Innholdsfortegnelse for August 28, 2021 i Billboard Magazine

MY RECORDS LIVE IN THE TOP 10,” CARDI B BOASTS in her and Lizzo’s new team-up, “Rumors.” True enough once again, the star-studded single debuts at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, marking Cardi B’s 10th top 10 and Lizzo’s third. The track, released Aug. 13, enters with 30.1 million in radio audience — marking the highest start on the Radio Songs chart (No. 21) in over five years — 20.9 million streams and 25,200 sold in the week ending Aug. 19, according to MRC Data. It also opens at No. 1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot Rap Songs charts Following the song’s arrival, Lizzo posted an emotional Instagram Live video, saying, in part, “Sometimes I feel like the world just don’t love me back. It’s…

BACK IN MARCH, veteran country concert promoter Louis Messina was thrilled when George Strait sold out his Aug. 13 and 14 comeback shows at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. On the nights of the concerts, however, Messina noticed that the no-show rate was a staggering 20%, far higher than the 1% to 2% he says is typical for the venue. And no-shows don’t only mean less revenue from food and merchandise — they make promoters nervous about future ticket sales. For over a year, Messina, who partners with AEG, had kept tours off the road, paying his staff $9 million in salary without any revenue coming in (money he later recouped from the Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program). Now the concert business is back to work, but a significant…

WHEN CHINESE ANTITRUST REGULATORS sneeze, the music business catches a cold. Beijing has been cracking down on technology companies, and on July 24, the government gave Tencent Music, the country’s largest audio-streaming company, 30 days to end the exclusive licensing deals that allow it to offer songs that competitors can’t. Months before, another regulator announced an effort to curb online tipping, a major source of revenue for Tencent Music, which takes a percentage of the money that fans send to performers. These days, however, what happens in China echoes from Stockholm to Los Angeles. Tencent Music’s share price, which hit an all-time high on March 23, fell a whopping 74.6% as of Aug. 23, wiping out $40.1 billion of market capitalization. Among its major shareholders is Spotify, which in…

AFTER A 20-YEAR estrangement owing to personal travails and jealousies, can four women in their 40s reclaim the ’90s fame and swagger they achieved as R&B and hip-hop stars? That one-line pitch is the premise behind Queens, which, ahead of the ABC drama series’ premiere on Oct. 19, is already picking up must-watch buzz. The hype is thanks in part to the cast, which brings together three popular ’90s hitmakers as members of the fictional group Nasty Bitches: Brandy (who plays Naomi, aka Xplicit Lyrics), Eve (Brianna, aka Professor Sex) and 3LW founding member Naturi Naughton (Jill Da Thrill). Rounding out the quartet is actress Nadine Velazquez (Valeria, better known as Butter Pecan). Also driving viewer anticipation is the promise of original songs inspired by the fertile ’90s era…

Styling by Kim Young Jin Jungkook wears a Dries Van Noten jacket, shirt and pants; Tom Ford belt; and Carmina boots. RM wears a Berluti jacket, turtleneck and pants, and Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello shoes. V wears a Munn jacket, shirt and pants; Prada shoes; and Coldframe necklace. Suga wears a Fendi shirt and pants, and Saint Laurent by Anthony Vaccarello boots. Jimin wears a Munn jacket and shirt, and Gucci pants. J-Hope wears a Fendi shirt and pants, Crockett & Jones shoes and Jiye Shin necklace and ring. Jin wears a Tom Ford jacket, shirt, pants, scarf, belt and boots. FROM FAR DOWN A HALLWAY in the new Seoul headquarters of HYBE Corp., a crystal-clear falsetto rings above distant footsteps and murmurs, singing the refrain to the…

TO MOST KANYE WEST fans, the prolonged rollout for his 10th solo album, DONDA, is yet another example of how the artist’s legendary perfectionism can complicate his career. As West continues to tinker in the studio, however, the ticketed inperson and livestreamed listening parties he has been hosting have been raking in the dough. On July 22, West filled Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium with 42,000 fans who paid $25 to $100 a ticket for a DONDA listening party, supervised by Balenciaga creative director Demna Gvasalia. (Days before, a new Beats by Dre ad that aired during the NBA Finals had teased the DONDA track “No Child Left Behind.”) The party was livestreamed for free by Apple Music with the idea that West’s album would drop the next day — which…

