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02 Jun 2025

Reneé Rapp Encourages Her Queer Fans to ‘Find Your Community’ During Political Turmoil

With Pride Month 2025 coming amid dark times for the LGBTQ+ community, pop singer Reneé Rapp wants her fans to know there is still light in the dark — they just have to go looking for it.

In a new cover story for Cosmopolitan on Monday (June 2), the “Leave Me Alone” singer shared a message for her LGBTQ+ fans who are struggling with the onslaught of anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric emanating from the Trump administration. “Find your community. Whether that community is online and thousands of miles away from you or two towns over or in someone who really lifts you up beyond a way you could do for yourself,” she said. “Your community will do the best it can to keep you safe. This extends so much further past gay and trans people.”

Explaining further, Rapp told her fans to look for the people in their lives who can help support them, citing her own experiences with her chosen family as an example. “Rely on people around you who are maybe more comfortable or less at risk than you are,” she said. “We kind of have a pact among certain friends of mine that’s like, ‘I can take a way bigger blow than you can. Let me do that s–t.’ I’m not going to let my friend who exists in a trans body go out and put themselves at risk because they immediately have a way bigger target on their back.”

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Since taking office for his second term in January, President Donald Trump has taken aim at the LGBTQ+ community numerous times. Through a series of executive actions, Trump attempted to restrict the legal definitions of “man” and “woman,” ban trans people from the military, bar healthcare providers from administering gender-affirming care and instructed federal agencies to remove words such as “queer” and “transgender” from official government websites, among other things.

With such an unprecedented wave of animosity toward the LGBTQ+ community from the government, Rapp said it is vitally important for queer people to find the care they need from other sources. “There is such a dire need for protection, and the government is not going to give that to you,” she explained. “No one here is going to give that to you but the people you can trust.”

Rapp is currently preparing to release her sophomore album, Bite Me, on Aug. 1 via Interscope Records. The singer shared the project’s lead single, the rebellious “Leave Me Alone,” back in May, before giving the track its live debut during the 2025 American Music Awards.

02 Jun 2025

Roots Picnic 2025 Faced the Storm: Here Are the 7 Moments That Shined Through

Despite weather-related chaos, the annual Philly festival delivered unforgettable performances and cultural moments.

Latto

Latto

Christopher Claxton

Roots Picnic 2025 brought tens of thousands of hip-hop and R&B lovers to Philadelphia’s Fairmount Park for a two-day celebration of music and culture. Held at the Mann Center, this year’s festival boasted a star-studded lineup featuring hometown hero Meek Mill, the legendary Lenny Kravitz, neo-soul icon Maxwell, GloRilla, Miguel and Tems. From longtime Roots Picnic attendees to first-time festivalgoers, fans came ready to celebrate Black music and community in one of the city’s most iconic outdoor venues.

But what started as a promising weekend quickly turned into a test of patience for many attendees. Originally slated to open at 1:00 p.m. on May 31, the festival was delayed due to heavy storms in the area. Doors didn’t open until around 3:30 p.m., and because of the sheer volume of attendees, some guests didn’t make it inside until nearly 7 p.m. — missing entire sets in the process. Organizers extended the hours to squeeze in every act, but set times remained a mystery. Fans were left in the dark, forced to make tough decisions: Do you wait at one stage hoping your favorite artist shows up, or move and risk missing them altogether?

I personally waited nearly two hours for Latto to perform — time I could’ve spent watching Miguel or Tems — if only there had been clearer communication. Day two saw smoother entry, but the disorganized schedule continued to cause confusion. Still, through muddy conditions, long lines, and plenty of frustration, the energy never dipped.

Shoutout to Questlove, because the Roots Picnic made it clear that even when things don’t go as planned, the show must go on. Here are Billboard’s picks for the seven best moments from the 2025 fest.

02 Jun 2025

Aya Uchida on iMarine Project++: A Creation Evolving Beyond the World of Anime & Video

The iMarine Project, a media mix content project by SANYO, is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. It has recently kicked off a new chapter with “iMarine Project++” (read: “iMarine Project Plus”). Billboard JAPAN spoke with Aya Uchida, voice actress for iMarine, about what progress she feels the project has made over the past decade and her hopes for its future.

