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Jaquel Knight Shares First Choreography He Memorized And Best Battle Songs
Music

Jaquel Knight Shares First Choreography He Memorized And Best Battle Songs

by jummy84
written by jummy84

Jaquel Knight’s talent has opened doors for him to work with some of the industry’s top talent including Beyoncé, Chris Brown, and Brandy,  but the Atlanta representative still remembers the first choreography he ever memorized. 

“The first song I learned the choreo too was ‘Real Love’ by Mary J Blige when she performed it on Soul Train,”  he revealed to VIBE at the Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final. “Then it was every TLC performance. My favorite one was when they did the MTV VMA’s [1999]. That’s probably one of my favorite things I remember learning. Then I became a pop kid. All the Brittney Spears performances. All the Janet Jackson performances. I can go on and on.” 

Enthusiastically, he continued to elaborate on his relationship to street dance as the competitors at the Red Bull Dance Your Style World Final were tasked with delivering the best of their non-traditional, freestyle moves opposed to showcasing classically trained technique and learned routines.

“I’m from the hood,” he exclaimed. “If you can’t dance, if you can’t get out there and go, you can’t dance. Freestyle dance is the core of who we are as dancers and the core of who I am as a choreographer.”

Knight continued, “For me, it’s important for dancers to be able to freestyle. It’s also an art I want to say we’re losing but thankfully things like this Red Bull event, it’s keeping the freestyle alive…That’s where your personality, your attitude, your charisma comes from.” 

Keeping in alignment with street style, 36-year-old listed the top songs for dancers to play for head-to-head competition. Artists he named include Missy Elliott, Fatman Scoop, Pharrell Williams and more.

Watch Jaquel Knight Set A VIBE with the best battle songs below.

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Wild Cherry soundtrack | What songs feature in the BBC drama?
TV & Streaming

Wild Cherry soundtrack | What songs feature in the BBC drama?

by jummy84
written by jummy84

If you’re making your way through BBC One’s latest drama, Wild Cherry, chances are that you’ve been toe-tapping your way through each episode.

As well as taking us on quite the twisted journey through wealthy ‘island’ Richford Lake, the series centres on a scandal that rips through the local girls’ school and plummets teenage best friends Grace (Imogen Faires) and Allegra (Amelia May) into the spotlight.

But along with all the drama and backstabbing also comes a catchy soundtrack that is packed full of songs, ranging from artists like Jordan Rakei, Dave and Lykke Li. The title song itself is an original one that was crafted by the show’s creator and writer Nicôle Lecky, who also showed off her musical talents in previous series Mood.

She told RadioTimes.com in an exclusive chat for Pass the Mic: “It was always my intention, actually, I should say, to do the title music. I thought that was quite fun. Rotem and I got into a studio and we created the song – and that became the title track.”

But what other songs feature in Wild Cherry? Read on to find out.

Wild Cherry soundtrack: What songs feature in the BBC drama?

Grace (Imogen Faires) and Allegra (Amelia May) in Wild Cherry. BBC/Firebird Pictures/Natalie Seery

Episode 1

  • Baby I’m Yours – Cass Elliot
  • Where do we go now? – Gracie Abrams
  • Favourite Kind of Girl – Gotts Street Park (featuring Flikka)
  • They – Jem
  • Never Ever – All Saints
  • Radiance – Agent Whiskers
  • The Drive – Everyone You Know
  • Talkin the Hardest – Giggs
  • Immaculate – Shygirl & Saweetie
  • Decisions – Knucks, M1llionz & Shae Universe
  • Genesis. – RAYE
  • Fuel to Fire – Agnes Obel

Episode 2

  • Manifestation Manifesto – Lava La Rue
  • Anyone Who Knows What Love Is (Will Understand) – Irma Thomas
  • Werewolf – Cat Power

Episode 3

  • Little Bit – Lykke Li
  • A Little Respect – Erasure
  • Sprinter – Dave & Central Cee
  • Colors – Black Pumas
Tara Webb as Noori Abas, Amelia May as Allegra Lonsdale, Imogen Faires as Grace Gibbons & Isabelle Allen as Jocasta in Wild Cherry all sitting together on a stoop.

