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Time to show off your wickedly good singing chops, as Wicked dropped a buzzed-about sing-along version of its film soundtrack on Friday (Dec. 20) via Universal Pictures / Republic Records / Verve Records. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Fans can channel their inner Ariana Grande as Glinda or […]
Julian Lennon has offered the public a timely reminder to undergo regular doctor visits following emergency surgery after a second skin cancer diagnosis.
Lennon took to social media this week to reveal his recent health scare, explaining that he had been on the way to New York for a Good Morning America appearance and press junket in support of his latest book, Life’s Fragile Moments, when he received word from Dr. Tess Mauricio that melanoma had been discovered on his skin.
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“So instead of going home to put my Christmas tree up and happily finish the year off, relaxing at home, I flew directly back to Los Angeles, after all my work in New York was done, and went directly from LAX airport, to surgery, with a surgeon recommended by Dr Tess, [Dr. Tim Neavin] – who spent several hours cleaning up and operating on me, with large margins, in the hope that we have, at the end of the day – clear margins, which would mean being free from cancer,” Lennon wrote.
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“The operation was a success, but we have yet to have the results of the biopsy, which we may not receive before Christmas.”
As he continued his post, he shared his gratitude for his medical team for their fast work at coordinating such rapid surgery and for “hopefully saving my life”.
“One can never be too confident in circumstances like this, but we all believe that Dr Tim has saved the day. So fingers crossed for now,” he wrote.
“Obviously good news, would be the best Christmas present ever… Which I’m hopeful for… But I just want to say, this is also a timely reminder to all, to please get yourself checked out by your doctor,” he added. “It only takes a short while to do so, and you may just be saving your own life, at the end of the day… so please, for the sake of yourself, your family and friends just go to your Dr and do what must be done… I love life and I want to live for a very long time and this is one way, and a choice, that could determine your future.”
Lennon’s fittingly-titled latest book, Life’s Fragile Moments, was released in September as is his first photography collection, and features stills taken over two decades, including landscapes, urban scenes, and intimate portraits.
Martin Short and Hozier have celebrated both the holiday season and their respective returns to Saturday Night Live in the latest promo clips released for this weekend’s episode. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The episode, which airs on Saturday (Dec. 21) will be the first musical appearance […]
There’s been a bunch of Lil Baby headlines on Thursday (Dec. 19) as he rolls out his upcoming album WHAM: Who Hard As Me. He recently sat down with Charlamagne Tha God, where he talked about his relationship with Gunna and getting name-dropped in Kendrick Lamar‘s Drake diss track “Not Like Us,” in which the […]
It was a lit scene inside the Grammy Museum’s Clive Davis Theater in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday evening thanks to an electrifying dynamo by the name of Doechii.
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As Doechii walked onstage to an ear-deafening chorus of cheers and shout-outs, she was just as psyched as the packed theater as she immediately launched into a rocking and riveting 11-song set. Accompanied by DJ Miss Milan, Doechii powered and danced her way through a mini-concert that opened with “Persuasive” and included “Boiled Peanuts,” “Denial Is a River,” “Spookie Coochee,” “Nissan Altima,” “Boom Bap” and the moving yet affirmative “Black Girl Memoir,” a key audience favorite.
Before segueing into “Death Roll,” an excited yet humble Doechi took time out to directly address the audience, thanking her mom (who was in the audience) and her family, label home Top Dawg Entertainment/Capitol Records, the Grammy Museum and the fervent fans in the room. “I’m so excited to be celebrating such an incredible year and a new era of hip-hop,” said the current four-time Grammy nominee.
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The Tampa-born, Los Angeles-based artist was the perfect guest to close out the last edition of the museum’s American Express-sponsored Spotlight program for 2024. The rapper is coming off a banner year, capped by four Grammy nominations: best new artist, best rap performance (“Nissan Altima”), best remixed recording (the Kaytranada remix of “Ego”) and best rap album (Alligator Bites Never Heal) — the first female rapper to appear in that category since Cardi B’s Invasion of Privacy in 2020.
