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True to her name, Mariah the Scientist’s songs are often the result of several months, and sometimes years, spent combining different elements of choruses and verses until finding the right mixture. But when it came time for the 27-year-old to unveil her latest single, the sultry “Burning Blue,” the R&B singer-songwriter was at a crossroads. So, she experimented with her promotional strategy, too — and achieved the desired momentum.
“Mariah felt she was in a space between treating [music] like a hobby and this being her career,” recalls Morgan Buckles, the artist’s sister and manager. And so, they crafted a curated, monthlong rollout — filled with snippets, TikTok posts encouraging fan interaction and various live performances — that helped the song go viral even before its early May arrival. Upon its release, Mariah the Scientist scored her first solo Billboard Hot 100 entry and breakthrough hit.
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Mariah Amani Buckles grew up in Atlanta, singing from an early age. She attended St. John’s University in New York and studied biology, but ultimately dropped out to pursue music. Her self-released debut EP, To Die For, arrived in 2018, after which she signed to RCA Records and Tory Lanez’s One Umbrella label. She stayed in those deals until 2022 — releasing albums Master and Ry Ry World in 2019 and 2021, respectively — before leaving to continue as an independent artist.
“Over time, you start realizing [people] want you to change things,” Mariah says of her start in the industry. “Everybody wants to control your art. I don’t want to argue with you about what I want, because if we don’t want the same things, I’ll just go find somebody who does.”
Mariah the Scientist
Carl Chisolm
In 2023, after six months as an independent artist, Mariah signed a joint venture deal with Epic Records and released her third album, To Be Eaten Alive, which became her first to reach the Billboard 200. She then made two Hot 100 appearances as a featured artist in early 2024, on “IDGAF” with Tee Grizzley and Chris Brown and “Dark Days” with 21 Savage.
“Burning Blue” marks Mariah’s first release of 2025 — and first new music since boyfriend Young Thug’s release from jail following his bombshell YSL RICO trial. The song takes inspiration from Purple Rain-era Prince balladry with booming drums and warbling bass — and Mariah admits that the Jetski Purp-produced beat on YouTube (originally titled “Blue Flame”) likely influenced some lyrics, too. She initially recorded part of the track over an unofficial MP3 rip, but after Purp caught wind of it and learned his girlfriend was a fan, he gave Mariah the beat. Mariah then looped in Nineteen85 (Drake, Nicki Minaj, Khalid) to flesh out the production.
“I [recorded the first part of ‘Burning Blue’] in the first room I recorded in when I first started making music in Atlanta,” Mariah says. “I don’t want to say it was a throwaway, but it was casual. I wrote some of it, and then I put it to the side.”
Once Epic A&R executive Jennifer Raymond heard the in-progress track, she insisted on its completion enough that Mariah and her collaborators convened in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, in February to finish the song. By that point, they sensed something special. Mariah shared a low-quality snippet on Instagram, but Morgan — who joined as a tour manager in 2022 — knew a more polished presentation was needed to reach its full potential.
Morgan Buckles (left) and Mariah the Scientist photographed May 20, 2025 in New York.
Carl Chisolm
Morgan eyed Billboard’s Women in Music event in late March as the launchpad for the “Burning Blue” campaign. Though Mariah wasn’t performing or presenting at the event, Morgan wanted to take advantage of her already being in glam to shoot a flashier teaser than Mariah’s initial IG story, which didn’t even show her face.
The two decided on a behind-the-scenes, pre-red carpet clip soundtracked by a studio-quality snippet of “Burning Blue.” Posted on April 1, that clip showcased its downtempo chorus and Mariah’s silky vocal and has since amassed more than two million views, with designer Jean Paul Gaultier’s official TikTok account sharing the video to its feed. Ten days later, Morgan advised Mariah to share another TikTok, this time with an explicit call to action encouraging fans to use the song in their own posts and teasing that she “might have a surprise” for fans with enough interaction.
Mariah then debuted the song live on April 19 during a set at Howard University — a smart exclusive for her core audience — as anticipation for the song continued to build. Two weeks later, “Burning Blue” hit digital service providers on May 2, further fueled by a Claire Bishara-helmed video on May 8 that has over 7 million YouTube views.
“We’re at the point where opportunity meets preparation,” Morgan reflects of the concerted but not overbearing promotional approach. “[To Be Eaten Alive] happened so fast, I didn’t even know what ‘working’ a project meant. This time, I studied other artists’ rollouts to figure out how to make this campaign personal to her.”
“Burning Blue” debuted at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 dated May 17, marking Mariah’s first time in the top 40. Following its TikTok-fueled debut, the song has shown legs at radio too, entering Rhythmic Airplay, R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay and Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay — to which Morgan credits Epic’s radio team, spearheaded by Traci Adams and Dontay Thompson. “[The song] ended up going to radio a week earlier [than scheduled] because Dontay was like, ‘If y’all like this song so much, then play it!,’ and they did,” Morgan jokes.
