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Jamie Foxx is not pulling punches when it comes to his thoughts on the Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ New York sex trafficking and racketeering trial. During a recent appearance at the Comedy Store in Los Angeles, the actor/singer lashed out at the disgraced former music mogul who he once honored at Diddy’s 2008 Hollywood Walk of Fame induction ceremony.
“Diddy is fu–in’ crazy, huh?” Foxx said in footage shared by Urban Hollywood. “I don’t know if he is going to jail, but he is a nasty motherf–er. Am I right? Especially for us… white people like, ‘It’s cool,’ but for Black people… that was our hero. All that g–damn baby oil, boy! Why you so nasty, Diddy?” When officers raided Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami last March prosecutors said they found drugs as well as more than 1,000 bottles of lubricant and baby oil.
The comments from Foxx about the shocking testimony in the Combs trial in reference to the rapper’s marathon “Freak Off” sex parties is relevant because in 2023 rumors circulated that Combs allegedly poisoned Foxx, leading to the actor’s hospitalization for what was later confirmed to be a stroke.
Foxx opened up about the rumors surrounding his mystery illness last month in a chat with The Hollywood Reporter, shooting down the allegations that Diddy tried to have him killed via poisoning. “I’m in f—ing perfect shape. [I saw things like,] ‘Puffy tried to kill me.’ No, Puffy didn’t try to kill me. When they said I was a clone, that made me flip,” Foxx said. “I’m sitting in the hospital bed, like, ‘These b—h-a– motherf—ers are trying to clone me.’”
While a spokesperson for Combs did not reply to Billboard‘s request for a comment on the allegations, his team has repeatedly said the rumor was false and unfounded.
Foxx also addressed the allegations in his What Had Happened Was… Netflix special in December, in which he said, “The internet said Puffy was trying to kill me, that’s what the internet was saying. I know what you thinking, ‘Diddy?’ Hell no, I left them parties early. I was out by 9. ‘Something don’t look right… it looks slippery in here!” The Combs trial is in its fourth week and on Wednesday (June 4) Bryana Bongolan, a friend of Diddy’s ex, prosecution star witness Cassie Ventura, alleged that Diddy dangled her over a 17th-floor apartment balcony in 2016 before shoving her into the balcony’s furniture.
Combs is facing five criminal counts of racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion and transportation to engage in prostitution, charges that could land him in prison for the rest of his life; Combs has denied the allegations against him.
In recent weeks, The All-American Rejects have been going viral for performances at small house parties. And now, frontman Tyson Ritter is taking his talents to an even more intimate space: OnlyFans.
As revealed Wednesday (June 4) through an interview with GQ, the rock singer has decided to set up an account on the creator-focused online subscription platform, which has become known for its NSFW content. According to Ritter, he’s more focused on using the website to build a closer, more direct relationship with fans — but they might be able to expect a little bit of the risqué on top of it.
“I don’t think anybody would have expected the All-American Rejects to make a ripple in the water ever again,” began Ritter of his band, which dominated the pop-rock landscape in the 2000s before fading from the mainstream in the 2010s. “So the excitement behind this whole thing is like, ‘Where else can we be disruptive?’”
“We’ve always been a band who’s got a tongue bursting through the cheek when it comes to our music,” he continued. “So why not, you know, do a little peen bursting through a zipper?”
The musician remained vague about what his subscribers are in for, divulging only that they “can expect full-frontal rock n’ roll with all access.” Adding that he doesn’t plan on making fans pay very much to access his content — “If anything, maybe you’ll pay 69 cents, just because we’re little cheeky cats,” he quipped — Ritter said that bandmates Nick Wheeler, Mike Kennerty and Chris Gaylor are totally supportive of his new venture.
At press time, Ritter’s OnlyFans account did not appear to have launched yet.
The band’s latest “disruptive” move comes as the All-American Rejects have been experiencing a renaissance online thanks to their string of viral house-party performances. According to Ritter, the streak (of smaller shows, not the other kind) began about a month prior to the interview, when the band somewhat spontaneously accepted an offer to perform at a college rager near the University of Southern California. One of their recent performances at a house party near the University of Missouri was shut down by police — but not before the responding officers stopped to listen to a few more songs, per CNN.
