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It’s a Tuesday evening in May at Nightbird Studios, the recording complex nestled within L.A.’s Sunset Marquis. Within this infamous hotel rock and roller hotel, where Keith Richards once got behind the bar and poured drinks during the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, Anyma is tinkering away on a new album intended to end the current phase of his career.
A space packed with production equipment is certainly like a second home to the artist, but for him this place must also feel relatively mundane, given how much time he’s recently spent at Sphere. During a 12-date residency spanning this past December, January, February and March, the Italian American producer became the first electronic artist to headline the Las Vegas venue.
While already a longtime star of the global underground via his solo work and previously as part of the duo Tale of Us, this high-profile gig naturally pushed the producer to a new level of ubiquity, with his name suddenly alongside fellow Sphere residents including U2, the Eagles, Dead & Company and Phish. When asked how life is different now than it was on Dec. 26, the day before his residency started, he’s forthright.
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“Well,” he says in his thick Italian accent, “I’m less stressed.”
But those who’ve witnessed the not casual themes of heaven and hell, creation and destruction, humanity and transhumanism woven into his Sphere show and other previous visual output are right to assume the artist born Matteo Milleri is a deep thinker. Tonight, posted up on the couch in the studio’s dimly lit lounge, his webby tattoos peeking out from the sleeves of his hoodie, he elaborates on how the Sphere experience did, in fact, change him. And in fact, he’d hoped it might.
“I think if I would feel the same, it would not be a success for me,” he offers. “Because I put my ideas out there, so that they reflect back on me once they’ve been absorbed by the world. For me as an artist, it’s very important to feel like I’ve changed, evolved, improved my craft.”
Anyma is talkative, polite and emits a sense of gravitas while talking about his work, altogether seeming older than his 37 years. He began the Anyma (pronounced “ah-nee-ma”) project in 2021, fusing the work with both tech and lofty ideas about humanity, spirituality, technology, the past and the future. This Friday (May 30), Anyma releases The End of Genesys, the third and final LP in a trilogy, following 2023’s Genesys and 2024’s Genesys II.
This new music, Anyma says, “was scored to the Sphere opera movie, so it was really written with a very big inspiration.” The tens of thousands of people who saw the show witnessed this inspiration in wild and often surreal visuals that depicted scenes of space, verdant forests, deserts, burning cities and a pair of recurring characters — a human man and a chesty cyborg who who meet in various landscapes, with him eventually plugging a heart into her chest, a moment that drew cheers.
For Anyma, the project was a natural extension of his longtime goal of creating something different in the live electronic world. “The reason why I went into the production of the visual experience was because I don’t really feel much from live events,” he says. “Of course, the underground dance stuff is great, because that’s its own thing. I’m talking about the big concerts, the big festivals, the big productions. For me, even with the technology and the budgets available, I just went home with my ears hurting. It’s difficult to even grasp an artist’s perspective when the production is overwhelming.”
His goal was to make a more intentional visual presentation that “you can just basically augment your purpose and your art with it… That was the whole idea behind everything.” In this way, Sphere was simply the most powerful tool for him to express ideas he’d long been considering. (Having a pre-existing visual identity also helped the team save money on the Sphere show’s mighty production costs.)
“Of course I’m happy it ended in Sphere,” he continues, “but it was supposed to exist even on its own on a world tour. I want people to think and to like, feel, you know? Maybe go home the next day and reconnect with a loved one or something, because they were moved.”
His goal for for The End of Genesys is roughly the same. But while anyone who saw the Sphere show has effectively already heard the album, listening to these 15 tracks in your headphones — with no eye-pummeling visuals or seats shaking in time with the kick — is a different experience. Separated from its corresponding visual identity, the ears better grasp the music’s nuances.
The project includes several marquee collaborations, with the album’s banger of a lead single, “Hypnotized,” featuring vocals from dance icon Ellie Goulding. “Taratata” features previous collaborator and fellow tech enthusiast Grimes, “Human Now” has Empire of the Sun’s always-heady Luke Steele, and other songs recruit 070 Shake, Rezz, Sevdaliza and Yeat.
Anyma’s music has historically existed in the heavy and often cinematic realms of melodic techno, a genre that’s bubbled up in popularity in the broader dance scene over the last few years, a trend that’s partially a function of the success of Anyma and Tale of Us. (The topic of the duo is off limits, although Anyma’s agent, CAA’s Ferry Rais-Shaghaghi, told Billboard in February that “both guys are super-focused on their solo projects right now.”) But via the collabs and song structures, The End Of Genesys often adopts a more pop lean. This was kind of the point.
The previous two Genesys albums came at “a transitional part of my career, when I was still trying to understand how to crack the code with pop, electronic and dance,” says Anyma. And now? “I feel like I did it.”
