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50 Cent promised to let Donald Trump know what Diddy has said about him in the past, and he followed up on exactly that when posting a pair of clips on Monday (June 2) featuring Combs condemning the president.
“See Trump don’t like s–t like this buddy, you run your mouth to much,” 50 wrote in one caption.
The first video finds Sean Combs in conversation with Charlamagne Tha God, talking about a potential race war if the now twice-impeached president were in office. “If Trump gets elected, I really do believe in my heart there’ll be a race war,” Diddy said in the clip.
Another video shows Diddy condemning Trump on REVOLT, saying: “White men like Trump need to be banished.”
Fans hopped into the comments, chiming in about 50 looking to kill any chance of a pardon for Diddy by Trump, who recently pardoned YoungBoy Never Broke Again.
“We will have BREAKING NEWS….from the White House to address by noon tomorrow…I am sure you just took that man’s last hope for sure,” one fan wrote.
The G-Unit mogul has been relentless in his trolling of Combs, as 50 even posted an edited image of himself rocking a “Free Diddy” shirt on social media.
Combs remains on trial in New York for federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges. During Tuesday’s 15th day of testimony, a hotel worker alleged Diddy paid them $100,000 to make sure the video of Combs assaulting Cassie never got out, per ABC News.
Last week, Trump was asked about a potential Diddy pardon during an Oval Office briefing and said he’d consider it, but would have to take a look at the case.
“I haven’t spoken to him in years,” Trump said. “He used to really like me a lot. I think when I ran for politics, that relationship busted up. … I would certainly look at the facts. If I think somebody was mistreated, whether they like me or don’t like me, it wouldn’t have any impact on me.”
Travis Kelce is interested in joining the DJ scene — and he knows exactly who he’d open for if he does. On the latest episode of New Heights posted Wednesday (June 4), he conversed with this week’s guest, Shaquille O’Neal, about wanting to get behind the turntables, with both athletes agreeing that the tight end would be the perfect “hype man” at Taylor Swift‘s concerts.
The topic first came up shortly after Travis and his brother/cohost, retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, introduced the basketball icon. Praising Shaq for his DJing skills, the Grotesquerie star asked him to “teach me your ways.”
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“Bro, I got you,” replied O’Neal, who performs under the moniker DJ Diesel. “You know what [would be] crazy? You opening up with your girlfriend. Bro, you’d be a f–king star. Ten minutes hyping up the crowd, oh my God.”
Travis then laughed with excitement at the prospect. “Come on, you know I’m a hype man,” he said as Jason cackled. “You know I’m a hype man. Get it rocking in there. Have the Swifties bouncing off the walls before T gets out there.”
With the “Fortnight” singer’s global Eras Tour ending last December, the Kansas City Chiefs star will have to wait until the next time she hits the road to put his own DJ skills to the test. He did, however, get a taste of what it’s like to perform alongside Swift before her last tour wrapped, making a surprise onstage cameo during one of her Wembley Stadium shows in June last year.
As far as being Swift’s “hype man” goes, Travis has plenty of experience in that department. The NFL star often publicly praises his famous girlfriend, from celebrating the release of her Billboard 200-topping The Tortured Poets Department album in April 2024 to commending her athleticism on the Eras Tour.
The latest episode of New Heights was also no exception. Following their chat about his DJ ambitions with O’Neal, Travis later celebrated the 14-time Grammy winner’s recent headline-making purchase of the master recordings to her first six albums, finally securing ownership of her back catalog after years of fighting to do so. After Shaq played Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” on his phone, the football player cheered, “Shout-out to Tay Tay!”
“Just got that song back, too,” he added with a big smile. “Just bought all her music back. So it’s finally hers.”
Watch Travis and Shaq’s conversation on New Heights above.
Damian Lazarus is bringing his longstanding Day Zero party to Brazil in 2026. The event will happen Jan. 3 in São Miguel dos Milagres, Brazil, located on the country’s northern coast in the state of Alagoas. Details regarding the lineup will be announced in the coming months. Bookings will presumably fuse the rich musical heritage […]
In the animated realm of Toca Boca World, anything is possible — from changing your hair color at the drop of a hat to becoming the next member of KATSEYE.
As announced Wednesday (June 4), the six-piece girl group is joining the digital universe of the Swedish children’s game, where the band’s signature diversity will go hand-in-hand with Toca Boca‘s mission to encourage play through imagination, creativity and self-expression. With members Manon, Sophia, Daniela, Lara, Megan and Yoonchae each getting their own avatars within the game, EYECONS who play along will be able to unlock a KATSEYE style pack, download the band’s music, and win free digital gifts once the partnership launches on Tuesday (June 10).
