R&B/Hip-Hop
Page: 290
Hip-hop continues its reign on the TikTok Billboard Top 50 as “Sky” by Playboi Carti vaults to No. 1 on the Oct. 7-dated survey.
The TikTok Billboard Top 50, which began three weeks ago, 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 Sept. 25-Oct. 1. Activity on TikTok is not included in Billboard charts except for the TikTok Billboard Top 50.
Playboi Carti’s “Sky” is the chart’s third No. 1, following fellow rap songs “SkeeYee” by Sexyy Red (Sept. 16) and “Wassup Gwayy” by FamousSally & YB (Sept. 23 and 30).
Explore
Explore
See latest videos, charts and news
See latest videos, charts and news
Released in 2020 as part of Playboi Carti’s Christmas Day-released album Whole Lotta Red, “Sky” peaked at No. 34 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart nearly a year later (Dec. 11, 2021).
The song often sports gains at the beginning of the month due to its “Wake up/ It’s the first of the month” lyric (Oct. 1 marked the end of the latest chart’s tracking week). This time around, multiple videos using “Sky” also reference the idea that using the sound at the beginning of each month spurs good luck for a poster for the rest of that month.
“Sky” is the latest song to reign over Doja Cat’s “Paint the Town Red,” which holds at No. 2 for a second straight week and third frame in all. The track, which concurrently returns to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, has not dropped below No. 3 in the four weeks of the TikTok Billboard Top 50’s existence.
Previous No. 1 “Wassup Gwayy” falls to No. 3, while Tate McRae’s “Greedy” leaps to No. 4 in its second week on the ranking. The pop singer’s runaway new hit, which concurrently jumps 33-24 in its second week on the Hot 100, was initially teased on TikTok on Aug. 5 and has only risen in popularity since its full release on all streaming platforms. The track earned 11.5 million official U.S. streams on those platforms Sept. 22-28, according to Luminate, a 1% boost.
Another Hot 100 success, Mitski’s “My Love Mine All Mine,” jumps into the top five of the TikTok Billboard Top 50, shooting 34-5. It was released as part of her album The Land Is Inhospitable and So Are We on Sept. 15, Mitski’s first full-length since the chart’s inception – though she is no stranger to success on the platform in the past, boasting viral moments with songs such as “Washing Machine Heart,” “Nobody” and more. The track concurrently debuts at No. 76 on the Hot 100.
See the full TikTok Billboard Top 50 — featuring debuts from Ayo & Teo, Suicidal Idol, Girl in Red and more — here.
While the rest of us have been just going on with our lives, Drake appears to still be harboring some ill feelings about Kanye West. The pair who’ve been embroiled in a mostly one-sided public feud for several years — including Drizzy’s use of a convo excerpt between Ye’s ex, Kim Kardashian, and her mom, […]
As R&B superstar SZA has continued to ascend to the highest levels of popular music’s stratosphere over the past year — No. 1 hits, festival headlining slots, A-list collaborations, raves from critics and peers — her résumé still lacks a key item: major Grammy success. While SZA has been nominated for 15 Grammys — an impressive number, considering that as of the most recent ceremony, she still only had one full-length album to her name — she has just one win: in the best pop/duo group performance category, for her guest turn on Doja Cat’s crossover smash, “Kiss Me More.”
That seems likely to change at the 2024 Grammys, following the December 2022 release of her SOS, one of the most universally lauded albums of the past year. Not only did it draw near-unanimous praise, it also brought SZA to a new level of commercial dominance: SOS topped the Billboard 200 for 10 nonconsecutive weeks, with all 23 of its tracks hitting the Billboard Hot 100 — including breakout single “Kill Bill,” which became her first No. 1 on the chart. “There’s nobody close,” says artist development specialist and academy member Chris Anokute when gauging SZA’s 2024 Grammy credentials. “The girl has paid her dues. She has been releasing music for seven years. And she has made a multigenre, multiformatted album — the best multigenre, multiformatted record I’ve heard in years. And it deserves to be the album of the year.”