Tara Webb as Noori Abas, Amelia May as Allegra Lonsdale, Imogen Faires as Grace Gibbons & Isabelle Allen as Jocasta in Wild Cherry. BBC/Firebird Pictures/Natalie Seery

Episode 4

  • In Your Arms – Someone & Tessa Rose Jackson
  • We, The Drowned – Lisa Hannigan

Episode 5

  • Wannabe – Spice Girls
  • Clouds – Jordan Rakei

Episode 6

  • Evergreen – Ritchy Mitch & The Coal Miners (featuring Caamp)
  • Colours out of Grey – Anders Lewén & James King
  • The Whirlwind – Alex Wilson
  • Free Yourself – Jessie Ware
  • Floating on a Moment – Beth Gibbons

Wild Cherry premieres on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on Friday 15th November.

Add Wild Cherry to your watchlist on the Radio Times: What to Watch app – download now for daily TV recommendations, features and more.

Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what’s on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.

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Magdalena Bay to Release New Songs in Nice Day Box Set
Music

Magdalena Bay to Release New Songs in Nice Day Box Set

by jummy84
written by jummy84

Magdalena Bay have released another pair of new songs: “This Is the World (I Made It for You)” and “Nice Day” follow three other double-singles the band has shared in the autumn. Listen to the new tracks below.

Mica Tenenbaum and Matthew Lewin kicked off their recent run of productivity, in late September, with “Second Sleep” and “Star Eyes.” They next released “Human Happens” and “Paint Me a Picture,” in mid-October, and “Unoriginal” and “Black-Eyed Susan Climb” on Halloween. All eight songs are now being collected in a box set called Nice Day: A Collection of Singles. They’re available separately as 7″ vinyl singles, too.

Regarding today’s new songs Tenenbaum and Lewin said, “This is the final pair. (We made it for you.) Thank you for listening to these songs; it’s been a nice day to tangle with you.”

The Nice Day songs follow Magdalena Bay’s Imaginal Disk. They remain on tour in support of the album.

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Squeeze Revisit Early Unheard Songs On 'Trixies'
Music

Squeeze Revisit Early Unheard Songs On ‘Trixies’

by jummy84
written by jummy84

Long before their reign as one of the most erudite bands in rock, Squeeze founding members Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook wrote a bunch of early songs as 1970s teenagers that have never seen the light of day. That will change on March 6, when BMG releases Trixies, the group’s first new album in eight years. The first taste of the music, “Trixies Part One,” is out now.

In 1974, Difford was 19 and Tilbrook 16 as they began writing tracks such as “Don’t Go Out in the Dark,” “You Get the Feeling” and “The Place We Call Mars,” which were set in a fictional club named Trixies. “We fully committed ourselves to songwriting, but this was three or four years before we even got to make our first record,” says Difford. “Long story short, these were songs that we just didn’t have enough musical experience to record properly.”

The “Pulling Mussels From the Shell”/”Tempted” hitmakers revisited the material with its latter-day touring band, including former Roots bassist Owen Biddle, who produced. “The songs that we wrote then astound me. I’m proud of them now, and I’m particularly proud that it was young us that did that. These are very much the same songs that we wrote then,” Tilbrook offers. “The only difference is that now I can teach the songs to the rest of the band. Back then, I didn’t even know what the names of the chords were!”

What’s more, an album of entirely new Squeeze material was tracked alongside Trixies and will be released at some point in the future. To cap the year, Squeeze are touring with Madness in the U.K. through a Dec. 20 show at the O2 Arena in London.

“The act of revisiting the Trixies songs had me in tears, partly because they’re so good, but also because I’m aware of all the stuff that I’ve still yet to hear and write,” Tilbrook says. Adds Difford, “It really fills me with joy that at my age we can discover that we wrote such great songs when we were teenagers. I’m very proud of that.”

