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While Charlamagne is now focused on spreading positivity, his former self was on a different type of time. He recently confirmed that he and Busta Rhymes almost got into it years ago.
As spotted on Complex, DJ Envy and Charlamagne Tha God paid a visit to the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast. The duo discussed a variety of topics regarding their rise to fame as one of the premier Hip-Hop morning shows in the country. Gillie and Wallo eventually asked about some of their past run-ins with rappers, and Charlamagne confirmed the long standing rumors that he and Busta Rhymes almost got into it.
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“Who ran down on me? Busta. Yeah, Busta ran down on me,” he opened. “I was being disrespectful. But you know what it was, though, I’ll say this. I wanted to win so bad when we got The Breakfast Club, anybody could get it.” He went on to admit that he was in the wrong and purposely was calling out the rap legend over his freestyle with DMX over “Otis,” which was originally recorded by The Throne.
“It was that freezer sh*t, man. I used to put rappers in a freezer back in the day. I put Busta in the freezer ’cause Busta had did a freestyle over the ‘Otis’ beat,” he explained. “And the crazy sh*t is, the sh*t is actually hard, but I was just being an a**hole. So it was Busta Rhymes and DMX — God bless the dead — on the ‘Otis’ beat, but I gave him ‘Donkey of the Day’ for no reason. It really was for no reason.”
The Moncks Corner, South Carolina native went on to detail their exchange, which almost went left. “Busta said, ‘You know me?! I said, ‘Yeah, I know you. You a dude who used to be hot but your sh*t wack now.’ Busta said, ‘You better stop this tough guy sh*t before I f*** you up in here!’ I’m drunk as sh*t, I’m like, ‘I’m a f*** you up.’ I said, ‘We gonna fight in this muthaf***er or something.’ Then Busta’s people came, my people came, and they just broke us up.”
You can view the interview with DJ Envy and Charlamagne Tha God below.
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Matthew Schonfeld and RaShaad Strong used to play a simple game to pass the time while working at Manhattan’s Only NY boutique.
“We started going on SoundCloud to find the artist with the least followers [who had] the song that was more fire than the next one,” Schonfeld says. The pair would alternate playing “SoundCloud rabbit hole” finds from now-established acts. While Strong usually had the best picks, Schonfeld unwillingly admits, both music lovers emerged as winners.
In 2016, the duo began their music discovery podcast Not97 — its name, of course, a “tongue-in-cheek” reference to renowned New York hip-hop FM station Hot97. “We love Hot97,” Schonfeld says. “It does its thing for [big] artists, and we’re going to do what we do for [emerging] artists.”
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Five years later, Not97 was picked up by Human Re Sources and The Orchard after seven seasons, and recently landed at No. 2 on the Apple Music Podcasts Chart. Along with their newest co-host Athena Yasaman, the trio of music lovers — who double as professional managers, curators and fashion industry creators — search the depths of the internet to find the best under-underground artists and pass the aux back and forth, highlighting their favorite finds across genres.
“What I liked most about Not97 is how it felt similar to our mission as a company of being disruptive,” says Human Re Sources CEO and EVP of creative development at Sony Music, Jay Erving. “They have a very high taste level and batting average in terms of picking artists that are ultimately going to have success.”
Each episode also features guests who bring two of their own music picks — including fashion designers, curators, DJs, A&Rs, music journalists, artists, music executives and directors. This season’s guests will include artists Jordan Ward, Fana Hues and Alex Vaughn.
“[Not97] has given artists an outlet that’s less abrasive,” explains co-founder Strong. “We’re one of the few platforms that if you come on to the show, we’re not even going to ask you many questions about your actual artistry. It’s a safe space.”
Instead, the artists spend their time uplifting other artists smaller than them that they admire, leaning into a community-based approach that is uncommon in the world of music interviews.
Founded in 2016, Not97 carved out its own uncharted space amidst an influx of music podcast start-ups, including Drink Champs and The Joe Budden Podcast (formerly known as I’ll Name This Podcast Later), among others. While wildly popular podcasts from known veteran music personalities like N.O.R.E., Joe Budden and Angie Martinez have thrived with superstar guests, co-founders Schonfeld and Strong made a name for themselves by leaning into the exact opposite.
