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Beyoncé and Jay-Z made a very rare red carpet appearance on Monday night at the Los Angeles premiere of Mufasa: The Lion King, posing for photos with daughter Blue Ivy Carter and Beyoncé’s mother, Tina Knowles.
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The 12-year-old plays a major part in the film, voicing lion Kiara, the daughter of Simba (voiced by Donald Glover) and Nala (Beyoncé) — who reprise the roles they played in 2019’s live-action The Lion King.
Blue Ivy and Beyoncé both appeared in gold dresses at the Hollywood Boulevard event, with the young star first taking solo shots before she was joined by her parents. Beyoncé famously avoids most red carpets, often doing her own photoshoots at events like the Grammys or the premiere of her concert film Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé.
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None of the three family members were previously announced to the press as attending the event, despite their involvement.
The appearance comes just a day after Jay-Z was accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in 2000 in a lawsuit that also alleges Sean “Diddy” Combs took part in the act, according to NBC News. The rapper responded with a forceful statement that the claims are “idiotic” and part of a “blackmail attempt.”
In the lawsuit, the accuser, identified only as “Jane Doe,” alleges Carter and Combs raped her at a house party after the 2000 MTV Video Music Awards, which took place in New York. The lawsuit, which was first filed in October in the Southern District of New York, originally listed Combs as a defendant and was refiled Sunday to include Carter. Attorney Tony Buzbee, who filed the suit, has also filed numerous suits against Combs in the past several months.
Jay-Z responded via his company Roc Nation’s X (formerly Twitter) account on Sunday, saying that what the lawyer “had calculated was the nature of these allegations and the public scrutiny would make me want to settle. No sir, it had the opposite effect! It made me want to expose you for the fraud you are in a VERY public fashion. So no, I will not give you ONE RED PENNY!!”
He also added, “My only heartbreak is for my family. My wife and I will have to sit our children down, one of whom is at the age where her friends will surely see the press and ask questions about the nature of these claims, and explain the cruelty and greed of people. I mourn yet another loss of innocence. Children should not have to endure such at their young age. It is unfair to have to try to understand inexplicable degrees of malice meant to destroy families and human spirit.”
If ever there was someone whose marriage advice was considered invaluable, it’s Dolly Parton.
The country veteran and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee has been recording and releasing as a solo artist since 1967 – just one year after her marriage to the rarely-seen Carl Dean.
Together, the pair have been married for close to 60 years, though Dean has been known for his aversion to the spotlight. Having met in a laundromat on the day she moved to Nashville, only rarely do photographs of the pair emerge, and Parton has long said that Dean – a retired paver four years her senior – has only ever seen her perform live once.
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In a new interview with Bunnie Xo‘s Dumb Blonde podcast (itself a song title from Parton’s 1967 album Hello, I’m Dolly), the musical icon has offered up some of the secrets to their long-lasting relationship.
“He’s quiet and I’m loud, and we’re funny,” Parton explained. “Oh, he’s hilarious. And I think one of the things that’s made it last so long through the years is that we love each other [and] we respect each other, but we have a lot of fun.”
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“Anytime [there’s] too much tension going on, either one of us can like, find a joke about it to really break the tension, where we don’t let it go so far,” Parton continued, touching on their shared sense of humor. “We never fought back and forth. And I’m glad now that we never did, because once you start that, that becomes a lifetime thing.
“I’ve seen it with so many people, and I thought, ‘I ain’t ever starting that.’ I couldn’t bear to think that he’d say something I couldn’t take… because I’m a very sensitive person toward other people and myself.”
Parton’s comments are consistent with her previous offerings on the key to her long-lasting marriage, telling ET Canada in 2022 why she feels the pair have worked so long for close to 60 years.
“I like it when people say, ‘How did it last so long?’ I say, ‘I stay going,’” she explained. “You know, there’s a lot to be said about that. So we’re not in each other’s face all the time. He’s not in the business, so we have different interests, but yet we have the things we love to do together. So it was meant to be, I think. He was the one I was supposed to have and vice versa.”
Lana Del Rey may have a lot to thank Jack Antonoff for when it comes to music, but in a speech at the Variety Hitmakers ceremony over the weekend, the 39-year-old pop star revealed that she’s actually most grateful for the way the producer inspired her to get married to husband Jeremy Dufrene. While presenting […]
In honor of earning her first Golden Globes nomination since 2009, Miley Cyrus made “Beautiful That Way,” recorded for Gia Coppola’s The Last Showgirl starring Pamela Anderson, available for listening Monday (Dec. 9) via YouTube. Appearing at the end of The Last Showgirl — which follows the Baywatch actress as a performer facing a reckoning […]
Roc Marciano and The Alchemist have decided to do it again. The duo have announced their latest endeavor The Skeleton Key as they look to follow up their critically acclaimed collab album The Elephant Man’s Bones from 2022. And with that announcement, they dropped the project’s lead single in “Chopstick” along with its video. Directed […]
On Sunday night (Dec. 8), Taylor Swift played the last of 149 shows on The Eras Tour. As reported earlier Monday, the record-setting trek grossed more than $2 billion and sold over 10 million tickets: $2,077,618,725 and 10,168,008, respectively, to be exact.