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The iMarine Project was launched in 2015, and then in 2020, Sanyo began iMarine Project (New Chapter). Now, in 2025, it is about to enter a new stage of its evolution, iMarine Project++. Looking back, what has your impression been of the past ten years?

The iMarine Project itself is celebrating its 10th anniversary, but I became a part of it with its third release, “Dive to Blue,” which was a full-length animated music video. It emphasized the concept that “iMarine is in your town, too,” which may be why I was chosen as the voice actress.

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From that point on, each year I’ve worked with a different creator, and the videos and aesthetic have kept on changing. The fourth release was an animated music video with characters from Umi Monogatari, who had their own lines, so it felt like the style had changed to one that was showing the world of Umi Monogatari through animation and lyrics.

“Deep Blue Town e Oide yo,” right? That was arranged like a story, starting out with an anime segment, then segueing into the song, and then ending with another anime segment.

Right. In the fifth release, we went with a more stylish, adult diva style. I feel like at that point the anime elements were completely gone, and the project had become more of a song-centered project.

Then 2020 saw the start of iMarine Project (New Chapter), whose concept was a “2.8-dimensional” idol.

This is where the story suddenly started getting much deeper. We were taking on a new challenge—expressing a story, a world, a scene, all through music.

There’s an online novel, and the Crystal Palace setting was reproduced in VRChat. It’s gone beyond just being a “media mix” to become a work that fuses all kinds of elements of all kinds of dimensions. The iMarine Project++ is the culmination of all that’s been done by the cast and directors to expand this one work.

Over the last five years, the project has fleshed out and defined the world and its aesthetics based on the story. This five year period has been a series of experiments, right?

The project is a media mix that combines not only physical spaces but also digital spaces, so every challenge has been a new one. This was also all being done while VTuber culture was growing, and it was so much fun being on the cutting-edge of the changing times.

As a performer, has the fusion of the digital and physical worlds made the project a difficult one?

Yes, a bit. As a voice actress, I’ve done a lot of work in the physical world, and I’m confident in that area, but when it comes to the digital world, I’m still feeling things out as I go along. For example, popular VTubers have their own defined characters, but they also speak really freely. [Laughs]

In the case of iMarine, the character is defined in a novel, so if I say the wrong thing, it could break that in-world feel. Like, if I wanted to say “I had some ramen today,” before I could even open my mouth, I’d start thinking “Wait, ramen might not exist in that world.” There’s a part of me that’s always operating with that actor’s mindset. [Laughs]

So because of the detailed setting, you’re in a different position than VTubers, who can act without thinking that deeply.

Yes, but lately, the way I’ve been thinking about it has started to change a little. There are things that Saeki has said as Ichika at VR events that just naturally became part of her character. For example, she said “I’m a big eater.” [Laughs] This thing she’d said became part of her virtual character, and when I realized that, I came to feel like I could speak more freely. The world and the aesthetic of the iMarine Project story is well-defined, but, surprisingly, the details about the characters themselves are a little vague. I think going forward, we’re going to be fleshing out the world of iMarine Project++ along with the members of the recently announced fan club, Musical Armored Division of Freedom.

In the new song, “M.A.D.,” which was recently debuted on-stage, you’ve taken on a new genre: hip-hop.

Idols have been performing some really cool hip-hop recently. I’m a big listener in my own personal life, so I was really happy that iMarine would finally take on the genre.

I think the presence of iMarine Project’s works goes beyond the bounds of anime and videos, so I’ve had this intense desire to perform using a really cool voice on a song that I felt really confident in.

So you feel like the quality of the music needs to be elevated beyond so-called “character songs” to better music-as-music. And also that the meanings of the songs are growing deeper as the story progresses.

This time, the music is going in a whole different direction. It’s darker, with more of a street vibe. It has this sense of a strong spirit that’s unbowed by everyday hard existence. Like a light in the middle of despair. I like that really down-to-earth feel in music.

