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Machine Gun Kelly and Jelly Roll get some serious help from their significant others in the emotional video for their new team-up, “Lonely Road.” In the Sam Cahill-directed clip for the song that pays homage to John Denver’s iconic 1971 hit “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” KellyRoll — as they’ve dubbed themselves — are joined by MGK’s girlfriend, actress Megan Fox, and Jelly’s wife, Bunnie Xo, who both have prominent roles in the tear-in-your-beer storyline.
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KellyRoll play a pair of old pals struggling to provide for their families in the visual that opens with the duo clad in all black at a funeral before jumping to footage of the pair grinding away at an auto shop in matching tan jumpsuits. “I probably could’ve saved us/ But instead I let us crash/ Cuz I don’t trust no one to love me back,” MGK sings while strumming an acoustic guitar. “But she say I do/ And this is not the place for you.”
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As the past due notices continue to pile up, we see MGK kiss one-time fiancé Fox’s swelling belly and Jelly Roll standing in a field singing about using alcohol on the road to fill the hole of loneliness he feels when he’s thousands of miles from his love. “Will our home ever be the same/ I hear the devil wears Prada, but I couldn’t read the tags/ And your horns started showing when I see you mad,” he sings as he and Bunnie console each other after receiving a letter confirming an infertility diagnosis.
The storylines are particularly poignant and personal for both men, as Jelly revealed last month that Bunnie, 44, is undergoing IVF as they try to conceive their first child together and in November, mother of three Fox opened up about the “very difficult” miscarriage she suffered with MGK.
After the two couples share a quiet home meal together, MGK tries to rope Jelly into a scheme to make some quick money, a road the “Save Me” country star says he can’t go down anymore. Following one more shot of MGK kissing Fox’s stomach, the rapper-turned-rocker-turned-country crooner hops on his motorcycle and pulls off a bank heist that ends with his arrest as he’s kissing his love and their unborn child goodbye one last time.
Cut to eight month later and Jelly, Bunnie and Fox are all cooing over the baby, who MGK kisses through the glass in the prison visiting room.
The long and winding road to “Lonely Road” has taken more than two years, with MGK recently saying that the duo have been working on the track over “2 years, 8 different studios, 4 different countries, [and] changed the key 4 times.”
Watch the “Lonely Road” video below.
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Exactly one new sport will make its debut at the Paris Olympics: breaking, an evolution of the phenomenon of B-Boys whirling and spinning in the Bronx during the early days of hip-hop breakdancing in the ’70s and ’80s. It’s a complicated, difficult sport, and star athletes such as Canada’s Phil Wizard train to move just about every part of their bodies, improvising instantly to tracks and beats they have no idea are coming. “We were more culture, now we’re sports,” says Victor Montalvo, 30, one of the U.S. breaking team’s four members, by phone from Philadelphia, a few days before departing for Paris. “Breaking has evolved. It’s way different now.”
The breaking events, which kick off Aug. 9, involve one-on-one battles during which hip-hop DJs provide the beats and competitors take 60-second turns known as “throw downs.” They choose from three broad categories of moves: “top rock,” or standing dances; “freeze,” a halted position on heads or hands; and “down rock,” or flashy, acrobatic spins. In a competition last year, Jeffrey “B-Boy Jeffro” Louis, 29, now on the U.S. team, repeatedly twirled his body while upside-down, feet in the air – balancing himself alternately on his head, upper back and a single forearm.
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“His style is super-musical. He goes off feeling. He has a lot of character, showmanship, stage presence,” Montalvo says of his teammate. “He just brings it all to life.”
Breaking, the sport, took off in the early 2000s when Red Bull sponsored events such as Lords of the Floor, treating the competition not like an old-school throwback but a series of hyped-up wrestling or boxing matches. Back then, Montalvo was learning his moves on his driveway with a cousin, and Louis’ older brother, Kenny, was teaching him and another brother, Pierry, how to do it. Today, they’re two of the 16 B-Boys and 16 B-Girls who will battle for Olympic gold. They spoke with Billboard in separate interviews a week before today’s opening ceremony.
