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In less than a month, BRIT Award-winning U.K. R&B girl group FLO will embark on its latest headlining tour in support of the group’s Billboard-charting debut studio album Access All Areas — and the trio stopped by Billboard News to talk about how they’ve been preparing.
“We’re getting going on the vocals, which are sounding [good],” teased Stella Quaresma. “The songs are super fun to sing. We’re working with Amari [Marshall], who’s brought something [new] out of us. She’s just sucked out what we need. We haven’t started [choreography] yet, so that’s gonna be when we see it come to life properly.”
Marshall served as co-dance captain on Beyoncé‘s record-breaking Renaissance World Tour, marking her return to Queen Bey’s kingdom after appearing in the dancer lineup for the icon’s 2018 Coachella headlining performance. More recently, Marshall has performed in Rihanna‘s Super Bowl Halftime Show set and Beyoncé’s Netflix-assisted NFL Christmas Day Cowboy Carter halftime show.
In addition to taking notes from Marshall, the ladies of FLO also drew inspiration from their supporting stint on Kehlani‘s recent Crash World Tour. The trio played to packed arenas nearly every night of the tour’s North American leg, which ran from Sept. 4 to Dec. 8, 2024. Launched in support of Kehlani’s two 2024 releases — Crash and While We Wait 2 — the tour also gave way to two collaborations between the acts. Late last year, FLO guested on a remix of Kehlani’s “8,” and the Oakland star returned the favor by reimagining the group’s “IWH2BMX.”
“After supporting Kehlani on her tour and watching her perform every night and reinvent the show, we all felt super inspired,” gushed Jorja Douglas. “It was amazing! It looked so natural [and] effortless, and that’s really what we want to tap into for this tour. Obviously, she rehearsed, but it [didn’t] look like she rehearsed! It just looked like everyone all of a sudden just knew how to do the same thing all at once!”
The Access All Areas Tour will visit the U.K. and Europe in March, before heading across the pond for 27 shows throughout the U.S. and Canada. Launching on March 5 and concluding on May 22, the trio’s trek will feature three opening acts; Lola Moxom will play the U.K./European leg, while Chxrry22 and Jae Stephens will grace the North American leg.
On the chart dated Nov. 30, 2024, Access All Areas debuted at No. 163 on the Billboard 200, becoming the group’s first project to appear on the ranking. The album — which also hit No. 3 in the U.K. — featured collaborations with Memphis rap star GloRilla and award-winning Wicked actress and singer Cynthia Erivo.
“We’re all the way from London and you never know how well your music is going to be seen and taken in other markets,” says Renée Downer. “To come to New York and have two shows that are at 6,000-capacity venues is something we don’t take lightly.”
Watch FLO’s full interview with Billboard staff writer Kyle Denis above.
Nikki Glaser is constantly meeting celebrities, but there’s one person she says she’ll never approach: Taylor Swift, who also happens to be one of the comedian’s biggest idols.
While on Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard for an episode of the podcast posted Monday (Feb. 24), Glaser said that she didn’t say hi to the “Karma” singer at the 2025 Grammys — which both women attended earlier this year — and explained why she doesn’t plan on breaking that pattern at future events. “Taylor, she’s just — everyone wants a piece,” Glaser began.
“I will never be the one to be like, ‘Excuse me!’” she continued. “There’s no way that she’s dying for that on a night like this where everyone’s doing it. And of course, she would be so nice. I know exactly how it would go down, but I don’t wanna take someone’s energy away that I require their energy to be put into making great music.”
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“It’s almost rude what I do, when I’m in the same room as Taylor Swift, because I won’t even look her way,” Glaser added.
Neither star took home gold at this year’s Grammys Feb. 2. Glaser lost best comedy album to Dave Chappelle, while Swift was passed up for song, record and album of the year.
About a month prior, Glaser hosted the 2025 Golden Globes — which the “Fortnight” musician did not attend this year, despite being present the year prior when her Eras Tour concert film was up for cinematic and box office achievement (but lost to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie). After helming this year’s ceremony, Glaser joked with a fan on X who asked if she was “pissed” about missing Swift by a year, replying, “Oh you know I was!”
The Someday You’ll Die stand-up’s commitment to giving the pop star wide berth comes at the expense of her own fandom. Glaser has gushed about her love for Swift multiple times and revealed in December that she spent nearly $100,000 to see the musician on 22 Eras Tour shows in 2023 and 2024.
