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Jay-Z just “rolled the dice, trying to get some change.” After helping launch Fanatics Sportsbook in 2023 alongside Fanatics CEO Michael Rubin, Hov is putting his money where his mouth is for the 2025 NBA Finals. According to a social media post from Fanatics and Roc Nation, Jay-Z has wagered $1 million on the Oklahoma […]
Cam’ron gave fans a bit of a stunning revelation on Thursday (June 5).
On a recent episode of It Is What It Is, while talking about NBA commissioner Adam Silver telling FS1’s Breakfast Ball that next year’s All-Star Game will be “some form of USA against the World,” Cam and his co-host Mase joked around that the league is stealing their ideas and that they should let them ghostwrite for them.
Cam then gave some high-profile examples of songs he’s co-written, including 3LW‘s 2000 hit “No More (Baby I’ma Do Right),” which features a viral opening line about broken promises. “I wrote for 3 Little Women,” the Harlem rapper said as Mase laughed and egged him on. “The single, I’m in the credits, I wrote that. ‘Promises, promises’? That’s me. I penned that joint. We’re real creative, just tap in, man.”
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He then revealed that he originally wrote the classic Dipset track “I Really Mean It” with the intention of giving it to Lil’ Kim, but the Queen Bee wasn’t feeling it — but said he was glad that Kim decided to pass on it because it’s one of his more popular songs.
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“I did write a song for Lil’ Kim and she didn’t want it, and the lyrics changed and I ended up keeping it for myself,” he began. “It was one of my biggest records, but I wrote ‘I Really Mean It’ for Lil’ Kim. Same format, and she didn’t like it. That’s one of the best things, ’cause that’s one of my close-out songs, to be totally honest with you, and she didn’t want the song. I’m happy she didn’t.”
Cam is, in fact, credited on 3LW’s hit record as a songwriter, and most of the recent comments on YouTube are people asking if they’re there because of It Is What It Is. The Harlem rapper also famously ghostwrote Lil’ Kim’s 1996 classic “Crush on You.”
You can watch the full episode below.
Meanwhile, though Cam and Mase are trying to take credit for the NBA All-Star idea, ESPN journalist Michael Wilbon said back in February on First Take that he’s been pushing the USA vs. the World format for more than a decade.
“I’ve been pushing this for 15 years,” Wilbon claimed during a segment about the popular 2025 NHL Nations Face-Off that replaced the hockey league’s All-Star Game. “This goes back to me talking to David Stern about it and then Adam Silver about it on this air during Finals games when Stephen A. [Smith] and I are sitting there with our colleagues with the commissioner during the Finals. I’ve been asking him about this directly. It even became a joke, where they said, ‘Oh, we know what Wilbon’s gonna ask Adam Silver about.’”
Cam and Mase should reach out to Wilbon and get him on the show.
IDLES frontman Joe Talbot used the band’s set at Barcelona’s Primavera Sound on Thursday (June 5) to offer full-throated support for Palestine.
The lead singer shouted “Viva Palestina!” from the stage at Barcelona’s Parc del Fòrum and led the crowd in a minuteslong chant of the Spanish phrase. At one point in between songs, Talbot asked the crowd: “Donde esta las Palestinas?” (which translates to “Where are the Palestinians?” in English). He also dedicated the group’s set to Palestine.
After kicking off with their 2018 track “Colossus,” the British post-punk outfit’s festival set also included recent singles like “Dancer,” “Grace” and “Gift Horse” from their latest U.K. No. 1 album, 2024’s Tangk, as well as earlier songs including 2018’s “Danny Nedelko,” 2019’s “Never Fight a Man with a Perm” and 2021’s “Car Crash.”
Known for their outspoken political activism, Primavera Sound is hardly the first time IDLES have used their platform to stand in solidarity for Palestinian rights amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. At their London release show for Tangk in early 2024, Talbot reportedly altered the lyrics of multiple songs, including “The Wheel” and “Danny Nedelko,” to reference Palestine.
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He also dedicated Brutalism-era album cut “Mother” to the Palestinian people during the band’s appearance at Glastonbury 2024, telling the crowd at Somerset’s Worthy Farm, “This song is a celebration of all the insults that I was thrown over the years, and I tried to turn it into something beautiful. … This is for the people of Palestine and this is for you. Any scumbags in the audience?”
Earlier this year, IDLES performed a benefit concert for the Los Angeles Fire Department following the 2025 Grammys, where they were nominated for best rock album, best rock song and best rock performance.
Primavera Sound continues throughout this weekend, with headlining sets from Sabrina Carpenter, Chappell Roan and Charli xcx. Northern Irish hip-hop trio Kneecap, who have been similarly vocal in their support for Palestine, is also on the Primavera Sound bill.