Prior to that, the self-anointed Swamp Princess spent the last 18 months cementing the foundation for her career breakthrough, including a performance on the main stage at Coachella; opening for Beyoncé’s Renaissance world tour; touring with Doja Cat; and collaborating with JT on the popular Eurodance/hip-hop-fused “Alter Ego. In the wake of releasing her critically acclaimed mixtape Alligator in August, she guested on Tyler, the Creator’s latest album Chromakopia and performed at his recent music fest Camp Flog Gnaw.
Taking a brief pause after wrapping her set, Doechii returned for an illuminating and humorous conversation with four-time Grammy-winning rapper Killer Mike. During his initial pre-performance introduction, Killer Mike said in part, “She is an amazing representation of that swamp called Florida that’s given us talent in the artistic world from sculptor Augusta Savage to writer Zora Neale Hurston. She is a performer; a rapper rapping her ass off at a time where rap needs some rappers … an artist who I feel is the present, the future — and who’s going to change music forever.”
Killer Mike speaks with Doechii at Spotlight: Doechii at GRAMMY Museum L.A. Live on December 18, 2024 in Los Angeles, California.
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Here are five sound bites from the pair’s freewheeling conversation as well as insightful audience questions that touched on Doechii’s childhood, creative process, hard-won confidence and career advice, among other talking points:
What made her put her pure soul into a record: My confidence is truly built and nurtured. I wasn’t always this confident. I wasn’t always in environments that made me feel proud to be a dark-skinned, outspoken girl. So this confidence is truly built behind closed doors. My mother is a single mother of three girls, and she always told me I was the most beautiful girl in the world every single day. I’d leave that home environment with so much confidence, and then I would go to school and get bullied a lot. Eventually, I made a choice that I refuse to be anything but happy. I made a choice that I was going to be myself no matter what it took, no matter what anybody said about me. And that confidence I bring with me on this couch right now is the same confidence that I decided to pour into this project. I wanted to give people an audiovisual experience of what it’s like living in my skin, being in my life, what my brain moves like, what I think about, what I’m afraid of, what I love. And that’s also why I am extremely honored to be representing female rap in the hip-hop album category.
Her ultimate goal: The end goal, beyond the accolades, the money and everything, is I want the world’s next icon to be inspired by me. I feel like they’re out there. They’re watching my interviews, studying me and listening to my music. They’re watching me. So I have to be free. I have to try my best. I have to show up, because I just feel it. She’s out there watching me. And I don’t know if it’s me that’s watching me or if it’s literally somebody, but that’s what is driving me: somebody needs this.
Staying determined while navigating her career pathway: Well, one, it’s in you. It’s not on you. When I said that I want to be the best, it comes from a place of truly healthy competition. My family is very competitive so I’m extremely competitive in a healthy way. I talk about this often, but I miss that competitive sportsmanship in hip-hop where everybody wanted to be the best lyricist. They wanted to tell tstories in the dopest way. And they would battle each other through rap, because it makes you stronger. It makes all of you stronger. Like oh, he just did a double entendre. I’m gonna do a triple. I’m gonna do a quadruple. I like that. I want to be the best at my craft. I love this genre. I love music. I like making it.
Breaking down her writing process: A lot of my writing process, at least for my brain, is I have to move quickly. If I don’t move fast enough, doubt will come in and it’ll slow me down. If I don’t move on to the next line, I’ll be like, ‘Oh dang, that line wasn’t cool. Let me redo that again.’ So I like to literally time myself. I’ll set a timer for one hour and whatever you get that hour, that’s what you get, baby girl. Then you’ve got to move on. It forces you to be in the moment. It forces you to trust yourself. And I also tell myself this all the time: I have the right to suck right now. I have the right to not say something that’s cool, the right to be vulnerable, to be corny, whatever. I have the right to be whoever I am in this hour. Then I must move on.
