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This week in dance music: Grimes canceled an appearance at D.C. World Pride, citing “family issues,” we spoke to the CEO of Epidemic Sound about a new remix series, we caught up with Mau P at Coachella, where he told us about the pressure of being a new generation dance star, saying that “I love […]
Niko McKnight, the estranged son of singer Brian McKnight, died on Thursday after a yearslong battle with cancer. He was 32.
Niko’s mother, Julie McKnight, confirmed the tragic news in a statement on social media, writing, “Nikolas was a cherished husband, son, brother, grandson, uncle, and nephew whose warmth, laughter, and love touched the lives of all who knew him. Nikolas was a self taught artist of music and photography. His passing is an immeasurable loss to his family and all those who held him dear.”
After asking for “privacy and continued prayers,” Julie concluded the statement by writing, “Mama Bear and the entire family appreciate the outpouring of love and support from friends, fans, and the public.”
Hours before the statement was released, Niko’s uncle, Claude McKnight, also spoke about his nephew’s death in a TikTok video, explaining that the musician had been “bravely battling cancer for the past two years or so.”
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“Niko was one of those amazing kids — quirky and curious and ridiculously talented,” Claude, the lead singer of a cappella group Take 6, continued. “Amazing singer, amazing guitar player. Had a great eye as a photographer. And one of those kids, at least in my estimation, that you always wanted to be around, and so it really sucks that he’s no longer with us.”
Brian McKnight has yet to break his silence on Niko’s death, though the pair had reportedly been estranged for a number of years, dating back to the elder McKnight publicly referring to his oldest kids — Niko and older brother Brian Jr. — as “products of sin” on social media.
In April 2024, the “Back at One” singer claimed his ex-wife Julie (Niko and Brian Jr.’s mother) had “forced” him to stop contributing to Niko’s cancer treatments. She responded by slamming the claim as a “false narrative.” At the time, Niko himself tweeted, “When I was about to die in the hospital from complications from my cancer, I just wanted to bury the hatchet and hear him say he loves me and he told me he couldn’t arbitrarily tell me he loves me. Still cuts so deep.”
In addition to his parents, Niko is survived by his wife, siblings and various other extended family members.
On daddy duty! Justin Bieber gave fans new glimpses of his son, Jack, via social media on Friday (May 30). The photos of the 9-month-old appeared in a carousel of images posted by the pop star with the caption, “Gonna be a good summer.” In the first photo, the pop star carries Jack on his […]
Ye (formerly Kanye West) misses the G.O.O.D. times. Yeezy took to X on Friday (May 30), extending an olive branch to his former right-hand collaborator, Pusha T, after King Push name-dropped West on the new Clipse single. “I miss me and Pusha’s friendship,” Ye wrote of his ex-G.O.O.D. Music president. West seemed to get wind […]
Following Patti LuPone‘s recent remarks disparaging fellow Broadway actresses Audra McDonald and Kecia Lewis, more than 500 members of the Broadway community have signed an open letter calling out the musical theater legend for “bullying” and “harassment.”
In the message published Friday (May 30) — just a few days after a New Yorker piece quoted LuPone as saying that McDonald was “not a friend” while calling Cole a “bi—” for labeling herself a stage “veteran” — the signatories wrote that the Agatha All Along star’s comments were “degrading and misogynistic,” as well as a “blatant act of racialized disrespect.” People who signed the letter include Courtney Love, as well as Tony winners James Monroe Iglehart, Maleah Joi Moon and Wendell Pierce.
“It constitutes bullying,” the letter continues. “It constitutes harassment. It is emblematic of the microaggressions and abuse that people in this industry have endured for far too long, too often without consequence.”
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Though the signatories directly urged the American Theatre Wing and the Broadway League to disinvite LuPone from the 2025 Tony Awards — as well as other “industry events” such as “fundraisers and public programs” — they also insisted that their message was about “more than one person.”
“It is about a culture. A pattern. A persistent failure to hold people accountable for violent, disrespectful, or harmful behavior — especially when they are powerful or well-known,” the letter reads. “This is not about differing opinions. It is about public actions that demean, intimidate, or perpetuate violence against fellow artists. It is about the normalization of harm in an industry that too often protects prestige over people.”
Billboard has reached out to LuPone’s rep for comment.
The letter adds to the online backlash LuPone has been facing since her New Yorker profile went live Monday. In the piece, LuPone reflected on how she once asked Shubert Organization head Robert Wankel to step in after sound from the Alicia Keys-created musical Hell’s Kitchen, in which Lewis starred, could be heard during LuPone’s performances of The Roommate next door on Broadway. Shortly after LuPone’s complaint, Lewis posted an Instagram video labeling the icon’s actions as “bullying,” “racially microaggressive” and “rooted in privilege” for calling “a Black show loud.”