In a strange way, even though the project is set in this digital world, the feeling of humanity really comes across. There’s this rebellious spirit in the face of daily struggles. It’s more human than human.

Exactly. The setting of the story is that iMarine and Ichika are both AIs, and the other members were originally humans, but they became AIs.

So I’m not human, but for precisely that reason, when I sing, it feels like in some way I’m almost being my natural self, the way I am now. I can express the passion in my heart. I love it, and in fact that may be the part that feels the most rewarding.

Everyone on the cast was overflowing with praise for a dance performance by one of the characters in the music video. I’m guessing that part made a big impression on you, too?

You’re talking about Isana’s breakdancing, aren’t you. [Laughs] I’ve done motion capture for characters on two songs before, and it really opened my eyes to how impressive and how hard motion capture is. That breakdancing was performed by using motion capture on an actual dancer. The level of technical skill needed to capture that kind of frenetic movement was just amazing! [Laughs]

There’s also the crowd of people wearing hoods. I liked how the concept of “we’re not alone” was highlighted through the whole video. Until now, we’ve been having people look at the world we created, but going forward, we’re going to make it so that people can get immersed from the perspective of the Musical Armored Division of Freedom.

This project is right on the bleeding edge, but it’s amazing how the end results always come out great. I’ve got to keep working hard to keep up so I don’t fall behind.

—This interview by Mio Komachi first appeared on Billboard Japan

02 Jun 2025

Major Labels in Licensing Talks With A.I. Companies Suno & Udio Amid Blockbuster Lawsuit

Universal Music, Warner Music and Sony Music are in talks with Udio and Suno to license their music to the artificial intelligence startups, Billboard has confirmed, in deals that could help settle blockbuster lawsuits over AI music.

A year after the labels filed billion-dollar copyright cases against Udio and Suno, all three majors are discussing deals in which they would collect fees and receive equity in return for allowing the startups to use music to train their AI models, according to sources with knowledge of the talks. Bloomberg first reported the news on Sunday (June 1).

If reached, such deals would help settle the litigation and establish an influential precedent for how AI companies pay artists and music companies going forward, according to the sources, who requested anonymity to discuss the talks freely.

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Such an agreement would mark an abrupt end to a dispute that each side has framed as an existential clash over the future of music. The labels say the startups have stolen music on an “unimaginable scale” to build their models and are “trampling the rights of copyright owners”; Suno and Udio argue back that the music giants are abusing intellectual property to crush upstart competition from firms they see as a “threat to their market share.”

Settlement talks are a common and continuous feature of almost any litigation and do not necessarily indicate that any kind of deal is imminent. It’s unclear how advanced such negotiations are, or what exactly each side would be getting. And striking an actual deal will require sorting out many complex and novel issues relating to brand-new technologies and business models.

Reps for all three majors declined to comment. Suno and Udio did not immediately return requests for comment. A rep for the RIAA, which helped coordinate the lawsuits, declined to comment.

If Suno and Udio do grant equity to the majors in an eventual settlement, it will call to mind the deals struck by Spotify in the late 2000s, in which the upstart technology company gave the music industry a partial ownership stake in return for business-critical content. Those deals turned out to be massively lucrative for the labels and helped Spotify grow into a streaming behemoth.

The cases against Udio and Suno are two of many lawsuits filed against AI firms by book authors, visual artists, newspaper publishers and other creative industries, who have argued AI companies are violating copyrights on a massive scale by using copyrighted works to train their models. AI firms argue that it’s legal fair use, transforming all those old works into “outputs” that are entirely new.

That trillion-dollar question remains unanswered in the courts, where many of the lawsuits, including those against Suno and Udio, are still in the earliest stages. But last month, the U.S. Copyright Office came out against the AI firms, releasing a report that said training was likely not fair use.

“Making commercial use of vast troves of copyrighted works to produce expressive content that competes with them in existing markets, especially where this is accomplished through illegal access, goes beyond established fair use boundaries,” the office wrote in the report.