“She has no idea who I am, but I’m just the biggest fan,” she said on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in July of being “addicted” to the Eras trek. “I want to just see it as much as possible, it’s the thing that makes me happiest in the world.”
Watch Glaser’s full interview on Armchair Expert below.
After a five-year break, Adam Levine is back on The Voice and it feels good. The singer said he’s “ready” and “rested” after stepping away from the show for a bit, telling Jennifer Hudson on Tuesday’s (Feb. 25) Jennifer Hudson Show that getting a chance to take a break and hang with wife Behati Prinsloo and the couple’s three young children has been good for him.
“Stepping back into it when I was really ready and comfortable it kind of felt like natural timing for everything,” said Levine, 45, who logged 16 seasons on The Voice before splitting in 2019. Levine was there in the show’s debut season in 2011, slipping into the iconic red chair next to Christina Aguilera, CeeLo Green and his best frenemy, Blake Shelton.
Hudson, who overlapped with Levine during seasons 13 and 15, asked if Levine has changed his strategy at all on he show, noting that he was “not easy to deal with” when she was going up against him. “I’m a pain in the butt,” Levine admitted, revealing that there was no official strategy when the first crew started the reality series that his team won three times.
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“So you just think to yourself, ‘Okay, I’ll just see how this goes,’” he said. More importantly, Hudson noted that Levine is now sitting in Shelton’s old chair after the nine-time champ country singer departed his long-time gig in May 2023 after 12 years.
“Doesn’t smell great,” Levine laughed. “Smells kind of off… weathered. Worn in, the seat’s a little more sunken in cuz he’s big… he’s a tall drink of water that guy. Nah, I think they washed it. It feels good.” He also described being on the “other side” of the stage this time, with John Legend book-ending the panel, a set-up the self-proclaimed “end-seat kind of guy” loves.
In the chat, Levine described taking his whole family on tour with Maroon 5 on the band’s recent run of shows in Asia, as well as being a “heated” basketball coach for his kids and the group’s upcoming “M5LV” Las Vegas residency at the Dolby Live at Park MGM theater in March.
And though he didn’t reveal many details, Levine also promised that M5 has some new music coming “soon,” and though he admitted he always says it, he’s “the most excited” about the upcoming LP, their follow-up to 2021’s Jordi. “We scaled it back a little bit and I did some writing on my own.. I kept it tighter,” he said of writing some of the songs by himself, saying they “harken back to the older stuff.”
Watch Levine on The Jennifer Hudson Show below.
Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor the late Roberta Flack by looking at the first of her three Hot 100-toppers: Her singularly exquisite and rapturous reading of the folk ballad “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”
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“When you express your feelings about the first time you ever see a great love, you don’t rush the story,” the legendary Roberta Flack told Songwriter Universe in 2020 — a sentiment applicable to her breakthrough rendition of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in multiple ways.
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One is that the song certainly took its time catching on commercially. Flack, who died on Monday (Feb. 24) at age 88, had shown prodigious musical talent as a vocalist and pianist from an early age, becoming one of the youngest Howard University students ever when she was accepted to the HBCU at age 15. By the late 1960s, she was already both a music teacher and a live performer of some renown, setting up residence as the in-house singer at the D.C. restaurant and jazz club Mr. Henry’s — where she was discovered by American jazz great Les McCann, who immediately hooked her up with Atlantic Records. An album was quickly recorded and released: 1969’s First Take, an eclectic and inspired debut whose centerpiece was its soulful rendering of the ’50s folk song “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.”
Initially, the song went nowhere. It was not even released as a single originally, with the label instead opting to release a split of her funky version of McCann’s jazz standard “Compared to What” and a more meditative cover of singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen’s ballad “Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye.” But that single also caught little mainstream attention, and the critically well-received First Take debuted at an underwhelming No. 195 on the Billboard 200 dated Jan. 31, 1970, held at that position for a second week, then dropped off the chart altogether. Flack’s next two albums, 1970’s Chapter Two and 1971’s Quiet Fire, would fare better, both reaching the top 40 — and by the latter’s release, Flack had also found Hot 100 success as a partner with Atlantic labelmate Donny Hathaway, with their duet on the Carole King-penned “You’ve Got a Friend” peaking at No. 29 on the chart in August ’71, just two weeks after James Taylor’s version topped the ranking.
