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Free Our Art, a new non-profit dedicated to safeguarding First Amendment creative freedoms for artists, has officially launched with widespread support from major arts advocacy groups and creative industry leaders.
The nonprofit focuses on the growing trend of creative works being used as confessions in court, advocating for state and federal legislation to limit this practice, supporting legal aid for defendants and funding research.
Free Our Art backs legislation establishing a single standard for admitting creative expression as evidence in court. The bipartisan federal Restoring Artistic Protection (RAP) Act was reintroduced in 2023, and states including Georgia, Maryland, Missouri and New York are considering similar bills. This follows cases where courts have overturned convictions due to prejudicial use of lyrics as evidence.
The movement began in the music industry, where artists have faced increasing legal scrutiny, particularly in hip-hop.
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Supporters include the Recording Academy, Black Music Action Coalition, Recording Industry Association of America, Songwriters of North America and SAG-AFTRA, among others. The organization’s leadership includes Harvey Mason jr., Julie Greenwald and Lyor Cohen, with advisory boards co-chaired by advocates and scholars including Dina LaPolt, Willie “Prophet” Stiggers, Dr. Erik Nielson and Lucius Outlaw III.
“RIAA is proud to stand with the creative community supporting free expression,” said Michele Ballantyne, president and COO of RIAA. “Free Our Art stands for responsible, balanced legislative approaches that protect the First Amendment and safeguard and encourage all forms of creative expression while allowing reasonable, limited use of artist works in court only where they are truly relevant and necessary and not being used to inflame and distort the process.”
Mason jr. added: “Music has always been a powerful tool for storytelling and self-expression, and unfairly silencing any genre or form of creativity is a violation against all music people. With the Free Our Art coalition, the Recording Academy will continue leading the fight to protect artists’ right to create freely, without fear of their work being criminalized.”
According to Free Our Art, scholars have documented nearly 700 cases where lyrics, primarily in hip-hop, were used in legal proceedings — with actual instances likely much higher. The group also cites a 2019 study at Arizona State University School of Law that found judges often fail to exclude creative works as character evidence, underscoring the need for legislative action.
Calling an artist’s right to create without fear “non-negotiable,” LaPolt, co-founder of SONA, said that “twisting creative expression into courtroom evidence isn’t just wrong—it’s a blatant attack on our First Amendment rights. This isn’t about one artist or one genre; it’s about protecting every creator from a dangerous legal precedent.”
The issue of lyrics being used in court gained renewed attention following the May 2022 indictment of rappers Young Thug and Gunna on RICO charges, where prosecutors cited song lyrics as evidence of gang affiliation. Young Thug received a 15-year probation sentence, while Gunna was released in December 2022 after pleading guilty to a gang-related charge.
Free Our Art aims to prevent similar cases from unfairly targeting artists based on their creative expression. More information on the organization’s efforts can be found here.
She’s fine, people. Jennifer Hudson just broke down what really happened at the New York Knicks game where she got smacked by a rogue basketball, from the moment it happened to the aftermath.
“First of all, I wanna say: I’m OK!” the talk-show host began on The Jennifer Hudson Show Thursday (March 13).
“It happened so quick,” Hudson continued, laughing incredulously. “I’m like, ‘What the hell done popped me? Someone must’ve hit me. Of all the people to hit, you hit Jennifer Hudson. Really?’”
The episode comes more than a week after the vocalist went viral over the mishap at the March 4 Knicks vs. Golden State Warriors game, where she was sitting courtside and chatting with partner Common when suddenly, a rogue ball came out of nowhere and smacked her in the head. Player Miles McBride then came crashing into her, after which the point guard and a ref checked to see if Hudson was all right as she sat there, stunned.
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“So the ball did actually hit me,” Hudson recounted. “All of a sudden, there’s people standing over me, like, ‘You OK?’ I’m like, ‘Let me just come to for a second. Let me just gather my thoughts.’ The poor basketball player, he wanted to end the whole game.”
“My sweet love was like, ‘OK, you all right? Would you like to leave?’” she continued, referring to Common. “And I’m like, ‘I’m good, just let me sit here and gather myself. ‘Cause the last thing you wanna do is get up and go running somewhere.’ No, you need a moment.”
Hudson also added that she was better prepared for the blow than most because she’s “a boy mom.” “What that means is, I have been on the basketball court many a days playing with these children, so they trained momma well to be able to take the game,” said the Dreamgirls actress, who shares son Daniel with ex David Otunga. “I was ready.”