“I got bored of blogs — I didn’t feel like I was finding new music there,” Schonfeld explains. “I was trying to figure out how I could effect some sort of change within music discovery for young artists. The podcast is kind of built as a means to an end for that.”
Schonfeld’s strategy has remained the same over the years: going down those SoundCloud rabbit holes in the hopes of finding a diamond in the rough. And his strategy has worked: Not97 featured Baby Keem, King Princess, Giveon, Kenny Mason, Arlo Parks, Tierra Whack, Fousheé and plenty of other now-notable acts before their breakout moments.
“You can read 500 words about an artist and still not press play on the song,” he says. “So [we thought], ‘Let’s streamline it and create a way to listen to a podcast and to eight songs.’”
Not only does Not97 expose small artists to an audience of thousands, but the platform has also become a strong networking tool for small acts to secure otherwise inaccessible opportunities. Schonfeld says he and his collaborators spent the first year of Not97 building relationships with artists, reaching out to ask permission before playing their songs. Featuring recorded tracks soon turned to holding full performances, when the team began their Not a Showcase series in Los Angeles and New York, setting the stage for a few acts to perform live for a ticketed audience and creating opportunities for those acts to profit from their art.
Beyond opportunities directly tied to Not97, the podcast allows for the show’s guests to be exposed to music from acts with small audiences. Over the course of nine seasons, Not97 has had music industry guests including artists, sync licensing coordinators, label executives and music journalists, with some artists whose music was featured going on to secure booking agents and performances thanks to their inclusion on episodes.
“When we started this, we didn’t set out to be the biggest podcast — we were using the podcast medium as a means of sharing music,” Schonfeld says. “We were like, ‘This is the easiest way for us to play this music, have these conversations and get it out there.’ In the last, like, four or five years, everybody started a podcast — it’s just gone crazy. That being said, I do think that the music podcast world is still fairly untapped.”
But despite the boom of podcast listenership, some companies are cutting back. In March, NPR announced that it would be canceling four podcasts — Invisibilia, Louder Than a Riot, Everyone & Their Mom and Rough Translation — to close a $30 million budget gap. In an article from NPR announcing the cancellation and a layoff of 10 percent of their staff, the platform attributed the slashing of those podcasts to “advertisers’ growing reluctance to spend money, particularly on podcasting, in an uncertain economy.”
“The problem is a lot of these companies don’t necessarily know what they’re doing with this content,” Schonfeld says. “I don’t think NPR realizes how important what they have is. They’re going to be producing Louder Than a Riot for this whole season and I hope by the end of it, NPR rethinks their [decision].”
When asked if he worries for Not97, Schonfeld is confident. “Not97’s tagline is, ‘Not a podcast, not a radio show.’ That has put us in a space that’s one foot in, one foot out,” he says. “A lot of our success up until now has been on the music side of things. I think of Not97 as an overarching brand and the podcast being the nucleus of that.”
Schonfeld says that the collaboration with Human Re Sources and The Orchard will allow them to provide resources to artists that they otherwise wouldn’t have access to. “Having a global distribution platform behind us where I can pitch artists to internal teams that [handle] music distribution, marketing, digital marketing services,” he lists. “The Orchard really builds itself out to be a full support system for artists.”
“Both Spotify, Apple and others are really leaning into podcasts,” says Erving. “I think we’re gonna start to see them behind the paywall, which will lend itself to a lot more revenue in the space.”
When it comes to the future of Not97, co-founder Strong has big plans for expansion. “[We’re thinking about] potentially going to a larger platform to amplify what we already do in terms of video,” he says. “Matt has always wanted to do a label from when I met him, before we even did the podcast. So a label would be the next thing. That was the ultimate goal.”
Michael Fitzpatrick, singer for rock band Fitz & the Tantrums, doesn’t envy the younger generation of artists trying to catch a break in the music business.
“I’m so grateful my career happened and flourished before TikTok came,” Fitzpatrick tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast. “I feel for these new artists. They’re not even making music. They’re just content creators. They’ll work a whole year on an album and [if] their label doesn’t see enough viral s–t, they’ll literally shelf their album.”