Jeffrey “B-Boy Jeffro” Louis
How familiar are you with the competition? Are you scouting?
We’ve been competing against these guys from the beginning of 2022, so we’re pretty much familiar with everybody. We know what everybody’s going to throw out and what they’re going to do. But everybody has a strategy, and we’re trying to strategize based on their strategy. It’s like a game of chess. At the end of the day, I know my moves. The judges might see my moves falling in a different category than what I believe my moves fall in — so you’re trying to understand the judging system, but you’re also trying to understand where you fall in that judging system, and analyzing your strengths and weaknesses within that judging system. It’s maintenance work right now.
What do you mean by maintenance?
Strength and conditioning. Doing physical therapy on my groin, because I had an injury a couple years ago, so I’m just trying to make sure I don’t strain it or injure myself. A lot of breakers are getting hurt because they’re overtraining and pushing themselves. It’s just getting into that mindset of don’t overdo it.
How does physical preparation for breaking compare to a traditional sport?
Everybody has their own style, so you want to train the way your dancing is performed. Some people live on their hands. They can walk, flip, spin — and stay on their hands the whole time. I’m more of a grounded person, so my training’s going to be different. I train through my fitness program, FitBreak, where I take breaking moves and combine it with traditional exercises.
How much do you study old-school hip-hop breakdancing?
I have to study everybody. If you’re involved in breaking, you have to go back. You have to know the history. There are a lot of moves back then that are not used right now. People might see it as “they’re basic,” but when you haven’t seen something in forever, and something reappears, people say, “That’s a classic move.”
Will your brothers be in Paris?
They’re part of my crew. Both aren’t able to make it, but one of them is — Sweet P. That’s [Pierry’s] breaker name. He was with me at the last qualifier in Budapest. He was there when I qualified to make the Olympics, and just having him there was such a boost. My personality shined more, my character shined, my mindset, feeling like I didn’t have to prove myself.
Any opponents you’re especially focused on?
Everybody’s high level. One person I would love to met in the competition would be Phil Wizard. Everybody’s saying this is the guy to beat. And my friend, Dany Dann, he’s from France, we just have one of the most natural connections whenever we battle.
What is your battle plan?
When I try to think of moves, it hinders my style. Going back to the beginning of how I started dancing — why I fell in love with breaking — it’s that freedom of movement. My goal in Paris is to get into that traditional Jeffro style of just moving and listening and connecting. When I’m that free, I’m unstoppable.
It’s like you’re describing a jazz musician improvising.
Yeah. You have to be able to connect with your whole surrounding, whether it’s the floor, the music, the DJs on set, the crowd. Because if you’re not, you can tell, there’s some unbalanced factor in your dancing. You have to have a conversation with your opponent through moves, and if you’re not doing that, then you’re just showcasing.
Victor Montalvo
How are you training for the Olympics?
For now, I’m simulating the battles. I’m doing a lot of breaking interval training, which requires 30-to-40-second rounds and 30-second rest.
Which competitors are you thinking about as you’re prepping?
There’s been a couple athletes that are in the same bracket as me, so I have to watch out for them. I’m just worrying about myself for now — bettering my style and moves and concepts.
How surprised have you been that breaking turned into an Olympic sport?
I feel like the whole community was shocked. We did not expect it. This was out of our heads. It was really cool, like, “This is a new goal we can achieve.” We’re stepping into the sports world. We’ve never had that opportunity to show the dance, and now we do. It’s really cool to see the positive reactions and the support we’re getting. There are a lot of people supporting me who haven’t seen breaking — or haven’t seen it since the ’80s.
Which members of your family are coming to Paris to watch you compete?
I have my cousin. He was the one who taught me breaking — my first ever power move, which was the windmill. From there, it never stopped. He’s coming to the event. He’s not going to be in Paris the entire time. He’s going to be there for my event, then heading back to the U.S.
Where do you get inspiration for your moves?
