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Electronic music and psychology may technically be two different career paths, but Jessica Audiffred understands as well as anyone that they’re essentially the same job.
The Mexican producer has both a psychology degree and a long list of accomplishments as a bass DJ and producer. She earned the degree years ago after her dad, incredulous that playing clubs and festivals could ever be a lucrative career, insisted she go to college. But music remained her passion, with the work — and her progressively higher-profile gigs, which include her Ultra Music Festival debut this weekend in Miami — providing ample opportunity to observe and affect human behavior.
‘Playing songs in front of thousands and thousands of people is like therapy in a way,” Audiffred tells Billboard over Zoom from her native Mexico City. “You’re dictating a crowd’s mood for the entire set. If they cry, if they scream of joy, if they sing out loud, it’s up to you.”
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This kind of behavioral control is especially potent given that Audiffred has long made bass music, one of the most visceral, physical realms of the electronic music spectrum. Her entry into this world was a straight line from her adolescent love of nu-metal to a passion for music by producers including Flux Pavilion, Excision, Doctor P and Caspa and labels like Circus Records, all arbiters of the some of the hardest, wildest sounds in dubstep and electronic music at large. Her explorations of the sound initially happened entirely online, as there was no bass music scene to speak of in Mexico when she started DJing and producing the music more than ten years ago.
“At that time there was no one doing dubstep or bass” she says. “When I started DJing, I think people were like, ‘What is this? Why is she not playing techno? Why is she not playing house?’” But being different also gave her a competitive edge: “It was like being in the spotlight in a way, because there wasn’t a lot of hard music, and especially not a lot of girls playing that type of hard music.”
As her sets expanded out of her living room and into actual clubs, she also created her own label, A Records, in 2015, using it as a platform for her own tough as nails productions and similar work by other artists. When her hero Flux Pavilion mentioned her in a 2016 list of global artists to watch, the nod led to Audiffred releasing music on Flux’s Circus Records, with momentum picking up even more when a friend encouraged her to audition for a gig that would push her further into the international spotlight.
“I was just graduating from my psychology [courses]. I had nothing to lose, so I did the casting and I got the job,” she recalls of becoming the official national DJ for HP Computers and Beats Audio, a gig that opened up her world. “They took me to Miami, they took me to Boston and to all of these gigs. I’d never even really left Mexico.”
The job also gained her the attention of Excision, who invited Audiffred to remix a track of his and play it alongside him at his annual Bass Canyon festival, with the 2019 show marking her third set in the U.S. “I’ll never forget that moment,” she says. “I played it, and he heard it for the very first time and hugged me as the fireworks were going off. It was like, “Oh my god, what the f–k?”
This literal firepower gave her the juice to further expand her footprint in Mexico, where she started her own festival, Mad House, three years ago, creating the local scene she once longed for. “When I was starting I had nothing, just YouTube and my friends in our living rooms,” she says. “I’m really happy to say that after Mad House started, a lot of promoters came to do more bass music in Mexico.”
Jessica Audiffred
Courtesy of The Shalizi Group
She says Insomniac Events and its Bassrush brand have been particularly supportive, putting her on their stages and helping her grow a career and business that now includes a pair of managers and representation at WME. Her U.S shows are continually getting bigger, and this Sunday (March 31) Audiffred will perform one of her biggest to date when she plays a b2b with Virginia-born bass producer Alleycvt at Ultra in Miami. In a fitting full circle moment, the pair come onstage after a b2b by Flux Pavilion and Doctor P.
She’s bumped into plenty sexism in her career, particularly in the extremely male-dominated world of bass, where she’s often been wrongly and ridiculously accused of using ghost producers. But as her music affects moods, so too has her success and general presence in the scene been effective in evolving minds. “When people see a girl producing these heavy-ass songs, it’s kind of stuck in their heads that she’s not making it,” she says. “In their brains, it can’t exist. It’s actually cringe that we’re in 2025 and people still think like that, but every year we have more successful females in the industry. I think we’re on a run.”
Audiffred is also evolving her sound. She’s been releasing her debut album, Rave New World, in pieces since last December, and when the full project is out, “I think that’s the last harsh dubstep you’re going to hear from me,” she says. “It’s not saying goodbye, because I’m not moving from bass, but I’m moving to a different type of like sound,” with her upcoming work focused on the adjacent genres of trap and future house. Indeed, most any psychologist would advise that healthy evolution happens with maturity, and so with Audiffred having achieved her initial dreams, she’s now aiming to make her sound a bit more mainstream, so she can start flexing on festival mainstages.