Fitzpatrick is hardly alone in his criticism of TikTok. Last year, Halsey blasted her record label for holding the release of a new track “unless they can fake a viral moment on TikTok.” Lizzy McAlpine, who debuted on the Hot 100 chart in February thanks to the success of the track “Ceilings” on TikTok, told Billboard she has “a love/hate relationship” with the app. “I feel like I can see the benefits of it, which is why I post,” said McAlpine. “But if I didn’t have to post, I would not be posting on TikTok.”
Not that Fitz & the Tantrums hasn’t had a bit of TikTok success; the band’s song “Out of My League,” which reached No. 13 on Billboard’s Hot Rock Songs chart back in 2013, has been given added longevity by being used in nearly 165,000 TikTok videos. But artists and labels can’t summon a viral hit on command, and Fitzpatrick isn’t sure lightning will strike twice. “I would say in the law of averages, we already had our viral moment on TikTok. So what’s the chance I’m going to get two? I’m not so sure.”
The trick is coming up with what Fitzpatrick calls “quotable” moments in music. He cites Meghan Trainor’s “Made You Look” as a good example of a song that wasn’t necessarily written with social media in mind but is perfectly built for viral potential. Trainor and her co-writers Sean Douglas and Federico Vender wrote “vibrant, neon-colored lyrics” with brand names — Gucci and Louis Vuitton — to go with “a cool dance,” he says. “I think if you can find a lyric that really feels makes a statement or says something profound in a clever way and is succinct enough, that’s not a bad idea to consider in your songwriting because it gives your song a quotable moment.”
If there’s a song from the latest Fitz & the Tantrums album, Let Yourself Free from 2022, with TikTok potential, it could be a track called “Ahhhh.” The lyrics — Fitzpatrick songs “I could be someone when I grow up” in the pre-chorus — have already attracted some TikTok users. “What I realized is we weren’t trying to create that moment, but it might be the most quotable part of the whole record,” says Fitzpatrick. “People went out, they felt that lyric, felt that message and they’re creating.”
But will “Ahhhh” resonate with a larger swath of TikTok users? “We’ll see,” Fitzpatrick says cautiously. “It’s such a tricky thing.”
Listen to the entire Behind the Setlist interview with Fitzpatrick at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart, Stitcher or Amazon Music.
Forget Ozempic, or the Hollywood 48-hour miracle diet. If you really want to get superstar fit, Coldplay singer Chris Martin suggests you do what he does: listen to The Boss. In his case that’s 73-year-old miracle of biology Bruce Springsteen, from whom Martin has learned a very important diet tip.
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“I actually don’t have dinner anymore,” Martin told Conan O’Brien on this week’s episode of the former late night host’s podcast, Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend when O’Brien asked what important lessons the singer has learned from meeting, and breaking bread, with so many of his rock idols. “I stop eating at 4 [p.m.] and I learned that from having lunch with Bruce Springsteen.”
O’Brien, in his best Springsteen grunt, joked, “what happened? You were having lunch with him and he said, ‘after this NO MORE! That’s it!’”
Martin explained that he got to share a mid-day meal at home with Bruce and wife/bandmate Patti Scialfa the day after Coldplay performed in Philadelphia earlier this year, which is where the rock icon known for his age-defying stamina during sometimes three-plus-hour concerts dropped a few pearls of diet wisdom on his young charge.
“I was on a really strict diet anyway,” Martin continued. “But I was like, ‘Bruce looks even more in shape than me’ and Patti said he’s only eating one meal a day. I was like, ‘Well, there we go. That’s my next challenge.’” They both had jokes about what that one meal is, with O’Brien suggesting it was an 8-foot-long sub sandwich and Martin matching his punchline by revealing that it’s an entire buffalo.
“And then you see it’s this giant vat of beef chili,” O’Brien chuckled. “The chef came out and said, ‘today we have flank of buffalo with a steroid sauce,’” Martin quipped.