With “Burning Blue” proving to be a robust start to an exciting new chapter, Mariah has a bona fide hit to start the summer as she prepares to unleash her new project, due before the fall. She recently performed the track on Jimmy Kimmel Live! and will have the opportunity to fan the song’s flames in front of festival audiences including Governors Ball in June and Lollapalooza in August. But as her following continues to heat up, Mariah’s mindset is as cool as ever.
“I’ll take what I can get,” Mariah says. “As long as I can use my platform to help people feel included or understood, I’m good.”
Mariah the Scientist
Carl Chisolm
A version of this story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Reservoir Media has entered into a strategic partnership with Fool’s Gold Records, adding the A-Trak co-founded independent label to its recorded music portfolio. As part of the deal, Reservoir acquires the master rights to key catalog recordings from artists including A-Trak, Danny Brown and Low Pros. In addition, Reservoir will take on exclusive marketing and distribution responsibilities for all past and future Fool’s Gold releases through its label platform.
As part of the deal, facilitated by Fool’s Gold CFO Jorge Mejias, label manager Nathaniel Heller and A-Trak’s management team at TMWRK, Fool’s Gold joins Reservoir’s roster of influential independent labels, which includes Chrysalis Records, Tommy Boy Music and New State. The partnership also extends to a new sub-label, A-Trak & Friends, which will be distributed by Reservoir. The first release from this imprint, “Reaching” by James Juke featuring LION BABE, debuted last month.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
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Founded in 2007 by A-Trak (Alain Macklovitch), Nick Catchdubs, David Macklovitch, and the late Joshua Prince, Fool’s Gold has built a reputation for blurring the lines across hip-hop, dance and electronic music. The label played a pivotal role in launching the careers of artists like Kid Cudi, whose debut single “Day ‘N’ Nite” was released through Fool’s Gold, as well as Run the Jewels, Flosstradamus and Danny Brown. A-Trak’s own projects, including his duo Duck Sauce’s hit “Barbra Streisand,” are also part of the catalog now under Reservoir’s distribution.
A-Trak has also made a name for himself as a solo artist with tracks like his remix of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ “Heads Will Roll” and singles such as “Ray Ban Vision” and “Believe.” The Fool’s Gold catalog further includes music from Treasure Fingers, Hoodboi, Tommy Trash and Michael Christmas.
Reservoir president and chief operating officer Rell Lafargue said, “As both founder and artist, A-Trak has built Fool’s Gold into a genre-blurring label that has been at the forefront of hip-hop, house, and everything in between for nearly two decades. We’re proud to welcome A-Trak, Fool’s Gold, and its artists into the Reservoir family as we continue to champion culturally significant independent music.” He continued, “This multifaceted deal also highlights Reservoir’s ongoing expansion in recorded music and our team’s ability to deliver across the full spectrum of the music business.”
A-Trak added, “I’ve been thoroughly impressed by Reservoir ever since the first time we all spoke. Everyone at the company has a deep passion for quality music. A big part of what’s helped Fool’s Gold navigate 18 years in the music biz is staying very nimble and malleable. Reservoir was able to craft a creative deal with us that showed real agility — that’s exactly what we were looking for in a new partner.”
Rainy Monday mornings are rarely settings for celebration. But on this one, The Orchard CEO Brad Navin has 48,000 reasons to smile: The vinyl edition of Bad Bunny’s DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS has finally shipped, returning the album to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with the largest vinyl sales week since Luminate began tracking data in 1991.
It’s the Puerto Rican star’s fourth straight Billboard 200 chart-topper, all of which have been released through his label, Rimas, in partnership with The Orchard, the services company that launched as a digital distributor in 1997. After an initial investment in 2012, Sony bought The Orchard outright in 2015, and since — through smart mergers and competitive acquisitions of companies like IODA, RED and AWAL, as well as a global outlook and a top-tier services offering — it has become the U.S. market leader among all distribution companies, boasting an 8.9% current market share for 2025 through May 15, according to Luminate, nearly triple its next-closest competitor.
For the past 15 years, Navin — who joined the company initially in 2003, rising to interim CEO in 2010 before taking over the post full time shortly after — has steered that ship, navigating it through the streaming revolution, the globalization of the business and, more recently, the democratization of music that has led to distribution becoming the industry’s hottest sector, with dozens of new startups and millions in private equity funding flooding the space.
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Still, as Navin notes, “No one has invested in the independent sector more than The Orchard has in the last 15-plus years. We have helped our clients sign artists, grow their business, grow rights within their business, expand where their business might be located — there is not a client in The Orchard that has not grown dramatically while they’ve been with us.”
From the start, The Orchard did things differently. Co-founders Richard Gottehrer and Scott Cohen started the company years before the iTunes Store revolutionized digital downloads and quickly took a global approach. “For years, it was difficult for independent artists to get noticed and get distribution, and early on, we realized it almost didn’t matter where you were from or what language you were speaking — music was music,” Gottehrer says. “It’s a universal language and sharing that was important.”
