In the midst of a week-long public battle with Adidas in which Kanye West has posted inflammatory comments about executives at Adidas in a pique of rage over his claims that the company’s Adilette slides are a “blatant copy” of his Yeezy slides, Ye took time out on Wednesday (Sept. 7) for some quality family time.
“Some things are bigger than money,” the artist who now goes by Ye said alongside a picture of him huddling in an all-black space with children North, 8, Saint, 6, Chicago 4, and Psalm, 2. “My kids have no idea what daddy has gone through this past few days alone to secure the brand that will one day be handed down to them God Willing.”
Last week, West posted a series of pointed personal and professional remarks aimed at Adidas execs, as well as screengrabs and slams of JP Morgan Chase board members amid his feud with the shoe company. Wednesday’s post offered the hope that his children will not have to endure the difficulties West has said he’s had with some of his retail fashion partners. “These future leaders will never back down be stolen from and forced to compromise who they are for the check,” he wrote.
Ye took aim at another partner, Gap Inc., last week, claiming that the clothing retailer with whom he partnered for the 2002 Yeezy Gap line “held a meeting about me without me?” He took another swing at Gap a day later, posting a screenshot of a text thread showing an image of a young man modeling an oversized Gap logo T-shirt, with one text claiming, “This is Gap copying YGEBB.” (YGEBB is the Yeezy Gap Engineered by Balenciaga collaboration.)
The latter was seemingly not related to perceived similarities between a Gap t-shirt and a Yeezy Gap design, but apparently about Ye taking issue with how the company allegedly handled a photo shoot with his children. “But they canceled the photo shoot with my kids in Japan without me knowing,” Ye claimed, not naming which of his four kids was supposed to be involved. At press time a spokesperson for West had not returned requests for comment.
Following her breezy and carefree “Provenza,” Karol G released her second single of the year, called “Gatúbela” (Catwoman), alongside reggaeton pioneer Maldy on Aug. 25.
The DJ Maff-produced track is an infectious old-school reggaeton laced with intense perreo beats. In the lyrics, Karol G is fiery and unapologetic, singing about all the things she’d like to do to someone else.
The Colombian artist brings the ultra-sensual lyrics to life in the vintage horror film-inspired music video, directed by Pedro Artola in Barcelona, where she’s seen in a locker room full of equally sweaty people whom she gets cheeky with, and later drenched in blood as she runs away from the moon.
“Gatúbela” earned Karol her 16th top 10 on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, debuting at No. 4 on the Sept. 10-dated ranking. It’s the first top 10 — and chart appearance — as a soloist for Puerto Rican Maldy, after his last visit to the list’s upper region in 2015 as part of Plan B. The track also opened at No. 37 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
Below, check out the full lyrics translated to English:
[Chorus]
I was crazy to try you
Give you the kisses myself
Hopefully, you stay
That way I stay too
I was crazy to hunt you down
Make love to you
I wish you could stay
I was crazy to try you
Give you the kisses myself
Hopefully, you stay
That way I stay too
I was crazy to hunt you down
Make love to you
I wish you could stay
[Verse 1: KAROL G]
I’m not dating anyone, but they keep me awake
I’m already elevated, I feel like Catwoman
This is a photo because I am not painted
And that little orphan needs a mom
Mmm it feels good
How you put my panty to the side (Mmm)
Mmm it feels good
Give me that kiss down there (Ah) Ay, bendito
I’ll make you finish faster in all fours Mmm, bendito
Don’t eat me so good, papacito
[Chorus]
I was crazy to try you
Give you the kisses myself
Hopefully, you stay
That way I stay too
I was crazy to hunt you down
Make love to you
I wish you could stay (Uff, how cool, a verse from Maldy)
[Verse 2: Maldy]
Without Maldy there’s no perreo
I dance with her in the club, as no one has done before
Tamed kitten, but the kitten rebelled against me
She told me that alcohol took all the fear away
That under her skirt nobody knows if she wears panties or not
She wants bellaqueo (to be turned on), bellaqueo will follow
Don’t blame me, I told you
That I’m on a high and no one can correct you
Come to my house so I can cover you
That I want to spank you so that your booty bounces
She has me turned on, how she loves it Chimbote
You are addicted and horny, you like to be rubbed
Like Yankee’s song, “rompe, rompe”
[Chorus]
I was crazy to try you
Give you the kisses myself
Hopefully, you stay
That way I stay too
I was crazy to hunt you down
Make love to you
I wish you could stay
The first time rising alt-pop singer-songwriter Nicky Youre heard his breakout single “Sunroof” in public, he was walking into a Panda Express. “I heard the last 15 seconds,” he recalls. “I was thinking about talking to the Panda people and going, ‘That was my song you just heard!’”