Martin will keep burning those calories on Coldplay’s massive Music of the Spheres world tour, wrapping up the current South American leg with a run of shows at Estadio Nilton Santos Engenhao in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil on March 25, 26 and 28 before moving on to another European swing that will run from May 17 through July 19. A final North American string of dates in September wraps with an Oct. 1 gig at the Rose Bowl in Los Angeles.
Watch Martin’s interview with O’Brien below.
Lance Bass sat down with Billboard News on Tuesday (Feb. 7) to spill all the tea about his new podcast, Lance Bass Presents: Frosted Tips, and whether *NSYNC fans might ever get the reunion they’ve always wanted.
Chatting with Billboard‘s own Tetris Kelly, the boy band veteran said he initially conceived of the project as a podcast that “really celebrated the fandom out there,” and it’s the perfect excuse for fans to take a time-traveling trip back to the heyday of the early 2000s.
According to the *NSYNC star, his other goal for the show was to use it as a vehicle for “telling stories we were never allowed to tell before.”
“We had to keep it very PG back in the day,” he said. “And there was a lot of stuff going down behind the curtain. There’s definitely a lot of secrets being told. It’s a really great look at the music industry, especially in that era. You know, how everything went down, what we all experienced. There’s so many similarities. A lot of the issues we were dealing with at the time were kept out of public view because we didn’t want the fans to know.”
So far, the podcast has featured Bass’ bandmates J.C. Chasez and Joey Fatone, as well as A.J. McLean of Backstreet Boys, Jeff Timmons of 98 Degrees and Jonathan Knight of New Kids on the Block.
When Kelly asked about whether a reunion might ever be in the boy band’s future — especially after four-fifths of *NSYNC joined Ariana Grande onstage at Coachella in 2019 — Bass left the door open.
“Never say never,” he said. “I mean, who knew we were going to be doing Coachella a few years ago? I think it just has to be the right time; we all have to be inspired in the moment. But I do think the world needs something again from *NSYNC. I always feel bad that there was no ending, because we didn’t have a final show, we didn’t have a final tour, because we didn’t know it was the final days. I think we owe it to the fans to give them something at some point. I just hope it’s before I’m 80 years old,” he laughed.
Watch more from Bass’ interview with Billboard News, including his thoughts on modern boy bands like BTS, his favorite memories from his *NSYNC days and more, above.
Hulu shared a first glimpse of its original docuseries based on Spotify’s popular RapCaviar playlist on Tuesday (Feb. 7).
RapCaviar Presents will tackle some of the most provocative issues surrounding hip-hop today through conversations with the genre’s emerging and chart-topping artists, including City Girls, Jack Harlow, Polo G, Roddy Ricch, Coi Leray and more. All seven episodes will premiere via Hulu on March 30.
In the nearly two-minute clip, Tyler, the Creator and Pharrell Williams separately sit down to discuss the impact they’ve had on one another. Tyler recalls meeting with his idol in the studio during his Cherry Bomb European tour in 2015 and the words he shared with him that instigated a significant “switch” in the rapper’s music. “Make something undeniable, and make it equally as infectious,” Pharrell advises in his own interview. “Why are you doing music? Is it just because you just want to look cool? ‘Cause that will burn out. When it becomes purpose-oriented, it can be as cool as the flashy sh–, but it will be much more meaningful.”
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“Oh f—!” Tyler exclaims in the next frame. “OK. No more being silly. … Music first. And at that moment, I went home. I just wanted to change everything. I just wanted to switch, and the switch f—ing happened.”
“Spotify continues to find ways to innovate and grow the influence of our playlist brands. We’re excited to expand the RapCaviar universe through this docuseries with our partners at Hulu,” said Carl Chery, Spotify’s head of urban music and creative director of the series, in a statement. “Using hip-hop as a vehicle to examine society, we’re revealing stories through the lens of visionaries like Tyler, The Creator, and the City Girls. Through RapCaviar Presents, we’re hoping to entertain and educate hip-hop fans and spark meaningful conversations about music and culture.”
Karam Gill serves as the executive producer of the series, with Steve Rico as the showrunner. Chery and Liz Gateley are both overseeing creative for the show on behalf of Spotify, with Eli Holzman and Aaron Saidman handling on behalf of The Intellectual Property Corporation (IPC), a part of Sony Pictures Television. Av Accius, Jeremiah Murphy and Marcus A. Clarke serve as co-executive producers. Gill, Quan Lateef-Hill, Peter J. Scalettar, Wendy J.N. Lee, Farah X and Mandon Lovett will direct the episodes.
