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Shaboozey is gearing up for his headlining tour dates of 2025. After taking the stage at both Coachella and Stagecoach, the “Amen” singer announced the stops on his Great American Roadshow tour on Monday morning (April 28). The outing is slated to kick off on Sept. 22 at the Egyptian Room at Old National Centre […]
Lily Allen is rethinking her comments about Katy Perry‘s trip to space. More than a week after she slammed the pop star’s participation in Blue Origin’s first-ever all-women rocket flight as “out of touch,” joining in on a wave of criticism related to the expedition, the “Smile” singer shared an apology on the latest episode of her Miss Me? podcast posted Monday (April 28).
On the show, the musician began by saying, “I would actually like to apologize for being mean about Katy Perry last week.”
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“There was actually no need for me to bring her name into it, and it was my own internalized misogyny,” Allen continued to cohost Miquita Oliver. “I’ve been thinking about it a lot, and it was just completely unnecessary to pile on with her. I disagree with what it was that they did, but she wasn’t the only person that did it. She was possibly the most famous and the one that divides people the most.”
“There was something in me that decided to choose her as the person that should … anyway, I’m just sorry,” she added.
Allen was just one of several public figures who criticized the Blue Origin flight following its 11-minute trip on April 14, during which Perry, Gayle King, Lauren Sanchez and more passengers hurtled approximately 62 miles above Earth to space. While the “Firework” singer has maintained that the trip was an empowering feat for women — “It’s about making space for future women and taking up space and belonging,” Perry told press immediately after touching down — stars such as Olivia Munn, Olivia Wilde, Emily Ratajkowski and more have countered that it was actually a waste of resources.
For Allen’s part, the podcaster had said on the April 17 episode of Miss Me? that there was “absolutely no f–king reason” for the Blue Origin mission. “Do we want to talk about Katy Perry and her mates all going up to space for 12 minutes?” she remarked. “I mean, what the f–king hell is all that about? In all seriousness, what? Why?”
“I just think it’s so out of touch,” Allen continued at the time. “We’re on the brink of recession. People are really f–king struggling to make ends meet and get food on their tables.”
But in hindsight, the “F–k You” singer says she now regrets zeroing in on Perry. “I would have been hurt if it had been me and someone in my industry used me and my name,” she said on Monday’s episode. “I’m sorry, Katy Perry.”
Listen to Allen’s apology below.
Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “Luther” tops the Billboard Hot 100 songs chart for a milestone 10th total and consecutive week. The single, whose title honors late R&B great Luther Vandross, who is sampled on it, became Lamar’s sixth No. 1 and SZA’s third. Lamar and SZA each extend their longest career Hot 100 reigns with the song.
An elite 4% of all Hot 100 No. 1s (46 of 1,179, dating to the chart’s Aug. 4, 1958, start) have ruled for double-digit weeks. Of those, “Luther” is the first by a solo man and woman and no accompanying acts – surpassing the nine-week reign of Diana Ross and Lionel Richie’s “Endless Love” in 1981. (Among other 10-plus-week No. 1s by co-billed lead male and female acts, Puff Daddy and Faith Evans’ “I’ll Be Missing You” — featuring vocal group 112 — led for 11 weeks in 1997 and Mariah Carey and then-quartet Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day” dominated for 16 weeks in 1995-96.)
Plus, Alex Warren’s first Hot 100 top 10, “Ordinary,” hits a new high (5-3), and reaches No. 1 on the Streaming Songs chart, and Morgan Wallen and Post Malone’s “I Ain’t Coming Back” debuts at No. 8 on the Hot 100, becoming their 15th and 14th top 10, respectively. It’s the sixth top 10 from Wallen’s album I’m the Problem — all ahead of its May 16 release, as he extends his record for the most top 10s from an album prior to its arrival.
Browse the full rundown of this week’s top 10 below.