But the reason she “really loved making this album,” she continues, is “because it was an ode to the rave and it’s kind of speaking to the little Jessica sho was just dreaming about playing festivals and becoming a DJ. It’s an album for her — to let her know that we’re good, and that we did it with own vision and style.”
You can bracket phases in dearALICE’s early career by their hairstyles and outfit choices. When the British K-pop boy band – comprising Blaise Noon, Dexter Greenwood, Olly Quinn, James Sharp and Reese Carter – first appeared on screens last year as part of the BBC documentary Made in Korea: The K-Pop Experience, the members each had next to no knowledge of the dizzying world of K-pop idol training they were about to step into.
We meet the boys at the start of episode one of the series, all baggy, neutral-colored clothing and skin fades; by the end of the six-part series, they’re sporting bleached buzzcuts, curtain bangs, and gravity-defying curls, visibly more confident in themselves and their image. The stylishly shot show follows the group as the five members undergo 100 days of dance and vocal bootcamp in Seoul, South Korea, with the public given a selective peek at the rigours and rewards of this process. Viewers watch the boys, who all grew up in England, also enjoy the country’s nightlife offerings and its diverse cuisine (their moniker was chosen after visiting a restaurant in Itaewon).
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Having been selected from a nationwide casting call, the five-piece trained under a world-beating management team led by Hee Jun Yoon, a director at SM Entertainment, the agency responsible for fostering the careers of many K-pop superstars including Aespa and Red Velvet. To sign dearALICE, they partnered with Kakao Entertainment, US label Gamma and British production company Moon&Back Media with the intention of showing “how cultural diversity drives artistic evolution and creative exchanges,” as the latter’s CAO, Chris Sungsu Lee, tells Billboard U.K.
In the past, achieving fame as a K-pop star has involved years of intensive fitness programmes, with a number of managers previously coming under fire for being exploitative of talent. Such practices led to the widespread strengthening of labour protections for performers last year, according to a report from Yonhap News Agency. SM’s own website makes a subtle nod to previous critique of the industry’s methods by stating its commitment to “setting the gold standard for responsible management in the industry.”
What Made in Korea sought to do, however, was to not offer analysis into the improvements made in the sector, but rather pique the curiosity of an international audience around a model that has generated dozens of influential acts. Previously, non-Korean hopefuls have faced the training machine – BLACKPINK, for example, features members born in New Zealand and Thailand – but the series brought a British group to the forefront for the first time.
“What we’re doing has never previously been done before,” says Noon, speaking over Zoom from a south London rehearsal space. “There’s no rulebook to follow, so we’re discovering all of this ourselves. We’ve been given such a wide exposure, so that we can grasp and take in what we need to help create what dearALICE is becoming, which is a fusion of cultures.”
By taking the super-slick choreography and marketing elements from K-Pop and mashing it with early-‘00s British sounds, dearALICE are arguably creating one of the most compelling fantasy worlds in contemporary pop music. They are fortifying this approach by blowing up their respective lives in order to be the group: diving headfirst into an entirely new way of life and invigorating the boy band model by injecting each calculated move they make with a dose of genuine-seeming curiosity.
They arrive at a time where the prominence of K-pop continues to grow rapidly in the U.K. market. In July, Stray Kids will take over the 65,000-capacity Tottenham Stadium, while SM Entertainment is bringing 14 acts to Twickenham Stadium, on the other side of the British capital, for a mega show in celebration of the firm’s 30th anniversary the month prior (including dearALICE). Last year, Seventeen became the first-ever K-pop act to perform on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury.
dearALICE have quickly whipped up a fervent following of their own, having recently hosted a meet and greet event at K-lifestyle hotspot at Sokollab in central London. Fans in Atlanta have rallied together to fund electronic billboards in support of the group, while it is also garnering hundreds of thousands of followers across platforms like TikTok and WeVerse.
