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Lil Durk has pleaded not guilty to federal charges alleging a plot to kill fellow rapper Quando Rondo. Keep watching for the full details of the case. Tetris Kelly:Grammy Award-winning rapper Lil Durk pled not guilty in a Los Angeles court on Thursday to federal charges related to an alleged murder-for-hire conspiracy plot against fellow […]
There’s nothing in this world Cardi B likes more than checks, but that doesn’t mean she took any money from the Kamala Harris campaign to attend a rally in Milwaukee.
On Thursday (Nov. 14), the politically outspoken rapper cleared up any misconceptions on the matter with a tweet aimed at conservative commentator Candace Owens, who’d written on X, “Hey @iamcardib — Working on a story and was wondering if you were in any way paid to speak at the Kamala campaign event you spoke at.”
Cardi quickly replied with, “I didn’t get paid a dollar and that’s on my three!!”
“I actually came out of pocket for glam and travel because it’s somewhere I wanted to be..,” the “WAP” artist continued. “Like please girl you know damn well I’ll argue you down about politics FOR FREE.”
The interaction comes a week after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, beating out the Democratic Harris-Walz ticket. Cardi — as well as numerous other A-list musicians — had staunchly supported the VP’s White House bid, with the Whipshots founder even speaking at a Nov. 1 campaign event in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to help drum up some last-minute support.
“Like Kamala Harris, I’ve been the underdog, underestimated, and had my success belittled,” she said at the time. “Women have to work 10 times harder and still face questions about how we achieved success. I can’t stand a bully, but just like Kamala, I always stand up to one.”
When Harris’ campaign efforts proved unsuccessful, Cardi shared an emotional letter to the politician. “This may not mean much but I am so proud of you!” the hip-hop titan wrote, addressing the former prosecutor directly. “No one has ever made me change my mind and you did! I never thought I would see the day that a woman of color would be running for the President of the United States, but you have shown me, shown my daughters and women across the country that anything is possible.”
Cardi also issued a warning to Trump’s supporters post-election. “So you know, Trumpettes, y’all won, I know y’all happy,” she said in a video posted to X Nov. 6. “Ain’t nobody acting like they’re the losers. However, y’all need to leave me the f–k alone. Because I got one more f–king cigarette in me before I start lighting your asses up. Aight?”
The “Up” artist’s history with Owens goes back years before their latest X exchange, with the latter first calling the former “illiterate” and suggesting that Black Americans should be “insulted” by Biden’s partnership with Cardi in 2020. The two women have sparred multiple times in the years since, but unexpectedly found a fleeting piece of common ground in 2023 when Owens backed up Cardi’s assertion that Brian Szasz — the stepson of a billionaire who died in the Titanic submersible implosion that year — was merely looking for “clout.”
“We all know this day would come,” Owens tweeted at the time. “Finally, I agree with [Cardi B] and everything she said about the submarine stepson from hell.”
See Cardi’s tweet to Owens below.
I didn’t get paid a dollar and that’s on my three!! I actually came out of pocket for glam and travel because it’s somewhere I wanted to be.. Like please girl you know damn well I’ll argue you down about politics FOR FREE https://t.co/SxJWWDSqFP— Cardi B (@iamcardib) November 14, 2024
This time, everything really is going to be different. Americans now live in a country where neither felony convictions nor dancing to “YMCA” onstage during a medical break in a political rally are disqualifying factors for the presidency; where a member of Congress who was investigated by the House Ethics Committee for allegations of sexual misconduct is nominated for attorney general; and where proposals for reckless tariffs and magic-bean-money marketed by grifters have made the stock market go up. Oy.
The music business has been humiliated. All those artist endorsements for Kamala Harris didn’t seem to matter, at least in part because most of them spoke to voters the way the Democrats did. (I found Bruce Springsteen’s ad for Harris moving, but I’m not sure it was all that convincing.) Taylor Swift, who endorsed Harris, is the dominant artist of this era. But Joe Rogan, who seems to be an idiot’s idea of an intellectual in the way that writer Fran Lebowitz once said that Trump is a poor person’s idea of a rich person, may have more influence. With just over 50% of the popular vote, Trump is now mainstream, at least statistically. Pop culture has changed.
