nsfs
Page: 65
With Chris Brown performing on another arena tour across New York and New Jersey, Fat Joe thinks it’s time to “move past” Brown’s legal history and give the singer his flowers.
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The Terror Squad boss hopped on Instagram Live over the weekend, where he claimed that the culture would be looking at Chris Breezy on the same level as Michael Jackson if it weren’t for his 2009 assault of Rihanna, Brown’s then-girlfriend.
“If Chris Brown never got into the controversy with Rihanna, we would be calling him Michael Jackson right now,” Joe declared. “Not like Michael Jackson, Michael Jackson. He’s the most talented singer, artist, performer, hitmaker of our time. There’s nobody even close to Chris Brown. And it’s time we move past it, it’s been 20-something years. That I know of, there’s no more incidents. Man, we gonna let this lifetime go by without saying the truth?”
Since Brown’s 2009 assault on Rihanna, he has faced various legal issues, including punching a man in the face in 2013, for which he pled guilty to simple assault; being accused of punching a photographer in 2017, with the charge later dropped due to “insufficient evidence”; ex-girlfriend Karrueche Tran being granted a restraining order against the singer after she accused him of abuse; and more.
Continued Fat Joe: “When the truth is an unpopular decision, everybody gets scared to say it, they get canceled. Especially famous people. The streets, they know what it is. The streets always know to tell you the truth. The streets still bumping R. Kelly. He’s in jail, he did terrible things. They still bumping R. Kelly.”
Fat Joe went on to come to Brown’s defense while declaring him the “King of R&B,” and said he was “a little kid” at the time of his assault on Rihanna.
“So what I’m trying to say is, it’s a shame we’re lying and we’re giving up to the king of R&B. The king of music,” the Bronx native added. “We thinking he could battle Michael Jackson, that’s all I’m trying to say. If you really look at his body of work, you look at all his hits, you see what he does … You remove from your mind that we don’t like it. We don’t like that he had a controversy … He was a little kid 20-something years ago.”
The “Lean Back” rapper is seemingly referring to the February 2009 felony assault of Rihanna, which took place when Chris Brown was 19. The singer was arrested for physically abusing Ri in a car before a Clive Davis Grammy Awards party; he pleaded guilty to felony assault in June that year.
Billboard has reached out to Rihanna’s reps for comment.
Brown reflected on the night in his 2017 Welcome to My Life documentary. “I look back at that picture and I’m like, ‘That’s not me, bro, that’s not me.’ I hate it to this day. That’s going to haunt me forever,” he admitted.
CB’s still on the road for his 11:11 Tour, which will head north of the border for dates in Montreal and Toronto before returning stateside next week with shows in Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore.
Watch Fat Joe’s share his thoughts below.
Dua Lipa has learned that with great reach comes great backlash. The singer who has nearly 100 million followers on Instagram and X revealed in an interview with the Radio Times this week that she is very aware that her public opinions on today’s most controversial topics might rub some people the wrong way, but she’s determined to share her thoughts anyway.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
The key, she said, is to be thoughtful and really do her homework first. “When I speak about things that are political, I double-, triple-check myself to be, ‘OK, this is about something that is way bigger than me, and it’s necessary – and that’s the only reason I’m posting it.’ That is my only solace in doing that,” she said.
In May, Dua joined a chorus of voices calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas, sharing the Artists for Ceasefire graphic and the hasthtag “#AllEyesOnRafah,” on her Instagram in reference to Israel’s long-planned attack on the city in the Southern Gaza Strip in the midst of the country’s ongoing devastating war against militant group Hamas.
Trending on Billboard
“It’s always going to be met with a backlash and other people’s opinions, so it’s a big decision,” Dua said about choosing to speak out. “I balance it out, because ultimately I feel it’s for the greater good, so I’m willing to [take that hit].”
While a lot of musicians keep their powder dry when it comes to diving into making statement on controversial topics, Dua said that speaking up is a “natural inclination for me, given my background and heritage, and that my very existence is somewhat political — it’s not something that is out of the ordinary for me to be feeling close to.” The singer was born in London as the eldest child of Kosovo Albanian parents and moved to Pristina, Kosovo as a 13-year-old, nearly a decade after the end of a brutal decade-long armed conflict in the country.
