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SXSW will no longer engage in partnerships with the U.S. Army or weapons manufacturers, the event announced Wednesday (June 26). “After careful consideration, we are revising our sponsorship model,” reads a statement posted to the SXSW website. “As a result, the U.S. Army, and companies who engage in weapons manufacturing, will not be sponsors of […]
Diddy scrubbed his Instagram account clean last week and he faced backlash for deleting his apology video to Cassie. Among those criticizing Sean Combs for the “foolish” move is ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith, who ripped the embattled music executive.
“You deleted all the videos from your Instagram account including the one I just showed,” he said on the Tuesday (June 25) episode of Stephen A. Smith Show. “If you had a million photos, if you had a million videos, and you decided to delete 999,999, that’s the one you should’ve kept up if you’re sincere.”
Stephen A. continued: “And I know that you’ve been taking a lot of hits, and there’s been shrapnels of criticism all over the place aimed in your direction. Not that it wasn’t deserved … Although one could argue, the ex that you hit had to deal with a hell of a lot more than you had to deal with in terms of the criticism.”
Smith just couldn’t understand how Diddy or his PR team thought it would be the right move to delete the Cassie apology video when public perception was not on his side.
“Delete everything else — not that,” he claimed. “Don’t you want people to know that you were contrite? That you were incredibly sorry? That you have profound regret for the egregious actions that you were caught on camera committing?”
The boisterous First Take host added: “By deleting the video, you throw all of that out the window. The possibility of the very few people that would ever believe that really having a reason to continue to believe you.”
Fans noticed Diddy cleared his IG account last week, including the apology video in response to footage of him physically abusing Cassie in a Los Angeles hotel. CNN shared the March 2016 video in May, and it showed Diddy dragging Cassie across the floor of an L.A. hotel elevator bank.
Diddy said he was “disgusted” with his behavior in the apology video that was shared on his Instagram account. “It’s so difficult to reflect on the darkest times in your life, but sometimes you got to do that,” he stated. “I was f—ed up. I mean, I hit rock bottom. But I make no excuses. My behavior on that video is inexcusable. I take full responsibility for my actions in that video. I’m disgusted. I was disgusted then when I did it, I’m disgusted now.”
Cassie accused Diddy of rape, physical abuse and more in a sprawling lawsuit in November. The two parties — who dated on and off from 2007 to 2018 — would settle the dispute less than 24 hours and terms were not disclosed. The disgraced star has also since been accused of sexual misconduct in several other lawsuits; he had previously denied all allegations.
Watch Stephen A. Smith’s full rant on Diddy below.
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Diddy is looking for a clean slate. The Bad Boy CEO has scrubbed his entire Instagram account, which included an apology to Cassie following the disturbing video leak of him abusing his ex in a L.A. hotel. The mogul’s 20 million followers noticed Diddy had deleted all of the posts from his account earlier this […]
Ty Dolla $ign is defending his Vultures 1 collaborator, Ye (formerly known as Kanye West).
The “Or Nah” rapper is the latest Billboard cover star, and he opened up about working with Ye on their recently released joint album. When asked if he feared Vultures wouldn’t perform well due to Ye’s string of controversial behavior, Ty shrugged it off. “Ye is the best artist of this generation, besides me, and I don’t give a f–k about what people were talking about. I know my n—. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met,” he said. “Just with my analysis of how it goes with him, he goes all the way to the top. And something may happen and he’ll say [something people find offensive] — and then people [get] right back, you know. Because this s–t is undeniable.”
Ye has had a long string of controversies over the past few years, making headlines at his Yeezy Paris Fashion Week show in 2022 for wearing a shirt with the phrase “White Lives Matter” on the back, in addition to featuring Black models wearing the shirt. The phrase is one that was adopted by neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in response to the Black Lives Matter movement, and the rapper faced backlash from both fans and celebrities online.
He also came under fire after a 2022 tweet in which he announced he was going “death con [sic] 3 on Jewish people.” Ye then repeatedly shared antisemitic hate speech, even going so far as to praise Adolf Hitler, a main leader responsible for the systematic murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust. Ye’s controversies have since cost him several lucrative deals, including one with Adidas.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ty discussed the making of Vultures, which arrived after much delay in February 2024. “Japan was hotel rooms, Italy was hotel rooms. Then we got Sting to let us use his [Italian] villa. At first we were just recording in the living room, recording by the pool, setting up recording equipment out there, and then we found out that there’s an actual recording studio there. […] It’s a very expensive album, I will say that. It would make for a crazy documentary.”
The duo are currently gearing up to release the album’s delayed sequel, Vultures 2. “We got all the songs. Basically, it’s just like, ‘How can we get it there? How can we go bigger than the first album?’” Ty said. “Certain people will probably expect you to just do the same exact sound, but that sound’s already out.”
Read the full cover story here.
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.
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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.
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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.
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“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.
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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.
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“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.