Music News

18 Jul 2023

The Mayan Warrior Art Car May Have Burned Down, But Its Creators Are Hosting One Last Party

Burning Man’s famous Mayan Warrior art car was destroyed in a fire this past April, but that’s not stopping its creators from throwing one final party.

On Tuesday (July 18), the Mayan Warrior announced its last ever show: a Halloween party in Los Angeles. The Oct. 28 event is being produced in partnership with Los Angeles-based production company Stranger Than, Mayan Warrior’s longtime partner on its off-playa tour stops.

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The event will happen at downtown Los Angeles’ Grand Park, where Mayan Warrior hosted its first West Coast event in 2017. While the actual Mayan Warrior art car will obviously not be on-site for the event, the party will be thrown in the tradition of its longstanding festivities. The event is a fundraiser for the Mexico City-based Mayan Warrior community, with money going toward this community’s next Burning Man camp and art project.

No artists have yet been announced for the show, with Mayan Warrior parties typically not revealing lineups until immediately before the event. Tickets go on sale Aug. 1.

The Mayan Warrior show will be just one of several events Stranger Than will host in Los Angeles over Halloween weekend. Since expanding to Los Angeles from New York in 2018, the company has made a name for itself by hosting dance shows in locations not often used for music events, including the beach and local museums.

Since debuting at Burning Man in 2012, Mayan Warrior had become one of the event’s prestige art cars, with a high-level soundsystem and a rotation of DJs representing Mexico and the global electronic scene.

The car caught fire and burned to the ground on April 5 while en route to a fundraiser in Punta de Mita — a beach town on the country’s central Pacific coast. The cause of this fire has not been given.

18 Jul 2023

Snoop Dogg & E-40 Are Teaming Up for a Cookbook: Here’s When It Arrives

Looking for something new to try in the kitchen? Snoop Dogg and E-40 got you covered.

The rap duo are teaming up for a new cookbook, titled Snoop Dogg Presents Goon With the Spoon, which is set to arrive on November 14 via Chronicle Books, according to People.

The book, which serves as a follow-up to Snoop’s popular cookbook, From Crook to Cook: Platinum Recipes from Tha Boss Dogg’s Kitchen, will feature more than 65 recipes inspired by both Snoop and E-40’s music, as well as some tasty dishes the hip-hop superstars enjoy cooking and eating together.

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“E-40 is my big homie, my brother, my mentor,” Snoop wrote in the book’s foreword, per People. “Watching him expand his love for food and cooking over the years to his many successful businesses is some boss-level shit. Which is why Snoop Dogg Presents Goon with the Spoon had to be the next cookbook, ya dig?”

Snoop is no stranger to the culinary arts. Beyond his cookbooks, the “Drop It Like It’s Hot” rapper’s 2017 Emmy-nominated cooking show with his pal Martha Stewart, Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party, featured a series of special guests such as Wiz Khalifa, 50 Cent and Bella Thorne.

If you’re looking for more tasty musician-approved recipes, we at Billboard have compiled a whole list of musician cookbooks you need to try for your next dinner party. Check out our list here.

18 Jul 2023

Olivia Rodrigo Almost Cut This Lyric From ‘Vampire’ Because ‘It’s Not Relatable’

Olivia Rodrigo just revealed that while writing “Vampire,” she almost put a stake through one of the lyrics at the heart of her new single’s message.

Speaking with Audacy’s The Julia Show, the 20-year-old pop star confessed that she and co-writer Dan Nigro went back and forth over including the phrase “fame f—er” in the chorus of “Vampire,” which scorches an ex-boyfriend for leeching off her stardom and exploiting their relationship. “Some people said, ‘It kind of isolates you from people, you can’t really say things like that in song, it’s not relatable,’ yada, yada, yada,” she shared.

“I totally get and saw where they were coming from,” Rodrigo continued. “I think the song isn’t about fame f—ing, I think it’s more about someone being manipulative and sucking you dry, using you for all you’re worth. I think that’s a universal theme, and I also think fame is more easily accessible now than it has ever been. It’s not just people in LA and Hollywood that have to deal with that.”

Widely believed to be written about Rodrigo’s rumored ex-boyfriend Zack Bia, “Vampire” made an angsty splash on the charts following its June 30 release. Temporarily dethroning Morgan Wallen’s 13-week reign at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, the bitter-tasting track became Rodrigo’s third single to debut at No. 1 following Sour‘s “Drivers License” and “Good 4 U.”