“It’s the final evolution of the sound,” he says, “with the best artists I know, most of whom are my friends. It’s inspiring that I could connect all my knowledge and influences into a record and make it contemporary and potentially timeless. That’s not up to me, but I think some of this record is really timeless, and that’s what really exciting.”
Balancing all of these factors was tricky he says, “because these days people want very simple things on the dance floor, social media needs to be fast and that’s what’s really resonating with the younger generations.” He instead aspired to make music in the grand tradition of artists like The Chemical Brothers, Daft Punk and Massive Attack who made songs, he says, “that you could kind of vibe and dance to, but you could also sing. It was one cohesive artist statement with an edge of the rave culture behind it.”
Anyma
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The music will serve as material for Anyma’s many upcoming DJ sets, with his summer shows happening largely in Europe. The run includes an eight-week residency at Ibiza’s newest venue [UNVRS], a 15,000 capacity mega-club tricked out with a ton of technology.
He describes these upcoming performances as encompassing two worlds. The first is “DJ curation, longer sets, community and more forward thinking, exciting music… Then the big headline stuff and the bigger shows are more of a spin-off of the last act of Sphere, that aesthetic and those sonics.” He also says some of the new visuals will be AI-driven, with the use of AI currently a major focus of his work.
With all of these huge projects and big ideas, it’s hard to imagine Anyma in Netflix and chill mode, although he says it does happen. He’s based in Ibiza, where he enjoys the quiet of the farmland and the goats and the sea. Vacation for him is staying home, watching TV, listening to music and exercising for at least an hour a day, a habit that techno legend Sven Väth encouraged him to adopt. (“He saw me on tour and was like ‘You look a bit tired,’ and I was like, ‘You look great.’”)
But after the intense demands of Sphere, he says the most straightforward form of relaxation currently on his calendar is “going back to being a normal DJ.”
“This has been years of my life, of thinking, of my philosophy in the show. But creatively I also need to take a break — no artist creates just because there’s a screen. I don’t think I can do anything meaningful that way.”
After six long years and four album re-records, Taylor Swift has finally won back control of her masters. But what does that mean for the long-awaited, highly anticipated Reputation (Taylor’s Version)?
In a letter on her website announcing that she’d finally been able to purchase back the rights to her first six albums from Shamrock Capital Friday (May 30), the pop star addressed just that. “I know, I know. What about Rep TV?” Swift began in her note.
“Full: transparency: I haven’t even re-recorded a quarter of it,” she continued. “The Reputation album was so specific to that time in my life, and I kept hitting a stopping point when I tried to remake it. All that defiance, that longing to be understood while feeling purposely misunderstood, that desperate hope, that shame-born snarl and mischief. To be perfectly honest, it’s the one album in those first six that I thought couldn’t be improved upon by redoing it.”
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For those reasons, Swift says she “kept putting it off” when it came time to re-record Reputation. Now that she owns the masters to the original album, she doesn’t technically need to remake it — but she did add, “There will be a time (if you’re into the idea) for the unreleased Vault tracks from that album to hatch.”
After releasing new versions of her Fearless, Speak Now, Red and 1989 albums over the past few years, Reputation was one of two albums left for her to re-record in the series of six LPs she’d made while still signed to Scott Borchetta’s Big Machine Label Group. One of the biggest feuds in music history erupted into the court of public opinion in 2019 when Borchetta sold the company — along with Swift’s catalog — to Scooter Braun, something the “Fortnight” singer at the time called her “worst case scenario” due to Braun’s “incessant, manipulative bullying” she accused him of directing her way over the years.
Her catalog later traded hands again when Braun sold it to Shamrock in late 2020, while Swift has kept fans on their toes with the unveilings of each Taylor’s Version album — each of which has featured a handful of “From the Vault” tracks written in years past that were never previously released. Besides Reputation, the only other album she still had left to re-record was her 2006 self-titled debut, about which she wrote in Friday’s letter, “I’ve already completely re-recorded my entire debut album, and I really love how it sounds now.”
“Those 2 albums can still have their moments to re-emerge when the time is right, if that would be something you guys would be excited about,” she wrote of Reputation and Taylor Swift. “But if it happens, it won’t be from a place of sadness and longing for what I wish I could have. It will just be a celebration now.”
Donald Trump is on a pardon spree and incarcerated former Death Row Records CEO Marion “Suge” Knight thinks Sean “Diddy” Combs could be the next celebrity on the president’s list to snag a get out of jail free card. In a new special edition of Laura Coates Live: Diddy on Trial, CNN chief legal analyst Laura Coates interviewed Knight from prison to get the one-time Combs rival’s take on Diddy’s New York sex trafficking and racketeering trial.