“She calls herself a veteran? Let’s find out how many Broadway shows Kecia Lewis has done, because she doesn’t know what the f— she’s talking about,” LuPone told The New Yorker of the situation. “Don’t call yourself a vet, bi—.”
As for McDonald, LuPone took issue with the Private Practice star showing support for Lewis in the comments of said Instagram video. “I thought, You should know better,” LuPone told the publication, noting that there had been an undisclosed “rift” between the two actresses. “That’s typical of Audra. She’s not a friend.”
McDonald later responded in an interview with Gayle King, saying she had no idea what “rift” LuPone was referring to.
But while the comments could be regarded as typical for the famously forthright LuPone, the members of the Broadway community who signed Friday’s open letter thinks she crossed a line. “To publicly attack a woman who has contributed to this art form with such excellence, leadership, and grace … is not simply a personal offense,” their statement reads. “It is a public affront to the values of collaboration, equity, and mutual respect that our theater community claims to uphold.
“We cannot continue to welcome back those who harm others simply because of their fame or perceivedvalue,” it concludes. “This must stop. We will no longer tolerate violence—verbal, emotional, or physical—against artists within our own community. No more free passes. If our industry is truly committed to equity, justice, and respect, then those values must be applied consistently, even when it’s uncomfortable.”
Diddy is currently on trial in New York for sex trafficking and racketeering. While the trial is still in its early stages, President Donald Trump was asked about potentially pardoning the Bad Boy mogul, and Trump admitted it’s something he’d consider. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news During […]
Alex Warren and Jelly Roll went all the way back to the Middle Ages in a music video for their new single “Bloodline.” Released Friday (May 30), the clip begins with Warren barricaded inside a medieval tavern. According to a brawny extra, there’s apparently a dangerous war raging outside. “The enemy shall be upon us […]
Officials with Forest Hills Stadium in New York have successfully saved their 2025 concert season from cancellation and announced a slate of programming at the stadium that begins with a concert on Saturday night (May 31) from British band Bloc Party.. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news NYPD […]
Bianca Oblivion had earned a degree in public health from Yale, a masters degree in epidemiology from UCLA and another masters in medical anthropology from Boston University, but what she really wanted to do was DJ.
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Growing up in a music loving family, the Los Angeles native immersed herself in city’s the sprawling music scenes as an adolescent and teen, while also taking dance classes in myriad styles. The love of music was just in her, and it went with her to Yale, where she was the music director for the school’s radio station and also hosted her own show.
Back in LA after graduating from Yale, she got another radio show on KXLU, then one night a friend asked if she wanted to spin at a nightclub in the city’s Culver City neighborhood. While she’d never played for a live crowd, she gathered her records, put some songs on an iPod and played the gig.
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“That was it,” she says. “After that I was like, ‘I need to do this more.’”
Her academic pursuits also continued in tandem, and at school in Boston, she immersed herself in the city’s club scene to the extent that by 2014, she’d been nominated for a DJ of the year award by a local paper. “I very much had these parallel paths and sides of me that that I was somehow balancing,” she says.
But after ultimately earning a trifecta of prestigious degrees, “my job search was not really panning out,” she says. “I wasn’t finding anything I was interested in or seeing how I was going to make these degrees work.”
Again back in L.A., she took a job as a substitute teacher, finding the flexibility of the gig made it possible to play shows. Making it all work, however, required some juggling. When she DJ’d for Princess Nokia at Coachella 2018, she graded papers in her backstage trailer before the show.
The same hustle that’s required to achieve so much in academia has also defined Oblivion’s musical career, which is reaching new levels following the pandemic as she’s focused more and more on her own productions and booked gigs around the world. She signed with the European agency Three Feet High in 2018 and released her first single in February of 2020, with the intention of doing a substantial European club run that summer.
This was, of course, weeks before nightclubs around the world shut down during the pandemic.
But instead of quitting, Oblivion used the global downtime to hone in on making music, without having to care whether or not it was getting played out. “It’s daunting,” she says of learning to produce. “It was not easy, especially while seeing a lot of my friends around me and peers in the scene just flying with that. It was like ‘What am I going to do? How am I even gonna add to this?’”
But with time and tenacity, she carved out a sharp and clubby signature sound that melds techno, bass, drum & bass and a host of other genre. She also developed an email list, organizing her career-related data in precise spreadsheets. (“That is where the training in school and data management came in very handy,” she says.) When the world reopened, she was well positioned.
“Since the pandemic my career has really accelerated,” she says. “I’ve gotten to play in venues and festivals I hadn’t even thought I would.”
Bianca Oblivion
Courtesy of Bianca Oblivion
These gigs include the U.K.’s famous Glastonbury, where she’ll play for the third time next month, a pair of Boiler Room sets, one a b2b with her good friend and fellow DJ Jubilee, and many other events across the U.S., Europe, Brazil and beyond. When speaking to Billboard over Zoom, Oblivion is just about to play a set in London, where she spends a lot of her time and finds inspiration in the cultural and musical diversity.
