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rookie of the year

In late May, Teezo Touchdown — clad in all-black leather, spiky silver nails piercing his shoulder pads — leaped across the stage of Los Angeles’ Fonda Theatre. As he performed his groovy 2023 song “Mood Swings,” he screeched helium-pitched “Wee!” ad-libs mid-air, and a vibrant flower bouquet encasing his microphone swung along with him.
“A night at Lil Yachty’s house” inspired his mic setup, Teezo says today as he periodically munches on a raw orange carrot that matches the couch he’s lounging on. Teezo and Yachty were marathoning Morrissey music videos, and the way the former Smiths frontman nonchalantly swung a bouquet of flowers in the “This Charming Man” video “really influenced” Teezo — so much so that the avant-­garde 31-year-old rapper-meets-rock star eventually made it his own.

He has now whirled that microphone onstage at the country’s biggest arenas and stadiums, thanks to opening gigs for Tyler, The Creator in 2022 (after featuring on Tyler’s “RunItUp”) and Travis Scott in 2023 (after appearing on Scott’s UTOPIA track “Modern Jam”). “Being an opener is so hard,” Teezo admits — but he gained valuable perspective playing for early arrivers interested in the main act.

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“I’m like the doorman welcoming you into Tyler’s crib, Travis’ crib: ‘Can I grab you anything? He’ll be down shortly. But while you here, let me entertain you,’ ” he explains. That attitude has also informed Teezo’s recent guest appearances on tracks by artists including Drake, Doja Cat and Don Toliver — A-list collaborations that launched him onto the Billboard Hot 100 with “Amen,” from Drake’s 2023 album, For All the Dogs, marking Teezo’s highest-charting entry, at No. 15.

“Teezo is your favorite artist’s favorite artist,” says his manager, Amal Noor, who has worked with him since 2019. “He respects these artists’ careers, and to know that they love him creatively is an amazing feeling.”

Jean Paul Gaultier top, Diesel jeans, Athanasiou bracelet.

Ariel Fisher

Teezo Touchdown photographed on July 18, 2024 in Los Angeles. Vintage Jean Paul Gaultier top, Louis Vuitton belt and jeans, Prada shoes.

Ariel Fisher

Following his own first headlining tour last spring, which came on the heels of his 2023 debut album, How Do You Sleep at Night?, Billboard’s 2024 R&B/Hip-Hop Rookie of the Year is still coming to terms with his current level of stardom. “I can still go to Whole Foods and grab my six hard-boiled eggs or go to Paris and walk the streets, and no one bats an eye,” he says. “But on the other end, I’m on the biggest albums in the world, biggest tours.”

Long before he became Teezo Touchdown, the artist born Aaron Lashane Thomas followed in the footsteps of his father, a DJ and avid music collector, and started DJ’ing in the second grade, performing at friends’ parties, weddings and graduations in his hometown of Beaumont, Texas. “Every year, I would get something music-related for Christmas, but in seventh grade, I got this small box. There was a key inside to the studio that my dad had built for me upstairs,” he says. Teezo made his first song ever that day — and he still plays the piano riff at studios he visits “to call back to that kid on Christmas, like, ‘Look where you at right now.’ ”

Tragedy affected his trajectory early on. After his girlfriend was fatally shot in 2016, Teezo channeled his grief into his art, and in February 2019, he dropped the somber single “100 Drums,” which decried gun violence over a sample of Panic! at the Disco’s emo smash “I Write Sins Not Tragedies.” Chance the Rapper and Trippie Redd both noticed, and the latter flew him out to L.A. for the first time the following month. Noor noticed, too: After seeing a clip of the “100 Drums” music video on a meme page, she also reached out to Teezo.

While spending time at his childhood home afterward, Teezo stumbled upon his father’s toolbox. “Punks are usually spiky. My dad had nails around the crib, and I was like, ‘This is going to be my spike,’ ” he says. In March 2020, Teezo asked his best friend to braid the nails into his hair for the first time, for his “Strong Friend” music video. “I think I was meant to find [the nails],” Teezo says, adding that he has comfortably slept with them in his hair multiple times.

Ariel Fisher

His unorthodox image complemented his developing sound, which he now describes as “R&B with the boom of rock.” He didn’t think he could meld those genres until he saw the Afropunk festival’s Instagram post about Black rock band Living Colour and his producers, Brendan Grieve and Hoskins, played him a mashup of Craig David and metalcore band Killswitch Engage.