Ritter is far from the only star to have joined OnlyFans, with several other musicians having turned to the platform as an additional source of income — or as a way of engaging more personally with listeners — over the years. Cardi B, Rico Nasty and The-Dream have all created accounts on the platform, while Lily Allen joined the platform last year to sell pictures of her feet.
“I think most people don’t realize that OnlyFans was a product of the pandemic that started as a Patreon for artists,” Ritter added to GQ of the site. “And then it was infiltrated by a genre that made it become a bit of a trope. It’s a platform that is offering an experience where the artist can set the price, and it’s artists-to-fans. There’s no middleman.”
The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated June 14, we look at a handful of albums likely to impact the top tier of the chart – a couple brand new, and a couple recently revitalized, led by a likely rebound from the biggest pop star in the world.
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Taylor Swift, Reputation (Big Machine): On a day of big new releases, last Friday (May 30) was still dominated by the news that Taylor Swift had officially acquired her own masters. Billboard reported from sources that she paid around $360 million for the acquisition from private equity firm Shamrock Capital, which had acquired the catalog in late 2020 from Scooter Braun’s Ithaca Holdings, after Braun had bought Swift’s old label Big Machine the year before. Braun’s initial purchase, and Swift’s negative reaction to her professional adversary having such a big stake in her history, had of course inspired the entire Taylor’s Version project — which led to Swift re-recording four of her first six albums over the course of 2021-2023, along with a number of period-appropriate rarities. That endeavor not only proved wildly successful for Swift, but played a major part in her 2020s ascension to a level of solo superstardom not seen before this century.
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One of the two Big Machine-era albums she had yet to get to with her Taylor’s Version series was Reputation, the divisive 2017 album that followed both her ultimate pop breakthrough with 2014’s 1989 and the backlash that ensued, particularly after her back-and-forth feuding with Kanye West and Kim Kardashian. Along with the announcement of the acquisition of her masters, Swift also revealed that Reputation (Taylor’s Version) had been the most challenging of the series for her to put together, as she found it difficult to get back into the headspace of that album era — and thus had not even finished re-recording a quarter of it. Fans could infer from her letter that now that Swift’s back catalog was once again her own, she would be unlikely to finish re-recording the rest of it anytime soon.
But while some fans may have been disappointed that they would not get the full Reputation (Taylor’s Version) package anytime soon — which was so long-anticipated that the original album got a consumption bump a couple weeks ago merely based on rumors that she might reveal something about it on the AMAs — most were ready to revisit the original album anyway. With no re-recording imminent, and Swift once again the owner of her back catalog, fans flocked to the original Reputation, resulting in it leaping to the top of the iTunes albums chart, and launching five of its tracks back onto the Spotify Daily Top Songs USA chart for Saturday (May 31).
The major bump in sales and streams, for an album that was still ranking at No. 78 on the Billboard 200 in its 349th week on the chart, could see the album make a major rebound next week. It’s unlikely to supplant Morgan Wallen’s I’m the Problem — but no album is, as Problem posted 286,000 units this week (according to Luminate) in its second week atop the chart, and is likely to still be comfortably in the six figures in its third week, thanks to the 37-track set’s gargantuan streaming numbers. But it could get as high as the top five, maybe even to the runner-up spot, if fan enthusiasm maintains the further we get away from Swift’s Friday announcement. (Swift could also perhaps give sales a boost if she made the album available for sale on her webstore — as of publishing, it was still not listed there.)
Miley Cyrus, Something Beautiful (Columbia): Perhaps Swift’s main competition for the biggest chart-crasher this week is her old Hannah Montana: The Movie co-star Miley Cyrus. The veteran pop superstar returned on Friday with her new LP Something Beautiful, the audio part of a visual album project whose film accompaniment is set to premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival this Friday (June 6).
Something Beautiful follows 2023’s Endless Summer Vacation, and its galactically successful lead single “Flowers,” which became the biggest chart hit of Cyrus’ career and won her her first two Grammys. So far, none of the advance releases from Something Beautiful appear to be on anywhere near a “Flowers” trajectory, however — the only one of them to even reach the Billboard Hot 100 so far was official lead single “End of the World,” which debuted at No. 52 and fell off the chart after just four weeks.
