State Champ Radio Music News
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John Mellencamp is not happy with his home state after some Hoosiers booed a few famous New York Knicks fans — including Timothée Chalamet and Ben Stiller, who were sitting courtside — at Game 4 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals.
In a strongly worded post on X Thursday (May 29), the singer-songwriter — who attended the match two days prior to support the Indiana Pacers with his girlfriend, producer Kristin Kehrberg — wrote that he was “embarrassed when somebody, under whose direction I don’t know, called out some of the people who had made the trip from New York to support their team.”
“The audience booed these people,” he continued. “I’d say that was not Hoosier Hospitality. One could only say it’s poor, poor sportsmanship. I was not proud to be a Hoosier, and I’ve lived here my entire life.”
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Though Mellencamp didn’t mention Pat McAfee by name, the rocker was likely referring to the moment at Game 4 when the sports commentator rallied the crowd at Gainsbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis by saying over the speakers, “We got some big wigs from the big city in the building: Spike Lee is here. Ben Stiller is here. Timothée Chalamet is here. Let’s send these sons of b—-es back to New York!”
The Night at the Museum actor would later call the moment “weird” on X, adding, “We were happy to be there and cheer our team and other than that Indy fans were awesome.”
McAfee later explained on the platform, “They asked me to do that in the fourth quarter and I wasn’t gonna say no,” after which Stiller extended an olive branch by replying, “Come to game 5 Pat!!”
But Mellencamp isn’t letting what happened slide. “On behalf of most Hoosiers, I would like to apologize for our poor behavior,” he concluded in his note. “I’m sure the Pacers had nothing to do with this smackdown.”
Game 4 would ultimately end with the Pacers defeating the Knicks 130-121, putting the Indiana team at a 3-1 series lead. The next game will take place Thursday night at Madison Square Garden, aka the New York City hoopers’ home turf.
Chris Stapleton is known for his unmistakable, thousand-watt voice and singing searing songs such as “You Should Probably Leave” and “White Horse,” but it turns out the guy with the burly vocals is also pretty sentimental.
During an interview with actor Josh Brolin as part of Billboard‘s 2025 Country Power Players cover story, Stapleton took Brolin into the space where he keeps a massive collection of guitars. While Stapleton does show some impressive axes such as a guitar that once belonged to Waylon Jennings (a gift to Stapleton from his wife and fellow musician, Morgane), he pulls out another guitar in his collection to show to Brolin — one he considers irreplaceable.
“This is the guitar that I bought when I moved to town, when I moved to Nashville,” Stapleton said, removing a well-used, scratched up acoustic guitar from its case.
“If I had to walk out of here with one thing, it would be this,” Stapleton said. “All the other stuff, I would be sad about a lot of it, but whatever I’ve done, whatever I’ve made, has pretty much been built on this thing. I would say 90% of the things I’ve written in my life has been on this guitar.”
That’s quite the statement, considering that not only has Stapleton written hits recorded by himself, but also hits recorded by artists including Josh Turner, Kenny Chesney and George Strait.
“It’s not precious in a collector way to anybody because it was in a flood at some point,” Stapleton said. “There’s mud inside it, somebody used it as a canoe paddle, there’s a million crack repairs. Yeah, if I were to walk out of here with one thing, if you want to know what’s the most important thing, it’s probably this.”
Elsewhere in the wide-ranging interview, Stapleton discusses the importance of family, the origins of his friendship with Brolin, and the actor even discovers how Stapleton likes his Hattie B’s Hot Chicken order.
Watch the full video interview between Stapleton and Brolin above.
Jack Black’s “Steve’s Lava Chicken” — the shortest song ever to make the Billboard Hot 100 — adds another chart feat as the A Minecraft Movie song debuts at No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Movie Songs chart, powered by Tunefind (a Songtradr company), for April.
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Rankings for the Top Movie Songs chart are based on song and film data provided by Tunefind and ranked using a formula blending that data with sales and streaming information tracked by Luminate during the corresponding period of April. The ranking includes newly released films from the preceding three months.
“Steve’s Lava Chicken” reaches No. 1 following its first month of tracking for Top Movie Songs; A Minecraft Movie debuted in theaters on April 4.