One of the most musical shows on Broadway right now isn’t, in fact, a musical. Pop music has a tangible presence in, and is intrinsic to the fabric of, Kimberly Belflower’s play John Proctor Is the Villain. The story follows a group of girls from small-town Georgia who, amid the #MeToo era, are reading Arthur Miller’s The Crucible and starting to doubt that the titular protagonist is as morally upstanding as he’s often portrayed to be — just as a classmate and friend (played by Stranger Things star, and now Tony nominee, Sadie Sink) returns to town after a much gossiped-about absence. Concurrently, they decide to form a feminism club in an attempt to learn more about a subject the adults around them don’t seem to love addressing head-on. And from the bop-filled pre-show playlist (constructed meticulously by sound designer and composer Palmer Hefferan) to Hefferan’s original music woven throughout to the references to seminal female pop singer/songwriters like Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Selena Gomez and Lorde written into (and crucial to) the plot, the pop music the girls love might as well be another character in the play.
“There’s something about music that is so connective — there’s just this language there that everyone understands,” says actor Fina Strazza, a Tony nominee for her portrayal of passionate overachiever and club founder Beth. “Even if you don’t know the song we’re referencing, you can see what it’s about and what it means to them.”
Chief among those songs is Lorde’s “Green Light,” which is referenced throughout the play before finally being played at its most cathartic moment (no further spoilers here!). Belflower — who calls it “a perfect song” — never considered any other in its place, which made its somewhat complex journey to approval especially anxiety-inducing. Songs are usually cleared off-Broadway on a production-by-production basis, but once John Proctor moved into wider publication and was clearly headed for Broadway, “We were like, ‘OK, we need to clear this song, like, forever,’” she explains, which entailed approaching Lorde’s publisher, UMPG. Belflower wrote an impassioned letter to Lorde, asking that it be passed to her personally — only to get a “no” as the first response from her team.
Sadie Sink and Amalia Yoo onstage.
Julieta Cervantes
“I had, like, a panic attack in the Whole Foods parking lot when my agent called to tell me,” she recalls now with a laugh. But two weeks later, a “yes” came through from the artist herself, saying she loved the letter (and that the initial “no” had just been due to a miscommunication between teams; while Lorde hasn’t seen the show yet, Belflower is hopeful that will change whenever she’s next in the city).
John Proctor Is the Villain — at the Booth Theater through Aug. 31 — is now the most Tony-nominated play on Broadway currently, with seven nods. In advance of the awards ceremony on Sunday (June 8), Belflower, Hefferan and Strazza spoke to Billboard about a few of its most prominent music moments and how they came to be.
Dayna Taymor and Kimberly Belflower on the first day of rehearsals for “John Proctor is the Villain.”
Jenny Anderson
Selena Gomez, “Bad Liar”
Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme has some sage advice for anyone who finds themselves in a difficult situation.
“If you’re going through hell,” Homme says, “keep going.”
Easy for him to say: He’s one of the few lucky souls who has left the Paris Catacombs, the subject of his band’s new film and the final home to more than 6 million deceased Parisians following an 18th-century effort to fix Paris’ overcrowded, dilapidated cemetery system. Homme has long been fascinated by the underground burial site, visited by more than a half-million people each year, and chose the dark and foreboding underground capsule as the central motif for Queens of the Stone Age’s new project Alive in the Catacombs, a concert and concept film directed by Thomas Rames and produced by La Blogothèque.
“This place is like trying to run on a sheet of ice,” Hommes explains in the accompanying documentary Alive in Paris and Before, shot by the band’s longtime visual collaborator Andreas Neumann. “You have no idea how much time has passed up there, up above, and no time has passed below. It’s the same time, all the time, every time.”
It’s easy to get lost in the maze-like film as it wanders through the subterranean tunnels and ossuaries buried deep beneath the City of Light. The film captures Homme at a low point in 2024, having to cancel a major European leg of the band’s tour due to a cancer diagnosis from which he has since recovered. Performing in the Catacombs had been a lifelong dream of Homme’s, and he pushes though the pain to delivery a carefully arranged performance of music from the band’s back catalog, “stripped down bare, without taking away what made each one wonderful,” band member Dean Fertita explains in the documentary.
The band recruited violinist Christelle Lassort and viola player Arabella Bozig to repurpose tracks like “Paper Machete,” “Kalopsia” and “Villains of Circumstance”; while each song was performed acoustically, Homme was adamant the project not simply feel like “Queens of the Stone Age Unplugged.”
