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Method Man and Redman will be ringing in the kush-blowing holiday together as the How High co-stars have been tapped to headline the 4/20 Bud Drop concert in NYC. The Blackout! duo will hit the Terminal 5 stage on April 19 in the hours leading up to the 4/20 celebration, which plays off the annual […]
Tyla was gearing up for her first world tour later this month, which included stops at festivals such as Coachella, but those bucket list accomplishments will be put on hold for now.
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The “Water” hitmaker announced on Thursday (March 7) that she’s canceling her North American and Europe tour dates and pulling out a handful of festivals.
Tyla penned a heartfelt letter to fan on Instagram, revealing that she’s been privately battling a health issue.
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She shared that her injury had “tragically worsened,” which forced her to cancel the trek altogether. The tour was slated to kick off in Oslow, Norway, on March 21, and then eventually make its way stateside in April, and wrapping up in May.
“As much as this is something I would rather have dealt with privately, it’s important that I share what I have to share with you today,” she wrote. “For the past year I’ve been silently suffering with an injury that has tragically worsened. I’ve seen doctors and specialists with high hopes but the pain has only become more agonizing as has the severity of the situation.
“I am absolutely heartbroken to have to say this but as of right now I won’t be able to proceed with the tour. In consulting with medical professionals it’s become increasingly clear that continuing any festival or tour dates would jeopardize my long-term health and safety.”
Tyla asked her Tygers not to “worry too much,” as they’ll still be seeing plenty of her around. “Just know when I’m back to performing pain free, I’m gonna be even more of a problem,” the Grammy-winning singer added in the caption. “It’s hard having to turn down opportunities you’ve been waiting your whole life for but God has his plan.”
While the amapiano-R&B sensation won’t be hitting the stage soon, that hasn’t slowed down Tyla’s album rollout, as her highly anticipated debut LP is slated to arrive on March 22.
Named one of Billboard‘s R&B/Hip-Hop Artists to Watch in 2024, the 22-year-old’s eponymous album will feature 14 tracks, including “Water” and the anthem’s Travis Scott-assisted remix.
Read Tyla’s post about her tour cancellation below:
Two New York residents who are staples of the intersecting cultures of music and fashion have linked up, as Ice Spice meets Alexander Wang. The “Princess Diana” rapper has been tapped by the fashion house as the face of its new S24 campaign. Ice Spice modeled an array of chic looks as part of the […]
A week after debuting at No. 5 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart, “Carnival,” from Ye (formerly Kanye West) and Ty Dolla $ign’s collaborative album Vultures 1, jumps to No. 1 on the tally dated March 9.
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The TikTok Billboard Top 50 is a weekly ranking of the most popular songs on TikTok in the United States based on creations, video views and user engagement. The latest chart reflects activity Feb. 26-March 3. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50. As previously noted, titles that are part of Universal Music Group’s catalog are currently unavailable on TikTok.
“Carnival,” which also features Rich the Kid and Playboi Carti, becomes the first No. 1 on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 for Ye, Ty Dolla $ign and Rich the Kid since the list’s September 2023 inception. Playboi Carti, meanwhile, has ruled twice before with “Sky,” which reigned on the Oct. 7, 2023, ranking and again Dec. 9, 2023.
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The main trend for “Carnival” on TikTok involves lip-synching to the song’s opening refrain and chorus, usually done in front of a mirror.
Concurrently, “Carnival” rises back to No. 1 on Billboard’s Streaming Songs chart for a second week, via 32.2 million official U.S. streams Feb. 23-29, up 31%, according to Luminate. The track also jumps 4-2 on the multi-metric Billboard Hot 100.
The success of “Carnival” comes despite Ye’s various controversies, including recent and continued hate speech and antisemitic remarks that have caused some listeners to shy away from his material past and present.
“Carnival” reigns over Bobby Caldwell’s “What You Won’t Do for Love,” which holds at No. 2 for a second week, and Djo’s “End of Beginning,” which ranks at No. 3 after spending its first week at No. 1 on the March 2 tally.
