First Stream Latin is a compilation of the best new Latin songs, albums, and videos recommended by the Billboard Latin editors. Check out this week’s picks below.
Ivy Queen, “Quien Dijo” (NKS Music LLC)
Ivy Queen’s foray into bachata is a stylized one, the bachata beat softened with synths and strings. It makes for an intriguing combination — edge, and sweetness — as the reggaetón queen displays her vocal chops to chastise a man who doesn’t value her love. One would have expected Ivy to rap over a bachata beat, but by choosing to go the opposite direction, she’s once again displaying her iconic musical sense. — LEILA COBO
Paulo Londra, “Julieta” (Warner Music Latina/Paulo Londra)
Argentine hitmaker Paulo Londra has blessed fans with “Julieta,” powered by a hypnotic reggaeton beat. The track marks Londra’s return to his reggaetón roots after dabbling in pop and punk rock. “Julieta,” produced by Sky Rompiendo and Federico Vindver (Londra’s go-to producer), joins Londra’s streak of singles he’s released since his comeback after three years. In the song, Londra tells the story of a patient who’s been admitted into a psych ward after not being able to get over his ex, whose name is Julieta. The single comes with an ’80s horror film-inspired music video. Check it out below. — GRISELDA FLORES
Ryan Castro, Reggaetonea (Ryan Castro/Sony Music Colombia)
After discovering his love for music 14 years ago, Ryan Castro finally brings to life his debut EP Reggaetonea. The Colombian rapper, who began singing on local buses in Medellin, has made his international leap thanks to hits such as “Mujeriego,” which entered both the Billboard Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts this year. But further solidifying his artistry, he delivers six other tracks on the set, including the Farina-assisted “Prende y Apaga,” “Niña de Mis Sueños” with his compatriot Blessd, and focus single “Amor De Una Noche,” all injected with Colombian perreo and finesse. Other collaborators on the Reggaetonea include Justin Quiles and Ovi. Producers include Simón Dice, SOG, Gangsta, and Fleiva. Stream it above. — JESSICA ROIZ
Nicky Jam, “Sin Novia” (Sony Music Latin)
Nicky Jam is addressing his love life in the new, playful track “Sin Novia,” a fun story about a former couple who enjoy single life more than an actual relationship. Penned by Nicky with Juan Diego Medina, Jorge Alberto Erazo, Luis A. O’Neill and Andrés Jael Correa, and produced by Jorge Milliano, the track is a Caribbean-infused reggaeton, made for the summer. In the music video, directed by Willy Rodríguez, the Puerto Rican artist reeled in his real-life ex-girlfriend and model, Genesis Aleska, to better demonstrate that two exes are better off as friends. — INGRID FAJARDO
Tokischa x Eladio Carrion, “Hola” (Paulus Music/Sony Music Latin)
A tale of a man trying to win his girl back marks the first collaborative effort between Tokischa and Eladio Carrion. In “Hola,” penned by both artists and produced by Cromo X and Foreignteck, Toki steps away from her signature, unapologetic dembow sound and taps into Hip-Hop, flaunting her rap verses. “It’s me calling again/I’m high on drugs, alcohol, and weed/Even if I won’t remember tomorrow,” chants Eladio in the chorus, to which Toki responds with, “you don’t feel good without me and I can tell/I won’t go back with you, what doesn’t work is thrown away/you only call me when you’re high.” In the gritty music video, filmed by Raymi Paulus in Toki’s hometown in The Dominican Republic, we see both artists deal with their heartbreak in their own way. — J.R.
Ivonne Galaz, “De Eso Se Trata” (Rancho Humilde)
Rancho Humilde’s only female signee, Ivonne Galaz, has released a hard-hitting and poignant corrido — powered by acoustic guitars and an accordion — titled “De Eso Se Trata.” The emerging regional Mexican artist teamed up with veteran singer-songwriter Erika Vidrio to pen the track’s blunt lyrics. “They don’t know my life but they criticize it,” Galaz sings. “Live your life and let me live mine. It’s my freedom, no one can take it away.” — G.F.