Here is the track list for Trixies:

“What More Can I Say”
“You Get the Feeling”
“The Place We Call Mars”
“Hell on Earth”
“The Dancer”
“Good Riddance”
“Don’t Go Out in the Dark”
“Why Don’t You”
“Anything But Me”
“It’s Over”
“The Jaguars”
“Trixies Part One”
“Trixies Part Two”

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A Breakdown of the Song’s Lyrics – Hollywood Life
Hollywood

A Breakdown of the Song’s Lyrics – Hollywood Life

by jummy84
written by jummy84

Image Credit: Getty Images for Academy Museum

Hilary Duff finally went back, back to the beginning of her pop star roots. The former Lizzie McGuire star released her 2025 single, “Mature,” that November, and fans are still clamoring over the song’s lyrics and their meaning. The track is a recollection of a past, unknown relationship when Hilary dated an older man. Naturally, the song prompted listeners to contemplate whom she is singing about.

“Mature” is Hilary’s first piece of music she’s released in a decade, and fans can’t wait for her to perform live in the new year.

Below, Hollywood Life has a breakdown of the lyrics and meaning of Hilary’s 2025 single, “Mature.”

What Is Hilary Duff’s Song ‘Mature’ About?

Hilary explained in a press release that “Mature” is “a little conversation that my present self is having with my younger self.”

“The two of us are reflecting on a past experience and sending love to each other,” the Disney Channel alum noted. “It’s a chuckle, a wink and a sense of being grateful that we are sure footed in where we landed.”

Who Were the ‘Mature’ Song Lyrics Written About?

Hilary has not confirmed who “Mature was inspired by, but the lyrics point to a past relationship with an older man, who’s now dating a similar-looking younger girl.

“She looks / Like all of your girls but blonder,” the Younger star sings in the chorus. “A little like me, just younger / Bet she loves when she hears you say / ‘You’re so mature for your agе, babe’ / She looks / Like shе could be your daughter / Like me before I got smarter / When I was flattered to hear you say ‘You’re so mature for your age, babe,’ oh.”

In a separate verse, Hilary recalls listening to the song “Strawberry Letter 23” by The Brothers Johnson and hiding her “car at Carbon Beach so I wasn’t seen at yours.” Carbon Beach is located in Malibu, California.

Is ‘Mature’ About Hilary Duff’s Ex-Boyfriend Joel Madden?

Fans of Hilary are convinced that “Mature” was inspired by her past romance with ex-boyfriend Joel Madden. The former couple started dating in 2004 when Hilary was a teenager. They broke up about two years later, and Joel started dating his current wife, Nicole Richie.

Nicole and Hilary have remained friends for years, and the reality TV personality even showed her support for Hilary’s 2025 track in a sweet Instagram Story. In it, Nicole included a shot of her and the How I Met Your Father alum wearing black outfits, laughing and holding hands on the ground.

“‘Mature’ is not the word I would use to describe us, but regardless, this song is a BOP,” Nicole wrote across the Story.

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10 David Gray Songs You Need to Hear (That Aren't "Babylon") » PopMatters
Music

10 David Gray Songs You Need to Hear (That Aren’t “Babylon”) » PopMatters

by jummy84
written by jummy84

David Gray made his musical name at the turn of the 21st century, but it would not be until halfway through its first decade that he released his true masterpiece. 1999’s White Ladder put Gray on the global map, fueled by the success of lead single “Babylon”. On that album and its successor, A New Day at Midnight, Gray pursues an electronic-inflected style of folk – “folktronica”, as one neologism has it – that lends him aesthetic uniqueness, bridging the old-fashioned guy-with-a-guitar setup and the new kinds of production and instrumentation available in a changing technological landscape.

After breaking into the international mainstream, however, Gray would not stick to folktronica. As 2005’s Life in Slow Motion attests, his music blossomed with organic instrumentation and fuller arrangements, in contrast to the intimate bedroom sound that makes White Ladder endearing still. Life in Slow Motion, now re-released in deluxe digital and vinyl editions that include demos and B-sides, testifies that for whatever Gray was able to get out of a spare recording setup, he knew how to take advantage of a full studio setup and a whole series of accoutrements, including brass string sections on the likes of “Alibi” and the haunting title track. The sonic canvas is as expansive as the arctic environs on the cover art.

