “She knows what she wants. She’s ambitious. Our standards for each other are so high. As a solo artist, she’s able to spread her wings a bit more and have more authority over her creative direction and strategy for how she wants to develop into an even bigger global artist.”
Jacquemus dress
Songyi Yoon
The hope is that Jennie will become the Korean pop star to represent the Asian music market — a bit like Bad Bunny does the Spanish-language one. But she and her team couldn’t conquer the world on their own. Chang knew that if the goal was to break even wider in the United States, they would need more resources and experience. “It was just a given,” she says. “We needed to partner with an American label.”
She and Jennie took “a lot” of label meetings in late 2023, but ultimately signed with Columbia for its “proactiveness” and how much the team they met had researched Jennie ahead of time. “Jennie values her roots and heritage more than anyone else, and while she does want to establish herself as a global artist, including in the U.S. market, she also deeply cares about her base and wants to make them proud,” says Kim, who worked at HYBE with acts including BTS prior to joining Columbia. “And I think our team is working really hard to support her in achieving that.” (For additional support, Jeremy Erlich will co-manage alongside OA; as Interscope’s executive vp of business development in the late 2010s, he helped facilitate the conversations between the label and YG that ultimately led to their global partnership and Blackpink signing with Interscope.)
But as the web around Jennie spreads, she remains firmly at its center — and is intent on calling the shots. Jennie attributes that to the woman she calls the “No. 1 boss lady”: her mom. “I don’t even have to look anywhere else. She’s taught me how to be a woman, how to be a boss, how to be myself. She’s my idol,” she gushes.
While coming up in Blackpink, Jennie says she had to learn how to compromise; with her own album, the only person she has to do that with is herself. “It’s a fight between me, myself and I — I’m not easy to convince,” she says. “It’s not easy working with me.” And that’s why Jennie craved this experience: It forced her to look into a metaphorical mirror.
“I needed this. I wanted this,” she says, her tone growing more confident. “The more I get to know myself, the more I try to love myself. I’ve had a time in my life where I didn’t — I had no clue how to do that. I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what I was living for. The time where I was feeling clueless. The fact that I’ve moved on from that phase and being so committed to myself, I’m very proud.
“It’s so easy to lose yourself, which is OK,” she continues. “There was also a time where I was feeling lost about ‘K-pop,’ ‘pop music,’ all these labels that I was chasing after … Now that I look back, I just want to tell myself, ‘Maybe enjoy it a little, feeling lost in the struggle, because there will be a time where you don’t even have time to think you’re lost.’ ”
Blackpink’s group chat is ID’d with a simple yet fitting emoji: a family of four. Jennie says her groupmates check in there as often as they can.
“We are all so caught up with life. Obviously, we can’t be calling each other every day,” she says. “Even though we know we can’t see each other so much, it doesn’t really feel any different than all the other years because we know we’re here for each other. They’re literally a phone call away. And at this point, we respect each other’s space so much. So if there’s anything to be happy for, to celebrate, we’re all in it together.”
For the group’s dedicated Blinks, Blackpink’s 2025 reunion, which will include new music and a tour — and follows Rosé’s just-released solo album, a forthcoming album and a role on The White Lotus for Lisa and an acting gig on a forthcoming K-drama and a Dior campaign for Jisoo — is indeed cause for celebration. “I’ve missed the girls. I’ve missed doing tours with them. I miss our silly moments,” Jennie says. “I’m excited to see what everyone brings. You know, everyone took their own journey [during] this time, and I’m excited to share that with the girls. I want to say it’s going to be the most powerful [versions] of ourselves that anyone has seen.”
As Blackpink’s members continue to grow, Chang says the best part of her front-row seat to Jennie’s journey has been seeing her evolution. “People don’t really know, but she’s a very shy, introverted person,” she says, “and seeing her throughout this whole process, I’m just really in awe of how much she’s grown. She put her heart into this.” As Kim recalls, while Jennie was recording her album, there were periods when she would be in sessions every day until six or seven the next morning: “It was surprising to me that she wanted to stay longer and write more. She was really, really passionate. It was inspiring for me to see her working so hard in the studio.”
Annakiki dress
Songyi Yoon
Most of Jennie’s album, as a result, is rooted in deeply personal songwriting about “what I’ve experienced, what I resonate to or what I want in my life. That’s one other thing that’s changed from being in Blackpink, is that I get to say my message in my way.”
And with so much time to reflect — both in and out of the studio — parts of Jennie’s life came into focus for the first time, including the realization that this is her life. Given her fluctuating schedule, she says her body often struggles to catch up or get into a rhythm, but over time, she has become better at prioritizing self-care. Her ideal day off (“Which is rare,” she says) includes morning coffee or tea, Pilates, a sauna or bath, dinner with friends and organizing her home. “That’s healing for me,” she says.
Understandably, she was thinking of such things while getting her hair and makeup done earlier today as she prepared for her Billboard shoot, and they inspired a thought that she shared with her team. “I said if I ever had a chance to tell people that are in their teenage [years] that look up to this job or this world, all I can say from experience is, ‘This is your life — and you have a whole lifetime to live.’ Not the next 10 years, not the next three years. It’s amazing to chase after your dream, but don’t forget to live.”
For now, Jennie is taking her own advice. When asked if her solo debut is the start of a continued solo career, her answer is succinct: “Let’s not put pressure on me. I want to live my present for now, and then let me ease myself into the next thing.”
Has she ever done that before?
“Oh, definitely not,” she says. “Every day has made me into who I am right now.”
This story appears in the Jan. 11, 2025, issue of Billboard.