Though Hudson assured the crowd that she’s OK numerous times, one person was still concerned: McBride. In fact, the point guard ended up sending the American Idol alum a bouquet of flowers and an apology video, which she played for her audience.
“Just wanted to say I’m sorry for running into you at our game last week,” McBride said in the clip. “I was in the zone trying to make a play, trying to bring some energy, and unfortunately, you were in the wrong place at the wrong time. Just saying I’m sorry, got you a little something — hope we can be cool after this.”
Hudson ended the segment by sharing what lesson she’s learned and plans on applying next time she sits courtside: “Bring a helmet.”
Watch Hudson talk about getting hit in the head with a basketball above.
On his new album, Lonesome Drifter, out Friday (March 14), Charley Crockett traverses new career territory while simultaneously nodding to his roots.
In the past near-decade, the prolific Crockett has released 13 albums, each on his independent label Son of Davy and nine of them in conjunction with Thirty Tigers. For Lonesome Drifter, which he recorded over a 10-day span at Los Angeles’ Sunset Sounds Studio, the fiercely independent-minded Crockett made a major career shift, signing with UMG’s Island Records.
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“The last few years, all the majors started calling,” he tells Billboard, noting that he nearly signed with Columbia Records at one point, given that it had been at points the home of two of his musical icons, Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash.
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But he says Island Records understood what he was seeking in a label partner. “It’s been a process in the past few years of seeing labels realize that if you don’t do a licensing deal with my company, or my friends’ companies, we’re just not going to do [the deal],” Crockett says. “Island agreed to all the things I was looking for, which was I wanted to maintain ownership and have creative control.”
Crockett has spent years building his reputation as a musician’s musician, an artist fueled by creativity and fashioning songs that mirror the lives and stories he sees around him, while also nodding to a deep understanding of the ties and history connecting country, folk, blues and more. In making the choice to sign with Island, he also wanted to make sure he wasn’t erecting creative boundaries in his career.
“Island wasn’t like, ‘Hey let’s take this thing to Nashville and focus on Nashville radio,’” he says. “I didn’t want to be stuck in that because I’ve always felt the thing in Nashville was ‘He’s too country,’ or ‘He’s not country enough.’ No matter who I was dealing with in Nashville, that was always the viewpoint. Not to be controversial here, but I’ve been around a long time and seen a lot of back rooms in Nashville and the money’s still coming from New York — just like Willie [Nelson] and Waylon [Jennings] figured out.
“[Island Records co-chairman/co-CEO] Justin Eshak, he did the whole deal, got all the paperwork, we signed the deal and everything, and they had never heard the [Lonesome Drifter] record,” Crockett continues. “It was like, ‘Look at these records we put out before it. If you like those records, then you’ve got nothing to worry about.’”
To commemorate the release of the new album, and the new label deal, Crockett has been giving away 100,000 copies of a four-song CD sampler at locations around the United States, including at 200 record stores across the country, at SXSW and the Houston and Austin Rodeos, and at Luck Reunion and the Luck Record Club. The choice brings him full circle — as a decade ago, he handed out 5,000 free copies of his self-released 2015 A Stolen Jewel.
“It was my wife’s idea. She’s a lot smarter than I am,” Crockett says, his grin audible as he gives credit for the Lonesome Drifter giveaway to his wife Taylor. “She mentioned it had been 10 years, and was like, ‘Let’s remind them how you did it. Let’s do 100,000 instead of 5,000.’ We went to the Universal building and Taylor threw that idea out in front of Island and they said, ‘It sounds like a hip-hop model,’ and when I say hip-hop, I mean DIY. And they weren’t scared of it.”
Crockett co-produced Lonesome Drifter with singer-songwriter-producer Shooter Jennings, son of Waylon Jennings and Jessi Colter. One of the songs released from the album, “Game I Can’t Win,” inspired by the work of Woody Guthrie, looks at greed from an underdog’s perspective. He takes a shot at Music City on the line, “Them boys in Nashville, they don’t mess around/ Better watch ’em when your deal goes down.”
“The phrase ‘I always love a game I can’t win’ came into my head, because it’s true,” he says. “The thing about America is: No matter what background people are coming from, people feel that it is rigged, that the cards are marked in advance. I think people feel that. When I think about parlor games, think about casinos — we know when we walk into a casino that the game is set up for the house to win, but even with all the odds stacked against you in America, you can win as hard as it is, as rigged as it is, as much favor for a favor [that] there is. For me personally, being from South Texas, I feel that you can win, and I think that’s at the heart of all Americans, that’s kind who we are.