The former Disney starlet also touched on why she chose “Vampire” to mark both the lead single off her upcoming album Guts as well as her first release since her 2021 debut record. “It was a song that felt really special to me, it was always really important when I looked through all the songs we had,” Rodrigo explained. “It’s a step forward and hints at everything that’s to come in the next album.”

“I feel a lot more sure of myself now,” she added. “I feel sure of who I am and what I want to do and what I want to say and the people I want to surround myself with… I’m still figuring lots of stuff out and thoroughly confused about lots of other aspects of life, but I’m definitely getting clear on more things.”

Check out Rodrigo’s Julia Show interview below:

18 Jul 2023

Kenshi Yonezu Drops ‘Chikyuugi,’ Theme of Hayao Miyazaki-Directed ‘The Boy and the Heron’

Kenshi Yonezu released his new single “Chikyuugi” (Globe) on digital services July 17. The song serves as the theme of Studio Ghibli’s highly anticipated latest animated movie The Boy and the Heron, which opened in Japanese theaters on Friday.

The artwork features an original layout illustration of a scene from the Hayao Miyazaki-directed movie. The J-pop hitmaker personally asked the famed Ghibli co-founder for this particular scene after reading through the film’s storyboard.

Yonezu also shared a photo of the “Chikyuugi” CD single adorned with the same illustration on the cover. The CD version will be available in first and standard editions, both including a CD containing the track and a 160-page A5-size photo book. The first edition comes in a moss green hardcover case embossed with a leaf pattern and a golden heron, with an outer cover made of craft paper. The standard edition comes in a softcover case.

The photo book captures the five years Yonezu, Miyazaki, and producer Toshio Suzuki spent developing the theme song, photographed by Tomohiko Ishii of Studio Ghibli. Documenting the process of creating the theme for The Boy and the Heron, the photos capture the tension Yonezu felt when submitting the song to Miyazaki and shows the director in tears when he first heard it, giving fans a realistic behind-the-scene look into the creative process. A conversation between Yonezu and Suzuki is also included at the end of the booklet.

18 Jul 2023

Jamie Lee Curtis Congratulates Lindsay Lohan on New Baby, Celebrates Being a ‘Movie Grandmother’

The congratulatory messages continue to roll in for Lindsay Lohan, who recently gave birth to her first child with husband Bader Shammas. Jamie Lee Curtis was among the many to wish the Mean Girls actress well as she embarks on motherhood, and remarked on how Lohan giving birth feels like a full circle experience, given their history.

“MAGIC MONDAY! My movie daughter just made me a movie grandmother. Blessings to Lindsay and Bader for the birth of Luai! @lindsaylohan,” Curtis wrote on Instagram, captioning a picture of the two posing together in the 2000s.

Curtis and Lohan starred opposite each other in Disney’s 2003 remake of Freaky Friday. The Oscar winner and singer-actress played a mother and daughter who one day mysteriously swapped bodies and are forced to spend a day in each other’s shoes. (Disney confirmed in a May sThe New York Times story that a sequel is confirmed, with Curtis and Lohan in talks to return.)

The Everything Everywhere All at Once star has remained in contact with Lohan. In a June 8 interview with Allure, the 37-year-old shared, “I spoke to Jamie Lee Curtis recently and she was like, ‘You just bring the baby with you and everything will be fine.”

Back in April, Curtis also shared a tribute to Lohan on Instagram and sweetly told her followers, “My friend and film daughter @lindsaylohan is growing up! So thrilled for her. What a mama she will be.”

18 Jul 2023

Doja Cat Says She’s Done Making Music That Is ‘Palatable, Marketable and Sellable’

It’s an understatement to say that Doja Cat‘s relationship with the mainstream music industry is fraught at best. Over the past year, the “Kiss Me More” rapper has proclaimed that she’s finished making pop music, then agreed with commenters who said her rapping was “corny” and joked that she was making an album inspired by German rave music before claiming her next album would be spoken word.

It’s fine, she was kidding about last one. But in a new cover story in V Magazine, the unpredictable 27-year-old singer said that one of the reasons she’s taking so much time working on her follow-up to 2021’s smash collection Planet Her is that she wants to be sure it is 100% authentically her.

After jumping from R&B to hip-hop and pop over the course of her career, Doja explained that a lot of her pushback and left turns are tied to making music she wasn’t totally down with. “I have thrown fits my whole career because I have been making music that didn’t allow me to have a mental release,” she told the magazine. “I have been making music that is palatable, marketable and sellable, that has allowed me to be where I am now.”