But it was “The First Time” that would, belatedly, mark Flack’s true commercial breakthrough. In October 1971, the recording was featured — in full — during a love montage from the movie Play Misty for Me, Clint Eastwood’s proto-erotic thriller directorial debut. The film was only a modest hit, but its use of “First Time” made for arguably its most striking moment: Two-thirds of the way through the movie, which predominantly focuses on Eastwood’s radio DJ character David seducing and then being stalked by overzealous fan Evelyn (Jessica Walter), the movie takes a long break from the mounting tension to feature David rekindling his romance with on-and-off girlfriend Tobie (Donna Mills). The sequence, of long walks on the beach and through the woods, of making love by the fire and in the grass and even of skinny dipping in the brook, could easily have been mawkish and eye-rolling — but soundtracked by the spellbinding “Face,” it instead served as the film’s emotional climax, and increased public demand for the song to the point where it was finally released as a single, three calendar years after first appearing on First Take.
The other way that Flack certainly didn’t rush the story of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” was in her version’s peculiar arrangement, and its decidedly nontraditional vocal interpretation. Dozens of “First Time”s had already been released by the time of Flack’s spin — dating back to when British songwriter Ewan MacColl first penned the song for Peggy Seeger (half-sister of Pete) to sing back in 1957 — but most of them ran somewhere in the two-to-three-minute range, moving briskly from one verse to the next. Flack slowed the song’s tempo to a candlelit crawl, let the bookending instrumental section stretch out at both ends, and sunk her teeth so deep into the vocal that she turned it from a love song into something more closely resembling a choral hymn.
By the time she was done with it, the album version ran nearly five-and-a-half minutes; producer Joel Dorn asked in vain for her to quicken and tighten it up, saying there was no way the song would become a hit in its current state. “Of course he was right,” Flack would later comment, “until Clint got it.” Still, when Eastwood first reached out to Flack to use her song, she assumed she would need to re-record a peppier version to make it more soundtrack-ready — this was still the era of Paul Newman and Katharine Ross frolicking on a bicycle to “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.” Eastwood, a jazz aficionado and part-time musician himself, instead assured her that he wanted the song exactly as it was.
In truth, once you hear Roberta Flack’s take on “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” it’s close to impossible to imagine it any other way. Upon entering the song with the title phrase — nearly 40 seconds in, after the fire is lit by some gentle acoustic strumming and atmospheric cymbal brushing — Flack immediately makes the song her own. While most previous renditions had essentially combined “First Time” into a quick “firstime,” Flack takes great pains to enunciate each “t” — “The firsT… Time….” — and then lingers on each word of “…ever I saw your face…” about a half-beat longer than you’d expect, letting the phrase spill all over the measure, in a way that no doubt infuriated those who’d later transcribe it to sheet music.
Flack’s voice at first is mighty but restrained. By the end of the second line, however — “I thought the sun roooose in yoouuuurrrr eyyyyyyyyyyeeeeeees” — she’s in full flight, with a soaring, piercing delivery that fully catches the epiphany of the moment. But by the third line, “And the moon and the stars were the gifts you gave,” she’s already pulling back a little in the smiling afterglow — and by the final line, “To the dark and endless skies… my love…” it’s back to an intimate near-hush. It’s a whole emotional journey and narrative arc in the course of of one compact verse — well, compact in the number of words, though Flack’s vocal contortions stretch the four lines (with one repetition) out to a minute-21 run time.
And so “The First Time” goes for its five-plus minutes. It’s not hard to understand Dorn’s instinctive commercial hesitation with the recording: Not only is it molasses-slow and Led Zeppelin-long, but the structuring of “First Time” is absurdly unconventional for a pop song. It’s just three nearly identical verses and no chorus, with minimal band backing, and only two total mentions of the full title phrase — one at the beginning and one at the end. There’s no particular hook or refrain to speak of, either vocally or instrumentally, and no attention-grabbing shifts in dynamics, no swelling orchestral climax or show-stopping closing vocal runs. Anchored by anything less than one of the great vocal performances in all of 20th century popular music, “First Time” should have been a complete nonstarter on the charts.
