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Alt-pop singer Alemeda has signed with Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) and Warner Records, Billboard can exclusively announce Friday (Sept. 20). She becomes the third female act to be signed to TDE, following SZA and Doechii.
“TDE placed trust and time in me to find my sound and develop as an artist at my own pace. I think to be signed to them means to be more than just an artist but to be a pivotal part of Black art and culture,” Alemeda said in a statement. “I’m honored to be the third woman ever signed to this historic roster of talented culture pavers. Warner also has a great understanding of who I am as an artist, and their historic success in the rock and pop genres makes me confident in our future together. I feel they were the right team to support my growth as an artist and I am excited for what is to come working with them alongside TDE.” 

The news coincides with the release of the Ethiopian-Sudanese artist’s debut EP, FK IT. The 8-track project includes previously released singles like her viral 2021 debut “Gonna Bleach My Eyebrows,” “Guy’s Girl” and “I hate your face.” She also performed her latest single “I already dug your grave” on popular German performance series platform COLORSxSTUDIOS earlier this month. “This EP is the truest expression of who I am right now,” she adds. “It’s about letting go of what doesn’t serve me and embracing the chaos and beauty of being real, unapologetically.”

Trending on Billboard

“One late night in December 2019, a few months before the pandemic, I was stuck in a rabbit hole scrolling Instagram when I happened to stumble across Alemeda. She was going by Rahema Alameda at the time and was doing a cool little bop with the brightest smile to a song of hers that she hadn’t released. I immediately felt she was gonna be great,” said TDE co-president Anthony “Moosa” Tiffith in a statement. “After reaching out to her, I learned that she hadn’t put out any music yet or even recorded in a studio before, so I flew her out to Los Angeles to give her that opportunity. When she told me about her strict upbringing and how she moved from Ethiopia to Arizona, I knew she had a story to tell.”

Tiffith continues: “She’s been here for the last four years, staying focused as a student of music and developing her sound. For most managers that must sound like a long time, but artist development is the most important thing to me. It’s a blessing to work with an artist like Alemeda who shares that vision and is willing to do the work. I’m happy and beyond excited to announce her to Top Dawg Entertainment, and equally enthusiastic for our partnership with Warner!”

Warner is also excited to work alongside TDE for Alemeda.”She’s an electrifying artist with a unique voice and vision, and FK IT is just the beginning of what will be an extraordinary journey. Her ability to channel her personal experiences into raw, boundary-pushing music makes her a perfect fit for our roster,” said Warner Records co-chairman/CEO Aaron Bay-Schuck in a statement.

He adds, “[Warner Records co-chairman/COO] Tom Corson, [Warner Records executive vp/head of A&R] Karen Kwak and our entire team is thrilled to be joining forces with Top Dawg Entertainment to bring Alemeda’s innovative artistry to an even wider audience. Collaborating with TDE’s exceptional team only amplifies our excitement for this groundbreaking partnership.”

It’s been five years since SiR launched a full-length album – and the world is a very different place from what it was back in 2019. More importantly, however, SiR is also a different person.  The Inglewood-bred R&B crooner has kept a relatively low profile over the past half-decade, as he took some time to […]

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Source: Earl Gibson III / Getty / DJ Akademiks
Keyboard warrior DJ Akademiks had time for TDE’s president Terrence “Punch” Henderson after he claimed he tried to “bully” him for being out-of-pocket while talking about SZA.

Last week, DJ Akademiks continued his trend of being extremely disrespectful to women when he hopped on the alt-right network Rumble and engaged in a ridiculous rant where he disgustingly talked about the singer’s body, weight, and appearance, calling her “a fat mini Lizzo,” and claiming she a “botched BBL.”