The Hot 100 blends all-genre U.S. streaming (official audio and official video), radio airplay and sales data, the lattermost metric reflecting purchases of physical singles and digital tracks from full-service digital music retailers; digital singles sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites are excluded from chart calculations. All charts (dated May 3, 2025) will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, April 29. For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X and Instagram.
Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.
‘Luther’ Airplay, Streams & Sales
Ray Vaughn has arrived at New York’s Billboard office for the second time in just over a week. He previously popped in and played a few tracks off his first official release with TDE, The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu, before flying out to continue his first-ever project rollout.
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As Vaughn settles in the second time around, his voice is gruff, worn from rapping, recording, interviewing, and flat-out existing. Regardless of the physical wear-and-tear, he’s chatty, in high spirits, and devoid of exhaustion. When asked if he’s feeling winded at all, he says with a laugh, “I don’t wanna go back to that f—in’ car.”
The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu is a product of years of strenuous grinding. Born in Long Beach, California, Vaughn was raised by a family of local rappers; he says his uncle nearly signed a deal with DMX before he “crashed the f—k out,” and his mother went by the rap moniker Sassy Black, hosting “Freestyle Friday” sessions at their house for friends and family.
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Vaughn’s earliest indicator that rap could be in his future came to him during those sessions in his living room. When he’d spit, people would listen. He locked in to rapping almost immediately, and at 15, Vaughn’s reputation had made the rounds in his community. A few labels even came calling, including Def Jam.
“My mom kept blowing meetings,” Vaughn says. “She just kept being like, ‘Oh, you’ll go next time.’ We was already so thorough, she didn’t even know. We was already robbing houses, shooting at people, we was doing s—t that could have got us real f—kin sentences. I was moreso like, ‘Let me go!’”
His mom had fallen down the rabbit hole of early YouTube conspiracy theories, believing the Illuminati had infiltrated major labels like Def Jam. No matter how hard he pushed, she always said no. After one particular nasty fight, she threw Vaughn out and he turned to the streets to make ends meet while still clutching onto his rap dreams.
Success trickled in and out of Vaughn’s life: he went viral a few times for various freestyles, but they didn’t lead to anything concrete. A promising moment came in 2019, when he ran into Ye’s cousin Ricky Anderson, who was managing G.O.O.D Music at the time, at a New Year’s Eve party. After Vaughn stealthily queued up his own songs to play at the party, Anderson suggested he meet with Ye face-to-face.
“He’s crazy, but he’s a genius,” Vaughn said of his meeting with Ye. The conversation went well, and Vaughn penned a few songs for Ye before arranging a meeting about a label deal. On the day of the meeting, however, Vaughn showed up to an empty room. He never spoke with Ye or the G.O.O.D. Music camp again.
“That same day I said to my manager, ‘Bro I’m still sleeping in my car, I don’t know what the f—k I’m doing!’” Vaughn recalled. His manager brought up an opportunity to record a song with an artist who was trying to get Jay Rock on as an additional feature. Two weeks later, Vaughn received a call from Top Dawg Entertainment CEO Anthony Tiffith.
“I hung up on him — I didn’t know what he sounded like, so I thought it was a joke,” Vaughn remembers. Tiffith called back, invited him to Interscope Records for a sitdown, and the rest was history.
After Vaughn’s first TDE project dropped on Friday (Apr. 25), the rapper spoke about it with Billboard.
Just to clarify, this is a mixtape and not an album.
Yes. I never wanted to call nothin’ an album if it wasn’t an album. I always was like, “With my first album, I wanna go crazy.” I’m very, very careful about calling something an album. That s—t counts. You could have 1,000 mixtapes and flop, but if you have an album and it flops? I know that’s something internally that’s gonna scratch my soul.
You don’t waste a bar on this mixtape. How did you approach writing for this project, and how do you approach writing in general?
Just make sure you keep it full of integrity. That’s the lost art form, period. Some records I don’t have bars on, it’s just a message, like ‘Pac. He didn’t have metaphors in every song. He was just very direct, and said what needed to be said, and you felt it.