“’I Can’t Win,’ a lot of it is two songs jammed together,” he continues. “When I put them in front of Shooter, he made me see how Willie and Waylon and them were doing. Willie was really good at taking what looked like two totally different sketches and making them one. Shooter helped give some context to that for me to finish some songs.”
“Easy Money” was inspired in part by the 1969 movie Midnight Cowboy, taking in the story arc of a Texan who seeks his fortunes in New York. Crockett began writing a freehand poem as he watched the movie. “I also remembered this person, a friend’s sister, who started dancing at a gentlemen’s club, Silver City in West Dallas. It all hit me, this idea of ‘easy money,’ but if you’re poor, there’s no such thing as easy money.”
The album closes with a cover of George Strait’s 1982 hit “Amarillo By Morning,” written by Terry Stafford and Paul Fraser in 1973. Before Strait’s version became prominent, Stafford released a version of the song in 1973, while Chris LeDoux recorded it as part of his 1975 album Life as a Rodeo Man.
“I’m a huge Terry Stafford fan,” Crockett says. “I knew all of George Strait’s songs when I was a kid, and ‘Amarillo by Morning’ was always a favorite. I thought, ‘I’m going to recut this. It’s 40 years old.’ But when I told Shooter about it in, I second-guessed myself and was like, ‘Never mind. They are going to judge the s–t out of me. George Strait owns that song.’ But Shooter’s heart was set on it and we did cut it. When I sing [songs like his own] ‘$10 Cowboy,’ it’s like, ‘I’m not George Strait. I’m not a rodeo guy.’ [But the “Amarillo by Morning” lyric] ‘I’m not rich, but Lord, I’m free,’ that’s how I live my life. I wake up every morning and I’ve got more responsibility than I ever did, but I know I still have that freedom of choice.”
Crockett was born in San Benito, close to the Texas-Mexico border, before his family moved to the Dallas-Fort Worth area (he also spent summers with family in New Orleans). He grew up soaking in an array of music, including Jennings, Nelson, Curtis Mayfield and ZZ Top, in addition to folk-troubadours like Dylan and Guthrie.
“I went to New York City because of this idolizing of what I heard or read about that scene in NYC that Bob took that folky thing in the village and took it to the world,” Crockett says. “Looking back now, there was a lot of darkness with that, and I couldn’t live there. I did learn that New York is the empire, the heart of the empire and if you try to get on top of the empire and stay on top, it can destroy you. That concrete jungle is so big. We got offered so many record deals, management deals, all that kind of s–t on those subway cars…one positive thing that’s changed about the business [is] there’s a lot of artists out there and they’re just amplifying what they are doing when they discover ‘em.”
He continued busking his way across the country, playing on the streets of California, Colorado and Paris, France, before making his way back to Texas. Along the way, he offered listeners CDs out of his guitar case, on the advice of other, more seasoned transient performers.
“If I was staying with someone, I would record the songs that I knew real quick with the built-in microphone on their laptop and then burn those onto CDs,” he says. “I’d wrap those up in colorful ads and magazines and sell them for $5,” he says, recalling that “the amount of money people threw in my case increased overnight — I realized I looked more legitimate.”
He had handed one of those CDs to Turnpike Troubadours lead singer Evan Felker outside of Gruene Hall in New Braunfels, Texas. The CD made its way into the hands of Turnpike’s booking agent Red 11 Music, Jon Folk (Red 11 Music was acquired by WME in 2023. Crockett is represented worldwide for booking by CAA). The Folk connection led to Crockett previously aligning with Thirty Tigers.
“The good thing about the way I did it, is I made a lot of records really cheaply with [Thirty Tigers’ co-founder/president David] Macias over the course of those seven, eight years, that allowed me to develop my sound,” Crockett says.
As his sound solidified, his prominence has grown. Crockett has continued putting in the time in both the studio and the road, playing over 100 shows over the past year. He’s been nominated for numerous Americana Honors & Awards and was named emerging artist of the year in 2021. Last year, he earned his first Grammy nomination, as his 2024 $10 Cowboy release was nominated for best Americana album.
His Island Records debut Lonesome Drifter comes not quite eight months after $10 Cowboy Chapter II: Visions of Dallas. The frequent releases Crockett has become known for serve as needed deadlines to help drive the singer-songwriter’s creativity.