Check out the first clip from RapCaviar Presents below.
“We would tend to start off with a bang,” says Kim Thayil, guitarist for Soundgarden, a pillar of the Seattle grunge scene in the late ‘80s and a 2023 nominee for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Often, the first song of a set was “Searching With My Good Eye Closed” from the band’s 1992 album Badmotorfinger. At the Detroit’s Fox Theatre on May 17, 2017, the band reached back farther into its catalog for “Ugly Truth” from its 1989 major label debut, Louder Than Love.
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Whichever song began a Soundgarden concert, the intent was the same. “Let’s hit them with something energetic and fast and aggressive,” Thayil tells Billboard‘s Behind the Setlist podcast.
As far as the music, the Detroit show was just another gig on a U.S. tour that snaked through the Southeast and Midwest. The band delved deep into its catalog, playing its biggest hits from the ’90s (“Black Hole Sun,” “Spoonman” and “Blow Up the Outside World”), a highlight from its early catalog (“Hunted Down” from its 1987 EP, Screaming Life) and deep cuts from a six-times platinum album (“Mailman” and “Kickstand” from Superunknown). It was anything but a typical show, however. The Fox Theatre show would be the band’s final performance. Singer Chris Cornell tragically died early the following morning.
Looking back at the career-spanning set from that final show, Thayil believes the four songs from the band’s final studio album, 2012’s King Animal, hold up well next to its more celebrated, earlier catalog. “Certainly a different time in the lives of many of our fan base who may have followed us for 30 years,” he says. “A different time in our lives. But I think those those songs were all fairly strong and fun to play live.”
The King Animal cut “By Crooked Steps” was one of those newer songs Thayil enjoyed playing live. Like “My Wave” from 1994’s Superunknown, “By Crooked Steps” is an energetic, physical and compelling song that departs from the standard 4/4 time signature. “That was a song that [drummer] Matt [Cameron] brought in,” he says. “It was his initial groove and riff. And then [bass player] Ben [Shepherd] and I wrote a few things around that groove to add to it. That was certainly dear to us because it’s one of the first things that that we had written. And all of us were collaborating on that, which was definitely the most fun in working on a song.”
An encore would typically end with “Slaves & Bulldozers” from Badmotorfinger “because it was it was kind of a jam song,” says Thayil. “There was a basic framework that we play in order to support the vocals and the lyrics. But then certain sections are just that could meander and go on — the jam sections with guitars. And the bass would jam. Matt would jam. It would meander. Sometimes we’d go off in different directions and Matt would have to play a gatekeeper and bring everyone back in to the yard. Like, OK, we’re we’ve lost this one, let’s come back in. Sometimes we’d all be on the same page and it’d be trippy, transcendent jam. And we just let that happen.”
The band would leave the crowd with a sustained blast of noise and feedback, “a sort of ritualistic ending” that began before original bass player Hiro Yamamoto left the band in 1990, says Thayil. The cacophony was turned into a separate, four-minute track at the end of the 2019 live album, Live from the Artists Den, and given the title “Feedbacchanal.” “It had always been part of our set as a set feedback jam like some kind of weird noise-jazz-improv trip-out with delays and squealing and humming,” says Thayil, “and ‘Slaves & Bulldozers’ feeds into that pretty well.
Listen to the interview with Thayil at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Amazon Music, Audible or iHeart.
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J Prince has garnered a reputation that seems larger than life in some respects, prompting many to hold the Texas native’s name in both reverence and fear. The Rap-A-Lot and Mob Ties honcho was a recent guest on the Million Dollaz Worth of Game podcast and took a swipe at Offset, prompting a reply along with civilian Twitter seemingly knowing the ins and outs of how gangsters move.
J Prince, J Prince Jr., and other members of the Prince family sat down with Gillie and Wallo to chop it up over a number of topics. Gillie rightly opened up the chat by offering condolences to Takeoff, who was shot and killed in J Prince’s native Houston during a dice game that went left.