What about the music business? Amid all of this winning, the industry may stay basically the same, according to a half-dozen conversations with industry policy executives and a dozen more with other music business figures. The basics of Trump’s economic agenda are tariffs, tax cuts and deregulation. Tariffs on imports will play havoc with some businesses, but they would only affect parts of the music industry; the price of merchandise, including CDs and vinyl, could go up, probably modestly. When it comes to taxes, successful artists and executives could end up paying much less, which seems inadvisable for the country but fine for business.
The industry’s biggest regulatory issue is copyright, power over which the Constitution specifically grants to Congress. (Even the U.S. Copyright Office operates as part of the Library of Congress, in the legislative branch of government.) It’s one of the few genuinely bipartisan issues that unites Democrats who champion the arts and Republicans who want to protect property rights, and the sheer complexity of the subject — as well as the fact that it’s always easier to stop legislation than it is to pass it — makes it hard to imagine significant change happening quickly.
The music business faces other issues, of course. Chief among them is the Justice Department’s antitrust case against Live Nation Entertainment, which seeks to break up the concert and ticketing giant. It’s impossible to know what’s going to happen with the case, although speculation suggests that it’s too popular a cause to simply drop. (Many concertgoers feel certain that breaking up the company will bring down ticket prices, which is hard to imagine; there are other important issues at play, but they’re more complicated.) There’s also the fate of TikTok, the Chinese-owned short-form-video platform that Trump tried to ban when he was president, then promised to “save.” (One of the hard things about figuring out what Trump will do is that he himself doesn’t seem entirely clear, either.) Right now, the issue is in the courts. And although TikTok’s Chinese parent company has said it does not intend to sell the platform, one could imagine a compromise that allows everyone to save face, probably without addressing the original problem.
These last two issues show just how much conflicts over media business regulation — and business regulation in general — now take place within parties as opposed to between them. Partly, this is because Republicans have been just as willing to regulate technology companies as President Barack Obama. When it comes to antitrust, for example, both traditional Republicans and corporate-leaning Democrats want to get rid of Federal Trade Commission (FTC) chair Lina Khan, who has taken an aggressive approach to antitrust enforcement, but JD Vance has said positive things about the job she’s doing.
Antitrust isn’t the only issue that works that way. President Biden, and most traditional Democrats, understand the need to protect small investors from cryptocurrency rip-offs. (Trump was against crypto before he was for it.) Until a decade ago, how and how much the government should regulate business was the main divide between the parties. Now a libertarian, business-friendly agenda is pushed by parts of both parties, available in Silicon Valley fleece and Wall Street cashmere.
This, more than Trump, represents the real policy risk for the music business — the libertarian side of Silicon Valley, which stands to gain from Vance’s influence over Trump. (There are other issues that are much more important, of course, including economic policy and the independence of the Federal Reserve.) Imagine that Trump and Vance want to Make Silicon Valley Great Again, which in their minds means having the U.S. take the lead in artificial intelligence. Could that mean allowing technology companies to train their software on copyrighted works without licenses? Or relaxing some of the other protections that rightsholders have? Given all the laws and treaties involved, this is actually hard to imagine. Then again, what about this situation isn’t?
Moses “Shyne” Barrow is gearing up for the release of his candid The Honorable Shyne documentary, which will land on Hulu on Nov. 18.
The former Bad Boy rapper-turned-politician stopped by the Tamron Hall Show on Wednesday (Nov. 13), where he discussed overcoming hardships, Belize and his turbulent relationship with his embattled ex-boss Sean “Diddy” Combs.
Hall pressed Shyne about reuniting with Diddy to perform “Bad Boyz” with him at the 2022 BET Awards, which he labeled a “legacy moment” and a chance to honor hip-hop as well as Belize, where he serves as the the Leader of the Opposition in the Belize House of Representatives. “I didn’t want to do it, but he said, ‘Listen, this is about Belize. Imagine this platform,’” Shyne explained.
She then cited a time on stage when Diddy — who is currently behind bars awaiting trial after being indicted on charges for sex trafficking and racketeering — referred to Shyne as his “brother” after all they went through.