Knight’s name recently came up during testimony in the trial by Combs’ longtime girlfriend, singer Cassie Ventura, who told jurors about a 2008 incident in which Diddy abruptly left one of their “freak-off” sex sessions after learning that Knight was having dinner at a nearby diner in Los Angeles. “I was crying,” she said. “I was screaming, ‘Please don’t do anything stupid,’” she said she told Combs, who reportedly left he house in a black SUV with a security guard and multiple hand guns to seek out Knight, who had already left.
Knight and Combs famously squared off in the so-called East Coast/West Coast rap battles of the mid-1990s that came to a head with the still-unsolved murders of Death Row’s Tupac Shakur in 1996 and Bad Boys’ Notorious B.I.G in 1997.
Now, though, Knight is speaking out from federal prison in San Diego and he appears to have softened his stance on his one-time sworn enemy. “I mean, anytime somebody is fighting for their life and they have kids, you still got to show some type of, you know, sympathy for them. He might have allegedly did a lot of things but I don’t want to see the children locked up, you know, because when a man in prison or a woman is in prison, so is their family, you know,” said Knight of Combs, a father of seven.
Knight also said he was not surprised to hear about the over-the-top, drug-fueled sex parties at the center of the Combs case, saying that when he signed artists to Death Row it was all “weed, weed, weed, weed,” which turned to “doing powder cocaine” when those acts graduated to major labels. “Once you open that door up and play with the devil, you’re going to become the devil. So that’s when a lot of the problems came in. I’m quite sure for puffy and everyone else,” Knight said.
And while Knight managed to work in on one of his long-held complaints about how camera-loving Combs conducted his business as a label boss at Bad Boy — “I believe that as an executive or a record label owner, you supposed to make them the star. Once you start trying to be the star, that’s when the problem come in” — in the end he thinks his one-time enemy will walk free.
“I don’t feel that the prosecution wanted that bad, because a lot of stuff they had on him, they left out. It don’t seem like they really coming down hard at them,” Knight said about his opinion of the prosecution’s laying out of their case so far. “If he get convicted — if Puffy get convicted, Trump’s going to pardon him,” Knight predicted. “Trump is a president that stands up and do what he wants to do, and he’s going to do what he feels is best. So Puffy has nothing to worry about.”
Trump has been on an unusual pardon spree lately, springing convicted felons and fellow former reality TV stars Todd and Julie Chrisley this week, in addition to rapper NBA YoungBoy, after earlier including Lil Wayne and Kodak Black in a massive 143 pardon/commutation spree at the end of his first presidential term. To date, Trump — who in May 2024 became the first U.S. president to be convicted of a felony — has not publicly commented on the Combs trial to date.
Coates also asked Knight the billion-dollar question everyone is asking: will, or should, Combs testify in his own defense? “He probably was advised not to, but I feel if he do tell his truth, he really will walk,” said Knight. “He can humanize his own self and a jury might give him a shot. But if they keep him sitting down, it’s like he’s scared to face the music. He just have his faith in God, pull up his pants and go up there and tell his truth.”
Testimony in Combs’ trial continued on Friday (May 30) with the jury hearing from a former personal assistant (referred to by the pseudonym “Mia”), who said that she suffers from “severe complex PTSD” as a result of working for Diddy.
Watch some of Knight’s interview below.
The similarity between Lorde‘s new single and GQ’s annual Man of the Year party is no coincidence. According to the pop star, she started writing the track just one day after attending the event in 2023.
During an appearance on Australian radio program Triple J Thursday (May 29), Lorde opened up about how the publication’s party two years ago triggered a gender revelation for her that would end up inspiring “Man of the Year,” which dropped the same day as the interview. “I had been feeling this expansiveness of gender happening for a while, and this was my first event that I’d been to in a while,” she began.
“I wore kind of like a ‘hot girl’ dress,” continued the “Royals” singer, who attended the event in a form-fitting green gown and heels. “And I felt so not like myself. And it was a really cool marker, especially being at this event that was celebrating all these cool guys, I was like, ‘Oh, I’m one of those guys, like, sometimes, when I wanna be. And I was like, ‘Whoa, I don’t think the hot-girl dress is the right device for this moment.’”
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The next day, Lorde says she and producer Jim-E Stack “were in the studio kind of hung over, and I was like, ‘I wanna write a song about how I’m the Man of the Year for me.’”
Lorde has been open about how new album Virgin — which drops June 27 — was inspired by her broadening gender identity over the past few years. In a cover story interview with Rolling Stone published earlier in May, she discussed how recovering from an eating disorder and stopping birth control allowed her to feel more at home in her own body and masculinity, adding, “I’m a woman except for the days when I’m a man.”
The sentiment echoes something she posted on her Instagram Story in 2023 immediately after the GQ party. Sharing a photo of herself in her dress, she’d written, “Some days I’m a woman, some days I’m a man.”