While Something Beautiful is unlikely to be an immediate streaming blockbuster — as of midweek, none of its tracks appear on either the Spotify Daily Top Songs USA or the Apple Music real-time charts — it should sell relatively well. To help with that, the album is available in six different vinyl variants (including an artist webstore-exclusive signed version), as well as standard and signed CDs and two deluxe branded boxed sets with the CD and branded merch. At the very least, the set should extend Miley’s streak of top five albums on the Billboard 200 — which encompasses every one of her official studio releases dating back to 2007’s Meet Miley Cyrus, excepting 2015’s Miley Cyrus & Dead Petz, which was not initially given a commercial release.
SEVENTEEN, SEVENTEEN 5th Album ‘Happy Burstday’ (Pledis/YG Plus): Also aiming for the top five next week is an act with less stateside household-name recognition as Swift and Cyrus, but nearly as much of a presence on the albums chart. SEVENTEEN has reached the Billboard 200’s top 10 six times already in the 2020s, and even gotten as high as No. 2 with two 2023 releases, the EP FML and the mini-album Seventeenth Heaven.
The 13-member group is likely to return to the top 10 next week with its fifth full-length album, Happy Burstday — a 16-track effort that includes contributions from two of the biggest U.S. hitmakers of the early 21st-century in Pharrell and Timbaland. While SEVENTEEN has never been a major force on streaming in the U.S., the group are reliable high-sellers, and Burstday is available for purchase in a whopping 14 CD variants — all of which contain collectible branded paper ephemera, some of which is randomized. It should be enough for Burstday to be a real contender for the Billboard 200’s runner-up spot, along with the Swift and Cyrus sets.
Xavi and Manuel Turizo unite for their first No. 1 together as “En Privado” advances from No. 3 to lead Billboard’s Latin Airplay chart (dated June 7). The song leads with 8.7 million audience impressions, up 27%, earned in the United States during the May 23-29 tracking week, according to Luminate.
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Xavi secures his second No. 1 on the overall Latin Airplay chart as “En Privado” climbs to the penthouse. The Mexican artist first conquered the chart in 2024, when his track “La Diabla” reached No. 1 in just its third week. Meanwhile, the collaboration also propels Turizo back to the summit for a ninth total time. He most recently led the list with “Copa Vacía,” with Shakira, in 2023.
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“En Privado,” released Feb. 5 on Interscope/ICLG, receives strong radio support by three Univision stations, led by KVVF-FM (San Jose), KQMR-FM (Phoenix) and KDXX-FM (Dallas).
Beyond its Latin Airplay coronation, “En Privado” also lands at No. 1 on Tropical Airplay, marking Xavi’s first chart-topper and Turizo’s fourth.
Meanwhile, Natti Natasha’s “Desde Hoy” spends a fourth nonconsecutive week at No. 2 on Latin Airplay (8.3 million in audience, up 11%). The last song to spend at least four weeks at No. 2, without ever going to No. 1, was in July 2017, when Shakira’s “Me Enamoré” spent its fifth and final nonconsecutive week at No. 2.
However, the most recent song to spend at least four weeks at No. 2 — only to later to go on to No. 1 — was Shakira’s “Soltera,” which spent seven nonconsecutive weeks at No. 2 before it climbed to No. 1, for one week, on the Jan. 4, 2025-dated chart.
Luis Figueroa Breaks into the Top 10 on Tropical Airplay
Elsewhere on Tropical Airplay, Luis Figueroa secures a spot in the top 10 with “Más Que Un Beso” as the song jumps 12-10 with 3 million audience impressions (up 22%).
As “Más Que Un Beso” ascends, Figueroa surpasses Marc Anthony to claim ownership of the third-most top 10s in the 2020s, with a total of 11. He trails only Prince Royce, who leads with 14 top 10s this decade, and Romeo Santos, who holds 12.
The song, the first single from Figueroa’s new album GRIS, also debuts at No. 47 on the Latin Airplay chart, where Figueroa earns his 10th career entry.
If you were a fan of Pavement in the 1990s then it probably won’t surprise you that when time came to make a biopic of the quintessential indie slacker rock band director Alex Ross Perry (Her Smell) took a hard turn away from the typical hagiographic, soft-focus treatment.