I feel like nowadays we got so many people who punch in. It’s not even a cohesive thought. What is that verse about? What is this song about? Who are you talking to? Who is the audience? I still believe in that art form. If I rap this a cappella, does this s—t make sense? It’s like poetry. If you can’t say it a cappella and it [doesn’t] makes sense, it’s like rambling.
Now that you’re officially entering the game, how do you feel about your place in rap?
Once I turn into the star I’m supposed to be, where other people see the star that I am, the influence will come after. Like Kendrick [Lamar], the fact that he’s making music that slaps, but it’s still got some conscience to it. People wanna follow that because they’re like, “Oh, he’s talkin’ about something.”
Outside of the Drake and Kendrick situation, it does feel like mainstream rap is heading away from lyrics. What are your thoughts on the more party-oriented rap?
We need those type of artists too! It’s a talent in being succinct. [Starts singing]”Soulja Boy off in this oh, watch me crank it, watch me roll, watch me crank dat Soulja Boy, Then Superman dat oh.” That s—t is hard to make for people who actually write lyrics, and nobody wants to feel like they’re being preached to all the time.
When you were writing songs like “DOLLAR menu,” how did you toe that line, to make sure you weren’t being too preachy?
I feel like there’s a very thin line between being preachy and delivering a message with wittiness. I have to change lines sometimes. I’m just speaking from my experiences, mostly. This is me and how I look at it from my perspective. I don’t want people to put me in a box with Kendrick. When Cole made “Grippy” with Cash Cobain, people tried to cook him. If [Cole] had been somebody else, it’d be like, “Oh this song is hard.” The expectation for his lyrical content is set so high that if he dumbs it down too low, then they be like, “What the f—k are you doing?” So they don’t even get to have fun.
With that in mind, what are you hoping to communicate with The Good The Bad The Dollar Menu?
I’m just perfecting a pepperoni pizza before I say I have wings, salads and calzones. That is my pepperoni pizza.
On songs like “FLAT Shasta” and “Cemetery Lanterns,” how do you revisit such traumatic memories and not get bogged down by it? How do you make sure the resulting art is authentic?
I just tell it like it is — exactly like it is. I’m in a good space. I’m signed to a f—king label that’s at the f—king peak of their career. I got nothing to complain about right now. Reflecting? That’s easy.
There’s a lot of soul-baring on the project. Do you ever worry you’re revealing too much for a first mixtape?
There were songs we moved out of the way because they were too heavy. I don’t want to go too crazy, because I want people to actually listen, but I also want people to know that if you listen to it and feel something? You just witnessed the super power.
A lot of things happened while JoJo Siwa was on Celebrity Big Brother UK.
First, there was her awakward interaction with castmate actor Mickey Rourke, who asked if she liked “girls or boys,” to which Siwa responded that she’s attracted to women and that her partner, Kath Ebbs, is non-binary. The 72-year-old Murder Motel star then said something that earned him a formal warning the show’s producers when he told Siwa, “If I stay longer than four days you won’t be gay anymore.”
After other homophobic comments, fellow competitor Chris Hughes called Rourke out for his language. Then, in an episode last week, after a discussion with Drag Race UK winner Danny Beard about how her Big Brother experience was helping her come to terms with her evolving sexuality, Siwa had a revelation. She said living in the house, “made me feel so queer. And I’ve always been afraid of feeling ‘queer,’”… like, I always said ‘lesbian,’ right? But I feel, like, so queer… I think I’ve always told myself I’m a lesbian, and I think being here I’ve realized, ‘Oh, I’m not a lesbian, I’m queer.’ And I think that’s really cool.”
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Siwa told ITV’s This Morning on Monday (April 28) that the reality TV lockdown also made her realize that things she was “okay with in my life that I should never have been okay with in the first place.” When one of the hosts asked if she was referring to the relationship with Ebbs, Siwa said, “so many things and that is one of them.”