When asked how it’s felt to share her newfound gender identity with fans, Lorde shared on Triple J that it’s “a little bit scary.”
“I feel what the lack of definitive boxes for this sort of stuff does to people, and I totally understand,” she added. “Sometimes we really need these containers, but for me personally, I felt like where I’m at, it’s all just still flowing, it’s still moving. And I think it’s probably like that for someone else, too, and maybe it’s OK to celebrate that impermanence, that rawness, that lack of arrival.”
Watch Lorde’s full interview on Triple J above.
Samara Cyn never wanted to be a rapper. Even while moving around the country as a military brat, Cyn was a straight-A student who prided herself on never getting a single B on her report card in her entire life.
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It wasn’t until a 2021 college internship at software company Intel that she knew corporate America and the cubicle weren’t for her. “It was just miserable,” she laments to Billboard during her April NYC visit. “I would smoke lavender cigarettes. The herbal s–t that be at crystal stores because it calms you down. I was smoking that and drinking Angry Orchards because I’m allergic to beer. That was the era of my life.”
Four years later, Samara Cyn is one of the rising stars in rap’s rookie class and a breath of fresh air in the genre, boasting an ambitious blend of hip-hop and neo-soul.
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After signing with VANTA at the top of 2024, the Arizona State University alum delivered her heavy debut project, The Drive Home, in October, which showcased clever wordplay, twisted storytelling and an arsenal of wispy poetic flows on her arduous journey to healing and finding peace. She’s picked up some major co-signs along the way, catching the eye of legends like Nas, Erykah Badu and Lauryn Hill.
Cyn’s been on the run, but she was forced to sit still when the devastating wildfires ripped through California in January, which provided a sobering genesis for her Backroads EP arriving on June 20.
“I’m sitting in my house with no power and my phone’s dead and I realized how uncomfortable it made me to sit in silence,” she explains with her silver grills peering through. “It made me reflect on how easy it is for us to ignore and distract and disassociate rather than face things and talk about what’s going on.”
The 26-year-old continues: “We’re desensitized as f–k. It pushed me into the whole delusion thing. How much are we willing to sacrifice to be comfortable and be delusional? Backroad is the long way around instead of facing that s–t.”
Cyn, who’s currently trekking through North America with her “Brand New Teeth” collaborator Smino on the Kountry Kousins Tour, delves further into June’s Backroads EP, Lauryn Hill bringing her out at a show, and where she sees herself in 10 years. Learn more about our Hip-Hop Rookie of the Month for May below.
Did you always want to be a rapper?
Hell nah, nope. This is a dumba– career choice. So stupid. When I was a kid, my voice used to be different. Then I got my tonsils and adenoids taken out. I snored like a 40-year-old man at five. My mom said that when I woke up from surgery, when I started talking that it startled her because I sounded so different.
I started doing music when I was in college. When I was in high school, people would say, “Your voice is so cool.” Interviewers or strangers will say, “You sing, right?” I’m like, “Yeah, a little bit.” I think you kinda have to have that distinctive something as an artist. When you hear it, it’s like, “Oh, I know who that is.”
Why is rap a dumb career choice?
It’s not lucrative at first. It’s like trying to get into the NBA. It’s not dumb for the people who make it. A very [small] number of people get to have long careers. You gotta work really f–king hard and you don’t get paid for a long time. Let me put out the resolve. Any career choice that is fulfilling to you is good for you to make that career choice.
It could be fulfilling and dumb at the same time. How does one go about managing their finances like that? It’s like you’re poor one second, and then come into money and might go crazy with it.
I’m a smart cookie. A lot of people do that. I had a lot of people around me that did that and they told me, “You’re gonna blow your first bag.” I was like, “No, I’m not. Watch what I do.” I was real adamant because I know how this is set up. We don’t get a 401 (k) or a W-2 at the end of the year. Cool, you made your first six figures — and you don’t realize half of that s–t is going to taxes. You made $50,000, calm down. You have to be really smart about it.
So immediately I went and found a financial advisor. I don’t want to work a job and do this as my job — so I need this much in salary, this much in high yield, and I want to start a retirement fund. A lot of artists I was asking hadn’t got in the position yet, or they didn’t know, even if they passed it. There’s no blueprint. I stayed in my same apartment and car.
How did you get in the zone for this project?
I made all of those songs except for one between now and January. It’s been a few months of making these records. It started in January with the wildfires that happened. My power had went out for a while, which is the least of the f–king worries. You start doom thinking about all the s–t that’s going on in the world that’s super f–ked up. I’m over here struggling to not have power for a few days, and it’s kids in Gaza that just had their house blown up. No family, no food, no water. Just recognizing my privilege in that moment.