Six albums have followed Life in Slow Motion, bringing the tally to 13 for Gray’s career. With the new edition of that LP as exigence, PopMatters looks back on Gray’s artistic output, delving deep into his catalogue to highlight ten songs that, in various ways, illustrate the many facets of his songwriting that culminate on Life in Slow Motion.

No songs from the much-lauded White Ladder appear here, intentionally. “Babylon” and its siblings, like “Sail Away” and “This Year’s Love”, still feature at any concert of Gray’s, and more ink, physical and digital, has been spilled about them than anything else in his discography. This article prefers the deep cut over the smash single, and Gray is one of those artists who shine most brightly on the songs that were never meant for radio’s circulation. The singles featured below dropped after the days when radio charts reigned supreme, but in a different musical reality, they still deserved to shoot to number one.

“Falling Free” (from Flesh, 1994)

This hushed piece from David Gray’s early and pre-fame years sounds in every aspect like an artist coming into his voice. Consisting of nothing more than Gray and a piano, “Falling Free” signaled his aptitude for writing love songs. “We’re standing face-to-face / With the angel of grace / Don’t it just taste so pure?” he cries at the song’s climax, a rupture of emotion in a gentle ballad.

The juxtaposition of stark piano chords and Gray’s poignant lyrics marks an essential passing of a test for a young songwriter: how well can you paint a musical picture with the barest of ingredients? “Falling Free” gives us a protean version of the Gray that would blossom in the years to come: earnest without being cloying, emotionally direct, and lyrically rich.

“Late Night Radio” (from Sell, Sell, Sell, 1996)

Despite its title, Sell, Sell, Sell ended up being the record that preceded the one that sold copies in the millions. Still, “Late Night Radio” should have been as big a hit as “Babylon” was, perhaps even more so. The song tells a story familiar to the annals of rock ‘n’ roll – a small-town woman having her world expanded with a move to a big city – but does so with a catchy chord progression and an intriguing chorus metaphor (“She don’t mind the late-night radio”).

Gray peppers in imagery that adds vivacity to the familiar picture he conjures, as when he describes New York as “dark, dirty and stark / Burning with yellow wings.” When in the final verse he describes his protagonist as “alive with the sound”, the same feels true of him. 

“Flame Turns Blue” (from Lost Songs 95-98, 2000)

Of the songs written by David Gray that should make the mythical songwriter’s canon, the kind of song that anyone with a voice and a guitar would do well to know, “Flame Turns Blue” stands out as the best candidate. Gray regularly introduces the song onstage by explaining its backstory, which was written after a stolen tour bus incident during a US tour. However, “Flame Turns Blue” might be the most timeless thing he’s written; the particularity of his experience in writing the song translates into an expression of universality.

The final verse contains some of Gray’s finest lyrical poetry: “Through the lemon trees the diamonds of light / Break in splinters on the pages where I write.” Lost Songs is an interstitial moment in Gray’s career, compiling tracks written in the years leading up to White Ladder. “Flame Turns Blue” confirmed a year after that record’s release that the brilliance had been in the works for some time.

“Knowhere” (from A New Day at Midnight, 2002)

The deepest of deep cuts, “Knowhere” might not be on the radar of even the most enthusiastic Gray devotees. No live versions of the song exist on YouTube, and the archival website Setlist only logs three performances, all in 2002, the year of A New Day at Midnight’s release. This brooding electronic number captures the outer edge of Gray’s “folktronica” experimentation.

Unlike “Flame Turns Blue”, “Knowhere” doesn’t sound like the kind of song one could effectively capture with only a guitar or piano as an aid. The brooding opening image (“Slow voices speaking through a hurricane”) and skeptical chorus refrain (“I don’t know where I / I don’t know what I’m / Supposed to do now”) provoke a curious disquiet. One could call it a mood piece, albeit one with which it is easy to sing along.  