“I wish I was his brother in 2000 when we were on trial,” Shyne quipped in reference to their fallout after the 1999 NYC nightclub shooting which saw him charged and Diddy walking away scot-free. “I wish I was his brother for the last 26 years when my mom, who is here with me, never got any assistance. He never helped to dry her tears.”
Shyne was sentenced in 2001 to a decade behind bars on first-degree assault, gun possession and reckless endangerment charges, while Diddy was acquitted on gun possession and bribery in the case.
“I keep having to put into context without spitting on someone’s grave that this is the person that destroyed my life,” he declared to Hall. “You hear my mom, she’ll probably start crying when she comes on this couch. People ask, ‘Do you think that he did those things?’ Well, I know what he did to my family so the potential is there.”
After serving eight years in prison, Shyne was released in 2009, but was immediately deported to Belize, where he began his redemption arc and pivoted to a career in politics.
“I moved on and I healed,” he reflected. “I didn’t see him shooting, but I know that he made me take the fall. I know that he called witnesses to testify against me. We sat here and I said, ‘Please, don’t call that witness. That witness is going to destroy me and the witness is lying.’ So I had to tell that truth.”
Billboard has reached out to Diddy’s reps for comment.
Watch the video below. Stream The Honorable Shyne on Hulu on Nov. 18.
Israel’s Netta Barzilai has not found it easy to create during the 13 months since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on her homeland and the ensuing war. But a brand new single, “Big Love,” brings the 2018 Eurovision Song Contest winner’s thoughts and emotions into focus.
“My job, my calling, is to bring people together over light and enhance the light in them,” Netta tells Billboard via Zoom from her apartment in Jaffa, an ancient port city near Tel Aviv. “I believe that music and art, especially in dark times, is important to any free world. It’s important for people to consume and create.”
Yet, she adds, “I felt this year I’m in no mood to create. The war isn’t something inspiring. It’s the darkest part of humanity. This year I’ve witnessed pain in amounts and in magnitude that I could not function. I tried, but I could not write. I’m a very happy person, and I tried all the mechanisms that I know that make me happy and they didn’t work. Usually when I walk in a studio and create it feels like the right thing, and every time I walked in the studio (after Oct. 7), it didn’t.”
With the uncharacteristically ethereal and moody “Big Love” – out now on S-Curve Records — Netta found a way to address her circumstances, acknowledging the situation and declaring in its chorus that, “This world may crumble but I’m by your side, with a big love.”
“This is a song that was written with friends out of desperation,” explains Netta, who composed the track with producer Theron “Neff-u” Feemster, Paul Duncan and Avshalom Ariel. “It’s for me to feel stronger and for me to just let myself know that this is my answer to the darkness growing inside — of all of us. War and conflict have always been part of human nature…and it’s soul-crushing. And in order for us to fight it we have to create light. (The song) is very personal, and it’s the little that I can do just to put it out there. But it is what it is.”
The sentiments of “Big Love,” Netta adds, aren’t limited to one side of the conflict or the other. “It’s to anyone who needs it. In my song I say if I had the moon and stars I would get them for you. If I could sing and stop the war, I would do it for you, if it could be that easy. It might sound cliché, but I really believe that making music is a calling, and I don’t think you have control over who finds power in it and who finds comfort in it. I hope whoever needs comfort anywhere finds comfort and light in this.”
On Oct. 7, Netta was slated to open for Bruno Mars in Tel Aviv and film a video during the show; those plans were scuttled, of course, and in the wake of the attack she found herself in the wrenching position of helping to take care of children whose families were tending to the dead and injured, as well as singing at funerals. Netta also scratched plans for a world tour and an English language album she had recorded and returned to Israel full-time — “I needed to be here,” she says — and released a Hebrew album, Hakol Alai (All On Me). She appeared as a contestant on the 10th season of Rokdim Im Kokhavim, Israel’s Dancing With the Stars, and also performed at a May rally in Tel Aviv calling for the release of hostages still held by Hamas.
Netta also watched this year’s Eurovision, which was marked by protests over Israel’s involvement, while contestant Eden Golan faced threats and harassment throughout the competition.