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In fact, unless you were a fan of the “Cut Your Hair” band back then, chances are Perry’s film, Pavements, will mostly just confuse you. Hell, even the band members aren’t totally sure how it all works. “We were informed via email things we needed to know, but for most of the process we didn’t know what was going on, because we didn’t have to,” multi-instrumentalist Bob Nastanovich tells Billboard about of the film in select theaters now and opening wide on Friday (June 6).
Addressing the project’s oddball format, which is part mockumentary, part documentary and includes footage from the fake Slanted! Enchanted! A Pavement Musical, as well as a movie-within-a-movie via the fake biopic Range Life: A Pavement Story, Nastanovich says, “if we wanted to have known more we would have. Our general attitude was: ‘lets see what happens.’”
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Stranger Things star Joe Keery takes on the role of singer Stephen Malkmus (but also plays himself), while the band’s members play themselves alongside a passel of young actors who also take on their personas. In a three-way call from Cincinnati — where bassist Mark Ibold was born and spent many of his summers — and Kentucky — where former Louisville native Nastanovich was visiting a friend — the two men describe their feelings about the film and get pumped about a gig throwing out the first pitch at a Cincinnati Reds game on Wednesday (June 4).
Nastanovich, 57, says he was thrilled to meet “delightful” actor Fred Hechinger, adding as far as he’s concerned the 25-year-old White Lotus star is “spitting image of me and an extremely good-looking young man.” That said, after Ibold, 62, ran into Escape Room star Logan Miller, 33, at the restaurant where the bassist works, he went to visit the New York set of the film to see what was up. Describing entering a room where various actors were playing Pavement, Ibold says he thought, “‘whoa, this is really tripped out,’” even though he couldn’t tell who was playing whom.
“[Director] Alex explained the concept to me and he interviewed us before he started to get an idea of what he wanted to do, but even when you see the film it can be somewhat confusing what is real and what isn’t… the concept is pretty wild and he presented it to the band in a way that he said would be very different from other rock documentaries,” says Ibold of the movie’s unusual take in the wake of more straight-ahead recent biopics of Queen’s Freddie Mercury, Elton John and Bob Dylan. He describes going to the Taipei Film Festival last year and having to explain what was going on to the perplexed audience during a post-screening Q&A after they seemed confused by the entertainingly disjointed nature of Perry’s approach.
While Ibold jokes that his takeaway was that “we’re all more handsome than we really are,” Nastanovich says that he honestly saw some things he didn’t know about before, including shots of Malkmus’ original lyric drafts and real memorabilia sent in by band archivist Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, which appear in the movie’s fake museum.
In addition to the film, the band recorded their first new song in 25 years, a cover of Jim Pepper’s 1969 track “Witchitai-To,” which is on the sprawling, 41-track Pavements soundtrack. The song came together during rehearsals for one of the band’s 2022 reunion shows and it’s the first fresh recording from the group since their 1999 Major Leagues EP.
Speaking of the major leagues, Ibold is excited to be back in Cincinnati, where he was born and spent many summers attending Reds baseball games with his family during the team’s late 1970s heyday. “My brother almost got hit by a car while getting Pete Rose’s autograph a block from where I am,” he says of the late, disgraced Cincinnati legend and all-time MLB hits leader who recently saw his lifetime ban end earlier this year when he was posthumously reinstated and made eligible for the Hall of Fame.
In fact, when he takes the mound on Wednesday at Great American Ballpark, Ibold says he plans to wear a jersey with Rose’s No. 14 on it when he tosses to catcher Nastanovich, for whom he made a custom “Nast” jersey honoring late Reds first baseman Dan Driessen’s No. 22, despite Nastanovich being a lifelong fan of longtime Red rivals the Pittsburgh Pirates.
“We’re extremely excited about it,” says Nastanovich, who says the team reached out to the baseball-loving band to see who would be interested in the honor, a query he and Ibold immediately raised their hands for. He says he’s seen video of Ibold practicing and predicted that his bandmate’s arc is so “sweet” that he might not even need a glove at all.
