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Are you tired of Boldy James yet? Well, you better get comfortable because the Detroit MC is set to drop yet another project next week with Harlem producer V Don on Apr. 4 in Alphabet Highway.
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So far, the duo have released two singles. Earlier this month, they dropped “Split the Bill” and earlier today they premiered the video for “RSNS.”
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Shot in Amsterdam and directed by Gijs Mortier, the video shows Boldy walking through the streets of Amsterdam flipping words like only he can with lines like, “Think I’m a lick or somethin’, nickname my 4-5 GloRilla.”
In an interview with Billboard about his album with Harry Fraud, Boldy said he records a ton of music and chooses to release it when he feels that the business end of things is air tight.
“I sit on a lot of music,” he said. Y’all don’t usually hear my music no sooner than a year or two after I make it. The most recent, current to date, like music that I make up into the point where y’all get a chance to hear it is maybe The Alchemist projects and the Nic Craven projects.”
Adding, “Everything else usually take a minute to come out, because we got a hash out the layout, the business arrangements and agreements, you know, terms and conditions.”
James started the year off with Murder During Drug Traffic with RichGains and Permanent Ink in January, Token of Appreciation with Chuck Strangers in February, and is planning on dropping Hommage with Antt Beatz on Mar. 28.
And after Alphabet Highway is released on Apr. 4, he and Real Bad Man are coming with Conversational Pieces on May 2.
Check out the video below.
In today’s episode of Billboard Unfiltered, Billboard staffers Carl Lamarre, Trevor Anderson and Kyle Denis are joined by Nyla Symone as they discuss Playboi Carti’s big week on the Billboard charts with ‘MUSIC,’ Ye’s surprise drop of ‘Bully’ and the mixed reactions surrounding it, the women in Hip-Hop and R&B being honored at Women in Music and more.
What do you want to hear more of? Drop your suggestion in the chat!
Billboard’s Women in Music event will take place this Saturday March 29th at YouTube Theater in Los Angeles.
Carl Lamarre:
Gentlemen and lady in the house. Y’all already know the usual suspects here. We have a special guest today, you may have seen her on ‘The Breakfast Club,’ ‘We Need To Talk’ podcast, Hip-Hop Nation, the one and only Miss Nyla Symone.
Nyla Symone:
I love that, thank you!
Carl Lamarre:
You know a little something, something.
Nyla Symone:
That’s a good intro.
Carl Lamarre:
Yes, yes. How are you feeling?
Nyla Symone:
I feel good, I’m so excited to be here.
Carl Lamarre:
Okay, you ready to rock and roll with us degenerates?
Nyla Symone:
Yes.
Carl Lamarre:
I love that.
Kyle Denis:
Degenerates is crazy.
Trevor Anderson:
She’s already elevating the whole-
Nyla Symone:
I’m like on this sh*t. Let’s do it.
Carl Lamarre:
Bringing it up, the first thing we’re going to talk about is the caption of the YN’s, Mr. Playboi Carti. Kyle is so hyped for this.
Kyle Denis:
That’s my guy.
Carl Lamarre:
Mr. Carti had an amazing, d*mn near immaculate week. He is No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 298,000 album equivalent units which is the biggest streaming rap album of the year. Biggest rap set of the year. Mr. Playboi Carti, also 30 songs on the Hot 100. No. 2 being “EVIL J0RDAN,” No. 4 being “Rather Lie” with The Weeknd. These are some big, big numbers.
Keep watching for more!
Meek Mill took to X to address claims made by recently incarcerated Rollin’ 60s Neighborhood Crip rapper Luce Cannon in a resurfaced clip. After Cannon was swept up in the Eugene ‘Big U’ Henley Jr. RICO case, Akademiks TV posted a three-minute video of the rapper making the claim on DJ Akademiks’ podcast Off the […]
Playboi Carti debuted atop the Billboard 200 with Music, earning just under 300,000 total album units in its first week on the chart.
Billboard Unfiltered returned with a brand-new episode on Wednesday (March 26) featuring The Breakfast Club‘s Nyla Symone as a special guest, and the crew debates Carti’s massive debut numbers, Ye’s Bully leak and more.
