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While fans are savoring Playboi Carti’s long-awaited release, MUSIC, one artist isn’t necessarily too fond of the new album. On Friday morning (March 14), Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) shared his thoughts on Kendrick Lamar’s heavy involvement on Carti’s 30-track effort.
“I DON’T LIKE KENDRICK LAMARS MUSIC,” an exacerbated Ye posted on X. “HE RAPS VERY GOOD BUT I DIDNT NEED TO HEAR HIM ON CARTI ALBUM.”
Billboard reached out to Playboi Carti and Kendrick Lamar’s reps for comment.
Ye’s targeted post of Lamar comes a month after he said that the Compton rapper was the only one who could beat him in a rap battle. “If you rap against Kendrick, you will lose,” Ye said during his interview with Justin LaBoy on The Download. “This man does this. You know, in Street Fighter, you get Chun-Li, you get a certain kick, and no matter what, you can’t beat that thing?”
Continued Ye, who has faced ongoing backlash for his hate speech: “If you rap against Kendrick Lamar, like Joe Budden said, ‘Never rap against Kendrick Lamar.’ If you rap against Kendrick Lamar, it’s a difficult task, but perhaps it’s something … I’m a psycho genius, so you know, it could be.”
Carti’s colossal release includes three Lamar appearances. The newly formed tandem teamed up on “Good Credit,” “Mojo Jojo” and the Ye-produced song “Backdoor.” For Carti, MUSIC marks his return after a five-year layoff after his seminal 2020 album Whole Lotta Red debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with 100,000 equivalent album units, marking his first-ever chart-topper.
Aside from K. Dot’s trio of assists, MUSIC features a stacked lineup of hip-hop heavyweights including Future, Travis Scott, The Weeknd, Lil Uzi Vert and more. Fans experienced delays after a promised midnight release from the self-proclaimed King Vamp. After missing out on the initial 12 a.m. ET drop, Cardi vowed the album would come out at 3 a.m. ET, but it arrived closer to 4.
For Carti, MUSIC, is shaping up to be a well-timed release. He’ll quickly get the ball rolling with his headlining performance at Rolling Loud California this weekend. Shortly after, Carti will embark on a stadium tour with The Weeknd, where he’ll serve as his opener.
Lil Yachty didn’t hold back when asked about his thoughts on the Black Lives Matter organization. The Atlanta rapper slammed BLM during an appearance on Quenlin Blackwell’s Feeding Starving Celebrities cooking series earlier this week. “BLM is a scam,” Yachty replied when asked about his philanthropic endeavors in recent years. “BLM was literally a scam.” Blackwell […]
Laura Jane Grace set out to make a point with a recent performance of a new song. It turns out, the song went right over the heads of the people she was hoping would hear it most.
On Friday (March 7), Sen. Bernie Sanders hosted a town hall as part of his “Fighting Oligarchy” tour across the country in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and invited Grace to perform on stage. One of the songs she performed — her February released “Your God (God’s D–k)” — caused immediate outrage online over its profane lyrics and religious themes.
In the song, Grace makes a point that while religious conservatives have a problem using the proper pronouns for trans people, they seem to have no problem imposing gender on an omnipresent, non-physical deity. “Does your god have a big fat d–k? ‘Cause it feels like he’s f—ing me,” Grace sings on the track. “Are his b–ls filled with lightning?/ Do they dangle like heaven’s keys?”
In an interview with Rolling Stone, Grace said that the purpose of the song was to open people’s eyes to the double standard of gender constructs today. “I’m not being profane to be profane, I’m not just saying ‘d–k’ to say ‘d–k.’ I’m asking a genuine question,” she said. “If you refer to your God as he and him, but you will not refer to a transgender person with the pronouns that are theirs … that’s just insane.”
Grace continued, adding that the outrage itself was representative of the larger problem around the right’s attack on trans people. “It’s such blatant hypocrisy. You can’t prove God exists with biology or chromosomes,” she said. “So if you’re gonna throw science continually in my face, let’s stick to that: Your god doesn’t exist.”