The past decade has proved that to be prescient: In April, the RIAA reported that Latin music revenue in the United States surpassed $1 billion for the third straight year, and The Orchard is on the front lines of that through partnerships with Rimas (which itself recently bought a stake in Dale Play), Double P Records and the recent acquisition of Altafonte. The company, which maintains 50 offices on six continents, “gives you the tools to think big and not be restricted in your deal or resources,” says George Prajin, who co-founded Double P Records with Peso Pluma.
“[They] prioritize making sure that their partners can reach everyone worldwide,” says Tunde Balogun, co-founder and CEO of LVRN, which signed a distribution deal with The Orchard after exiting its joint venture with Interscope Records. “Whether it’s a genre or a region, it’s amazing to experience how they partner with entrepreneurs and artists and back them and help them grow.”
And as part of Sony, The Orchard has only strengthened its position. “A lot of the new companies springing up in the space are owned by investment vehicles or backed by finance money, and it’s not really clear what their long-term proposal is,” The Orchard president/COO Colleen Theis says. “We serve the independent community, and that’s always going to be our client base and our focus.”
With this proposition, The Orchard continues to attract new clients, from traditional partnerships to its 2022 investment in Rimas to taking stakes in Fat Possum and Mass Appeal. “Sometimes modern automation tricks us into believing these service providers are all the same, but when done right, it’s a far more complex operation than most people realize,” says Tyler Blatchley, co-founder of Black 17 Media, in which The Orchard has taken a minority stake.
“The deals we’ve done over the years have always been very strategic: a specific genre, a specific region of the world, a specific synergy or enhancing the value proposition that’s going to benefit our clients and our reach,” Navin says. “Is there a great operator or a great entrepreneur there that we want to be a part of what we’re doing? That’s where my motivation lies and that’s how we’ve done our deals historically: working with great operators.”
Brad Navin with Mass Appeal CEO Peter Bittenbender (left) and co-founder Nas.
Courtesy of The Orchard
You’ve been at The Orchard for more than 20 years. What was it like when you first got here?
We were a digital distributor before there was digital. It was pre-iTunes, let alone iPhone. I give the founders, Richard Gottehrer and Scott Cohen, a lot of credit — they had this understanding that the world was going to go online in some capacity. At the time, we were flipping over CDs and typing in label copy. That’s what digital meant for us back then.
It had to get more sophisticated to keep up with the volume and what was going to happen next. We wanted to control our own destiny, so we built around technology. And that became our great advantage because it taught us how to build a platform of services and the ability to integrate what’s next, without us needing to know what was next, necessarily. And that ethos exists today.
What did you feel The Orchard needed when you took over as CEO in 2010?
The team before me had the vision to go out all over the world — that music from everywhere matters. And now we live in a time where music from anywhere can stream everywhere. But we hadn’t yet built out our own technology. We were wildly unprofitable, we were in a terrible reverse merger from back in 2007-08, [and we were in a] total state of flux in management and what we were doing. And I came and said, “We need to build this out; here’s how I think it will transform the company.”
Sony invested in 2012 and then bought The Orchard in 2015. How did that work?
In the early days, there was some trepidation about being acquired by a major: Do they understand the independent sector? Do they understand all things digital and what’s going on? But as Richard said on the heels of the transaction, “We were bought by a f–king music company. Not by a bank, not by some people looking to liquidate.”
We had a company with the size that they are on a global level that was going to make sure that IP [intellectual property] was protected, that the value of music and how it’s going to be represented in a streaming world, or a short-form video world, would be represented in the right way, and that, ultimately, The Orchard and our clients were going to benefit. And that’s going to include whatever’s next, like [artificial intelligence]. As long as the creators are in the monetary chain and protected, I don’t know if I care what it is, necessarily.
Even in 2015, 50% of your business was outside the United States. How has that early global focus paid off?
To go into markets all over the world, where there are massively important catalogs and repertoire of varying genres, was an opportunity. As the [digital service providers] began to expand their reach and launch in those markets, we were sitting right there with all this music already available. You’ve got to be part of the local music scene and culture for the value proposition of artists and labels and the local music services. But we also need to be able to move music regionally and globally as it starts to happen. And that’s the way we function.
You said distribution used to be the unsexy part of the business. Now everyone wants to be in distribution. What changed?
The independent sector has always been about partnership, pushing the envelope on marketing, or the next format, or new ways to promote. Basically, they’ve always been willing to f–k with stuff while the big IP companies want to hold back. And as artists become empowered, they start to question: “What’s the definition of a label? What do I need going forward?” That’s a big reason why the industry’s been shifting. The definition of a label, or an artist services company, or a distribution company — it’s all in flux.
What are you focused on now?