“Back It Up and Dump It (Dump Truck),” from Kinfolk Thugs, GC Eternal and Tyme Bomb, breaks into the top five for the first time, lifting 7-4. Originally released in 2013, the song benefits from a choreographed dance trend, as well as other general, often jokey posts including its lyrics. Another more recent trend shows creators using an app showing celebrities with whom they share a birthday.
Cat Janice’s “Dance You Outta My Head,” a former No. 1 on the chart, rounds out the top five with a one-position lift to No. 5. The rise follows Janice’s death on Feb. 28 at age 31 after a bout with cancer; she released “Dance You Outta My Head” as her final song while in hospice care.
One song reaches the chart’s top 10 for the first time: 21 Savage’s “Redrum,” which jumps 19-8. The tune initially premiered at No. 39 on the Feb. 10 survey but has found new life on TikTok in recent weeks, with sizable gains coming after the song’s Feb. 24 performance on Saturday Night Live. “Redrum” concurrently appears at No. 8 on Streaming Songs via 18 million listens, up 11%. It also rises 16-13 on the Hot 100.
The week’s top debut belongs to Xakei, whose “Merry Go Round of Life (Old Piano)” bows at No. 13. The rendition is a version of an instrumental track from the Studio Ghibli film Howl’s Moving Castle, and a viral usage of the song in the latest tracking week soundtracks an Austin City Council meeting in which workers learn they were relieved of duties in real time by Google.
DeJ Loaf’s “No Fear” also sports a strong debut, starting at No. 16. The song was released in 2017 and sports a trend of people showing off relationship texts while the song’s chorus plays.
See the full TikTok Billboard Top 50 here. You can also tune in each Friday to SiriusXM’s TikTok Radio (channel 4) to hear the premiere of the chart’s top 10 countdown at 3 p.m. ET, with reruns heard throughout the week.
J. Cole’s Dreamville Festival is returning to North Carolina in April, and he’s put together an all-star team to hit the stage alongside him this year.
Dreamville Fest 2024 announced its lineup of heavy hitters on Thursday (March 7), with SZA, Nicki Minaj and Chris Brown set to serve as headliners with J. Cole.
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The anticipated fourth edition of the annual festival — which launched in 2018 — is set to take over Dorothea Dix Park in Raleigh, N.C., on Saturday, April 6, and Sunday, April 7. Tickets are already on sale with a limited number of general admission passes still available for the two-day event.
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“Some of the biggest names in music will travel to Raleigh in only a few short weeks, bringing about one of the most highly anticipated festivals of the year. Our team looks forward to welcoming all of our Day One fans from around the world back to Dreamville Festival,” said Dreamville Cofounder and Festival President Adam Roy in a statement.
The rest of this year’s stacked lineup will feature sets from Lil Yachty, JID, Sexyy Red, ScHoolboy Q, Teezo Touchdown, Jeezy, Monica, Rae Sremmurd, Key Glock, Jeremih, Lul Tyler, Muni Long and more.
From the Dreamville hometeam, fans can expect EARTHGANG, Bas, Cozz, Lute, and Omen to hit the stage as well.
In addition to the musical acts, there will be plenty of other attractions for festivalgoers throughout the weekend including carnival rides, immersive art installations and a variety of food options.
Find the full Dreamville Festival 2024 lineup broken down below.
Saturday, April 6:
SZA
Chris Brown
J.I.D.
Lil Yachty
ScHoolboyQ
Sexyy Red
Jeremih
EARTHGANG
Teezo Touchdown
Amaarae
Lute
Luh Tyler
Domani
Saturday, April 7:
J. Cole
Nicki Minaj
Rema
Jeezy
Monica
Rae Sremmurd
Key Glock
Bas
Muni Long
Cozz
Omen
TiaCorine
Chase Shakur
See the announcement below:
Nelly, the St. Louis rap vet, raised a few eyebrows when a clip with him from SpringHill’s The Shop circulated on social media yesterday. In the clip, the diamond-selling superstar claimed that it was much harder to sell records as a rapper back when he was first coming out than at any other time in the genre’s history.