It really made me reflect on how I was showing up and what my contribution was. It made me feel like that wasn’t enough. What am I gonna do about the s–t that’s going on in the world? I’m gonna make a song about it. How often I have a TV sitcom playing in the background, or music on in the background. It’s easy to distract, because that s–t is heavy. It’s heavy to think about everything all at once.
Even what’s going on in our country right now. Like, it’s f–ked up, but we just continue to do our job. Even when the wildfires were happening, people were still going to work and their whole neighborhoods were burning down. I don’t think my contribution was enough, because all I did was write songs about it. How stupid I feel sacrificing so much.
It started with “Pop n Olive.” Sonic symbolization. Feel good song, but we’re talking about killing people the whole time. “Hardheaded,” straight on, confront society and how it is. Why we are the way we are and ignore s–t, when we know we can do something about it. Visually, I’m stepping into the 3-D worlds to kind of represent the delusion and the comfort aspect.
What made VANTA the right partner? When did you sign?
January of 2024. What made them the right partner — one, they were very adamant about being artist-friendly. I felt like a lot of people we were meeting with were like, “Yeah, but…” I got my whole vision laid out. I’m type-A personality. I got PowerPoints and decks. I come in with the s–t, and y’all can make suggestions, but this is what I’m doing.
They were the first people that were like, “We f–k with that and we’re gonna let you do what you need to do.” They’ve been very trusting of me because I’ve shown them that I can do it. They’re just there to help me evolve it. They were artist-friendly compared to some of the people I was talking to. They were trying to give me a color instead of making my color brighter.
How was it when Lauryn Hill brought you out?
Surreal. I rehearsed 15 minutes with her band and I missed her at soundcheck. She had came later, so my first time seeing her was walking out on stage. Jazz in the Gardens is a mature crowd. A mature crowd is a tough crowd. They came there to see the n—as they rock with.
I think the crowd was receptive. For what it was, I felt like I did a good job. To be on the same stage as somebody and I can turn around and be like, “Thank you, Ms. Lauryn Hill.” She’s like, “You’re welcome.” Like, what a full-circle moment of my life, from listening to her projects in high school and throughout childhood, playing [her] in the house, to meet her and tell her it was a full-circle moment and she’s all warm and receptive is cool. The fact she wanted to highlight up-and-coming artists felt really great, to be considered by somebody like that.
Doechii was there showing you love, too.
I seen her while I was performing. I was doing the call-and-response thing I do, and she was up there. I seen her acknowledge and I blew her kisses. She’s really a cool-a– girl. Very warm as well. I think the media tries to make it competitive.
Who are some of your early music inspirations?
Christina Aguilera was my own first CD that I ever got. Back to Basics. My sister had a Chris Brown CD. It wasn’t mine, but I was listening to it. Christina [Aguilera], Erykah Badu, my dad played Slick Rick a lot, Outkast, Florence & the Machine.
Moving around so much as a kid, highlight one or two of the places where you lived? I was gonna say Hawaii…
We moved [to Hawaii] when I was nine and stayed there until I was 13. Me being young, I wasn’t able to take in where we were at. I loved playing outside every day. We lived in a cul-de-sac, and it was 82 degrees every day and I could walk to school. I wished I was a little bit older when I was there so I could drive around. Any time we would do surfing or paddleboarding, I’d have to go with the neighbors. My parents not doing that type of s–t. I played a lot of sports out there.
Hawaii was dope. It really put me onto island music like J Boog and Common Kings. I was playing tennis. I was in a bowling league. [I] never bowled a 300 though.
You were writing poetry growing up?
Yeah, here and there. It wasn’t until college that I got super into it. My mom’s an English teacher and she always had this segment she would teach where she would show videos of Brave New Voices, which is like a reality thing, and you go to inner cities and the kids work on poetry pieces until the end of a competition. I was inspired by that. I was in the 5th grade writing slam poems about s–t I had no idea about. It wasn’t something I did every day. I would go through phases. I was really diligent in school. I never got a B in my life.
How was Arizona State University? What jump-started your rap career out there?
To be completely honest, the first time I rapped a verse — remember when Chance The Rapper did the So Gone Challenge on Twitter? He was rapping to his girl, and then it started a whole thing. I did a So Gone Challenge in high school. I was 17 and I did it for my mom. That s–t went up in my school area. I would write little verses here and there. Even when I was in college, I remember writing verses to the “Xxplosive” beat. I would pick hip-hop s–t and I would write verses to it when I was bored.
One night in college I was off a bean, and me and my friends were sitting by the lake on ecstasy, and one of my friends, Dwayne — he would rap and he was playing instrumentals — and I was like, “I got some s–t in my notes that would go to this.” I rapped one of my lil’ poems and my friends were like, “Damn, what the f–k? That was kind of hard.” I couldn’t stop writing after that. I stayed up all night trying to finish that s–t. I went upstairs and got my bag and went to class. I didn’t go to sleep. I was in class writing. Mind you, I’m a diligent kid, so me not paying attention in class, it’s like, “I f–k with this.” I would put my headphones on and walk to class writing raps.