The question of whether a homegrown act with a major K-pop influence can cross over, and truly take root, in the notoriously discerning British mainstream is more complex. At present, country music and Stateside stars such as Sabrina Carpenter and Chappell Roan continue to rule the roost on the U.K. charts. Not that the boys are too phased by the pressures that lay ahead just yet: “We want to show the world that there is space for a different sort of boy band,” affirms Quinn.
Last month, dearALICE launched on the global stage with “Ariana,” a feisty, neon-hued number that depicts “a guy in a relationship with a girl who’s totally in love with social media,” explains Greenwood. Though their listenership does not belong to any one age group or gender, boy bands have historically loved very specifically, with songs about gently pursuing a girl. With a titular nod to a modern pop icon, “Ariana” flips this precedent, posing questions about all-consuming celebrity obsession and the omnipresence of stan culture in the online world.“The decision to debut dearALICE with this track was a strategic choice to effectively showcase the group’s identity and establish a distinctive presence in the competitive global K-pop market,” explains Sungsu Lee. Its accompanying music video sees the group “showcase their British roots proudly, echoing aesthetics that have been so successful in taking Brit music global,” adds Ben Cook, President of Gamma (UK & Europe).
Union Jack paraphernalia, expansive city vistas, the Tube: Any studious pop fan would be quick to make comparisons between the “Ariana” video and One Direction’s Up All Night era, which was characterized by images of vintage Routemasters and tonal red and white palettes. In the case of dearALICE, images of London are being used to “define them as a Western act,” says Cook, rather than emulate the one-time aesthetic of their most obvious comparison point.
There’s an element, perhaps, to dearALICE’s story about what it means to get boxed in by outside perceptions, and the tenacity needed to flourish in the face of misunderstanding. A cursory scroll through pop-adjacent Reddit forums will bring up lengthy discourse related to the lack of successful boy bands in the past decade. Recent auditions for Simon Cowell’s planned Netflix series were met with a poor turnout, while the passing of One Direction’s Liam Payne last October has brought questions around the mental health and safety of young performers into a renewed focus.
Beyond the wider cultural conversations around the future of the boy band, dearALICE and their team have chosen to reckon with taking a slow burn approach to their output. There was a six-month gap between the broadcast of Made In Korea and “Ariana” being unveiled – although the show’s OST landed in November, topping the U.K.’s Soundtrack Album Chart – leaving some fans wondering if their momentum was at risk of faltering.
Cook says that this was an intentional move, in order to break away from the typically rapid release schedule in K-pop, which can involve frequent comebacks for ‘rookie’ acts, often with new EPs or singles released every few months. “dearALICE are just starting their journey,” he says. “To make amazing music, they need to do things the right way, be true to themselves, really love what they’re doing, and be taken care of. That’s how great art is created.”
He continues: “I appreciate that in the K-pop world, people might expect a new group to follow a certain format or plan. But dearALICE are a bit different. Even though they had incredible K-pop training from the expert SM team in Seoul, they are a Western group. So, we’re helping them grow like Western artists do, which means we’re trying new things and making their own path. They love K-pop and are very influenced by the artform, but don’t purport to be a K-pop band.”
In January, dearALICE took to the stage at SMTown Live in Seoul, alongside scene-leading names including RIIZE and Hyoyeon of Girls’ Generation. Performing in front of 25,000 ticketholders, the set saw the group tightly finesse the relentless choreography it had previously struggled with in the early days of Made In Korea, offering a glimpse of the pristine pop phenomenon they are striving towards becoming in the future.
“The biggest breakthrough we’ve had was proving to ourselves that we could perform on that stage,” Quinn recalls. “It was the ultimate test for us. We felt a lot of responsibility to not mess up in front of that many people, but it really showed [the synergy] we have as a team.”For dearALICE, more new music and spontaneous fan events await in the pipeline as they continue to forge their own unique path in the pop arena. What they’ll make of their mission is an open, vastly exciting question, and it won’t have a simple answer.
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Source: Icon Sportswire / Getty
Kendrick Lamar’s haters continue to arrive. The FCC received over 100 complaints regarding K. Dot’s Super Bowl LIX Halftime performance.
As spotted on Complex, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) heard a mouthful from 125 Americans on Super Bowl Sunday. According to TMZ, the FCC received several complaints about Kendrick’s halftime performance. The feedback ranged from inappropriate language, to the dancing being too provocative, and even that the talent featured was largely African American.