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“When you go into the Catacombs, there are 6 million people in there, and I think about, ‘What would you want to hear if you were one of those people?’” Homme said Wednesday night (June 4) during a Q&A in Los Angeles following a screening of the film. “I’d want to hear about family and acceptance and things I care about. A lot of the songs we picked are about the moment you realize there’s difficulty and the moment you realize you’re past it, so a lot of the songs we picked were about letting the people down there know it’s all right and that we care about them.”
Homme said the challenges of the performance was that unlike a traditional concert where the band plays to the audience, “We’re in the belly of this thing. The ceiling is dripping and it’s an organic thing that’s really dominating.”
The Paris Catacombs were built during a time of great upheaval in French society, as revolution completely reshaped civic life and laid siege to the political fabric of the French monarchy. There are no coffins or headstones in the Catacombs, with the bones of the princes and kings mixed with peasants and non-nobility.
The band shot the entire film in one day, Homme said, securing permission from the historical group that oversees the Paris Catacombs to shoot on a day the space was closed to the public.
“We didn’t over-rehearse; we just rehearsed twice,” Homme said. “It’s not supposed to be perfect. You try to make a plan, but you go down there and all the plans are off.”
Fans can preorder the film in advance on Queens of the Stone Age’s website; fans who order the video before Saturday will also receive the mini-documentary film. Watch the trailer below:
Billboard is continuing to expand its global footprint with the launch of Billboard Africa, which was announced Wednesday night (June 4) at our inaugural Global Power Players event in London.
In partnership with Global Venture Partners, Billboard Africa will continue Billboard‘s commitment to highlighting major developments within the African music industry and embracing the continent’s diverse voices and rich stories through events, awards and exclusive multimedia content. The platform aims to become the leading hub for African music and culture, strengthening ties between artists and fans as well as the local music economy.
“We are thrilled to launch Billboard Africa, a pivotal step in recognizing Africa’s profound contributions to global music culture,” said Josh Wilson, managing director at Global Venture Partners. “African music is not only rich and diverse but a driving force that continues to reshape global music trends. Billboard Africa will create a space where these voices are amplified, where artists connect with new audiences, and where fans and industry professionals alike can witness the full impact of Africa’s creative energy.”
In honor of Billboard Africa launching, we’re celebrating 11 African artists’ trailblazing efforts in the global music scene.
While Rema‘s “Calm Down,” featuring Selena Gomez on the remix, became the first African artist-led song to hit one billion Spotify streams, he’s not the only African artist in Spotify’s Billions Club. Wizkid was the first African member and also one of the first members ever when Drake’s “One Dance,” also featuring Kyla, became the very first song to hit one billion streams on the streaming service in 2016. And while Wiz is also the first Nigerian artist to have a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 with the same song in 2016, South African jazz legend Hugh Masekela became the first African artist to top the all-genre songs tally nearly 50 years earlier with “Grazing in the Grass.” CKay also landed a historic No. 1 on a Billboard chart that was brand new at the time: the U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart that we launched in partnership with Afro Nation in 2022, which ranks the 50 most popular Afrobeats songs in the country.
Like Masekela, many African acts have paved the way for others to achieve historic firsts in their own right. Miriam Makeba, also known as “Mama Africa,” was the first African artist to win a Grammy in 1966, and almost 60 years later, Tyla won the first Grammy in the best African music performance category that the Recording Academy introduced in 2024. And Tems, who won her second Grammy in that category earlier this year with “Love Me JeJe,” made history in a whole different field when she became the first African-born woman to own a Major League Soccer team when she joined the San Diego FC ownership group as a club partner.
From the 1960s to the 2020s, take a look back at more of the historic firsts African artists have accomplished.
Miriam Makeba becomes the first African artist to win a Grammy (1966)
Billboard has partnered with Global Venture Partners, a Dubai-based venture capital firm focused on fostering economic growth across Africa and the Middle East, to launch Billboard Africa. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Billboard editorial director Hannah Karp first announced the news at our inaugural Global Power […]
Top Dawg Entertainment singer SiR had his 2024 tour stop in Toronto canceled, and he made his return north of the border for a show on Wednesday (June 4).
During his performance, SiR placed the blame for his original cancellation on Drake. In a clip from the performance, SiR says that he was “caught in the middle of a beef I ain’t have s–t to do with,” referencing the ongoing feud between the Toronto rapper and Kendrick Lamar. However, SiR quickly walked back the claims and said it was the venue — which is co-owned by Drizzy — that cancelled his show.
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“Then when we tried to switch venues, the venue was like, ‘Nah, we ain’t f—ing with it. I ain’t taking no motherf—ing chance you gon’ get your ass beat,’” he says in the clip.