I really enjoyed it and the people around me would rap, so it was quick that I got in the studio and got into that environment. Quickly after that, I was performing. I was putting s–t out on SoundCloud. That’s 2019. Then COVID hit and I lived by myself so it became very therapeutic. I went through some dramatic events that made it a safe space for me to talk about the stuff I was going through so I didn’t feel crazy.
Poetic Soul was an open mic event that would happen every Wednesday and I went to that really often. That’s where I started doing my live performance music stuff. They have a band, and you plug your phone in and have five minutes to do whatever you want. The band is so good that they’ll pick up your track in 20 seconds, and the host will come out and unplug your track and you just go with the band for the rest of the time. That was a cool experience.
Once I graduated in 2021, I was like, “Damn, I’m gonna try to do music for a little bit.” I tried to do the businesswoman s–t I thought I wanted to do. I did an internship at Intel. I got paid crazy that summer as a college student.
When did you become an artist? I read this story you went to L.A. for Grammys week and got caught up in a home invasion.
Yeah, that actually happened in 2020. That was the traumatic s–t I was talking about. That shifted my focus from being on rah-rah s–t, which is so far out of my character, but at the time I was even finding myself. To actually doing more conscious, neo-soul, boom-bap type of rap at the time. That pivoted my trajectory. It wasn’t until the Intel internship that was the thing where, “Okay, I’m gonna do music.”
I was gonna get into sustainability, but that s–t is a joke. Companies that say they have a sustainability department — it’s not real. It’s an image thing. I started doing shows with music and doing admin jobs and I drove Covid vans, which was crazy. Transporting people with COVID to shelters and quarantine hotels. I needed to pay my rent. Eventually, I was like, “I’m gonna go to L.A. and do music.”
What did your parents think of you pursuing a music career?
My mom was so supportive. She’s always been the person to say, “Now is the time to follow your dreams. Push comes to shove, you got your degree and maybe you could fall back on something.” She was like, “Maybe you give yourself a certain amount of time and if you’re not getting opportunities, then you can come back.” The opportunities never stopped coming.
Dad was a little more of a tougher cookie. He’s very supportive now, but he had to see it first. Even with the record deal, I quit a decent job. I told him I got a record deal and he was like, “Just make sure you see it in person because n—as be saying anything.” He be putting all his friends onto my music. My 13th birthday, me and my dad rapped “Children’s Story” back-and-forth. On my 18th birthday, he beatboxed Doug E. Fresh and I rapped “La Di Da Di” in the kitchen at breakfast. Call him and he’ll hit you with a verse right there.
Who’s gonna play you in your biopic?
I wish I could say Zendaya could, but she’s too cool to play me. She’s too tall. She’s too classy. She’s amazing. Challengers was dope.
Have you talked to Nas?
Yeah, I opened for Nas in London. We played two shows at the Royal Albert Hall. He’s cool as hell. He’s so interested in giving game, which is nice. It’s really easy to respect him. Not just because of his career, but as a human. He was very honest and real about s–t if he’s not f–king with something he’ll say it.
What other business endeavors do you want to get into outside of music?
Part of me is interested in fashion, but I don’t know if that’s the path that I want to take. A lot of me is interested in creative direction and I’m a writer at heart. I feel like I could write great stories. Maybe TV and film is another way I can take it. Maybe not as in front of the camera. [Being] behind the camera or making a series would be cool. I really admire people like Childish Gambino or Issa Rae and Vince Staples. His series was cool. I could see it going into that era. Even Teyana Taylor. Maybe creative direction, it would be cool to do for other people.
Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
On a beach somewhere, s–t. I hope to have left a mark that can be respected and it’s thought of as quality, as far as the music I make. I hope to be in different businesses I set up. I admire Rihanna’s career path. I hope to be more at peace and content with where I’m at. More paced. But right now, it’s grind time.
For Bono, music has always been an immersive art form. “When I was a teenager and stereo came, it was everything,” the rock legend tells Billboard. “U2 immersed ourselves in our audience — I jumped into the audience, and then our shows were always immersive in their instincts.”
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So when he got an early look at the Apple Vision Pro, the mixed-reality headset that the company launched in the U.S. last year, Bono says that he “was honored to be a lab rat in in their unusual mix of art and science.” On Friday (May 30), Bono: Stories of Surrender, a new documentary that captures and expands upon his recent one-man stage show, will be released on Apple TV+ as both a standard 2D film and as an immersive experience on the Vision Pro — the first feature-length project to be released in the format.