Rels B, “Como Dormiste?” (Flakk Team)
More than just a new single, Rels B is announcing his relationship with Lali Esposito. In “Como Dormiste?” the Spanish rapper details the beauty of interchanging energies with someone, and describes his passionate chemistry with the Argentine artist. “I want to make love and then ask you, how did you sleep?/ Did you dream of me?/ I want to know if you woke up with more desire,” he chants in the less-than-two-minute song. In the sensual R&B track, he even samples Jowell y Randy and Arcangel’s 2006 hit “Agresivo.” The homemade music video, filmed vertically with a cellphone, captures the new Latin power couple enjoying each other’s company. — J.R.
Noel Miller is a comedian at heart. So much so that when he recalls one of his earliest childhood memories over Zoom – the 1994 Northridge earthquake in Los Angeles, which forced his family to move back to his hometown of Toronto when he was just four – Miller can’t help but close it with a punchline of sorts.
“My parents thought I was dead. They were calling out to me and I wasn’t responding. Everything that was in a cabinet or a shelf had fallen over. They couldn’t get to my room right away. So as they were calling out to me, eventually I woke up and I was like, ‘Yeah.’ I had no clue what was going on,” he says with a smirk. “I slept through the whole thing.”
Finding humor in even the most unfortunate life experiences is what Miller’s known for. From reading off-base fan DMs to reacting to out-of-pocket TikToks to questioning the bullying tactics of Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath with his Tiny Meat Gang co-host and collaborator Cody Ko, Miller is swift when it comes to his comedic timing. He’s such a natural, it’s hard to imagine that he’s ever considered another career path.
And yet, Noel Miller is rapping. Seriously rapping.
Since March, Miller has uploaded two music videos to his YouTube channel – which is usually composed of reaction videos and other hijinks – under the moniker NOEL. His following of 2.6 million subscribers are now also subscribing to the maker of “Rat Race” and “Pacemaker,” tracks where he spits over gritty production, detailing his approach to fame and other career moves with a straight face.
As Miller explains, many of his creative ideas are in “stark contrast” to the comedy he’s best known for. On “Rat Race,” Miller flexes his business-savvy nature, tossing in some clever bars (“Treat this rap s–t like twins/ What I mean by that is I just had to”). And on “Pacemaker,” he runs through the sacrifices he had to make to get there, like sleeping on floors in 2010, and the responsibilities that come with financial comfort.
While Miller still sprinkles punchlines throughout his work, rapping in a non-satirical sense is a concept that fans of the funnyman are still wrapping their heads around But this isn’t a career pivot: Miller has been a rapper, far before his stand-up career beginnings or his first Vine account took off years before.
Miller found meaning in hip-hop when he found meaning in comedy, he explains. With his father being a classically trained musician skilled at piano and violin, Miller was encouraged at a young age to try out some instruments of his own – none of which stuck with him. What did stick with him in his adolescence was music discovery on Napster and the call-and-request music video channel The Box, where he was first introduced to the lore of Cash Money Records–the New Orleans Universal imprint, home to game-changing rappers Lil Wayne and Juvenile.
“I can’t remember how young I was, but I remember when I realized that Juvenile had gone to jail,” Miller reflects to Billboard from his Los Angeles home. “And I was sad. I remember watching his first big single back, they shot a music video for it. And I remember being genuinely happy, like, ‘Juvenile is out of jail!’”
Around that same time, the Toronto-born, L.A.-bred Miller stumbled on BET and Comedy Central, as he became familiar with stand-up comedy through the specials he watched on television. Before he even considered chasing influencer status, he spent nights trying to influence his friends that he was a worthy keystyling opponent – essentially battle-rapping them over instant messenger – and practicing rhymes over pre-made beats from his middle school peers.
Miller says he only got serious about his education – which didn’t necessarily include asking his friends to send over beats – later in high school, and that he eventually attended the “only college that would have taken me” to study business. On the side, he interned at a music studio, worked for an artist management company, and was employed at Best Buy to make ends meet, his work schedule leading to many sleepless nights. Miller says that it all took place at a time when the internet didn’t offer much guidance to young creatives like him.
“I ended up dropping out in my second-to-last semester. And I dropped out for a while,” Miller explains. “And at that time, I went pretty hard with trying to be creative again. But in that process, I went very broke. And I went into a lot of debt and I needed money and I needed a lot of it fast.”
