Innholdsfortegnelse for August 27, 2022 i Billboard Magazine

NICKI MINA J’S “Super Freaky Girl” debuts on the Billboard Hot 100 at No. 1, marking her first leader on the all-format songs chart as an unaccompanied artist. It’s her third time reaching the list’s summit following “Trollz” (with 6ix9ine) and her featured turn on Doja Cat’s “Say So,” both in 2020. Notably, Minaj scores the first Hot 100 No. 1 debut for a hip-hop song by a female artist without any accompanying acts since Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” in 1998. “Super Freaky Girl” tallied 21.1 million streams, 4.6 million radio airplay audience impressions and 89,000 downloads sold in its first week (Aug. 12-18), according to Luminate, and launches atop both the Digital Song Sales and Streaming Songs charts. Minaj adds her 12th No. 1 on the…

In the last two years, Bartees Strange has opened for Phoebe Bridgers, Courtney Barnett and Car Seat Headrest, among others, but this November, the 33-year-old Washington, D.C.-based indie rocker will embark upon his first North American headlining tour, which begins Nov. 3 in Pittsburgh. “I’ve been opening for so many people and getting a feel for what all of these different bands’ crowds are like, and I’m curious what my crowd is like,” he says. On a day off from touring with The National, Strange shared his plans for the trek in support of his second album and 4AD debut, Farm to Table. SET THE STAGE I’m seeing a floral kind of vibe, this farm vibe. I have a huge table right in the middle of the stage that…

I DON’T THINK THERE has ever been a time in music history when the influence of hip-hop has been more evident,” says RIAA chairman/CEO Mitch Glazier. “Streaming is the biggest revenue generator for the industry, and hip-hop accounts for a huge percentage of those streams.” Given the genre’s dominance, he adds, “now is exactly the right time to look back” to celebrate the pioneers who helped create rap. On Sept. 14, the RIAA will do so at RIAA Honors Pioneers of Hip-Hop, to be held at its new headquarters on F Street NW at the East End of Washington, D.C. To properly commemorate the genre’s legacy, the RIAA Honors will salute Grandmaster Flash; MC Lyte; Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.; and Universal Music Group general counsel Jeffrey Harleston as their…

COLDPLAY HAS BEEN hovering in the upper reaches of Billboard’s monthly Top Tours chart for most of the year. It was No. 5 in March and April, powered by 11 shows in Latin America, and hit Nos. 3 and 7, respectively, in May and June during a 12-date trek through North America. But once it arrived in Europe, the band struck gold, with the first 11 continental dates of the Music of the Spheres tour making it the highest-grossing touring act of July. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, Coldplay’s stops in Berlin; Paris; Frankfurt, Germany; and Warsaw, Poland, earned a combined $66.7 million and sold 731,000 tickets, averaging $6.1 million and 66,000 tickets per night. Coldplay succeeds fellow U.K.-originating artist Ed Sheeran atop the chart, who similarly…

MUMBAI, INDIA — Rapper-singer Badshah is known in music circles outside India as the artist who claimed in 2019 to have broken BTS’ record for the most YouTube views in 24 hours — a boast the video streaming service never verified. Three years later, with Universal Music Group in his corner, he has his sights set on becoming India’s biggest global crossover artist. UMG and Badshah want to popularize Indian music globally with a genre they’re calling Desi pop. (“Desi” is a colloquial Hindi word, considered offensive by some, meaning “from the country.”) They launched the quest in April with “Voodoo,” a cross-continental collaboration between Badshah and Latin artists J Balvin and Tainy. Five months later, despite what the label called the most extensive marketing campaign for any of…

Following a summer of synchs powering veteran acts back up the charts — especially the Stranger Things boosts that benefitted Kate Bush (“Running Up That Hill [A Deal With God]”) and Metallica (“Master of Puppets”) — flagship names in R&B are looking to score chart resurgences of their own. After a flurry of new major-label deals with heritage R&B/hiphop acts, the coming months will be packed with releases heralding their long-awaited returns. Shawna Spears, who oversees artist partnerships for the genre at TikTok, says of the “old school is the new school” paradigm: “Great music will always live on.” Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds Girls Night Out Oct. 21, Capitol Records After a nearly seven-year hiatus, the 12-time Grammy Award winner will resurface with a new album whose themes mirror his…

JESSIE REYEZ NEVER quite got to celebrate the release of Before Love Came To Kill Us, her long-awaited 2020 debut album. “It came out the same fucking month that everything happened, everything paused,” she recalls. “No one could really point me in any direction or give me any sort of advice, because we were the guinea pigs doing it in the middle of the pandemic.” Although there have been a series of highs in the interim (a No. 4 debut on Billboard’s Top R&B Albums chart, an opening slot on Billie Eilish’s tour), the Grammy Award-nominated singer is eager to experience a proper album launch with the release of her second album, YESSIE, out Sept. 16 on FMLY/Island Records, noting that this project “almost feels like the real first…