In an exclusive interview with Billboard‘s Delisa Shannon celebrating the collaboration, Sophia said her favorite part is how fans will be able to combine their favorite traits of each KATSEYE member to become an honorary member of the squad. “When you’re creating your character, you get to take different parts of us and also parts of you — you can literally make it look exactly like you — and I think it’s so beautiful,” she gushed over Zoom as her bandmates nodded.
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“Just like how we always say with KATSEYE, the beautiful part of it is the diversity and the global-ness of it, and the ability to see yourself in us,” Sophia continued. “Whether it be, ‘Oh, I love Dani’s style, but I look like Sophia’ — you can fully become that in this world. It’s kind of like becoming a seventh member of KATSEYE.”
“I think it’s very cool that within this game, we’ve been able to express our diversity and the difference and uniqueness between all six of us,” added Lara. “But then also being in this one world together, being friends, being sisters, I think that’s so beautifully reflected in the game.”
The ways in which each KATSEYE member is unique will be represented down to small details in their avatars, from Lara’s bindi to the birthmark above Daniela’s eyebrow. Serving as Toca Boca World‘s first-ever “guest characters,” the ladies will also contribute music to the game; a custom player will let fans listen to tracks “Touch,” “Debut” and “I’m Pretty,” as well as new single “Gameboy” after it drops later this summer.
Plus, the animated KATSEYE avatars will also take part in an in-game Voxella Festival Stage Takeover, descending one-by-one on the virtual venue and unlocking a song after they’re united. For Yoonchae and Daniela, however, the most exciting parts of the game are its opportunities for self-expression and customization.
“I would change my face every day,” the former gushed when asked how she’d spend her time in Toca Boca World if it were a real place, while the latter said, “I would just go shopping and buy the whole mall, and just customize different outfits.”
KATSEYE’s partnership with Toca Boca comes as the group is bigger than ever before. In the months since dropping debut EP SIS (Soft Is Strong) in August, the sextet has amassed millions of listeners and scored its first-ever Billboard Hot 100 hit with the viral single “Gnarly,” which debuted at No. 92 in May.
As hype around the track continues to heat up in tandem with the temperatures outside, the members of KATSEYE — who also have a new EP, Beautiful Chaos, coming June 27 — think it’s pretty clear what this year’s song of the summer is going to be. “It’s a ‘Gnarly’ Summer,” said Megan, as her bandmates smiled in agreement.
But after Brat Summer and Hot Girl Summer, what does a “Gnarly” Summer entail? “Not being afraid of being cringe … letting your intrusive thoughts win,” Megan elaborated, while Lara said it’s all about “being very wild — and a little bit messy.”
In a studio hangar just outside Cairo, weeks before the release of his new album The Man Who Lost His Heart, Marwan Moussa sits with a resolve that only grief teaches. The kind shaped by someone who’s been to the depths of loss and carried back not just a song, but 23. The album wasn’t built overnight, Marwan Moussa explains to Billboard Arabia in his exclusive May cover interview. It was carved out of grief and shaped with intention. Each track, he says, was sculpted from the turbulent, shifting emotions he experienced during the long and winding journey of healing after the heartbreak of losing his mother two years ago.
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The album, he says, was “a kind of therapy.” Like writing a journal, sleeping on it, then reading it with fresh eyes to look at his life from a different perspective.
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The Man Who Lost His Heart doesn’t open with a bang; it opens like a dream taking shape. “Try to remember” is the first line we hear, fighting its way through an ethereal sound design. Structured in five parts, the album mirrors the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – but more than that, it charts the long, slow work of survival. Moussa doesn’t just document his pain; he invites you into it, offering a guide and companionship with each track.
“It isn’t a linear journey, of course,” he explains. “You could be angry, then suddenly find yourself depressed, and then all the way back in the denial stage.”
But the album isn’t merely a chronicle of grief. It’s a sonic deconstruction of Moussa’s process. Blending trap-shaabi (a genre he helped popularize that combines trap beats with various textures found within Egypt’s popular folk music), heavy synths, tender melodies and deeply personal sound bites – including audio lifted from childhood VHS tapes of him and his family – he crafts a layered, emotional landscape.
The Man Who Lost His Heart isn’t just a collection of songs. It’s a reckoning.