If I think about North America, in this last year, Kelsea Ballerini on Black River Entertainment is an example of how the independent sector supports artist development. You could say the same thing in a completely different form for G*59 and $uicideboy$ and their roster. Music that I think the industry wasn’t really aware of but their fans were aware of, that’s the power of the artist being able to be out there, building audiences and driving it forward — it’s stunning. Black 17 and the whole phonk thing that’s been going on — when you work with great entrepreneurs all over the world, there’s new categories of music that we didn’t go out and look for that are happening. This is what’s going on in our sector of the business that’s so exciting.
How many different levels of service do you offer?
It’s not just the different levels. If they want us to f–k off and just put their music out, we can do that. If they want us to hold hands and really be in bed working up to that street date, we’ll do that. There’s no one size fits all at all. There can’t be.
Does that affect the deals you do, to keep them flexible?
To some degree, but not to a wide degree. The influx of outside capital into the music industry the last 10 years, and large competitors being born out of other majors or large, stand-alone distribution companies, whatever you want to call it — competition is great. We thrive off of it. Imitation is the best form of flattery. What is concerning, though, is … there’s a lot of irresponsible deals that have entered the marketplace: low margin, high capitalization. The artists deserve to be in control. They deserve to get paid.
This story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Source: Johnny Nunez / Getty
After Pop Smoke passed away, his team was working on finishing his first album, “Shoot for the Stars, Aim for the Moon”.
One song, called “Paranoia,” originally featured a guest verse from rapper Pusha T. However, drama ensued behind the scenes. According to Steven Victor, who managed both Pusha T and Pop Smoke, Universal Music Group (UMG), the label releasing the album, thought Pusha’s verse was throwing shade at Drake.
Even though the song had nothing to do with Drake or Pop Smoke, UMG told Victor that they wouldn’t let the album come out unless Pusha changed his lyrics. Victor was upset, saying it wasn’t even a diss and asking, “What happened to freedom of speech?” But the label didn’t back down, and Pusha’s verse was removed. The song was released without him, but the original version leaked online later, and fans definitely thought it sounded like a Drake diss.
This all ties back to the long beef between Pusha T and Drake. Their feud goes way back, but it really blew up in 2018 when Pusha dropped a diss track called “The Story of Adidon.” In it, he revealed that Drake had a secret son, which shocked many people. Since then, things have been tense between them. So when Pusha raps something that might sound like a jab at Drake, people, especially big labels, get nervous.
UMG didn’t want any drama connected to Pop Smoke’s album, so they made sure to keep things clean, even if it meant removing a big-name rapper from a song.
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When Faye Webster is back home in Atlanta, she likes to visit Oakland Cemetery. “I always go there when I’m home from a tour and just walk around by myself,” she says.
It’s not that the cemetery is the final resting place of any of her loved ones, or that Webster enjoys checking out the tombstones of Atlanta’s rich and famous, like musician Kenny Rogers or golfer Bobby Jones, who are both buried there. She just sees it as “a peaceful, safe space” to find silence amid her increasingly chaotic life.
Last year, Webster, 27, released her fifth album, Underdressed at the Symphony, and played 77 shows to support it — a lot by anyone’s measure, but a touring itinerary that was particularly challenging for Webster. Despite her fast-growing success, the soft-spoken homebody has never loved the spotlight. “Navigating it is tough, but I had a friend give me the advice to call someone I love after the show every day to remind myself of what’s real,” she says. “So I asked my mom, ‘Hey, can I call you at 10:10 every night?’ Now we always do it.”
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She has other ways of making the road feel like home — like the added comfort of having her older brother Jack as her guitar tech; her best friend, Noor Kahn, on bass; and her bandmates of many years by her side. (Her other elder brother, Luke, handles her merchandise and graphic design.) She also has a go-to warmup routine for shows. “I always get everyone together and we recite the battle of the bands prayer from School of Rock: ‘Let’s rock, let’s rock today!’ Then we go onstage,” she says.
Originally, Webster had asked to meet at the cemetery for this interview, but with heavy rain projected in the forecast, we decide to talk over matcha and baked goods at a nearby café instead. Between bites of a guava pastry, Webster says that when she gets the rare opportunity to be at home, she spends time with friends and family or tends to her many hobbies, which include — but are not limited to — yo-yo, tennis, Pokémon, the Atlanta Braves and Animal Crossing. And, she says with a laugh, “I have so many collections of so many different things. So many dumb things.” Her house is littered with it all. “I was collecting alarm clocks for a while, then I filled a full shelf and I was like, ‘OK, there’s no more space.’ I did my yo-yo shelf, too. I have tons of vinyl. Now I need something new to collect, so I’m buying CDs,” she explains. Her latest purchase? A copy of Alison Krauss and Robert Plant’s Raising Sand from Criminal Records in Atlanta.