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The song earned 20.1 million official on-demand U.S. streams and sold 3,000 downloads in April, according to Luminate. That led “Steve’s Lava Chicken” to debut at No. 78 on the Hot 100 dated May 3, making it the ranking’s shortest song ever at 34 seconds (a longer, albeit less popular version is one minute and 15 seconds).
“Steve’s Lava Chicken” reigns over a trio of holdovers from the chart’s previous iteration, paced by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” from The Electric State (No. 2; 14.6 million streams, 1,000 downloads) and followed by Chappell Roan’s “Casual” from Novocaine (No. 3; 13.8 million streams) and Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Spitting Off the Edge of the World” from The Gorge (No. 4; 2.4 million streams, 1,000 downloads).
The next highest debut is courtesy of Rod Wave’s “Sinners,” from the movie of the same name, released April 18. Wave’s track bows at No. 5 via 14.3 million streams and 1,000 downloads.
More Sinners activity is possible upon the May chart, the movie’s first full month of tracking for the survey. The soundtrack debuted at No. 133 on the Billboard 200 dated May 10.
Eric Prydz‘s 2004 hit “Call On Me” also starts at No. 7 via a synch in Warfare, garnering 2.6 million streams and 1,000 downloads in April. Prydz’s track concurrently returned to Billboard charts via the Dance/Electronic Digital Song Sales list in late April, bowing at No. 5. It peaked at the same position on Dance/Mix Show Airplay in 2004.
See the full top 10, which also features music from Snow White and Holland, below.
Rank, Song, Artist, Movie
“Steve’s Lava Chicken,” Jack Black, A Minecraft Movie
“Mary Jane’s Last Dance,” Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Electric State
“Casual,” Chappell Roan, Novocaine
“Spitting Off the Edge of the World,” Yeah Yeah Yeahs feat. Perfume Genius, The Gorge
“Sinners,” Rod Wave, Sinners
“Good Things Grow,” Snow White Cast, Snow White
“Call On Me,” Eric Prydz, Warfare
“Mother,” Danzig, The Electric State
“Party Up,” DMX, Holland
“(All Along the) Watchtower,” Devlin, The Gorge
Ten years ago today, on May 29, 2015, Jamie xx released his debut solo album, In Colour.
The 11-song project reached No. 21 on the Billboard 200 and No. 3 on the Official U.K. Albums Chart, generating hits including “Gosh,” “I Know There’s Gonna Be (Good Times)” and “Loud Places” and becoming a beloved LP of the era.
Billboard also celebrated the album upon its release, publishing a glowing review that identified the British producer’s ability to create a collage of ’90s U.K. rave culture that simultaneously acknowledged the rich history of this era while also sounding entirely fresh.
“Jamie xx is 26 years old, which means he was barely out of diapers during the heyday of ’90s U.K. rave culture, which provides the heart, soul and inspiration for his jaw-dropping solo debut, In Colour,” wrote Billboard contributor Garrett Kamps.
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The review continues to say that “The xx member (real name: Jamie Smith) reportedly combed through videos from the era on YouTube, experiencing it in a way that generations before him could not: all at once, chopped up, voyeuristically and set to the best music. This, conveniently, describes the rush of hearing In Colour, an ambitious collage of dance music’s most artistically exciting decade, assembled with maximum TLC by a visionary who inherited its legacy.
“Pockmarked by bits of dialogue from the era’s radio shows and documentaries,” Kamps continues, “the record leaves no doubt as to its source material, and Jamie xx is among other U.K. electronic-dance acts, such as Disclosure and Four Tet, that are tapping the genre’s past to forge its future. But no one has nailed it quite like this.”
Read the complete 2015 review here.
Speaking with Billboard last year upon the release of In Colour‘s long-awaited follow-up, In Waves, the artist said his country’s esteemed history with electronic music, combined with some good old fashioned homesickness, inspired the album’s tone.
“When I was making Colour, I was on tour [with The xx], and had been for seven or eight years nonstop,” he said. “I was really homesick, and I was dreaming up ideas about the U.K. and music in the U.K. and the dance scene there and everything that has happened since the ’80s in dance music in the U.K., which is a lot. It was sort of my fantasy version of U.K. dance music history. Because I was missing home, it made me feel more like I was at home, I guess.”