Take his track “BOSAKBER,” which spirals through memory and misfire. His flow isn’t clean; it’s distorted and fractured like a freshly broken heart. In the accompanying video, directed by Youssef Haridy, Moussa appears alone beneath a wide, empty sky. He fights his own reflection. The imagery is both surreal and stark, but not hopeless. It’s not the portrait of someone broken – it’s the portrait of an artist in the whirlwind of putting themselves back together, even if the pieces no longer fit the way they once did.
“We wanted to create a surreal imagery that feels deeply rooted in oriental aesthetics; something distinct,” Moussa says.
Moussa is not new to transformation. Over the last several years, he’s become one of the most influential voices in Arabic hip-hop – not only as a rapper, but as the producer behind dozens of hits, including “Brazil,” and more recently “Kebda” for longtime collaborator Afroto. He’s also been a constant on Billboard Arabia’s Artist 100 chart for over 55 consecutive weeks.
Moussa first set foot on Egypt’s hip-hop scene in 2016, releasing his early tracks on SoundCloud. The following year, his collaborations with Abyusif on “La2 Mafeesh” (No, There Isn’t) and “Zaghzaghto” (Tickling) brought him into the spotlight, and his skills as both rapper and producer began to further solidify.
In 2018, he released his first music video for “Kiki,” which marked his production breakthrough. Then came “Fr3on” (Pharaoh) in 2019, with its unpredictable rhymes and sharp wordplay over a solid beat and advanced production techniques.
Marwan Moussa
Amina Zaher/Billboard Arabia
Marwan Moussa
Amina Zaher/Billboard Arabia
After experimenting with several genres, Moussa’s 2019 track “El Bosla Da3et” (The Compass Is Lost) marked a turning point not only for his career, but for Egyptian trap as a whole. It was one of the first tracks to experiment with fusing shaabi and trap, paving the way for the rise of trap-shaabi, as it became known subsequently.
His 2021 album Florida cemented his reputation as an innovator, blending regional rhythms with experimental production in a way few dared to. From songs like “Tesla” and “Sheraton” to shaping his own catalog to producing for Egypt and North Africa’s most respected MCs, Moussa has always known how to bend sound to feeling.
But The Man Who Lost His Heart, released in full on May 5, is different. If Florida was Moussa pushing his craft’s limits, this album is what remains when all else falls away – just music, message and the strength found in the breaking.
That strength is amplified by a slate of carefully chosen collaborators. The album features standout moments with producer El Waili on “Yamma” and Afroto, as well as verses from Lege-Cy on “Klameny Belel.” But it’s Donia Wael’s contribution that Moussa calls essential to the record’s emotional core. “I want Donia Wael’s voice on the album to be interpreted by each listener in his or her own way—as a girlfriend, friend or therapist,” he says.
“The reason the album came out this way,” says Moussa, “is that I thought if I give through the five stages of grief, maybe it helps you get through what you’re dealing with or get past a tough time in your life or your current period of depression.”
In that way, The Man Who Lost His Heart is more than an act of expression. It’s an offering. A hand on your shoulder there to remind you that no stage of sadness lasts forever, even when it feels like it might.
For Moussa, producing an album this emotional, meant risking everything: the cool detachment of a hardened rapper. What he’s delivered instead is something harder, and far more lasting. A document of heartbreak. And perhaps, in doing so, he has found his heart again, and his voice.
Marwan Moussa
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After each individually holding the record, Kendrick Lamar and SZA combine forces to claim the longest-running No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart as their collaboration “Luther” reaches an unprecedented 23rd week at the top. The crowning feat, on the list dated June 7, dates to the chart becoming the singular standard genre survey […]
ABBA‘s Björn Ulvaeus is working on a new musical using artificial intelligence. According to Variety, during a talk at SXSW London on Wednesday (June 4), the 80-year old Swedish pop legend said he’s tapping into AI because he believes it is an excellent creative tool.
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“Right now I’m writing a musical, assisted by AI,” Ulvaeus said, noting that he’s about three-quarters of the way through the creative process on the unnamed project, the follow-up to the hugely successful pop quartet’s avatar stage show, Voyage.
“It’s fantastic. It is such a great tool,” Ulvaeus raved of AI. “It is like having another songwriter in the room with a huge reference frame. It is really an extension of your mind. You have access to things that you didn’t think of before.” Unlike many in the industry who fear that AI is an existential threat to their existence and the traditional creative process, Ulvaeus is aware of the bugs in the system, which he said have helped him to merge AI with his already formidable songwriting skills.