How Do You Sleep at Night? (released last September on Not Fit for Society/RCA Records) showcases Teezo’s genre-defying talents — from the garage punk-meets-R&B anthem “Too Easy” to the guitar-driven indie-rock jam “Impossible.” It failed to crack the Billboard 200, but Teezo only cares about the numbers for one reason: “I’m so obsessed with numbers because I just want to make my team proud. I’m proud because I’m making music and one person knows who I am.”

Drake called How Do You Sleep at Night? “some of the best music ever” when Teezo played it for him a month early. But ironically, Teezo’s profile expanded even further when Kendrick Lamar name-dropped him in the opening lines of his Hot 100 No. 1 Drake dis track, “Not Like Us” (“Nail a n—a to the cross/He walk around like Teezo”). Having just started his own tour (a “little bubble” filled with “loving fans”) at the time, “I made a decision that I wasn’t going to listen to any of the back-and-forth,” says Teezo, who claims to have somehow avoided listening to the inescapable “Not Like Us” in its entirety. “I’m seeing a mob mentality, and I don’t like division. Sorry I’m so kumbaya, but it’s all love over here.” The simple fact that both Drake and Lamar “know who I am… it’s still one of those moments where you have to pinch yourself. The kid in Beaumont, I’m pretty sure he’s jumping through the roof right now.”

Vintage Jean Paul Gaultier top, Louis Vuitton belt and jeans, Prada shoes.

Ariel Fisher

Vintage Jean Paul Gaultier top.

Ariel Fisher

Come October, Teezo will hit the road again on Don Toliver’s North American arena tour — an opportunity he initially hesitated to take because he wanted to focus on making his next album. But “[Don] was like, ‘Teezy, I’m telling you. If you know you got a tour coming up, it’s going to make you lock in.’ I needed a fire under me, and that was the fire.”

And it’s working: Teezo has already started on his next project. “The word that [we] keep bringing up is ‘undeniable.’ Everything that we’re making, is it undeniable?” he says. “If it’s not, put a red mark on it and let’s move on to the next.”

This story appears in the Aug. 31, 2024, issue of Billboard.

At Houston’s NRG Stadium on Aug. 29, Karol G invited a special guest to join her onstage: her international tour’s opening act, the Puerto Rican rapper Young Miko. Clad in a vibrant pink crop top and matching baggy pants, Young Miko took Karol by the hand as the two sang their collaborative hit, “Dispo,” moving in perfect harmony in an undulating perreo-style dance.
Amid the ecstatic cheers of fans, it was Karol, not the newcomer, who betrayed a rare glimpse of nerves as she admitted, “Ahora soy yo la que me puse nerviosa!” (“Now it’s me who has gotten nervous!”)

Miko’s meteoric rise from nascent local sensation to captivating performer capable of holding her own beside a global superstar is a testament to her undeniable talent. In just over one year, Billboard‘s 2023 Latin Rookie of the Year has broken out of her native Puerto Rico’s música urbana scene, performing with heavyweights like Karol and Bad Bunny as well as headlining her own Trap Kitty world tour of nearly 50 cities across the Americas and Spain.

“I feel incredible — a world tour! At least this early in my career,” Miko says, still sounding awestruck.

She has also been ascending the Billboard charts. “Dispo” peaked at No. 22 on Hot Latin Songs, and she made her Billboard Hot 100 debut in July with “Classy 101,” a smooth reggaetón number with Colombian star Feid. “It was definitely a shocker,” Miko told Billboard in June. “Usually one sees Beyoncé, Taylor Swift or The Weeknd on the Hot 100. To see my name is very surreal, a reminder that this is really happening and that people are consuming [my music].”

Lia Clay Miller

Lia Clay Miller

While her name now shares the charts with music’s biggest stars, not long ago, the 24-year-old artist born María Victoria Ramírez de Arellano Cardona was leveraging another form of artistic expression — tattooing — to finance her music. “The goal was always to start tattooing so I could afford my music dreams and eventually let go of the machine,” she says. “Thanks to tattoos, I was able to start paying for studio time.”

Since arriving on the global Latin pop scene, Miko has both played into and inverted male-centric Latin tropes with bold and raunchy lyrics that draw on her experience as a queer woman while boosting the LGBTQ+ community. “When I started writing music, I was like, ‘F–k it. People already know I’m gay, and why would I sing to men?’ Respectfully,” she adds with a chuckle, “if I don’t like men, I’m not going to dedicate a song to one.”