With his first big pivot, Miller turned to web development and engineering. While prioritizing making a site for him and his friends’ production crew, he found jobs to get by with his self-taught skills. “Engineering teaches us sort of functional ways to work, like how to isolate certain aspects of a project and then to bring it into a full vision,” he says. “I think all that stuff helps with the peripherals to music, as far as executing it… But you got to be right with yourself to make music before we get to any of that.”
Noel Miller
In 2014 and 2015, Miller began to put together the pieces for what would eventually become a following of millions after everything else took a backseat with the death of a close friend. “I don’t want to name drop, but he just came from a very talented family. He passed and then I think weirdly, that put me off from making music,” Miller says. “I took a step back from being creative [for a while]. [But with] all these bulls–t jobs I was working, I wanted to be doing creative stuff.”
That’s when Miller says he decided to pivot to comedy. “I would try to shoot a lot of sketches with my friends and try to get something going there,” he says. “And then I naturally landed on stand up.”
Miller saw his star grow through Vine, where he eventually perfected the art of making 6-second videos, thanks to his breakout “skinny penis” clip. He found a formula on the social media app, and stand-up shows then became more of a possibility, with promoters flaunting his growing following of thousands.
“I realized that people on Vine were getting a lot of success just from getting eyeballs on them,” he says. “So eight years ago, I had it in my head, like, ‘Oh, if I create entertainment online, then that would enable me to sell tickets.’ That was an idea that was sort of laughed at back then.”
Thanks to Vine, Miller ended up being the one laughing – and he, along with his comedy ride-or-die Cody Ko, have millions laughing with them. As the two transitioned from short clips to tackling the YouTube reaction format with ease, they launched their fan-loved podcast Tiny Meat Gang in 2017, along with a satirical musical duo of the same name, which signed to Arista Records in October of 2019.
It’s likely you’ve seen some of their biggest YouTube videos too, like the “That’s Cringe” series or their deep dive into the “Kombucha King,” some of which have earned over 30 million views. And you may have heard their music, which still earns them an impressive million monthly Spotify listeners, despite them having not released new material in over a year. “Broke Bitch” and “short kings anthem” clearly have some lasting power, with 47 and 60 million streams on Spotify respectively. But for Miller, while TMG is a fun detour, making comedy-tinted music was a lot more difficult than rapping with honesty and intention.
“It’s always, in my opinion, a little bit low-risk. With comedy, it’s easy to sort of self-deprecate, or kind of cop out and say, if the jokes are bad, ‘I’m an idiot.’ It doesn’t scare me or make me nervous, per se,” Miller shares candidly. “But music – I think music, I definitely get a lot more in my head, because I’m still at a point where I’m still learning how to open up and be direct.”
That mentality helped Miller to come into his own as NOEL in 2020. Dropping his last name and independently releasing his first single “Motor Yola” and his EP Push later in the year, NOEL put the funny business aside momentarily and entered the world of hip-hop for real this time. He looks back at his earlier efforts as a bit less confident than how he sounds today in “Rat Race” and “Pacemaker” – both of which are produced by friends AMON and Spock, who he met online in 2017 and built a creative relationship off the bat with.
“Noel is someone who always puts his best foot forward and goes over the top to push the envelope,” Spock explains. “Whether or not you enjoy the music, I believe you have to respect the boldness of the vision and direction… It used to feel like we were forcing anything out just to get something done, but now I think he’s let go of some inhibitions and is finally confident saying what he wants.”
Now with a small team of agents at UTA and an attorney backing him, NOEL’s solo footprint is only growing. Top comments on NOEL’s videos make it clear what his fans think of his latest offerings: He’s been called a “jack of all trades,” and the “whole package” for being able to balance as many artforms as he does, as some even plead for more frequent solo music videos from the comedian, who is sitting around 100,000 monthly Spotify listeners.
While passionate about his comedic work, Miller had oftentimes shied away from allowing his vision for music to materialize, not knowing how his fans would feel about his detour into hip-hop.
“For so long, I’ve made a lot of content that is just content. It’s things that service a here-and-now,” he explains. “But I think I’m at a point where sitting on [music I want people to hear], it’s not worth it to me anymore. People can engage these ideas the same way I do… I want it to be entertaining, but I also want it to be meaningful.”