Spotted on HipHopDX, Punch, who is known for speaking his mind on social media, responded to Akademik’s foolishness over the weekend.
Punch Was Tired of DJ Akademiks Nonsense
“Man I’ve been so conflicted the [past] couple of days as to address this dude publicly or not,” Punch wrote in a since-deleted X post. “I’m not playing no internet games… He have to answer for those disrespectful things he said about SZA.”
Akademiks couldn’t help but respond, hopped in his dark room, turned on his video camera, and “clapped back” at the record executive, accusing Punch of trying to “Suge Knight” him.
“None of y’all are Suge Knight. You don’t strike fear in my heart. There is no, ‘Oh my God, he’s going to get me!” Akademik’s rant begins. “I did content about the biggest killers in the world in Chicago. I’ve talked about the worst people you could imagine … I won’t be sitting here scared of an older n-gga who claims he’s a ‘thug.”
He continues his rant, puffing up his chest, saying, “Mr. Punch from TDE, you didn’t have to delete your tweet … I’m not scared of you. I don’t know nobody that’s scared of you, and I don’t know nobody that would think you be doing nothing.
“So please, pipe down, and rather than delete the tweet, don’t send the tweet. Because if you look at my tweet history, I leave them up for all to see.”
DJ Akademiks Claims Punch Is A Hypocrite
He wasn’t done, accusing Punch of being a hypocrite, adding, “This is why we’re laughing: you’re tweeting [about how] you’re not playing internet games while you’re tweeting it! This is why I said y’all are not Suge Knight. Suge Knight wouldn’t give a nice proper warning and then delete the tweet. I don’t think he’d tweet at all.
“I just want to let you know, if [the tweet] was even remotely aimed at me, it was received, laughed at, and sent back. We’re not scared of none of you n-ggas.”

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Oh The Irony
Hilariously, the man best known for popping sh*t from behind his keyboard accused Punch of being an “online gangsta” telling him to focus on running his record label.
“Listen, you guys have some great artists, and I’m hoping you guys can put out music a little more frequently, just as the fan in me speaking,” he added. “Put your record out, be quiet. That’s about it … Stop acting gangsta online. If you was gonna do something, you wouldn’t tweet it. Stop it, brother, please. You look pathetic.
“And by the way, I don’t want a response for this neither. Work your record, you’re a record executive. Yeah, you got a couple gangstas on payroll. Whoop de doo! We’re all millionaires. Everybody could pay for some dumb shit to get done. You don’t wanna die, I don’t wanna die. You don’t wanna go to jail, I don’t wanna go to jail. Shut up with your tweeting.”
We are VERY SURE DJ Akademiks would never say any of these things to any of these individuals in person.

Photo: Earl Gibson III / Getty

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Reason, a member of the sprawling Top Dawg Entertainment operation, is prepping for the release of his upcoming album Porches this Friday (August 11). The Carson, Calif. rapper aired out some grievances with TDE, getting into a heated discussion with label co-president Anthony “Mossa” Tiffith Jr. over features that didn’t happen.
Reason was a guest on the BACKONFIGG podcast with hosts T-Rell and Smac. During the chat, the artist born Robert Gill Jr. had plenty to say about the practices of TDE as a label, explaining that features from Latto and EST GEE were lined up but lost due to time.

“We had certain features lined up that could’ve went through,” Reason said. “We had the budget, we had the feature lined up, takes too long to get pushed through, feature price ended up going up or something goes away. Content ideas lined up, not executed. Rollout ideas lined up, not executed.”
He went on to explain that Latto was all but set to go as well as EST GEE but TDE execs held up the process.
“I had Latto lined up for something, not executed. I had EST Gee lined up, not executed. Like, us not pushing through. Features lined up, we got a price set, video and verse for the love, takes too long,” Reason added.
The EST GEE feature in particular jumped in price by $25,000, which apparently would’ve been a huge hit to the album’s marketing budget.
During the interview, Moosa called into the podcast to challenge some of the points made by his artist. Moosa explained that much of what TDE does is a process and kept pointing to the “motion” that TDE artists Ray Vaughn and Doechii have managed to garner as far as fan interest goes.
Moosa then challenged the co-hosts, self-proclaimed fans of their guest, to name 10 Reason songs, which they both failed to do. Also in the call, Moosa explained that former TDE exec Dave Free didn’t want to sign Reason, citing that the rapper gave off, “substitute teacher” vibes.
Reason took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to explain that he’s very much releasing his album on TDE and seemingly wants to remain on the label.
“I appreciate ppl that’s reached out to me. Trust I’m as good as I can be. We’ll have a real convo at some point about what happened, just trust that wasn’t a “rollout move” lol that actually happened! All positive energy as of now moving forward tho! Porches Friday! Love y’all!” he tweeted.