“I felt really bad for her,” Netta says. “I thought she was a champ dealing with so much hate. When a girl stands on stage and she sings and so many people are trying to bring her down…I think it ruined Eurovision. Eurovision is supposed to be about having a safe space for art and a safe space for people to unite and be brought together. Eurovision is supposed to be the answer to, yes, there are geographical debates and politicians have their wars, but this should be the place to show them that we can talk and we can understand. It was very, very sad.”
Netta says her own situation in Israel right now is safe, which she considers “a gift.” She’s not yet sure if “Big Love” will rekindle her muse, but she’s confident that whatever comes next will have a similar purpose.
“I find small hopes,” she says. “As goofy and as funny and as colorful as my music has always been, it’s always been about love, and it’s always been about light. I’m so sad the world isn’t a perfect place. It crushes me. I really wish it was different, but…it is so complex. But I believe in humans. I believe they can restore and rebuild. I have to.”
Pharrell Williams is clarifying a misinterpreted quote he gave to The Hollywood Reporter about celebrity endorsements, which led some to believe he was dissing Taylor Swift over voicing her support for Vice President Kamala Harris in the 2024 presidential election.
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In a new cover story with GQ, Williams explained, “They pit you against each other. I love Taylor. She knows that.”
Noting that he didn’t even mention her in the interview, the “Happy” singer added, “I bought a 1989 Taylor t-shirt online last year, and I was walking around here with it tucked into my jeans. I love her. I love people, bro. That was some right-wing troll s—. But I heard something the other day that made the most sense in the world: Right-wing, left-wing, all the same bird.”
Swift was one of many musicians gave Harris their seal of approval this past election, with Ariana Grande, Billie Eilish, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion and more speaking out in support of the Democratic ticket before Donald Trump ultimately won the presidency earlier this month.
In a post shared with her 238 million followers, Swift expressed her admiration for Harris, calling her a “steady-handed, gifted leader” and a “warrior” for causes she holds dear, such as LGBTQ+ rights and women’s reproductive freedoms.
Shortly after her endorsement, the Hollywood Reporter interview with Williams was published in which he said he doesn’t “do politics” and gets “annoyed sometimes” by celebrity endorsements. “There are celebrities that I respect that have an opinion, but not all of them. I’m one of them people [who says], ‘What the heck? Shut up. Nobody asked you,’” he said at the time. “When people get out there and get self-righteous and they roll up their sleeves and s—, and they are out there walking around with a placard: ‘Shut up!’ So, no, I would rather stay out of the way, and obviously, I’m going to vote how I’m going to vote. I care about my people and I care about the country, but I feel there’s a lot of work that needs to be done, and I’m really about the action.”
A week after Donald Trump won the 2024 U.S. Presidential election, The Blessed Madonna has Tuesday (Nov. 12) published an essay on her newly launchedSubstack in response.
The Kentucky-born, London-based producer (real name: Marea Stamper) writes that she is “yoked to the brink of collapse with contempt for millions of my fellow Americans, myself included possibly. When Project 2025 spelled out the plan to cement power in the hands of white, straight men, while kneecapping every inch of progress made in our country over the last fifty years, I believed them, just as I believed Trump in 2016. I believe they intend to do what they have promised. But still, I feel like someone kicked the air out of me.”
The Blessed Madonna, who released her debut album Godspeed in October, is one of the few politically vocal electronic artists in the scene and is one of a handful of producers to publicly comment on the election results, with Massive Attack and Moby also sharing their thoughts following the Nov. 5 election. Read her complete statement below.
At night, I flip through my phone and try to make a timeline, something that will put this in a linear form that I can understand.
417 weeks ago, I was boarding a plane and a bunch guys in camo and MAGA gear got on. I posted a picture and I tagged United Airlines and said, these men are wearing clothing associated with a hate group and I feel uncomfortable. I was absolutely serious. But the comments poured in calling me judgemental, overreactive, snide, unhelpful. “You don’t know these guys at all! Terrible form. You would go nuts if someone did that to you.” As if that MAGA hat isn’t the stand in for a white hood. As if we did not see those men scaling the wall of the Capitol four years later.
It doesn’t matter how many pictures I look at or timestamps I check though. It’s all a knot of repeating scenarios. I tell my mother it will be ok. I tell myself it will be ok. Someone does something that makes me lose faith in humanity. Someone does something that restores it, for a while. It all just swings back and forth, ticking like a metronome which does not tell time, but keeps it in a holding pattern.