A small percentage of the complaints also noted that the show promoted his beef with Drake with one person saying, “Kendrick Lamar made fake false and scandalous claims that are unfounded.” Another message read, “He [said] Drake was a pedophile on TV in front of [a] million…[people], do better, this is a sad day.” A separate objection alleged that Serena Williams’ dance routine was gang affiliated.
It should be noted that Kendrick Lamar’s halftime show was viewed live by over 130 million people during the live stream, thus the number of grievances is not even equal to one percent. Since then, the 2025 Super Bowl Halftime show has amassed an estimated 3.65 billion views, which also includes reposts on social media and user generated content.
Flashback to Oct. 19, 2024: Lil Durk was celebrating his 32nd birthday and hosted his first Birthday Bash concert a day later, taking over the United Center in Chicago, and left inspired to revamp what became his Deep Thoughts album.
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However, less than a week later, the Chitown rapper’s universe was flipped upside down when he was arrested in South Florida on federal murder for hire charges tied to a 2022 shooting allegedly targeting Quando Rondo that left another individual dead at a Los Angeles gas station.
Enter Cedrick “SB” Earsery and Kelvin Sherman, Durk’s managers, who were left picking up the pieces and tasked with delivering Deep Thoughts while having limited communication with the OTF leader behind bars in MDC Los Angeles.
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“[Lil Durk] was at a space in life where he was just ready for elevation and transitioning,” Earsery tells Billboard. “He was getting toward religion more. He got married last year on Father’s Day. He was in a new place. He had went to rehab and [was] bettering himself.”
Earsery has known Durk since he was about nine years old and was the rapper’s first manager while returning to the role close to two years ago. Sherman came into the team’s mix around the time Durk was rolling out his 2023 album, Almost Healed.
The duo worked in collaboration with in-house A&R DJ Bandz, Durk’s engineer Justin (Jusvibes) and Fred Foster on the creative direction side to execute Durk’s vision to the fullest extent for Deep Thoughts, which arrived on Friday (March 28) – about five months after the rapper’s arrest.
“Everything was with [Durk’s], blessing so we were definitely making sure he was present in all of this with phone calls,” Sherman says. “Even though we tweaked some things, the bulk of this is really Durk. We wanted to make sure it sat in the intention he went when he set out.”
What started off as the next installment of Durk’s fan-favorite Love Songs for the Streets series developed into what eventually became Deep Thoughts. Durk seemed to be intentional with every couplet while showcasing his entire artistic repertoire. The rapper’s latest includes wistful trap anthems ruminating on his trials and tribulations, as well as menacing drill tracks and more melodic songs tapping into his romantic side to cater to his female fan base — all of which were run by Durk’s legal team before heading to streaming services.
“We went into the hard drive and listened to the stuff that might fit the direction that we’re going and we pieced a masterpiece together,” SB proclaims.
I WASN’T GON PUT THIS OUT BUT THEN I REMEMBERED THE STREETS NEED THIS.NOT BEING OUTSIDE WITH Y’ALL WHEN I DROP IS HARD, BUT I KNOW I WILL FEEL Y’ALL LOVE AND ENERGY THROUGH THESE WALLSTHANK Y’ALL FOR ROCKING WITH ME THROUGH EVERYTHING. I TELL THESE STORIES SO OUR VOICE IS… pic.twitter.com/wANrqIR0xe— THE VOICE (@lildurk) March 28, 2025
Guest appearances from Future, Lil Baby, Jhené Aiko and Hunxho are sprinkled in throughout Deep Thoughts, and were all completed prior to Durk’s arrest. Sherman recalls Durk being ecstatic when Aiko’s celestial vocals came in as he bumped the duet “1,000 times” on repeat at the studio around his birthday last year.
“I feel [the] weight of responsibility because fans are gonna cook us,” Sherman adds of the pressure to nail the project. “They gonna be like, ‘It’s y’all fault! Y’all should’ve been communicating with him the best.’”
The Recording Industry Association of America quelled Sherman and SB’s worries heading into release day when the RIAA announced on Thursday (March 27) that Durk collected another 53 plaques, giving him the most certifications of any rapper in 2025 and placing him among the top 50 artists of all-time with 52.5 million units.
SB spoke with Durk a day before our interview and claims the rapper’s “mindset is good, very positive” from behind bars. “He’s happy with how things are going,” he adds.
