R&B/Hip-Hop
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Femme It Forward (FIF) is expanding its mentorship services with the launch of MUSE: Musicians Uplifting Stars Everyday. Created by FIF founder/president and Live Nation partner Heather Lowery, the new initiative has enlisted Alicia Keys, Teyana Taylor and Erykah Badu as advisors to help guide emerging female artists and creatives in the music industry. MUSE […]
For more than a decade, Future has stood as a hip-hop powerhouse, setting trends, notching countless hit records and helping shift the sound of popular music with each new album. Ahead of the release of We Still Don’t Trust You — his second Metro Boomin joint album of 2024 — Billboard has put together a brief roundup of the Grammy winner’s most impressive chart achievements.
Future made his Billboard Hot 100 debut back in 2011 with his appearance on YC’s “Racks” (No. 42), which also reached No. 4 on Hot Rap Songs. Since then, the rap superstar has racked up a whopping 185 career entries on the Hot 100, the fourth-most for any artist in Billboard history behind Drake (329), Taylor Swift (232) and Lil Wayne (186).
Of those 185 Hot 100 entries, 15 have hit the top 10, including 2017’s “Mask Off” (No. 5) and 2020’s Drake-assisted “Life Is Good” (No. 2). The “Tony Montana” rapper has also earned three Hot 100 chart-toppers: 2021’s “Way 2 Sexy” (with Drake and Young Thug), 2022’s “Wait for U” (with Drake and Tems) and 2024’s “Like That” (with Metro Boomin and Kendrick Lamar).
Over on the Billboard 200, Future has notched nine No. 1 titles, including 2015’s DS2, 2022’s I Never Liked You and this year’s We Don’t Trust You (with Metro Boomin). In 2017, with the back-to-back releases of Future and Hndrxx, Future became the first soloist in Billboard 200 history to debut two different albums at No. 1 in consecutive weeks.
With just a few days to go until We Still Don’t Trust You, Future could add a few more major achievements to his impressive Billboard chart history.
After the video, catch up on more Billboard Explains videos and learn about Peso Pluma and the Mexican music boom, the role record labels play, origins of hip-hop, how Beyoncé arrived at Renaissance, the evolution of girl groups, BBMAs, NFTs, SXSW, the magic of boy bands, American Music Awards, the Billboard Latin Music Awards, the Hot 100 chart, how R&B/hip-hop became the biggest genre in the U.S., how festivals book their lineups, Billie Eilish’s formula for success, the history of rap battles, nonbinary awareness in music, the Billboard Music Awards, the Free Britney movement, rise of K-pop in the U.S., why Taylor Swift is re-recording her first six albums, the boom of hit all-female collaborations, how Grammy nominees and winners are chosen, why songwriters are selling their publishing catalogs, how the Super Bowl halftime show is booked and more.
It’s been more than eight years since Rihanna’s last album, Anti, and the Navy is starving for any signs of life when it comes to R9.
RiRi provided a concise update regarding her current relationship with creating music in her Interview mag cover story while chatting with former stylist Mel Ottenberg.
“I have a lot of visual ideas,” she said, which typically isn’t the start of her creative process. “It’s weird. My brain is working backward right now. I usually have the music first, and the music leads me into all of these visual opportunities, and now I’m having all of these visuals.”
Unfortunately, Rihanna admitted she doesn’t have the songs to accompany the visual ideas just yet, but hopefully they eventually come to fruition.
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“I don’t have the songs for them yet, but maybe that’s the key, this time,” the “Work” singer teased. “Maybe the visual ideas are leading me to the songs that I need to make.”
She surreptitiously added: “Random ideas, quirky ideas, things that have nothing to do with me at all.”
Back in February, A$AP Rocky teased that the nine-time Grammy winner — with whom he shares two young sons — is “working” on herlong-awaited album, but Rihanna has remained tight-lipped on the matter. “She’s working on it,” he said while out for Paris Fashion Week.
Billboard‘s Heran Mamo penned an essay in March about the sobering idea that Ri’s Navy may need to come to grips with the fact she may never release another album, and that’s perfectly fine after delivering eight in about a decade’s time.
However, Rihanna did make her return to the stage for her first performance in eight years in March for a pre-wedding celebration for Anant Ambani, who is the son of Asia’s richest man, and Radhika Merchant in Jamnagar, India.