Fans on Twitter noted that Gillie, typically viewed as an interviewer who asks tough questions, didn’t dig for details and clarity to the level his co-host and cousin Wallo demonstrated. However, the Prince family used the moment to defend themselves against allegations that they had something to do with the death of Takeoff and it appeared they named other individuals in a bid to clear their own involvement according to observers.
There was one point of serious contention as it relates to the Migos collective overall with J Prince saying that Offset was not as close to his blood cousin, Takeoff, in recent times. Mike Prince also got emotional when he spoke about the fateful evening of Takeoff’s death and decried the rumors that the Prince family was connected.
As it stands, J Prince and the Prince family find themselves trending on Twitter while Offset is fuming over the mishandling of the emotional nature of the passing, mentioning his cousin’s mother during his video.
On Twitter, folks are speaking from vantage points that are clearly not cut from the cloth and some folks are throwing flags on the play. Check out those reactions below along with the podcast episode in question.
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The second season of the acclaimed podcast hosted by Dave Chappelle, Yasiin Bey and Talib Kweli has launched with its first episode.
Fans of The Midnight Miracle podcast which is hosted by Chappelle, Bey, and Kweli on the Luminary platform, dropped the first episode of their second season Monday (Dec. 19). The episode, entitled “A Magnificent Day for an Exorcism,” follows the same format as the first season where listeners are greeted with an audio collage of hosts and guests.
The trailer for the launch features Bey conducting a prayer, which serves as the backdrop for a montage of video and images featuring the trio over the past year. Those featured in the first episode of the new season include cinematographer Arthur Jafa, Bill Murray, Q-Tip, Monie Love, Pharaohe Monch and Jon Stewart. In addition to being available on Luminary, the new season will also be available to listeners who are subscribed to Apple Podcasts.
The Midnight Miracle is a true audio masterpiece led by Dave Chappelle, Talib Kweli, and Yasiin Bey. They represent some of the most thoughtful voices of our generation and together deliver a forum that addresses the world as it’s happening today, with nuance and grace,” said Rishi Malhotra, CEO of Luminary.
The release of the episode was anticipated by many after the release of a trailer last month, which preceded the comedian hosting SNL with Black Star as the featured musical guest. Chappelle had also teased the possibility of the new season launching while headlining a show with Chris Rock out in Los Angeles.
At that same show – which marked the first in the city for Chappelle since he was attacked by a fan onstage – Kweli and Bey came out to perform for the crowd. The attacker, Isaiah Lee, pleaded no contest to charges of battery and entering a restricted area during a live event last week in a courtroom and received a sentence of 270 days in jail.
Check out the trailer for the new episode below.
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John Mayer stopped by Call Her Daddy for the hit podcast’s first-ever holiday special and spilled some major tea about his breakout hit “Your Body Is a Wonderland.”
The topic came up when host Alex Cooper asked the rocker what he was like in high school, in an episode that dropped Tuesday night (Dec. 20). “I didn’t have a presence,” Mayer admitted. “So I think that one of the bigger misnomers about me is that there’s like a jocky-ness to me, you know? Like there’s an alpha, musician jocky-ness to me and the bottom line is, like, I went to school to get it over with. And my life began at 3 o’clock in the afternoon when I came home and played guitar.”
Cooper was quick to point out that just a few years after graduating from high school, he was winning his first Grammy for 2002’s “Your Body Is a Wonderland.” And yet, Mayer insisted that — contrary to the mythos surrounding his love life — he was hardly a Hollywood playboy at the time.
“That was about my first girlfriend,” he said of his sophomore single. “That was about the feeling, which I think was already sort of nostalgic… I was 21 when I wrote that song and I was nostalgic for being 16.”
When Cooper pressed that she always thought the sensual smash was about a certain, unnamed celebrity, he responded, “No, that’s one of those things where people just sort of formed that idea, it gets reinforced over the years, no, no, no. I had never met a celebrity when I wrote that song.”
Next year, Mayer will embark on the final Dead & Company tour, starting May 19 at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles.
Stream Mayer’s Call Her Daddy episode on Spotify below.