You see someone you look up to and you create your own path. It’s all about taking, but recreating. Most of the moves we’re doing are from tribal dances, martial arts. It’s a melting pot of inspirations.
What do you want viewers to know about this new Olympic sport?
We can’t repeat in our competition. Let’s say in figure skating, you have a full routine that you have to practice, and it’s like two minutes. In breaking, we have 15 full routines, 15 signatures that we rehearse, and we can’t repeat them. So once you do that one signature, you can’t repeat it the entire event. Because you get points taken off, you’ve always got to come up with new things each round. It’s all based off of improvising and adapting in the moment. You never know what’s going to happen.
How challenging is it to train for this type of improvisation?
Even with your moves rehearsed, you’ve got to have your moves in your head. You might forget [during] the third round, so you’ve got to adapt. It’s all like a mind game.
That sounds tough.
It’s just competing. I’ve been doing it for so many years — I’ve been competing internationally for 12 years, but in total, I’ve been competing for 18 years — and you just start understanding the formula and start having this muscle memory from all the dancing you’re doing. It comes alive without even thinking. It comes out of nowhere, like your body knows what to do.
Just like Britney Spears did in 2000, Halsey is pulling back the curtain on the dark side of fame with her new single “Lucky.”
The track — which samples the iconic pop star’s turn-of-the-millennium hit of the same name — dropped at midnight Friday (July 26), while theY2K-inspired music video directed by Gia Coppola arrived hours later. In the visual, the 29-year-old singer channels a Spears-like teen idol who, on one side of the coin, is revered by a little girl with posters of Halsey covering her bedroom walls.
On the other side, the “Without Me” singer’s character faces troubles in her relationship while receiving treatment for an illness, much like the real-life Halsey. In June, the musician revealed she’d been diagnosed with Lupus and a rare T-cell disorder two years prior. Last year, she split from partner Alev Aydin, with whom she shares 3-year-old son Ender.
“I shaved my head four times because I wanted to/ And then I did it one more time ’cause I got sick,” she sings on the track, which also interpolates Monica’s 1998 Billboard Hot 100-topper “Angel of Mine.” “I left the doctor’s office full of tears/ Became a single mom at my premiere/ And I told everybody I was fine for a whole damn year/ And that’s the biggest lie of my career.”
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The video also finds Halsey modeling a crystal bodysuit to parallel Spears’ “Toxic” visual and smiling for paparazzi on a red carpet. She later removes the bright pink wig she’d been wearing throughout the visual to reveal a shaved head before sitting down to receive treatment through an IV. At the end, she symbolically sits next to the little girl who worships her, unaware of the full story, on a swing set.
“it was really challenging to incorporate so many conflicting emotions in just a few minutes,” Halsey wrote of the video on Instagram after it went live. “this campaign has been fun because I WANT to have fun, but I made lot of this art when I was suffering.”
Of her decision to pay tribute to Spears — who personally approved the “Lucky” sample, Halsey previously revealed — the “Closer” artist tweeted, “I remember the first time I heard her sing lucky and it hitting me at such a young age that I had no idea what her life was really like.”
“that feeling resonates with me so much still,” she added. “I found myself singing it when I started treatment and then I knew I had to do it 💕”
Watch Halsey’s raw “Lucky” music video above.
This week in dance music: Legendary dance vocalist Evelyn Thomas died at age 70; we trekked to Belgium for Tomorrowland and recapped its best moment and ten most played tracks; Anyma reported selling an incredible 100,000 tickets in less than 24 hours for his six sold out shows in Sphere in Las Vegas this December and Meduza shared the secrets of “Italian touch” for the latest cover of Billboard Italy.
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And we’ve got the goods, too. These are the best new dance tracks of the week.