The news was first reported by The New York Times.
Without qualification, The Eras Tour is the highest-grossing tour of all time, by artists of any genre, and from any era in music history. If compared to data officially reported to Billboard Boxscore, it is the biggest tour ever by an unthinkable distance of more than $900 million, blasting past Coldplay’s Music of the Spheres World Tour (2022-ongoing) – the only other tour to gross more than $1 billion – by a margin of almost two-to-one.
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Even before The Eras Tour was announced, Swift was one of the most successful touring acts of her generation. Dating back to her first reported solo headline show at Sovereign Performing Arts Center in Reading, Pa. (April 6, 2007), she has grossed $3 billion across her career, when adding The Eras Tour’s sum to officially reported data for her prior tours to Billboard Boxscore.
Previously, her biggest tour – according to Billboard Boxscore – came when Swift brought in $345.7 million and sold 2.9 million tickets on 2018’s Reputation Stadium Tour, marking a 38% leap from the earnings on 2015’s The 1989 World Tour. The Eras Tour multiplies her prior best more than six times over.
The Eras Tour kicked off in Glendale, Ariz. on March 17, 2023. If the tour hadn’t already made a seismic impact just via its announcement, the actual performances sent Swift from superstardom to the stratosphere. The friendship bracelets, the surprise songs and all of Swift’s eras took over, sparking major economic booms in every city she visited and hysteria among Swifties around the world.
By August 9, 2023, Swift had released her re-recording of Speak Now (July 7), announced the re-recording for 1989 and wrapped the tour’s first U.S. leg. Quickly after, she played her first shows ever in Mexico with four nights at the capital’s Estadio GNP Seguros (then known as Foro Sol), followed by nine shows in South America.
In February 2024, Swift took her talents to Asia and Australia, but not before she won her record-setting fourth Grammy for album of the year for Midnights and announced her next new studio album during an acceptance speech. That one – The Tortured Poets Department, released April 19 – arrived while on break from tour, and once again, set a new career-peak with a debut week of 2.61 million equivalent album units earned in the U.S., according to Luminate, and the entire top 14 on the Hot 100. On the current, Dec. 14-dated edition of the Billboard 200, the set returns for a 16th week at No. 1 on the back of a physical release of the album’s deluxe Anthology version, sold exclusively at Target.
In May, Swift took on Europe, with 48 shows across the continent. While Tortured Poets spent most of the summer atop the Billboard 200, The Eras Tour continued its blistering pace, including eight nights at London’s Wembley Stadium.
Finally, Swift returned to North America for three shows each in Miami, New Orleans, and Indianapolis, plus six in Toronto and one last weekend in Vancouver.
Hello, Cleveland! On Nov. 1, 1894, Billboard Advertising published its first monthly issue out of an Ohio office. Its goal: to demonstrate for advertisers “the efficacy of the bill board” (two words, even though the magazine’s name was one) and “maintain a high and exacting standard of excellence,” despite starting as a “journalistic youngster.” The nascent magazine was renamed The Billboard in 1897, nicknamed “Billyboy” by the 1910s and officially became Billboard in 1961. By then, the trade publication had become weekly, with a music business focus, and it was more about chart position than advertising placement. Even at 130, the only wrinkles are in our stories.
No Business Like Show Business
By 1900, The Billboard covered more than best (and worst) practices for bill posters, who early issues reported would glue ads on ash cans, piles of bricks and even, according to the first issue, a dead horse. (Are we kidding? Neigh.) Within a decade, carnivals, fairs and vaudeville productions took over Billboard’s pages; a music column started in 1905, and coverage of sheet music sales joined the chorus in 1913. “The Billboard has grown,” the magazine declared when it marked its 35th anniversary in 1929, “to include the entire world.”
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Over There
The Dec. 29, 1934, issue celebrated the publication’s 40th anniversary by hailing “the legion of true, sincere and loyal show-folk” who provided “continued support and favor.” Also, “It is our earnest wish to have an active part in a 50th Anniversary Number.” History had other plans: The Dec. 18, 1943, Billboard replaced its “Anniversary and Holiday Greetings” annual with an ad-free “Bondbardment” issue that urged advertisers to take the money “they would be spending” and buy “an extra war bond.” The next year’s issue followed suit.
The Same Old Song
By the time Billboard hit 75, music had become the publication’s primary focus, thanks in part to the Aug. 4, 1958, launch of the Billboard Hot 100. “This industry of entertainment is not an easy one to record; like the sky it is never the same two days running,” an editorial in the Dec. 27, 1969, issue observed. But “as one aspect of the business faded, decayed or lost its broad public, another has smartly taken its place.”
Computer Love
“Billboard Charts the Future,” declared the Dec. 15, 1984, issue — sometimes presciently. “Computers in the home will have a major impact on the entire retail industry, not just on music retailing,” predicted one article. “It would be possible to purchase an entire music collection without leaving home.” Other ideas weren’t ready for prime time: “Why not squirt radio broadcasting out on the coaxial cable network?” another piece suggested.