He also reflected on the differences within himself as he made two connected projects nine years apart, saying that while listening to In Colour while making In Waves, “I remember being really surprised by a lot of decisions I had made as a younger person, and remembering who the hell I was when I made those decisions.
“I guess I was drunk quite a lot of the time, having a lot of fun in my mid-20s,” he continued with a laugh while reflecting on the production process for In Colour. “It’s very painstaking, all these decisions you feel are so important. Then listening to them 10 years later or five years later, you can’t believe you made any of the decisions. And you think they’re wrong, or I would have made completely different decisions now, but I guess that’s a part of it.”
The dull, distant thud of munitions falling in Gaza is the only sound you hear in the parking lot in Re’im in southern Israel. It’s a world away from the thumping, joyous EDM beats that filled this same site more than two years ago as 3,000 ravers gathered under the stars for an all-night Nova Music Festival.The site is now a memorial to the 364 people killed by Hamas militants on Oct 7, 2023, eerily silent on a recent mid-May morning as friends, family and visitors quietly wandered among the hundreds of tributes to the slain attendees of the music festival. In addition to the scores killed and assaulted that day, 44 others were taken hostage in what became the deadliest attack in modern Israeli history.
The joyous rave kicked off the night before the shocking early morning raid by the al-Qassam Brigades that resulted in the killing of nearly 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals and kidnapping of more than 250. What was meant to be a celebration of the Jewish holiday of Shemini Atzeret — a time to stop and reflect, pray for rain and gather with friends and family — is now a heart-wrenching shrine to vibrant lives cut short.
“Daniel Goffman, 24 years old when he passed away. A child with a huge heart, endless generosity, and optimism, always willing to help and sacrifice himself for a friend,” reads one tribute featuring the image of a smiling young man giving a thumbs up. “He went to the Nova music festival with his partner, Daniela Petrenko, may she rest in peace, to celebrate the start of a new life, but they never returned.”
Among those attending the festival was Israel’s 2025 Eurovision Song Contest runner-up Yuval Raphael, who still bears shrapnel in her body from the attack. She has recalled hiding in a bomb shelter packed with 50 other people as Hamas gunmen repeatedly shot into the shelter and lobbed grenades. She survived after making a panicked call to her father, who counseled her to play dead and be quiet, a tactic that allowed her to be among the 11 people in the shelter who survived the onslaught.
In the middle of the sea of stories of lives cut short featuring tokens of memorial ranging from a charred DJ deck to a ghostly white statue mirrored on the ground by a hollow dirt reflection, is a massive star made up vibrant reproductions of the nation’s official flower, the red anemone (Kalanit). The flowers bloom at the festival site every February and the deeply symbolic gesture is a nod to the spilled blood of the victims, as well as a sign of resilience and hope. The official memorial funded by the non-profit Jewish National Fund has quickly become the JNF’s most-visited site, attracting nearly 7,000 visitors a day.
Visiting family for a wedding in Tel Aviv, I admittedly was not able to get a perspective on the dire situation in the Gaza Strip as Israel’s government continues to hammer the area with daily assaults in a conflict that has killed more than 53,000 people in the territory to date, according to Palestinian health authorities.
But what I did observe that day was a sea of moving tributes to dance music fans who gathered in the desert for an all-night celebration of renewal that turned into an early morning nightmare of automatic weapons fire and brutal assaults by Hamas militants who crashed through the border during the shocking surprise attack.
Just down the road was a kind of car graveyard, framed by five-story piles of charred, rusted vehicles attendees attempted to flee in that were destroyed in the attack. Scattered among the trashed cars with memorials to the victims were shot-up trucks driven by the marauders, some with large gun mounts in the bed.
Like the Nova memorial, the eerie site full of crushed and burnt cars and piles of mangled motorcycles features placards with QR codes that lead to the fuller stories of the victims. At the center is a destroyed car spilling over with a long trail of the red anemone sculptures. Atop the vehicle is a metal sculpture with the Hebrew word “V Ahavat,” which translates into “and love,” a common expression of affection.
The entire nation is laser-focused on returning the remaining hostages in Gaza — believed to number 58 men and women, half of whom are believed to be alive — with the two Nova memorials similarly plastered with stickers and banners honoring the captured and demanding their return. From the Ben Gurion airport arrival area to restaurant walls and roadside memorials, the stickers and posters bearing the faces of the captives are inescapable in the country now, along with massive banners reading “Bring Them Home.”