“One of the reasons I record so often is because I’m really good at starting songs, but I’m not always great at finishing them, if I don’t have pressure,” Crockett says. “I need a bunch of pressure and not a lot of time, so booking studio sessions is how I finish songs.”
And there are more on the way — Crockett says Lonesome Drifter is the first in a trilogy of projects, noting, “I just got the second one done, and I’ve got the theme and sketch of the third one done.”
“Good Luck, Babe!” hitmaker Chappell Roan is opening up about her new self-described country song, “The Giver,” which arrives later on Thursday (March 13).
Roan recently made the media rounds, visiting Amazon Music’s Country Heat Weekly podcast on Thursday (March 13). With hosts Kelly Sutton and Amber Anderson, the musician opened up about creating the new country-leaning bop — and also made her intentions clear.
“I’m trying to really articulate that it’s not me trying to cross genres and be like, ‘Hey, you know, look at me.’ I’m not trying to convince a country crowd that they should listen to my music by baiting them with a country song,” Roan said. “That’s not what I feel like I’m doing. I just think a lesbian country song is really funny, so I wrote that.”
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Roan also noted, “I wrote a country song not to invade country music, but to really capture what I think, the essence of country music is, for me, which is nostalgia, and fun in the summertime, and the fiddle, and the banjo feeling like country queen. It makes me feel a certain type of freedom that pop music doesn’t let me feel. I think it’s interesting and I had to do it. I had to do it for myself to know what is it actually like to write a country song and perform it next to ‘Casual’ or next to ‘My Kink Is Karma’ or next to ‘Super Graphic Ultra Modern Girl’ — I just had to do myself justice.”
The Missouri native referenced the title of her 2024 album, The Rise and Fall of a Midwest Princess, saying, “Well, and I can’t call myself the Midwest princess and not acknowledge country music straight up. That is what is around me in the grocery stores. That’s what is playing on the bus … I know that my heart really wanted to write a country song.”
Roan previously shared her thoughts on writing “The Giver,” and said she grew up surrounded by country music as a child. “I have such a special place in my heart for country music. I grew up listening to it every morning and afternoon on my school bus and had it swirling around me at bon fires, grocery stores and karaoke bars,” she wrote in a March 4 Instagram post. “Many people have asked if this means I’m making a country album??? My answer is.. hmm right now I’m just making songs that make me feel happy and fun and The Giver is my take on c–try xoxo may the classic country divas lead their genre, I am just here to twirl and do a little gay yodel for yall.”
Over the past few years, Roan has gained pop music acclaim thanks to songs including the Billboard Hot 100 top five hit “Good Luck, Babe!” and top 10 hit “Pink Pony Club.” Roan also picked up a Grammy win for best new artist earlier this year.
Lexa Gates is ready to leave her “normal life” behind, and the 23-year-old’s not stopping until she’s sleeping in a mansion and hitting the “Lexa jig” on private jets across the globe.
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It’s been just over six years since her breakthrough “I Can Fly” fittingly pushed her to fully pursue music, after an ex-boyfriend taught her it was possible to record at home and upload songs to the SoundCloud matrix. The Queens native has quickly garnered a fanbase — which she says doesn’t have a name just yet — and established herself as part of the next crop of rap stars coming out of New York City.
Gates’ dexterity allows her to puncture beats with burly flows as refined as her signature Black winged eyeliner, and squeeze every last drop out of brutally honest takes on romance and failed relationships that leave a hole in listeners’ collective hearts.
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She’s also hoping to deliver her Elite Vessel follow-up at some point this year, as Gates promises she has a project done that’s currently in the clearing process. However, for her next act, she refuses to be boxed in and wants to veer into the pop lane.
Gates says she’s doing “more singing and melody” while crafting a “more universally digestible” product. “Less niche, Queens native rapper,” she tells Billboard. “More true artist, global.”
Down the line, Gates — who was co-signed by SZA last year — wants to form the pop avengers and lock in with the genre’s A-list architects like Sabrina Carpenter’s secret weapon Amy Allen and Grammy Award winner Jack Antonoff. “I need to get in there with them,” she adds. “I still bring what I have to the table. We need that.”
Even outside of the music world, Gates has lofty goals to eventually lock down her own Erewhon smoothie and a Puma deal. Learn more about our Hip-Hop Rookie of the Month for March in the interview below.
Billboard: When you look back at your musical upbringing, what are some moments that stand out in changing your life?