Sanders’ event was aimed at protesting president Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers’ proposed plans to cut federal programs like Medicare and Medicaid that low-income families rely on. “4,000 people came out to say: NO tax breaks for billionaires,” he wrote on Instagram following his Kenosha event. “NO cuts to Medicaid. NO oligarchy. NO authoritarianism. NO MORE billionaires buying elections.”
The White House has since stated that Trump “will not cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits,” but has alleged that there is “waste and fraud in entitlement spending” without providing concrete evidence of where that waste and fraud exists in programs like Medicare or Medicaid.
Shyne has lost his bid for re-election in Belize. The former Bad Boy conceded defeat in a press conference on Wednesday night (March 12).
According to Channel 5 Belize, Shyne (born Moses Barrow) was unseated by fellow United Democratic Party member and businessman Lee Mark Chang in the general election.
Shyne was elected to the Mesopotamia seat in Belize City for the House of Representatives in 2020, and he eventually served as the Leader of the Opposition in the House of Representatives and the leader of the Belize United Democratic Party.
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According to Channel 5 Belize, Shyne secured only 318 votes in the constituency of Mesopotamia, while Chang earned 601.
“The people have spoken. Congratulations to Lee Mark Chang — he’s now the new area representative of Mesopotamia, and I wish him well,” Shyne said, according to the local news outlet. “I was confident; that was the interaction I was having with the people, but they made a decision to go in another direction, and I respect that.”
With Shyne losing his House of Representatives seat, he’s planning to resign as the leader of the Belize UDP once a new official is elected.
“I certainly will resign effective once we have a national convention to elect a new leader,” he added. “Obviously you can’t be a leader of the United Democratic Party once you’re not a member of the House, and I would not want to be appointed as a senator or anything to hold on to the leadership.”
Chang was very critical of Shyne leading up to the election, reportedly referring to him as a “cancer” in the government. “The people are realizing they have been bamboozled,” he reportedly said on national TV in Belize.
It’s unclear if the loss marks the end of Shyne’s run in Belizean politics.
Shyne rose to fame in the late ’90s as a rapper under Diddy’s Bad Boy Records label. He was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in 2001 on assault, gun possession and reckless endangerment charges for his role in a 1999 NYC nightclub shooting that left two people wounded. He was released in 2009 after eight years behind bars and deported to Belize.
Director Dan Reed is planning a third chapter in his ongoing Leaving Neverland series about allegations of sexual abuse against late pop icon Michael Jackson by dancer/choreographer Wade Robson and James Safechuck.
According to Variety, the second sequel will focus on the upcoming trial pitting Robson and Safechuck against Jackson’s companies over their allegations that the organizations neglected to protect them from the alleged abuse detailed in the bombshell 2019 two-part doc. In the original film, the men described in graphic detail how the late King of Pop allegedly molested them at his Neverland Ranch in California when they were both minors; Jackson’s estate has continuously and emphatically denied the allegations.
The reported third film will serve as the follow-up to the upcoming Leaving Neverland 2: Surviving Michael Jackson, which will premiere on Channel 4 in the U.K. on March 18 and on YouTube in the United States. The 50-minute movie will primarily focus on Robson and Safechuck fighting to have their lawsuit against Jackson’s estate go forward; the case is slated to go to trial next year.
“It’s taken an awful long time just to get to a trial date that looks as though it could actually happen,” Reed told Variety about his plan to have cameras in the courtroom, despite his belief that the Jackson estate will “find a way to try and sideswipe this whole thing and make sure it never goes to court… But who knows. Maybe justice will prevail and there’ll be a trial. And if there is a trial, I want to be there.”
While we will have to wait to see what will happen when the men have their day in court, Reed is aware that it’s possible that the judge in the case might not let cameras in their courtroom. “It’s really the judge’s discretion,” he said. Reed was allowed to film inside the Santa Monica Courthouse for several hearings depicted in Leaving Neverland 2, which mainly focuses on the legal back-and-forth leading up to Robson and Safechuck being granted a trial.