Even with the legal landscape unsettled, some content companies have struck deals with AI firms. Just last week, the New York Times — which is actively litigating one of the copyright cases — struck a deal to license its editorial content to Amazon for AI training. Last fall, Microsoft signed a deal with HarperCollins to use the book publisher’s nonfiction works for AI model training.

Music companies have not struck any such sweeping deals, and instead have preferred more limited partnerships with tech companies for “ethical” AI tools. UMG signed a deal last summer with SoundLabs for an AI-powered voice tool for artists and another one in November with an AI music company called KLAY. Sony made an early-stage investment in March in a licensed AI platform called Vermillio.

02 Jun 2025

Suspect Detained In Colorado Terror Attack Injuring 8

8 people injured in 'targeted act of violence' in US state of Colorado
Source: Anadolu / Getty

On Sunday (June 1), a weekly walk held by members of the Jewish community in Boulder, Colorado, to support Israeli hostages held in Gaza was disrupted when a man allegedly threw a Molotov cocktail into the crowd and used a makeshift flamethrower, according to the FBI. Eight people, ranging in age from 52 to 88, were injured in the attack with two in serious condition being airlifted to a hospital in Aurora. One of the injured is a Holocaust survivor.

“This wasn’t a pro-Israel rally or some sort of political statement on the war,” said Executive Director of the University of Boulder Hillel, Elyanna Funk. “These are peaceful people who’ve been walking for nearly 20 months weekly to bring awareness for the hostages.”

The suspect, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, was pointed out by witnesses at the scene. According to a store owner who spoke to CNN, Soliman was seen as “pretty calm, pacing around with the spray bottles that were filled with some sort of flammable liquid.” Other witnesses allege that he yelled “Free Palestine!!” before using the incendiary devices at the “Run For Their Lives” event. Soliman, 45, was arrested on two counts of first-degree assault and crimes against at-risk adults or elderly people. He’s currently being held in the Boulder County Jail on a $10 million bond.

The FBI reportedly searched a home in an apartment complex in Colorado Springs with ties to Soliman, who neighbors said drove an Uber in Denver and wasn’t around that much according to local network KKTV 11 News. Neighbors expressed shock at the news. According to Department of Homeland Security, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, Soliman was in the United States illegally. In a post on X, formerly Twitter, McLaughlin wrote,” He entered the country in August 2022 on a B2 visa that expired on February 2023. He filed for asylum in September 2022.”

The incident comes after the shooting death of two Israeli embassy employees at an event held by the American Jewish Committee in Washington, D.C. The AJC is an advocacy group which supports Israel and combats antisemitism. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer described the attack as “horrifying” in a statement, and Colorado governor Jared Polls said in a statement, “My thoughts go out to the people who have been injured and impacted by this heinous act of terror. Hate-filled acts of any kind are unacceptable.”

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02 Jun 2025

CMA Fest Calendar of Concert Showcases, Events in Nashville

CMA Fest will officially launch June 5-8 in Downtown Nashville, with tens of thousands of fans expected to participate in nightly stadium concerts, plus hundreds of daytime performances at smaller venues.

They’re also afforded the opportunity to collect autographs at Fan Fair X in the Music City Center. 

On top of the official activities, a host of CMA Fest-adjunct events will take place beginning June 2. The following is a rundown of many of those events. (Advance confirmation may be required.)

June 2

• Darius & Friends Show
Ryman Auditorium
Darius Rucker’s annual concert featuring a surprise guest list.

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• Ty Herndon’s Concert for Love & Acceptance
Category 10
The 10th and final edition includes Dasha, Sam Williams, Brooke Eden, David Archuleta, Shelly Fairchild, and Lindsay Ell.

June 3

• Craig Campbell’s Celebrity Cornhole Challenge
6th & Peabody
Featuring Jerrod Niemann and Gary LeVox.

• Whiskey Jam Takeover by River House
Whiskey Row
Performers: Austin Snell, Ryan Charles, The Kentucky Gentlemen.

June 4

• CAA Whiskey Jam Takeover
Whiskey Row
Featuring Warren Zeiders, 49 Winchester, Colby Cooper, and Carter Faith.

