News
Page: 190
Drake was in a giving mood during the second stop of his Anita Max Win Tour in Australia and New Zealand. During his set at RAC Arena in Perth, Australia, the Toronto rapper randomly spotted a couple of fans in the crowd and gifted them $20,000 apiece, as captured by Australian hip-hop Instagram account Take […]
Kanye West is coming to his wife Bianca Censori‘s defense after her see-through dress at the 2025 Grammy Awards red carpet stirred online controversy. “My wife’s first red carpet opened a whole new world. I keep staring at this photo like I was staring in admiration that night Thinking wow I am so lucky to […]
Travis Kelce might be an NFL superstar, but he’d probably argue he isn’t the only pro athlete in his relationship with Taylor Swift.
At a pre-Super Bowl press conference Thursday (Feb. 6), the Kansas City Chiefs tight end praised the “remarkable” physical and mental stamina his superstar girlfriend demonstrated for nearly two years straight on her global Eras Tour, which kicked off in March 2023 and ended in December. “To see that week in, week out, traveling from one country to the next, how excruciating it is on her body and her mind … ” Kelce said at the New Orleans junket.
“Her work ethic, what I saw on that tour last year, was pretty remarkable,” he marveled. “It was the dancers, the band, the singers, it was everybody involved, and it was an absolute machine. It was something I could admire watching and take a lot of notes from.”
The Ohio native’s comments come just three days ahead of the Chiefs’ ultimate game against the Philadelphia Eagles, which will find Kansas City attempting to make history as the first team to ever win three consecutive Super Bowls. The “Fortnight” singer is expected to attend the showdown at Caesars Superdome in NOLA.
Trending on Billboard
The venue also happens to be one where Swift stopped last year on her Eras trek — and during one of her Louisiana shows, she appeared to “bless” the stadium by doing one of Kelce’s signature dance moves and holding up three fingers to welcome a “three-peat” for her boyfriend’s team.
The New Heights podcaster was asked about the gesture in another press conference this week. “We both, we love to manifest things,” he said, smiling. “Whatever she was doing, I’m sure it helped.”
The 14-time Grammy winner has also been open in the past about the amount of training she had to do to get in shape for such a demanding tour, for which she spent more than three hours onstage each night for a total of 149 shows. “Every day I would run on the treadmill, singing the entire set list out loud,” she told Time in December 2023. “Fast for fast songs, and a jog or a fast walk for slow songs.”
She also revealed at the time that she followed a program specially designed for her by her gym focusing on strength, conditioning and weights. “Then I had three months of dance training, because I wanted to get it in my bones.”
See Kelce talk about Swift’s athleticism below.
HipHopWired Featured Video
DJ Khaled is currently preparing to release his 14th studio album, Aalam Of God, which fans can expect will be packed with features from the We The Best honcho’s high-profile friends. Drake, a frequent collaborator of DJ Khaled’s, looked to be a part of the album’s plans but it appears that things are on hold for now.
On Wednesday (Feb. 6), DJ Khaled shared a trailer to announce the coming of Aalam Of God with actor Mark Wahlberg. The trailer was framed as fans trying to take the project for themselves because of a pair of Drake features. Taking to Instagram, Drizzy shot down his appearance on Aalam Of God, writing, “Must be @drakebell,” referencing former Nickelodeon actor Drake Bell.
After that missive, Khaled took down the trailer and all signs are pointing to the OVO Sound honcho pulling the plug and no longer featuring on the project. Of course, this could all be part of the album’s rollout but the “I’m On One” rapper has been clear in recent social media posts and freestyle leaks that his circle is no longer as wide as it was before.
Do you think Drake is firing shots at DJ Khaled and pulling his features from Aalam Of God? Let us know via our social media pages or in the comments section.
[h/t @Kurrco]
—
Photo: Getty
Entertainment attorney Dina LaPolt is expanding her empire. The advocate and founder of LaPolt Law has announced the launch of LaPolt Media, which will focus on producing content that “inspires, informs and amplifies impactful voices while providing a platform for LaPolt’s unparalleled expertise and advocacy,” according to a press release.
“Launching LaPolt Media is about taking everything I’ve learned from fighting for creators, breaking down barriers, and rewriting the rules — and putting it into action in new ways,” said LaPolt in a statement. “Whether it’s a book, a podcast, or a bold idea, I want to empower people to own their story, seize their power, and make an impact.”
The company’s debut projects include LaPolt’s upcoming motivational book Street Smart: Succeeding in a Man’s World, to be released Oct. 7, and her new podcast, The Stiletto Room, which is set to launch this spring.
Trending on Billboard
LaPolt has tapped Samantha Gayle Bullock as chief media officer and executive producer of The Stiletto Room at LaPolt Media. Bullock has a background in both the music and entertainment industries encompassing IP development, artist and estate relations, content programming, global marketing and strategic media partnerships. She will oversee a team that includes The Press House, which will manage press campaigns, Crowd Surf, which will handle social media initiatives; and publishing and podcast distribution partners, all of which were handpicked by LaPolt.