This week the metronome’s pendulum has swung mostly to shame. I indulged in the kind of optimism that no mother who has ever had to give her black or brown son “the talk” about police brutality will ever have the luxury to enjoy. I am yoked to the brink of collapse with contempt for millions of my fellow Americans, myself included possibly. When Project 2025 spelled out the plan to cement power in the hands of white, straight men, while kneecapping every inch of progress made in our country over the last fifty years, I believed them, just as I believed Trump in 2016. I believe they intend to do what they have promised. But still, I feel like someone kicked the air out of me. Women have cast their vote for men who would let them bleed to death in a hospital parking lot from a miscarriage, should they need an abortion?
I am so angry, I feel as if I drank poison and am waiting for the other guys to die.
This is who we are. This is America.
Don’t say it’s not.
We have done this now not twice, but millions of times in millions of ways. We have have done it at the border. We have done it in for-profit prisons and for nothing executions. We have done it in forever wars and proxy wars and culture wars. We have sold our schools and public hospitals off for parts and left human beings in the wreckage.
And We The People have chosen as a country to buy what that vile man is selling, the real American dream: white supremacy. And he will sell it to you whether you can redeem or not. And he has sold it to you, though in the end, it will redeem no one and nothing. And so tonight, what I lack in optimism, is replaced with rage, which itself I believe can be a kind of love. It is not a gentle or comforting kind of love, but the love that lives behind bared teeth and says: motherf—ker, one of us is about to die trying.
Following Donald Trump’s 2024 Presidential Election victory, Uncle Luke took to Instagram Live and blasted the Latinos who cast their vote for Trump.
Per NBC News’ exit polls, Trump earned 45 percent of the Latino vote — while Harris held 51 percent — which is a 13-point uptick for the twice-impeached president elect compared to the 2020 election. It’s also a record high for a Republican presidential nominee, as Trump toppled George W. Bush’s 44 percent in the 2004 election.
“All y’all who didn’t vote for Kamala, y’all stupid a– gon’ get deported. Y’all having marches and s–t already. We are not going out there to march,” Luke said. “Black people are not going to march for you. I’m sorry, we will not be marching. It’s no more such thing as Black and brown people. It’s Black. We will not be marching with you.”
The former 2 Live Crew frontman continued: “The line got drawn last Tuesday,” he continued. “We know where we stand with all y’all. White people know where they stand with white women. Black people know where they stand with Hispanics. We though y’all were our friends. Y’all go through some things, we be out there fighting and marching and then you do this.”
Luke believes some Black people may be distancing themselves from Latinos in the future, and joked about how ICE agents looking to deport illegal immigrants will be singing along to Vanilla Ice’s chart-topping 1990 single “Ice Ice Baby.”
“Now you got to worry about the little Black ladies who sitting there looking out the window calling the people on you,” he said. “Hey ICE. They going to be singing the song. ‘Ice Ice Baby.’”
Luke’s commentary caused quite a stir on social media. “Luke isn’t a Black American so idk why he cackling talking about we,” one fan fired back on X. “You are Carribean not Black American.”
Trump overwhelmingly beat out Democratic nominee Kamala Harris in the Nov. 5 election. In addition to winning the popular vote, per NBC News, the business mogul — who in May was convicted on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records — also took the Electoral College 312 to 226, and swept all seven swing states.
Watch Uncle Luke’s rant below.
Sting isn’t worried about the legacy of “Every Breath You Take,” even if it is somewhat tied to Sean “Diddy” Combs forever.
In a new interview with the Los Angeles Times published Monday (Nov. 11), the Police frontman was asked whether his feelings toward his band’s iconic 1983 hit — which the disgraced Bad Boy Records founder famously sampled in his own “I’ll Be Missing You” — now that Combs is facing trial for numerous allegations of sexual abuse, racketeering and more.
“No,” Sting began. “I mean, I don’t know what went on [with Diddy]. But it doesn’t taint the song at all for me. It’s still my song.”