• Turn It Up! Texas Daytime Performances
Category 10
Featuring Smithfield, Jenna Paulette, and Jack Blocker.

June 5

• Warner Music Nashville’s Heatwave House
Barstool
Performers: Gabby Barrett, Ingrid Andress, Ian Munsick, Hudson Westbrook.

• FEMcountry Showcase by Leslie Fram
City Winery
Featuring Brittney Spencer, Lucie Silvas, Abbey Cone, and more.

• Billboard Country Live (June 5–6)
Category 10
Featuring Drew Baldridge, Max McNown, Reyna Roberts.

• Big Machine Pop-Up (June 5–7)
Bell Bottoms Up
Artists include Greylan James, Caroline Jones, Brett Young, and Midland.

• Spotify House at Ole Red (June 5–7)
Featuring Carly Pearce, Riley Green, Nate Smith, and others.

• BMI Block Party (June 5–7)
Outdoor stage at Ryman Auditorium
Performers: Kelsey Hart, Noah Rinker, Grace Tyler, Tyler Braden.

• Sounds Like Nashville by MCA (June 5–8)
Skydeck on Broadway
Featuring Tucker Wetmore, Vincent Mason, Crowe Boys, Caylee Hammack, Bryce Leatherwood, Sons of Habit.

June 6

• ASCAP Showcase
6th & Peabody
Featuring Jordan Fletcher, Maddie Lenhart, Beck and Call.

02 Jun 2025

Cynthia Erivo Reveals How She Approached Elphaba Differently in ‘Wicked: For Good’: ‘She’s Delicious’

After her massive breakthrough as Elphaba in 2024’s Wicked, Cynthia Erivo is giving fans a taste of what’s to come in the film’s final chapter this fall.

In her Billboard cover story published Monday (June 2), Erivo teases what fans can expect from her green-skinned heroine in Wicked: For Good, the much-anticipated second part of the film due out this November. “Elphaba in act one, or film one, it’s head and heart … Elphaba in act two is head, sacral,” Erivo tells Billboard Pride editor Stephen Daw, explaining her use of chakras to differentiate Elphaba’s transformation across the two films. “It’s grounded. It’s really earthy, feet-on-the-ground. She’s able to access her rage more.”

That change in her gravity-defying character also meant Erivo had to take a different approach to portraying her while filming. “The scent I wore changed. The makeup changed,” she explains. “Little shifts that bring you to a more mature version of who Elphaba becomes. And she is delicious in this next one.”

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The upcoming film will look to replicate the breakout success of its predecessor, which went on to become the highest grossing film adaptation of a musical, earned 10 Oscar nominations (including a best actress nom for Erivo) and scored a No. 2 debut on the Billboard 200 with its soundtrack. “The cast was like, ‘Oh, so it’s just in the ether now? People are just listening to it on their way to work at this point?’” Erivo says of the soundtrack’s success in particular. “It’s really wonderful.”

The interview comes just ahead of the release of Erivo’s sophomore LP, I Forgive You (out Friday, June 6 via Verve and Republic Records), which sees the singer exploring uncharted new territory as a performer. As she tells to Billboard, her Wicked co-star Ariana Grande helped connect her with Republic Records’ chairwoman and chief creative officer Wendy Goldstein to help make her LP shine.

“Wendy is a very singular human being who just gets it,” she says of meeting Goldstein. “It was the first time that everything became really clear. To have someone who understands who you are as a musician and a singer and an artist was just a new experience within this space for me as an artist.”

See Erivo on the cover of Billboard and a clip from her interview below:

02 Jun 2025

Peep The Teaser Trailer To The 5th & Final Season Of ‘Stranger Things’

Stranger Things
Source: Netflix / Netflix

It’s been three years since the fourth season of Stranger Things left fans wondering what we could expect from the supernatural saga, and now we’ve gotten an idea of what’s to come as Netflix has finally released their first teaser trailer for the fifth and final season of their franchise series.