Lexa Gates: I was dating a white rapper from Harlem who was enrolled in SUNY Purchase. He taught me that you can record yourself at home and put it on SoundCloud. Something could happen with that. [This was] when I was like 17.
Is that when you started to take music seriously?
Yeah, that’s when I started learning how to engineer myself and create a product.
How long did it take to reach the level where you felt, “I can kinda do this?”
Well, not that long. Nowadays, you can download Garageband on your phone and just make a song with a pair of headphones.
Is “I Can Fly” from around that time?
Yes, exactly — and everyone really loved that song. That boyfriend ended up being a hater about it. It happens.
Would you say that was a breakthrough moment for you?
Yeah, it really was. It would’ve had like 10,000 plays on SoundCloud, and I was like, “Whoa, who would’ve thought that people would actually like it?” It was fully organic. That’s how it was back then with SoundCloud. It wasn’t about any marketing or any schemes. No TikTok; Instagram was just your friends on there.
How would you summarize this last year for yourself? It’s been quite the elevation.
It’s been a lot, but I still feel like it’s nothing yet. I’m just getting started.
How has been dealing with fame for you?
Some girl just recognized me outside. No makeup, on my way to get my eyebrows done. She like, “Are you Lexi?” I’m outside my house, so that’s a little scary.
So you’re starting to get recognized outside a bit? At least in New York.
Yeah, that’s a good thing, and it’s what I want. Eventually, I just want to be constrained to the back of a car or a private jet and never get to live a normal life again.
Some people try to keep it as normal as they can be, and you’re on the other end of getting to this point and not having to deal with any of this.
It’s gonna be a nightmare either way. That’s not necessarily a positive. I’ll be like, “D–n, I wish I could go grocery shopping.”
The dating scene has gotta be crazy.
Oh, that’s already out the window. That’s already gone.
The days of swiping on Hinge are over.
Yeah, actually, I met that dude on Tinder — the boyfriend. Yeah, and we dated for a long time. You never know.
How’s performing been? I went to your show in Brooklyn last June.
Oh, the Elsewhere show? That one was pretty a–. The shows are great. I’m a lot more comfortable now. I remember in that concert, I was super nervous, and my mom was there and I barely moved on stage. I was just standing there with my arms crossed.
It was cool to see your fans bringing your flowers. Where did that relationship start to become a thing?
That’s just from begging a bum-a– dude to buy me flowers, to just having so much fruition in my career. People bringing me flowers that I don’t even know — but they love me. And I don’t have to be like, “Why didn’t you get me this?” Also, I heard that flowers raise a woman’s vibration. It’s like a natural thing. You can smell ’em.
How did your signature winged eyeliner come to be?
It was just like, me not going to school. I’m doing my makeup and trying to make the liner even on one side and the other side until it just became a giant Black block on my eyes. It gets to the point where you just get tired of washing it off and trying again, so you kinda just work with what you got. Now it’s more intentional. I get it perfect almost every single time.
What’s next on the music front? What are our plans this year?
I have a whole album done that we are in the process of clearing. I have like 20 songs done. I want to drop another album.
Did you do any work with Conductor Williams?
No, I didn’t, but I’m in conversation with him. We just haven’t gotten together. It’s crazy because I want to make pop music.
Is this something that feels natural to you, or you wanted to change it up and keep it fresh?
It was still natural for me. I had to be in L.A., of course. It’s still true to me, it’s just what I like now.
Yeah, you gotta pull up [to the office] and play that… You got some fans over here.
I’m really happy to hear that. I never even knew about all this ranking and status within the artist community until I got signed and spoke to [a media trainer], and she pulled up the Billboard [Hot] 100 and I realized, “This is like a sport.” [It’s a] pro athlete vibe. That’s also something I took with me into my new work. That’s why it has to be more structured and intentional.
How has being signed to a label influenced your creativity? Is it different being at a studio than at home?
They put a positive pressure on me. It’s still very personal. I work usually work one-on-one, just me and the producer so it’s not a whole organization in the studio yet, but I’m not closed out to the idea if I find the right people.
How was linking up with Jadakiss and Fabolous for “New York to the World”?
Brought me back to my roots. Just like the energy they bring — intimidating, smoking, but still down to earth and true to themselves. I had to be the girl with the hair did and my legs crossed, and just spit some s–t. They’re mad cool and super loving. Especially the producer, Scott Storch. Yeah, he’s a legend, so inspirational. He seems a little bit like an insane guy.
When did you start doing your dances across the city?