“It’s a bridge film in between what was a pretty high-profile start and what I hope will be a very dramatic ending,” Reed said. “We could have kept it to include all this material and the trial. But I think the trial will be so dramatic, and you won’t have time for all the stuff in between.”
The original Leaving Neverland won an Emmy for outstanding documentary or nonfiction special, even as it drew fire from Jackson’s family and estate and, in 2019, resulted in a $100 million lawsuit by the estate against HBO over claims that the documentary violated a 27-year-old non-disparagement clause the network signed to air a 1992 concert film for Jackson’s Dangerous World Tour; the case was sent to private arbitration that year and is still pending.
Jackson’s estate has consistently denied a series of allegations of sexual abuse against the singer who died in 2009, often noting that Jackson was acquitted in a 2005 criminal trial and has never been convicted or held liable for any such claims. The estate has also claimed that accusers are looking for a payday from an artist who cannot defend himself because defamation laws do not cover dead people.
As for why he’s planning the third chapter, Reed said that he hopes to keep telling Robson and Safechuck’s story because he thinks it will help viewers “realize that these are real people, with a real story, with real families who are doing this… They’re not just a couple of people who popped up because they saw a pot of gold. These are people who have really dedicated a decade, at least, of their lives to getting justice.”
On The Tonight Show Tuesday (March 11), Sting and Shaggy explained the current tumultuous state of the United States economy the best way they know how: through song. In a hilarious segment on the episode, the duo answered host Jimmy Fallon’s questions about the Donald Trump administration’s financial policies with lyrics from their own songs. […]
Mase is planning a comeback. During the March 7 episode of his sports talk show It Is What It Is, the Harlem rapper-turned-sports pundit kicked things off by revealing that not only is he going to drop his first album since 2004’s Welcome Back, but Cam’ron helped curate the tracklist. “Mo, what’s good? Can y’all […]
Tory Lanez released his Peterson album on Friday (March 7), which was entirely recorded while behind bars serving his 10-year sentence in the 2020 felony shooting case against Megan Thee Stallion. The incarcerated Canadian singer examines his relationships with his peers in the music industry, and how most have turned their backs on him since he got locked up.
However, Lanez showed love to Chris Brown on “T.D.F x L.A. County Jail” for allegedly supporting him financially and helping take care of legal fees.
“Where was you n—-s when I was in Cali fed up with no covers to bundle up/ Only real n—a that helped me was Chris Brown, that really my brother,” he raps.
Lanez continued to address his legal situation and standing with those in the music game on the outro of his album closer, “Free Tory.”
“I had no real, like, access to my funds. I was fed up and my lawyer wanted over, like, a quarter million to represent me for the appeal,” he said. “So, you know, I start hollering at all my rap friends, my celebrity friends, and nobody was there.”
Tory continued: “N—-s treating me like I was dead and this n—a Chris Brown — I’ll never forget it — this n—-a Chris Brown came out of nowhere. He just gave me the money. He said, ‘Look, bro, when you get outside, holla at me. Hope you come home.’ That’s a real n—a, bro.”
Billboard has reached out to Chris Brown’s rep for comment.
Lanez and Brown have a friendship that goes back to the 2010s, as they’ve teamed up in the past on tracks such as “The Take,” “Feels,” “Tell Me How You Feel,” “Flexible,” “Lurkin,” “Bad Then a Beach” and more.
Lanez (real name Daystar Peterson) was sentenced to 10 years behind bars in August 2023 after being convicted on three felony charges stemming from the 2020 Megan Thee Stallion shooting following a pool party in L.A.’s Hidden Hills.
Three years into a 30-year sentence for sex trafficking and racketeering, R. Kelly broke his silence this week during a seven-minute phone call into the Inmate Tea With A&P podcast, in which the disgraced former R&B star claimed that he’s written more than two dozen albums since his imprisonment in 2022.
Kelly called in on a monitored prison phone line and told the show’s hosts that he was told he was supposed to sing someone “Happy Birthday,” as the two women giggled and referred to the 58-year-old singer born Robert Sylvester Kelly as the “King of R&B,” as well as by his once honorific title: “the Pied Piper of R&B.”