But, well, guess what. Flack renders “First Time” with a painter’s detail and a preacher’s passion, a vocal of absolutely disarming clarity and unnervingly visceral feeling. Her vocal elevates the song far beyond even its folk roots to something far more traditional, a canticle, a spiritual. (Flack has referred to the song as “second only to ‘Amazing Grace’” in its perfection.) The song reflects the ecstasy and fulfillment of romantic and sexual union no problem, but also feels like it has its sights set on capturing something even deeper, more elemental — despite the song’s obvious references to physical love (“the first time ever I kissed your mouth,” “the first time ever I lay with you”), Flack said she connected with the song due to its universality, feeling it could just as easily be about “the love of a mother for a child, for example.” Her later-revealed claim that her performance on the record was most directly inspired by her love for her recently deceased pet cat feels so unexpected that it almost has to be true.
Billboard Hot 100
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It’s not surprising that Flack’s “First Time” would absolutely knock viewers sideways when showcased — again, in its 5:22 entirety, almost like a mid-movie music video — during such a sentimental stretch of Play Misty for Me. Consumers and radio programmers snapped up the single (with a minute lopped off its runtime, mostly taken from its ends) upon its early 1972 release; the song debuted at No. 77 on the Hot 100 dated March 4, and topped the charts just six weeks later, knocking off America’s three-week No. 1 “A Horse With No Name.” It topped the listing for six weeks total — making for both a rapid rise and a long reign by early-’70s standards — before giving way to another slow song: The Chi-Lites’ “Oh Girl.”
The song would ultimately top the year-end Hot 100 for 1972, and establish Flack as a commercial powerhouse for the era; First Take even re-entered the Billboard 200 shortly after and topped the listing itself for five weeks. It ended up being perfect prelude for the April ’72 release of Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway, her first full LP alongside Hathaway, which reached No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and spawned the top five hit “Where Is the Love?,” soon a signature song for the duo. Flack’s triumphant 1972 was later commemorated at the 1973 Grammys, where “First Time” took home both record and song of the year, and “Love” also captured best vocal performance by a duo, group or chorus.
Flack would go on to have many more hits — including two further No. 1s across the next two years — and escape what could have been a rather intimidating shadow cast by her breakout smash with impressive ease. But as far as her legacy goes as both a vocalist and a musical interpreter, she may have never topped “The First Time,” simply one of the most transcendent and timeless bondings of singer with song in all of popular music. “I wish more songs I had chosen had moved me the way that one did,” she told The Telegraph in 2015. “I’ve loved every song I’ve recorded, but that one was pretty special.”
Los Angeles rapper Lefty Gunplay (born Franklin Holladay) was arrested on controlled and prohibited substance charges in El Paso, Texas, over the weekend.
Per jail records viewed by Billboard, the alleged offense happened on Sunday (Feb. 23) and he was booked into El Paso’s Downtown Jail the following day on charges of possession of a controlled substance, possession of a prohibited substance in a correctional or civil facility and not wearing a seatbelt.
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The rapper, who collaborated on Kendrick Lamar’s “TV Off,” was released Monday after posting a $35,000 bond and paying the $184 fee in cash for the seatbelt violation.
According to local news affiliate CBS 4, Holladay was in El Paso for an appearance at the Chuco Brunch event, which he never made it to. The outlet also shared video footage of what appears to be the artist in handcuffs while being escorted around a medical facility by a police officer.
Billboard has reached out to the El Paso Police Department and reps for Lefty Gunplay for comment.
Holladay apologized to his fans during an interview with Power 102.1 FM’s Patti Diaz, and promised to make it up to those he disappointed.
“Later on, I’ll get into further details of what really happened. If you know, you know, but I feel like I got to make it up to my El Paso fans. You know I got a lot of fans in Texas and things didn’t work out the way they were supposed to,” he said during the chat.
Holladay continued: “At the end of the day, everything happens for a reason and I love Texas. They gotta come see me in California if they really wanna see me. Things ain’t matching up right when I make an attempt.”
Lefty Gunplay emerged onto the mainstream rap scene in November with his guest appearance on Lamar’s GNX standout “TV Off.” The Mustard-produced hit sits at No. 4 on this week’s Billboard Hot 100.
Listen to a clip of Lefty Gunplay on Power 102.1 FM below:
Not unlike the voting body for the Screen Actors Guild Awards, Kate Eberstadt has had Timothée Chalamet on the brain lately. On Tuesday (Feb. 25) morning, she’s sharing an evocative music video for a sly indie-pop song titled “Timmy Chalamet.”
“I want to drink champagne with Timmy Chalamet / Alone in the church in the middle of the day / Go to confession tell him what I want to say,” sings the New York City-based artist over slinky cello strings and a laid-back, irresistible rhythm.