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“My era of music was the toughest era of hip-hop, ever. Ever,” he says on the episode that drops March 7. “When I put out songs, I had to go against DMX, JAY-Z, Eminem, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Luda. All of us are fighting for one spot!”
Every artist believes their generation has it the toughest. Drake, for example, on his first Rock Ross collab “Lord Knows,” laments having to deal with a climate in which a celebrity’s private life is incessantly mined for content by publications and people on social media, alike. Going as far as to wonder if the greats he’s compared to would “ever survive in this era. In a time where it’s recreation to pull all your skeletons out the closet like Halloween decorations.” Who knows how rappers from the 90s would fare if they had to contend with X, Instagram, and TikTok.
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But Nelly’s mostly right. It’s tough to believe that it was harder to be a top-selling rapper in the early 2000s than it was in the, say, late 80s, but it’s not hard to believe that it’s a bit easier today.
Real quick, some numbers to consider.
When Nelly dropped his debut album, Country Grammar, in June of 2000, he managed to sell 235,000 copies the first week. Not bad for a kid most people had not heard of who was riding the success of a single everyone found super catchy if a bit puerile. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard 200. The top spot was taken by Eminem who, a month earlier released his highly anticipated sophomore effort, The Marshall Mathers LP. Yes, you read that right.
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TMMLP sold 1.78 million copies its first week. The second week it sold 800,000. Third week? Another 600,000. And then the fourth week it sold a comical 520,000 copies. That’s more than double Nelly’s first week. And, for those keeping a running tally, that’s 3.7 million copies in one month. Nelly would eventually claim the top spot and he and Em would duke it out for the rest of the summer before both albums would go diamond.
So far in 2024, no rap album has even gone gold in its first week. And, sure, numbers aren’t everything. These days there are more rappers than ever who are making a great living. Depending on their deal a rapper doesn’t have to sell a million records or have a top 10 album in order to live well. Artists today have found new and novel monetization methods that just weren’t available when Nelly was first coming out. That’s all fine and well. However, it’s undebatable that we have less rap stars than before.
The era Nelly is referring to is one in which DMX dropped two multiplatinum albums in one year, both of which went number one on the Billboard 200. It’s the era when Outkast capped off an incredible five-album run by going diamond. It’s the era when Ludacris was still a rapper. It’s when JAY-Z dropped an album every fourth quarter that topped the charts and went multiplatinum. If you wanted to be a rap star, you had to do battle with all of them and more.
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Ask a rap fan why no albums have managed to sell crazy so far this year and they’ll likely point out the fact that Drake, Kendrick Lamar, and J. Cole—the venerable “Big 3”—haven’t dropped anything. Even if you add Future, Nicki Minaj and Ye, to that group, it still wouldn’t match up to the sheer number of heavy hitters who were moving units back then.
It was, as the saying goes, just different.
Halle Bailey fans will soon have her second solo single, “In Your Hands,” in their hands. The singer announced the new track on Wednesday (March 6) by previewing almost 40 seconds of the sweeping ballad in a behind-the-scenes video of her Essence cover shoot. “You guys have asked for it, so i’ll gladly give it […]
Shortly before her 24th birthday last January, Flo Milli got an unexpected gift from her fans. After playing dress-up one night in her bedroom, the Alabama upstart posted an Instagram video of herself singing to her new record, “Never Lose Me.” Though she made the video in jest, the results were golden, as the clip went viral, leading to the biggest hit of Flo’s career.
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“I saw it spreading before my birthday [in January], maybe months before that,” remembers Flo. “It was crazy, because I was promoting another song, but all that was on my mind was [“Never Lose Me”]. One day, I was at the house, and I made a video on my phone and posted it on Instagram. I was like, “Oh, they’re f–king with it.” Then, I put it on TikTok, and people started making videos immediately. It started getting bigger a few months after that.”
The success of “Never Lose Me” wasn’t originally on Flo’s birthday wish list, but the record has since peaked to No. 18 on the Hot 100, a career best. What started as an impromptu freestyle over Babyface Ray and 42 Dugg’s “Ron Artest” beat morphed into a sugary pop-rap bounce, courtesy of Flo’s entrancing hook and cheeky lyrics about staying close to her beau.