“I wasn’t surprised at this level of commercial success from Carti,” staff writer Kyle Denis said. “It was really more confirmation of his past five years of how he’s positioned himself as the leader of the new gen. The kids love this man.”
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“Rather Lie” featuring The Weeknd debuted at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 and has been serviced to radio, which could position itself as the longest-lasting hit from Music.
Deputy editor Carl Lamarre compared “Rather Lie” to feeling inspired by Drake and SZA’s No. 1 hit “Slime You Out.” “Weeknd’s verse was very ‘Slime You Out.’ I’m just saying he was inspired,” Lamarre alleged.
The conversation moved to finding the “big three” in rap behind Drake, Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole. The crew seemed to agree that behind them it’s looking like Playboi Carti, Travis Scott and Tyler, The Creator have solidified themselves as the next superstars.
“Numbers don’t lie,” senior charts & data analyst Trevor Anderson said.
Denis added: “The kids really f— with those two [Playboi Carti and Travis Scott]. We see it in the streams go crazy, the hard sales go crazy when they put up stuff for you to buy, the ticket sales be going crazy, the festival crowds go crazy and they got the cultural pull. Carti wasn’t necessarily getting chart hits the past five years, but was still a bigger cultural presence than a lot of rappers that were getting hits.”
With people complaining about the lack of new stars in rap, Anderson wonders if he’ll receive a true mainstream push in the form of radio play, award show performances and commercial accolades. “Clearly you have evidence millions of people f–k with this dude so why not open the door,” he said.
Ye (Kanye West) returned with the leaked release of his Bully album last week, which drew positive reviews from fans even in the midst of his hateful tirades on X.
“From what I heard, I do like it,” Symone said. “I never doubted Ye couldn’t come back, but as far as being excellent at his craft, he’s never swayed from that.”
Denis believes the “curatorial” and “sequencing” skills have “disappeared” for Ye following 2016’s The Life of Pablo. “I haven’t had a favorable listening experience top-to-bottom in quite some time,” he said.
Lamarre thinks fans are still hanging onto the hope of Ye being able to put everything together once again and have it pay off in the music. “In the last decade, we have seen so many flashes of the old Ye,” Lamarre said before citing Ye’s performance at the Larry Hoover benefit concert and tracks like “530.”
The rest of the episode also finds the crew diving into the hopeful album releases from Cardi B and Saweetie as well as GloRilla versus Doechii. Watch it below.
Who knew Playboi Carti did his own stunts? After releasing a deluxe version of his No. 1 album Music — which included four new songs in “Different Day,” “2024,” “Backr00ms” and “FOMDJ” — Carti dropped the video for the latter and channeled Tom Cruise by not needing a stuntman. After the video went up on […]
GloRilla is currently trekking across North America while headlining her Glorious Tour, but ended up having to cut a St. Louis show short earlier this week after several fights broke out among the audience. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news Per local affiliate FOX 2 Now, brawls […]
Drake has set the release date for his anticipated “Nokia” video, which will arrive on March 31. The 6 God posted a teaser for the clip on Tuesday (March 25), revealing that the Theo Skudra-directed visual was shot for IMAX. Explore Explore See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “NOKIA […]
Erykah Badu has loudly and proudly always marched to the beat of her own drummer. But the “Call Tyrone” singer admitted this week that she’s happily hopping on a recent trend to protest the deep cuts to government agencies being led by Elon Musk as part of his DOGE team by trashing one of the richest man in the world’s signature vehicles.
“Just vandalized my own Tesla,” Badu tweeted earlier this week. “Trying to stay on trend.”
There have been a number of attacks on Teslas and Tesla dealerships around the country over the past few weeks, from Cybertrucks set on fire to molotov cocktails hurled at Tesla dealerships and vandalism of charging stations. Attackers have also taken their ire out on the all-electric vehicles with anatomical drawings and NSFW messages such as “Hail Elon” and “Nazi car,” in seeming reference to Musk’s Nazi-like salute at Donald Trump’s inauguration in January.