Miller now admits there were nerves involved in sharing his two most recent singles as visuals, and certainly some with the other material he’s been holding back, but introducing his talents to new audiences, and his own audience, make it worth it. Even if the critiques can be loud.
“People sort of interpreted it as, ‘Oh, why is he trying to compensate because he did comedy music before? And now he’s trying to go extra tough with this,’” NOEL says of some of the pushback he’s dealt with. “It really doesn’t f–king matter. With the way art and media are in general, you can do a lot of things. And you’ll probably find an audience within each category. And sometimes you’ll find you’ll find people that don’t even care about the other stuff that you do.”
NOEL is grateful that he could very well be introducing fans of his humor to some of the sounds he grew up on. But he still comes off bashful and admits he doesn’t think he’s at the point where he should be anyone’s introduction to rap, since he’s still relatively new to self-releasing music.
While he lists out some of his own favorite rappers in underground heroes Conway the Machine, Boldy James, and Tony Shhnow, he’s unsure if he and those within his personal rotation will ever collaborate – although he does bring up the fact that Conway’s Griselda Records co-star Benny the Butcher has collaborated with Barstool, as a joke – but he’s willing to prove himself to find out.
“Where do I land on the spectrum?” NOEL asks rhetorically of where he, as a YouTuber, would blend into the rap world. “Because I don’t know. I think the onus is on me to just show that I’m serious about it and put out some material that makes people feel like, ‘This guy can make music.’ That’s what I have to deliver on.”
Those in Miller’s circle, like producer AMON, know Miller is a hip-hop head at heart, with enough “extremely specific” knowledge to do the dance himself. On a track like “Pacemaker,” he plays that up by opting for some boastful bars about making money and his hefty work schedule, while throwing some religious metaphors in there to show how serious he is about proving his skillset. “I’d say most of all he is very self-aware and self-critical,” Amon says. “He has a very interesting story to tell, and it’s about time he tells it.”
And NOEL’s timing couldn’t have been better, since one of the biggest breakout stars this summer has been another creator-turned-musician in alt-R&B star Joji — who got his start as George Miller, the YouTube mastermind behind the vulgar character Filthy Frank and is just celebrating his first top 10 hit on the Hot 100 in “Glimpse Of Us.” So who’s to say Miller isn’t capable of being taken seriously now as well?
“I admire him, because I think I’ve always approached things, especially with comedy, very literally – it’s very who you are, and experiences you’ve been through. It’s not behind a character,” NOEL says of his YouTuber-turned-hitmaker predecessor. “But I think it’s cool that George has been able to be Filthy Frank and create lore around these things, and then eventually transition into what is actually a very honest and probably true version of himself.”
NOEL hopes to be among that class of content creators who can make a transition into music – but with fans running up his views to about 400,000 on each of his recent music videos, which is standard for some of his comedy videos, his most meaningful art is seeing love. And he plans to keep it up, while still prioritizing his punchlines.
“I’ve really honed in on who I am as an actual person,” he says. “And I don’t always think that’s even relevant to listeners – to be honest, I don’t think most listeners give a f–k. But I think it’s how I can make music for a long time, because I feel like I’m being true to myself.”
“Weird Al” Yankovic is the excitable type, but few things get him as pumped up as being part of the Star Wars universe. The parody king announced on Friday morning (Aug. 5) that he has officially taken a trip into the world of wookies with his new original single, “Scarif Beach Party” from the just-released Disney+ exclusive, LEGO Star Wars Summer Vacation.
As with his famous send-up songs, “Party” is full of amazingly silly puns and wink-wink references, from the “far, far away” lyric in the opening verse to mentions of the “Kessel Run” and the dreaded Empire. “It’s a Scarif Beach Party/ It’s time to get down/ It’s a Scarif Beach Party/ When there’s no Empire around/ It’s a Scarif Beach Party (ooh)/ Past the Empire’s reach/ It’s a Scarif Beach Party/ Gonna blow up the beach,” Al sings on the chorus.
The video for the bouncy electro pop song finds Al performing the song on a beach with some members of the Max Rebo band alongside footage from the movie, including Darth Vader chilling with a taco in one hand and a sparkler in the other and everyone’s favorite surfside game: light saber limbo.