It wouldn’t be the last time. Since its release last Thanksgiving, the breezy pop-rock hit has grown from TikTok favorite to streaming sensation to one of the year’s most unavoidable radio hits — topping Billboard’s Pop Airplay chart for two weeks so far. It also crossed over to a No. 5 peak thus far on the Billboard Hot 100, and recently earned Youre his first trip to New York, where he walked his first red carpet and heard “Sunroof” called out as one of the nominees for song of the summer at the MTV Video Music Awards. “My dad was like, ‘What do I need to do to get on this with you? I’ll do anything!’” he says, laughing. “I’m like, ‘Dad… no.’”
It’s an impressive journey for the 23-year-old Aliso Viejo, Calif. native, who was still in school studying international business at the University of California San Diego when he wrote “Sunroof” in spring 2021, not even sure at the time that he was going to pursue music as a professional career. “I was over music, trying to take a break,” he says of that period in his life as a singer-songwriter. “Nothing was connecting the way I was wanting it to. And I kind of just wanted to live my life.”
His more relaxed senior year ended up being an extremely positive experience — and ironically, it was one of the few bad nights he had that spring that inspired his joyous breakthrough hit. “I was sick one night, and I was just like, ‘I wanna feel good — like how I’ve been feeling lately,’” he says. “So I wrote this song… and then 30 minutes into writing, I was [singing], ‘I got my head out the sunroof!’ And I was like, ‘Whoa, that’s kind of sick. A sunroof.’ ”
To help bring the song to life, Youre sought the help of collaborator Dazy, a producer/artist whose work he admired, and who DM’d him after they followed one another on Instagram. (“A classic [modern day] love story,” he jokes.) Youre, who admits he “can’t produce at all,” sent Dazy the song’s lyrics and melody, along with a list of musical touchstones (including recent TikTok hits from breakout artists Tai Verdes and BENEE) for the song’s sonics.
“I wanted the guitars to sound super-full and bright — that was something we talked about,” says Dazy. “That was a new lane for me to try in terms of making pop music. I had mostly done a lot of electronic stuff.” Even so, Dazy nailed the slick, upbeat production Youre was looking for on his first try. “It was the first song that I had felt inspired by in a really long time,” the singer/songwriter says.
From left: Peter Rugo, Nicky Youre, and Mathew Hyun photographed on Aug. 19, 2022 at Nostalgia in Santa Monica, Calif.
From there, Youre and his Keel Management team, where he signed last October, set their sights on making the song happen on TikTok. “We encouraged Nicky for many months to work in tandem with us and come up with some clever, fun and engaging ideas for content that would create some type of hyper-movement leading into the release,” says Peter Rugo, Keel co-founder. “I think the one that really started it off was [a video he made of] ‘Here are 10 songs that I like…’ People ended up getting more focused on the background audio than they did on the songs he was listing.”
That song was, of course, “Sunroof,” which quickly took off on the platform, ultimately being used as a sound in nearly 8 million TikTok videos to date. Youre’s team kept pushing the song, focusing on specific markets where it was performing notably well — Southeast Asia, Australia — and partnering with TikTok’s all-in-one music distribution and marketing program SoundOn and opting into the service’s Commercial Music Library (which pre-clears songs for royalty-free commercial use) to increase the song’s global exposure. “Our main goal for it was, ‘Let’s try to extend the campaign for this song as long as possible to try to get to the warmer months in North America,’ ” Rugo says.