Just like the Nova site, the stickers and banners are daily testimonies to a grievous wound that feels impossible to ever heal from. But they are also a reminder of the vibrant stories of the lives that were lost and, hopefully, of those hostages who may yet return.
Check out a gallery of photos from the Nova site below.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
More than 5,000 people visit the Nova Memorial site every day, where they can wander among personalized tributes to the 364 killed by Hamas raiders on Oct. 7.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
Each tribute features lovingly written profiles of the Nova attendees’ lives, along with tokens memorializing them and clay recreations of the red anemone flowers that bloom in the area each February.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
In an adjacent grove, the families of the victims planted saplings in memory of their loved ones on the Jewish holiday of Tu BiShvat last year, an annual arbor day-like celebration of trees.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
The outside walls of a bomb shelter on the Nova site graffittied with the names of some of the dead and the acronymn “Hashem Ylkom Damo,” which translates to “May God avenge his/her blood” and a phrase reading “to win my brother.”
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
One of the bomb shelters on site at Nova where attendees fled during the attack. A guide said Hamas raiders repeatedly attempted to throw grenades into the packed concrete bunker during their assault.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
A close-up of one of the cars destroyed during the raid, one of hundreds on display in a grim shrine just down the road from the Nova Festival site.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
The memorial for attendee Shani Gabay, entitled “Shani Gabay’s Black Saturday,” feauturing a time-coded countdown of her attempt to escape, with links to photos and videos. It relates how the 25-year-old tried to run away from the assult and was declared missing for 17 days, until her body was discovered accidentally buried with another victim.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
A memorial to an Israeli soccer player featuring scarves from the victim’s favorite football teams, including Maccabi Petah Tikva, Hapoel Tel Aviv, Beitar Jerusalem and Israel’s beloved Maccabi Tel Aviv FC. The collection of white stones are in keeping with a Jewish tradition of mourning, in which visitors leave a rock to mark a visit to a grave site.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
A ghostly memorial to attendee Ziv Pepe Shapira, in which a tree has been planted in the middle of the “reflection” of a human torso on the ground.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
The burnt remnants of a metal sign reading “Nova Tribe of Light” lies amid a pile of wreckage near the memorial for beloved trance DJ Matan “Kido” Elmalem (aka “DJ Kido”), 42, who played festivals all over the world. He was spinning an early-morning set on Oct. 7 as Hamas raiders descended on the festival.
Image Credit: Gil Kaufman
An enormous garden of clay anemone flower sculptures — including charred black versions at the center — spreads on the Nova memorial site. Anemones are the official flower of Israel and they bloom near the festival site every Feburary. A tribute to the blood of the victims as well as a sign of resilence and hope.
Bunnie XO and Jessie Murph just had a far-out conversation about their first times taking shrooms, with the former revealing she once tripped so hard, she thought she was Michael Jackson.
In a clip from a recent episode Dumb Blonde, the podcaster asked the 20-year-old singer-songwriter to recount giving the psychedelics a try just a few weeks prior at Coachella. “I took them right before y’all’s party, actually,” Murph said, referring to Bunnie and her famous husband, Jelly Roll.
“It was so great,” the “High Road” singer recalled. “I was always apprehensive to try them … because they say it can mentally get you in a weird place.”
“But I had the time of my life,” Murph added. “I just was smiling, it made me really happy. But I’m gonna try not to do them a lot.”
One of Bunnie’s experiences with the drug, however, was a lot less serene. “I thought I was Michael Jackson one time,” she told Murph as both of them laughed. “I was in the snow making snow angels and then I cooked, like, a five-course meal … I did a big dose and it was phenomenal — that’s when I thought I was Michael Jackson.”
“And then I did a microdose and s–t got weird,” Bunnie added. “I started thinking about my childhood.”
According to the Alcohol and Drug Foundation, shrooms — aka magic mushrooms — are consumed for their hallucinogenic effects caused by key ingredient psilocybin. The psychedelics can alter “a person’s thinking, sense of time and emotions,” an ideally pleasant experience that can sometimes lead to anxiety or paranoia instead.