Dua is gearing up to headline this year’s Glastonbury Festival in Somerset, England next week alongside fellow headliners Coldplay, SZA and Shania Twain.
Sean “Diddy” Combs has returned his key to New York City after a request from Mayor Eric Adams in response to the release of a video showing the music mogul attacking R&B singer Cassie, officials said Saturday (June 15). The mayor’s office said Combs returned the key after Adams sent letters to the embattled musician’s […]
Barclays has suspended its sponsorship of Live Nation’s U.K. festivals following protests from artists over the bank’s links to defense companies supplying arms to Israel as well as fossil fuel firms.
Country singer CMAT, folk group Lankum and rock bands Pest Control, Zulu, Scowl, Speed and Ithaca are among the acts who have either pulled out of or threatened to boycott Live Nation-promoted summer events, including July’s Latitude festival and the three-day Download festival, which starts Friday (June 14) in Donington Park, Leicestershire.
In a statement on Friday, a spokesperson for Live Nation U.K. said, “Following discussion with artists, we have agreed with Barclays that they will step back from sponsorship of our festivals.”
Confirming the news, a spokesperson for Barclays told Billboard that the London-headquartered bank “was asked and has agreed to suspend participation in the remaining Live Nation festivals in 2024.”
“Barclays customers who hold tickets to these festivals are not affected and their tickets remain valid,” the spokesperson continued. “The protestors’ agenda is to have Barclays debank defence companies which is a sector we remain committed to as an essential part of keeping this country and our allies safe.”
Referencing recent outbreaks of vandalism at a number of U.K. Barclays bank branches, where protestors threw paint and smashed windows, the spokesperson said the “only thing that this small group of activists will achieve is to weaken essential support for cultural events enjoyed by millions. It is time that leaders across politics, business, academia and the arts stand united against this.”
Barclays is one of the biggest sponsors of music festivals in the United Kingdom and signed a five-year sponsorship deal with Live Nation last year. Over the past two decades, the company says it has invested £112 million ($142 million) in supporting British music and the country’s arts sector.
Pressure from pro-Palestinian groups on music festivals and arts organizations to cut ties with sponsors with perceived links to Israel has been building since the start of the conflict in Gaza. Last month, more than 150 artists withdrew from Brighton’s Great Escape Festival over the independent event’s ties to Barclays.
Defending its position, Barclays has previously stated that it provides “vital financial services to U.S., U.K. and European public companies that supply defence products to NATO and its allies” but does not directly invest in these companies.
The news that the international bank, which has also drawn heavy criticism from environmental campaigners for bankrolling fossil fuel firms, was pulling out of sponsoring Live Nation’s U.K. festivals was welcomed by campaign group Bands Boycott Barclays.
“As musicians, we were horrified that our music festivals were partnered with Barclays, who are complicit in the genocide in Gaza through investment, loans and underwriting of arms companies supplying the Israeli military,” posted the campaign group on Instagram.
“Hundreds of artists have taken action this summer to make it clear that this is morally reprehensible, and we are glad we have been heard,” the group added.
Posting on X, Rage Against The Machine’s Tom Morello, who is due to play Download this weekend, said that “the fact that the festival has listened to its musicians and cut ties with Barclays Bank is a testament to the power of artists taking collective action for human rights.”
“I’ve been pushing hard for this behind the scenes,” added Morello, “and I salute all the artists like Zulu, Scowl and Speed who have taken a stand to help make this historic withdrawal happen.”
A 58-year-old Arizona man who spent months plotting to stage a violent attack at a Bad Bunny show in Atlanta in May in order to spark a race war ahead of this November’s presidential election was indicted by a federal grand jury on Tuesday. According to NBC News, Mark Adams Prieto was indicted on charges of firearms trafficking, transfer of a firearm for use in a hate crime and possession of an unregistered firearm following a monthslong investigation by the FBI that resulted in his arrest last month.
The Justice Department said that Prieto is currently in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service awaiting transport from New Mexico to Arizona. NBC reported that according to an arrest affidavit, officials began investigating Prescott, Arizona native Prieto in October after a confidential source told a Phoenix FBI agent that a man — later identified as Prieto — had talked about wanting to incite a race war in the run-up to this November’s election.