The latest LEGO Star Wars saga finds Finn throwing a surprise summer vacation getaway for his pals Rey, Poe, Rose, Chewie, BB-8, R2-D2 and C-3PO on the super luxe Galactic Starcruiser, the Halcyon. Finn get separated from the party, however, and runs into three Force ghosts while he’s searching for his buddies, each of whom regale him with their own tales of disastrous vacations.
The film features Al’s voice, along with a superstar cast that includes Yvette Nicole Brown (Colvett Valeria), Thomas Lennon (Wick Cooper), Kelly Marie Tran (Rose), Billy Dee Williams, (Lando), Paul F. Tompkins (Rad), Allie Feder (Sy Snootles), Jake Green (Poe Dameron), Dee Bradley Baker (Boba Fett), Ashly Burch (Tour Droid) and many more.
Kanye West‘s 2020 presidential run was divisive. It caused some fans to question the judgement of the rapper (who now goes by Ye), and it even caused a rift with one of his oldest collaborators, John Legend. In an interview with CNN’s David Axelrod for his Axe Files podcast, Legend discussed how his one-time musical compatriot and producer went from a friend and studio confidant to a more distant acquaintance after West’s disastrous White House bid.
“Well, you know, we aren’t friends as much as we used to be, because I honestly think because we publicly disagreed on his running for office, his supporting Trump, I think it became too much for us to sustain our friendship, honestly,” Legend said of the Donda rapper who heartily embraced disgraced former president Trump and proudly displayed No. 45’s signature red MAGA hat on social media during the 2020 race. “He was upset that I didn’t support his run for presidency of the United States of America for understandable reasons.”
And while Legend knows he was not alone in shunning West’s fool’s errand campaign — which garnered an anemic 60,000 votes out of more than 158 million cast — he said that Kanye was “not happy about that … we really haven’t been close since then.”
When asked what people might not get about Ye, Legend praised the MC for being very open about his mental health struggles and being “very real” and upfront with his opinions and his challenges. “I think what you see with him is pretty much what you get,” Legend said. “I don’t feel like he’s a whole separate person in private than he is in public. I think you’re pretty much seeing the real Kanye publicly.”
Before chronicling their fractured relationship, Legend dove into how he first met Ye — when both were music strivers new to New York and trying to hustle up a demo to break through. “He was in a position to really help me as a producer, and he began to have more and more connections in the business,” he said of West, who at the time signed Legend to his production company, Good Music, which eventually helped the singer get a deal with Columbia Records in 2004.
Legend also discussed his FREEAMERICA project talking on mass incarceration, as well as his racial equality-focused Human Level organization, and how his mother’ struggles with self-medicating may have inspired his career-long interest in social justice and criminal justice reform. “Sometimes, particularly when you’re younger, you don’t see the macro view of things. You’re just seeing what’s happening in your life. And then as someone who avoided getting in trouble with the police, I saw that I was able to do that,” he said. “And you start to see everything through the lens of individual responsibility. You’re thinking, ‘Well, my mother made mistakes. She coped with her trauma and her tragedy in the wrong way, and this caused consequences for her.’ And then I had multiple friends, you know, who got in trouble with the law. You know, some of them were hustling, they were drug dealing. They were involved in situations they shouldn’t have been in.”
So, as a younger man, he focused on the mistakes his friends made, not about the fact that the laws they were sanctioned under “were written by men and women with frailties and with political points of view.” Those perspectives, he said, helped to put the U.S. in a place where we have the most incarcerated citizens of any country in the world. After reading up on the issues that fueled his interest, Legend said he tried to find a way to apply all that knowledge.
“And so as an older person, I was able to relate my mom’s individual trauma and struggle to all those other millions of people who have gone through substance abuse, mental health struggles, all these other struggles that they’ve gone through and how we as a nation have decided to treat those issues almost with the same solution all the time, which is lock more and more people up,” he said.
In one of the more emotional segments, Axelrod asked for Legend’s opinion on the recent Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and how the devastation he and wife Chrissy Teigen faced in 2020 when they lost a child to a miscarriage might counter the notion that people are making “casual decisions” about pregnancy.
