Hip-Hop
Travis Scott Begins Effort to Dismiss Astroworld Lawsuits: Report
Travis Scott has begun the process of dismissing the hundreds of lawsuits over his deadly Astroworld festival. Per TMZ, the Houston rapper has filed to have a civil suit against him and his companies — Jack Enterprises and Cactus Jack — be dropped with prejudice. Scott is issuing a “general denial” in response to attendee Jessie Garcia’s lawsuit, meaning he wants to deny responsibility for all allegations in one blanket response. TMZ reports that Travis and his legal team are preparing a similar response to every civil suit filed against him. This may not be necessary, however, as attorneys for both victims and festival organizers filed a joint petition last week to combine the mounting number of cases into a single “multi-district litigation.” As Billboard points out, this is standar...
Top 50 Songs of 2021
The 2021 edition of our Annual Report continues with our Top 50 Songs of 2021 list. As the year winds down, stay tuned for more awards, lists, and articles about the best music, film, and TV of 2021. You can find it all in one place here. While 2020 felt like the year that didn’t happen, 2021 has felt like the year that just… kinda did. As the calendar pages flipped by, we cautiously began searching for a semblance of a familiar life, culminating in a summer-fall explosion as festivals returned and venues reopened. But for so many reasons, we were always looking over our shoulders, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Even as the world proved ever stubborn, we were desperate to put the worst behind us. The term “post-pandemic” entered the lexicon, a fallacy we were all fully aware of as we ...
Cardi B Debuts Boozy Whipped Cream Partnership During Miami Art Week
Jumping on the celeb-back booze train, Cardi B is now peddling liquor, but her “authentic” spirit isn’t tequila or rum — it’s vodka-infused whipped cream. Whipshots by Cardi and Starco brands are available on Whipshots.com in 500-can-per-day Whip Drops, and the three launch flavors — vanilla, caramel and mocha — have been selling out in under four minutes daily since Dec. 1. Explore Explore Cardi B See latest videos, charts and news See latest videos, charts and news “I’m not really a hardcore liquor-drinking person. And I like things that are sexy and tasty. It’s going to be a party in every can,” Cardi tells Billboard. “At one time I was planning to do margaritas, but this is more fun.” On Dec. 4, Cardi debuted Whipshots with a sweets-themed party at Pharrell and David Grutman’s The Good...
Mach-Hommy Drops New Album Balens Cho: Stream
Less than a year after his last full-length project Pray for Haiti, Mach-Hommy is back with a new album. Balens Cho — which translates to “hot candles” in Creole — is out today, offers an even deeper understanding of the New Jersey rapper’s Haitian roots. Balens Cho is 13 songs total, with its subject matter detailing Mach’s hopeful outlook on Haitian youth, for whom he hopes to soon build a technology-focused school. Though Pray for Haiti was unfortunately snubbed for a Best Hip-Hop Album Grammy this year, Balens Cho further cements Mach’s status as one of today’s most exciting underground rappers, serving up an innovative take on East Coast rap. Stream the album on Apple Music or Spotify below. Last month, Mach-Hommy was featured on Kaytranada’s la...
These Hip-Hop Songs Prove Rappers Have A Strong Love For ‘The Matrix’ Film Franchise
Source: Ronald Siemoneit / Getty Film and Hip-Hop have a unique relationship being that you can always find a reference to a particular movie in a rap song. One movie in particular that always gets a nod from your favorite rapper is The Matrix. There is no denying how much of a stranglehold The Matrix has on pop culture. It’s made evident due to the film’s many references in other movies, television shows, cartoons, and music, especially in Hip-Hop. Since the movie’s 1999 release, The Matrix, plus its mind-blowing plot, has found its way into the songs of many rappers over the years. With Lana Wachowski’s highly-anticipated 4th film in the franchise, The Matrix: Resurrections, right around the corner, you can bet there will be even more Matrix-related bars popping up in new songs. Until we...
Rap Song of the Week: Tierra Whack Embraces Her Inner Joker on “Stand Up”
Our recurring new music feature Rap Song of the Week breaks down the hip-hop tracks you need to hear at the end of every week. Check out the full playlist here. This week we highlight “Stand Up” off Tierra Whack’s new Rap? EP. In the three years since releasing her innovative debut Whack World, Tierra Whack has put out a steady stream of one-off singles that have kept her in the conversation as one of the most talented rappers in the game. The Philly native officially returned this week with her new EP Rap?, which is unfortunately only three tracks long. With the opener “Stand Up,” however, Whack serves up a reminder that she will never stop pushing forward. In an interview with Apple Music, Whack shared her love for the most recent Joker film and expressed her ambitions to ...