Trending on Billboard
The source told authorities that they’d spoken to Prieto more than 15 times over the course of three years at gun shows, where their chats grew from small talk to political discussions. Last year, however, the source told authorities that Prieto started making concerning comments “advocating for a mass shooting” that the affidavit said would specifically target Black people, as well as Jews and Muslims.
Prieto — a vendor at gun shows who allegedly traded his personal guns in cash or swap deals in order to evade detection from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives — reportedly believed that “martial law will be implemented shortly after the 2024 election and that a mass shooting should occur prior” to it being invoked, asking the source in late 2023 if they were “ready to kill a bunch of people.”
The FBI surveilled Prieto from January to March of this year, with the affidavit claiming that on January 21 Prieto told the source and an undercover FBI agent acting as an associate of the source at a Phoenix gun show that he wanted them to help him carry out a mass shooting that targeted Black people at an undetermined rap show in Atlanta. In describing his reasoning for picking Atlanta, the affidavit said Prieto explained, “When I was a kid that [Georgia] was one of the most conservative states in the country. Why is it not now? Because as the crime got worse in L.A., St. Louis, and all these other cities, all the [N-words] moved out of those [places] and moved to Atlanta. That’s why it isn’t so great anymore.”
Prieto allegedly said he wanted to attack a hip-hop show because there would be a high concentration of African Americans there and he was planning to leave confederate flags behind afterwards to send the message that “we’re going to fight back now, and every whitey will be the enemy across the whole country,” adding “KKK all the way” and that he wanted to show “no mercy, no quarter.” Prieto is also alleged to have made plans to travel to Atlanta in advance to store weapons in the area, stressing that having a “high body count” was the most important aspect of the planned attack.
On March 23, Prieto attended another gun show in Arizona where he allegedly told an undercover agent that he was still planning the attack, fearing that if he waited until after the election, “they might have everything in place you can’t even drive, you’ll be stopped,” according to the affidavit. At that point Prieto appeared to hone in on a pair of Bad Bunny shows at State Farm Arena in Atlanta on May 14 and 15, telling the undercover agent that he wanted them to wear hoodies because he thought they wouldn’t raise any alarms dressed that way at a hip-hop show. The following day Prieto allegedly sold an AR-15 to the undercover agent for $1,000 and told him to use it during the attack and to bring along as many gun magazines as he could carry.
At a subsequent gun show in April in Prescott the affidavit said that when the undercover agent asked Prieto if his attack was still on target for May, he said he was planning to push the date back. Prieto was then arrested in New Mexico on May 14 and admitted to knowing the undercover agent and the source and discussing the potential attack on a public venue in Atlanta.
“However, he told agents that he did not intend to go forward with the attack,” the affidavit said, noting that Prieto also allegedly admitted to having sold the AR-15 to the agent and telling him that it would be a good weapon to use in the attack. According to the Justice Department, Prieto allegedly told agents he had seven firearms in his car before being taken into custody and when agents searched his home they found additional firearms as well as an unregistered short-barreled rifle.
Each conviction on Firearms Trafficking and Transfer of Firearm for Use in a Hate Crime carries a maximum penalty of 15 years in prison, as well as a fine of $250,000, or both; a conviction for Possession of an Unregistered Firearm carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison. a fine of $250,000, or both.
A spokesperson for Bad Bunny had not returned Billboard’s request for comment at press time.
Kehlani revealed to fans on Thursday (June 13) that sales of shirts promoting their “Next 2 U” single raised more than $555,000 for the Palestinian people, as well as the people of war-torn Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. “This song is about protection, something that institutions have failed to do for the people of Palestine, Congo, and Sudan,” she wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday.
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
“No one got us the way we got each other,” they added. “Me & my team feel overwhelmed with gratitude for yall showing out for this fundraiser. We’re blessed to say we supported artists in the West Bank while raising money for families in Gaza, Sudan and Congo. We’re blessed to say that we are supported by a community standing on business together. We’re blessed to play a small part in a growing tide towards the truth about Palestine.”
The singer concluded the note by saying, “we’re invincible together and I feel ever so inspired by y’all. THANK you for showing out on the streets of DC, with your dollars, with your labor and organizing, with your bodies blocking business as usual.” The note also featured the phrase “I believe that we will win” and a watermelon emoji, which has become a symbol showing support for the Palestinian people.