With plenty of heat in the stash, a deluxe for Deep Thoughts is in the works. While nothing is confirmed on that front, Durk’s management team wants to keep his name alive heading into his trial, which has been pushed back to October. Durk has pleaded not guilty to all of the charges against him.
“A lot of people miss him in the marketplace,” Earsery states. “We got his career in our hands, and he’s trusting us to [tend to] that.”
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Source: Memphis PD / Memphis Police Department
According to reports, the Memphis Police Department has identified their person of interest in the shooting of rapper Sauce Walka, aka Albert Walker Mondane, and his protege, Sayso P, aka Latorian Hunt, outside of a downtown hotel last weekend. A warrant was issued for the arrest of Jayden Dandridge, 21, for the shooting. Dandrige is charged with first-degree murder, two counts of attempted first-degree murder, two counts of employment of a firearm during the commission of a dangerous felony, and auto theft.
A surveillance video captured the scene outside of the Westin Memphis Beale Street Hotel down the road from the FedEx Forum Saturday (March 22) where two gunmen emerged from a white 2021 Dodge Charger Scat Pack 392 at 2:40 p.m. before running up to Sauce Walka and Sayso P standing by a Black Escalade. Sayso P can be seen falling to the ground after gunfire rings out. Sauce Walka was injured and Sayso P succumbed to his injuries at the scene. In an interview with Houston news network KHOU 11, Sauce Walka’s father, confirmed that his son was hit in the thigh. “Had it not been for God, my son would’ve been dead,” he continued.
Memphis Police Officers would later tell reporters that the Dodge Charger was stolen. The car was found shortly after the incident. The warrant for Dandridge was announced alongside a $6,000 reward offered by the MPD for any information leading to his arrest. The incident is another unfortunate circumstance surrounding Sauce Walka. The Houston, Texas, native was connected to an incident involving a gun during a Trae Tha Truth concert in 2009. He was linked to gang activity by local police in 2018, a claim which he denied in a report by the Houston Chronicle, saying: “I know that I’m a record label, I know that I’m an artist… I’m not into gang activity or any of that stuff.”
Ariana Grande goes on quite the journey in her new Brighter Days Ahead short film, which arrived Friday morning (March 28), just hours after the release of the pop star’s deluxe Eternal Sunshine album. In the 26-minute visual co-directed by Grande and Christian Breslauer, the two-time Grammy winner sings selections from both the original Eternal […]
James Estopinal is having an existential crisis.
For most of his professional life, Estopinal has operated as Disco Donnie, an old school concert promoter known for throwing festivals and taking dance artists on tours across the country. Estopinal was what many called a “pure play” promoter, meaning he didn’t own any venues himself; 100 percent of his attention and capital was spent building artists’ touring careers and supporting acts on the road.
Unfortunately for Estopinal, it has become increasingly difficult to sustain oneself as a full-time road warrior, renting out venues and battling club owners each night for his artists’ fair share. After a bumpy festival season in 2024, Estopinal and his partner, Patrick Tetrick, crossed the concert world’s Rubicon last summer and opened Silo, a brand-new nightclub in Dallas’ burgeoning Design District. Silo is not a typical nightclub — it’s a 30,000-square-foot transformed historic grain storage facility with beveled walls, 40-foot height ceilings, a 1,200-square-foot stage and a massive 100,000-watt sound system made by German loudspeaker company D&B Sound. Silo is Dallas’ first ever concert venue built for the electronic dance world and, to most people, opening their city’s hottest new nightclub would be the ultimate flex on a high-profile 30-year career in music and touring.
But Estopinal is not like most people.
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“I’m really struggling to suddenly be a club owner; it’s just not how I’m programmed,” he tells Billboard, noting that the transition from tour promoter to venue management has been difficult. As a promoter, Estopinal was taught early on not to trust venue managers and to always be skeptical of the line they’re pushing.
“I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with club owners,” Estopinal says. “They’re shady and I’m always trying to do the right thing. Like 90 percent of them have some shady shit going on and I never imagined myself being on that team.”
Making the leap from promotion to club operations is like a public defender suddenly joining the district attorney’s office, or an environmental activist going to work at a big oil company. Traditionally, the nightclub owner is the adversary of the show promoter, due in large part to the economic model of concert promotion.