Indeed, the feeling among insiders that Billboard spoke with for this article is that SZA’s career has hit all the right beats for a Grammy artist since she signed with Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) a decade ago — and that it’s time for the Recording Academy to properly recognize her. “The Grammys are supposed to reward artists who show development and growth; artists who were once opening up and then get to arena level,” one music industry veteran says. “The Grammys really should want to be behind the trajectory of an artist like that.”
A source on SZA’s team confirms that the label will run a traditional campaign for her and points to increased visibility from the second leg of her North America tour (which includes two late-October stops in Los Angeles), as well as a deluxe reissue of SOS — recently confirmed by SZA herself as being titled Lana, featuring “seven to 10 [new] songs” and coming sometime this fall. The team has also sent out SOS boxes to “partners at press, radio” and digital service providers that include the album on vinyl and CD, as well as a compass, ring, metal straw and cleaning brush.
“Such packages have become very effective through the years because that’s what helps make projects stand out,” says a veteran marketing strategist of the box set promotional strategy. “It’s about what’s going to remind people that this record is a contender.”
[embedded content]
While the album (and its accompanying singles, “Kill Bill” and the more recent top 10 hit “Snooze”) likely will be in the running, it’s working against the tide of recent history. R&B has had some success in the past decade within the all-genre Big Four categories, but the genre’s most successful artists in the general field have tended to be those who embraced more of a classic, retro-vibing R&B mold: Bruno Mars and Silk Sonic, H.E.R., Jon Batiste. Artists like SZA — whose R&B is largely rooted in hip-hop sonics (and who came up as the lone R&B artist on the rap-focused TDE) — have, like rap itself, struggled to gain that kind of Grammy recognition.
Anokute doesn’t necessarily see that lack of recent precedent as an issue for SZA’s chances, instead calling back two decades to a pair of artists whose blend of classic and modern soul sounds made them pop insiders and Grammy darlings. “To me, you could compare this SZA moment to Lauryn Hill’s and Alicia Keys’ big Grammy moments [in 1999 and 2002, respectively],” he says. “She has crossed boundaries, she has crossed race with this album. At the end of the day, popular is popular, right? … You can’t call pop music [only] music that is on top 40 radio. Pop music is the most popular genre. And at the end of the day, Black music is the most popular music in the world.”
No matter how popular her music is currently, SZA will still have her work cut out for her contending at next year’s Grammys, likely against some of the other biggest artists in the world right now — including Olivia Rodrigo, Morgan Wallen and of, course, three-time album of the year winner Taylor Swift. However, Anokute points out that no one, not even the galactically popular Swift, can boast the cross-demographic appeal that SZA now has: “In terms of the most popular record between all genres of people, SZA beats Taylor Swift. I don’t know anybody listening to Taylor Swift outside of mostly, you know, white people… But I know a lot of white people, a lot of Black people, a lot of Spanish people that are listening to SZA and are huge fans. I’m not saying that Taylor only appeals to white people or Caucasian people, but the majority of her fan base is not Black or brown. SZA’s is, but she also crossed over.”
And whether the Grammys ultimately reward SZA’s latest, one music industry veteran says that it is in the Recording Academy’s best interest to look forward with R&B as much as backward. “We appreciate [the recognition for] the Bruno Marses and the H.E.R.s — they’re a safe balance,” the veteran says. “I think the academy knows that to be a part of the future, they have to embrace the future… Can we prove the Rolling Stone guy [Jann Wenner] wrong? That’s what we should focus on.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
Baby2Baby Gala is returning to Los Angeles on November 11, and Snoop Dogg will be taking the stage to perform at the charitable event, Billboard can exclusively reveal. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news In honor of his performance, Baby2Baby is set to provide nearly 300,000 essential items […]
“I don’t go on TikTok,” says PinkPantheress when asked whom she pegs as future TikTok stars. It’s surprising, to say the least. Few musicians have utilized the platform as expertly as she has over the past three years. What started out as a bet with a friend to prove she could crack its algorithm — “I told her I could make a viral video if I wanted to. And then I did,” she remembers — wound up launching what has turned out to be a fruitful career IRL.