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Gordo, Diamante
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Think of Diamante, the debut album from Gordo, as the companion piece to Drake’s Honestly Nevermind, with Gordo producing that 2022 album and Drake featuring on two tracks on this new project by his longtime friend. The connective tissue extends well beyond credits, as Diamante picks up and in many ways extends Honestly Nevermind‘s underground house terrain, with its 16 tracks embodying simmering, sophisticated and in many cases sensual dancefloor music that folds in elements of reggaeton, pop, indie, jazz and hip-hop, altogether sounding like any given afterhours in Miami, Tulum, Berlin or Ibiza. The album features not just the two Drake collabs, but a crew of other guests including Fuerza Regida, T-Pain, Maluma, Nicki Nicole, Feid, Leon Bridges, &ME and Rampa of Keinemusik and Young Dolph.
Gordo is of course the producer formerly known as Carnage, with the Nicaraguan-American artist born Diamanté Blackmon abandoning the Carnage project in 2022, telling us that it was making him “miserable.” With Diamante, out via Ultra Records, he’s clearly found and gotten comfortable in a new, more mature groove. Blackmon spent four years making the project, and dedicates it to his grandmother and his other nearest and dearest.
“I called in every favor I could for this body of work….,” he writes. “It’s really really beautiful….I have never been so nervous in my life… I guess that’s a good sign??? To be honest with you all… I thought about calling it quits after I dropped this album…i felt a bit lost when I finished it because i couldn’t fathom something better than this… everything I’ve dreamed of is right here in this project… all of my dreams collab came true…so many talented people helped with this project… I’m so grateful… this isn’t a gordo album… it’s a diamante album… from carnage to gordo… it’s been a wild ride… i hope I make you guys proud.” — KATIE BAIN
Calvin Harris & Ellie Goulding, “Free”
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After nabbing a No. 1 hit in the U.K. last year with “Miracle,” Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding return with what could be its successful sequel, “Free.” The Scottish producer has been rinsing the new track in his recent DJ sets, including one earlier this week at Ibiza mega-club Ushuaïa, where Goulding popped in for a live performance. Like its predecessor, “Free” is high in energy and steeped in ‘90s-era sounds, but it leaves the trance route in favor of euphoric piano house with cascading breaks and waves of warm, glowing synths. Goulding’s vocals float above, her gossamer timbre naturally capturing the song’s vulnerable but hopeful lyrics: “Eyes closed, holding on/ Alone no more/ I’m free when I’m with you.” —KRYSTAL RODRIGUEZ
Sophie, “Berlin Nightmare”
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Ahead of Sophie’s final album release, two new tracks from the late Scottish producer have emerged: “One More Time” featuring Popstar and “Berlin Nightmare” featuring Evita Manji. “Berlin Nightmare” is delightfully dark and grimy, with multiple synth lines squelching and skipping across unrelenting percussion, culminating in a last-second speedup that yanks you out of their trance. It evokes images of hazy warehouse parties, where in the dim-lit space the dancefloor looks like a single mass of writhing limbs, and dried puddles of spilled drinks occasionally glue your shoes to the concrete. The two tracks follow lead single “Reason Why,” released last month. Sophie is due out on September 27. — K.R.
Hayla, “Freefall”
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As one of current electronic music’s most in-demand vocalists, Hayla has been omnipresent on the dance floor and on the charts, logging recent collaborations with Kx5, John Summit and Kygo. High-profile as they may be, the British singer/songwriter is fierce all on her own as shown on her latest solo single “Freefall.” It’s an atmospheric yet hard-hitting affair, with rumbling and swirling synths echoing the duality of Hayla’s love conundrum, and her drawn-out chorus pulls you into a state of weightlessness.
“I wrote this song in L.A. about a year and a half ago with Carl Ryden,” says Hayla. “The track was one that I always loved and when we were thinking about what to put on the album this track really stuck out as a stand alone single release. This song’s story happens after the love has gone – when the realization hits that no matter how hard you try to make something work you can’t. The chorus however asks the question of gravitational pull … maybe in another time it would bring you back together.” “Freefall” is Hayla’s final single release ahead of her debut album, which is slated for a November release. — K.R.