Advice to creators crafting their careers while dealing with real life: Every creative reaches this point: you have to eventually choose your art. You have to choose your art over whatever thing there is. If it’s a relationship that’s distracting you, you need to choose your art. I choose to record today. I choose to post today. I choose to keep going. I choose to instead of invest my money in that, I’ll invest my money in singing lessons. It’s all about your decisions at the end of the day. And I know it sounds cliche, but seriously, as a creative, you have to choose yourself over and over. Don’t allow yourself to come up with excuses that will stop you. You do whatever it takes, and you continue to work on yourself. Then when you get the thing (you’ve been working toward} there’s a whole other battle. And you have to choose yourself again.
Billie Eilish has been giving back during her Hit Me Hard and Soft tour. The superstar partnered with Support+Feed and American Express to provide support for small businesses across cities including Atlanta, Nashville, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The partnership […]
After seven years in a row as the top TV show for music synchs, Grey’s Anatomy has ben unseated as top dog, according to Tunefind.
Tunefind, a Songtradr company, has announced its top TV shows, movies, songs, artists and composers for the year, and according to Tunefind, the biggest show of the year was the U.S. version of Love Island.
The music discovery website Tunefind’s year-end rankings are based only on traffic and interaction on its website, which helps fans identify what song they heard in a TV show or film. Tunefind’s year-end charts are separate from the monthly Top TV Songs and Top Movie Songs charts, presented with Billboard. The monthly Top TV Songs chart ranks the top songs that appear in TV shows each month, using a combination of metrics from Tunefind and Luminate, while Top Movie Songs does the same for films released in the preceding three months.
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Love Island, which premiered in the U.S. in 2019 after multiple years of successful iterations abroad (beginning with the original in the United Kingdom), premiered its sixth season in June via Peacock. The 37-episode season featured a number of synchs in each edition, ranging from well-known tracks old (Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s “Murder on the Dancefloor”) and new (Chappell Roan’s “Red Wine Supernova”), as well as covers of familiar tunes.
It reigns over the return of Arcane, whose second season propels it to No. 2 on Tunefind’s year-end ranking. Netflix’s animated series from the League of Legends video game universe premiered season two in November, three years after the original. Its soundtrack, featuring a variety of original songs from Twenty One Pilots, Freya Ridings, Marcus King and more, debuted at No. 26 on the Billboard 200 dated Dec. 7 and rose to a new peak of No. 24 on the Dec. 17 tally.
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Grey’s Anatomy, the ABC series that had reigned for the past seven years since Tunefind began sharing its year-end data with Billboard, still maintains its standing as a TV synch juggernaut, ranking at No. 3 on Tunefind’s year-end report, while FX/Hulu’s The Bear and HBO’s Industry round out the top five. Speaking of HBO, its new series The Penguin tops the five-position ranking of the biggest new shows of the year in synchs.
The top TV song of the year in TV, however, is from none of those shows. The distinction belongs to Mazzy Star’s 1994 hit “Fade Into You,” No. 3 on Billboard’s Alternative Airplay chart that September and the band’s only track to date to reach the Billboard Hot 100.
“Fade Into You”’s year-winning synch came from Netflix’s new series 3 Body Problem, which premiered in March.
Meanwhile, the top movie of the year for synchs was none other than Marvel and Disney’s Deadpool & Wolverine, which premiered in July, followed by a home video release in October and streaming on Disney+ in November.
In fact, the film takes up the entire top 10 of Tunefind’s biggest movie synchs, led by *NSYNC’s “Bye Bye Bye,” which reached No. 4 on the Hot 100 in 2000 and returned to the ranking in August 2024 at No. 45 following the movie’s theatrical release.
Billie Eilish snags the distinction of the year’s top artist, while Ramin Djawadi takes the top composer honors. Eilish’s year included synchs in Heartstopper, True Detective, Love Island and more, and Djawadi contributed scores to 3 Body Problem, Fallout and the second season of House of the Dragon.