The gig also comes naturally to Ibold because his great great uncle started the iconic Ibold Cigars company in Cincinnati in the late 1800s. “When we came in from the airport to go to my grandparent’s house we’d see all these Ibold ads on warehouse walls and old brick buildings,” he says of the stogie maker that used to occupy a 13,000-square-foot, five-story building downtown, where it pumped out more than one million cigars a month in the 1940s.
50 Cent promised to let Donald Trump know what Diddy has said about him in the past, and he followed up on exactly that when posting a pair of clips on Monday (June 2) featuring Combs condemning the president.
“See Trump don’t like s–t like this buddy, you run your mouth to much,” 50 wrote in one caption.
The first video finds Sean Combs in conversation with Charlamagne Tha God, talking about a potential race war if the now twice-impeached president were in office. “If Trump gets elected, I really do believe in my heart there’ll be a race war,” Diddy said in the clip.
Another video shows Diddy condemning Trump on REVOLT, saying: “White men like Trump need to be banished.”
Fans hopped into the comments, chiming in about 50 looking to kill any chance of a pardon for Diddy by Trump, who recently pardoned YoungBoy Never Broke Again.
“We will have BREAKING NEWS….from the White House to address by noon tomorrow…I am sure you just took that man’s last hope for sure,” one fan wrote.
The G-Unit mogul has been relentless in his trolling of Combs, as 50 even posted an edited image of himself rocking a “Free Diddy” shirt on social media.
Combs remains on trial in New York for federal sex trafficking and racketeering charges. During Tuesday’s 15th day of testimony, a hotel worker alleged Diddy paid them $100,000 to make sure the video of Combs assaulting Cassie never got out, per ABC News.
Last week, Trump was asked about a potential Diddy pardon during an Oval Office briefing and said he’d consider it, but would have to take a look at the case.
“I haven’t spoken to him in years,” Trump said. “He used to really like me a lot. I think when I ran for politics, that relationship busted up. … I would certainly look at the facts. If I think somebody was mistreated, whether they like me or don’t like me, it wouldn’t have any impact on me.”
Travis Kelce is interested in joining the DJ scene — and he knows exactly who he’d open for if he does. On the latest episode of New Heights posted Wednesday (June 4), he conversed with this week’s guest, Shaquille O’Neal, about wanting to get behind the turntables, with both athletes agreeing that the tight end would be the perfect “hype man” at Taylor Swift‘s concerts.
The topic first came up shortly after Travis and his brother/cohost, retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce, introduced the basketball icon. Praising Shaq for his DJing skills, the Grotesquerie star asked him to “teach me your ways.”
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“Bro, I got you,” replied O’Neal, who performs under the moniker DJ Diesel. “You know what [would be] crazy? You opening up with your girlfriend. Bro, you’d be a f–king star. Ten minutes hyping up the crowd, oh my God.”
Travis then laughed with excitement at the prospect. “Come on, you know I’m a hype man,” he said as Jason cackled. “You know I’m a hype man. Get it rocking in there. Have the Swifties bouncing off the walls before T gets out there.”
With the “Fortnight” singer’s global Eras Tour ending last December, the Kansas City Chiefs star will have to wait until the next time she hits the road to put his own DJ skills to the test. He did, however, get a taste of what it’s like to perform alongside Swift before her last tour wrapped, making a surprise onstage cameo during one of her Wembley Stadium shows in June last year.
As far as being Swift’s “hype man” goes, Travis has plenty of experience in that department. The NFL star often publicly praises his famous girlfriend, from celebrating the release of her Billboard 200-topping The Tortured Poets Department album in April 2024 to commending her athleticism on the Eras Tour.
The latest episode of New Heights was also no exception. Following their chat about his DJ ambitions with O’Neal, Travis later celebrated the 14-time Grammy winner’s recent headline-making purchase of the master recordings to her first six albums, finally securing ownership of her back catalog after years of fighting to do so. After Shaq played Swift’s “I Knew You Were Trouble” on his phone, the football player cheered, “Shout-out to Tay Tay!”
“Just got that song back, too,” he added with a big smile. “Just bought all her music back. So it’s finally hers.”
Watch Travis and Shaq’s conversation on New Heights above.