“I remember the first time I heard her sing when I was a kid. I thought, ‘I didn’t know people could sing like this,’ ” Webster recalls of Krauss. “She has this very soft, angelic, pristine voice. When I first heard her sing I thought, ‘I want to be her.’ ”
Faye Webster
Christian Cody
Webster self-released her debut, Run and Tell, an earnest and straightforward Americana record, in 2013 when she was just 16. Back then, her voice was still developing and didn’t yet have the bell-like clarity and melancholic whine that she is beloved for now. Soon after, Webster’s path crossed with the Atlanta hip-hop scene when she started photographing and hanging out with the young rappers signed to tastemaking indie label Awful Records. Around this time, she also grew closer to another emerging local rapper, Lil Yachty — whom she ultimately collaborated with on Underdressed single “Lego Ring.” With Awful, “It started as just a friendship for months, and then it grew to me signing there,” says Webster, who was an oddball addition to the label as its first non-rap artist.
But for Webster, it didn’t feel strange at all — she was just putting out music with help from her friends. “I loved my experience with Awful. I think, to this day, what I learned there was about creating this sense of family and community. I still hold those values today,” she says.
After releasing 2017’s Faye Webster with Awful, she moved to indie powerhouse Secretly Group and its Secretly Canadian label. There, she steadily accumulated millions of fans as she released 2019’s Atlanta Millionaires Club, 2022’s I Know I’m Funny haha and Underdressed. (Secretly also now distributes her self-titled album.)
Her career hit hyper-speed about two years ago when she scored surprise TikTok hits with “I Know You” and “Kingston” — which were about 7 and 5 years old, respectively, when they took off. Those viral moments shifted her audience away from indie-loving Pitchfork dudes and toward a younger, more female crowd; her recent shows have been marked by throngs of adoring fangirls. Ironically, Webster isn’t even on TikTok — and she barely posts on social media in general.
“Faye is amazing — and somewhat of a contradiction as an artist,” says Secretly Group vp of A&R Jon Coombs, who, with his team, signed Webster to Secretly. “She bucks industry trends by not being online that much, but she still has great social media success. She’s someone who is so impossibly cool, yet she likes traditionally uncool things like yo-yoing and gaming. All of these things combined make her a really compelling and singular artist.”
To connect her whimsical hobbies to her much more serious music career, Webster introduced custom yo-yos as merch in collaboration with Brain Dead Studios, which is run by her friend and creative director Kyle Ng. (“Individuality and being her own character adds so much to her as a musician,” he says.) She also incorporated Bob Baker Marionettes into the Ng-directed “But Not Kiss” music video; founded an annual yo-yo invitational in Berkeley, Calif.; started an active Discord server with a dedicated channel to all things Minions; and has repeatedly covered the Animal Crossing theme at her gigs.
“I look out at shows now and see people dressed up like Minions and having fun and singing and I think, ‘This is so beautiful. This is why I do it,’ ” Webster says. “I really appreciate that my music can resonate with anybody. That’s all I’ve ever wanted — for somebody to feel they can relate to my work.”
Faye Webster
Christian Cody
Her hobbies also seep into her songs, like Underdressed’s “eBay Purchase History” or Funny’s “A Dream With a Baseball Player,” which is about her lasting crush on Atlanta Braves star Ronald Acuña Jr.
“She has this ability to pack a short story into a single line,” Coombs says of her lyricism. From “The day that I met you I started dreaming” (“Kingston”) to “You make me want to cry in a good way” (“In a Good Way”) and “Are you doing the same things? I doubt it” (“Underdressed at the Symphony”), Webster’s economical songwriting often repeats phrases on a loop, each refrain cutting to a deeper emotional core. Her expertly crafted productions — Wurlitzer keys, smooth Southern-rock guitar and plenty of pedal steel — seal the deal.
For Webster, “initial reactions” and “gut feelings” are the anchors of the songwriting and recording process. “To me, I’m just like, ‘Oh, that sounded good! Let me say it again…’ However the song plays out is sometimes just the way it’s supposed to happen,” she says.
As part of that instinctive approach, Webster has historically recorded songs soon after writing them. “I just like to do things in the moment,” she says. “When writing a song, I’ve often texted my friends, my band, and tried to get everyone together while it’s still fresh.” She typically self-records her vocals at home and the rest in nearby Athens. Most recently, however, she tried recording Underdressed at famed West Texas studio Sonic Ranch.
“That was our first experience going somewhere new,” she says. “My producer [Drew Vandenberg] was like, ‘What if we go somewhere else?’ And I was like, ‘OK, if it’s you and it’s me and it’s Pistol [pedal steel player Matt Stoessel] and all the band, it shouldn’t matter where we go.’ ”
Now, as she works on her next album, Webster is taking another leap of faith: signing her first major-label deal with Columbia Records, where she’ll join a roster that includes Beyoncé, Vampire Weekend and Tyler, The Creator (whose Camp Flog Gnaw festival she performed at last year). When asked why she signed there, she pauses, taking a sip of matcha as she thinks. “It comes back to that initial gut, that initial intuition,” she finally answers. “[Columbia] feels like where I belong right now and that’s where I’m supposed to exist.”