100, Pure Love
For its Nov. 1, 1994, 100th-anniversary special, “Billyboy” took a victory lap. “Billboard is peerless,” an article boasted. “No other publication has the sweep and continuity of Billboard’s coverage of movies, of television, of laser disc, of videocassettes — even of multimedia formats like CD-ROM.” Most of those formats sound like relics today, but the accompanying insight remains timeless. “History is typically made by amateurs,” an editorial said. “The boldest ideas regularly come from those who are oblivious to conventional solutions.”
After earning her fourth Golden Globes nomination on Monday (Dec. 9), Cynthia Erivo is practically “Defying Gravity.”
In a series of posts to her Instagram Stories, Erivo celebrated her nomination for the 2024 Golden Globes, along with the many nominations for her smash-hit film Wicked. “Now that my feet are hovering off the ground, I cannot even come close to properly expressing what this moment means to me,” she wrote under a photo of herself as Elphaba. “Not just because of this individual nomination, but because I get to watch as this project and my @wickedmovie family are celebrated, too.”
The actress/singer was nominated on Monday for best performance by a female actor in a motion picture – musical or comedy for her role as Elphaba in Wicked. Erivo’s co-star Ariana Grande also received a nomination in the supporting role category for her work as Glinda on the film, while the film itself was nominated for best motion picture — musical or comedy.
“Being a part of this project has been a dream come true, and playing Elphaba, a woman who speaks to everyone who has ever felt like they don’t belong and lets them know they have the power to defy gravity, has been the honor of a lifetime,” Erivo continued.
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The actress shared special praise for the film’s director Jon M. Chu — who Erivo thanked for his “wonderful dedication to this work,” and his “care for each one of us on your set” — and for Grande, who she called her “little sister” in a post. “I’m so proud of you. You’re so deserving of this moment, and I’m glad I get to share the seconds and the moments and the days and the years with you,” she wrote. “This journey has been so unbelievably special, and I believe it is the company we have kept together that has made it as special as it has been and will continue to be.”
In one final post on her Stories, Erivo shared a special shoutout to the other women nominated in her category — Amy Adams, Karla Sofía Gascón, Mikey Madison, Demi Moore and Zendaya. “Being named alongside you powerhouses is one of the truest honors of them all,” she wrote. “I can’t wait to be in a room celebrating you all!!”
The new posts come just after Grande herself shared her own thoughts on being nominated, saying that she was “floored and honored to be recognized by members of the @goldenglobes” for the annual ceremony.
Normani’s years-in-the-making debut album arrived with Dopamine earlier this year, but the 28-year-old revealed she’s not planning to make fans wait that long again with her sophomore LP. In an interview with Rolling Stone at Spotify’s Wrapped party, Normani opened up about her plans to release another album in 2025. “Putting lots more music out, […]
Pusha T has some thoughts on the battle that broke out between his arch nemesis Drake and Kendrick Lamar, who the Virginia rapper has collaborated with in the past.
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On Saturday (Dec. 7), Emmy-winning journalist and MSNBC correspondent Ari Melber interviewed Pusha for Saint & Citizen’s Saint Sessions Live at Art Basel in Miami, where they talked about a number of topics, most notably the aforementioned rap beef.
When asked by Melber if he thinks Kendrick won the battle, Push answered, “1,000 percent,” before elaborating on how he thinks Lamar pulled it off. “I think that Kendrick is a lyricist and a lyricist that talks to your soul. Like, you could be clever, you can say cute things, you can do things and so on and so forth, right? But the truth really hurts and the truth cuts deep,” he said. “And I think what Kendrick was doing was really talking to his soul. I believe that.”
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He then added, “And I believe that’ll cause you to tap out, that’ll cause you to sue, that’ll cause you to do a lot of things. It’s crazy. Listen, suing is crazy … it’s nuts.”
Ari then tried to compare Push’s back and forth with Drake in 2018 with Lamar’s and why they were willing to say the things they said about the Toronto rapper while other peers decided to stay quiet publicly. “I play in a space that my music is, I guess ‘semi-popular,’ I don’t even know if it’s that popular,” he admitted. “It’s a very niche group that messes with me. So, it’s easy to dismiss my wins because it’s not as loud as everyone else’s. Kendrick on the other hand, his music is super popular so it’s a difference.”
The “Story of Adidon” rapper continued, saying artists were “backing away” from him after his beef with Drake, adding that they “didn’t wanna get on records” or “do videos” with him after it ended. “The record labels, the artists, everybody were taking me off of songs, it was crazy,” he said, referencing Pop Smoke’s posthumous album Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon when he asked to be taken off “Paranoia” that also featured Young Thug and Gunna after Thugger was upset Push’s verse was about Drake.
But in his chat with Melber, Push gave Kendrick credit for bringing quality lyrics to the forefront. “It’s good to see lyricism be looked at and respected on such a high level and it’s dope because … what Kendrick did for what we do as rappers was very big.”