The $65 T-shirts for the singer’s latest single were made in Bethlehem and printed in Ramallah, cities that are both in the West Bank. The fundraiser comes as the war between Israel and the militant group Hamas drags into its ninth month following Hamas’ surprise Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which officials said more than 1,200 women, children and men were killed and 250 citizens were taken hostage. Israel’s retaliatory strikes have killed more than 36,000 Palestinians to date according to authorities, while displacing more than one million people and causing what aid groups have called the worst famine in recent history.
In the video for “Next 2 U,” Kehlani placed her solidarity with the Palestinian people front-and-center, with an opening message featuring a poem from Palestinian-American writer Hala Alyan and the message “Long Live the Intifada” — a reference to the two violent uprisings in the West Bank and Gaza Strip aimed at ending Israel’s occupation of those territories. The clip also features the singer and their background dancers waving Palestinian flags and wearing suits accented with keffiyeh scarves. It ends with a message saying that her team included a link to the list of the names of the “thousands of deceased children” killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza provided by Al Jazeera in the video’s description because it was too long to include in the clip.
Over the past few months, Kehlani is among the artists who’ve been speaking out in support of the Palestinian people, posting an Insta video in May — which has since been removed — in which she called out her “highly f–king platformed” peers for not commenting on the war, saying “You can’t speak? Disgusting… It’s f–k Israel. It’s f–k Zionism. And it’s f–k a lot of ya’ll too.” Her comments have been supported by rapper Macklemore, who recently released his pro-Palestinian protest song “Hind’s Hall,” named for the Hamilton Hall building at Columbia University that students occupied in April and renamed in honor of a six-year-old Palestinian girl, Hind Rajab, who was killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
Check out Kehlani’s post below.
Young Thug’s attorney Brian Steel will not have to report to jail this weekend on criminal contempt charges after the Georgia Supreme Court granted his emergency motion for bond.
The ruling, issued Wednesday (June 12), came two days after the Atlanta judge overseeing Young Thug’s gang trial held Steel in criminal contempt in a bizarre courtroom episode centered on claims of a secret meeting between the judge, prosecutors and a key witness.
The decision means that Steel’s jail sentence — 20 days, to be served over ten consecutive weekends starting this Friday — will be put on pause until the Supreme Court rules on his appeal of the contempt order, which his attorneys have argued was an abuse of the judge’s authority.
An attorney for Steel did not immediately return a request for comment.
On Monday (June 10), months into the massive racketeering trial, Steel alerted Judge Ural Glanville that he had learned of a secret “ex parte” meeting that morning between the judge, prosecutors and a witness named Kenneth Copeland. Steel argued that such a meeting, without defense counsel present, had potentially involved coercion of a witness and was clear grounds for a mistrial.
Rather than address Steel’s complaints, Glanville instead repeatedly demanded that he divulge who had informed him about a private meeting in his chambers, suggesting the leak was illegal: “If you don’t tell me how you got this information, you and I are going to have problems.”
Steel refused to do so, saying that it had been the meeting itself that was the problem. “You’re not supposed to have communication with a witness who’s been sworn,” he told the judge. Steel said he had been told that during the meeting, prosecutors and the judge had pressed Copeland to testify by saying he could be held in jail for an extended period of time if he did not do so.
“If that’s true, what this is is coercion, witness intimidation,” Steel told Glanville.
In an extraordinary exchange, the two continued to argue until Glanville eventually ordered Steel removed from the courtroom by a court officer. In an order issued later on Monday — with Steel now represented by another well-known Georgia criminal defense attorney —Glanville ultimately sentenced Steel to spend 20 days in jail, to be served over 10 consecutive weekends.
In a dramatic twist, Steel requested that he be allowed to serve that sentence alongside Young Thug, who has been sitting in jail for more than two years as the trial drags on.
Thug (Jeffery Williams) and dozens of others were indicted in May 2022 over allegations that his “YSL” group was not really a record label called “Young Stoner Life” but a violent Atlanta gang called “Young Slime Life.” Prosecutors claim the group committed murders, carjackings, armed robberies, drug dealing and other crimes over the course of a decade.
Jury selection kicked off in January 2023, but the trial itself did not begin until November and has since been marked by numerous delays. With dozens of witnesses still set to testify in the prosecution case, the trial is expected to run into 2025.