See each of the year-end rankings below.
Top Songs (TV)
“Fade Into You,” Mazzy Star (3 Body Problem)
“Only You,” The Platters (Fallout)
“Heartbeats,” Jose Gonzalez (Brilliant Minds)
“New Noise,” Refused (The Bear)
“Hope We Can Again,” Nine Inch Nails (The Bear)
“Together,” Nine Inch Nails (The Bear)
“White Rabbit,” Jefferson Airplane (Reacher)
“You and I,” Leon (Nobody Wants This/English Teacher)
“Everything In Its Right Place, Radiohead (Everything In Its Right Place)
“See Her Out (That’s Just Life),” Francis and the Lights (Nobody Wants This)
Top Songs (Film)
“Bye Bye Bye,” *NSYNC (Deadpool & Wolverine)
“The Lady in Red,” Chris De Burgh (Deadpool & Wolverine)
“Only You,” The Platters (Deadpool & Wolverine)
“Like a Prayer,” Madonna (Deadpool & Wolverine)
“SLASH,” Stray Kids (Deadpool & Wolverine)
“I’m With You,” Avril Lavigne (Deadpool & Wolverine)
“Angel of the Morning,” Merrilee Rush & the Turnarounds (Deadpool & Wolverine)
“Iris,” Goo Goo Dolls (Deadpool & Wolverine)
“The Power of Love,” Huey Lewis and the News (Deadpool & Wolverine)
“The Greatest Show,” Hugh Jackman with Keala Settle, Zac Efron, Zendaya & The Greatest Showman Ensemble (Deadpool & Wolverine)
Top TV Shows
Love Island (U.S.) (Supervisor: Jordan Young)
Arcane (Jen Malone & Nicole Weisberg)
Grey’s Anatomy (Justin Kamps)
The Bear (Josh Senior & Christopher Storer)
Industry (Ollie White)
All American (Madonna Wade-Reed)
The Rookie (Liza Richardson & Marc Mondello)
True Detective (Susan Jacobs)
Tell Me Lies (Kristen Higurea & Maggie Phillips)
Heartstopper (Mat Biffa)
Top TV Shows, New
The Penguin (Supervisors: Jen Malone & Whitney Pilzer)
Nobody Wants This (Este Haim, Zachary Dawes & Kristen Higurea)
Tracker (Robin Urdang)
The Day of the Jackal (Catherine Grieves)
English Teacher (Jen Ross)
Top Movies
Deadpool & Wolverine (Supervisor: Dave Jordan)
The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare (Rupert Hollier)
Beetlejuice Beetlejuice (James Balmont)
Twisters (Rachel Levy)
It Ends With Us (Season Kent)
Road House (Randall Poster)
The Fall Guy (Rachel Levy)
Beverly Hills Cop: Axel F (Sarah Maniquis-Garrisi)
Challengers (Robin Urdang)
Venom: The Last Dance (Spring Aspers)
Top Artists
Billie Eilish
Taylor Swift
Radiohead
The Rolling Stones
Nina Simone
Massive Attack
Beck
Mazzy Star
The Cure
Goo Goo Dolls
Top Composers
Ramin Djawadi
Rob Simonsen
Max Richter
Hans Zimmer
Jeff Russo
Dave Porter
Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross
Kris Bowers
Christopher Lennertz
Tyler Bates
Lil Baby and Gunna may never make music together again.
While sitting down with Charlamagne tha God and his Out of Context interview series, the media personality asked Baby about his relationship with Gunna and if they’ll ever make music again. However, the Atlanta rapper isn’t optimistic about giving fans a follow up to their critically acclaimed mixtape Drip Harder from 2018. “We ain’t got no relationship,” he said before Charlamagne asked about fans on the Internet claiming Lil Baby “can’t make hits without Gunna.”