While we have five days to go to see if the Oscar-nominated 29-year-old pulls off a best actor win for his portrayal of Bob Dylan in A Complete Unknown, the video for “Timmy Chalamet” harks back to the actor’s breakout role in Luca Guadagnino’s Call Me By Your Name. Directors Maud Oswald & Robin Giles shot “Timmy Chalamet” on film, which gives this clip the sun-soaked, idyllic look of that 2017 masterpiece, even if the imagery here is a bit more fatalistic: the infamous peach is presented here rotting with mold, while in another shot, Eberstadt immerses herself in a river, evoking John Everett Millais’ classic painting Ophelia.
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“This song came out of a pretty lonely and unprecedented period of my life,” explains Eberstadt. She’d been working on an album in a cabin in Michigan when her partner, whom she lived with, broke up with her over the phone.
“I was spiraling,” she admits. “I went on a walk in the snowy woods, processing it all. My producer Jake Crocker had sent me some beats to write to. I came across this one that was a little strange, with a cowbell in it. It felt dystopian in a way that resonated with the state of my world,” she explains.
“I had recently rewatched Call Me By Your Name and was struck by Timothée Chalamet’s incredibly vulnerable and generous performance – in particular, the final scene where he’s crying by the fireplace. His heartbreak was so real, raw, palpable. I just felt like he would understand what I was going through.”
The song came to her in “a tiny little church in the woods,” and she recorded a demo back at the cabin. A few months down the road, Eberstadt and Crocker recorded “Timmy Chalamet” in person, after which composer Phillip Peterson (Lana Del Rey, Haim, St. Vincent, P!nk) “added strings to the track that really made it sparkle,” she says.
Check out the video for Kate Eberstadt’s “Timmy Chalamet” here.
K-pop star G-DRAGON dropped his first full-length album in more than a decade on Tuesday (Feb. 25), Übermensch. The eight-song collection released through Galaxy Corporation as part of their deal with indie label EMPIRE kicks off with the rock-adjacent banger “Home Sweet Home” featuring fellow former BigBang members TAEYANG & DAESUNG.
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The LP features DRAGON’S patented mix of singing and swaggering rhymes over big beats and air-tight pop productions on tracks such as the funky Anderson .Paak collab “Too Bad,” as well as “Drama,” “Ibelongiiu,” “Take Me,” “Bonamana” and “Gyro Drop.”
Describing the album’s title — an allusion to philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of a future human ideal of the “overman” or “superman” — G-DRAGON said in a statement, “Übermensch means ‘Beyond-Man,’ representing an individual who transcends themselves. This album embodies the idea of presenting a stronger and more resilient version of oneself to the public. I hope this strength resonates with my fans through my music.”
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Übermensch is the long-awaited follow-up to DRAGON’s sophomore solo effort, 2013’s Coup D’Etat, which also mixed rock, pop, hip-hop and electro on songs featuring collabs with Missy Elliott, Sky Ferreira, BLACKIPINK’S JENNIE, Diplo, Baauer and Boys Noize, among others.
To celebrate the album’s release, G-DRAGON released the colorful video for “Too Bad,” spotlighting the singer’s signature eclectic, oddball fashion sense and playful, Michael Jackson-inspired choreography in a clip in which he models a series of street couture looks and neon hair styles. The visual also features a surprise cameo from aespa’s Karina.
DRAGON also shared the more sedate video for the sedate ballad “Drama,” in which he plays a giant wind-up dancer — with a big metal crank in his back — who does an emotion-filled routine with a a ballerina whose face is obscured by a white mask.
“You never like it when it’s nice/ Drama queen got it from her mama/ Rather hang up to pick a fight/ What goes around here comes the karma,” he sings over a moody piano.
G-DRAGON will play his first solo concert in eight years when he kicks off a global tour on March 29 at Goyang Stadium in Seoul; a pre-sale will open on Wednesday (Feb. 26) here. The singer will continue the first outing since his 2017 Act III, M.O.T.T.E. world tour with a second Seoul show on March 30, followed by a headlining set at the Head in the Clouds Festival at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles in May and a performance at the F1 Singapore Grand Prix race in October, where he will co-headline with Elton John. More details about the tour will be released soon.
Watch the “Too Bad” and “Drama” videos below.