It was just an accident. I had to make content, so I was like, “Record me.” Then I just dance. It was never like supposed to be what it is. People just made it a thing. They love anything. They f–king told me. I was spinning around in circles and trying different things, but the dance is what stuck with me. They be calling it the Lexa jig. It’s actually kind of embarrassing now because that’s just how I dance in general so when I do it, it’s not the same anymore. I hear some music and I start dancing and I gotta stop myself.
What does your mom think about your music career taking off? I know she was an aspiring musician and put you in lessons and things growing up.
She’s really happy and is really proud of me. She loves everything I’m doing and supports me fully, but except for financially. Just emotionally.
I feel like on records you touch on romance, relationships and love. What do you think makes a perfect record for that kind of song?
I guess just capturing the moment of time that you’re in. Whatever is going on you just gotta get the last drop from it.
Do you hold certain things back on it or let it rip?
I don’t hold back, I let it rip. Sometimes it be just about even anybody in the room. I don’t really care. If I have to say it, I have to.
How was the experience of staying in the box for 10 hours? I feel like that broke through and saw it everywhere. It was kind of refreshing. For lack of a better term, I feel like we see a lot of bulls–t promo tactics that artists go through.
It was never supposed to be like a promotional thing. I think the label showed me that was the case when they were telling me, “Oh, we should do a halal truck outside and sell food to them.” I’m like, “What? No, it’s supposed to be art.”
How was it getting the SZA co-sign?
That was really surreal. All these things you feel like you want, then you get it — and then you’re still a human being in a body that’s rotting and digesting food and bleeding and breathing. You never float through the air and explode into sparkles. It’s all the same. She’s the GOAT. Very talented and beautiful woman.
How do you look at this next generation of New York City? We had Laila! up here and she showed you love.
I don’t know a lot of [artists]. I know a lot of people coming up, like Sailorrr. I know she got this [Rookie of the Month] spot last month. There’s so many people. Every day, something’s breaking. I like Molly [Santana] too.
I was watching an interview you did a couple of months ago and you said you were bordering on a spiritual psychosis, but being aware, in control. What does that mean?
I don’t even know what the f–k that means. It was very surreal to be on tour and be on a bus and have the shows selling out. It’s a beautiful thing, but also it’s nothing. You can only feel so much in a natural state where you just become disassociated to what’s happening so you can get the work done. If I thought, “Oh my God. This is amazing.” Then I wouldn’t work as hard as I do to do more.
I look at it from a sports sense: what would be your version of winning the NBA Finals or a Super Bowl? What’s your goal? What’s the top thing? What would I do after that?
I guess having that unethical, ungodly f–k you money out of art would probably be the end goal, or really winning to where anything is possible. That’s why people stop doing art — like, “All right, I don’t have to give it to people anymore. “Maybe they still do it behind closed doors. Even like Frank Ocean or Aminé. He just followed me, and I look at his page, and there’s nothing. If you really love art, you probably weren’t doing it for that in the first place, or for any type of outside validation or streams. It would be a luxury to be back at that point.
Does the fan base have a nickname yet?
No. I don’t know. Maybe we just call them my Flowers. It’s cute. Little Flowers. Like a Little Monster. I like Ice Spice, too. They should be my Beans.
Do you have any brand partnerships or business endeavors outside of music that you think would be dope for you?
Yeah, I want an Erewhon smoothie. I want to work with Puma. I love Margiela and Acne. Something fire. I really love coffee, too. It would be cool to a coffee-related thing. I like Blue Bottle Coffee.
Where’s Lexa Gates in 10 years?
Hopefully, in the best shape of my life. Financially free. I want a house and I want to own a bunch of houses. Is that a good answer? Where should I be? I want to be on Billboard. No. 1, I don’t see why not.
Shyne has lost his bid for re-election in Belize. The former Bad Boy conceded defeat in a press conference on Wednesday night (March 12).
According to Channel 5 Belize, Shyne (born Moses Barrow) was unseated by fellow United Democratic Party member and businessman Lee Mark Chang in the general election.
Shyne was elected to the Mesopotamia seat in Belize City for the House of Representatives in 2020, and he eventually served as the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives and the leader of the Belize United Democratic Party.
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According to Channel 5 Belize, Shyne secured only 318 votes in the constituency of Mesopotamia, while Chang earned 601.