Concerts typically make money in two ways: ticket sales and food and beverage sales. In a perfect world, the artist and the promoter keep 100% of the ticket sales, while the venue keeps all the food and booze money. That part’s easy — the tricky part is splitting up the show costs and deciding who pays each bill. Typically, venues will cover bar staffing and basic production needs, but the bigger the show, the more ticket takers and bouncers need to be hired, and the more expensive backline becomes.
These types of details should be worked out in advance, typically months ahead of time when the promoter is paying the deposit to book the venue. But it’s not uncommon for surprise expenses to pop up when the bill is settled between the parties. That’s when the gamesmanship begins, Estopinal explains, with both sides going line by line through bills, arguing over money.
Estopinal says he loathes the idea of hitting acts that play Silo with last minute expenses. As a promoter, when it “came to the settlement, I would always fight back,” Estopinal says, especially when club owners tried to make him pay their house nut — essentially a standard fee the venue would charge every touring show to recover unspecified expenses. To Estopinal, the house nut is like a hotel charging a $40 resort fee or an Airbnb rental charging a $100 cleaning fee — “they’re junk fees that are just a cash grab.”
Shakey Settlement
Inside Silo Dallas
Patrick Le
Estopinal remembers a show settlement in El Paso, Texas, when a club owner shook him down for a last-minute $1,000 “rent” charge.
“The deal was that he kept the bar and I got the door. Rent wasn’t in the original deal and I told him I wasn’t going to pay him rent,” Estopinal explains. “So, he opens his drawer and pulls out a gun and puts it on the desk. So, I say, ‘Oh, you’re threatening me now? Fine, take your $1,000 blood money.’”
Estopinal says he returned to the tour bus and stewed in anger for a while, before going back inside to confront the club owner again. Six security guards were summoned to the office, and “one got me in a headlock and they all kind of picked me up in a lateral position, carried me out down the stairs and put me back on the tour bus,” he recalls. “I never got my $1,000 back, but I did hear that he later got arrested for something else.”
Then there was a Skrillex show Estopinal promoted in the 2010s at a country western bar in San Antonio, Texas. Skrillex finished his set at midnight and his crew wanted to break down the show and leave, but the bar owner wanted to stay open to keep selling beer. The owner even had his resident DJ go on after Skrillex’s set and play Skrillex music.
“Suddenly all the fans that were leaving at the end of the Skrillex set turned around and came back in,” Estopinal says. “All so that the club owner can sell beer for two more hours.”
The tour managers approached Estopinal and told him to find the owner and shut down the faux Skrillex set so they could leave. “But I couldn’t find the owner anywhere. I noticed they had four bodyguards stationed around the DJ booth, and so I went back to the dressing room and said, ‘Hey, I can’t get this guy to turn the music off. You guys are just going to have to load out.’ They told me, ‘We can’t load out with all these people in here.’”
Worried that he might lose the rest of the tour if he didn’t quickly act, Estopinal took two shots of tequila with the tour manager and then “ran into the front of the DJ booth, dove inside, unplugged all the wires and pushed all the equipment on the floor,” he says. While the security guards weren’t able to stop Estopinal from silencing the bootleg set, they did “eventually get a hold of me and started wailing on me.”
The police eventually showed up, placed Estopinal in handcuffs and got him to fork over $2,000 to pay for the broken mixers and busted CDJ player. An expensive night, but minor when compared to the extortion Estopinal encountered when he tried to throw a rave with several big-name promoters in San Bernardino, Calif., in 1999. What had originally been forecast as a 5,000 to 8,000 person show quickly ballooned into a 25,000-person riot with fans swarming the box office, desperate to buy tickets.
“It was cash only and we’d have people come up to the window with a huge wad of cash and be like, ‘Give me 16 tickets,’” he says. “The money was coming in so fast that one of the ticket takers just started sweeping the cash onto the ground. There was no place to put it. And she just keeps selling tickets, ankle deep in cash.”
Eventually, Estopinal lost control of the show and “the police called in the riot squad, and they arrived in helicopters and tear gassed the front of the venue,” he says. Once the dust eventually settled, the venue manager approached Estopinal and told him the police wanted $40,000 in cash, right away. “I asked, ‘Can I give it to them myself?’ And they told me, ‘No, that would be illegal.’ The whole thing sounded illegal to me, but my only goal was not to have that party shut down. So, I went and got the $40,000 in cash and gave it to the venue manager. I don’t know where it went, but the event never got shut down.”