By April, the song had grown to daily streams in the hundreds of thousands, and the team moved their focus to U.S. radio. For that, though, they decided they required extra help. Keel had already signed Youre to its own Thirty Knots sister label, but to conquer radio, they would need the muscle of a major label as a partner — opting for Columbia, which in recent years has helped artists like Harry Styles, Lil Nas X and The Kid LAROI all become FM mainstays. “We felt like Columbia is the best in the business at top 40 radio,” Keel co-founder Joey Papoutsis says. “And we really got to know Ron [Perry, chairman/CEO] and the rest of the team, and felt the most comfortable and confident with them taking this thing the distance.”
Their instinct quickly paid dividends, as “Sunroof” entered Billboard’s Pop Airplay listing on the chart dated May 21, and topped the tally by the end of last month. With the song climbing into the Hot 100’s top 10, Youre and his team kept the pedal to the metal with an EP of remixes for the song in mid-August, featuring artists from different genres — EDM (Loud Luxury), hip-hop (24kGoldn), Latin pop (Manuel Turizo) and country (Thomas Rhett).
“[We asked ourselves], ‘How can we really maximize this moment in growing the song, as well as Nicky’s audience?’ ” Matthew Hyun of Keel says of the strategy behind the remix package. “It was just to get a little more eyes on it that traditionally wouldn’t have been listening to that song.” Adds Rugo: “It felt like a great way to kinda revitalize the energy for those audiences who heard the original record ad nauseam at that point.”
Though “Sunroof” is still growing on the Hot 100, Youre and his team are now focused on what comes next, with the dual goals of establishing him as a live presence — with Keel putting out asks to more established artists in the hopes of booking him an opening slot on a 2023 tour — and expanding his song catalog (Dazy teases that the two have “another song that’s pretty much finished and ready to go.”). Youre says he’s been “living in the studio the past three months,” trying to find collaborators to help him build up a signature sound, and give his fans more of the good vibes he’s cultivated with his now-signature hit.
“I have some angsty teen energy in me as well — it’s definitely not, like, all summer stuff,” he clarifies. “But I know that that’s working right now. I gotta give the people what they like. So that’s what I’m aiming to do.”
Nicky Youre photographed on Aug. 19, 2022 at Nostalgia in Santa Monica, Calif.
Maldy scores his first entry on the Billboard Hot 100 chart (dated Sept. 10), as Karol G and the Puerto Rican singer-songwriter’s “Gatúbela” launches at No. 37.
The single, released Aug. 25 on Universal Music Latino, debuts with 11.4 million U.S. streams, 2.9 million radio airplay audience impressions and 2,000 downloads sold in its first full tracking week (Aug. 26-Sept. 1), according to Luminate.
“Gatúbela” also opens at No. 4 on the multi-metric Hot Latin Songs chart, No. 15 on Latin Rhythm Airplay and No. 39 on Latin Airplay.
Maldy (real name: Edwin Vega) has been a steady hitmaker on Billboard‘s charts since the mid-2000s as half of reggaeton duo Plan B. However, he’d charted only once before under his own recording name: “La Formula Sigue,” with Zion, Arcangel, Lennox, Chencho and RKM & Ken-Y, reached No. 21 on Latin Rhythm Airplay in 2012.
Plan B, which comprises Maldy and Chencho Corleone, first appeared on Billboard‘s charts in 2006 with “Frikitona,” which hit No. 14 on Latin Rhythm Airplay and appeared on Hot Latin Songs. The duo has sent 10 more entries onto Hot Latin Songs, led by the No. 3-peaking “Fanática Sensual” in 2015. The act has also charted 27 songs on Latin Rhythm Airplay, including eight top 10s, four of which have reached the top five: the No. 4-peaking “Mi Vecinita” in 2014, and the No. 5 hits “Fanática Sensual” (2015), “Zapatito Roto” (2013) and “Te Dijeron” (2012).