Her commitment to authenticity allowed her to carve out a place as a singular, hyper-femme queer rapper in música urbana with an unmatched, unhurried flow that has captivated a growing fan base that she calls Mikosexuals.

“For a lot of people, I came out of nowhere and caught a drastic boom — but in reality, we’ve been doing this for a really long time,” she explains. “SoundCloud played a big role in letting me test these waters that I had never explored before. We didn’t have any other resources. We had the talent, the idea, the vision, the work ethic.”

Lia Clay Miller

That drive paid off when Angelo Torres, co-founder and head of Puerto Rican indie label Wave Music Group, came across Miko while scrolling through Twitter on a flight in 2020. “This SoundCloud link popped up of this girl with pink hair and tattoos,” Torres remembers. “I was instantly captivated when I heard her tracks. There was something undeniably intriguing about her sound. [I thought,] ‘I really need to meet this person.’ ”

Torres and producer Caleb Calloway established Wave in 2021 and signed Miko several months after. Calloway, who would become pivotal to her rise, first collaborated with her on “Puerto Rican Mami” when she only had a couple of songs released on SoundCloud. That track arrived in December 2021. By July 2022, Miko was onstage at Coliseo de Puerto Rico José Miguel Agrelot in San Juan with Bad Bunny, performing her viral trap song “Riri.”

To Calloway, Miko’s sincerity remains the key to her success. “She has always maintained her originality, never letting fame alter her essence,” he says. “Miko was that artist that was able to finally fit in exactly to where my sound was and then take it to another level with her Y2K flow, with her singing and then rapping, and me doing the beat. It just sounds like we’ve been together our whole lives, and we’ve only been working for three years.”

Lia Clay Miller

Young Miko photographed on September 11, 2023 in New York.

Lia Clay Miller

Alongside Calloway and her longtime producer Mauro, Miko has crafted hits like “Riri” and this year’s “Wiggy” and “Lisa.” Her debut album, Trap Kitty, and the singles that have followed showcase her laid-back approach to trap, rap and reggaetón — a refreshing blend of boldness and nonchalance.

“We sensed tremendous excitement around Young Miko,” says Jeremy Vuernick, president of A&R at Capitol Music Group, which locked in a long-term distribution deal with Wave in April. “One of the most exciting things about Young Miko, aside from her incredible ability as a songwriter and storyteller, is the way that she’s able to connect with her audience.” And her unwavering authenticity and fiery passion have struck a chord with fans across the globe.

“It has been a year filled with a lot of learning, both professionally and as a person. It all happened so fast, but I’m surrounded by people who just want the best for me — people who have been with me since day one,” Miko says. “There are many new things that seem unreal, but I’m grateful. I’m growing, I’m learning, I’m evolving. I just know that the best is yet to come.”

Young Miko will speak at Billboard Latin Music Week, taking place Oct. 2 – Oct. 6. To register, click here.

This story will appear in the Sept. 23, 2023, issue of Billboard.

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Source: Jason Koerner / Getty
Ice Spice is continuing to level up in 2023. The rapper has been named Billboard Magazine’s Hip-Hop Rookie of the Year.

As spotted on HipHopDX the South Bronx, New York native has just added another milestone to her career. Last week the music industry trade periodical published a story on the “Deli” rapper’s rise to fame. The media outlet detailed how she has captivated the current generation with her relaxed rapping style that infuses New York street culture. Additionally, the staff also noted that she has been putting up big numbers and the looks to back up the hype including high profile collaborations with Nicki Minaj and Taylor Swift but claiming four Top 10 on the “Hot 100” chart.

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Ice Spice revealed that she was focused at a very early age. “I would always be on Google as a kid, looking up ‘how to be rich’ and ‘careers that pay the most.’ I was like, ‘OK, should I be a doctor? Or should I be a lawyer?’ I just wanted to make all the money,” she explained. “But I did always love music. I guess it just fell into place.” Ice Spice is set to receive her Rookie of the Year award on Tuesday, August 8.
You can read the entire feature on the “Bikini Bottom” MC here. 