Following Glanville’s contempt ruling against Steel, his attorneys immediately appealed the decision, arguing that the judge’s actions on Monday had been both procedurally and substantively improper. Among other things, they cited the fact that Glanville himself had issued a ruling on an issue that involved his own potentially unethical actions.
“The court involved itself in these proceedings by conducting the ex parte hearing that violated Mr. Steel’s client’s rights,” Steel’s attorney wrote in their appeal. “This created a conflict of interest for the court because its own ethical conduct was at the heart of Mr. Steel’s request.”
“The court then compounded its abuse of power by presiding over the very contempt hearing where its own rules violations prompted the controversy,” Steel’s attorneys continued. “The court should have recused and allowed the contempt proceedings to be handled by a separate court.”
That appeal, filed with a state appeals court on Tuesday (June 11), was passed along to the Supreme Court, which under Georgia case law is tasked with handling such appeals directly. And on Wednesday, the high court accepted the case and ordered Steel’s sentence put on hold until it issues a final ruling on Judge Glanville’s actions.
Following Monday’s dust-up, the YSL trial has continued with more testimony, with Steel present in the courtroom representing Thug. But on Wednesday, attorneys for another defendant (Deamonte Kendrick) argued that Glanville should recuse himself from the case over the alleged secret meeting with prosecutors and the witness. They argued that the meeting had been intended to “harass and intimidate the sworn witness into testifying.”
When presented with that motion in court, Glanville quickly denied it and continued on with the trial.
Miami’s Mutiny Hotel served as the epicenter of the 305’s party scene running the late ’70s and early ’80s. MGM+ is looking to party like it’s 1980 and recreate the vibrant energy surrounding that era in Vice City with the Hotel Cocaine series. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts […]
As the people of Georgia continue to rally against their government’s stringent “foreign agents” law, U.K. trip-hop collective Massive Attack is joining them in protest. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In a message shared to the band’s Instagram Stories on Wednesday morning (June 12), Massive Attack […]
Ariana Grande has broken her silence on her time with Nickelodeon following the claims of sexual harassment and toxic workplace conditions made by former child actors in the documentary Quiet on Set: The Dark Side of Kids TV, which streams on Max.
While talking with her “The Boy Is Mine” costar Penn Badgley, Nava Kavelin and Sophie Ansari on the trio’s Podcrushed podcast, the pop star reflected on playing Cat Valentine on the network’s Victorious and Sam & Cat when she was just a teenager. “Obviously my relationship to it has been — and is currently — changing,” she said in the Wednesday (June 12) episode. “I’ve been reprocessing a lot of what the experience was like.”
“I think that the environment needs to be made safer if kids are going to be acting, and I think there should be therapists,” continued Grande, who was cast on Victorious when she was just 14 years old. “I think there should be parents allowed to be wherever they wanna be.”
The interview comes about three months after the arrival of the docuseries, which explored multiple claims from former Nickelodeon employees about the network’s sets allegedly being rife with sexism, racism and inappropriate/predatory behavior involving underage stars and crew. The documentary also suggested that head producer Dan Schneider’s shows tended to put young women such as Grande in comedic situations with overt sexual implications. (Schneider filed a defamation lawsuit against Warner Bros. Discovery and the other companies behind the docuseries in May, arguing that Quiet on the Set incorrectly implied that he sexually abused the child performers he worked with.)
“It’s really taken advantage of how much it means to the young performer to get a laugh,” the “Yes, And?” artist told Badgley and his co-hosts. “We were convinced [that] was the cool thing about [Victorious]: We pushed the envelope with our humor, the innuendos. It just all happened so quickly, and now looking back on some of the clips, I’m like, ‘D–n, really?’”
“You think about it, ‘If I had a daughter …,’” she added. “There’s a bottom line. The things that weren’t approved for the network were snuck onto our website. That is another discovery. Going into it, I guess I’m upset.”
Grande also revealed that the Victorious casts’ parents were, for most of her time on the show, only occasionally allowed to be on set with their children. She also pointed out that young people in all industries, not just Hollywood, deal with inappropriate bosses and sexual harassment, and she’s glad that society is starting to push for better conditions.
“The survivors who have come forward, there’s not a word for how devastating that is to hear about,” she concluded. “I think the environment just needs to be made a lot safer all around. Like I said, I’m still, in real-time, reprocessing my relationship to it.”
Watch Grande recount her time on Nickelodeon on Podcrushed above.