Plan B’s two most recent sets charted on Top Latin Albums: Love & Sex (No. 2, 2014) and House of Pleasure (No. 18, 2010). The tandem’s most recent charting single, “Te Acuerdas de Mi,” reached No. 15 on Latin Rhythm Airplay and No. 29 on Latin Airplay in 2017.
Though Plan B hasn’t released any new music since 2018, Maldy recently told Puerto Rican podcaster Chente Ydrach that the pair hasn’t separated. “What we decided on was to work on our solo projects,” Maldy said (in Spanish). “[Chencho Corleone is] my blood cousin … blood weighs more than water. Despite whatever happened, we’re good. He’s doing his own thing, I’m doing mine. Do you get me? He is doing well, I am doing well.”
TWICE re-enters the Billboard Artist 100 chart (dated Sept. 10) at No. 1 to become the top musical act in the U.S. for the first time, thanks to the group’s new release Between 1&2: 11th Mini Album.
The EP soars in at No. 1 on the Top Album Sales and World Albums charts and No. 3 on the Billboard 200 with 100,000 equivalent album units earned in the Aug. 26-Sept. 1 tracking week, according to Luminate. It marks the South Korean group’s third Billboard 200 top 10, and matches its best rank, after Formula of Love: O+T=<3, The 3rd Full Album (No. 3) and Taste of Love: The 10th Mini Album (No. 6), both in 2021.
TWICE becomes the fifth K-pop group to hit No. 1 on the Artist 100, dating to the chart’s launch in 2014. It joins BTS, who has ruled for 21 weeks (the fourth-most in the chart’s history), BLACKPINK, Stray Kids and SuperM, each of whom have led for one week apiece.
DJ Khaled vaults 100-3 on the Artist 100 – the 97-spot leap being the largest in the chart’s history – and ranks in the top 10 for the first time since May 2021, when he led the list. His new album God Didlaunches as his fourth No. 1 on the Billboard 200, with 107,500 units earned.
Plus, Kendrick Lamar jumps 18-4 on the Artist 100, sparked by the Aug. 26 vinyl release of his former Billboard 200 No. 1 Mr. Morale & The Big Steppers. The LP rebounds 24-4 on the Billboard 200, with 36,000 of its 55,000 units for the week via vinyl album sales.
The Artist 100 measures artist activity across key metrics of music consumption, blending album and track sales, radio airplay and streaming to provide a weekly multi-dimensional ranking of artist popularity.
BLACKPINK unveiled the complete tracklist for their upcoming sophomore album BORN PINK on Wednesday (Sept. 7).
Along with lead single “Pink Venom,” which has already earned the girl group a top 25 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 and dominated Trending Songs and both Global charts for the past two weeks, the studio set will contain seven other songs including “Shut Down” and the previously unreleased “Ready for Love.” The other songs are “Typa Girl,” “Hard to Love,” “The Happiest Girl,” “Tally” and “Yeah Yeah Yeah” — the latter of which Rosé and Jisoo both have writing credits on, along with regular collaborators R.Tee and IDO.
And while the group’s 2020 debut, The Album, contained collaborations with the likes of Selena Gomez (“Ice Cream”) and Cardi B (“Bet You Wanna”), this time around the quartet are taking the reins on every track without a single guest artist.
Earlier in the week, Jennie, Lisa, Rosé and Jisoo also shared details on their upcoming world tour in support of the new studio set — including an added stop in Copenhagen on the trek’s European run — and officially announced “Shut Down” as the second single off the album with a fierce, streetwear-inspired teaser poster.
Meanwhile, “Pink Venom” continues to break new ground for BLACKPINK. Not only did the girls make their U.S. awards show debut by performing the smash at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, but on the chart dated Sept. 3, the anthem also earned them their very first solo Streaming Songs top 10 by landing at No. 9.