Now, she added, she’s making music for her fourth album that allows her to express how she feels about the world around her. “These upcoming projects are going to be very different compared to everything I have done and I am excited about that,” she said. “I do not care if people are not.”

Though the provocative black and white shots she took for the magazine have a rock and roll edge, Doja said she doesn’t consider herself a rock star. “I have made pop music. I’m currently making rap, soul and R&B music with jazz elements,” she said of her upcoming album, which she also noted is inspired by “hatred and outrage” culture.

Doja dropped the long-awaited single “Attention” in June, which asked the apropos question for a star who has gotten attention for shaving her head and razoring off her eyebrows live on camera: “Look at me, look at me?/ You lookin’?” To date, the singer has not announced a release date for the album she tweeted in May will be called First of All, the follow-up to Project Her, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 album chart and produced the hits “Need to Know,” “Woman,” “Ain’t S–t” and “Get Into It (Yuh).”

Click here to see pictures from the V Magazine shoot.

18 Jul 2023

Lizzo Models T-Shirt With Boyfriend Myke Wright’s Face on It: ‘Im a Big Grrrl But He Can Take It’

Lizzo‘s fans know her well. In a recent TikTok, the 35-year-old hitmaker showed off a perfect custom gift from fans: a T-shirt with her boyfriend Myke Wright’s face on it.

Dancing along to Wright’s original song “Nights Like This,” Lizzo filmed herself modeling a black short-sleeve tee with the comedian/actor/musician’s face plastered in the center, framed in a heart. “I’m a big girl but he can take it,” the shirt reads, quoting a lyric from Lizzo’s Special track “Naked.”

The “About Damn Time” singer echoed the lyric in her caption, writing, “Im a big grrrl but he can take it.”

In a block of text at the top of the video, Lizzo revealed that the shirt was a gift from fans in Perth, Australia, where she played a show Friday (July 14) at the RAC Arena. “TO THE BANANA GRRRLS THAT MADE ME THIS SHIRT IN PERTH… THANK YOU,” she wrote.

The Yitty founder has been dating Wright since 2021, though they met back in 2016 while working on their MTV show Wonderland. She’s been open in interviews about their love story, telling Vanity Fair last year that “he’s the love of my life. We are life mates.”

A couple months ago, Lizzo even put an unofficial end to her public celebrity crush on Chris Evans, asking fans to stop bringing posters of the Captain America star’s face to shows, and to bring posters of Wright’s face instead. “Chris Evans is not my man,” she told her crowd at a show in May. “My man is [Myke Wright]. He fine as hell. I wanna see his fine a– face when I’m onstage.”

After the Grammy winner’s stop in Perth comes two back-to-back shows in Melbourne, the first of which was Monday (July 17). Fan videos from the night captured Lizzo tearing up while facing the crowd, an emotional moment the star later reacted to on Twitter, “I had a rough day… and y’all really made me feel loved. Thank you,” she wrote.

See Lizzo’s TikTok below:

18 Jul 2023

Hot 100 First-Timers: FendiDa Rappa Arrives With Cardi B Collab ‘Point Me 2’

Chicago-based drill rapper FendiDa Rappa is officially a Billboard Hot 100-charting artist as she scores her first appearance on the list with her new collaboration with Cardi B, “Point Me 2.”

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The song, released July 7 through Giant Music (which relaunched in 2022), debuts at No. 82 on the Hot 100 with 7.3 million official U.S. streams and 4,000 downloads sold through July 13, according to Luminate. It also enters at No. 14 on Hot Rap Songs and No. 20 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs (which use the same multimetric methodology as the Hot 100). The track becomes Fendi’s first appearance on any Billboard charts.

“Point Me 2” is a remix to Fendi’s 2022 breakout track “Point Me to the Slut’s” (both versions are combined into one listing on Billboard‘s charts).

Prior to that, Fendi released her debut 15-track album, Str8 From Da Raq, in 2021.

As for Cardi B, the song becomes her 44th career charted hit on the Hot 100, and second this year, after her featured turn on Latto’s “Put It on Da Floor Again,” which debuted and peaked No. 13 in June and ranks at No. 54 this week.

18 Jul 2023

NewJeans Hit No. 1 on Emerging Artists Chart Thanks to ‘Super Shy’

NewJeans jump from No. 6 to No. 1 on Billboard’s Emerging Artists chart (dated July 22), as the South Korean pop group becomes the top emerging act in the U.S. for the first time, powered by its new single “Super Shy.”