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On May 1, Ice Spice attended her first-ever Met Gala. By the end of that month, she had appeared on an even bigger public stage: as the featured artist on the remix of Taylor Swift’s “Karma,” which she live-debuted with Swift in a surprise appearance at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., the same day the track dropped. A week later, “Karma” vaulted to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100, earning Ice her third top 10 on the chart and her highest-reaching hit to date.
Then, in June, Ice reconnected with her idol Nicki Minaj (they had already released the Hot 100 No. 4 hit “Princess Diana” in January) for the Aqua-sampling “Barbie World” from the Barbie movie soundtrack; the song debuted at No. 7 on the Hot 100, notching Ice her fourth top 10. Two days later, Ice honored the Bronx — the New York borough that both raised her and birthed hip-hop itself 50 years ago — at the BET Awards during her first-ever awards show performance. And in July, she played four international music festivals — Dublin’s Longitude Festival; Norway’s Stavern Festival; Les Ardentes in Liège, France; and London’s Wireless Festival, where she performed her No. 3 collaboration “Boy’s a Liar, Pt. 2” with PinkPantheress for the first time — in a single week.

“The People’s Princess,” as her legion of fans has dubbed her, is on fire. And this month, she’ll add another accolade to her fast-growing résumé, when, on Aug. 8, Billboard honors the artist born Isis Gaston as its 2023 R&B/hip-hop Rookie of the Year. “I have put in so much hard work, and it means a lot to be recognized for it and have more than just plaques to show for it,” she says.

Her litany of accomplishments may resemble the trajectory of an established superstar, but in fact Ice will receive her award just two days before the one-year anniversary of “Munch (Feelin’ U),” the breakout single that catapulted the up-and-coming MC to the upper echelons of hip-hop — and pop — royalty.

“I would always be on Google as a kid, looking up ‘how to be rich’ and ‘careers that pay the most.’ I was like, ‘OK, should I be a doctor? Or should I be a lawyer?’ I just wanted to make all the money,” she said in April, when she sat down with Billboard for a cover story. “But I did always love music. I guess it just fell into place.”

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The seeds for Ice’s career were first planted when her father, an underground rapper, schooled her on hip-hop heavyweights like Jay-Z and Wu-Tang Clan. Then, in her teens, she witnessed the late Pop Smoke shed new light on New York’s drill scene. “I guess I always knew I’d be a rapper because I was looking to be friends with producers,” Ice says of meeting RIOTUSA, who would become her go-to producer, while attending State University of New York at Purchase. In less than two years, the two developed a winning formula — Ice’s low-pitched, sharp-tongued bars brimming with idiosyncratic-yet-catchy slang paired with RIOT’s menacing drill beats softened by bubblegum-pop melodies from EDM samples — and struck gold with “Munch.”

Since then, Ice has conquered hip-hop, EDM and pop stages alike — and proved she’s no one-hit wonder. “I believe she’s able to attract different genres and crowds because of her willingness to experiment with crossover sounds and not box herself in,” says her manager, James Rosemond Jr. “Ice will always be a rapper first — however, we do want to take what she represents and what she is doing on a global level.”

Before that happens, she has a few more goals for the year — like releasing the deluxe edition of her debut EP, Like..?, which dropped July 21 — before she gets to work on her first album. “We want to build a strong foundation for her and not fly over any necessary steps that a new artist should take, nor have her quickly change her music to sound a certain way due to the big crossover success,” Rosemond says.

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Come November, Ice will open Doja Cat’s North American arena tour alongside Doechii, a support opportunity Rosemond says was “a personal request from Doja” after Ice met her earlier this year and helped by his relationship with Doja’s manager, Gordan Dillard. “Every strategic festival moment you’ve been seeing Ice billed for and doing is her getting her live-show chops up for this upcoming tour moment,” he says, also citing her “Karma” stadium performance with Swift. “Ice’s confidence has shot up even more to take on an arena tour as a supporting act.”

And as she continues strategically plotting new career milestones, Ice knows her path aligns with the trajectory of hip-hop itself. “Fifty years of hip-hop is monumental,” Ice says. “I hope to push the genre forward in whatever ways I can, but I know I’ll have a huge impact on the youngins coming up now.”

This story will appear in the Aug. 5, 2023, issue of Billboard.

This past February, the rising star Blxst got an unexpected text: Anthony Saleh, Kendrick Lamar’s manager, wanted to connect him with his client — and soon enough, the two artists were on FaceTime.
“[Kendrick] was like, ‘Yo, I respect what you got going on. I’m a fan of your last project. I want you to be a part of my album,’ ” Blxst recalls.