“Anyone who’s dealt with pregnancy knows none of this is casual. None of this is is frivolous. And it’s so intimate and it’s so personal,” Legend said. “How do we want our governors and our legislators — most of whom are men — in this room with a doctor and with this person who’s dealing with their pregnancy? Why do we want our government involved in those decisions?
“If you decide they weren’t allowed to have an abortion, then anyone who had a miscarriage after all of that trauma, after all of that pain, after all those tears we went through to then have the local D.A. or a local law enforcement do an investigation and make sure the miscarriage was approved by the state and not just a regular run of the mill abortion,” he continued. “To have the government decide whether or not the life of the mother was sufficiently in danger for them to make this intimate decision that they make between themselves and their doctor, to have the government involved in that conversation in any way is so offensive to me. It’s nasty. It’s evil. It should not be even a discussion. The government should not be involved.”
And though he has many fervent opinions on the issues of the day — which he often expresses in impassioned tweets — Legend is happy to let his advocacy live online and on the stage, and that’s about it. “I do not want to run for office,” he insisted. “I definitely don’t want to do it now.”
“I don’t envision myself wanting to do it in the future. I did when I was a kid. I did want to be president and I wanted to be a few things … I know enough people to have been president, one in particular [Barack Obama] that I’m good. I don’t need that in my life. You know, I love what I do. I love my day job. But I also love the work we do politically and philanthropically.”
Two years ago, Tom Cruise asked Ryan Tedder a simple question over Zoom: “What do you hear?” Having been connected through a mutual collaborator at Paramount, the actor was showing the veteran producer and OneRepublic frontman a rough cut of the dogfight football scene from Top Gun: Maverick, and Tedder could imagine quite the sonic blend. “I said, ‘I hear a little Beach Boys… Gorillaz… and this kind of whistle thing,’ ” Tedder recalls.
Taking cues from those references, as well as other acts like Foster the People, Tedder and his bandmate Brent Kutzle turned the whistling melody in his head into OneRepublic’s latest single, “I Ain’t Worried.” The shuffling groove — which appears halfway through the blockbuster sequel that was 36 years in the making and premiered in May — has since scored the band its biggest hit in nearly a decade.
With the track gaining traction on TikTok following its May release, “I Ain’t Worried” has climbed to No. 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 (chart dated July 30), partially thanks to fans creating and sharing their own edits of Miles Teller’s shirtless — and now-viral — “Rooster wiggle” from the scene during which the song plays. While the “Rooster wiggle” tag has been viewed over 1.5 billion times on TikTok, “I Ain’t Worried” has garnered over 65.5 million on-demand official U.S. streams, according to Luminate.
Much like Kenny Loggins’ “Playing With the Boys” did during the classic beach-volleyball scene in the 1986 original film, “I Ain’t Worried” offers viewers a much-needed exhale amid the life-or-death stakes and high-flying action central to the plot. “The beauty of it was that I wasn’t trying to write some huge global record — it’s not following any pop math,” says Tedder. “It wasn’t written to sound obvious.” To Cruise, however, the song’s potential was always clear. His one piece of feedback when Tedder turned it in: “I think it’s a bull’s-eye.”
Days after accusing Ne-Yo of cheating, Crystal Renay has filed for divorce, dropping the bombshell allegation in legal documents that the singer recently fathered a child with another woman.
In a petition filed Monday (Aug. 1) in a Georgia court, Renay asked for a divorce on the grounds that her marriage to Ne-Yo was “irretrievably broken with no hope for reconciliation” and that the singer had “committed the act of adultery.”
Those accusations were already public, after an emotional Instagram post on Saturday (July 30) in which Renay said she was “heartbroken and disgusted” with her husband’s alleged cheating with “numerous women.”
But the petition, which was obtained by Billboard, also included a shocking new allegation. After listing out the couple’s three children, Renay added: “There are no further children anticipated to be born or adopted as issue of this marriage, however, Respondent has recently fathered a minor child with his paramour.”
A spokesman for Ne-Yo did not immediately return a request for comment.
In an Instagram post on Sunday, the singer vowed not to address the split publicly: “For the sake of our children, my family and I will work through our challenges behind closed doors. Personal matters are not meant to be addressed and dissected in public forums. I simply ask that you please respect me and my family’s privacy at this time.”