“The people have spoken. Congratulations to Lee Mark Chang — he’s now the new area representative of Mesopotamia, and I wish him well,” Shyne said, according to the local news outlet. “I was confident; that was the interaction I was having with the people, but they made a decision to go in another direction, and I respect that.”
With Shyne losing his House of Representatives seat, he’s planning to resign as the leader of the Belize UDP once a new official is elected.
“I certainly will resign effective once we have a national convention to elect a new leader,” he added. “Obviously you can’t be a leader of the United Democratic Party once you’re not a member of the House, and I would not want to be appointed as a senator or anything to hold on to the leadership.”
Chang was very critical of Shyne leading up to the election, reportedly referring to him as a “cancer” in the government. “The people are realizing they have been bamboozled,” he reportedly said on national TV in Belize.
It’s unclear if the loss marks the end of Shyne’s run in Belizean politics.
Shyne rose to fame in the late ’90s as a rapper under Diddy’s Bad Boy Records label. He was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in 2001 on assault, gun possession and reckless endangerment charges for his role in a 1999 NYC nightclub shooting that left two people wounded. He was released in 2009 after eight years behind bars and deported to Belize.
The Jonas Brothers announced the release date for their upcoming single, “Love Me to Heaven,” on Thursday (March 13). The follow-up to the sibling trio’s recent singles with Marshmello (“Slow Motion”) and Rascal Flatts (“I Dare You”) is due out on March 21. They announced the news in an Instagram post in which all three modeled Canadian tuxedoes while flipping and jumping through the sky.
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The band previewed the uptempo pop tune during their 20th anniversary celebration show in Toronto last month, busting out the live debut of the track on which they sing, “Could give me everything, but it ain’t enough/ You can’t put a price on the human touch/ I could be down, but you love me to heaven/ Love me to heaven, babe.”
Joe, Nick and Kevin Jonas will continue their celebration of two decades of familial pop rocking with the upcoming one-day JONASCON at the American Dream mall in their native New Jersey on March 23. The event will feature live performances, DJ sets, Q&A panels, fan activations, pop-up surprises, retail takeovers, a Jonas trading post, trivia, games, immersive experiences, an interactive art installation, keynote event, karaoke, a Camp Rock bar, special guests, mini golf and exclusive merch. “From their early beginnings to global pop icons, JONASCON will honor the band’s incredible journey while also showing their appreciation to the fans who have been with them from the beginning,” a statement promised.
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While no specific information has been released about where the new single will land, earlier this year the trio promised that their 20th anniversary celebrations will include a “year of music,” featuring new songs, a live album, soundtrack, solo music and a holiday movie for Disney titled Jonas Brothers Christmas Music.
They will also be featured on Rascal Flatt’s upcoming duets album, Life Is a Highway: Refueled Duet via “I Dare You,” which was written by Nick Jonas with Dan + Shay’s Shay Mooney (as well as Dewain Whitmore Jr and Tommy English) and currently sits at No. 37 on the Billboard Country Airplay chart after peaking at No. 24.
Check out the “Love Me To Heaven” announcement below.
Lizzo is getting her groove back. On Thursday (March 13), the hitmaker dropped a new single titled “Still Bad” with a clear message at its center: Even after heartbreak, she’s still that girl. Produced with “About Damn Time” collaborators Blake Slatkin and Ricky Reed, the funky bassline-driven track finds Lizzo reclaiming her positive energy. “I […]
Memphis rapper Key Glock is officially joining Republic Records. As he continues to tease his upcoming album, Glockavelli, Republic announced exclusively with Billboard that Glock will be joining their roster. In addition to this new partnership, he’ll also remain under the late Young Dolph’s label, Paper Route Empire (PRE). The signing marks an exciting new […]
Last month, Vice President J.D. Vance represented the U.S. at the Artificial Intelligence Action Summit in Paris. In a speech addressing top leaders from around the world, he declared, “I think our response [to AI] is to be too self-conscious, too risk-averse, but never have I encountered a breakthrough in tech that so clearly calls us to do precisely the opposite. […] We believe excessive regulation of the AI sector could kill a transformative industry just as it’s taking off.”
Vance’s comments marked a stark shift from the Biden administration, which often spoke about weighing AI’s “profound possibilities” with its “risks,” as the former president put it in his farewell address in January. In the wake of Vance’s remarks in Paris, it’s clear that in the Trump White House, AI safety is out and the race for dominance is in. What does that mean for the music business and its quest to protect copyrights and publicity rights in the AI age?