“Ain’t No Love” (from Life in Slow Motion, 2005)

Nestled in the midsection of Life in Slow Motion, an album that begins with orchestral bombast (“Alibi”) and concludes in a squall of distortion (“Disappearing World”), “Ain’t No Love” does not assert itself the way one might expect of a great song. The simple C-major chord progression and brief structure – which, unusually, concludes after just a single chorus, right as the music achieves liftoff – is downright spartan in contrast to the string-soaked lushness of “Alibi” or the gradual build of “Now and Always”.

Simplicity works to Gray’s advantage in this case. The delicate piano chords that augment the closing verse’s glistening imagery (“On winter trees the fruit of rain / Is hanging trembling on the branches / Like a thousand diamond buds”) are a respite amidst the dynamic volleys of Life in Slow Motion, a reminder that resting for a breather affords its own kind of power.

“Full Steam” (from Draw the Line, 2009)

Gray would do well to indulge in a duets record, considering the collaborations he’s put to tape over the years. “Full Steam” is the boldest of that small group, a rousing tune featuring Annie Lennox that, given its context of the Great Recession, feels like a renunciation of neoliberalism. “Forlorn, adrift, on seas of beige / In this, our golden age,” Gray and Lennox harmonize together, before admitting in the chorus: “Now you saw it coming / And I saw it coming / We all saw it coming / And we still bought it.”

Gray, of course, is hardly a polemicist, and “Full Steam” is no fiery manifesto. The reluctance in the lyrics to name specific political targets ultimately proves to be an asset. In many situations, Gray and Lennox remind us, the first step toward change often involves recognizing our own complicity. Barring that, we are “running full steam ahead” into destruction.

“Birds of the High Arctic” (from Mutineers, 2014)

Arriving after the more organically instrumented Draw the Line and the stripped-bare Foundling (2010), Mutineers hearkened back to the electronic textures of Gray’s years most centrally in the public spotlight. Yet there is a maturity there built from the more robust arrangements on Life in Slow Motion and Draw the Line, making Mutineers a unique point of synthesis. “Birds of the High Arctic” recalls the dramatic piano balladry of “Alibi” while washing it in layers of reverb.

Gray sounds like he set up microphones in the frigid landscape on the cover of Life in Slow Motion. The song ascends to a pained moment of revelation: “Baby say that it isn’t true / You were never there and it wasn’t you.” Lyrically, he indulges one of his beloved topics, avian life, equating a now-departed presence to a speck with wings on a whiteout sky. 

“Hall of Mirrors” (from Gold in a Brass Age, 2019)

Gold in a Brass Age is, in many ways, the logical aesthetic follow-up to White Ladder and A New Day at Midnight, in its embrace of electronic textures. Still, it could only have been written by a songwriter who expanded his horizons in the way Gray did after the early 2000s. The jittery “Hall of Mirrors” proves illustrative in this regard: chiming guitars intertwine with spastic programmed drums and layered vocals, coming to glorious fruition with a hymnal of an outro: “Baby when that oh-too-solid ground / Comes a-risin’ up, hey don’t look down now,” Gray chants, his voice a choir in miniature. New-school in sound but old-school in feeling, “Hall of Mirrors” is, as its name suggests, a showcase of Gray’s artistry. (Read the author’s interview with Gray about this album for PopMatters here.)

“Accumulates” (from Skellig, 2021)

A simple hammered-on guitar lick defines David Gray’s biggest hit in “Babylon”, so it’s unsurprising that a reprisal of that technique works brilliantly on “Accumulates”. Like the rest of the tunes on Skellig, “Accumulates” captures Gray at his most elemental, with voice and guitar doing the heavy lifting, adornments minimal at most. The origin of the album’s name, taken from remote islands off the coast of Ireland, informs the meditative isolation that characterizes “Accumulates”, whose post-2020 release felt all the more apt, given the containment experienced by Gray’s listeners worldwide.

He dances around the subject of the song; “Well it grips / And it grins / It cavorts / and it gyrates,” he sings, never giving the “it” a proper noun. The repetitive hammered guitar note and lyrically hypnotic quality of “Accumulates” suggest the image of someone trying their best, on their own, to think their way to identifying a force they sense but cannot name. Who among us hasn’t been there?