In December 2014, I saw Ariel Camacho perform at Guelaguetza, a popular Mexican restaurant in Los Angeles. He was making the rounds as the emerging sierreño act to watch from Sinaloa, known for his extraordinary guitar skills and striking vocals. In his early 20s and on the brink of stardom — signed to the indie label DEL Records — Camacho stood confidently in the middle of the stage with his band Los Plebes del Rancho with a pumping tuba that commanded attention and his mesmerizing requinto. All eyes were on this new artist, who had modernized a música Mexicana subgenre that was mainly popular in the Northern regions of Mexico, and played in the rancho.
Two months later, in February 2015, Camacho died in a tragic car accident in his native Sinaloa at age 22 and instantly became a legend. While the young signer’s career was extremely brief — he had only emerged in the musical spotlight in 2013 — he’s had one of the most consequential careers in Mexican music since corridos icon Chalino Sánchez. Ask anyone from Peso Pluma to Fidel Castro (Grupo Marca Registrada), Christian Nodal and Jesús Ortiz Paz (Fuerza Regida), and they will all categorically say that it was Camacho who paved the way for them. In fact, Castro, Peso and Paz all spoke at the 2024 Billboard Latin Music Week about how the late artist has impacted their respective careers.
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“Ariel Camacho was the pioneer of everything,” says Ángel del Villar, CEO of DEL Records, the label that signed Camacho early on and eventually brought Ariel Camacho y Sus Plebes del Rancho to the United States for promo and shows. “Only someone with his essence could take such a local genre to an international level. What we are living now in the regional Mexican genre has its roots in the music he created. He led the way for a revolution in the genre.”
Ariel Camacho y Los Plebes Del Rancho earned their first Billboard chart entry, and top 10 hit, through “El Karma,” which debuted at No. 40 on the Latin Digital Song Sales in August 2014. The song returned to the chart seven weeks later, for its second week, peaking at No. 7 in March 2015, a month after Camacho’s death. The track earned Camacho his first No. 1 on any chart: the posthumous champ surged 30-1 on the multi-metric Hot Latin Songs chart in March 2015. Overall, Ariel Camacho y Los Plebes del Rancho’s albums have earned a combined 2 million equivalent albums units, according to Luminate, and 2.7 billion on-demand official streams in the U.S.
When Camacho launched his career in 2013, regional Mexican music wasn’t the global force that it is today. The genre was mainly dominated by corrido singers and banda ensembles like Banda MS and Julión Álvarez y su Norteño Banda led by a frontman — most were older men that didn’t play an instrument onstage. Camacho — who was managed by Jaime González (Christian Nodal’s father) — was refreshingly different. He was very young compared to his fellow genre mates, he sang romantic songs and he brought along his requinto (a six-string guitar), which he learned to play thanks to his father, also a singer and musician.
“He was a boy with his guitar,” Nodal told Billboard during his interview for his 2024 Billboard SXSW cover story. “It was something so simple that made such an impact at the time that, when Ariel passed away, he invited me to dream. It was because of him that I started listening to regional Mexican music and began to write songs.”
The guitar part of it all is “extremely notable,” says Tere Aguilera, Billboard and Billboard Español‘s correspondent in Mexico who has covered música mexicana extensively. “It was no longer just about wanting to be a singer or the vocalist of a group. All the kids who were looking for a start found a reference point in Ariel because he was a young person singing something that wasn’t just their parents music anymore. It’s also important to note that because Ariel was mainly successful in the U.S., aspiring Mexican-American artists took note. They too could succeed outside of Mexico, it was no longer a ‘regional’ thing.”
It’s precisely what Paz, frontman of Fuerza Regida born and raised in San Bernardino, Calif., saw in Camacho. “He really lived life to the fullest — doing his thing, getting on radio shows in L.A, and pushing a genre that was part of our childhood. He was making space for us outside of Mexico, and as someone from California with Mexican roots, that hit close to home,” he tells Billboard, adding that his favorite Ariel Camacho song is the emotionally-charged “Hablemos.”
Marca Registrada’s Fidel Castro was perhaps one of the few artists who actually met and hung out with Ariel Camacho. They also recorded together. “The first time I heard Ariel’s voice it caught my attention,” Castro remembers. “It was a voice with a lot of feeling. And whatever song he sang, it was beautiful because he had the talent to not only feel it but make it his own.”