Mochakk feat. VTSS “Locomotiva Ibiza 2099”
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Brazilian phenom Mochakk (of “Jealous” fame) further proves he’s got the goods to stay in it for the long haul with his latest, “Locomotiva Ibiza 2099.” The title track from of the producer’s new three-song EP, the nearly seven-minute clubland opus takes its time warming up, then shifts into high gear with the sound of an actual locomotive and a cascade of acid-soaked synths that capture the heady, warm, happily weird vibes of going for it in the club at 5 a.m. on the song’s namesake island.
A collaboration with producer/vocalist Vtss (whose Boys Noize collab “Steady Pace” was a 2023 favorite), “Locomotiva Ibiza 2099” is out via Circo Loco Records and comes from the first installment of a two part EP, with the second installment coming in September. Both are out via CircoLoco Records, the label birthed from Ibiza’s DC10 where Mochakk is a current resident. He’ll play his own Mochakk Calling event in São Paulo this Saturday, July 27, along with upcoming festivals including Lollapalooza, Osheaga and Hard Summer. — K.B.
Boys Noize, “Fvkvrvnd”
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Ahead of Hard Summer next weekend, the festival’s namesake label is setting the tone for the event with this, the latest from German fav Boys Noize. Clocking in at a throttling, threatening 148 BPM, the track is all kickdrum and relentless buzzaw bassline, adding up to a happily hectic, cathartically tough song that sounds like it’s got your head in a vice in the best kind of way. Naturally, Boys Noize plays Hard Summer on the first day of the August 3-4 festival in Los Angeles. — K.B.
David Guetta & Oliver Heldens feat. Fast Boy, “Chills (Feel My Love)”
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This past week has yielded something of a stylistic whiplash for Oliver Heldens. Last Friday, the Dutch producer released the dark and absolutely drilling single “Baddadan Bad” under his Hi-Lo alias, and today he teams up with David Guetta and Fast Boy on “Chills (Feel My Love),” an uplifting summer anthem that invites hands-in-the-air festival moments. The powerful combination of skyward builds, stadium-sized synths and Fast Boy’s impassioned vocals must sound like how it feels when you experience a love so strong that your heart threatens to burst out of your chest.
“Earlier last year, I was looking for some uplifting vocals, and Fast Boy sent me a few vocal demos,” Heldens says. “One of them, ‘Chills,’ really stood out to me, and I was immediately drawn to its emotional and melancholic vibes, so I started working on it. In the summer of 2023, I tested an early demo at some of my shows but felt it wasn’t totally right, so I went into the studio and kept re-working, and during a session in Amsterdam during ADE where I actually met Fast Boy for the first time, we got it to a place where it sounded so big and fresh! The new version reminded us a lot of some of David Guetta’s older hits, like ‘When Love Takes Over,’ so we had to send it to him. He loved it and put his touch on it, and we all finished it up together!” — K.R.
Ye and Ty Dolla $ign are extending their August trip to Asia with a stop for a Vultures 2 listening party in Taiwan.
Ty Dolla $ign confirmed plans for the experience in an Instagram post on Thursday (July 25), with the event slated for Aug. 25. It’s another signal that the much-delayed Vultures 2 could be on he horizon, with Ty captioning the show flyer with “V2.”
“VULTURES LISTENING EXPERIENCE TAIWAN 08 25 24,” the flyer reads.
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Fans voiced their frustration with the Vultures listening parties continuing to be announced without any update on the arrival of V2.
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“Even ty doesn’t know when the F—ING ALBUM IS DROPPING,” one person wrote. Another asked: “Does Ye know about this?”
Denzel Curry chimed in with a “LETS GOOOOOOOO,” leading some belief he’s possibly making an appearance on the sequel.
Details of the Taiwan venue and ticketing situation are not yet known, but like the South Korea Vultures event, LeGrand is handling promotion duties as the organizer.
Ye and Ty Dolla are slated to hit up South Korea’s Goyang Stadium for a Vultures listening party on Aug. 23 — two days before coming to Taiwan.