Samantha Bullock
Alex Walk
“When I took Dina’s UCLA Music Business professional extension course 15 years ago — one that focused on the legal and practical aspects of the music business — I was already running my own indie rock marketing agency, but the experience was transformative,” said Bullock in a statement. “It was both a lesson in self-empowerment and a deep dive into how the entire music industry operates. To now have the opportunity to work alongside her is such a full-circle moment, and I’m thrilled to help bring her vision for LaPolt Media to life.”
Street Smart: Succeeding in a Man’s World, published by Burman Books Media, will distill decades of LaPolt’s hard-won wisdom into a playbook for navigating competitive industries. It will draw from LaPolt’s experiences building a powerhouse law firm from scratch and negotiating high-stakes deals. LaPolt will share insights on navigating negotiation, building confidence, defusing emotional triggers, sharpening instincts and turning even the toughest setbacks into stepping stones for success.
In The Stiletto Room podcast, LaPolt will sit down with “trailblazing creatives, disruptors and unapologetic originals” to discuss work, life, love, LGBTQ+ journeys, social justice and other topics. LaPolt Law describes the podcast as “combining the energy of Call Her Daddy with the insight of Mel Robbins.”
LaPolt Media is currently specific to the attorney’s projects, but the company intends to look at other projects going forward. Any additional projects will lean into advocacy.
LaPolt is celebrated for co-founding one of the nation’s most prominent songwriter advocacy groups, Songwriters of North America (SONA), which led to her work on the landmark 2018 Music Modernization Act and her efforts in championing creators’ rights. She has also worked on he Restoring Artistic Expressions (RAP) Act in the House and the Decriminalizing Artistic Expression Act, which is now law in California. She also advocated for the Ensuring Likeness Voice and Image Security (ELVIS) Act in Tennessee and is currently working on the passage of the No Fakes Act, currently pending in Congress, which would give every American a first-ever federal property right in their own voice and likeness, preventing non-consensual deep fakes.
Despite the new media venture, LaPolt maintains that her main focus will always be her law firm. “My law practice will always be my first passion and first priority,” LaPolt said, “but with the LaPolt Media team, I’m building a platform to amplify the voices and visions that deserve to be heard. No fluff, no nonsense — just unapologetic, unstoppable truth.”
A recent column published by The Hollywood Reporter criticized Chappell Roan‘s best new artist acceptance speech at the 2025 Grammys, and Halsey is coming to her fellow pop star’s defense.
In a post to Instagram Stories, Halsey called out The Hollywood Reporter for publishing a guest column headlined “Chappell Groan: The Misguided Rhetoric of an Instant Industry Insider,” in which former music industry executive Jeff Rabhan said Roan’s speech calling out music labels was “a hackneyed and plagiarized script.”
Trending on Billboard
“I hope you’re embarrassed of the absolute personal attack that you’ve ran and disguised as critical journalism,” Halsey wrote to her Instagram Stories. “This is so far beneath the standard you should uphold as a publication.”
In his column, Rabhan — who worked as an A&R executive at Atlantic and Elektra Records, and currently serves as the CEO & co-founder of edutainment platform Bored-of-Ed — claimed that Roan’s call for labels to give artists improved healthcare benefits and a living wage was coming from “an artist basking in industry love while broadcasting naïveté and taking aim at the very machine that got her there.”
He continued, adding that “if labels are responsible for artists’ wages, health care and overall well-being, where does it end and personal responsibility begin? Should Chris Blackwell put a mint on her pillow and tuck her in at night, too? There is no moral or ethical obligation by any standard that hold labels responsible for the allocation of additional funds beyond advances and royalties.”
The “Ego” singer ripped into Rabhan’s “ranting, seething tantrum,” as they called it, claiming the former executive’s argument was “loaded with assumptions and accusations that generalize the experience of every artist to that of the most successful.” She pointed out that advances offered by labels only cover “affording survival” considering that making an album for a label “precludes [artists] from working a day job.”
“It’s a game of investment but the investment is towards producing the materials, the person *the ORGANIC MATERIAL* that is producing that product needs access to things like health care. Shocking, I know,” she wrote. “If you want to profit off of someone else’s art; that artist should have the basic living means to feel safe enough to create that art.”
In concluding the post, Halsey also pointed out that Roan is not an “instant industry insider,” as Rabhan claimed, but instead someone who has been working for over a decade to get to the position she currently occupies. “To compare the payoff of her actions to those of an industry titan with the power and financial leverage of Taylor Swift, when Chappell hasn’t even spun the block enough times to see the residuals of her long earned but sudden success, is irresponsible for someone with your experience in this industry,” she wrote. “Shame on you. Boot licking behavior.”
The speech in question saw Roan call out major labels for not providing adequate benefits to their signed artists, citing her own experience after being dropped from Atlantic in 2020. “It was so devastating to feel so committed to my art and to feel so betrayed by the system and to be so dehumanized to not have healthcare. If my label would have prioritized artists’ health, I could have been provided care by a company I was giving everything to,” she said.