Castro and Camacho met in Sinaloa through a colleague: “When he arrived to the house we were meeting at, he was listening to a song of mine called ‘La Vida Ruina,’ and in fact we re-recorded it together. For me it was an honor, it was immediate chemistry and we became friends. After that we went everywhere together.”
Castro’s relationship to Camacho is peculiar, in the way that not many in the industry had the chance to meet this ephemeral talent. “Ariel was super humble, but had a lot of personality. He was a great friend, he loved jokes, and he was a big foodie,” Castro shares. “If we were in Culiacán and all of a sudden craved something from Guamuchil, where he lived with his parents, we had to travel from Culiacan to Guamuchil just for a torta from Tortas El Rey. If something got into his head, there was no one to stop him.”
It’s hard to pinpoint just one reason why so many artists that are ushering a new generation of regional Mexican music look to Camacho for inspiration. Whether it was because he was young, successful outside of Mexico or because he dared to refresh a decades-old genre with his requinto and the mighty tuba, it’s clear that Camacho left a blueprint for hitmakers today.
“Even if they don’t sing the same style as Ariel, those new artists are influenced by what Ariel did,” Castro adds. “Today, Peso and Fuerza Regida are monsters in music, and their foundation is Ariel Camacho. That’s his legacy: starting a new era of Mexican music.”
Read manager Jaime González share his first-hand memories of Camacho here.
Drake and PartyNextDoor blast onto the latest Billboard Hot 100 chart (dated March 1), thanks to the pair’s new collaborative album, $ome $exy $ongs 4 U.
The set debuts at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 246,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in its opening week (Feb. 14-20), according to Luminate. PartyNextDoor earns his first leader, while Drake adds his 14th, tying Jay-Z for the most among rappers. He also joins Jay-Z and Taylor Swift for the most No. 1s among soloists; among all acts, only the Beatles have more, with 19.
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All 21 songs from the project debut on the Hot 100, including two solo-billed Drake tracks in the top 10: “Gimme a Hug” (No. 6) and “Nokia” (No. 10). Below is a recap.
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Rank, Artist Billing, Title:
No. 6, Drake, “Gimme a Hug”
No. 10, Drake, “Nokia”
No. 18, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “CN Tower”
No. 21, PartyNextDoor, Drake & Yebba, “Die Trying”
No. 26, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “Something About You”
No. 29, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “Moth Balls”
No. 30, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “Somebody Loves Me”
No. 31, PartyNextDoor, “Deeper”
No. 35, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “Spider-Man Superman”
No. 37, Drake, “Crying in Chanel”
No. 40, Drake, “Small Town Fame”
No. 43, Drake, “Raining in Houston”
No. 45, Pimmie, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “Pimmie’s Dilemma”
No. 47, Drake, “Brian Steel”
No. 60, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “Lasers”
No. 63, PartyNextDoor, Drake & Chino Pacas, “Meet Your Padre”
No. 66, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “Celibacy”
No. 70, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “Greedy”
No. 73, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “When He’s Gone”
No. 74, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “OMW”
No. 83, PartyNextDoor & Drake, “Glorious”
Thanks to 20 new entries on the chart (one song, “Deeper,” is credited solely to PartyNextDoor), Drake extends several of his historic records on the Hot 100, spanning the chart’s 66-year history:
Most Hot 100 Hits: 358Most Top 10 Hits: 80Most Top 20 Hits: 139Most Top 40 Hits: 216Most Top 10 Debuts: 64Most Top 20 Debuts: 115Most Top 40 Debuts: 182Most Cumulative Weeks Spent in the Top 10 (all titles combined): 389
Meanwhile, thanks to her appearance on “Pimmie’s Dilemma,” Pimmie earns her first career entry on Billboard’s charts. Pimmie is, notably, the only vocalist on the cut. The unsigned Houston singer-songwriter has released 10 solo songs, including her debut six-track EP, Bittersweet, in February 2024.
Plus, Yebba scores her third Hot 100 hit via her billing on “Die Trying.” She previously charted with another Drake collab, “Yebba’s Heartbreak” (No. 24 peak in 2021), and as featured on Ed Sheeran’s “Best Part of Me” (No. 99, 2019).
Released Feb. 14 on the deluxe version of Sabrina Carpenter’s album Short n’ Sweet, the remix of her originally solo smash “Please Please Please” — adding Dolly Parton in a featured role — debuts on Billboard’s Hot Country Songs chart (dated March 1). The remix opens at No. 17 on the survey after it drew […]