“The internet will say anything,” he then answered. “You know how many hits I got? So, that don’t even make sense.” Charlamagne then followed up by asking, “I know Thug says what Wham! says goes, but Thug says, ‘Hey, I’mma get in the studio, I’m gonna make some music with Gunna, Baby I want you to participate.’ Would you?”
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“I don’t see that happening,” Baby replied before elaborating that he meant he doesn’t expect Young Thug to ever make that kind of request. “Nah, I’m just saying, like, ‘I want you to participate.’ I don’t know what nobody else will do. But as far as me, know what I’m saying?”
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Charlamagne then brought up his “350” record from 2023 where Baby rapped, “Ain’t never say nothin’ ’bout it, nigga, you know you a rat” on the song’s first verse, but he brushed the controversy surrounding that line off. “That’s just the Internet, what they gonna create,” he answered. “I talk about rats in every song I had since I started rappin’.” Adding, “They just be creating a narrative and I don’t even be talkin’ about a nigga. It’s whoever’s a rat.”
The drama surrounding the former duo dates back to December of 2023 when Lil Baby told his DJ to turn off “Drip Too Hard” during a performance, saying, “F—k the rats, turn this sh—t off.” Since then there’s been conflicting feelings coming out of Thug’s YSL camp such as Thug tweeting, “whateva wham say goes,” in June and his father coming to Gunna’s defense publicly on multiple occasions.
The interesting tidbit in all this is that Thug had to get permission from the judge to be able to record songs with Gunna as a condition of his release.
Lil Baby’s fourth solo album WHAM (Who Hard as Me) is due out Jan. 3, 2025.
K-pop tracks continues to dominate playlists and charts worldwide with 2024 being no exception. This year, top artists delivered an incredible array of songs that define the genre’s innovative spirit, emotional depth and increasing international appeal. As the year winds down, Billboard wants to know which track resonated with you the most. 2024 saw major […]
Lil Baby loves gambling. Whether that be on betting on himself in his career, cards or rolling dice, the Atlanta rapper is always down to play the odds.
Baby hopped on Lil Yachty’s A Safe Place podcast where he admitted that losing a fortune in less than two days forced him to get his gambling habit under control.
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“$8 million,” he said when asked what’s the most he’s lost. “Like one day, probably like 40 hours straight, I lost like $8 million, $9 million. I made myself stop gambling.”
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Baby continued: “I had Mike Rubin write a letter to every casino and ban me from the casino. I just do s–t. I don’t gamble no more.”
Don’t expect to see Lil Baby in the casinos anymore, but he’s still making it rain in other ways. The 4PF rapper and Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin have become close friends over the years as they’ve aligned on REFORM Alliance ventures and business dealings such as Mitchell & Ness and Fanatics.
Rubin and Lil Baby have been the subject of plenty of memes and social media fodder with photos from his famed “white parties” on July 4. Elsewhere talking to Yachty, Baby revealed the memes actually bother him.
“I don’t play with n—-s, period on no funny, weird s–t. I’m dapping Kuzma up and Mike’s happy to see me he run up on me. I got 10 other pictures,” Baby said. “We play like that. They white so they don’t really understand how I understand. Even when the picture came out before it went viral I told Mike, ‘I can’t have pictures like that.’”
He continued: “When that picture came out, I literally made Mike Rubin go to the security camera in his house and go to the footage the whole time. I ain’t even gonna post that s–t… Certain s–t, all that type s–t like that really bother me. How I grew up, certain s–t can’t be on your name.”
The 30-year-old called Michael Rubin a “super great influence” on his life. “We have the best conversations ever,” Baby added. “He damn near fascinated with the way I live, and I’m fascinated with the way he lives so we live in the middle.”
Lil Baby is looking to kick off 2025 on a high note as he readies a pair of albums, the first of which is set to arrive on Jan. 3 with WHAM (Who Hard As Me).