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“It’s lousy at [writing a whole song]” and “very bad at lyrics,” he said about his AI helpmate, which has allowed him to navigate through some creative dead-ends. “You can prompt a lyric you have written about something, and you’re stuck maybe, and you want this song to be in a certain style,” he said. “You can ask it, how would you extend? Where would you go from here? It usually comes out with garbage, but sometimes there is something in it that gives you another idea.”
Ulvaeus is part of an eclectic lineup for 2025 SXSW London, whose lineup includes Erykah Badu (as DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown), Tems, Mabel, Alice Glass and many more. Penske Media Corporation (which also owns Billboard) and the film and production company MRC invested in SXSW in 2021 following the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic; two years later, Penske took majority ownership of SXSW.
The AI project, whose ultimate form has not yet been announced, is part of Ulvaeus’ ongoing partnership with Pophouse Entertainment, the company behind the ABBA Voyage production. The Voyage virtual residency opened in London in May 2022 and is slated to run through January 2026. The show is a combination of 10 live performers and digital avatars of the four ABBA members, who have not performed live since their split in December 1982; the group, which also features Agnetha Fältskog, Benny Andersson and Anni-Frid Lyngstad, released their first album in 40 years, Voyage, in November 2021.
Though Ulvaeus is happy to use AI in the creative process, he is also adamant about fighting for artists’ rights in the rapidly evolving digital age. “These AI models wouldn’t exist without the songs that we wrote,” he said.
Mariah Carey likes living on the edge. In a teaser announcing her new single Wednesday (June 4), the Songbird Supreme beats around no bushes when describing her type: dangerous. In a video posted to her social media accounts, Mimi sits behind the wheel of a luxurious car and poses in a “Type: Dangerous” tank top […]
Gracie McGraw — the daughter of country superstars Tim McGraw and Faith Hill — would like to set the record … well, not straight, but you get it. In a since-expired post to her Instagram Stories on Monday (June 2), McGraw posted a photo with the words “everyone get more gay now” written in bold […]
KATSEYE, which recently notched their first Billboard Hot 100 hit with “Gnarly,” is set to perform that feisty song on the 2025 Kids’ Choice Awards. The show, with Tyla hosting, is set to air live on Saturday, June 21, at 8 p.m. ET/PT from Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California.
KATSEYE, a Los Angeles-based girl group (Daniela, Lara, Manon, Megan, Sophia and Yoonchae), has been steadily building its fanbase over the past two years. With members from the Philippines, South Korea, Switzerland and the U.S., KATSEYE is often described as a “global girl group.”
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The group first formed through HYBE and Geffen Records’ The Dream Academy competition and artist development program, later chronicled in the Netflix docuseries Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE.
The group received two nominations at the 2025 iHeartRadio Music Awards: favorite K-pop dance challenge for “Touch” and favorite on screen for Pop Star Academy: KATSEYE.
The group made Billboard’s 21 Under 21 list for 2025 and has been named an Artist to Watch for 2025 by VEVO, DSCVR and TIDAL.
In September, KATSEYE attended New York Fashion Week for the first time. In November, joined by the L.A. Rams Cheerleaders, they performed on the MAMA Awards at Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. In December, they performed on select dates of the iHeartRadio Jingle Ball concert. This year, they were added to the performance lineups for L.A.’s Wango Tango in May and Lollapalooza, scheduled for August in Chicago.
“Gnarly” is set to appear on KATSEYE’s second EP, Beautiful Chaos, which is due June 27 via HYBE x Geffen Records. The group’s first EP, SIS (Soft Is Strong) — which featured contributions from such A-listers as Ryan Tedder, Omer Fedi and Blake Slatkin — reached No. 119 on the Billboard 200.
Now, they’re the first performers announced for an awards show whose young teen fanbase will overlap to a large degree with their own EYEKON fan army.
Nickelodeon is calling the show the biggest party of the summer. It is certain to have more epic slimings than any other show. Kids’ Choice Awards 2025 will simulcast across Nickelodeon, TeenNick, Nicktoons, the Nick Jr. channel, MTV2 and CMT, and also air on Nickelodeon channels around the world.
Leading the pack with four nominations each are Ariana Grande, Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar, followed by Jack Black, Dwayne Johnson, Selena Gomez and Jelly Roll with three apiece.
First-time nominees include Gracie Abrams, Zach Bryan, Jordan Chiles, Frankie Grande, Cynthia Erivo, Doechii, Keith Lee, Chappell Roan, Shaboozey, Shohei Ohtani and Florence Pugh, among others.