BORN PINK arrives in full on Sept. 16. Check out the complete tracklist for the LP below.
Offset and Cardi B‘s children pretty much won the parent lottery. Four-year-old Kulture and 1-year-old Wave are often at the receiving end of over-the-top parties and gifts given to them by their superstar mom and dad, demonstrated most recently by Wave’s luxury-car themed first birthday celebration. But according to the two rappers, there’s actually a pretty logical reason behind all of the extravagance.
During a Tuesday night (Sept. 6) appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, Offset explained to his host why he and Cardi find it so important to go all out for their son and daughter. “We do it big for our kids,” he said after sharing a video of Wave on his birthday, driving a new miniature car while partygoers cheer him on. “We love our kids.”
“We want to have a good time and bring our family together,” he continued. “We travel a lot, we be gone a lot, so we bring our family together, make it a big celebration for the kid. Even though he’s only 1.”
The rapper went on to explain that he and Cardi weren’t as fortunate when they were young, and so they now prioritize giving Kulture and Wave experiences he and his wife never had while growing up. “At the end of the day, we went through life and we didn’t have the opportunities,” he said. “I bet if my mama had the chance, she would have went all out and did what she wanted to do for me.”
“So I’m just lending it to my kids,” he added. “Just letting them see they can have another life too, you know? We work hard to do that.”
Offset’s words echo a similar message tweeted by Cardi a day prior to the “Ric Flair Drip” rapper’s Tonight Show appearance. “I know I can be a little extra when it comes to my kids,” she wrote Monday morning (Sept. 5). “But I ain’t really had s–t growing up soooo yea imma ball.”
I know I can be a little extra when it comes to my kids but I ain’t really had shit growing up soooo yea imma ball
Kelly Clarkson is following the recent footsteps of Kacey Musgraves, Adele, the Chicks and Miranda Lambert as she preps a post-divorce album. “When my ex and I first separated, there were many emotions. It was hard,” Clarkson told Variety in a new cover story about the songs she’s written in the midst of her separation and subsequent divorce filing against ex-husband Brandon Blackstock in 2020.
“My producer and I were laughing yesterday because I was like, ‘Remember that time we wrote, like, 25 songs in a week?’ A lot of those are the ones that are on the album,” she said of the as-yet-untitled collection. “I literally wrote most of these almost two years ago. Then I told my label, ‘I can’t talk about this until I’ve gone through it,’ and it’s just taken some time to do that. That’s one of the reasons we’ve done a lot of Christmas stuff the past two years — because I was like, ‘Well, that’s happy!’”; Clarkson released the holiday album When Christmas Comes Around in 2021.
As Clarkson gears up for the upcoming season four premiere of her eponymous daytime talk show — as well as the release of her revamp of “9 to 5” with Dolly Parton — the singer said she’s planning to release the “important” album next year as the long-awaited follow-up to 2017’s Meaning of Life. “I’m working on this in therapy: I have a hard time vocalizing what I’m feeling sometimes, so music is helpful for me,” she told Variety. “It’s just been really healing. I recorded the record quite some time ago.”
The new music was reportedly inspired by the “emotional journey” Clarkson went through during her tumultuous split with Blackstone, with whom she has two young children. “I hadn’t really been working hardcore on an album until I needed to. I was just very busy,” she said of the album that will be released by Atlantic Records.
“There were so many jobs, and I’m a single mom — well, even with being married, it’s a lot, trying to fit kids’ schedules in and all that stuff. But then the whole divorce thing happened, and I needed to write it. And then I didn’t know if I was going to release it, because you can be very angry in that state of mind. So some of the songs, they definitely cover the gamut of emotions; there’s everything on the album. It’s almost like the arc of a relationship, because the beginning is so beautiful and so sweet, and then it evolves. And sometimes it doesn’t evolve how you want.”