Faye Webster
Christian Cody
Perhaps it’s thanks to the flexibility her time on indie labels offered, or the support system it allowed her to build — but so far, Webster has deftly navigated the music business without sacrificing her personality, her community or her privacy, and she doesn’t see that changing under Columbia. “I think throughout this process [of signing the new deal], I’ve been very up front and honest. I was like, ‘Don’t be surprised if I say no to a lot of things.’ I think being honest and having an understanding of each other is really important in any relationship.”
“I know it’s a buzzword, but Faye is just so relentlessly authentic,” says her manager, Look Out Kid founder and partner Nick O’Byrne. “Over the years, I’ve seen she’s not interested in doing anything that feels unnatural to her, and from talking to fans, I know that they’re smart and they see that in her, too.”
When I ask Webster if this signing is an indication that she is more comfortable in the spotlight now, she quickly replies “no” with a laugh. “I think I’m just always going to be this way.”
This story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
On a warm, breezy evening in Kyoto, Japan’s biggest music stars walked a red carpet, performed their most popular hits and thanked their fans as they took the stage to receive ruby-hued awards.The dazzling ceremony, which was televised across Japan May 21-22 and livestreamed on YouTube, felt in many ways similar to the Grammy Awards.
But remarkably, even though Japan is the world’s second-biggest music market, the inaugural Music Awards Japan (MAJ) marked the country’s first major national music awards show.
“We’re honored to have received an award, but I also believe this could become a goal for young people in Japan who are just starting out in music,” said Ayase, producer and member of Japanese duo YOASOBI, after winning the top global hit from Japan award. “I hope that through events like this, people both in Japan and abroad will come to appreciate the greatness of Japanese music even more.”
The glitzy new gala is core to Japan’s mission to turbocharge its export of music to the world. For years, its music industry was able to increase revenue by marketing to fans within its borders thanks to the country’s enormous appetite for physical products like CDs and vinyl, which still account for 62.5% of its overall recorded-music revenue, according to IFPI. But those days have come to an end: Japan’s population has been shrinking for the past 14 years — and has been slow to adopt streaming. The country’s recorded-music revenue fell 2.6% in 2024, even as global recorded-music revenue has grown for the last 10 years, according to IFPI. So, to woo a global audience, Japan’s major music trade groups representing labels, concert promoters, publishers, producers and other enterprises united to form the Japan Culture and Entertainment Industry Promotion Association (CEIPA) and organized the show, inviting guests from 15 countries to attend.
Nominees for most of the awards were selected based on chart data provided by Billboard Japan, and winners were determined by a two-stage voting process involving over 5,000 industry professionals.
Hip-hop sensation Creepy Nuts took home nine awards including song of the year for its viral hit “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born.” Singer-songwriter-pianist Fujii Kaze earned album of the year with his Love All Serve All project. Pop-rock band Mrs. GREEN APPLE racked up a multitude of honors including artist of the year. Kendrick Lamar, Billie Eilish and Ariana Grande won awards for the impact of their hits in Japan, though they weren’t present to accept in person. MAJ executive committee chairman Tatsuya Nomura says that CEIPA plans to host the next show in June 2026 at a bigger venue in Tokyo so fans and more international artists can attend.
One sign of this year’s success: Streams of songs that won top honors have jumped an average of 31% in Japan, with 21 out of the 27 songs that received top honors gaining streams compared with the previous week, according to Luminate.
This story appears in the June 7, 2025, issue of Billboard.
Source: Taylor Hill / Getty
Hip-Hop fans are rejoicing now that the Clipse have reunited and will be returning with a new album in July, Let God Sort Em Out, but interestingly enough the reunion didn’t come without some repercussions as the two-man group was dropped from Def Jam Records after refusing to remove a Kendrick Lamar verse from their project.
Now, we’re learning that not only did Def Jam release Pusha T and Malice from their label, but the two had to cough up seven figures to get their walking papers.
In a new interview with Billboard, the group’s manager, Steven Victor, talked about Def Jam’s demands to have Kendrick Lamar change his verse or have it removed entirely in order for the Clipse album to see the light of day. When that didn’t sit well with the artists who refused to do either, Victor tried to come up with creative ways to release the album that wouldn’t “implicate” Def Jam as being a part of the record. When that didn’t work he revealed that the only way The Clipse would be able to recoup their artistic freedom from Def Jam Records was if they came out of pocket and paid the label a Galactus- sized grip for their walking papers.
Per Billboard:
I went to them and I said, “Let us put the song out somewhere else since you guys have an issue with it. You guys won’t have to stand behind whatever complications come from it. We’ll put the song out somewhere else, and we’ll license it back to you guys when the album comes out.” Their response was, “How about you just find somewhere else to put out Clipse? Just pay something to us and put it out somewhere else.”
So they said, “Find another deal, and let’s figure out a business.” They didn’t drop us. They were like, “Pay us this money” — which was an exorbitant amount of money, a s—t ton of money — “and we’ll let you out the deal.” That’s what happened. We paid them the money, an insane amount of money. It wasn’t, like, $200,000. It was a lot of money for an artist to come up with. They bought themselves out of the deal.