Billboard and The Hollywood Reporter are both owned by PMC.
Seven-time Grammy winner and Academy Award-winning artist Jon Batiste has signed with UTA for representation in all areas, the agency announced Thursday (Feb. 5) Batiste is also a composer and performer who has built a career spanning multiple genres and disciplines.
This Sunday (Feb. 9), Batiste is set to perform the national anthem at the 2025 Super Bowl in his hometown of New Orleans.
Batiste’s latest studio album Beethoven Blues, released in November via Verve Records/Interscope, blends Beethoven’s compositions with Batiste’s own approach to the piano. The album debuted at No. 1 on Billboard’s Classical Albums chart and held the top spot for five weeks. It also reached the top of the Classical Crossover Albums chart where it sat at the peak for 10 weeks.
Trending on Billboard
Batiste has earned seven top 10s on the Jazz Albums chart, including a No. 1 with 2014’s Social Music and 2018’s Hollywood Africans, which peaked at No. 2 and spent over six months on the chart. He’s also had three top 10s on the Adult Alternative Airplay chart, with 2021’s “I Need You” reaching No. 2. His song catalog (for tracks on which he is the lead performer) has registered 284.5 million official on-demand U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
Batiste received 11 Grammy nominations in 2022, eight for his album We Are and three for his music to the Pixar movie Soul. He is one of only five artists in Grammy history to receive 11 or more nominations in one year. His nominations were spread across six genre fields in addition to the General Field.
Batiste was the subject of Matthew Heineman’s 2023 documentary American Symphony, released on Netflix in partnership with production company Higher Ground. Batiste and Grammy winner Dan Wilson penned the emotional song “It Never Went Away” for the film, which earned an Oscar nomination for best original song in 2024. American Symphony also won best music film at this year’s Grammys, while a track featured in the film, “It Never Went Away,” won best song written for visual media.
A Juilliard graduate, Batiste served as the bandleader and musical director of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert from 2015 to 2022. His early Grammy recognition included a nomination for best American roots performance in 2018 for his rendition of “Saint James Infirmary Blues” and two nominations in 2020 for Chronology of a Dream: Live at the Village Vanguard and Meditations (with Cory Wong). In 2021, he won the Academy Award for best original score for Disney/Pixar’s Soul alongside Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. In 2024, he also composed the score for Jason Reitman’s film Saturday Night live on-set during filming.
Batiste additionally runs his own company with an executive team led by Jonathan Azu, Dan Shulman, Ryan Lynn and ID PR.
Cindy Mabe, Universal Music Group Nashville’s chair/CEO, has left the company, Billboard has confirmed.
Mabe, whose reign lasted almost two years, was the successor to Mike Dungan, who retired in March 2023. Mabe became the first woman to lead a Nashville major label group. Country Aircheck first broke the news.
Mabe, who was 2019 Billboard’s Country Power Player executive of the year, had come out of the gate with ambitious plans that greatly broadened the scope of UMG Nashville’s remit, including an alliance with Cirque du Soleil, signing a number of acts that she introduced during a “Revival” that were left-of-center of mainstream country, launching a TV/film production company and, last month, reviving Lost Highway Records with T Bone Burnett.
The label is home to such acts as Chris Stapleton, Eric Church, Luke Bryan, George Strait, Carrie Underwood, Mickey Guyton, Little Big Town and The War and Treaty. Among its more recent successes were upstart Tucker Wetmore, who reached No. 2 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart last year with “Wind Up Missin’ You,” and Ringo Starr, whose country album is the first release from Lost Highway/UMGN and debuted at No. 27 on Top Country Albums.
Trending on Billboard
In a January interview with Billboard about restarting Lost Highway, Mabe stressed focusing on artistry and lamented the loss of art in music as analytics have played a bigger role. “T Bone and I keep talking about the reason that we’re going to win is we’re going to put quality art back into the marketplace,” Mabe said. “It’s just missing. I’m not saying that there’s not some quality art out there, but it’s not always the goal. You don’t get artist development just by spinning the wheel and seeing how many ‘likes’ are out there. You actually have to make people feel something.”
Upon Mabe’s ascension from UMG Nashville president, she quickly made staffing changes, including the departures of the head of promotion, Royce Risser, and two heads of A&R, Brian Wright and Stephanie Wright, while bringing in Chelsea Blythe as executive vp of A&R. Blythe had been best known for her work with hip-hop artists at Def Jam, Columbia and Interscope. More recently, executive vp/COO Mike Harris left UMG Nashville in September.
UMG Nashville and UMG representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
From the lounge staple “Volare” to the hip-hop smash “Not Like Us,” here are all the hits that won both of these top prizes.
Timothée Chalamet makes his Billboard album chart debut as the soundtrack to the Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown, in which Chalamet stars as Dylan, arrives across four charts (dated Feb. 8). The set launches on Soundtracks (No. 17), Indie Store Album Sales (No. 23), Top Current Album Sales (No. 29) and Top Album Sales […]