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As viewers know, Siwa, 21, broke up with Ebbs at the show’s wrap party and the singer/actress told This Morning that that was not her plan. “Initially, I was told that the wrap party was something they [Ebbs] didn’t want to attend and then about an hour into the wrap party they decided they wanted to,” she said of the Australian content creator. “And so I was genuinely just going to have a conversation before and then it just led to another. They straight up asked me if I was happy and I said ‘no.’”
During that conversation, Siwa said Ebbs asked if she was happy and Siwa told them she was not. “One thing led to another… and that conversation did take place there,” she said of the 20 days that felt “like four-and-a-half years,” noting that the first thing she wanted to do when she got out was “exactly what you need to do in your life to make it as good as you can.”
Sitting next to Hughes on a couch, Siwa said she is “very happy where I am now” and grateful for having Hughes in the house with her for “support and comfort.” Asked if her friendship with Hughes was a catalyst in the break up with Ebbs after the couple went public in January, Siwa, again putting her hand on Hughes’ shoulder said, “obviously we’re very close,” with Hughes adding that it’s “just a really strong bond between two people which is just a strong friendship.”
Hughes, 32, called their time together in the house “three weeks we’ll remember for the rest of our lives,” arguing that all gossip aside about the nature of their close ties in the house, he thinks you can genuinely have a “soulmate friendship.” Asked by the hosts if she’d like things to get romantic with “gorgeous boy” Hughes, Siwa doubled-down on her pal being a “great guy,” but agreed that it’s strictly platonic and that they have a lot of fun together, but that’s it.
“Life is life and I don’t know any future of anything,” she said. “But I’m really grateful for our dynamic that we have and our bond that we have.”
Watch Siwa and Hughes discuss their platonic relationship below.
There was nothing ordinary about Alex Warren‘s star-studded experience at Stagecoach 2025, especially a moment during which Lana Del Rey sang his own song back to him backstage.
In a video posted to TikTok Sunday (April 27) — the same day the TikToker performed at the festival during Jelly Roll‘s headlining set — Warren hangs out with the “Summertime Sadness” singer and “Son of a Sinner” musician in a special lounge area. As Warren smiles incredulously, Del Rey sings a lyric to his chart-climbing breakout hit, “Ordinary”: “You’re takin’ me out of the ordinary …”
“Every time I hear it, I think, ‘Why can’t we hear more like this?’” the alt-pop star gushes of the track as Jelly nods. “Because it takes you to church.”
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In footage seemingly filmed just moments after, a shocked Warren marvels, “Lana Del Rey was singing my song? To me?”
“Your song now,” he adds breathlessly. “Not my song, that’s your song. Oh my god.”
The recognition from Del Rey is just one of many pinch-me moments Warren has experienced since “Ordinary” has propelled him to new heights, with the track reaching a new peak of No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 dated April 26. He also sang the song with Ed Sheeran at the British pop star’s Coachella pop-up April 20, and at Stagecoach, the social media star performed it alongside Jelly for thousands of fans in Indio, Calif.
The duo also debuted their upcoming collaboration, “Bloodline,” during the “Need a Favor” musician’s set. On Instagram, Warren further teased the track by posting a video of himself and Jelly singing the lyrics, writing, “this album is about to be CRAZYYY.”
In addition to playing her own Stagecoach set — during which Del Rey raised eyebrows by singing about supposedly kissing Morgan Wallen — the “Snow on the Beach” musician, like Warren, made a cameo during Jelly’s performance. Subbing in for Lainey Wilson, she and the country star belted out his finale number, “Save Me.”
About a month after officially announcing Jackboys 2, Travis Scott is teasing a release date for his Cactus Jack label compilation sequel. La Flame essentially confirmed the project was done on Monday (April 28) when he wished his mother, Wanda, a happy birthday on Instagram, where Scott revealed that he played JB2 in full for […]
Katy Perry loves sharing her woman’s world with Lady Gaga. In the crowd at Mother Monster’s ¡Viva La Mayhem! concert in Mexico City Saturday (April 26), the “Firework” singer was one of tens of thousands of fans cheering on Gaga, whom she later praised in a sweet message on Instagram.