The 36-year-old’s most recent musical output came with a pair of singles in late 2022 for the Black Panther: Wakanda Forever soundtrack. “Lift Me Up” served as a tribute to the late actor Chadwick Boseman, along with “Born Again.” The former earned Rihanna a Grammy nomination for best song written for visual media, and an Oscar nod in the best original song category.
Anti arrived in January 2016. The album reached No. 1 on the Billboad 200 in its first full week of tracking with 166,000 units in the U.S. in the week ending Feb. 4.
Check out some photos from Rihanna’s Interview cover shoot below.
Rihanna is a mother of two, but that number could be increasing in the near future. RiRi hinted at her desire to have more kids in a new cover story with Interview magazine, which arrived on Tuesday (April 9).
“As many as God wants me to have,” the nine-time Grammy winner told her former stylist Mel Ottenberg in their all-encompassing chat regarding having more children down the line. “I don’t know what God wants, but I would go for more than two. I would try for my girl. But of course, if it’s another boy, it’s another boy.”
When it comes to her post-partum body, Rihanna — who shares sons RZA and Riot Rose with partner A$AP Rocky — wants to get her pre-pregnancy breasts back, and is open to getting a lift procedure.
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“I don’t want implants. I just want a lift,” she shared. “I heard that you might have some scars. I’m OK with all that. But I don’t want to ever have a tummy tuck because I don’t want a new navel, and I don’t want that scar, right?”
Ri added that she’s typically nervous to go under the knife. “Third-trimester cellulite is no joke. You just see ripples coming from places you never knew, and it’s all in your thighs, because your thighs are carrying the weight of your baby and uterus,” she said. “I’m also scared of the knife. So if I had to pick one thing, I’m going to pick my boobs. Because I can, like, squat and get an a–, hopefully.”
The Fenty boss revealed some other tidbits when it comes to RZA, who will be turning 2 in May, including his first word, which was “hey.”
“I used to try to get his attention all the time, and I would say, ‘Hey, hey, hey.’ And one day he said it back to me in the same melody, and I kept singing it and he kept following it over and over again,” she said of the learning process. She also touched on her firstborn’s favorite songs that they sing together.
“Oh my gosh. There’s ‘Penguins Salute.’ There’s ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’ Oh my gosh. RZA gets really emotional about that,” Ri revealed. “Now he’s really into ‘Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes.”
“‘The Wheels on the Bus’ is a favorite from the beginning till now. That’s just a classic. It’s never going out of style,” she continued. “And oh, the new ‘Incy-Wincy Spider,’ because he gets like, ‘Ahh,’ like he thinks I’m going to tickle him when I sing that one. And he has a book about that, so he can put two and two together.”
Rihanna and A$AP Rocky welcomed RZA as first-time parents in May 2022, and then Riot Rose in August 2023.
See some of the photos from Rihanna’s Interview shoot below:
Sometimes you just catch a weird vibe off someone and you don’t know what it is, but you just don’t want to find out. That’s how Jelly Roll described the time he had a chance to meet Sean “Diddy” Combs last October when both men were guests on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, but declined the photo-op at the last minute for reasons he still can’t explain.
Jelly was on Kimmel to perform on the Oct. 30 episode that featured Diddy as a panel guest, months before a series of shocking revelations emerged accusing the hip-hop mogul of sexual assault and sex trafficking.
“This is the first time in my career, ever, where they said, ‘Do you want to meet such-and-such?’ And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and I started walking that way,” the “Son of a Sinner” singer said on the CANCELLED With Tana Mongeau podcast last week after wife Bunnie XO admitted that despite being a conspiracy theorist at heart she doesn’t believe in the illuminati.
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Asked if he’s ever had a “weird” interaction with a fellow celeb or gotten illuminati vibes from one, Jelly joked, “ain’t nobody trying to touch my butt… maybe i’m not their type?” The refreshingly candid singer then said he did have one story about odd vibes that he would probably “get in trouble” for telling, before going ahead and telling it.
“And as I was getting down the hallway — this is a true story — I said, ‘Nah,’ and went and got back in the car,” Jelly Roll said of the aborted Diddy meet-up. “I don’t know what it was, and I made a joke at first, ‘you don’t wanna meet the guy that got Tupac killed…’ And nobody thought that was funny… When we were walking, I was like, I don’t know. Very seldom does things rub me in a way where I was like, ‘I don’t even know if that’s a picture I want.’”