“Once I figured out the algorithm, I was like, ‘Well, surely this would be able to blow up the music, too,’ ” she says. The 22-year-old English musician (who goes by various pseudonyms in lieu of her real name) is sitting in a midsize meeting room at the 1 Hotel in Brooklyn’s DUMBO neighborhood, where the décor — black leather, bare metal and treated wood everywhere — is working hard to make nature feel modern, but she looks effortlessly cool in baggy denim and a comfortable tank top. She’s polite and cordial, even though it’s clear she would rather be doing anything but an interview. “I was like, ‘Well, I might as well just try and see what happens. And even if I don’t get anyone listening to it, at least it’s out there and not just stuck on my laptop.’ ”
The songs that were hiding out on her laptop quickly found an audience. Her brand of drum’n’bass-meets-’90s pop/R&B tapped right into the heart of the zeitgeist, resonating with a generation of kids who don’t know life before the internet, smartphones and social networks but are downright tickled by the idea of a more analog lifestyle.
“When I posted my first song, people were commenting saying it was really good. And I saw people using the sound — like 200 uses in a day or something,” PinkPantheress says. “At that point I was like, ‘Wow, this is crazy.’ Imagine you have a song that you didn’t think anyone was going to listen to, to suddenly way more people than you expected listening to it.”
Lia Clay Miller
Uploaded three years ago on Christmas Day, the song was the Michael Jackson-sampling “Just a Waste,” and it showcased what has become her trademark style: throwing a disco ball drenched in despair into a blender to create something deceptively fun. But while PinkPantheress loves sampling, she’s weary of relying on its easy pleasures. “I always like to think that I’m adding something to [the sample], which is, like, relevant enough that suddenly it’s a new song. I just think too many songs these days are just an interpolation,” she says.
With hordes of new fans clamoring for more, PinkPantheress uploaded “Pain” in January 2021, a song that would have fit in perfectly with the Euro alt-pop invasion of the late 1990s. At only a minute and 39 seconds long, it’s really more of a ditty than a song — but manages to perfectly convey forlorn teenage love.
“Just a Waste” and “Pain” showcased a young, gifted songwriter, one who could succinctly capture and clearly telegraph universal feelings to make listeners feel as if she might be reading their DMs. Early on, unrequited love dominated her music. The feeling of “having someone that you’ve always wanted to see romantically but you’ve never managed to be able to and stuff like that,” she says. Now that she’s getting more famous, though, her music may soon have a more optimistic glint. “I guess the more I create music, the less I want to be stuck in that world.”
Born in Bath, England, to a Black Kenyan mother and a white British father, PinkPantheress was raised in Kent with her older brother. She took to music at an early age, learning to play piano and forming a rock band with a few friends while in grammar school. She spent most of her free time watching music videos and interviews on YouTube. By the time she got to college, she started making electronic music and experimenting with musical software to create her own productions.
To try out her songs, she wrote and produced for her friend MaZz. “I think, objectively, the songs were good songs,” PinkPantheress says. “She was kind of the [voice] and face for my writing.” But, like many talented songwriters, PinkPantheress soon “wanted more control over how I sounded.” She registered for SoundCloud under the name of her favorite Steve Martin movie and began uploading songs.
Lia Clay Miller
Nothing caught on — but when she took to TikTok in December 2020, seemingly overnight, she became an indie pop darling. “Pain” broke onto the U.K. Singles chart in August 2021 and peaked at No. 35. Later that year, she signed a deal with Parlophone and Elektra Records and released her first mixtape, To Hell With It. As booking offers came in for PinkPantheress — who had yet to perform live — her management at Upclose took things slowly, opting for smaller shows that allowed her to build an audience rather than going for festival stages.