Damian Lazarus is bringing his longstanding Day Zero party to Brazil in 2026. The event will happen Jan. 3 in São Miguel dos Milagres, Brazil, located on the country’s northern coast in the state of Alagoas. Details regarding the lineup will be announced in the coming months. Bookings will presumably fuse the rich musical heritage […]
In the animated realm of Toca Boca World, anything is possible — from changing your hair color at the drop of a hat to becoming the next member of KATSEYE.
As announced Wednesday (June 4), the six-piece girl group is joining the digital universe of the Swedish children’s game, where the band’s signature diversity will go hand-in-hand with Toca Boca‘s mission to encourage play through imagination, creativity and self-expression. With members Manon, Sophia, Daniela, Lara, Megan and Yoonchae each getting their own avatars within the game, EYECONS who play along will be able to unlock a KATSEYE style pack, download the band’s music, and win free digital gifts once the partnership launches on Tuesday (June 10).
In an exclusive interview with Billboard‘s Delisa Shannon celebrating the collaboration, Sophia said her favorite part is how fans will be able to combine their favorite traits of each KATSEYE member to become an honorary member of the squad. “When you’re creating your character, you get to take different parts of us and also parts of you — you can literally make it look exactly like you — and I think it’s so beautiful,” she gushed over Zoom as her bandmates nodded.
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“Just like how we always say with KATSEYE, the beautiful part of it is the diversity and the global-ness of it, and the ability to see yourself in us,” Sophia continued. “Whether it be, ‘Oh, I love Dani’s style, but I look like Sophia’ — you can fully become that in this world. It’s kind of like becoming a seventh member of KATSEYE.”
“I think it’s very cool that within this game, we’ve been able to express our diversity and the difference and uniqueness between all six of us,” added Lara. “But then also being in this one world together, being friends, being sisters, I think that’s so beautifully reflected in the game.”
The ways in which each KATSEYE member is unique will be represented down to small details in their avatars, from Lara’s bindi to the birthmark above Daniela’s eyebrow. Serving as Toca Boca World‘s first-ever “guest characters,” the ladies will also contribute music to the game; a custom player will let fans listen to tracks “Touch,” “Debut” and “I’m Pretty,” as well as new single “Gameboy” after it drops later this summer.
Plus, the animated KATSEYE avatars will also take part in an in-game Voxella Festival Stage Takeover, descending one-by-one on the virtual venue and unlocking a song after they’re united. For Yoonchae and Daniela, however, the most exciting parts of the game are its opportunities for self-expression and customization.
“I would change my face every day,” the former gushed when asked how she’d spend her time in Toca Boca World if it were a real place, while the latter said, “I would just go shopping and buy the whole mall, and just customize different outfits.”
KATSEYE’s partnership with Toca Boca comes as the group is bigger than ever before. In the months since dropping debut EP SIS (Soft Is Strong) in August, the sextet has amassed millions of listeners and scored its first-ever Billboard Hot 100 hit with the viral single “Gnarly,” which debuted at No. 92 in May.
As hype around the track continues to heat up in tandem with the temperatures outside, the members of KATSEYE — who also have a new EP, Beautiful Chaos, coming June 27 — think it’s pretty clear what this year’s song of the summer is going to be. “It’s a ‘Gnarly’ Summer,” said Megan, as her bandmates smiled in agreement.
But after Brat Summer and Hot Girl Summer, what does a “Gnarly” Summer entail? “Not being afraid of being cringe … letting your intrusive thoughts win,” Megan elaborated, while Lara said it’s all about “being very wild — and a little bit messy.”
In a studio hangar just outside Cairo, weeks before the release of his new album The Man Who Lost His Heart, Marwan Moussa sits with a resolve that only grief teaches. The kind shaped by someone who’s been to the depths of loss and carried back not just a song, but 23. The album wasn’t built overnight, Marwan Moussa explains to Billboard Arabia in his exclusive May cover interview. It was carved out of grief and shaped with intention. Each track, he says, was sculpted from the turbulent, shifting emotions he experienced during the long and winding journey of healing after the heartbreak of losing his mother two years ago.
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The album, he says, was “a kind of therapy.” Like writing a journal, sleeping on it, then reading it with fresh eyes to look at his life from a different perspective.