Saying he was feeling “great,” Kelly broke into the opening lines of his 1998 song “When a Woman’s Fed Up,” singing a cappella as one of the hosts danced in her seat, laughed and enthusiastically sang back-up vocals. Asked if he’s continued to used his talents while incarcerated, the vocalist — whose daughter, Buku Abi, now 26, claimed in a documentary last year that her father had sexually abused her as a child, claims his lawyer denied — referred to singing as “a beautiful disease that’s uncurable. That’s not gonna happen, not singing.”
In fact, Kelly, claimed that he’s written “like 25 albums” since he was sentenced to three decades in prison in 2021 following a conviction on racketeering and sex trafficking charges; in 2022, Kelly was also convicted of three counts of sexual exploitation enticement of a minor child via production of child pornography as well as three counts of coercion and enticement of a minor to engage in criminal sexual activity.
Before his sentence, Kelly was known for his prolific nature, releasing 18 studio albums from 1992 through 2016 as well as 33 chapters in his bizarre “Trapped in the Closet” musical soap opera series between 2005 and 2012.
In addition to writing songs from his cell at a federal prison in North Carolina, Kelly said he’s working on trying to get out of prison so he can get back to “what it is God gave me, my talent.” Last month, Manhattan’s 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals rejected Kelly’s bid to appeal his New York conviction, which, given the singer’s age, could keep him locked up into his 80s if he serves the full term.
Kelly was long dogged by allegations of sexual and physical abuse of women, as well as an illegal marriage in 1994 to a then-15-year-old Aaliyah when he was 27. He was accused in 2017 of holding half a dozen women hostage, some allegedly underage, as part of what was described as a “cult,” in which he allegedly controlled every aspect of their lives, from when they ate and bathed to how they dressed and when they had sex with him.
Multiple women later came forward to claim that Kelly sexually and physically abused them, including a number who spoke for the first time in public about his alleged abuse in the bombshell Surviving R. Kelly series; Kelly and his legal team have denied the allegations.
Duane “Keffe D” Davis is speaking out from behind bars as he faces a murder charge for the 1996 shooting death of Tupac Shakur.
Davis, who pleaded not guilty, has remained at Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas since his September 2023 arrest, and he has now given ABC News his first-ever interview since being arrested.
“I’m innocent,” he said in the sit-down, which aired Thursday (March 6) on Good Morning America. “I did everything they asked me to do. Get new friends. Stop selling drugs. I stopped all that. I’m supposed to be out there enjoying my twilight at one of my f—ing grandson’s football games and basketball games. Enjoying life with my kids.”
2Pac’s murder remained a cold case until Davis’ 2023 arrest nearly 27 years after the legendary Death Row rapper was gunned down in Las Vegas. Still, the former Crips gang member, who prosecutors believe was the “shot caller” to orchestrate the hit on Pac, is confident he’ll be found not guilty.
“I did not do it,” he insisted during the interview. “They don’t have nothing. And they know they don’t have nothing. They can’t even place me out here. They don’t have no gun, no car, no Keffe D, no nothing.”
Davis claims he was hundreds of miles away when the 2Pac shooting took place, and said he’ll have about “20 or 30 people” coming to court to corroborate his alibi.
He spoken about his alleged involvement in Pac’s murder in the past, as he’s given his account in numerous interviews as well as his 2019 Compton Street Legend memoir. However, back in 2008, Davis allegedly agreed to a proffer agreement with authorities connected to an L.A. task force, which would have granted him immunity from being prosecuted in the case.
Per ABC News, he once again admitted his alleged role in Pac’s murder a year later to detectives in Las Vegas, but they were not required to honor any previous agreements.
A Clark County District Court judge ruled in January that Davis had not shown proof of any immunity deals. He’s repeatedly been denied bail.
Shakur was shot on Sept. 7, 1996, in a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. Authorities believe Davis orchestrated the hit with others in the car following a brawl at the MGM Grand casino.
Davis was arrested in September 2023 and has been charged with first degree murder. He will head to trial in February 2026.
Watch Davis’ interview with ABC News above.