While the photo-op didn’t happen, Jelly Roll’s instinct about the Bad Boy Records mogul and one of the first hip-hop billionaires now seems prescient since Combs’ ex-, singer Cassie Ventura, filed a lawsuit against Combs alleging years of physical abuse and rape just two weeks later; the bombshell filing led to a quick, private settlement within one day, whose terms have not been revealed.
Combs was quickly swarmed with a series of similar suits, including one claiming the “gang rape” of an unnamed teenage woman in 2003 when she was 17-years-old, as well as suits by two other women claiming Combs sexually assaulted, drugged and beat them; Combs has vehemently denied all the allegations. As the civil suits began to stack up, Combs’ homes in Los Angeles and Miami were raided and searched by Homeland Security agents on March 25 reportedly linked to a sex trafficking investigation.
In the wake of the legal action, Combs stepped down as the chairman of his digital media company Revolt, 18 brands formerly associated with Diddy severed ties with his E-commerce company Empower Global and Hulu scrapped a planned Combs family reality series.
Watch the Jelly Roll interview below (Diddy talk begins at 42:50 mark):
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Rihanna and A$AP Rocky have a beautiful family of four that could be growing in the years to come. However, none of that may have happened if they hadn’t performed together at the 2012 MTV Video Music Awards.
RiRi sat down with her former stylist and Interview Editor-in-Chief Mel Ottenberg for a cover feature of the mag that arrived on Tuesday (April 9). During their chat, Rihanna reflected on performing “Cockiness (Love It)” with A$AP Rocky at the VMAs, and recalled him grabbing her butt while on stage.
“He grabbed my a– … So when he grabbed my a– that night, everybody thought I was about to … My team was worried that I wanted to have his head on a f–king mantle,” she said, recalling that her team was nervous she was ready to have him wiped off the face of the earth.
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However, Rihanna wasn’t even angry, and her inner circle realized at that moment she may have had a crush on the rapper.
“But I was like, ‘Ah, nah.’ That’s why everybody was like, ‘Oh my god. She likes him,’” the Fenty mogul added.
Rihanna would go on to star in the Virgil Abloh-directed video for Rocky’s “Fashion Killa” hit in 2013. But wasn’t until late 2019 that the two musicians would reconnect with an eye toward building a future together as a couple.
“We saw fashion the same. We saw creative the same,” she explained. “We ended up in the same circles a lot. And past that, when we grew up, we ended up supporting each other’s brands and products and creative all the time. I would wear his shit, he would show up to my launches.”
Rihanna continued: “We’ve known each other for a long time. I’ve seen him in relationships. He’s seen me in relationships. We’ve seen each other outside of relationships. We knew what we’re capable of, and the trouble that we could bring to each other’s lives. We can make or break each other’s hearts. And so, we started dating with a lot of caution.”
Their relationship got turned up several notches with the quarantines brought along by the COVID-19 pandemic. Rihanna gave birth to their first child, RZA, in May 2022, and the little boy’s baby brother, Riot Rose Mayers, was born in August.
See Rihanna’s Interview cover below:
Keith LeBlanc, the multi-talented drummer/producer who helped shape the sound of early hip-hop with his playing on albums by the Sugar Hill Gang and Grandmaster Flash has died at 69. LeBlanc’s death was confirmed in a statement from his label, On-U Sound, as well as LeBlanc’s wife, Fran LeBlanc, who told Variety that her husband died on April 4 due to an undisclosed illness.
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“All of us at On-U Sound are heartbroken to share the news that the great Keith LeBlanc has passed away,” read a statement from the label.
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Over the course of a four-decade career that began with his gig working along bassist Doug Wimbish and guitarist Skip “Little Axe” McDonald as part of the house band for rap pioneers the Sugarhill Gang in the early 1980s, LeBlanc played with and performed on records that spanned electronica, rock and pop.
LeBlanc’s work can be heard on such landmark Sugar Hill records as “Apache” and “8th Wonder,” as well as Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five’s “It’s Nasty” and the 1982 album The Message. In a nod to his versatility, LeBlanc spent the 1980s and 1990s playing sessions with a wide variety of acts, from Ministry to R.E.M., Seal and Annie Lennox, as well as adding his production and engineering expertise to Nine Inc Nails’ landmark 1989 industrial rock classic debut, Pretty Hate Machine.