Pre-sale tickets will hit the market on July 29 at 8 p.m. local time, and then the general public will have their shot on July 30. Prices appear to range from $58 to $181 when converted to USD.
While Vultures 2 remains without a release date, Ty confirmed in his Billboard cover story that the project is essentially finished and awaiting a proper rollout. “We got all the songs. Basically, it’s just like, ‘How can we get it there? How can we go bigger than the first album?’” he said. “Certain people will probably expect you to just do the same exact sound. But that sound’s already out.”
Vultures 1 was released independently on Feb. 10, and the LP debuted atop the Billboard 200 with 148,000 equivalent album units. Ye and Ty also topped the Billboard Hot 100 in March with “Carnival,” featuring assists from Rich the Kid and Playboi Carti.
Vultures 2 was originally slated to arrive on March 8 before being pushed to May 3, and then delayed indefinitely.
See Ty Dolla $ign’s announcement for the Taiwan event below:
Linda Perry is well aware of the qualities that have made her a world-class songwriter, producer and go-to studio magic-maker. But asked to define what she thinks her strong suits are, Perry tells Billboard that she is, “pretty tough, I’m aggressive, I’m a pretty powerful person,” but also, “very talented, I’m smart, I’m a great mom, I’m a great friend… I’m all these things, I’m a great songwriter, but sometimes you lose your way.”
That why, even with all those sparkling qualities, Perry said, sometimes you lose your way. That dichotomy is at the heart of Linda Perry: Let It Die Here, the documentary about Perry’s work and life that debuted at the Tribeca Festival in June. “In real time I kind of figured things out, I’m still putting the pieces together,” she says. “I don’t think, honestly, anybody truly knows who they are until they can be at one with everything. I guess I’m trying to get to that point where I don’t have a reaction. Because reactions are emotional.”
Perry opens up in the film about her journey from fronting early 1990’s band 4 Non Blondes — famous for their 1993 Billboard Hot 100 No. 14 hit “What’s Up” — to becoming an in-demand songwriter and producer for everyone from Adele and Christina Aguilera to Dolly Parton, P!nk, Miley Cyrus, Celine Dion, Ariana Grande and Alicia Keys. Director Don Hardy speaks to the singer, as well as her family, friends and colleagues in the 90-minute doc that also features new performance and recording footage.
“I didn’t even know we were making a documentary,” Perry says of the process of filming that took place as she was beginning to unpack some hard truths about her childhood and past trauma — which included mental, physical and emotional abuse — as well processing her mother’s dementia diagnosis and her own health issues. She’d met Hardy years ago when she scored his doc Citizen Penn, about actor Sean Penn’s efforts to help Haitians in the wake of 2010’s devastating 7.0 earthquake.
“One day he was like, ‘you’re so interesting. Do you mind if I’m like a fly on the wall in your studio?,” she recalls. As Hardy hung around, Perry says she began “unraveling,” and it wasn’t until the director came told her he’d shown a 30-minute edit of the footage to some people and they agreed there was a movie in there somewhere. She said go for it and gave them the green light to start the film, just as her and her mother were both hit with health crises.
“All of that was happening in real time,” she says. “It all makes sense now, like how I had to unravel in real time. If I would have thought about it, if I knew it would was gonna happen, never would have approved anything like this.”
The film has allowed Perry to let all of that go, which is why she wanted it to be called Let It Die Here; she wrote a song for her mother with that title. “I’m not a liar. I am about as honest as you will find on this planet,” Perry adds of her no-b.s. songwriting process and how everything she writes is true, even if it’s about another person.
At some point, though, she was having trouble writing songs for others because she couldn’t figure out how to tell her words through someone else’s experience. “It started to feel like a lie to me,” she says of her decision to focus on scoring film and TV. Watch the full interview with Perry above.
Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond.
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This week, Ice Spice makes their full-length bow, Post Malone brings in another country superstar, and Halsey nods to Britney and Monica. Check out all of this week’s picks below:
Ice Spice, Y2K!