Bunnie and Murph — who recently earned her highest peak to date on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Blue Strips” reaching No. 15 earlier in May — have been friends for a while. In 2023, the Alabama native teamed up with Jelly for a duet titled “Wild Ones,” reaching No. 7 on the Hot Country Songs chart, and all three of the stars recently walked the red carpet together at the Academy of Country Music Awards — where Murph’s piglet, Wilbur, stole the show.
In June 2024, Bunnie defended Murph against social media trolls who took issue with the latter being featured on Koe Wetzel’s “High Road,” which would reach No. 22 on the Hot 100. “All you grown ADULTS being mean to a beautiful 19-year-old girl who’s pursuing her dreams & has already accomplished so much in her career, more than some of y’all,” the social media star wrote at the time, sharing a video of herself hugging Murph on Instagram. “Don’t play w me or baby girl.”
Watch Bunnie and Murph discuss shrooms below.
The Grammy Museum announced the guest artists who will participate in this year’s Grammy Camp, which is expanding to Miami and New York, in addition to its flagship Los Angeles program.
Cimafunk, DARUMAS and GALE will be this year’s guest artists in Miami; Alexander Stewart, Aly & AJ, Daniel Seavey, D’Mile, India Shawn and Reneé Rapp will be guest artists in Los Angeles; and Braxton Cook, Chloe Flower, and Renée Elise Goldsberry will be guest artists in New York.
They will discuss their career paths and help students prepare for the music industry. The signature music industry camp for U.S. high school students will take place at the following locations:
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Art House Studios, Miami – June 8–14
Evergreen Enterprise Experience, Los Angeles – July 13–19
Engine Room Audio, New York – July 27–Aug. 2
“For more than 20 years, Grammy Camp has been a vital launching pad for high-school students chasing their dreams in music, providing a real-world glimpse into the industry and the journey that comes with it,” said Michael Sticka, president and CEO of the Grammy Museum, in a statement. “This summer, we’re thrilled to expand that mission even further, welcoming rising talent to our Grammy Camp community in Los Angeles, Miami and New York.”
Several of this year’s guest artists have won major awards. D’Mile is the only songwriter in Grammy history to win back-to-back awards for song of the year, for co-writing H.E.R.’s “I Can’t Breathe” and Silk Sonic’s “Leave the Door Open.” He also won an Oscar for co-writing “I Can’t Breathe” from Judas and the Black Messiah. Renée Elise Goldsberry won both a Grammy and a Tony for Hamilton. Darumas was nominated for at Latin Grammy for best new artist. Alexander Stewart was nominated for two Juno Awards this year.
The Grammy Museum also announced that 172 talented high-school students from 126 U.S. cities across 25 states have been selected as participants in this year’s program.
Now in its 21st year, Grammy Camp focuses on all aspects of commercial music and will feature various career tracks in all three locations: music business, instrumental performance, electronic music audio production, songwriting and vocal performance will be at each location. Each location will incorporate a curriculum tailored to its unique musical heritage, offering specialized tracks such as musical theater, screen scoring, music production with a DJ emphasis, and instrumental performance surrounding jazz music. Each track is taught by Grammy-winning and -nominated professionals, Recording Academy members, industry experts and notable guest artists, offering participants an exclusive glimpse into real-world music career pathways. Students are selected for one career track but have the opportunity to collaborate with all students.
Applications for Grammy Camp 2026 will be available online in September on its website.
The Clipse is back. Pusha T and No Malice officially announced the first Clipse album in more than 15 years on Thursday (May 29) with Let God Sort Em Out. The project is set to make it snow in the summertime with a July 11 release date. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See […]
Chris Stapleton‘s signature bluesy-rock guitar licks might be fiery, but his hot chicken order? Perhaps not so much. As part of a cover story for Billboard‘s Country Power Players issue, Stapleton and actor Josh Brolin spent time at the musician’s studio in Nashville, but also took time to eat at Hattie B’s Hot Chicken, one […]
Larry Hoover Jr. has thanked Ye (formerly Kanye West) for his support over the years when it comes to advocating for his father, Larry Hoover’s, freedom. The elder Hoover had his federal life sentence commuted by President Donald Trump on Wednesday (May 28). TheGangster Disciples’ founder has been locked up since 1973. “It started a […]