Clarkson said she’s “definitely” going to tour and do some shows, but while she’s looking forward to getting back on stage at some point, she has to work gigs in around the schedule of her talk show and her gig on The Voice. We’re figuring that out,” she said. “But when you write an album that’s so personal, it’s just therapeutic to be able to get up there… I know there are other guys and girls out there that have been through this kind of breakup who are going to need to scream at the top of their lungs — you can come and join me.”
Lil Nas X turned a small catalog (to date) into a big show as he opened his first-ever concert tour on Tuesday night (Sept. 6) at the Fox Theatre in Detroit.
Over 65 minutes, three acts and more than a dozen songs, the Long Live Montero Tour production was designed to dazzle — no surprise, really, to anyone who’s seen the Georgia-born hitmaker’s extravagant performances for awards shows and other events.
It was designed to be, as he wrote in the Playbill-style program handed out to fans, “a play about me, starring me as me, with music by me…about my journey, what I’ve been through, me being out of breath while performing and my aspirations to continue on my path in life.”
Coach creative director Stuart Evers added in his own note that “the looks we created together explore tensions between past, present and future…a reflection how inspiring individuals like Montero (Hill, Lil Nas X’s birth name) are defining (and redefining) our American story for today — and a celebration of the optimism for the future we share.”
That high concept was acted out by Lil Nas X and eight dancers with an elaborate video production on a three-panel screen behind the stage.
The show, which started an hour after the announced 7:30pm time, moved briskly from segment to segment, narrated by The Wizard of Naz, a woman whose image was beamed onto the curtain between the show’s three acts, while the instrumental music and some voices, including Doja Cat’s feature on “Scoop,” were all recorded to track.
Introduced as “one of those special souls,” Lil Nas X got things started alone on stage with “Panini,” sporting the first of six outfits — shirtless with gold pants — before the dancers joined him for some precise and athletic choreography.
Production numbers with titles such as “A Visit From a Friend” and “Pure/Honey” flitted between songs from his EP (7) and 2021 album Montero, and the selection was heavy on big hits — “Old Town Road,” which was paired with “Rodeo,” “Sun Goes Down,” “That’s What I Want,” “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” — but also slotted in deeper cuts such as “Don’t Want It,” “Tales of Dominica” and “Lost in the Citadel.”
Lasers and smoke jets accented a few of the songs, while Lil Nas X donned a pair of giant butterfly wings briefly during “Call Me By Your Name” — after which scores of animated Lil Nas X butterflies flitted around the video screen.
At the end of Act Two, an elaborately staged short film titled “You Are Going to Hell” addressed the spiritual homophobia he encountered in his life.
The emphasis, however, was on performance and precision, whether it was the cowboy-themed routine of “Old Town Road”/”Rodeo” or the exuberant expositions of “That’s What I Want” and “Scoop.”
He reminded the Detroit audience a couple of times that this was his first-ever tour, and during “Down Souf Hoes” ordered the crowd to “get the f*** up and shake your ass or you’re gonna be escorted out of the building.”
He was loose enough to crack, “Who’s of legal age here and wants to f***” before quickly adding “no, no, that’s a joke” and following up with a self-effacing borscht-belt styled “What’s the deal with airline food?”
“Industry Baby” closed the main set and “formal” part of the show in a muscular, full-length rendition while confetti blasted over the crowd’s heads, and Lil Nas X encored with the recent “Star Walkin’,” which was received as enthusiastically as any of the evening’s other songs.
The Long Live Montero Tour continues Wednesday night (Sept. 7) back at the Fox Theatre and continues with 20 more shows — including an Atlanta homecoming Sept. 27-28 — through Oct. 23 in San Francisco. The seven-date European leg of the tour begins Nov. 8 in Amsterdam.
Lil Nas X’s full opening night setlist included:
“Panini”
“Tales of Dominica”
“Sun Goes Down”
“Old Town Road”/”Rodeo”
“Dead Right Now
“Don’t Want It”
“That’s What I Want”
“Lost in the Citadel”
“Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”
“Down Souf Hoes”
“Scoop”
“Industry Baby”
Encore:
“Star Walkin’”
Are you still listening?
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