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Ice Spice’s boisterous personality and no-holds-barred approach to New York drill made her a star in 2023, and this year brings Y2K!, the summation of months of single releases that still congeals into a singular full-length. Travis Scott and Gunna swing by new tracks, but Ice’s solo power on songs like “Papa,” “Plenty Sun” and “TTYL” make Y2K! worth turning up in the back half of the summer.
Post Malone feat. Luke Combs, “Guy For That”
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Post Malone’s chart-topping country music exploration continues with “Guy For That,” a hearty team-up with Luke Combs that leans on both artists’ vocal strength to achieve anthem status; both Posty and Combs are currently promoting bigger hits, and seem to use “Guy For That” to tinker with their respective images and have a down-home blast.
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Halsey, “Lucky”
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Interpolating both Britney Spears’ “Lucky” and Monica’s “Angel of Mine,” Halsey utilizes past hits to tell her own tale of complicated fame and effectively tugging on heartstrings with bare emotion: “And I told everybody I was fine for a whole damn year / And that’s the biggest lie of my career,” she laments.
MGK with Jelly Roll, “Lonely Road”
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The artist formerly known as Machine Gun Kelly has reinvented himself a time or three since launching his career, and a track like “Lonely Road,” which corrals Jelly Roll and puts a modern spin on a John Denver classic with plenty of soaring harmonies and acoustic strums, demonstrates his range while forging yet another new path.
Fuerza Regida, Pero No Te Enamores
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Although “Harley Quinn,” Fuerza Regida’s hit team-up with Marshmello, is not included on the track list to Pero No Te Enamores, the full-length fusion of regional Mexican music and thumping EDM is indebted to that earlier single, with artists like Major Lazer, Afrojack and Gordo swinging by to contribute to the party.
Calvin Harris with Ellie Goulding, “Free”
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Fans of “I Need Your Love,” “Outside” and “Miracle” are going to wrap their arms around “Free,” the latest collaboration between Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding that builds upon their long-standing chemistry and pushes the tempo with a straightforward but powerful catchphrase: “When I’m with you, I’m free,” Goulding declares.
Mustard, Faith of a Mustard Seed
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Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” was momentous enough to both land a knockout blow in a rap feud and revitalize producer Mustard’s mainstream career, and the star-studded Faith of a Mustard Seed, featuring everyone from Travis Scott to Kirk Franklin to Ella Mai (who teams with Roddy Ricch on the “911” rework “One Bad Decision”), functions as an extended, well-earned victory lap.
XG, “Something Ain’t Right”
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The retro bounce of XG’s “Something Ain’t Right” goes beyond feel-good and achieves downright giddiness, as the Japanese girl group preview their forthcoming second mini-album (due out Nov. 8) with a killer hook and ‘90s-indebted production that could feasibly reach a whole new listenership in the U.S.
Central Cee, “gen z luv”
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On the same day that his “Did It First” collaborator Ice Spice unveils her new album, Central Cee has a New Music Friday banger himself: “gen z luv” is a sparse, surprisingly vulnerable tale of social-media-age romance, but the pummeling percussion also makes the song work in a club setting.
Editor’s Pick: Wand, Vertigo
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Over the course of Los Angeles rock group Wand’s decade of activity, frontman Cory Hanson’s vocal affectation has drawn endless comparisons to that of Thom Yorke; with its ambitious, psych-adjacent sprawl, new album Vertigo is great enough to evoke peak Radiohead, and enough of a sonic leap forward to serve as a breakthrough.
Drake apparently decided to pop out as a fan to the Limp Bizkit concert in Toronto on Thursday night (July 25), but when frontman Fred Durst shouted him out, the crowd reaction was less than enthusiastic.
“Did you know Drake’s here tonight?” Durst said as concertgoers booed, though the rapper was not visible. “I thought Drake was your homie? What? No? Drake’s my homie.”
The Budweiser Stage audience’s boos continued to get louder as Durst went on, before the rocker dedicated the next track in the band’s set to the 6 God. “F–k you,” one fan can be heard saying in a viral clip on TikTok.