Promising Signs
Inside Silo Dallas
Tyler Church
The concert world has changed significantly since Estopinal’s riotous rave in 1999, mostly for the better, he concedes. The corporatization of the business led by Live Nation and AEG has standardized the show settlement system, and major talent agencies have become much more vigilant about sticking to the language of the contract and avoiding last-minute surprises.
“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how I can change the dynamic as a club owner and make the venue more artist-friendly,” Estopinal says. “I can try to make the tickets as cheap as possible and not let people bribe the doorman to cut in line or slip in through a side door that the promoter doesn’t know about.”
He’s also decided to make Silo available to community groups during off hours and has even struck a deal with a local Dallas church to lease the club for its Sunday services.
Pastor Richard Ellis with the Dallas-based Reunion Church told Billboard that he happened to stumble upon Silo while looking for a new home after the church ended its lease at the Dallas Convention Center.
“I met with Donnie’s partner Patrick Tetrick and he told me, ‘I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but it would be good for us to have you in here,’” recalls Ellis. “Sometimes a club like that can have a reputation and one can soften that reputation by having a church in the building on Sundays.”
Estopinal says he has other community uses for Silo in mind and notes that having a church in the building makes him feel better about crossing over into the venue world.
Protect The Enterprise
Inside Silo Dallas
Bo Buckley
Estopinal also says he has started to bring a lot of his own experience to Silo and do some of the club’s bookings in-house, tapping into his own expertise. One of his first lessons came during the opening of Silo in September when he ignored his own advice about splurging on a big headliner for opening night.
Estopinal says it’s a “classic mistake” to book a big a headliner for an opening night concert at a new venue because “if there’s any type of delay due to permit issues or construction, you’re not going to be able to open the venue and you’re still going to end up owing the artist the money.”
For reasons he can’t explain, Estopinal ignored his own advice and booked superstar DJ Tiesto as the opening artist for Silo. “The day of the show arrived and we still don’t have the permit needed to open the venue” due to a disagreement with the local fire marshal about Silo’s sprinkler system, he says. “The show sold out and I’m just sitting there imagining, ‘How am I going to get out of this one?’” Estopinal recalls. “Then Tiesto’s agent calls me and says, ‘I got some bad news. Tiesto’s plane had depressurized, and he had to turn back.’”
Estopinal described the news as divine intervention: If Tiesto was cancelling on Silo, then he didn’t owe the Dutch DJ a dime — crisis averted.
“And then, oddly enough, about an hour later, my phone rang again,” he says. “It was the fire marshal’s office. The permit issue had been resolved, and I was cleared to open Silo.”
Estopinal says he was shocked, but also clear-eyed in what he had to do. Tapping into his instincts as a promoter, new club owner and lifelong hustler, Estopinal grabbed the phone and immediately dialed Tiesto’s agent.
“I told him, ‘You better put him on a new plane immediately and get him out here tonight or else!’” Estopinal remembers. Tiesto made it in time to play the gig and the show opened without a hitch.
Surprisingly, Estopinal said he didn’t feel bad about the episode, noting that club ownership and tour promotion had one key component in common.
“You’ve got to protect the enterprise,” he says. “No matter what side you’re on, you want the show to go on.”
After winning her first Grammy and being named Billboard‘s Woman of the Year for 2025, Doechii is adding another piece of awards hardware to her shelf after Thursday night (March 27).
Doechii took home the GLAAD Media Award for outstanding music artist at the non-profit organization’s ceremony. Presented the award by former GLAAD Award recipients Lil Nas X and Maren Morris, Doechii took to the stage to express her delight.
“I am thrilled at being recognized with such a prestigious award by GLAAD and to be joining prior honorees such as Renee [Rapp], Lady Gaga, Lil Nas X, Sam Smith and Janelle Monáe,” she said. “This is a huge and special moment as well because GLAAD is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, which is super fab.”
As she continued, laying out the organization’s principles of “acceptance, inclusiveness and empowerment,” Doechii took a moment to reflect on where we are in this politically charged moment for the LGBTQ+ community.