Other than the new accusation of a child born out of wedlock, the petition did not contain many details. Renay is seeking primary physical custody of the couple’s three children, along with joint legal custody – meaning the children will live with her, but the couple will share decision-making power. She’s also seeking child support and alimony, though the petition did not specify how much.
After getting married in 2016, the pair came close to divorcing in 2020 and started a trial separation, but eventually renewed their vows elaborate Las Vegas ceremony in April 2022. In the new filing, Renay said the couple had split once more on July 22.
Doja Cat is nearly as smooth as a Sphynx cat. The 26-year-old star went on Instagram Live Thursday (Aug. 4) to reveal that she had shaved her entire head — before taking it one step further and razoring off her eyebrows on camera as thousands of fans watched in real time.
Showing off her newly bare noggin, the “Woman” musician began with a heart-to-heart conversation with fans about why she’d decided to make such a bold style choice. “I feel like I was never supposed to have hair,” she said. “I don’t like having hair. I cannot tell you one time since the beginning of my life that I’ve ever been like, ‘This is cool.’ I just do not like to have hair.”
Doja also pointed out that she rarely ever displayed her natural hair in the first place, instead having spent most of her career wearing wigs in different colors. “I remember feeling so f–king exhausted with working out,” she continued, explaining that her wigs often slid around and peeled off her head while training. “I’d be working out, but I couldn’t focus because I was more concerned with how I looked and how my hair was doing.”
“I just can’t believe that it took me this long to be like, ‘Shave your f–king head,” she added. “I’m really liking this. What is the use of having hair if you’re not going to f–king wear it out? I don’t even sport it.”
Then, the Grammy winner upped the ante by coating her brow with shaving cream and pulling out a razor as around 20,000 other Instagram users looked on. “My makeup artist just texted me, ‘Are you shaving your brows off? I’m driving the f–k over,’” Doja told her viewers with a laugh. “I’m gonna do it.”
Watch Doja Cat explain why she shaved her head, then razor off her brows on Instagram Live:
I was just thinking to myself, ‘Jesus Christ, oh my goodness. I need to retire soon,’ ” says Willow. “This is crazy.”
Very few artists could credibly declare that at the age of 21, but it’s understandable why Willow would consider calling it a day. A handful of dates into her supporting role on Machine Gun Kelly’s Mainstream Sellout tour, she’s sprawled out on an old leather couch in Los Angeles, theorizing about when she’ll get a break — sometime after the 20 dates with MGK end in August, she figures, and certainly not until after she has promoted coping mechanism, her next album, due this fall on Roc Nation.
The last four years have been nonstop for Willow. In 2019, she released a self-titled psychedelic R&B album, followed six months later by a 10-track project with frequent collaborator Tyler Cole as The Anxiety that included everything from dreamy pop (the anthemic viral hit “Meet Me at Our Spot”) to rowdy punk (“Fight Club”). Then, amid the pandemic, Willow switched gears completely, releasing the devotional meditation EP RISE, and by spring 2021, she was promoting her first full-blown rock album, Lately I Feel Everything, and its Travis Barker-featuring lead single, “transparentsoul.”
And that’s just her solo output. Lately, Willow’s clear-eyed intensity has made her the artist to call when a track needs some added edge, which she lent to Camila Cabello’s “psychofreak” and PinkPantheress’ “Where you are.” Even artists who are already firmly working in rock know a feature from Willow — like on MGK’s “emo girl” and Yungblud’s “Memories” — can add a little something extra to take them over the top.
Roc Nation co-president Shari Bryant insists there’s “not one particular reason” that these artists seek out Willow. For some, it might be the wide audience she reaches with 30 million weekly streams; others just “like her point of view. Her aura is something you can’t get anywhere else.”
NIKI vividly recalls coming home from school when she was 9 or 10 and turning on the TV to an episode of E! True Hollywood Story on Taylor Swift. “Upon seeing that I was like, ‘Mother, I must,’ ” she says with a laugh, knowing then she wanted to follow a similar path. “I was like, ‘Oh, people can write songs,’ and I wanted to try that.”