The next day, she’s playing 6,000 miles away in San Diego, and the day after she’ll do a set at Lightning in a Bottle near Bakersfield, Calif. Her summer schedule includes Shambhala, Dirtybird Campout x Northern Nights, Toronto’s Sojourn Festival and Belgium’s Rampage Open Air.
Oblivion is very aware that her rookie status is one of gradually getting in front of more and more people over the years, rather than the rocket ship of virality. She’s cool with that.
“Sometimes people win the DJ lottery,” she says. “They get a viral moment, or they know the right somebody, or there’s something that pushes them a bit further and accelerates them. I’m not one of those people.”
But “I’m not complaining,” she continues. “I’m built for this in terms of where I came from and my work ethic, getting into more than one Ivy League school. I just set my mind to something and I’m relentless, not in a business shark way where I’m going to stomp on everyone in my path. More like, ‘What can I personally do to make sure I cover every single thing I can to get to that point?”
The grinding has obviously paid off. While it was only a few years ago that she was figuring out how to make music, Oblivion’s releases are ever tighter, fiercer and more stylish. Her latest release, February’s Net Work EP, features four inventive and frequently hard-hitting productions that feature collaborators including Lunice, Machinedrum and Sam Binga. Her forthcoming single is a baile funk track with British dancehall duo RDX, with it’s release date yet to be announced.
“In every industry, there’s going to be people who are going to jump the line or jump ahead, and that’s just what it is,” she says. “The only way to mentally deal, I think, is just to ask myself what I’m contributing. Why am I doing this? Is it because I want to get the best gigs or make the most money? No. I’m doing this because I live music This is my life. This is what I’ve been connected to since I was a child. So I’m going to make music and do stuff that’s going to fulfill me and add to the world that I love.”
The pursuit is also now paying off in ways that even this extremely educated artist didn’t imagine.
“People have come up to me at shows, especially young women, and they tell me they look up to me and like my music. I didn’t have that kind of role model as I was coming up as a DJ, at least not in the same way, so I’m just honored that people are even seeing me as a role model.
“Maybe I’m not that hot new DJ that’s touring everywhere,” she continues. “But obviously if my music is making a difference, and if just by existing in these spaces I can be someone that people look up to and see ‘okay, I can do this too,’ then that means something.”
In her letter on Friday (May 30) announcing she achieved a long-time goal of owning the master recordings to all of her songs, Taylor Swift described herself as “endlessly thankful” to the private equity firm Shamrock Capital that sold Swift their holdings of her early music. In fact, Swift is “so grateful to everyone at Shamrock” that she jokingly said her “first tattoo might just be a huge shamrock in the middle of my forehead.”
Swift has not always spoken so warmly about the California-based investment firm — until they struck the deal she says she’d been seeking for years.
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When news broke in November 2020 that Shamrock Holdings purchased Swift’s Big Machine Label Group catalog from Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings — marking the second time in 17 months that Swift’s first six albums had changed hands — the superstar said “it was the second time my music had been sold without my knowledge.”
In a letter Swift wrote to Shamrock Holdings at the time, which she shared on Twitter, she said she was initially hopeful for her “musical legacy and our possible future together.” But she said she could not partner with them because of certain undisclosed terms that Swift said would enrich Braun, related to her “music masters, music videos and album artwork.”
“I simply cannot in good conscience bring myself to be involved in benefiting Scooter Braun’s interests directly or indirectly,” Swift wrote in the letter.
Braun, who has disputed many of Swift’s assertions in the past, said simply on Friday (May 30), “I am happy for Taylor.”
In Shamrock’s statement after announcing its acquisition back in 2020, the company expressed admiration and respect for Swift’s work and professionalism, describing her as a “transcendent artist” with a “timeless catalog.”
“We made this investment because we believe in the immense value and opportunity that comes with her work,” Shamrock said in a statement at the time. “While we hoped to formally partner, we also knew this was a possible outcome … We hope to partner with her in new ways moving forward.”
At least publicly, that was that for about five years. But behind the scenes, Swift kept Shamrock abreast of her plans to re-record albums, according to statements from Swift. And privately, Shamrock explored selling Swift’s catalog, according to sources.
What prompted the sale now is not known. While Swift’s Taylor’s Versions of four of the albums Shamrock held the original recordings to had pulled some fans away from the originals, Swift’s overwhelming dominance as a global superstar resulted in the catalog held by Shamrock still generating nearly $60 million in average annual global revenue between 2022 and 2024, according to Billboard’s estimates based on Luminate data.
“The way they’ve handled every interaction we’ve had has been honest, fair, and respectful,” Swift wrote in her letter on Friday (May 30). “This was a business deal to them, but I really felt like they saw it for what it was to me: My memories and my sweat and my handwriting and my decades of dreams.”
Shamrock did not respond to requests for comment.