“I remember my first few shows after my mixtape was out at the end of 2021 and [my management] were making me do rooms of like 100 people and 150 people,” she recalls. “The biggest room I did was probably 800. I remember thinking, ‘Why are these rooms so small?’ ”
“It has been superintentional,” says Jesse Gassongo-Alexander, PinkPantheress’ co-manager, when asked about helping her build a fan base after finding so much success online. “It was always a case of putting in the hard work and taking the slower route to build a foundation that is solid that’s going to allow her to stay here for a while.”
Her story resembles that of another young female artist who managed to parlay massive online success into real-world results: rapper Ice Spice. On paper, PinkPantheress and Ice Spice may seem like photo negatives of each other — one’s a brash rapper from the Bronx who has no problem putting herself in the spotlight; the other’s an introverted singer who prefers the solitary pursuit of songwriting to industry glad-handing — but to PinkPantheress, they’re more alike than different. So much so that she offered Ice a spot on the remix to her hit song, “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2,” earlier this year.
“I feel like I don’t have that many peers that exist in a similar space to me,” she says. “I’m not talking about levels. I’m talking about internet space. I think a lot of people see me as being this, like, internet cutesy teen-pop girl. I feel like she was one of the newcomers whom I got drawn to because, even though she does drill and rap, it still feels like she’s in the same cutesy world to me. And she’s Black too, and that was a big important part of it to me. I prefer to collaborate with other Black artists.”
Lia Clay Miller
The song became an instant hit, her biggest so far, debuting at No. 14 on the Billboard Hot 100 after going viral on TikTok. For many in the United States, “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” was the first time they had heard PinkPantheress. It got her her first BET Award nominations (best collaboration, BET Her Award), landed her an MTV Video Music Awards nod (best new artist) and ultimately peaked at No. 3.
Many believe she’s a lock for her first Grammy nomination thanks to the song — if she had to guess, probably for best pop duo/group performance. She’s taken aback and amused when told about the drama that has surrounded the Grammy Awards’ classification of certain albums by Black artists — even more so when she learns how disappointed Justin Bieber was when his album Changes got the nod for best pop vocal album instead of best R&B album.
But even without a Grammy nomination, she can count this year as an unequivocal success. In addition to her biggest single yet, she appeared on Barbie: The Album — as good an “I’ve arrived” moment as any. But still, even as her career explodes, it’s surprising to hear that TikTok has taken a back seat.
“I didn’t leave it behind. I still post on it,” she says reassuringly. “I love using it to post my own videos, but I do not watch videos on there. Because like a year ago, I would scroll and I’d see too many TikToks about me. I was like, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’ ”
Makes sense. Her management team trusts her to make the best decisions for herself. “I think she has shown how globally intelligent she is by being one of the earlier trendsetters,” Gassongo-Alexander says. “Coming from TikTok and appealing to a wider audience and then knowing how to retain that wider audience.”
How does PinkPantheress plan to keep growing that audience? By keeping on keeping on, it seems. She’s uninterested in sacrificing her core audience at the altar of pop stardom. Thankfully, her music is naturally easy on pop fan ears. “What I’ve realized is that my natural way of writing is more pop-friendly than anything,” she says. “So even though the beats can be kind of alternative, I still write in a very standard structure. And I make sure all the lyrics are tangible. And because of that, I think that it has made the [music] that I’m doing very accessible to mainstream audiences. But my biggest fear is having people hear me do a [song] and recognize that I’m doing it for the wrong reasons.”
This story will appear in the Oct. 7, 2023, issue of Billboard.
After the release of Drake’s “8 AM in Charlotte,” Billboard takes a look at Drake’s celebrated timestamp series.