Though details about the fifth and final season remain scarce, it looks like the monsters of the Upside Down will be making their way to our reality as our heroes attempt to keep them at bay with what we expect to be many casualties. Our only question is whether or not Eleven’s other super-enhanced friends like Kali (Eight) and the others will finally return to the series or if they’ll just be completely ignored following their appearance in Season 2. We sure hope to see them come back and help Eleven and them save the day.

Releasing in three volumes, the final season of Stranger Things we be premiering Nov. 26, followed by a second installment Dec. 1 and the finale on New Year’s Eve. Netflix is really stretching this one out. It better be worth it.

Check out the teaser trailer to the fifth season of Stranger Things, and let us know what you want to see in the final season in the comments section below.

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02 Jun 2025

How Taylor Swift’s Masters Battle Changed the Narrative Around Ownership for Artists

Four years before Taylor Swift began her crusade to re-record new versions of her early albums so she could own the valuable master recordings, Bowling for Soup did the same. The pop-punk band put out Songs People Actually Liked — Volume 1, note-for-note copies of early quasi-hits such as “Girl All the Bad Guys Want” and “Punk Rock 101,” and justified it by telling fans they were more mature, better musicians and sought to “add some luster” to the originals.

The band conspicuously did not say the 2015 project’s main purpose was to secure the rights to those songs, boost streaming royalties and be able to license them to movies, ads and TV shows. At the time, that seemed crass. “We had to be very careful about never making our audience feel like we were taking advantage of them,” says Jaret Reddick, the band’s frontman, by phone from a Disney cruise with his family in Juneau, Alaska. “Shortly after that, Taylor Swift literally educates the entire music population on song ownership. She made it OK for all of us to re-record our stuff and everybody will back us. It was such a blessing.”

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Swift announced Friday (May 30) that she purchased the master recordings to her first six albums, from 2006’s Taylor Swift to 2017’s Reputation, from investment firm Shamrock Capital, for an undisclosed price. The sale was the end of a six-year crusade, after music mogul Scooter Braun bought the Nashville record company, Big Machine Label Group, which had released Swift’s original recordings. Angered that control of her catalog went to Braun, who’d worked with her enemy Kanye West, Swift tried and failed to buy back the recordings from Braun, then Shamrock, which bought them from Braun for what sources say was around $360 million.

Swift’s strategy — re-recording all six of those albums with most of the original musicians as “Taylor’s Versions,” convincing top radio stations to air them and streaming services to emphasize them in playlists while promoting them on her massive tours — has been influential, directly or indirectly, on other artists. It has also led to major labels overhauling their contracts to avoid anybody else replicating “Taylor’s Versions.” In part because Swift’s re-recordings have muted sales, streaming and licensing for the originals, all three major labels have recently overhauled their contracts to force artists to wait 10, 15 or even 30 years to re-record after departing their labels. “You try to put the shortest re-recording restriction you can get in the record contract — it used to be five years after release, but now I’ve found they’ve extended it to 10 years,” says Ben McLane, another music attorney.

Nonetheless, artists in the post-“Taylor’s Versions” age persist in following Swift’s lead: Pop-punk band Cartel recently announced it would release a re-recording of its 2005 album Chroma this September. “Artists are re-recording their masters more frequently than they were,” says Josh Karp, a lawyer who represents Cartel and other artists. “Part of that is definitely that Taylor shined a big bright light on it and showed it could be done successfully.”

Long before Swift, Frank Sinatra, Little Richard, Chuck Berry and many others re-recorded their hits to claim financial control, and the process still happens today, with or without Swift’s influence. Switchfoot put out a new version of its 2003 breakthrough The Beautiful Letdown 20 years later; TLC, Wheatus and Paris Hilton have done the same in recent years; and Ashanti announced in 2022 that Swift inspired her to begin a similar project. “It’s also a technological issue,” Karp says. “It’s simply easier to record now than it was 10, 20, 30 years ago.”