ON A MUGGY FL ORIDA afternoon, a summer storm pelts the pristine white Rolls-Royce SUV that pulls up to an empty street corner just outside downtown Miami. The window rolls down, and an immediately recognizable voice, soft and sultry, calls from the driver’s seat: “Come on in,” he says, leaning over to push open the passenger door. I clamber into the front seat, mortified as water splatters on the red leather. The car may be flashy, but the man inside looks much less so. Romeo Santos — the artist who took bachata global and became one of Latin music’s biggest stars — is wearing plaid pants, an oversize yellow T-shirt and a baseball cap. His only jewelry is his Rolex and a small gold chain. The car is empty…

KANG HY O-WON isn’t a household name. The South Korean music producer is better known as Pdogg, the studio wizard behind hits by K-pop supergroup BTS and other acts on the roster of Korean entertainment company HYBE. Because Kang played a key role in HYBE’s success, his employer gave him 128,000 stock options in 2016 that turned into about $35 million when Kang exercised them. (All currency conversions to U.S. dollars in this story are based on the average 2021 exchange rate.) That made Kang the second-highest-paid music industry executive last year among those whose earnings are publicly disclosed. Yoon Seok-jun and Kim Shin-gyu, co-CEO of HYBE America and chief artist management officer, respectively, also benefited from HYBE going public. Yoon netted nearly $34 million and Kim gained $24…

EVEN BEFORE THE NFL announced that Dr. Dre, Mary J. Blige, Snoop Dogg, Kendrick Lamar and Eminem would perform during the Pepsi-sponsored halftime show at Super Bowl LVI on Feb. 13, Seth Dudowsky knew he had a crucial sound issue to solve. One of his many responsibilities as the point person for the production at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, Calif., which would be seen by 103.4 million viewers, was keeping the set list under wraps. The problem, however, was the venue, which is next door to the NFL’s Los Angeles-area headquarters where he works and is anything but soundproof. “It’s technically an outdoor stadium with a roof,” Dudowsky says. “So sound blows out the [open] sides of the stadium.” Knowing that media outfits would station reporters outside the stadium…

WHILE searching for the perfect narrative to stage a musical around the catalog of Swedish superproducer Max Martin, producer Theresa Steele Page had two off-limits storylines: “No boy bands and no little girl from a tiny town who becomes a pop star.” After all, Steele Page and her production partner Tim Headington already had front-row seats to those reallife success stories: As part of Johnny Wright’s Wright Entertainment Group in the 1990s, they worked closely with pre-fame Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC as they started scaling the Billboard charts with Martin-helmed smashes. This time around, the duo was much more interested in a narrative jukebox musical akin to the ABBA-soundtracked Mamma Mia! versus a Jersey Boys style biopic. As it turned out, the famously private Martin and his…

When Kelsea Ballerini launched her career, she made a promise to herself: include one solo write on every album. As she readies her fourth full-length, Subject to Change, out Sept. 23 on Black River Entertainment, she assures she has kept her word. “It keeps me accountable to not always rely on a co-writer,” says Ballerini, who won her first Country Music Association Awards, published a book of poetry and scored her fifth No. 1 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart in the past year. While she’s always writing between projects, she says that there comes a time “to gather all the demos and figure out the theme. When I was listening through the first 80 songs I had, there was a lot of juxtaposition and change captured.” Another recurring concept?…

It was two days before THE OPENING OF MY WAY, USHER’S NEW, REBOOTED LAS VEGAS RESIDENCY, AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR SIMON HAMMERSTEIN STILL HAD AN IMPORTANT PUZZLE TO SOLVE. Like any artist who does a residency, Usher has a big catalog of hits to choose from — the trouble was choosing which one would end the show. In the afternoon, Hammerstein settled into an empty row of VIP seats toward the front of the Park MGM’s Dolby Live theater, next to production designer Paul Tate dePoo, who quietly argued for “Love in This Club.” “I feel like Vanna White trying to sell this pitch,” he said drolly, pulling the track up on his phone. “Can you just let go of that song?” Hammerstein said with mock desperation. Still, Hammerstein asked…

Beyoncé’s first notable appearance in Billboard came in the March 21, 1998, issue, which identified her as one-quarter of “the female foursome” that ended “the eight-week run of the 18-year-old crooner” Usher at No. 1 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart when “No, No, No” negated “Nice & Slow.” One-quarter of a century later, she’s one of the biggest pop stars on the planet, with eight Billboard Hot 100 No. 1s and 19 million albums sold in the United States (according to Luminate) as a solo act. In 2021, she became the most Grammy-awarded singer ever, with a career total of 28 trophies; this summer, she topped the Billboard 200 and Hot 100 simultaneously, with Renaissance and “Break My Soul,” respectively. CHILD’S (AIR)PLAY “Armed with beauty, youth and the…