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The song, released July 7 via ADOR/Geffen/Interscope Records, debuts at No. 66 on the Billboard Hot 100 with 9.2 million official U.S. streams and 2,000 downloads sold through July 13, according to Luminate. It also opens at No. 2 on World Digital Song Sales and No. 45 on the all-genre Digital Song Sales chart.

Internationally, the song debuts at No. 2 on both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts. It’s the act’s third top 10 and highest-charting entry on each survey.

“Super Shy” is NewJeans’ third and highest charting title on the Hot 100 after “OMG” and “Ditto,” which reached Nos. 74 and 82, respectively, in February.

In the Emerging Artists chart’s six-year history, NewJeans are the 10th K-pop group to hit No. 1, following NCT, BLACKPINK, NCT 127 (all in 2018), TOMORROW X TOGETHER, NCT DREAM (both 2019), ATEEZ (2021), xikers, (G)I-DLE and P1Harmony (all this year).

NewJeans formed in 2022 and is comprised of members Danielle, Haerin, Hanni, Hyein and Minji.

Among other moves on Emerging Artists, FendiDa Rappa debuts at No. 9, thanks to her new collaboration with Cardi B, “Point Me 2.” The song starts at No. 82 on the Hot 100, as well as No. 14 on Hot Rap Songs and No. 20 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, becoming her first-ever Billboard chart appearances.

The Emerging Artists chart ranks the most popular developing artists of the week, using the same formula as the all-encompassing Billboard Artist 100, which measures artist activity across multiple Billboard charts, including the Hot 100 and Billboard 200. (The Artist 100 lists the most popular acts, overall, each week.) However, the Emerging Artists chart excludes acts that have notched a top 25 entry on either the Hot 100 or Billboard 200, as well as artists that have achieved two or more top 10s on Billboard’s “Hot” song genre charts and/or consumption-based “Top” album genre rankings.

18 Jul 2023

Travis Scott’s ‘Utopia’ Egypt Concert Reportedly Canceled by Authorities Due to ‘Safety & Protection of the Audience’

The road to Utopia has gotten bumpier for Travis Scott after Egyptian government officials canceled his July 28 concert at the Pyramids of Giza on Tuesday (July 18), according to multiple reports. 

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The news comes after The Egyptian Syndicate of Musical Professions reportedly cited myriad issues about Scott’s forthcoming performance. The Syndicate, which ultimately approves concert permits, is said to have concerns about ensuring “the safety and protection of the audience.”

Dr. Mohamed Abdullah, in a statement on behalf of the Musicians Syndicate obtained by Egypt Today said: “Regarding the concert scheduled to be held on 28th July at the Pyramids area in Giza by American rapper Travis Scott, the Musicians Syndicate, as the entity responsible for issuing licenses for music and singing concerts in Egypt, in coordination with the Egyptian Ministry of Culture represented by the Censorship Authority for Artistic Works and the Ministry of Labor, emphasizes the necessity of considering security aspects and obtaining approvals from the relevant authorities as a top priority when organizing concerts. This is to ensure the safety and protection of the audience.”

The statement also cites Abdullah as saying that the group welcomes various art forms, “it has set conditions and regulations to safeguard the customs and traditions inherited by the Egyptian people.”

In addition, Egypt Today quotes Abdullah as saying that social media played a part in the decision to cancel the concert’s license. “After examining social media opinions and feedback, as well as the news circulating on search engines and social media platforms, which included authenticated images and information about peculiar rituals performed by the star during his performance, contradicting our authentic societal values and traditions, the Syndicate’s president and board of directors have decided to cancel the license issued for hosting this type of concert, which goes against the cultural identity of the Egyptian people,” he reportedly said in his statement.

Billboard has reached out to Scott’s reps for comment. 

In 2021, 10 people died and many more were injured at Scott’s Astroworld Festival due to a crowd crush. After 19 months of police investigation, a grand jury ultimately decided that no one should be criminally charged for the disastrous event. In a statement to Billboard, Scott’s attorney Kent Schaffer said the grand jury’s decision proved that “Travis Scott is not responsible for the Astroworld tragedy.”

“This is consistent with investigative reporting by numerous media outlets and federal and state government reports that have squarely placed the onus for event safety crises on organizers, operators and contractors — not performers,” Schaffer said. “While waiting patiently for the District Attorney’s decision to not file charges, Travis Scott has been inaccurately and wrongly singled out, despite stopping the show three separate times and being unaware of the events as they were unfolding. Now that this chapter is closed, we hope for the government efforts to focus on what is most important — stopping future heartbreaking tragedies like Astroworld from ever occurring again.”

Utopia marks Travis Scott’s fourth studio album and drops July 28.