Ultimately, The Clipse became free agents and Victor put in a call to Jay-Z to see if he’d be interested in an opportunity to have The Clipse as part of Roc Nation. And if we know anything about Jay-Z it’s that the man is all about opportunities and paper.
He hit me back right away, like,“You just made my day. Let’s figure it out. What do we need to get it done?” I went back to Pusha, and said, “Listen, Jay’s gonna give us a very artist-friendly deal, we get to own the masters, and they’ll put the marketing power of Roc Nation behind it. You guys are friends. It’s a great outcome.” We worked out the deal in less than 24 hours.
Naturally, Def Jam got a cut of the new Clipse deal as the record industry is shady, but in the end, we’ll be getting a new Clipse album and a Kendrick Lamar-featured cut in “Whips & Chains,” which freaked out Def Jam execs to the point where they were willing to shelf an entire album if they didn’t get them to remove a verse from arguably the biggest rap star in the game today.
Should be interesting.
What do y’all think about The Clipse having to buy their independence from Def Jam Records? Let us know in the comments section below.
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Like David Lee Roth’s drum riser leaps or Pete Townshend’s windmill guitar arm swing, Benson Boone‘s backflips are seemingly going to be part of his stage show until his ortho, or insurance company, say otherwise. So it was no surprise that Boone’s acrobatic signature came up not once, but twice on The Tonight Show on Wednesday (June 4).
First, in the cold open, host Jimmy Fallon met Boone backstage and bragged that he can also pull off Benson’s signature trick. “You know, I can actually do a back flip too,” Fallon said. “Yeah, I just kind of jump and turn around all the way in the air. Just kind of always had a knack for it, if that makes sense. Flippity Floppities is what I call them.”
Boone appreciated the gesture, but warned Fallon that he doesn’t have to flip out to impress him, adding that he wouldn’t want the host to hurt himself. Fallon laughed it off and promised it was “very easy” for him, as the camera cut to a stunt double hurling himself backwards into a table covered with snacks and crashing out after zero rotations.
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Later in the show, Boone said “there’s no guaranteed flips” when Fallon asked if the iconic move would be part of Boone’s upcoming arena tour. When Fallon wondered if Boone practices and plans out his flips, the singer sighed and said he didn’t, since he’s been doing the trick his whole life. “I’ve been doing them forever,” he said. “Like, if you knew me growing up and you saw a video of me now and you hadn’t seen anything else — if you went to preschool with me and then you just had not heard the name Benson Boone since them — and then you see a video of me doing a backflip, you’d probably be like, ‘He’s still doing this?’”
So, of course, at Fallon’s request, he stepped up onto the host’s desk and pulled off a perfect one to the studio audience’s delight.
The 22-year-old also singer sat on the couch and played a game where he gave one-word reactions to some of high highest highlights from his breakthrough last year. For instance: the Grammys (“whooo!” with crotch grab and a “wow, that’s tight”), Coachella (“crowd”), MTV VMAs (“it was very sparkly”), Eras tour (“whoa!”), Lollapalooza (“I still don’t think I can spell it”) and the American Music Awards (“… moonbeam ice cream…”).
He then joked about trying to gin up some buzz on the internet for “Mystical Magical,” the first single his upcoming sophomore album, American Heart (June 20) by attempting to make the confounding “moonbeam ice cream” lyric a meme. “Nobody knows [what it means], I don’t know,” he said of his hope to spark some interest in the album by teasing the intriguing phrase. “So it went downhill quick. People started doing ‘what is ‘moonbeam ice cream?’… I hate Benson Boone!’” he said, admitting that even with the hate it kind of worked out for him.
Boone returned later in the show to perform the American Heart single “Momma Song” accompanied by a string quartet, crooning the moving ballad on a sundown-colored stage with zero flips. He will play CMAC in Canadaigua, NY on Thursday night (June 5) and New York City’s Governor Ball on Friday (June 6).
Watch Boone on the Tonight Show below.
Concord Originals, the film and TV division of music company Concord, has acquired storied film studio RKO, giving the Nashville-based music company a wealth of opportunities to promote and capitalize on its publishing and recorded music catalog.
RKO is one of Hollywood’s oldest studios and produced numerous timeless films and TV productions from the ‘20s to ’50s, including King Kong, Citizen Kane, The Best Years of Our Lives, It’s a Wonderful Life, Suspicion and The Woman in the Window. Legendary industrialist Howard Hughes owned RKO for a brief stretch, buying the company in 1947 and selling it to General Rubber and Tire in 1955.
The acquisition covers derivative rights for remakes, sequels, stage productions and stories — “anything that someone with creative intent and with a little bit of sweat equity could theoretically turn into a project,” Concord CEO Bob Valentine tells Billboard. Concord’s deal for RKO gives it the opportunity “to develop new and interesting projects around that original IP,” Valentine explains. Turner Broadcasting System, now owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, acquired the distribution rights to the original RKO library in 1987.