ON AUG. 13, MORE THAN 42 2,000 concurrent players gathered in a London-themed virtual world within the Roblox gaming platform to watch British rapper KSI perform songs from his July album, All Over the Place. The artist himself appeared on a video screen onstage while the players in the crowd bounced on floating discs, direct-messaged one another and showed off virtual merchandise like a KSI-branded backpack. The experience reaired throughout the weekend and received 11 million total visits, according to Roblox, while KSI’s virtual merch line has reached six figures in sales. It was just the latest music event within the free gaming platform, where a community of 42 million daily active users create and play their own games (there are now over 40 million) and spend real money…

On Sept. 25, an eclectic roster of A-listers will perform across six continents during the 24-hour Global Citizen Live, rallying to fight climate change and extreme poverty, and aiming to help the 41 million people on the brink of famine. These are issues that have only been compounded by the pandemic, notes Global Citizen CEO Hugh Evans. “We’re going bigger than ever to reflect the scale and severity of the crisis,” he says. “This is not a celebration — it’s a moment of unity to rally the world, to petition world leaders, CEOs, philanthropists to commit to solutions that only governments and those with billions of dollars can bring about.” Musicians and industry power players have been integral to the organization’s success since its inaugural concert in 2012, addressing…

When his breakout hit, “Love Cycle,” took off in 2020, rapper Toosii started getting calls from major labels interested in signing him. One of the last meetings he went to was with Capitol Records. “When I walked in and saw Jeff [Vaughn], I was like, ‘This is the label,’” recalls Toosii. The two had met years earlier under very different circumstances — Vaughn was head of A&R for another label, while Toosii, unbeknownst to Vaughn, was homeless — and the rapper remembered the kindness Vaughn had showed him. “He’s one of the most humble dudes you’ll ever meet, showing up to work in Vans and a flannel shirt,” says Toosii. “As an artist, he treats me like I’m precious. Shout-out to the new Capitol.” As the company approaches its…

AS R.KELLY FACES A trial in New York on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges, with another trial for similar charges to follow in Chicago, the singer’s lawyer says that he’s running out of money. “His funds are depleted,” said attorney Deveraux Cannick at an Aug. 3 court hearing, requesting free trial transcripts for his client. In jail since July 2019, Kelly hasn’t been able to tour or release new music. His existing recordings still generate plenty of revenue that flows to former label RCA Records — about $1.7 million in the United States so far this year, Billboard estimates — but the resulting royalties don’t go into Kelly’s pockets because the money has been claimed by both his former recording studio landlord and a woman who won a…

CAN A HARDCORE punk band impact the U.S. mainstream in 2021? Turnstile may soon provide an answer: Ahead of its third album, Glow On (out Aug. 27 on Roadrunner Records), the Baltimore quintet has been steadily gaining buzz beyond the hard-rock community, thanks in part to enviable live bookings, new collaborations with Blood Orange mastermind Dev Hynes and recent social media shoutouts from Blink-182’s Tom DeLonge and Paramore’s Hayley Williams. (“This band has always been so cool and the new music smacksssssss me,” Williams tweeted in July.) The major cosigns coincide with an album that is both more ambitious and accessible than Turnstile’s 2018 Roadrunner debut, Time & Space, which peaked atop Billboard’s Heatseekers Albums chart and has earned 36,000 equivalent album units, according to MRC Data. “We’ve never…

THE BEATLES BROKE UP FIVE DECADES ago — but they never went away. The group’s 1 compilation was the bestselling album of the 2000s; last year, the band took in $12.9 million, according to Billboard’s U.S. Money Makers list; and on Nov. 25, the Get Back documentary that director Peter Jackson assembled from footage of the Let It Be sessions will debut on Disney+. “Because it was so close to The Beatles’ breakup, my impression of the [1970 Let It Be] film was of a sad moment,” Paul McCartney told Billboard in a Nov. 16, 2019, cover story. Now “the overall impression is of friends working together.” WE CAN’T WORK IT OUT “The Beatles, the symbol of the British influence on the global music industry and the catalyst of…