Offset‘s upcoming Set It Off solo album features two collaborations with wife Cardi B, as well as a raft of other A-list guests. The Migos MC unveiled the track list for his upcoming solo album on Wednesday afternoon (Oct. 4); the album is due out on Oct. 13. In a song roster posted on his […]
Drake is in an introspective mood on the gospel-tinged surprise track “8AM in Charlotte,” which the 6 God dropped early Thursday morning (Oct. 5). The Conductor Williams-produced track rides on a laconic beat and finds Drizzy backed by a soulful choir as he flexes about his nine-figure lifestyle while dropping an awards show-worthy list of A-list names.
The video for the track co-stars the rapper’s five-year-old son, Adonis, who opens the five-minute visual by showing off a cute drawing he made for his pops. “Tell me about your beautiful piece of artwork that you sold me,” Drake says to his son, who goes on to describe a tale of a goat running away from monsters amid images of flaming flowers, race cars and jail stairs.
“Daddy’s name is next to the goat, does that mean that he’s the GOAT?” the MC wonders. “Yes, so it’s Daddy GOAT,” Adonis confirms. Clearly already a chip off the old block, when Drake asks Adonis how much he earned for his beautiful drawing, the kindergarten controller laughs and says, “Oh please.”
Then dad gets to business, rapping, “Preachin’ to the dogs about wantin’ more for themselves/ It’s weighin’ heavy on my moral scale/ Knowin’ they gon’ sell another citizen ‘cane, they think they Orson Welles,” in the bare-bones visual in which Drizzy sports colorful hair curlers, baggy black vinyl pants and a jacket with a series of colorful V’s on it. In one shot, Drake sits surrounded by a group of men, and Adonis, all wearing black shirts that read “Hate Survivor.”
The avalanche of bold-faced names continues, with a shout-out to a fellow GOAT (“the restaurant clears out faint echoes of Lauryn Hill”), a spooky szn-appropriate ref (“I say we gotta talk about us, I feel like Jordan Peele”), as well as stops at 21 Savage (“got a green card straight out of the consulate”) and Michael Jackson (“I feel like Mike switched out the glove for the pen”).
Plus, he gets political with a clever geography bar, rapping, “Where I go, you go, brothers, we’re Yugoslavian/ Formal is a dress code, dawg, so many checks owed/ I feel Czechoslovakian.”
The second verse drops references to a country icon (“Shania Twain, notepad, I’m making it line dance”), a megachurch preacher (“I swear I’m like a young T.D. Jakes to my menaces/ Long kiss goodnight, PDA for my nemesis”), anti-vax presidental candidate RFK jr. (“Conspiracy theories start floatin’ around like the Kennedy guy”) and the late DJ Screw (“R.I.P. to the DJ from Houston, we loose screws”).
The Adonis cameo is fitting, since Drake revealed last month that his son’s line-drawing of a pooch would be the cover art for his upcoming For All the Dogs album, which is due out on Friday (Oct. 6) and is expected to also include his SZA collab, “Slime You Out.”
Watch the “8AM in Charlotte” video below.
Whether it’s her “Icy” calling card or her “I know that’s right” catchphrase, two-time Grammy-nominated rapper Saweetie has been cementing herself as a branding queen since she first hit the Billboard charts with “Icy Girl” back in 2017. In the years since then, she’s notched a bevy of platinum singles — “Tap In,” “My Type” and “Best Friend” (with Doja Cat), among them — and collaborated with everyone from John Legend to Gwen Stefani.
For her latest partnership, Saweetie has joined forces with Tinder — the dating app used by millions of love-seekers around the world. Dubbed “Swipe-Off,” the collaboration is a nationwide challenge where the college with the most Swipe activity on Tinder wins a free double feature concert headlined by Saweetie and special guest and fellow rapper Baby Tate. “She was definitely one of the top choices and I’m happy she went with us,” Saweetie gushes.
Swipe-Off — which alludes to Saweetie’s “Tap In” lyrics, “You better get the card and make it swipe like Tinder”— is the latest step in a busy year for the “Icy Chain” rapper. Earlier this year, she released a pair of singles titled “Shot O’ Clock” and “Birthday” (with YG & Tyga), the latter of which peaked at No. 16 on Billboard‘s Rhythmic Airplay chart. Before she debuted those two songs, Saweetie also hopped on the remix of Baby Tate’s viral hit “Hey Mickey,” which the pair will “absolutely” perform at the Swipe-Off concert. Just last month, the rapper and USC alumna co-hosted the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards pre-show.