U2 has a long history of partnering with Apple, and Bono says that he was happy to be the one to break new ground for the company. “A lot of companies, when they get to that scale, they stop innovating,” he says. “And here they are again, ready to do it.
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“And for the first time, I got to see myself onstage, and realized, ‘What a big arse!’” Bono adds with a laugh. “That has gotta go! And by the way, are those nose hairs? I’m like, ‘Wow!’”
Indeed, Stories of Surrender offers plenty of extreme close-ups of the rock star, as the documentary (directed by Andrew Dominik) adds new dimension to a 2023 performance of Stories of Surrender: An Evening of Words, Music and Some Mischief… The stage show itself was an extension of Bono’s 2022 memoir Surrender: 40 Songs, One Story, and mixed monologues detailing his upbringing, sparse visual props and stripped-down arrangements of some of U2’s biggest hits, all in a theater setting (the doc was filmed at the Beacon Theatre in New York City).
“I ended up in the stage play because I didn’t want to do a promotion tour for the book,” Bono notes, “and I thought I’d do something a bit more challenging and a bit more fun — for me, selfishly speaking, and perhaps for the audience.”
The 86-minute documentary flies by with heartfelt anecdotes about Bono’s relationship with his father, the earliest days of U2, run-ins with global celebrities and his legacy as an artist. Although the tasteful presentations of U2 songs like “Beautiful Day,” “Pride (In the Name of Love)” and “Vertigo” — by a trio of backing musicians, led by veteran producer Jacknife Lee — earn deservedly rousing reactions from the audience in the doc, Bono’s stories also received a reaction that startled him when the stage show launched.
“I went out onstage, and something happened to me that had never happened to me before onstage with U2, at least not in more than 30-seconds intervals: People started laughing!” Bono says. “And I started to [think], ‘Oh, is this funny? Wow, I like the sound of this.’
“And so I had the songs, and I’d found a different way of getting inside the songs to tell the story, and now I could be as silly and as serious as I wanted to be, and indeed, as I am,” he continues. “There’s a reason tragic comedy was a favorite of Shakespeare’s. People’s tears mean more after they’ve been laughing, or the other way around. And all our lives are these absurdities, aren’t they?”
Now that this extended look back — first with the memoir, then with the stage show, and now with the documentary — is wrapping up, Bono says that each project has made him feel closer to his father, Bob, who passed away in 2001. In the doc, Bono re-creates multiple conversations with his dad across time — playing both roles by turning his head from side to side, finding humor and heartache as the camera cuts between the sides of the discussion.
“It is a little opera that I was making, about … my father, and how his son had to go through various different stages before he’d fully appreciate his father,” says Bono. “And one of those stages was playing him onstage, with the turn of my head every night, and realizing that my father was funny. And not just that I loved him, but I started to like him, just by playing him.”
On Friday (May 30), a new wave of performers was unveiled for Billboard Country Live, coming June 5-6 to Category 10, Luke Combs’ Nashville bar and live music venue. The event will spotlight some of country music’s emerging talent alongside influential industry power players.
The festivities kick off Wednesday, June 4, with an exclusive gathering on the rooftop of Category 10 honoring Billboard’s Country Power Players, a premier event, presented by Bud Light, recognizing the most influential figures shaping the genre today — including Stacy Vee of Goldenvoice/AEG, our 2025 Executive of the Year.
On Thursday, June 5, the excitement continues with a showcase concert presented by Bud Light, which will feature newly announced country hitmaker Mitchell Tenpenny joining a lineup that already includes Alexandra Kay, Ashley Cooke, Drew Baldridge, Max McNown and Reyna Roberts. The showcase-style concert inside Category 10 will also include Billboard‘s video lounge, where Major League Baseball will film exclusive interviews with the country stars behind players’ walk-up songs.
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Tenpenny’s history on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart extends back to 2018 and includes three top 10s of eight total hits: 2018’s “Drunk Me” and 2022’s “Truth About Me,” which both peaked at No. 2, and his chart-topping Chris Young duet “At the End of a Bar” in 2021.
The Billboard Country Live celebration extends to Friday, June 6, with a second night of music that will spotlight “Country on the Rise,” shining a light on the genre’s future hitmakers. Featured performers will include Cooper Alan, Graham Barham, Harper Grace, Jake Worthington, Tayler Holder and Timmy McKeever.
Find the full lineups below, and to attend, visit live.billboard.com/country to RSVP.
Another DMX posthumous album is in the works. According to Rolling Stone, a collection of never-before-heard collaborations, DMX Features, is slated for release this summer, previewed on Friday (May 30) with the hard-hitting “Bring Out the Worst” featuring Joyner Lucas. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The grinding […]
Sabrina Carpenter will have plenty of support when she takes the stage for her two BST Hyde Park shows this summer. The two massive gigs will kick off on July 5 with a sold out show featuring support from Clairo, Beabadoobee, Amber Mark, Luvcat, Ider, Sofy, Dellaxoz, the Tulips and Sola.