Born in Bristol, CT in 1954, LeBlanc also had a robust solo career, drumming on tracks for English producer Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound productions. He snagged an unexpected underground solo hit in 1983 with “No Sell Out,” which sampled the voice of late Nation of figurehead Malcolm X over bouncy synths and drum machine beats and is considered one of the first songs to use samples in a commercial release.
He also performed in the rotating lineup of Sherwood’s industrial hip-hop band Tackhead in the late 1980s and early 1990s alongside Wimbish and McDonald after Sherwood was impressed with LeBlanc’s musicianship, inviting the trio to join him in London for experimental sessions.
“Once ensconced in the studio, they continued their sample-based explorations, with the producer as a fourth member manning the mixing desk. This is something they would also replicate in their live set-up, with Adrian dubbing and processing the musicians in real time as they played on stage,” On U’s memorial read. “Cutting records simultaneously as Fats Comet (for the more dancefloor-oriented material) and Tackhead (for their more aggressive political tracks), they also became the second incarnation of The Maffia, the uncompromising backing band of Mark Stewart [the Pop Group]. The members were additionally involved in solo projects, session assignments, and appearances in other mysterious guises on the On-U roster, such as Barmy Army and Strange Parcels.”
In a statement, Sherwood said, “Keith was a major, major talent ..incredible drummer, producer and musician.. Along with Doug, Skip and also dearly missed Mark Stewart we enjoyed some of the most creative times together that shaped my musical life. Thank you Brother Keith..Love Forever. Heart and Soul.”
LeBlanc also released six solo albums during that period, including his 1986 album Major Malfunction, which was inspired by the space shuttle Challenger disaster. Throughout his musical adventures, LeBlanc folded in hip-hop, spoken word, film/TV samples and a mix of live drumming and programmed beats, releasing material through his Blanc Records label, which also offered fans budget-priced collections of “sample packs” featuring beats and effects.
Among his other notable recordings is an appearance on “Little” Steven Van Zandt’s 1985 anti-apartheid all-star single “Sun City,” as well as collaborations with McDonald’s blues-leaning group Little Axe and writing/producing for Living Colour, Peter Gabriel and The Cure and drumming on songs by James Brown, the Rolling Stones, Stone Roses and Sinead O’Connor, among many others.
Check out some of LeBlanc’s music below.
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The Roots are hitting the road this summer with some special friends. The Tonight Show house band will take a break from playing celebrities onto stage and doing bits with host Jimmy Fallon to play a run of dates from May through September with kindred spirit hip-hop experimentalists Digable Planets and Arrested Development.
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After announcing an initial slate of dates for the Hip-Hop Is the Love of My Life outing last week with the message “This is for the ones that really fell in LOVE with this,” the band has filled the roster out with a more robust run. The mostly weekend shows will commence on May 11 with a gig at the Mountain Winery Concert Series in Saratoga, CA and a spot on the Wonderfront Festival in San Diego on May 12 before setting up shop in Philadelphia for this year’s edition of their Roots Picnic festival.
This year’s June 1-2 Picnic will feature André 3000 and his bag of magical flutes, Jill Scott, Lil Wayne, Gunna, Victoria Monét, Method Man, Nas, Redman and Sexyy Red, and others performing in The Mann in Fairmount Park.
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A quick pop-in at the Reggae Rise Up Maryland 2024 festival in Baltimore on June 23 will be followed by a June 29 gig at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and then a pair of dates in July in Denver and Seattle, before a hop over the Atlantic for a couple of dates in England and Germany before a return to U.S. shores in August for shows in Houston and Irving, Texas, Highland Park, IL, Sterling Heights, MI, Atlanta, Vienna, VA and a Sept. 1 show at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston.
In keeping with their job supporting Fallon since 2009 — on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon and then, beginning in 2014 on The Tonight Show — the majority of this summer’s dates will be weekend gigs that will allow the group to be in their spots in Studio 6B in Rockefeller Center in New York for their nightly gig.
Check out the dates for the Roots’ Hip-Hop Is the Love of My Life 2024 tour below.