“All the focus is on the competition with China, so national security has become the number one issue with AI in the Trump administration,” says Mitch Glazier, CEO/president of the Recording Industry Association of America. “But for our industry, it’s interesting. The [Trump administration] does seem to be saying at the same time that we also need to be ‘America First’ with our [intellectual property] too. It’s both ‘America First’ for IP and ‘America First’ for AI.”
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That, Glazier thinks, provides an opportunity for the music business to continue to push its AI agenda in D.C. While the president does not have the remit to make alterations to copyright protection in the U.S., the Trump administration still has powerful sway with the Republican-dominated legislative branch, where the RIAA, the Recording Academy and others have been fighting to get new protections for music on the books. Glazier says there’s been no change in strategy there — it’s still full steam ahead, trying to get those bills passed into law in 2025.
Top copyright attorney Jacqueline Charlesworth, partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz, still fears that Vance’s speech — as well as President Trump’s inauguration in January, where he was flanked by top executives from Apple, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet — “reflected a lot of influence from the large tech platforms.” Many major tech companies have taken the position that training their AI models on copyrights does not require consent, credit or compensation. “My concern is that creators and copyright owners will be casualties in the AI race,” she says.
For David Israelite, president/CEO of the National Music Publishers’ Association, it’s still too early to totally understand the new administration’s views on copyright and AI. But, he says, “we are concerned when the language is about rushing to train these models — and that becoming a more important principle than how they are trained.”
Glazier holds out hope that Trump’s bullish approach to trade agreements with other nations could benefit American copyright owners and may influence trade partners to honor U.S. copyrights. Specifically, he points to the U.K., where the government has recently proposed granting AI companies unrestricted access to copyrighted material for training their models unless the rights holder manually opts out. Widely despised by copyright holders of all kinds, the music industry has protested the opt-out proposal in recent weeks through op-eds in national newspapers, comments to the U.K. government and through a silent album, Is This What We Want?, co-authored by a thousand U.K. artists, including Kate Bush, Damon Albarn and Hans Zimmer.
Organized by AI developer, musician and founder of AI safety non-profit Fairly Trained, Ed Newton-Rex, Is This What We Want? features silent tracks recorded in famous studios around London to demonstrate the potential consequences of not protecting copyrighted songs. “The artists and the industry in the U.K. have done an incredible job,” says Glazier. “If for some reason the U.K. does impose this opt-out, which we think is totally unworkable, then this administration may have an opportunity to apply pressure because of a renewal of trade negotiations.”
Israelite agrees. “Much of the intellectual property fueling these AI models is American,” he says. “The U.S. tackles copyright issues all the time in trade agreements, so we are always looking into that angle of it.”
It’s not just American music industry trade groups that have been following the Trump administration’s approach to AI. Abbas Lightwalla, director of global legal policy for the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), the global organization representing the interests of the recorded music business, says he and his colleagues followed Vance’s Paris speech “with great interest,” and that future trade agreements between the U.S. and other nations are “absolutely on the radar,” given that IFPI advocates across the world for the music industry’s interests in trade negotiations. “It’s crucial to us that copyright is protected in every market,” he says. “It’s a cross-border issue… If the U.S. is doing the same, then I think that’s a benefit to every culture everywhere to be honest.”
Charlesworth says this struggle is nothing new; the music industry has dealt with challenges to copyright protection for decades. “In reflecting on this, I feel like, starting in the ‘90s and 2000s, the tech business had this ‘take now, pay later’ mentality to copyright. Now, it feels like it’s turned into ‘take now, and see if you can get away with it.’ It’s not even pay later.”
As the AI race continues to pick up at a rapid pace, Israelite says he’s “not that hopeful that we are going to see any kind of government action quickly that would give us guidance” — so he’s also watching the active lawsuits surrounding AI training and copyright closely and looking to the commercial space for businesses in AI and IP that are voluntarily working out solutions together. “We’re very involved and focused on partnerships with AI that can help pave the way for how this technology provides new revenue opportunities for music, not just threats,” he says.
Glazier says he’s working in the commercial marketplace, too. “We have 60 licensing agreements in place right now between AI companies and music companies,” he says. Meanwhile, the RIAA is still watching the two lawsuits it spearheaded for the three major music companies against AI music startups Suno and Udio and is working to get bills like the NO FAKES Act and NO AI FRAUD Act passed into law.
“While IP wasn’t on the radar in Vance’s speech, the aftermath of it totally shifted the conversation,” says Glazier. “We just have to keep working to protect copyrights.”