Check the full BACKONFIGG podcast episode with Reason below. Hop to the 1:24:00-minute mark to see the moment in question.
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Kendrick Lamar may have released his last album on TDE with Mr. Morale and the Big Steppers, but the label isn’t going to be deterred from continuing to give the streets what they want. TDE’s top dog, no pun intended, teasing a new project that’s been raising many eyebrows as it may involve K. Dot.

Over the weekend, Top Dawg Entertainment founder, Anthony “Top Dawg” Tiffith was fielding questions from fans on Twitter. When someone asked whether we’d get a new Black Hippy song, Tiffith not only said there’s a chance of a new song but suggested an entire project may be forthcoming. “I think they will… they owe y’all an album or EP,” he tweeted.

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Featuring the label’s heavy hitters of Kendrick Lamar, ScHoolboy Q, Jay Rock, and Ab-Soul, Black Hippy’s pleased fans over the years with a few songs under their belt. But they never actually dropped an entire project together. With each artist experiencing solo success and focusing on their own careers, they probably haven’t had time to get together and hammer out an entire record together.
While we await word on a potential Black Hippy project, Tiffith does have a slate of projects planned to release throughout 2023. Jay Rock, Reason, and Q amongst others should have new work out in these streets if they “do their part.”

That’s good and all, but we want a Black Hippy album above everything else now that it seems like an actual possibility. In an interview with MIC back in 2022, TDE President Terrence “Punch” Henderson explained why a Black Hippy album never happened.
“Everybody was never in the same timeframe. So we didn’t want to hold back; we wanted to keep going and just push further into their individual careers,” Henderson said.
Hopefully, for the sake of their fans, Black Hippy can carve out some time to create something special that’ll live in Hip-Hop lore forever. We might’ve never gotten a Murder Inc. album (Jay-Z, Ja Rule & DMX), but maybe we can get a Black Hippy album in our lifetime when it’s all said and done.
Do y’all think Black Hippy should make an album or EP happen? Let us know in the comments section below.

Photo: Getty

The holiday season is usually a wash when it comes to new music releases: the charts are dominated by the likes of Brenda Lee, Mariah Carey, Michael Bublé and Bing Crosby, and carols are dominating the radio on just about every channel. But this year has been different: while the top 10 of the Hot 100 has been full of the usual suspects, the Billboard 200 has been dominated by SZA’s S.O.S., the first album by the alt-R&B singer/songwriter in five years that roared out of the gate upon its Dec. 9 release with the fifth-biggest debut of 2022 and that has ruled the Billboard 200 for three straight weeks, bridging the gap between the holiday season and the opening of 2023. (And the Hot 100 found room for 20 songs from the album for good measure.)

The success of that release has been no accident. SZA’s fans have been patiently — or not so patiently — waiting for the follow up to her critically and culturally acclaimed 2017 album CTRL for years and, over the course of 2022, have been eating up each single that SZA has released, with “I Hate U,” “Shirt” and, lately, “Kill Bill” all seeing huge success not just at streaming but also at radio as the release date crept nearer. And the payoff was worth it: S.O.S. is now the first R&B album by a woman to spend three weeks at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in a decade, since Beyoncé’s self-titled album accomplished that feat in 2013. And it helps make TDE president Terrence “Punch” Henderson Billboard’s Executive of the Week.

Here, Punch breaks down the rollout of the album, the way that both RCA and TDE helped build anticipation for the release and how the quality of SZA’s music helped push a hotly-anticipated album into commercially-successful and universally-acclaimed territory once again. “S.O.S. is what the fans have been waiting on and they’ve shown that. It’s been so much love and support since it dropped,” he says. “But it literally takes an army to make this whole thing work. It starts with SZA — she wrote and sang these songs with her whole heart and mind and soul and pain and life and her whole being. She put everything she had into it.”

This week, SZA’s S.O.S. spent its third week at No. 1 on the Billboard 200. What key decisions did you make to help make that happen?

The key decisions were picking the songs and literally putting them out. The people have been waiting for SZA’s next offering for a long time. It takes time to create quality art that will last and really stand the test of time. That’s what we aim to do every time. Once it got to a comfortable space, we put it out and the people responded.

It’s been more than five years since SZA’s last album. How did you roll this out differently, with how much things have changed in that time?

Everything is the rollout. Every time we drop a single we attach another record to it just to keep people engulfed in what’s to come next. That’s something we’ve been doing since 2014. Once we got the album concepts pretty much locked in, I wanted to start sending out some clues for the core fan base. So we loaded the “Shirt” visual with a bunch of bread crumbs hinting at what’s to come. Then the Morse Code thing to further the conversations surrounding the album. Mix that with the amazing promo videos that SZA shot, and it was a good recipe. Even the spats online. Though they be real — and a bit out of context [Laughs] — it’s still all about the conversation surrounding the album.

December is traditionally a tough month to release an album, given the holiday music that often dominates. How did you set this up before its release to help it cut through the holiday noise?

There was talk of possibly pushing to January for that very reason. But personally, I’m not scared of the holiday season at all. To me, if everyone is thinking the same thing about NOT dropping during the holidays, that just means it’s wide open. [Laughs] We dropped “Good Days” on Christmas! The main issue was radio during that time, but with streaming it’s different; you don’t have to wait on programming, etc. The furthest I would’ve pushed it to was Dec. 30th. And that’s because it was mentioned in Billboard that we were dropping in December. Once a date is said, I’m sticking to it.

“I Hate U,” “Shirt” and “Kill Bill” all succeeded on both streaming and on radio. What did you do to help those songs cut through?

Again, the main thing we can do is provide the music. It does what it does after that. The streaming team and radio team do a great job at pushing the records, but they need the records first.

How have you been able to keep the album’s momentum going through the New Year and keep it atop the charts?

Most of the work comes in the setup and it carries over from there. First, you have to have great records and then you have to know where you can get the records from. You have to know that the album is out. [RCA execs] Zay [Isiaih Bonds] and Tío Matty [Matt Bernal] have to be engaging the DSPs. Jordan [Blaugrund] has to have a sales strategy. Baby Sam [Selolwane], Keith [Rothschild], LG [Lori Giamela] and Inca [Kevin Valentini] have to be on the phones with radio people. Camille [Yorrick] need to be speaking to directors and producers to make sure we good to shoot visuals through the holiday season. Ashley [Monae] has to be on with photographers and videographers and BTS people to make sure the images are right for exclusives, etc. I know it’s a ton of people I’m missing who played a role in this, but all of these things and people were in place to deliver the record.

S.O.S. is the first R&B album by a woman to spend three weeks at No. 1 in a decade, since Beyoncé’s self-titled project in 2013. It also had the fifth-biggest debut week of all of 2022. What is it about her, and this project, that have made those stats a reality?

S.O.S. is what the fans have been waiting on and they’ve shown that. It’s been so much love and support since it dropped. But it literally takes an army to make this whole thing work. It starts with SZA — she wrote and sang these songs with her whole heart and mind and soul and pain and life and her whole being. She put everything she had into it. Then you have all of the producers involved laying the soundscape. You have MeLisa Heath on the management side of things making sure everything is streamlined and running how it’s supposed to run. The whole TDE staff and the whole RCA staff on the front lines. The executive branch with [RCA’s] Peter [Edge] and Fleck [John Fleckenstein], Top [Dawg] and myself. Miss Carolyn [Williams] overseeing everything. Theola [Borden] overseeing press and TV, etc. And the fans. It literally takes an army of people. It’s also a full circle moment being that Beyoncé was the first person of that caliber to reach out to SZA and have her come in to work. Now to be mentioned in the same breath as her is truly amazing.