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In a clip posted to her Story two days after the show, Perry and a friend passionately sing along with Gaga as the latter performs Mayhem single “Abracadabra” on stage at GNP Seguros Stadium. The former American Idol judge — who arrived with her team to witness the locally dubbed “¡Viva la MAYHEM!” show — also shared a video of Gaga singing “Perfect Celebrity.”
“Show was MAGINIFCA!” Perry wrote. “The dress! The sand! Every moment was theee moment.”
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“So proud of you and grateful to grow up together @ladygaga,” the singer also gushed. “Love u.”
Gaga’s performance in Mexico’s capital came just three days after Perry kicked off her own Lifetimes Tour in the city, performing a mix of past hits and selections from 2024 album 143 at Arena CDMX Wednesday (April 23). Much of the show featured space-themed outfits and visuals, matching the “California Gurls” musician’s recent trip above the Earth’s atmosphere – about 62 miles up to the Kármán line, which is the internationally recognized boundary of space — on Blue Origin’s first all-woman space flight April 14.
At one point, Perry invited two fans dressed as astronauts to join her on stage. “You guys look so good,” she gasped at the time. “I want these gentlemen to come on stage, because they are dressed like my most current timeline.”
The Haus Labs founder first premiered her Mayhem live show at this year’s Coachella, headlining the festival April 11 and 18. She’ll next perform in Rio de Janeiro for a special Mayhem on the Beach performance May 3, after which she’ll set up shop for four nights in Singapore before embarking on her Mayhem Ball tour through North America, Europe and Australia.
“To all my beautiful little monsters who are here tonight, it is an honor for me to be here, in your beautiful country, performing for you,” Gaga told her fans in Mexico City Saturday. “It’s been 13 years since the last time I was here. I hope you see how hard I’ve worked on stage tonight to show you how much I admire and respect you. I sincerely thank you for choosing to spend the night with me.”
Mariah Carey tops the pop-forward line-up for Capital’s Summertime Ball with Barclaycard 2025 show slated to take place at Wembley Stadium on June 15. In addition to Carey, the show will also feature sets from Benson Boone, Lola Young and KSI. Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news The […]
Kim Thayil says that even before Chris Cornell‘s death in 2017, the members of Soundgarden would have conversations about the band being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“Sometimes ideas have been tossed out — sometimes as a lark, just general chatter among buddies, and sometimes as a more serious, sincere thing,” the guitarist tells Billboard. “We would joke around like, ‘Hey, if we ever got in the Rock Hall, what special thing would we do? Who would we want to induct us?’ We’d throw out all sorts of things; some of it was bulls–t clowning around, some of it was serious.
“So we’ve given a little bit of thought to it.”
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Thayil and company are definitely thinking more seriously about it now that, after two previous nominations, Soundgarden has been named as part of the Rock Hall’s class of 2025, which will be inducted on Nov. 8 in Los Angeles. First and foremost, he’s happy the Seattle band’s time has finally come.
“I felt fairly confident that there was absolutely no reason why we wouldn’t qualify for induction — from how I appraised the work we did and from what I received over the years from our peers and the music industry,” Thayil says. “I’m much more appreciative now, especially when I saw the response people have given me when they learn about the nominations.”
Nevertheless, he acknowledges, his own enthusiasm for the Rock Hall honor took some time to evolve.“I kinda came from a subculture of rock that didn’t quite get what all the fuss is about,” Thayil tells Billboard. “Back in the ’80s, ’90s, when the Hall started, I probably was not alone in being part of a punk rock or indie metal scene that had an aversion to the idea. It was kind of hard to wrap my head around both a qualitative appraisal and a quantitative assessment.”
His view changed first after Cornell inducted Seattle rock precursors Heart into the Rock Hall in 2013, and then later after friends from Nirvana and Pearl Jam (including Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron) were inducted during 2014 and 2017, respectively.
