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The 2022 Latin Grammy Awards are finally here, taking over the Michelob Ultra Arena at Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas on Thursday (Nov. 17).
The Latin Recording Academy announced this year’s nominees back in September, with Bad Bunny leading the way with 10 nods. Mexican songwriter and producer Edgar Barrera follows closely with nine nominations, while Rosalía and Rauw Alejandro both have eight. Christina Aguilera, Jorge Drexler and Tainy have seven nominations each.
As is the case every year, the 2022 Latin Grammys has a slew of star-studded performers ready to take the stage, including Aguilera, Camilo, John Legend, Elvis Costello, Karol G, Marc Anthony, Nicky Jam, Rosalía, Rauw Alejandro, Sebastian Yatra and many, many more.
The jam-packed event is hosted by Anitta, Luis Fonsi, Laura Pausini and Thalía, and Mexican icon Marco Antonio Solís was honored as Person of the Year at a gala on Wednesday (Nov. 16).
With so many A-listers joining the party, the red carpet was equally as fun, with Latin music’s biggest stars showing off their best looks. Check out our gallery of photos from the red carpet and the 2022 Latin Grammys below.
In 2011, Ebonie Ward was preparing for the grand opening of her boutique, Fly Kix ATL, a men’s clothing store in Atlanta’s Castleberry Hill district that would soon become a stomping ground for high-fashion sneaker heads and up-and-coming rappers such as Kendrick Lamar and Nipsey Hussle. She knew she needed the perfect artist for the launch, so she reached out to a close friend of a rapper she had recently seen at a local showcase. The burgeoning artist, Future, had no Billboard Hot 100 hits to his name — just a commanding, charismatic presence that pierced her core the first time she saw him onstage.
Future accepted the offer and performed at the grand opening, where he also met Ward for the first time and was immediately intrigued by her determination. “She had a different kind of drive,” says Future, who hired her to be his assistant shortly after. “[She] had a will just to get everything done by any means necessary. She always sees ahead of the curve.”
“I think he is the most talented individual on the planet,” says Ward, who began managing Future alongside his longtime manager, Anthony Saleh, in 2017. “When you see somebody who’s so passionate, diligent and hardworking, it just ignites something inside of you that you don’t even understand that you possess. You meet somebody who’s constantly able to help you evolve on every level of your life, just with his level of dedication. It’s really a beautiful thing.”
Read Billboard’s full Future cover story, part of the R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players issue, here.
A trampoline park in Austin isn’t the first place you’d expect to see hundreds of SZA fans. Yet on a Friday night in October, there they were — lined up, excitedly chanting the lyrics to “The Weekend” from the singer-songwriter’s 2017 debut album, Ctrl. And in fact, it wasn’t a completely unexpected sight: SZA had just wrapped her headlining set at the Austin City Limits festival and sent an open invite on Twitter to “randomly jump w me” till 2 a.m. The former competitive gymnast flipped into the foam pit with the utmost joy, just like her fans.
Altitude Trampoline Park, which bills itself as the “world’s best trampoline park,” also might not be where you’d expect to hear a preview of what RCA Records chairman/CEO Peter Edge calls “one of the most important albums of the year.” But on this particular evening, for any attendees listening closely, it was. Terrence “Punch” Henderson, SZA’s manager and president of her label, Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE), played “at least 4 songs off the new album on the loud speakers,” she tweeted the following morning. Unlike this night in Austin, though, getting that album out has been far from all fun and games.
When SZA released Ctrl on June 9, 2017, on RCA and TDE, she immediately established herself as alternative R&B’s girl next door and one of the most exciting new voices in music. Sonically, it was the kind of music SZA had always wanted to hear growing up but never quite found outside of herself — an abstract form of R&B influenced by indie and trap music and shaped by lo-fi beats. And lyrically, it was the kind of ultra-relatable songwriting that young people from all walks of life needed: SZA chronicled familiar coming-of-age quandaries, like wondering if your significant other believes you’re enough, or debating if being normal would benefit your relationships, or, well, questioning everything else life throws at you in your 20s.
Read SZA’s full Billboard cover story, part of our R&B/Hip-Hop Power Players issue, here.
Aaron Carter, a fixture of Y2K era pop music, died on Saturday (Nov. 5) at age 34. The singer, actor and TV personality passed away at his residence in Los Angeles. He is survived by his son, Prince.
In 1998, Carter — the younger brother of Backstreet Boys singer Nick Carter — made his solo debut in America with Aaron Carter, featuring the singles “Crush on You,” Crazy Little Party Girl” and “I’m Gonna Miss You Forever.”