In a lively conversation with Billboard, Saweetie speaks on new music, that VMAs teleprompter gaffe, a return to acting and her dating tips for a Tinder home run.
[embedded content]
What can fans expect to hear and see at your Tinder Swipe-Off concert, should their campus win the competition?
Icy Girls love to have fun, and I’m a college girl, so I would love to bring my energy to whatever campus wins. I think it’s a great way to bring communities together in such a fun and youthful way. I’m jealous too, I wish I was still in college. It’s been some time! I’m really happy to go to the students. I’m happy that they’re excited to see me with my new music. I just dropped “Birthday” and “Shot O’ Clock,” which is doing really well right now. So, I’m excited to see who’s gonna go up because they can expect a really fun show. The surprise is out now, I’m bringing Baby Tate, who is also amazing. So, we’re going to bring all of that!
The focus on college campuses in this Tinder collaborations lines up with your advocacy for education. What are your long-term plans and goals for your ICY Baby Foundation?
My longtime goals and plans is to give back to Black and brown communities, and to come back and to be a living example for what they could become. Whether it’s music, business, education, whatever their heart desires. I want them to know that accomplishing their dream is possible. I think it’s important that somebody who looks like them is coming back and speaking on this, just to give them the fuel they need to engineer their dreams.
My goal is to go back and to inspire and to help them not only learn about financial literacy, but to discover what their passion is. I think that when we used to have career fairs as children, we were often only shown the traditional careers, but it’s 2023-2024. There’s so many more opportunities out there. So, I think it’s important to show them that someone that looks like them did it, and they can do it too.
As you prep for the Swipe-Off concert, what have you found are your favorite songs to perform live?
So there’s two songs. For a popular cut, I love to perform “My Type,” of course. The energy is always so crazy. A deep cut I love to perform is “Back Seat,” it’s such vibe, it’s so special, and it just puts me into this magical trance on stage.
You put out “Birthday” and “Shot O’ Clock” earlier this year, which of the two do you prefer?
I feel like every day is your birthday. I’m the type of person that celebrates my birthday the whole month. So, “Birthday” was really special to me, because I feel like everyone should celebrate life for, if not the whole month, then — I don’t know what’s more dramatic than that — but give me a whole month and I’m good.
What I love about “Shot O’ Clock” is that it’s a triple entendre. It could be alcohol shots, but it could also be like healthy and wellness shots. They could be NBA shots. There could be some type of other shots! [Laughs.] It can go in so many different ways. What made those two songs the perfect combination is that they’re a celebration of life. I’m an Icy Girl, I love to have fun. I like to work hard, but I also like to celebrate hard as well, and I feel like those are what those two songs exhibit.
Those two songs were your first releases (as a lead artist) of the calendar year, why return with those particular tracks?
I think it was all about getting new music out. It was the summertime — you know, summertime is for the girls stepping out, getting ready and having fun — so I think it matched that energy. Now, as far as my next couple of releases, I’m still deciding on what those are, but I just wanted to give the girls something to get ready to and to party to.
In terms of new music, where is your head at sonically? What sounds and styles are inspiring you right now?
I don’t want to give the name of my sound out — because, you know, people be studying and they be stealing, girl. But this music I’m creating…
I literally tell people that I don’t like writing camps. Don’t do any writing camps without me, because I have to be in the room. I produce my own music and I also write my own music. It’s a co-production between me and the creatives, and I think once I put my foot down in that way, the music got so much better. I need to be in the room. My soul and my spirit needs to be in the production. All I can say is when you hear this sound — it’s just gon’ be that Saweetie Sound. So, I’m really excited to share that with the world. It’s that Saweetie Sound, baby, let’s just call it that!