The original “Every Breath You Take” spent eight weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100 the year it came out, and it remains The Police’s only No. 1 hit on the chart. Fourteen years later, Diddy released “I’ll Be Missing You” as a tribute to the late Notorious B.I.G. with Faith Evans and 112, featuring an interpolation of Sting’s classic; it spent 11 weeks at No. 1.
Diddy was arrested Sept. 16 on charges of abuse, sex trafficking, forced labor, kidnapping, arson and bribery, after which he was immediately taken into custody and denied bail multiple times as he awaits trial on May 5, 2025. The most recent update in his case came Friday (Nov. 8), when a judge rejected his “unprecedented” and “unwarranted” request that a gag order be issued against his alleged victims and their lawyers on the grounds that they were making “inflammatory extrajudicial statements aimed at assassinating Mr. Combs’s character in the press.”
“The court has an affirmative constitutional duty to ensure that Combs receives a fair trial,” the judge wrote. “But this essential … requirement must be balanced with the protections the First Amendment affords to those claiming to be Combs’s victims.”
Meanwhile, Sting has been touring once again as part of a trio with guitarist Dominic Miller and drummer Chris Maas, a setup not unlike his three-person lineup with The Police’s Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland — and the “We’ll Be Together” singer is aware of the irony. “I never left the Police,” he said while speaking to the Times. “I’m not sure what I did. I just made a record — as the others had done — and enjoyed it more than I did being in a band.
“And here I am again,” he continued of his return to form. “My whole modus is surprise. I don’t want people to be entirely confident about what I’m going to do next. That’s the essence of music for me. And no one expected a trio at this point.”
Karol G gave a lengthy response Monday (Nov. 11) to the criticism her new song “+57” — featuring J Balvin, Feid, Maluma and other Colombian acts — as it faces backlash over lyrics that some have construed as sexualizing minors.
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Her post comes four days after dropping the reggaetón track, which brought together Colombia’s biggest hitmakers, also including Ryan Castro, Blessd and newcomer DFZM. Produced by Ovy on the Drums — Karol’s longtime producer — and co-written by Keityn, the song, even before it dropped, was being labeled as a new anthem for Colombia.
But shortly after it was released on Thursday (Nov. 7), the song’s lyrics received criticism online, with some people pointing out its over sexualization of minors. (In one line, they mention a woman who’s been a “mamacita,” or “hot mama,” since she was 14 years old.) Rolling Stone En Español published a column titled “The Disaster of +’57′” and the Instituto Colombiano de Bienestar Familiar (ICBF) issued a statement saying that the song “reinforces the sexualization of children in our country” and that it “does not contribute to our fight against commercial sexual exploitation of children and adolescents.”
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Karol wrote in her Instagram Stories that as artists, they are exposed to public opinion and that the song’s lyrics were taken out of context. She began her message by pointing out that she has always been grateful for her fans’ support and those who “know my project, the intentions of my work and the causes close to my heart, those that move me, that I am passionate about and for which I work every day with love and responsibility,” she continued. “I do care about my people and I am a person that every day I look for ways to get involved in projects where I myself can extend my blessing and impact in a positive way the lives of many people.
“As artists, we are exposed to public opinion, and to the individual interpretations of people who like us and people who differ with what we do. I feel a lot of frustration for the misinformation that has been given, about the false posts that I have supposedly made and deleted from twitter, an account that I have not used for more than six months. In this case, unfortunately, the lyrics of a song, with which I sought to celebrate the union between artists and put to shine my people … were taken out of context. None of the things said in the song have the direction they have been given, nor was it said from that perspective but I listen, I take responsibility and I realize that I still have a lot to learn. I feel very affected and I apologize from the bottom of my heart,” she added. It’s worth noting that Karol doesn’t sing the line about the “14 year old,” but rather some of the men on the track, yet she’s the one apologizing.
Feid, Balvin and Ovy on the Drums have all reposted Karol’s post in solidarity. “Queen, we are with you,” Balvin wrote. “You have given us so many wins that this doesn’t take away from your greatness, we’re here unconditionally.”
Karol ended her post once again thanking her fans for “their unconditional love and support.” She concluded, “I value it very much, and the artists who participated with me in the song, I keep in my heart the beautiful energy with which we worked that day.”