“Those are the same things I strongly believe in and advocate for and that continue to propel me forward — especially now that hard-won cultural change and rights for transgender people and the LGBTQ community have been threatened,” she said. “And I am disgusted. Disgusted. But I want to say that we are here and we are not going anywhere.”
In closing her speech, Doechii gave a special callout to up-and-coming queer artists in the audience, offering them some sage advice: “[Do] not let anyone ever block your dreams … I just want to encourage you guys to stay connected with one another. Stay passionate. Stay focused. Keep your chin up. Be kind, and be fab!”
Doechii was far from the only winner at Thursday’s ceremony. Rising R&B star Durand Burnarr took home a trophy for outstanding breakthrough music artist during the ceremony, while Cynthia Erivo was honored with the organization’s Stephen F. Kolzak award for her work in raising visibility for queer people in 2024 and beyond.
“I know this event is to celebrate the work and I am endlessly grateful for that honor and for this celebration, but the real work is making the ground we leave in our wake level enough for the next person who finds their way to the path we have made,” the Wicked actress said in her speech. “For the person who is searching and searching and has not found it yet. This room is full of people who can and will … be lanterns to light up your journey and your path on your way to showing the world who you are.”
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Lil Durk is currently embroiled in a legal matter involving an alleged murder for hire plot involving rival Quando Rondo. While behind bars, Lil Durk released his ninth studio album, Deep Thoughts, and the early reactions are in on X.
Lil Durk, 32, announced the release of Deep Thoughts on social media and left a message for his fans, along with sharing the album covers and images of the Chicago rapper at work.
From Instagram:
I WASN’T GON PUT THIS OUT BUT THEN I REMEMBERED THE STREETS NEED THIS.
NOT BEING OUTSIDE WITH Y’ALL WHEN I DROP IS HARD, BUT I KNOW I WILL FEEL Y’ALL LOVE AND ENERGY THROUGH THESE WALLS
THANK Y’ALL FOR ROCKING WITH ME THROUGH EVERYTHING. I TELL THESE STORIES SO OUR VOICE IS NEVER LOST. I’M COMING HOME SOON STRONGER THAN EVER. INSHALLAH, THE VOICE
LOVE, DURK
Deep Thoughts only has four features, with Future showing up on “They Want To Be You” and Lil Baby delivering a verse on “1000 Times.” On “Cant Hide It,” Jhené Aiko delivers vocals, and lastly, Hunxho appears on “Late Checkout.”
Much of the album finds “The Voice” in a reflective space, especially on the opener “Shaking When I Pray,” which features the artist born Durk Banks praying in Arabic. The common themes of his back against the wall, eclipsing his meager beginnings, and speaking directly to his detractors are present throughout Deep Thoughts. However, it is an extension of the rhythmic comfortability Lil Durk displayed on his 2023 album, Almost Healed.
On X, formerly Twitter, we’ve scoured the site and got the best reactions to the album we could find. Find those replies below.
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Photo: Prince Williams / Getty
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A bizarre and unsettling video surfaced last month showing two unidentified men dropping off a coffin outside DJ Khaled’s Miami home.
The casket was marked with the words “R.I.P Drake,” instantly sparking speculation about its meaning and intent. The footage, captured by security cameras, shows the men engaging in a strange ritual after leaving the coffin. They kneel beside it, seemingly praying or possibly casting a hex, while making cryptic hand gestures toward the sky. The security guard on duty appears visibly confused, unsure of how to respond to the eerie scene.
When Kendrick Lamar dropped “Not Like Us,” a lot of fans started rocking with him over Drake, and that’s when the “Drake hate” really kicked off.
Strangely, DJ Khaled wasn’t the only one to receive such a chilling delivery. Just two days earlier, rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine had a nearly identical experience at his Florida home. In his case, the coffin was labeled “R.I.P King Von,” referencing the late Chicago rapper who was fatally shot in 2020. The eerie coincidences have fueled numerous conspiracy theories, with some suggesting the acts were meant as intimidation tactics or a form of ritualistic symbolism.
Nobody knows who’s behind these creepy acts, and no one’s explained why they’re happening. Some people think it might just be a weird publicity stunt, while others are worried it could mean something darker. The authorities haven’t said anything yet, leaving fans and the hip-hop community wondering who’s doing this and what message they’re trying to send.