May 11 – Saratoga, CA @ The Mountain Winery Concert Series
May 12 – San Diego, CA @ Wonderfront Festival
June 1 – Philadelphia, PA @ Roots Picnic 2024
June 2 – Philadelphia, PA @ Roots Picnic 2024
June 23 – Baltimore, MD @ Reggae Rise Up Maryland 2024
June 29 – Los Angeles, CA @ Hollywood Bowl *^
July 20 – Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom
July 21 – Seattle, WA @ Woodland Park Zoo
August 1 – Tower Of London, UK @ Crystal Palace Bowl
August 2 – Margate, UK @ Dreamland
August 5 – Berlin, DE @ Uber Eats Music Hall
August 16 – Houston, TX @ 713 Music Hall *^
August 17 – Irving, TX @ The Pavilion At Toyota Music Factory *^
August 24 – Highland Park, IL @ Ravinia Festival *^
August 25 – Sterling Heights, MI @ Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre at Freedom Hill *^
August 29 – Atlanta, GA @ Cadence Bank Amphitheatre at Chastain Park *^
August 31 – Vienna, VA @ Filene Center at Wolf Trap *^
Sept. 1 – Boston, MA @ MGM Music Hall at Fenway *^’July 20 – Denver, CO @ Mission Ballroom
* = w/ Arrested Development^ = w/ Digable Planets
There looks to be trouble in paradise for the City Girls. JT and Yung Miami were entrenched in a heated social media exchange on Monday (April 8).
Miami publicly called out JT on X for sneak dissing her on solo songs such as “No Bars” and “Sideways” in a series of tweets aimed at her bandmate.
“For you to come on here and try to play [the] victim is crazy! Jatavia, you [have] been sneak-dissing me for the LAST COUPLE OF DAYS,” she wrote . “I haven’t said s–t back to you! You made two whole songs DISSING ME, and I STILL RAPPED your s–t with my chest, and showed love, so what’s the real problem here?
Yung Miami continued to blast JT: “A b—h trying to kick me while I’m down and play into these narratives! Is dangerous when I been nothing but a friend to you!!!!! I ain’t jealous of a soul I’m always like go b—h go!!! I clap for everybody I show love to EVERYBODY it ain’t a b—h I haven’t shown love to!!!!!!”
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JT claimed that Miami was “losing it” and seeking attention with her initial response.
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“Oh wow, you’re really losing it,” she wrote. “If you thought this, why not speak to me about it? You came on here and said, ‘LOL,’ so [people] can ask you why you wasn’t defending me… ATTENTION seeking as usual. You looking for a way out of your situation who was the first person called you when it all started? You’re a sad f—-g case!”
Miami went on to say that all she wants is the best for JT in all facets of her solo career whether that be with music, modeling and other endeavors.
“You weird but always wanna act like I’m a weirdo you always mad it’s always a problem & all I try to do is push you tell you, you the shit you can rap, you should model etc! You always mad you doing your shit as you should CONGRATULATIONS but somehow you STILL MAD AT,” Miami said.
Fortunately, JT and the Caresha Please host appear to have hopped on the phone to settle their issues, and it’s all love from both sides.
“Jatavia we just got off the phone I’m so confused now we back to the internet,” she wrote. “Jatavia I love you. I’m moving on!”
JT gushed: “I love you more I actually love you the most!”
The City Girls last released a project in October with RAW which featured stars like Usher, Muni Long, Lil Durk, Juicy J and more. Unfortunately, the album notched a lowly debut of No. 117 on the Billboard 200.
JT has since heavily pursued her solo career with the release of tracks such as the aforementioned “Sideways” and the more recent “Alter Ego” alongside Doechii. She kicked off her first-ever solo tour last month in Houston and has stops in Miami, NYC and more on tap.
Find the back-and-forth below from the City Girls.
You looking for a way out of your situation who was the first person called you when it all started? You’re a sad fucking case!!!! https://t.co/ifwiZCnrdE— JT ☆ (@ThegirlJT) April 8, 2024
If I’m ever mad I have a reason to be behind close doors you have done stuff to me that you think I should just get over! You never come to my defense when I would’ve literally took a bullet for you! When CP popped off I was there 1st episode, & when someone canceled I showed up… https://t.co/leAK63LAYj— JT ☆ (@ThegirlJT) April 8, 2024
GloRilla made an appearance at the 2024 CMT Music Awards on Sunday night, and the Memphis rapper caught up with Billboard News’ Tetris Kelly on the red carpet for an interview. Big Glo was tight-lipped when asked about her heated back-and-forth with JT on Friday after name-dropping the City Girls rapper on her Ehhthang Ehhthang […]