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It was unclear if Badu — who recently revealed to Billboard that she is working on her first new album in 15 years — was joking or actually dinged up her Tesla, but she is not the only one breaking up with the pricey vehicle that was once considered a badge of environmental courage. Sherly Crow announced last month that she had sold her Tesla and donated the proceeds to NPR in protest; NPR and PBS executives will be on Capitol Hill on Wednesday (March 26) to testify in a hearing titled “Anti-American Airwaves: Holding the Heads of NPR and PBS Accountable” as DOGE is reportedly homing in on drastic cuts to public radio and television.
While many protests across the nation, and the world, have focused on Teslas and Musk, Green Day took aim at the billionaire during shows in January, where singer Billie Joe Armstrong swiped at the unelected DOGE boss while performing in Musk’s home country of South Africa. “I’m not part of the Elon agenda,” he sang in a switch to a classic “American Idiot” lyric.
Jack White also slammed Musk during a performance of his 2018 single “Corporation” at a February 18 show on his No Name tour. “I was thinking about becoming an oligarch, who’s with me?” White sang in Boston. “I was thinking about taking government subsidies and starting my own electric car company. Who’s with me?” he added. “I’m thinking about not being elected. Never holding a public office. Never serving one day of military service. But somehow having the authority to control parts of the U.S. Government. Who’s with me?”
Then, on the debut episode of Netflix’s Everybody’s Live with John Mulaney earlier this month, 1960s folk legend Joan Baez lamented that “our democracy is going up in flames… we’re being run by a bunch of really incompetent billionaires.” And while she didn’t name names, when Mulaney joked about Baez owning a Tesla, she noted that she did used to have one, but that she sincerely regrets the purchase now.
“I hated that thing,” Baez, 84, said. “But I thought I was supposed to like it. So I drove off in it. Within 45 minutes I had smashed it into an oak tree on my property… I was thinking, ‘That’s a sign.’” Without saying when she ditched it, Baez added, “I hated it… It was too big… I sold it and got one-half the amount of money I paid for.”
Over the weekend, Chicago rapper Vic Mensa posted a video on his social media accounts about the time he got into it with some Italian mobsters in a club and how he had to pay them to leave him alone.
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Vic starts things off by painting a picture. He was on his tour bus already drunk, in an undisclosed city, when he decided to check out a club that a friend was DJ’ing at, and mentioned that he was supposed to make an appearance in that same club the very next day.
Once he gets to VIP, he was handed a blunt, a fifth of Dusse, and a bottle of Ace of Spades before he noticed a friend on the dance floor asking him for some backup. “So, I start going down there,” he recalled. “He like, ‘G, they just choked me and dragged me out the club! And they not even security!’ I’m like, ‘Who? Who did this to you?’”
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After his friend pointed the culprit out, Mensa claims that he hit he hit him with the bottle of Ace of Spades. “I’m a nut so I already had bottle of Ace of Spades in my hand,” he said. “Boom! I crashed his ass. Immediately, this shit turned into a melee. I told you, I only got one friend in the building. Now this shit is not going well. I’m getting punched up and down like cartoon fists in a cloud.”
Adding that once he got away and made it to his hotel, a friend called him to inform him that the people he fought were made men. “My mans called me, who I didn’t even know was in that city at that time,” Vic began. “He was like, ‘Man, that was the Italian mob. They finna kill you!’
Vic then had to give one of his “big homies” in Chicago a call to help him out and said he had to pay $10,000 to make things right and made his scheduled club appearance with extra security. “Long story short, I get the bread, I pay the mob,” he continued. “Oh yeah, but that’s another one of the reasons why I don’t drink.”
Vic talked about his journey on the road to sobriety on Instagram in 2023, saying that he had to “learn the difference between fun and joy.”
Check out his “Italian mob” story below.
Snoop Dogg will deliver the 2025 commencement address at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business graduation ceremony, the university announced Tuesday (March 25). “I am deeply honored to join USC Marshall’s commencement in celebrating the remarkable achievements of these graduates,” the Long Beach rapper said in a statement posted to the school’s […]