Let’s get into your Tinder history for a bit. When you use the app, do you do so as Saweetie or Diamonté, or are you a lurker?
Honestly, I was a lurker for one day. I was like, “Oh no, this is a new world for me. I gotta come back to this.” But I never came back to it, so I’m excited that I’m actually able to work with them in a bigger way.
What are you green flags and red flags on a Tinder profile?
Green flags are somebody who’s well-traveled, who likes to have fun, who has a job…? A J-O-B. [Laughs.] A job that makes tangible money, not just social currency. A red flag is someone who has no other hobbies besides partying. I think that’s a very one-dimensional personality, and for a girl like me, you need to be multi-dimensional to keep me interested. That’s definitely what I’m looking for: someone who has more to offer than just one side.
What was your approach to dating in college and how does that differ from how you move in the streets now?
I definitely recommend that people shouldn’t be tied down to one person in college, I think college is all about experience — which is why Tinder is great because, you’re able to see what you like and what you don’t like. Hopefully, the girls are out there vetting because we’re the prize. So, who wins the prize? We’re gon’ see!
In the Swipe-Off ad, you were giving us some acting vibes and you’ve done that in the past. Is a return to acting on the table for you in any capacity?
Well, before the writers’ strike, I actually filmed with a really big TV show, so I’m really excited for whenever they decide to release it. I know it’s going to be a huge moment. They stripped me down: no lashes, barely any makeup, I had this wig on! They were like, “No lashes, take ‘em off!” And you know, I’m a lash girl, so I’m just like, “All right, cool. Let’s get into this acting bag, what’s up?!”
Obviously the SAG-AFTRA strike is still ongoing, but could you give fans any hints as to what the show could be?
I’m going to give you one of my lyrics: “Cocaina tiptoes/ Ride it like the whip stole/ Benjis in my bra when my titties need a lift though.” The answer’s in there!
Outside of the Swipe-Off concert, where else can fans expect to see you performing?
That is something we are working on when it comes to this top-secret rollout we’ve been planning, but they gon’ see me outside!
Now, I have to get into the VMAs because obviously everybody had a lot to say. Take me inside your head while you were hosting the pre-show and reading off that teleprompter. Do you have anything you’d like to say to the commenters at home?
I do have a response for that actually. I think a simple response is no matter what happens, baby just keep going. Imma always keep going. I love to motivate. I love to inspire, and because I got back up on that stage, makeup still intact, hair still intact, outfit still intact, still on my Icy Girl ten white toes — I just keep going no matter what happens. That’s all I gotta say about that.
I know your DMs probably be flooded daily, what’s the corniest pick-up line anyone’s ever tried on you? And have you ever used a pick-up line on somebody else?
I think my brand is so strong that the way I’m approached or the way fans — you know, fans shoot their shot — I think I don’t get corny lines cause I think people just know me so well. They be like, “You want some crab legs? You want a Birkin? What you wanna do?” It be cute stuff!
I think that I don’t get corny pickup lines, I get creative pick-up lines. The pickup lines I be getting to see have me laughing. And I think that when people are trying to link on Tinder, make them laugh, be creative, don’t do the “Yo,” “Hey,” “Wassup.” Don’t do the simple stuff. It’s Tinder, baby! Let’s spice it up and let’s have fun in life. It’s something about making the girl laugh. If you could make me laugh, what else can you do?
You puttin’ everyone on game, I know that’s right!
I know that’s right! You know what I love? I love when a man come up to me and they do that line and they go, “I know that’s right.” I be like, “Look at you!” It makes me giggle because to hear a man say it in my tone?! [Laughs.]
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony member Krazyie Bone is giving fans an update on his health after being hospitalized for nearly two weeks. In a Tuesday (Oct. 3) Instagram post, Krazyie Bone shared a photo of himself from his hospital room. “Just fought for life Literally for 9 days straight,” he wrote in the caption. “And I only […]