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“I was in the studio all night, and I wasn’t really focused,” says Flo. “I was working on other stuff for my project, and then right when I was about to leave, I asked the engineer to pull up this beat — that’s when I started rapping. For the ‘Never Lose Me’ part, I’m such a perfectionist: Until I get a line right and it sounds like how it sounds in my head, I’ll do it so many times. I just kept saying, ‘You never wanna lose me.’ I wasn’t expecting it to blow. I was just doing it for me.”
Released last December, “Never Lose Me” soared into the TikTok sphere and dominated. The song topped the TikTok Billboard Top 50 chart for four weeks, becoming the longest reign yet for any track. The record’s remixes featuring Bryson Tiller and Lil Yachty also helped its growth, with both stars fanning over the song before its explosion.
“It wasn’t really planned; Yachty had reached out — he told me he loved it and we started communicating on that end,” says Flo. “I sent it to Bryson. That happened because he was hitting me on DMs [before it was officially out], like, “Drop this shit. This song has been in my head.” I was like, “You should put a little verse on it,” and that’s how that came about.
Despite those wins, Flo has one more trick under her sleeves: unleashing a third remix, this one with R&B and pop superstar SZA.
“I can’t give a date on [the SZA remix] right now but hopefully soon. I’ve been talking to SZA for a couple of years — she’s always been supportive towards my career, even behind the scenes.”
A version of this story originally appeared in the March 2, 2024, issue of Billboard.
Kid Cudi is hitting the road this summer. Mr. Rager will be traveling across the globe for the Insano World Tour, which he officially set in motion with an announcement on Wednesday (March 6).
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Cudder will kick off the tour in Austin, Texas, on June 28 and will hit select arenas across the country throughout the summer.
The Ohio native won’t be at it alone, as his “EVERYBODY LIKE” collaborator Pusha T will be joining him on the trek. Jaden Smith, EARTHGANG, Chelsea Pastel and Siena Bella will also be popping up to assist the tour on a handful of dates.
Among the 43 shows, Cudi is slated to bring the rage to New York City, Nashville, Philadelphia, Toronto, Montreal, Boston, Detroit, his hometown of Cleveland, Denver, Phoenix, San Diego, Las Vegas and Seattle, and wraps up the North American leg in Los Angeles on Aug. 30 at the Crypto.com Arena.
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Kid Cudi will head overseas for a slew of shows in quarter one of 2025, where he’ll hit London’s O2 Arena, Germany, Italy, France, Ireland and other cities in the U.K.
American Express pre-sale tickets are set to go on sale starting on March 12 at 10 a.m. local time, and March 13 for those looking to attend European shows. The general public will get in on the ticketing action on March 15 at the Insano Tour website.
Kid Cudi unleashed what he described as his most “powerful” project to date with INSANO in January, which featured guest appearances from Travis Scott, A$AP Rocky, Young Thug, Lil Wayne, Lil Yachty, Pharrell and the late XXXTentacion.
The LP debuted at No. 13 on the Billboard 200. He boosted INSANO with a deluxe edition of sorts where he added a handful of new songs last month for the NITRO MEGA version.
Find all of the dates for the Insano World Tour below.
North American Dates
June 28, 2024 – Austin, TX @ Moody Center +^
June 30, 2024 – Dallas, TX @ American Airlines Center +^
July 3, 2024 – Nashville, TN @ Bridgestone Arena +*
July 5, 2024 – Sunrise, FL @ Amerant Bank Arena +*
July 6, 2024 – Tampa, FL @ Amalie Arena +*
July 9, 2024 – Duluth, GA @ Gas South Arena +*
July 11, 2024 – Raleigh, NC @ PNC Arena +*
July 13, 2024 – Washington, DC @ Capital One Arena +*
July 14, 2024 – Philadelphia, PA @ Wells Fargo Center +*
July 17, 2024 – Newark, NJ @ Prudential Center +^
July 19, 2024 – Toronto, ON @ Scotiabank Arena +^
July 20, 2024 – Montreal, QC @ Bell Centre +^
July 23, 2024 – New York, NY @ Madison Square Garden +^
July 24, 2024 – Boston, MA @ TD Garden +^
July 27, 2024 – Detroit, MI @ Little Caesars Arena +*
July 28, 2024 – Rosemont, IL @ Allstate Arena +*
July 31, 2024 – Cleveland, OH @ Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse +*#!