Swift’s crusade, according to Gandhar Savur, a music attorney, has helped young artists better understand the benefits of signing label licensing deals rather than ownership deals. In the former, artists retain control of their recordings, although they’re unlikely to get an advance payment from a label to fund an expensive recording project; in the latter, the label pays out that advance money in exchange for ownership of the recordings for as long as several decades. “Historically, artists have said, ‘Don’t give away your publishing,’ and that message has gotten across. Now I feel like artists are starting to feel that way about their recordings as well,” Savur says. “Part of that is a result of big stories and big headlines and Taylor Swift and whoever else talking about the importance of owning their recordings.”

After Wheatus finished re-recording its 1999 alt-rock hit “Teenage Dirtbag” in April 2020, and it went viral on TikTok and Instagram during the pandemic lockdown, the new master generated nearly $25,000 for singer-songwriter Brendan Brown, according to Billboard estimates in 2023. Although Swift did not inspire the new version — that would have been original label Sony Music’s losing the master recordings, according to Brown — the singer-songwriter has praised Swift for raising the issue. “I would love to see the contract,” Brown said by phone from a tour bus en route to New Jersey after Swift’s announcement Friday. “But generally the answer is, ‘Yeah. Nice job. Get ’em.’”

02 Jun 2025

Megyn Kelly Slams Beyoncé for ‘Playing Victim’ by Using Footage of Her in Cowboy Carter Tour Visuals

Whether she likes it or not, Megyn Kelly is a part of Beyoncé‘s Cowboy Carter Tour — but that’s not stopping the political commentator from slamming the superstar for including footage of her in the trek’s visuals.

In a recent clip from The Megyn Kelly Show titled “Beyonce Tries Playing Victim,” Kelly said it had recently come to her attention that “Beyoncé, who’s on some world tour right now reinventing herself as a country star, is running videotape during the show of yours truly.”

“Here is another one of the most privileged, beloved women in the world — and richest, based on her own fortune, never mind the man she’s married to,” the TV personality continued, referring to billionaire Roc Nation founder Jay-Z. “But [she] still has to look for the one sliver where she could play the victim and be aggrieved because big bad Megyn Kelly said something completely milquetoast about her entry into country music.”

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Billboard has reached out to Bey’s rep for comment.

Kelly’s remarks come more than a month after the Destiny’s Child alum kicked off her world tour in support of Billboard 200-topping album Cowboy Carter, which found Bey exploring her love for country music across 27 tracks, including collaborations with icons such as Willie Nelson and Dolly Parton. At a certain point in each show, a blurred-out clip of the former Fox News anchor blasting Bey for “sticking her big toe” into country music during an appearance on Australia’s Sky News plays on venue screens.

The moment in the show is representative of how many people were critical of the 35-time Grammy winner for experimenting with country music once Cowboy Carter dropped in March 2024. Many parts of the industry were unwelcoming — the album earned zero nominations at the CMA Awards and country radio did not embrace any tracks — but Bey would become the first Black woman to ever reach No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart with lead single “Texas Hold ‘Em.” Cowboy Carter also took home both album of the year and best country album at the 2025 Grammys.

But despite Bey’s success since the last time she spoke on the subject, Kelly doubled down on her early criticism of Cowboy Carter. “She and her marketing people were treating that entry [into country music] like the second coming, like it’s Jesus incarnate,” she added on on The Megyn Kelly Show. “‘All hail Queen Bey, she’s here to rescue country music,’ which was a perfectly thriving industry long before Beyoncé showed up.”

Following stints in Los Angeles, Chicago and the New York City area throughout the month of May, Bey is now gearing up to bring her Cowboy Carter trek to London for a string of shows at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium kicking off June 5. Her five-night stay at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., grossed $55.7 million with 217,000 sold, marking the biggest single-venue engagement reported to Billboard Boxscore in 2025 so far.

Kelly’s complaint about the Sky News footage isn’t the first instance of someone taking issue with the Cowboy Carter Tour visuals, however. In May, attorneys for Sphere Entertainment Co. CEO James Dolan sent Bey a cease-and-desist for using imagery of the Las Vegas Sphere in a video interlude, after which the musician cheekily superimposed the city’s Allegiant Stadium over the first venue in the visual.