Soon after, she got her first guitar. By the eighth grade she wrote her first song. And by 15, she won a contest (arranged by Taylor Swift and ice cream brand Walls called Ride to Fame) to open for the icon in her hometown of Jakarta, Indonesia, which inspired her to launch a YouTube channel where she started posting covers and originals.
Growing up, NIKI (born Nicole Zefanya) says her Saturdays were for jam sessions at home, during which “nonblood aunts and uncles” would come to rehearse with her mother, a church singer, for Sunday service. “That’s where I learned how to harmonize,” she says. It was in that same house, sitting in her childhood room, that she first met with 88rising, her future label home. While joking one day with a producer friend and fellow Indonesian artist Rich Brian about landing one of her songs on the then-fast-rising label’s YouTube channel, she thought, “Yeah, right. That’s never going to happen.” Yet she couldn’t shake the idea, and the next week, Rich Brian — already signed to the label — called founder Sean Miyashiro to set up a Skype meeting. 88rising agreed to distribute NIKI’s first few singles and the following year, in 2018, officially signed her to a record deal.
NIKI
By then, she was attending college in Nashville and gigging at local coffee shops with the same songs she had shared on her channel, before eventually scrubbing them from the internet. “It was this weird transitional phase, where I was about to debut as NIKI and I was figuring out, ‘Well, what do I like?’ ” says the singer. While she ultimately carved a lane for herself in pop-leaning R&B, she recalls “core memories” of her songwriter friends gently questioning the pivot, often asking, “Are you sure you don’t want to put out your other stuff?”
NIKI sat with that question through the pandemic in Los Angeles, where she moved after college. She started combing through the same pink journal she has had since 2013 and listening to her bank of songs on Evernote. Then, she began reproducing a handful of them, and, feeling particularly inspired by the 2021 release of Fearless (Taylor’s Version), debated embracing her folksier singer-songwriter roots. “I remember talking to my friend, [pop singer-songwriter] Maisie Peters, and I was confused about, ‘Who am I in music? What is my sound?’” says NIKI. “I was talking about all these old songs and she was like, ‘That was you, though. You liked those songs at one point.’ It was this ‘aha’ moment for me. Even though I’m like, ‘I would never write that line now,’ shifting the perspective of, ‘Well, that was authentically where you were when you were 17,’ is very freeing.”
The result is Nicole, NIKI’s second full-length, out Aug. 12 on 88rising. After releasing back-to-back EPs in 2018 and 2019, NIKI launched her debut album, Moonchild, a genre-blending project that proved her interests and talents extend beyond R&B, in 2020. Nicole now comes amid a hot streak for 88rising, arriving soon after its artists performed on the Coachella main stage in April as part of the festival’s first label-curated set. NIKI, who along with Rich Brian became the first Indonesian artists to play the festival, says the rehearsals felt like High School Musical. And in June, labelmate Joji scored a surprise top 10 hit with his ballad “Glimpse of Us.” Ollie Zhang, NIKI’s co-manager (alongside Miyashiro) and 88rising’s head of artist development, wouldn’t be surprised if ballads make a comeback: “People want to feel those feelings and not pretend like everything is OK right now. I think that kind of songwriting, that type of emotional depth in music, is timeless.”
Nicole is filled with such aching ballads and reflective odes to her teenage years — her friends have called the album’s accompanying music videos “weirdly triggering.” As a whole, it’s a stunning time capsule that NIKI believes she only could have made, and have had the confidence to release, now. She says reworking songs she wrote as a teenager taught her the power of production, calling the process “the saving grace of this record, because I wouldn’t really have the guts to put [this music] out as just a guitar and vocal demo.”
It’s why she tapped an intimate team of collaborators, including Jacob Ray, Tim Anderson, Jacob Reske and Ethan Gruska, to help mold the album’s warm and inviting sound. “I’ve been listening to a lot of other artists and looking through song credits,” she says. “If I like something, I’m like, ‘Who worked on this?’ Ethan, for example, works a lot on Phoebe Bridgers’ stuff, and [her album Punisher] was so life-changing for me. It’s comparable to when I was listening to Taylor [Swift] in the sixth grade.”
Zhang sees Nicole as striking a similar chord. “The thread that connects all of [NIKI’s] music together, and is why people who know her love her, is the songwriting — and this album has that in spades.”