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Carpenter be back the next night (July 6) with Clairo in tow as well, along with Olivia Dean, Amber Mark, Chloe Qisha, Ider, Miso Extra, Tanner Adell, Dellaxoz and The Tulips. You can also see Carpenter in Fortnight, where she will take over the Festival Jam Stage for the Dance With Sabrina interactive music experience beginning today (May 30) at 3 p.m. ET through June 16 at 11:59 p.m. ET.
Carpenter is part of a massive lineup for this summer’s BST Hyde Park gigs, which will also include Olivia Rodrigo taking the stage on June 27 with support from The Last Dinner Party, Girl in Red, Flowerlove, Between Friends, Caity Baser, Katie Gregson-Macleod, Ruti, Florence Road, Aziya and Déyyess.
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Other BST headliners include Zach Bryan — with Dermot Kennedy, Mt. Joy, Gabrielle Aplin, Turnpike Troubadours, Ole 60, Willow Avalon and others joining him on June 28 and 29 — as well as Noah Kahan (July 4) with Gracie Abrams, Finneas, Gigi Perez, Paris Paloma and more and Neil Young and the Chrome Hearts (July 11) with Yusuf/Cat Stevens, Van Morrison, Amble, Alice Merton, Naima Bock and others.
The BST shows will also include headliners Stevie Wonder (July 12) and Jeff Lynne’s ELO (July 13).
Check out the Carpenter BST Hyde Park show poster below.
Charli xcx says she’s been re-watching all the Final Destination movies lately in preparation to see the just-released recent installment, Final Destination Bloodlines, and the budding film mogul was so inspired she pitched her own bratty next chapter to the horror franchise.
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“The reason I love these movies is that they really just are about hot people getting killed,” she said in a poolside bikini TikTok video from a Sicily vacation. “You know, there’s no moral backbone to the story, it really is just, ‘they’re hot, they’re cursed and they deserve to die.’”
And here’s the thing: with so many irons currently in the fire in Hollywood, Charli has crunched the numbers on the six-film franchise that has grossed more than $350 million to date and she’s shooting her shot for an all “It Girl” version.
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“Basically, it doesn’t matter who’s in these films, they do, like, super-super well,” said Charli. “And so I was thinking, well, shouldn’t there be a sort of ‘it girl’ version of this franchise? You know like, a Final Destination with It Girls. Kind of like, Rachel Sennott, Alex Consani, Gabbriette, Romy Mars, Me, Quenlin Blackwell, Devon Lee Carlson… maybe there’s like a scream queen in there like Jenna (Ortega). Maybe there’s an OG scream queen like Sissy Spacek. And then it’s also directed by like a horror auteur, like Ty West (MaXXXine)?”
The most recent edition in the series in which the cast defy death only to have Death find the most baroque ways to kill them had a franchise-best opening earlier this month when it raked in nearly $52 million in its opening weekend.
Charli also pitched Robert Rodriguez as a possible director, suggesting that the Machete auteur could lean into the “b-movie-ness of it all” and do a version where “everyone is just getting completely massacred. It’s like bloody.” Or, she suggested, she could take a really “big swing” and see if Oscar-nominee David Fincher (Fight Club) would be interested.
“I just think that it would be a good idea and I don’t think… the films wouldn’t have to change their formula. I think the whole point is that they play into the lore. They kind of make fun of their own lore, and I don’t think this one would have to be any different, like I think that’s the point,” Charli said. “It’s really not trying to do anything other than have hot people die in the most brutal ways and play with some unbelievable dialogue.”
To be clear, there doesn’t appear to be any official pitch so far, but in the comments Sennott gave it a thumbs up. “Ok I’m in….” she wrote.
After winning the season with brat summer last year, Charli is doing a hard pivot to movies, with the singer recently lining up a gig to star in and produce the next movie from Japanese horror director Takashi Mike (Yakuza Apocalypse). No additional information was available on that film at press time, but it is slated to be the second project Charli will produce through her Studio365 banner, joining the upcoming A24 drama The Moment, based on her original idea.
In addition, she is slated to appear in Julia Jackman’s period drama 100 Nights of Hero, as well as Pete Ohs and Jeremy O. Harris’ Erupcja and director Daniel Goldhaber’s horror remake of the legendary shock cult film Faces of Death. Other movies on her list include director Greg Araki’s I Want Your Sex and Romain Garvas’ adventure comedy Sacrifice, as well as The Gallerist, in which she’ll appear with Natalie Portman, Ortega and Da’Vine Joy Randolph. Charli also makes a cameo and produced the music for Benito Skinner’s new Prime Video comedy, Overcompensating.