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Billboard has reached out to Drake’s team for comment.
The clip from Wednesday’s concert went viral on social media as fans had plenty to say about SiR’s claims, who himself wondered, “Why is this news?”
Plenty of OVO fans were riled up at SiR’s comments and hopped into his replies on X. “It’s news because you said Drake name,” one person said. Another added: “Why you mentioning Drake when he has no clue who you are?”
At the time of the 2024 show, SiR blamed the venue in a statement to fans on X. “So sorry to my Toronto fans. The show has been canceled. We’re working on rescheduling for a later date,” he wrote, per VIBE. “For those wondering, we sold that show out. It was canceled by the venue. Not sure why. My apologies again to those that came just to see me.”
SiR wasn’t the only TDE-affiliate to have issues touring in Canada, as ScHoolboy Q also had a show scrapped in Toronto last summer. “THey just canceled my sHow in TORONTO,” he said at the time. “CANADIAN POLICE DONT WANT NOBODY FROM TDE PERFORMING.”
See how fans reacted to the clip of SiR talking about his 2024 cancellation below:
Anytime an affiliate from either side mention anything about the “beef” it’s going to be news. Tbh why you even take the time to talk about it. You should’ve thanked the crowd and kept it moving. We all know what happened last year.— BREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE (@breyonksmith) June 5, 2025
Why did you make a spectacle of it in the first place— Prime – Enjoyer of #4 (@xPrimeHoops) June 5, 2025
Sir is only speaking the truth from a year ago. Drake is petty and can’t a Loss like a man. Everyone knows this…What is the new news here?— ChiKnows (@Chi_Knows01) June 5, 2025
SIR is irrelevant to the culture. Top 5 is more relevant— Stateless Gonad (@StatelessGonad) June 5, 2025
0 clips of the performance just 1 clip of the only part anyone cares about— Vocal Pineapple 🍍 (@VocalPineapple) June 5, 2025
He literally just told you— Corey (@ioftendrift) June 5, 2025
Neh Drake involved him in things that’s he was not part of— SeanKing (@ShawnSikhosana) June 5, 2025
Ed Sheeran‘s love for India sparkles on his new song “Sapphire,” which dropped alongside an adventurous music video Thursday (June 5).
On the effervescent dance track, the British pop star mixes percussion elements of traditional Indian music with his signature absurdly catchy melodies, singing about never wanting to stop dancing with a lover whose aura shimmers just like the blue diamond for which the song is named.
“We are surrounded but I can only see/ The lights, your face, your eyes/ Exploding like fireworks in the sky,” Sheeran sings on the song.
Adding flair to the recording are vocals and sitar provided by Indian artist Arijit Singh, who also appears with the four-time Grammy winner in the “Sapphire” music video. Filmed across various locations in India during Sheeran’s tour through the country earlier this year, the visual keeps the English musician in the center of the frame as he walks through bustling streets, explores beaches, visits tourist spots, hangs out with locals and sings with a team of youth soccer players.
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His companion in those sites is often Singh, with whom Sheeran sings in Punjabi, “ਚਮ-ਚਮ ਚਮਕੇ ਸਿਤਾਰੇ ਵਰਗੀ” — which translates to “They sparkle just like stars,” according to YouTube’s captions.
“‘Sapphire’ was the first song I finished for Play that made me know where the album was heading,” wrote the “A Team” singer in a statement, referring to his September-slated LP. “It’s why I finished the recording process in Goa surrounded by some of the best musicians in India.”
“The final jigsaw piece for me was getting Arijit on the record,” he continued. “Me and him have done a full Punjabi version of the song that will come out in the next few weeks, which has a lot more of him on it. This is the album version of the song, and my favorite song on the album. Hope you guys love it.”
“Sapphire” follows previous Play singles “Azizam” and “Old Phone,” the latter of which dropped at the beginning of May. Arriving Sept. 12, the new album will serve as the first in Sheeran’s next series of LPs, marking a departure from his yearslong mathematics-themed saga.
“Play was an album that was made as a direct response to the darkest period of my life,” he recently wrote on Instagram. “Coming out of all of that I just wanted to create joy and technicolor, and explore cultures in the countries I was touring. It’s a real rollercoaster of emotions from start to finish, it encapsulates everything that I love about music, and the fun in it, but also where I am in life as a human, a partner, a father.”
Watch the “Sapphire” music video above.
Disclosure will perform a run of North American live shows this fall, the duo announced Thursday (June 5.) The newly announced shows piggyback a run of previously announced DJ sets from the Lawrence brothers. The newly announced shows include dates at both indoor and outdoor venues, including Forest Hills in New York, the Santa Barbara […]