“Chris lived the experience and said the enthusiasm of the fans was eye-opening for him, and understanding how important that was — and Matt seconded it,” Thayil explains. “In so many ways the fans got some kind of validation by having a band that was important to their heart and that they championed get (the honor). I know I felt that way about bands I believed in, whether the MC5 or the Ramones or Kiss.
“Chris explained that to me, and that kind of changed things. Plus I heard this from the Nirvana guys, the Pearl Jam guys, other friends and other bands. So it really changed my perspective.”
And Thayil is confident that Cornell — who died by suicide in May of 2017 following a concert in Detroit — would “definitely be stoked” about Soundgarden being inducted.
“He’s the one who convinced me how appreciative the fans and our peers and the Soundgarden community — that includes the people that we work with and work for us — would be about it,” Thayil says. “He realized how important that was, and he understood that would be important to us because it’s important to people who cared about us and helped us and supported us all along.
“That’s how I believe Chris would respond to this. I think he’d be very appreciative and thankful to all the people who have believed in him and believed in the work he did and the work that we all did, collectively.”
Thayil says Cameron and bassist Ben Shepherd are both “very happy” about the induction news, and the guitarist is also pleased that original bassist Hiro Yamamoto — who was with Soundgarden from 1984 to 1989 and played on its first two EPs and first two albums — is being included in the induction.
“It’s the classic lineup and the foundational lineup,” Thayil says. “[Yamamoto] was really enthused, too. You have to reflect upon our formation and all the hard work, just the weird things we went through — walking miles and stapling posters to telephone poles for a gig 40, 50 people will be at, the van tours — not just of the U.S. but in Europe — sleeping on floors in Motel 6. It’s a long way, and I enjoy sharing and seeing enthusiasm from my bandmates and our people in the Soundgarden community — management, crew, everybody. It’s great.”
During its 34-year run, Soundgarden released six studio albums, including the six-times platinum Superunknown in 1994, and won two Grammy Awards. The group was the first of the so-called Northwest grunge bands to sign with a major label (A&M Records in 1989) and spearheaded a movement out of Seattle. The late Cornell also released five studio albums and joined members of Rage Against the Machine in the band Audioslave during Soundgarden’s 1997-2010 hiatus. Its final release to date was King Animal in 2012.
Thayil, Cameron and Shepherd have played together only a handful of times since Cornell’s death, including at a charity tribute concert for him during January 2019 and as part of the Taylor Hawkins Tribute Concert in September of 2022, both at the Kia Forum in Inglewood, Calif.
Soundgarden’s previous Rock Hall nominations came in 2020 and 2023, and Thayil says Cornell’s absence has always been top of mind when the honor has been broached.
“It’s a high bar, not just technically, but emotionally,” he acknowledges. “There has to be a reverence for the missing brother and founder, and there also has to be reverence for the legacy — both for Chris’ work and Chris’ creativity, as well as the regard and reverence we have for ourselves collectively and for each other. Some suggestions have come out; I’m not prepared to share that, but I’ll just say it’s a higher bar than the usual composite of guitarists and drummers or singers.”
Also lurking, of course, is the specter of seven unreleased Soundgarden recordings that were the subject of legalities between the band and Cornell’s widow, Vicki Cornell. The matters were settled during the spring of 2023, but there’s no word about plans to release that material. “Certainly the catalog will continue to be addressed,” Thayil promises. “It’s been kinda shelved for a few years, but it will be addressed.”
In the meantime, Cameron is currently on tour with Pearl Jam, and work with Thayil in the band 3rd Secret — which also Nirvana bassist Krist Novoselic and others — has so far released two albums. Thayil also guests on albums for a variety of other artists, which he’ll continue as Soundgarden prepares for November’s festivities.
“We always wanted to be the kind of band for our fans that we looked up to and inspired us — that’s always been a context in which Soundgarden understood its own work,” Thayil says. “We wanted to be that kind of band would make decisions with regard to that community that had supported us or that we had worked to build, and I think we did a great job of that.”