Megan Thee Stallion Posts Graduation Countdown, Invites Hotties to Join the Party
Megan Thee Stallion is just over a week away from graduation from Texas Southern University and the Houston rapper could not be more excited. “9 more days until I graduate,” she tweeted on Thursday morning (Dec. 2) along with a wagging tongue emoji. She’s so jacked, in fact, that she wants some of her superfans to help her celebrate. “Are there in hotties in Texas that wanna pull up I wanna invite like 10 maybe 15 of y’all lol” she tweeted. There were, of course, plenty of Hotties ready to join the party in honor of the “Body” rapper finishing her degree in health administration. Explore See latest videos, charts and news Meg’s been holding down the books and the charts for the past two years, most recently taking the stage alongside BTS for the first on-stage concert collaboration on thei...
Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi Share “Just Look Up” from Netflix’s Don’t Look Up Soundtrack: Stream
The end of the world requires a good playlist, and Ariana Grande and Kid Cudi are here to offer their contribution. The pair have today shared “Just Look Up,” a cut from the soundtrack to Netflix’s forthcoming dark comedy Don’t Look Up. Don’t Look Up stars Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence as astronomers who find out that a “very large comet” is on its way to crash into Earth and eradicate humankind. Both Grande and Cudi have cameo roles in the film. As Grande and Cudi tell it on “Just Look Up,” the surefire way to make the best of such disastrous circumstances is to throw yourself into love — and disregard conspiracy theorists. Advertisement Related Video “Just look up /There is no place to hide /True love doesn’t die /It holds on tight and never lets you go,” Grande croons on the t...
Fight Breaks Out During Three 6 Mafia and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony’s Verzuz Battle
A fight broke out between members of Three 6 Mafia and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony during a Verzuz battle on Thursday night. As Complex points out, Bone Thugs’ Bizzy Bone accused Three 6 Mafia of “mocking” him as he performed, and proceeded to throw a bottle in the group’s direction. In response, members of Three 6 Mafia rushed towards Bone Thugs N’ Harmony’s side of the stage and threw punches. The Verzuz battle was briefly paused as organizers of the event sought to get the situation under the control, but the two groups eventually returned to the stage and resumed the concert. Advertisement Related Video Later in the evening, Bizzy Bone apologized for the scuffle, saying, “I want to apologize to everybody the fuck out there, on both sides. I’m not trying to fuck this shit up. Pardon me. Let’s ...
Raekwon Says RZA Rejected a Leonardo DiCaprio Wu-Tang Biopic
Leonardo DiCaprio’s a big Wu-Tang Clan fan, and Raekwon is apparently a big enough Leonardo DiCaprio fan that he was all set to let the actor’s production company create a biopic about his rap group. Unfortunately, the rapper says his bandmate RZA shut the film down in favor of Wu-Tang: An American Saga, the TV series now streaming on Hulu. In a Rolling Stone-published excerpt from the rapper’s memoir, From Staircase To Stage: The Story Of Raekwon And Wu-Tang Clan, Raekwon writes that he was inspired by the success of N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton film and wanted to pursue a similar project, but that RZA believed a scripted series was the best way to tell the group’s story. When he convinced his bandmate to let him shop around for movie deals, he met up with DiCaprio though the...
Multiple HIV/AIDS Organizations Say DaBaby Has Ghosted Them Since Initial Meetings
Last summer, DaBaby made the interesting choice of hyping up the crowd at Rolling Loud Miami by spewing ignorant nonsense about gay people, women, and people with autoimmune disorders. After half-hearted apologies and defensive music videos got him dropped from several music festivals, the rapper met with a series of HIV/AIDS organizations to clean up his act and assure audiences he was willing to do better. Now, however, several of those organizations are saying DaBaby has not contacted them since their August meeting, nor donated any money to their causes. “Though we felt the conversation was extremely powerful a couple months ago, we haven’t heard anything back as an organization since our conversation,” Ian L. Haddock, founder and executive director of The Normal Anomaly Initiativ...
Spotify Reveals the Most Streamed Artists, Albums, and Songs of 2021
Christmas Day for music geeks is here: Today (December 1st), Spotify’s 381 million-plus users were gifted with their Spotify Wrapped, a roundup of their most-listened music of the year. Aside from individual rundowns for each user, the streaming giant also unveiled details about the world’s listening habits in 2021. Some of the stats shouldn’t come as a surprise. Much of the world was drinking the Olivia Rodrigo Kool-Aid this year, with her smash hit “drivers license” cruising straight to the No. 1 song in the world. Meanwhile, Bad Bunny took the title of the most-streamed artist globally for the second year in a row, with Taylor Swift and BTS trailing right behind in the second and third spots, respectively. In the US specifically, Drake was the most streamed artist, followed by T-Swift, ...