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RKO’s library includes what Valentine calls “some of the most seminal musicals” created in the mid-20th century, many of which have not yet been adapted for live performance. Among RKO’s musicals are films starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers such as Top Hat and Swing Time. “I wouldn’t underestimate the potential for theatrical development,” he says.
RKO will continue to operate as a standalone entity within Concord Originals after the transaction. Sophia Dilley, head of Concord Originals, and current RKO president Mary Beth O’Connor will run RKO has co-presidents. RKO chairman and CEO Ted Hartley will stay on as lead producer and chief storyteller of active RKO projects.
Dilley’s six-person team will expand to nine after the acquisition. RKO’s Brian Anderson will work across both companies as director of contract, administration and distribution, according to Dilley. As part of a recent restructuring at Concord Originals, Wesley Adams was upped to vp of production and distribution, Charlie Hopkins was promoted to vp of development and Imogen Lloyd Webber was given the new role of executive vp of marketing and communications of Concord Originals and Theatricals.
“Our plan will be to grow strategically, because a lot of these film companies grow too fast, they have overhead too fast,” says Dilley. “Our mission is to be really frugal and careful about how we put this together so that it’s set up for success long term.”
Concord Originals was founded in 2021 as an outgrowth of Concord’s realization that it could be “a more direct beneficiary” of derivative works that involved the company’s music rights, says Dilley. Among the productions by Concord Originals are Stax: Soulsville USA, a Peabody Award-winning, four-part HBO documentary that was co-produced with Polygram Entertainment and Warner Music Entertainment, and Let the Canary Sing, a documentary about singer Cyndi Lauper produced with Fine Point Films and Sony Music Entertainment. Concord Originals is also working on a biopic on blues legend Robert Johnson, whose publishing catalog is represented by Concord Music Publishing.
In addition, Concord Originals has a partnership with Skydance Entertainment and Jennifer Lopez’s Nuyorican Productions to develop original projects. One such project is a limited series based on Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella. Rogers & Hammerstein’s catalog was acquired by Concord in 2017 through its purchase of Imagem Music Group.
Miley Cyrus says she knew she was going to win her first Grammy last year for “Flowers” when she saw another “MC” in the crowd. “The reason that I never got a Grammy before was because it was never my compass. It was not my North Star,” the singer told Tonight Show host Jimmy Fallon on Wednesday night’s (June 4) show.
That’s why she was so genuinely surprised when she did win, even though she almost didn’t make it because she got stuck in traffic in the rain on the way to the broadcast. “Once I saw Mariah Carey I knew I was going to win,” she said. “Because I had this whole idea in my mind of, like, the butterfly and that metamorphosis. And she is the butterfly. Her [1997] album Butterfly has been such a North Star for me. And so when I saw her I kind of knew I was going to win because that was… it was an M.C. to M.C. I knew I had to get it.”
The singer once again described how her new Something Beautiful album was almost a very different kind of project until her old pal Harrison Ford stepped in with some sage advice when they met up at the Disney Legends Awards ceremony last summer. He asked her what she was up to, so naturally Cyrus pulled out a PDF with her grand plan for Something Beautiful, which at that point included her dream tour of “magical places” for a project then called Somewhere Beautiful that would have had her playing shows in the forest or in front of the pyramids.
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“And he looked at it and goes, ‘Looks expensive… not sure if it’s worth it,’” she said, adding that she took the note to her management, who 100% agreed.
The pair talked about running into each other at the SNL 50 special earlier this year, with Cyrus, 32, admitting that she was a “little bit nervous” before the show “because everyone that I’ve ever looked up to or watched on TV or loved was there.” Cyrus performed a stunning cover of Prince’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” with Tonight Show house band the Roots and Brittany Howard on the show and she said Fallon looked “crazy” before his breathless opening musical bit.
“You got a little out of breath,” she teased him. “We’re working on that… I’m getting you snatched for the summer.”
Part of that work included Miley teaching Jimmy how to dance in stacked heels after he praised her for a video in which she rehearsed the choreo for her song “Easy Lover” in what he said were the highest heels he’s ever seen. “If I were rehearsing this show… I’m in sweatpants,” he said, as Miley warned, “Not once I get you that summer body.”
Admitting he needs help to get that beach ready, Miley busted out a little treat she brought for the host: a pair of black chunky boots with four-inch heels. “Stage one: a chunky booty,” she said as she presented the shoes. “Which by the way, is your new drag name. Here you go, Miss Booty.”
Fallon was game, so he slipped on the boots and came out from behind the desk to learn the steps to the “Easy Lover” dance, teetering on the heels and getting a lesson on why you need to rehearse in the shoes you’re going to perform in.
The companion Something Beautiful film will be in theaters for one night only on June 12.
Watch Cyrus on The Tonight Show below.