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The Man Who Lost His Heart doesn’t open with a bang; it opens like a dream taking shape. “Try to remember” is the first line we hear, fighting its way through an ethereal sound design. Structured in five parts, the album mirrors the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance – but more than that, it charts the long, slow work of survival. Moussa doesn’t just document his pain; he invites you into it, offering a guide and companionship with each track.
“It isn’t a linear journey, of course,” he explains. “You could be angry, then suddenly find yourself depressed, and then all the way back in the denial stage.”
But the album isn’t merely a chronicle of grief. It’s a sonic deconstruction of Moussa’s process. Blending trap-shaabi (a genre he helped popularize that combines trap beats with various textures found within Egypt’s popular folk music), heavy synths, tender melodies and deeply personal sound bites – including audio lifted from childhood VHS tapes of him and his family – he crafts a layered, emotional landscape.
The Man Who Lost His Heart isn’t just a collection of songs. It’s a reckoning.
Take his track “BOSAKBER,” which spirals through memory and misfire. His flow isn’t clean; it’s distorted and fractured like a freshly broken heart. In the accompanying video, directed by Youssef Haridy, Moussa appears alone beneath a wide, empty sky. He fights his own reflection. The imagery is both surreal and stark, but not hopeless. It’s not the portrait of someone broken – it’s the portrait of an artist in the whirlwind of putting themselves back together, even if the pieces no longer fit the way they once did.
“We wanted to create a surreal imagery that feels deeply rooted in oriental aesthetics; something distinct,” Moussa says.
Moussa is not new to transformation. Over the last several years, he’s become one of the most influential voices in Arabic hip-hop – not only as a rapper, but as the producer behind dozens of hits, including “Brazil,” and more recently “Kebda” for longtime collaborator Afroto. He’s also been a constant on Billboard Arabia’s Artist 100 chart for over 55 consecutive weeks.
Moussa first set foot on Egypt’s hip-hop scene in 2016, releasing his early tracks on SoundCloud. The following year, his collaborations with Abyusif on “La2 Mafeesh” (No, There Isn’t) and “Zaghzaghto” (Tickling) brought him into the spotlight, and his skills as both rapper and producer began to further solidify.
In 2018, he released his first music video for “Kiki,” which marked his production breakthrough. Then came “Fr3on” (Pharaoh) in 2019, with its unpredictable rhymes and sharp wordplay over a solid beat and advanced production techniques.
Marwan Moussa
Amina Zaher/Billboard Arabia
Marwan Moussa
Amina Zaher/Billboard Arabia
After experimenting with several genres, Moussa’s 2019 track “El Bosla Da3et” (The Compass Is Lost) marked a turning point not only for his career, but for Egyptian trap as a whole. It was one of the first tracks to experiment with fusing shaabi and trap, paving the way for the rise of trap-shaabi, as it became known subsequently.
His 2021 album Florida cemented his reputation as an innovator, blending regional rhythms with experimental production in a way few dared to. From songs like “Tesla” and “Sheraton” to shaping his own catalog to producing for Egypt and North Africa’s most respected MCs, Moussa has always known how to bend sound to feeling.
But The Man Who Lost His Heart, released in full on May 5, is different. If Florida was Moussa pushing his craft’s limits, this album is what remains when all else falls away – just music, message and the strength found in the breaking.
That strength is amplified by a slate of carefully chosen collaborators. The album features standout moments with producer El Waili on “Yamma” and Afroto, as well as verses from Lege-Cy on “Klameny Belel.” But it’s Donia Wael’s contribution that Moussa calls essential to the record’s emotional core. “I want Donia Wael’s voice on the album to be interpreted by each listener in his or her own way—as a girlfriend, friend or therapist,” he says.
“The reason the album came out this way,” says Moussa, “is that I thought if I give through the five stages of grief, maybe it helps you get through what you’re dealing with or get past a tough time in your life or your current period of depression.”
In that way, The Man Who Lost His Heart is more than an act of expression. It’s an offering. A hand on your shoulder there to remind you that no stage of sadness lasts forever, even when it feels like it might.
For Moussa, producing an album this emotional, meant risking everything: the cool detachment of a hardened rapper. What he’s delivered instead is something harder, and far more lasting. A document of heartbreak. And perhaps, in doing so, he has found his heart again, and his voice.
Marwan Moussa
Amina Zaher/Billboard Arabia