He had no idea if what he recorded would end up on the album — or when the album would even arrive. “This album is never finna come out. He ain’t dropped a project in four years,” Blxst remembers thinking at the time, with a laugh. Lamar sent him an instrumental and told Blxst to “do whatever you want to it,” he says. “He came with a melody of his own for the bridge. I got voice memos of him singing and telling me what notes to hit.” So Blxst did what he does best: He added an earworm of a hook.

Both the track and the album it landed on — Lamar’s acclaimed 2022 project, Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers — came to fruition. “Die Hard,” featuring singer Amanda Reifer, peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 and is now nominated for the best melodic rap performance Grammy, and Lamar is just one of the high-profile co-signs Blxst has attracted lately. Since releasing his debut solo EP, No Love Lost, in 2020, Blxst (real name: Matthew Burdette) has become a go-to feature for artists like Rick Ross, Snoop Dogg and Nas, and something of a modern-day Nate Dogg in the process — a “king of hooks” in his own right who surprisingly never charges for his services.

“I’m more about the art,” the 30-year-old explains. “If I’m a fan of the song or if it fits with the direction that I’m going in, I’mma jump on a song off the strength. If I don’t like it, I’mma just not do it.”

Growing up in South Central Los Angeles, and attending high school in safer Upland about 40 miles east, Blxst taught himself how to rap, sing and produce as a hobby. A self-described introvert who’s still remarkably reserved and calm, he spent the rest of his free time at the local skate park, which Tyler, The Creator also happened to frequent. “I used to go up to him rapping lyrics [of his] that he would drop on his Myspace, before he was super big,” Blxst recalls.

Blxst photographed on October 25, 2022 at GenQ Studio in Los Angeles.

Sage East

In 2018, he founded his own label, Evgle (pronounced “Eagle”) Records, and started to release singles. The following year, Blxst’s business partners — manager Vic Burnett and attorney Karl Fowlkes — joined him as Evgle co-founders. “I wanted to create a platform where I could control my narrative. I think it’s important for people to be able to control their intellectual property,” says Blxst. “Especially with me being a producer as well, I’m doing most of the work.”

Over the next couple of years, Blxst released his first collaborative EP (2019’s Sixtape, with fellow South Central artist Bino Rideaux) and Evgle struck a partnership with Red Bull Records, under which Blxst maintains his independence as an artist. By the time No Love Lost came out in 2020 (and, a few months later, its deluxe version), the buzz around Blxst had grown, and his music — with its two-step rhythms evoking the comfort of a Black cookout — provided a sense of solace for fans post-quarantine. That year, both Evgle and Blxst individually signed publishing deals with Warner Chappell.

This past spring, his debut full-length album, Before You Go, arrived, acting as “a note to self, speaking on the transition I feel like I’m facing as an artist, as an executive,” he told Billboard at the time. From slow jams to upbeat tracks oozing L.A. flair, No Love Lost yielded singles like “Hurt,” “Got It All” and “Chosen” featuring Ty Dolla $ign and Tyga, which recently went platinum.

Not that Blxst has had much time to celebrate. He has been too busy picking up accolades, including a spot in XXL’s Freshman Class of 2021, the first-ever Rising Star award at Billboard‘s 2021 R&B/Hip-Hop Summit and now, Billboard’s Rookie of the Year honor. And when we talk, he’s wrapping up his first headlining world tour — and clearly still wrapping his mind around his newfound fame.

“To travel and see people still singing [my songs] word-for-word, it’s like, ‘What is going on?’ ” he marvels. “I still be tripping off the position I’m in.” And he’s in no rush to “take an elevator” to the top. “I’m moving at a slow pace because that’s what I want to do,” he says. “I elevated a lot in just this one year but being in control of my deal and being in control of my narrative, it allows me to take a look at every step.”

That means remaining a student of the game — and appreciating the little lessons along the way. “I remember I was in the studio with Snoop, just playing music for him and seeing him nod his head, and after I pushed ‘stop,’ him reciting certain lines I said,” Blxst recalls. “It was just a reminder for me to believe in myself even more.”

Blxst photographed on October 25, 2022 at GenQ Studio in Los Angeles.

Sage East

This story will appear in the Nov. 19, 2022, issue of Billboard.