His follow-up album, Aaron’s Party (Come and Get It), was released in September 2000. Aaron’s Party peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200 albums chart and went triple platinum. It featured the singles “I Want Candy” and two Billboard Hot 100 hits, “Aaron’s Party (Come Get It)” (No. 35) and “That’s How I Beat Shaq” (No. 95). He supported the album as an opening act for Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears on the Oops!… I Did It Again Tour. His third album, Oh Aaron, went platinum in 2001, and he has released two albums since then, most recently LØVË in 2018, where he had a writing credit on every track.
Carter also appeared in TV shows such as Lizzie McGuire, Sabrina, the Teenage Witch and 7th Heaven. He made his Broadway debut in 2001 as JoJo the Who in Seussical the Musical and also enjoyed a long stint in the off-Broadway production of The Fantasticks. In a 2019 interview with Billboard, Carter talked about his drive to keep going in the music business: “I’m not going to give up. I’m not going to stop. I’m going to succeed. If something is broken, I’m going to f–king fix it.”
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Rihanna‘s Savage x Fenty Vol. 4 fashion show is just a week away, and the annual fashion experience will feature some high-production performances from global superstars Anitta, Burna Boy, Don Toliver and Maxwell.
In addition, the show will include some special appearances by Ángela Aguilar, Avani Gregg, Bella Poarch, Cara Delevingne, Damson Idris, Irina Shayk, Joan Smalls, Kornbread, Lara Stone, Lilly Singh, Marsai Martin, Precious Lee, Rickey Thompson, Sheryl Lee Ralph, Simu Liu, Taraji P. Henson, Taylour Paige, Winston Duke, Zach Miko and more.
The follow-up to the Emmy-winning Vol. 3 iteration of the fashion show will feature the latest Savage X Fenty styles from the music icon, and will stream exclusively on Prime Video in more than 240 countries and territories.
Ahead of the Savage x Fenty Vol. 4 show airing on Prime Video on Nov. 9, get in the mood for all the fun by checking out our gallery of photos featuring this year’s performers.
Takeoff, born Kirshnik Khari Ball, was shot and killed on Tuesday (Nov. 1) in Houston, Texas. According to a spokesperson from the Houston police department, Takeoff was at a private party at a bowling alley in downtown Houston when shots rang out around 2:35 a.m.
As one third of Migos (alongside his uncle Quavo and cousin Offset), the rapper was an influential force on the mic and on the charts for the last decade. Migos’ 2013 single “Versace” just scraped the Billboard Hot 100 (peaking at No. 99) but set the tone for the next several years of hip-hop. By early 2017, the trio topped the Hot 100 with their Lil Uzi Vert collab “Bad and Boujee,” hailing from the group’s Billboard 200-topping album Culture. Overall, Migos has earned 9.39 million equivalent album units in the U.S. for their catalog of albums, per Luminate, and 14.09 billion on-demand official streams of their songs.
Takeoff himself netted 558,000 in equivalent album units for his solo albums, including the recent collab set with Quavo, this year’s Only Built for Infinity Links.
“There are so many artists,” Takeoff told Billboard in a 2017 Migos cover story. “You got to keep coming like bow! bow! bow!, making so much music that they wonder, ‘Who are the Migos?’ We play a beat for 15, 20 seconds and know if we want to get on it. When we record a verse, it’s no more than 15, 20 minutes. We don’t have a pen and paper. We bounce off each other.”
“I try not to be cocky,” Takeoff continued. “But hey, we the sh-t, man.”
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With fall and spooky season in full swing, October has been filled to the brim with highly anticipated concerts and awards shows.
Just a day after Blink-182 announced a reunion with former singer-guitarist Tom DeLonge for a 2023 global tour and new music, singer-bassist Mark Hoppus was seen chucking up the deuces at Ball Arena for the Denver Avalanche vs. Chicago Blackhawks game.
It was a month of throwbacks for rock fans in general, as Taking Back Sunday and My Chemical Romance took over the Kia Forum in Los Angeles for their own respective concerts. Marcus Mumford also headed out on tour in support of his debut solo album, and took over the Ventura Theater on Oct. 4 in Ventura, Calif.
October was also a month of fashion, as members of K-pop groups SEVENTEEN and Girls’ Generation dressed to the nines while attending the ‘AMI’ 23 SS collection show in Seoul, South Korea. Meanwhile Renjun, Jeno, Jisung, Jaemin and Chenle of NCT Dream attended the 2022 The Fact Music Awards.
Over on the theater side, Lin-Manuel Miranda and the cast of Hamilton headed over to Hamburg, Germany, on Oct. 6 to celebrate the wildly popular production’s German premiere at Stage Operettenhaus. In one of the sweetest photos from the month, Miranda is seen walking onstage to take his bow at the end of the performance, with a hand on his heart and a grateful look on his face.
Look through Billboard‘s favorite photos from throughout the month of October below.