Aug. 2, 2024 – Cincinnati, OH @ Heritage Bank Center +*#!
Aug. 7, 2024 – Minneapolis, MN @ Target Center +*
Aug. 9, 2024 – St. Louis, MO @ Enterprise Center +*
Aug. 11, 2024 – Denver, CO @ Ball Arena +*
Aug. 14, 2024 – Phoenix, AZ @ Footprint Center +*
Aug. 16, 2024 – San Diego, CA @ Pechanga Arena +*
Aug. 17, 2024 – Las Vegas, NV @ MGM Grand Garden Arena +*
Aug. 20, 2024 – San Francisco, CA @ Chase Center +*
Aug. 22, 2024 – Portland, OR @ Moda Center +*
Aug. 24, 2024 – Vancouver, BC @ Rogers Arena +*
Aug. 25, 2024 – Seattle, WA @ Climate Pledge Arena +*
Aug. 28, 2024 – Sacramento, CA @ Golden 1 Center +^
Aug. 30, 2024 – Los Angeles, CA @ Crypto.com Arena +^
Europe
Feb. 25, 2025 – Oslo, Norway @ Spektrum +
Feb. 27, 2025 – Hamburg, Germany @ Barclays Arena +
Feb. 28, 2025 – Berlin, Germany @ Uber Arena +
March 2, 2025 – Oberhausen, Germany @ Rudolf Weber-ARENA +
March 3, 2025 – Amsterdam, Netherlands @ Ziggo Dome +
March 5, 2025 – Milan, Italy @ Forum Milano +
March 8, 2025 – Paris, France @ Accor Arena +
March 9, 2025 – Brussels, Belgium @ ING Arena +
March 12, 2025 – Dublin, Ireland @ 3Arena +
March 14, 2025 – Birmingham, UK @ Resorts World Arena +
March 15, 2025 – Manchester, UK @ Co-op Live +
March 18, 2025 – London, UK @ The O2 +
+ PUSHA T* EARTHGANG^ Jaden# Chelsea Pastel! Siena Bella
This Blockbuster is also out of business. Busta Rhymes appears to have canceled all of the 21 dates that were set to be part of his North American Blockbusta Tour 2024.
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According to Busta’s Ticketmaster page as well as Live Nation’s event listings for each show, the 2024 North American trek, which was set to begin next week on March 13 in San Francisco and was produced by Live Nation and The Conglomerate Entertainment, will no longer be taking place.
“Unfortunately, the Event Organizer has had to cancel your event. No action is required to obtain a refund,” the message on Live Nation reads in part.
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The 51-year-old hasn’t commented on his social media accounts about the canceled dates, but fans have flooded his comments wondering what happened to the North American trek.
Billboard has reached out to Busta Rhymes’ reps as well as Live Nation for comment. Neither Live Nation nor Ticketmaster have a reason for the tour cancellation listed on their websites.
The New York-bred rapper was slated to rumble through Hollywood, Phoenix, Denver, Toronto, Dallas, Miami Beach, Charlotte, Philadelphia, Detroit and more before wrapping up back home in NYC on April 21.
The tour was originally announced in November, and Busta Rhymes was coming off of providing support as an opening act on 50 Cent’s Final Lap Tour across the globe throughout 2023.
Busta also unleashed his latest body of work, BLOCKBUSTA, in November. It was loaded with superstar guest appearances including verses from Chris Brown, Burna Boy, Kodak Black, Coi Leray, BIA, Young Thug, DaBaby, T-Pain and more.
BLOCKBUSTA debuted at No. 42 on the Billboard 200, while reaching No. 10 on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart.