Month: June 2022

Want an up-close look at the outfits worn by such stars as Billie Eilish, Olivia Rodrigo, Silk Sonic and Jon Batiste at the Grammy Awards in April? You’re in luck! You can also check out outfits worn by such stars at Gloria Estefan and Mon Laferte at the Latin Grammys in November.

The Grammy Museum at L.A. Live in Los Angeles has refreshed its popular “On the Red Carpet” exhibit to display outfits worn on the red carpet or on stage at the 64th annual Grammy Awards on April 3 and the 22nd annual Latin Grammys on Nov. 18. Both shows were held at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas.

“On the Red Carpet” has been a permanent exhibit at the Grammy Museum since it opened in 2008. But it has become more popular in recent years since the Grammy Museum had the bright idea to refresh it every year so the outfits on display were from the current awards cycle. Because Grammy fashion hits and misses receive virtually as much attention as Grammy performances and awards, this exhibit is a perennial hit.

The museum’s associate curator, Kelsey Goelz, curates the exhibit, which is located in the third floor gallery. Incidentally, the outfits go back to the artists’ teams after their year on display — either the artist directly, or the stylist, or the designer.

Here’s the official bio for the exhibit: “Some of the most significant, iconic — and, occasionally, outrageous — red carpet looks from the Grammy Awards’ history all in one place. On The Red Carpet showcases original clothing worn on the Grammy Red Carpet and on stage, illustrating the glitz and glamour of Music’s Biggest Night. The Grammy Awards red carpet has become a place for fashion designers to exhibit their most dazzling designs of the year, generating buzz alongside the highly anticipated performances and award ceremony.”

Beyoncé isn’t horsing around in the lead-up to her fast-approaching new album Renaissance. In a Thursday (June 30) Instagram post, the 40-year-old superstar unveiled the whimsical cover art for what’s certainly one of the most highly anticipated albums of all time, and penned a sweet tribute to everything that inspired its creation.

Set against a completely black backdrop, the Renaissance cover features a mostly bare Bey with long blonde hair, saddled on a glowing silver horse. She’s positioned so that the top half of her body faces forward as she stares down the camera.

In the post’s caption, the “Formation” singer gave considerably more details about the making of the July 29-slated album than she has to date. “Creating this album allowed me a place to dream and to find escape during a scary time for the world,” she wrote. “It allowed me to feel free and adventurous in a time when little else was moving.”

Only one song from Renaissance has been released so far: the inspirational, house music-infused club banger “Break My Soul,” which arrived June 2o. “My intention was to create a safe place, a place without judgment,” she continued. “A place to be free of perfectionism and overthinking. A place to scream, release, feel freedom. It was a beautiful journey of exploration.”

Beyond what Bey just revealed about the album, not too much more is known beyond what she told British Vogue in a recent profile. The piece reported that the album, made during the pandemic, was filled with “ambitious” sounds and lots of dance beats.

“I hope you find joy in this music,” she concluded. “I hope it inspires you to release the wiggle. Ha! And to feel as unique, strong, and sexy as you are.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Beyoncé (@beyonce)

After enjoying glory on the film festival circuit, the documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, A Journey, A Song is ready for its wider rollout.

Hallelujah — directed and produced by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine and sourced from Alan Light’s 2012 book The Holy or the Broken: Leonard Cohen, Jeff Buckley, and the Unlikely Ascent of “Hallelujah” — opens July 1 at theaters in New York and Los Angeles, preceded the day before by a screening and discussion at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland (Cohen was inducted in 2008). It then begins expanding on July 8 nationally, with weekly openings currently slated into August and more likely on the way via Sony Pictures Classics. The film, which premiered at the Venice and Telluride film festivals last September, is also due out in Cohen’s native Canada and is slated for Europe this fall.

“We’re delighted it’s going to get into movie theaters,” Geller told Billboard after Hallelujah‘s screening at the 2022 Tribeca Festival, followed by an all-star concert at the Beacon Theatre that featured performances by Judy Collins, Sharon Robinson, Amanda Shires and Why Don’t We’s Daniel Seavey. “It’s an emotional experience as a movie, and the amplification of seeing something together with other people in a darkened theater, with some permission if you want to weep a little bit, it’s what we always hope for in our movies. That’s the great reward.”

Goldfine added that the film’s sound “was mixed for the big screen.” The Cohen estate and longtime manager Robert Kory, who’s one of the films executive producers, had given them access to music stems from Cohen’s final concerts during the end of 2013 in Australia and New Zealand, which sound editor Bob Edwards mixed from scratch at Skywalker Sound. “It opens with his very final version of ‘Hallelujah’ that he performed in Auckland (on Dec. 21). (Edwards) could actually make it sound as it should in a theater. It’s a more gratifying watch. I think the most gratifying thing as a filmmaker has been to realize that it does indeed take the audience on a spiritual journey. It’s not your typical music documentary.”

Geller and Goldfine — along with Light, who served as a consulting producer and has published a newly updated and expanded edition of The Holy or the Broken — are gratified that Hallelujah is out at all. The documentary was an eight-year odyssey for the couple, starting with a dinner party suggestion during the summer of 2014 by a friend, screenwriter David Thomson. “When someone says, ‘Oh, I’ve got this great idea for your next film,’ I want to hear that idea,” says Goldfine, though her initial reaction “was to kind of have the air sucked out of me — That’s the idea? A documentary about a song?” That Thomson added he had considered writing a book about a song and “decided it wouldn’t really work” wasn’t encouraging, either.

But the hesitation soon turned into inspiration. “Within about 10 minutes, I was still sitting at the same dinner table. I kind of grabbed Dan’s arm and said, ‘It’s weird, but I thought of the song and I thought of the artist…it’s ‘Hallelujah’ and it’s Leonard Cohen.’ Clearly my subconscious thought more of the idea than my conscious brain did,” Goldfine says.

Like many others, Geller and Goldfine had first been exposed to “Hallelujah,” which first appeared on Cohen’s Various Positions album in 1984, via Jeff Buckley’s version on Live at Sin-é in 1993. They then became backwards educated about the song’s history, mostly through Light’s book. “We looked at each other and said, ‘OK, if someone like Alan Light could fill 250 pages of a book with this song, we can do a documentary.’” The project had relatively quick buy-in from Cohen and his manager Kory, especially since Geller and Goldfine proposed doing it without having to interview Cohen. They did not begin conducting interviews until the spring of 2016, however, spending most of the time negotiating to license “Hallelujah” from Sony Music Publishing. “We did not want to film in the interim because we did not want to waste anybody’s time,” Geller says. “If we could not get licensing rights to the song, why ask anybody to sit for an interview and begin to hand archives over?”

Once the rights were secured, however, Geller and Goldfine were off to the races, spending time with the likes of “Hallelujah” producer John Lissauer, Cohen confidant Larry “Ratso” Sloman, photographer and video director Dominique Issermann, longtime Cohen friends such as Nancy Bacal, Adrienne Clarkson, Judy Collins and Rabbi Mordecai Finley, and Cohen musical collaborator Sharon Robinson. Clive Davis, who had left Columbia Records by then, reflects on then-label chief Walter Yetnikoff’s decision to not release the Various Positions album in the U.S. back in 1984, famously telling Cohen “we know you’re great, but we don’t know if you’re any good.”

The film also explores how subsequent versions of “Hallelujah” — particularly Buckley’s and then Rufus Wainwright’s in the 2001 animated film Shrek, which exposed the tune to another generation — were responsible for turning it from a song into the modern hymn it’s become. The late Hal Willner, who helped to discover Buckley, is interviewed and served as Hallelujah’s music producer, and the film includes interviews with other artists who have covered the song, including Brandi Carlile, Eric Church and Myles Kennedy (Slash, Alter Bridge).

Cohen’s manager also made the artist’s notebooks and other archival materials available to the filmmakers. “Other people at the time had approached (Cohen) about a documentary about just the song…but as (Kory) said, we won a competition we didn’t realize we were in,” Geller noted. “I think when we began to show (Kory) some rough cuts of first passes of first parts of the movie, when he saw we were following through with what we said we were doing to do, and that it had a depth and tone and respectfulness and sense of humor that would be in line with Leonard’s sensibility, then that trust opened up and he began to really show us beautiful, archival elements and assets that we could incorporate into the movie, that are so important to understanding Leonard.”

Light, meanwhile, was “jealous but delighted they had access to Leonard’s notebooks and were able to give glimpses into all of those years of the different drafts and verses and stray lines and revisions. That’s the mythic part of the story I was able to write about but they’re able to actually show. It brings it into a different focus when you can look at (Cohen) working the stuff out on the page like that.”

By the time Cohen died on Nov. 7, 2016, at the age of 82, Geller and Goldfine had filmed “a bunch of substantial interviews,” which Goldfine said was fortunate because “after he passed away a lot of people for whom he was important closed up. They were just dealing with their own grief and their own shock at his no longer being a part of the world. Certainly, the Ratso interview was predicated on Leonard still being around.” The filmmakers did miss out on speaking with longtime Cohen collaborator Jennifer Warnes in particular, but they don’t regret their decision to not speak with Cohen himself.

“From a personal standpoint, yeah, I really would have loved to have interviewed him,” Geller acknowledged. “But from the beginning this really was set to look at his life through the lens of the song and the spiritual quest and contradictions that are in the song rather than some comprehensive, ‘He was born on such and such a day.’” Goldfine added that, “There’s something beautiful about having a limitation, and you use that to your advantage. It made us really be like magpies and go out into the world and get every last scrap of everything Leonard said… And not only did we have these people who had a lot of interaction with Leonard, but they’re damn good storytellers, too.”

Geller and Goldfine hold out the possibility of a director’s cut that could include deleted material such as Saturday Night Live‘s use of “Hallelujah” in the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election — the same week as Cohen’s death — sung by cast member Kate McKinnon as defeated candidate Hillary Clinton. Light, however, was happy to have an opportunity to include that and more for his updated The Holy or the Broken, which came out during Tribeca.

“My thoughts about the song are continually changing, shifting, adjusting through different ways that you encounter it, different versions and just different places it pops up out in the world,” Light noted. “That kaleidoscope continues to shift, constantly. Certainly, I learned more (fresh) stuff from some of the work, some of the research, some of the archives that Dan and Dayna brought into the film. And it continues to evolve. When the book came out Leonard was still alive. Since then, there have been lots of significant uses or people who have performed it, some of which we were able to work into the film, others that I was able to bring into the book.”

Showing Hallelujah to audiences, meanwhile, has only enhanced the film team’s appreciation for the song, and for Cohen — and validated the arduous process of making the film.

“Talking to people who are well-versed with Leonard’s work, they come up to talk afterwards and are very much engaged with the movie,” Geller said. “They’ve learned things from the movie and felt like they had seen things about Leonard they had not known before. And there are also people who were dragged there because someone else said, ‘You have to come’ and didn’t know Leonard Cohen at all; they’re engaged and saying they wanted to dive in and listen to more of his music. If we can hold both ends in there, to me, that is a very gratifying result of the movie.”

Light added that “Hallelujah” “still hasn’t been knocked out of the position of being That Song. It was there at the Biden inauguration. It’s still there for national crises and disasters. There’s still a thing that song can do that nothing else can do. The most remarkable thing is just hearing from people about how this song has mattered and functioned in their regular lives. Everybody that you ask has some story, some relationship to it — ‘We played it at my uncle’s funeral.’ ‘We played it when my daughter was born.’ ‘We played it at my wedding.’ To continue to hear that is so important and validating in all of the work we do, every day.”

Sheryl Crow, Paul McCartney and Billie Eilish and Finneas have joined NBC’s upcoming Ukraine: Answering the Call program as special guests, the network announced on Thursday (June 30).

The group joins stars including José Andrés, Jon Batiste, Kristen Bell, Brandi Carlile, Brian Cox, Jeff Daniels, Vera Farmiga, Lena Headey, Alicia Keys, Simu Liu, Julianne Moore, Brad Paisley, Rosie Perez and more who are all set to take part in the event.

Ukraine: Answering the Call, which airs on Sunday (July 3) on NBC, MSNBC and CNBC, is an hour-long event that aims to raise awareness and educate audiences, plus raise funds for those whose lives have been impacted by the ongoing crisis in Ukraine.

President Volodymyr Zelensky has challenged Americans to use their voices to reach those who want peace, and he will address the country during the special. NBC News will also share reports on the stories of real people all around the world who have been affected by the crisis in Ukraine. During the broadcast, viewers will have the chance to help families by donating to the International Rescue Committee, an organization that helps people affected by humanitarian crises to survive, recover and rebuild their lives.

Additionally, engagement platform Buzznog will offer a digital collectible created by a Ukrainian artist available exclusively through the Zelus Wallet via a QR Code on-screen during the telethon. For every download of the digital collectible, Zelus is donating $10 to the IRC up to $500,000.

Following the event, the entire program will be available to stream the next day on Peacock, which you can sign up for here.

Uprooting your life and moving to a new city is a scary proposition for any teenager. But for SleazyWorld Go — who initially hated the decision by his mom to pick up and move from Grand Rapids, Mich. to Kansas City, Mo. — it’s paying dividends a decade later.

After signing to Universal Music Group’s Island Records in April, and since relocating to the bright lights of Los Angeles, the 24-year-old with a mouth full of braces is acclimating to his new life of fame. Sleazy broke through with his stick anthem “Sleazy Flow” earlier in 2022, and thanks to social media apps including TikTok and Facebook, the menacing track went viral: he added Lil Baby to its remix in May, and it subsequently debuted at No. 47 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early June. It sits at No. 65 on this week’s chart (dated July 2), as he continues to push toward cracking hip-hop’s mainstream.

With co-signs both in private and public from the likes of Jeezy, 21 Savage and Cardi B, SleazyWorld Go knows the stakes have been raised as he prepares his major-label debut project, Comer [pronounced Come Here], which he says should arrive at some point in July.

Check out the rest of Sleazy’s interview, where he reflects on quitting his job at the Kohl’s factory to focus on rap, his love for Tupac, why he feels no pressure about being a one-hit wonder and more.

Was it hard moving from Michigan to Kansas City at 13 years old? That’s a tough age to pick up everything and find friends in a new environment.

SleazyWorld Go: It was horrible. I hated the decision to move. It was all my homies and everyone I knew was there. I had to go to this new city and I don’t know anyone and I’m leaving everyone behind. I had family in Missouri so that was a plus, but it took me a while to get used to it and actually like being there.

I read Tupac is someone you idolized growing up.

It’s not too many artists that I look up to because I’m big on creating my own path. There are artists I like, but I don’t idolize them. Tupac is one I look up to because of his artistry and how creative he was. The way he told stories was real deep. He paints pictures well. You could listen to one of his songs and you could feel like you’re in that same year going through what he’s talking about.

Music wasn’t really on your mind, as far as being an artist growing up, right?

It wasn’t a passion for me, but I always loved listening to music. I didn’t love making music for a long time. I’d rather go hoop than go make a song. My brother made music, but I’d play around with it. 

You’ve said that you couldn’t work a regular day job in the past.

Yeah, that sh-t sucked. Them hours felt too long. It felt like I was in jail or some sh-t. My last job was working two factory jobs. That’s when I first started taking music seriously. I was at a factory job, and I had wrote a song while I was working — it was just helping me get through my time when I was working a 12-hour shift. That was the first song I released to, [and it was] called “Sliding.” It’s actually what got me my first buzz. I was packing trucks with supplies and sh-t. It was the Kohl’s factory.

How did “Sleazy Flow” come together?

I was at a point like, “What’s the next move?” I was dropping songs [that were] getting views, but it was only getting about 100,000. I was at a standstill. I wasn’t going backwards, but it wasn’t going up. I remember thinking like, “What the f–k do I gotta do to get to that next level?” Yeah, I got fans and 100,000 views, but this sh-t ain’t enough. I’m tryna get into them doors. I never try to stick to the same sh-t. I’m always trying to make a new sound. 

I set up the studio session because that sh-t was in my head. I was like, “I gotta get this song done.” I just laid down me talking and I kept playing it back-to-back. Then I started rapping on that motherf–ker and it came out like that.

Tell me more about your cameraman going to jail with the video footage and you had to get it from him and edit it yourself?

I sent the song to my brother and told him to tell Icewear Vezzo to get on the song. They were f–king with it and I’m just hoping he’s gonna put a verse on it. He said he was [going to], but I’m impatient. I needed to drop this motherf–ker. I just end up shooting a video to it. 

It was my first time meeting the videographer I used to shoot it because my old one ended up having a baby and he stopped shooting videos. So I’m looking for a videographer (Dot Shot It Films) and I’m skeptical because I’m real picky. I ended up giving him a chance and that motherf–ker went crazy. He ended up getting locked up but I posted a 26-second snippet the same day we shot the video. It went viral — at least 30,000 shares on Facebook. Everyone was asking when it’s dropping. A month and a half later and the song still ain’t dropped and he’s locked up. I ended up getting in contact with his baby momma to get the footage and edit it myself so I could drop the song. People started finding out about it and that was my first million views with no promotion.

Right before that, my YouTube page had got taken. It was some sh-t with my cousin and I got into it with her baby daddy and she had access to my YouTube page and we fell out so she took the page from me. So I had to start completely over with zero subscribers with “Sleazy Flow.”

Was there a moment you felt it really took off and broke through on a mainstream level?

I was meeting with labels way before I dropped that song. They were paying attention to me, but they weren’t serious — they were just watching. That’s another reason why I thought I needed to figure it out and step my game up. I was meeting with Island Records in New York, and I woke up and it was viral. Everyone was tagging me and there were artists doing TikToks to it. That was a game-changer. 

What are your thoughts on TikTok boosting the record?

A lot of people try to discredit TikTok, but TikTok is a great social media app because you don’t need to have a big platform to be visible on there. I was an underground artist that everyone knew, but [in the] mainstream, nobody knew me. So when I got discovered on TikTok, all my fans were like, “No, don’t bring him on here. This is our artist.” Mainstream was kinda late to me, but at the same time, it was good because it brought my sound to more ears than I could do on my own. It would’ve taken me more time. It opened them doors. 

“Sleazy Flow” is sitting at No. 65 on the Billboard Hot 100. How much do you value chart success — is it something you’re checking on?

I don’t go look at the charts, but my team lets me know the progress. If it hit the top 50, they let me know. I make sure I let them know that’s sh-t I want to be aware of. I’ve been signed for about two-and-a-half months, so the growth of the music has been amazing.

Are you happy “Sleazy Flow” is the record that blew you up?

I’m happy with “Sleazy Flow.” That’s the sound and song I’ve been searching for the whole time I’ve been doing music. When you an artist, you got to find yourself. It just took me figuring out who I was and the story I wanted to paint. I feel like a lot of my fans love my music so much because they can relate. I’m not trying too hard. I’m just rapping about what I know and what I been through. “Sleazy Flow” is a perfect song and the name alone is like an opening statement to who I am. It’s more to Sleazy, though. 

How about getting Lil Baby on the “Sleazy Flow” remix, how did that happen?

I just felt like it was the perfect decision because he was one of the first hip-hop artists co-signing and showing support to [“Sleazy Flow”]. He would come out to his shows listening to “Sleazy Flow” and he did a TikTok to it. 

Have anyone else’s remixes stood out to you? Who would you want to see hop on it next?

One that stood out the most was Yungeen Ace. It’s kind of hard to do that beat. You gotta have a unique flow to do that beat. I would want to see what Drake can do on “Sleazy Flow.” That would be crazy to see.

Talk to me about your next project, Comer, arriving soon. 

My son changed my life and he gave me happiness. For a long time, I was just trying to find it and having him made me happy. I’ma go through the hard stuff so he won’t have to. That’s why the tape is dedicated to him. This is it. This is my introduction and I want to go hard for my son. It’s supposed to be dropping in July. 

What do you hope fans learn about you?

I want them to embrace this new sound with me being a new artist. It’s a lot of good storytelling on there. A lot of cultural songs on there. I want it to be in history like when you look back on this year, and you’re thinking about songs from this year, songs on this tape will be that. “Sleazy Flow” is going to be one of those when someone thinks about 2022. It’s in history now.

What was it like to link up with Offset for your new song together, “Step 1”?

I used to listen to him when I was younger and now that I’m in these moments, I don’t realize how crazy it is to be doing songs with artists I was listening to. A motherf–ker from where I’m from can’t just say, “I got a song with Offset, or I got a song with Lil Baby.” 

Offset actually reached out to me. He likes my music and believes in my sound. He thinks I’m next up and I f–k with whoever f–k with me. I f–k with Offset. It was my record at first, but he liked it and heard it from a TikTok I did. He wanted to hop on there.

Was there a bidding war before you signed with Island Records?

Yeah, there was a bidding war. I’m a picky person and I don’t just make decisions fast. I had to really meet with these labels and vibe with these people to figure it out. It was never about money. It was about who I felt I could trust and be in a partnership with. If we’re gonna do business, I want to have some sort of bond and trust there. I’d rather do business with someone I trust. Island understood me and believed that I’m the next sound and that I could be the next big thing.

Do you feel any pressure to beat the one-hit wonder allegations?

Nah, I don’t feel any pressure about one-hit wonder allegations. I got hits, but they just ain’t released yet. Motherf–kers won’t even give artists a chance to release more music. “Sleazy Flow” is a hit song, but I got songs that are going crazy just like “Sleazy Flow.” It’s almost at the same views in less time and no promotion. 

[People saying that I’m a one-hit wonder] are not even my real fans. If they were, they would know, so it’s obvious they only listening to this one song. Most people just want to have something to say. I’m not worried. I’m gonna continue to let my music speak for me.

A version of this story originally appeared in the June 25, 2022, issue of Billboard.

Pretty much everybody has insecurities — even Cardi B. A day ahead of the release of her upcoming single “Hot Shit” with Kanye West and Lil Durk, the 29-year-old rap music star opened up on Instagram Stories about her hopes to get cosmetic surgery done on her stomach after the new song comes out.

Reclining back in her seat while holding her phone camera up high, Cardi starts to show off her outfit before pinching a bit of her belly area and saying, “This stomach, it’s giving tummy tuck.”

“It’s not bad, but I just don’t like this extra little skin,” she continues. “I am a little heavier than usual but I don’t like it, I want to get rid of it.”

The “WAP” rapper went on to say that she thinks her body was changed after giving birth to her son Wave in September with husband Offset. “I think Wavey did me wrong,” she joked. “I cannot wait to put out this song and do more things so I can get the f–k out and do my f–kin surgery. I’m over it. Me and surgery goes together bad. Real bad.”

The song in question, “Hot Shit,” arrives midnight this Friday (July 1). Cardi only just announced the single on Sunday (June 26), unveiling a day later that both Kanye West and Lil Durk would be joining her on the track.

The “Up” artist also just dropped a teaser video for the new single, featuring her eating a luxurious breakfast on a New York City terrace, using plates with the Playboy bunny logo printed on them. “I’m connected, I don’t know what’s longer, man, my block list or my check list,” she raps along to a snippet of “Hot Shit,” the Empire State building visible in the background. “I don’t know what’s colder, man, my heart or my necklace/ Pretty when I wake up, I’m a bad b—h at breakfast.”