“Since Drake’s here — he’s over here on the side — we’re gonna do this one for him. It’s dedicated to you,” Durst added as the opening strains of the band’s 2000 hit “Take a Look Around” started playing.
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Billboard has reached out to Drake’s reps for comment.
Some watching the Loserville Tour clip on X were shocked to see the rapper getting booed in his hometown, while others weren’t as surprised based on there being not much overlap between Limp Bizkit fans and Drizzy’s core fan base.
“I doubt many Drake fans and Limp Bizkit fans are synonymous with one another,” one person replied.
Another quipped: “Welp guess drake gonna take a selfie with oversized pants a korn tshirt and a box of biscuits.”
While Drake may have received a cold reception at the Limp Bizkit tour, he’s still out to deliver for his own fans when it comes to music. Drizzy recently served up a pair of features via Gordo’s Diamante project, making appearances on “Sideways” and album closer “Healing.”
The OVO boss and Gordo have a rich collaborative history, as he produced a handful of tracks on 2022’s Honestly, Nevermind. Even amid the fallout from the Kendrick Lamar battle, Gordo says Drake is at peace and in a great state of mind.
“Ever since all this has happened … I’ve seen him happier. It’s really weird. He’s pretty jolly,” Gordo told People. “The internet makes it seem like, ‘Oh, that photo, he’s all sad and s–t.’ That’s just a bad photo from a bad camera. But because it’s him, it’s put under a magnifying glass like, ‘Oh, look at his eyes. He’s looking a little droopy. He hasn’t slept.’ But the guy’s been happy as s–t, to be honest. He’s chilling.”
Watch when Limp Bizkit fans booed Drake at the band’s Toronto show:
Riding the wave of a blockbuster year so far, Billboard Español April cover star Myke Towers is poised to embark on his North American tour, La Pantera Negra, this fall. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news After touring Spain, Towers will recreate that stint in 18 cities […]
Luckily, they didn’t drop it like it’s hot. Snoop Dogg and Pharrell Williams both carried Olympic torches Friday morning (July 26) in the final leg of the 2024 relay, which will soon culminate in the lighting of the cauldron at the opening ceremonies, signifying the beginning of the Paris Games.
More than two months after the Olympic flame was first lit in Greece — after which it crossed the ocean to be relayed all over France — the Doggfather transported his torch through a stretch of Seine-Saint-Denis. In a video posted shortly afterward, the 52-year-old rapper Crip Walks and waves to nearby fans while carrying the precious cargo.
“I look at this as a prestigious honor and something I truly respect,” Snoop, who will provide on-the-ground coverage of the Games for NBC this year, previously told the Associated Press of being tapped for the relay. “I would have never dreamed of nothing like this. I’m going to be on my best behavior. I’m going to be on my best athleticism. I’ll be able to breathe slow to walk fast and hold the torch with a smile on my face, because I realize how prestigious this event is.”
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Later, Pharrell served as the final bearer of the torch before the flame makes its way to the Olympic cauldron, carrying it to the top of the Basilica of Saint-Denis. French journalist Mohamed Bouhafsi and actress Laëtitia Casta first completed the final handover of the flame to the producer, who then entrusted it to the Keeper of the Flame for storage in the official lantern ahead of the opening ceremonies Friday afternoon.
The “Drop It Like It’s Hot” collaborators are just two of the latest musicians to carry the torch in Olympic history. BTS’ Jin carried the flame earlier this month, while John Legend, Olivia Newton-John, Will.i.am, Loretta Lynn, Lance Bass, Mel C and more have also all participated in the relays of years past.
The Olympic Opening Ceremony is set to kick off around 1:30 p.m. ET Friday, taking place on the Seine. The festivities will air live on NBC, streaming on Peacock, DirecTV Stream, Hulu + Live TV, Sling TV, and FuboTV.
Watch Snoop participate in the 2024 Olympic torch relay below.