“Plus and Minus” (from Dear Life, 2025)

Now over 30 years into a musical life, David Gray continues to add gems to his songwriting trove. “Plus and Minus”, the first single from his latest LP Dear Life, ranks with the likes of “Sail Away” and “Please Forgive Me.” A mercurial duet with a young UK singer named Talia Ray, “Plus and Minus” deploys a perfectly placed modulation in the prechorus that includes a poetic phrase that could be describing the trials of creativity, or of the pursuit of love: “For the fire that gets lit / And the flame that regrets it.”

The electronic drum track and repetitive Euro dance-style piano chords that anchor the song evoke Gray’s 1990s roots. However, the cumulative effect is contemporary, a testament to an artist who can adapt to the times while still sounding like himself. “This whole routine is getting old,” Gray sings in unison with Rae, an ironic statement for an artist like himself.

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Arlo Parks Debuting New Songs At Club Shows
Music

Arlo Parks Debuting New Songs At Club Shows

by jummy84
written by jummy84

London-reared, L.A.-based musician Arlo Parks will play her first shows in more than a year next month, during which she plans to debut some fresh songs and other surprises.

“I’ve spent the past few years in the studio exploring new sonic palettes, world building and experimenting,” she wrote on Instagram. “I’ve always wanted to show people the workings out of my music, so [longtime collaborator] Baird and I will be bringing our studio setup to the stage for a journey through old and new material. I can’t wait to show you what I’ve been dreaming up, face to face, in three cities that mean a lot to me. Don’t miss out. It’s gonna be magic.”

Parks will play Nov. 27 at Bath House in London, Dec. 2 at Silo in New York and Dec. 5 at Melt in Los Angeles. Tickets go on sale Wednesday (Nov. 12) but fans must sign up through this link for access.

The artist has been off the road while working on the follow-up to 2023’s U.K. top 10 hit My Soft Machine, which is expected to move in a more electronic- and dance-oriented direction than on past projects. One new song, “New Desire,” was posted on YouTube last week and can be sampled below.

“This little idea was born out of a late late night session with Baird,” Parks said of the tune, which was inspired by a voice note “that made me feel like a teenager again — tender with new magic. I wanted to put my heart on the line and write it how it felt.”

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For the first time in 35 years, the Billboard Top 40 has no hip-hop or rap songs. Here’s why - National
Celebrity News

For the first time in 35 years, the Billboard Top 40 has no hip-hop or rap songs. Here’s why – National

by jummy84
written by jummy84

Starting in the late ’70s, hip-hop and rap ascended through popular culture, mostly in America but also in other countries.

Then, in 1990, a breakthrough. Hip-hop and rap tracks began infiltrating the Billboard Top 40, and for the next 35 years, we saw dozens of these songs reach official hit status. By the end of the decade, hip-hop/rap had supplanted rock as the nation’s cultudral driver when it came to music. It seemed unstoppable. America would forever be a hip-hop nation.

This month, however, a surprise. For the first time since 1990, the Billboard Top 40 was devoid of any hip-hop and rap.

What happened? Does this mean it’s on the decline and on the way out? Well, no. The genres are very alive and well. Its absence has more to do with the way charts are compiled these days than the popularity or strength of the songs.

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Charts are the way the music industry keeps score with itself. The higher a song or album rises, the more opportunities for hype. Radio play increases, sales go up, and more people stream the songs. And at the end of the year, the record company executives measure themselves against each other over who had the most high-charting singles and albums.

And it used to be so simple. Charts were compiled based on sales and radio airplay. In the streaming era, there’s a complicated weighting system that tries to convert digital music consumption into old-school sales. One modern metric is the Track Equivalent Album (TEA). Under this formula, 10 digital song sales from the same album equal the sale of one album, thereby unifying digital sales with physical ones.


Billboard also has Streaming Equivalent Sales (SEA). This measurement counts on-demand plays of a song through Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music and all the other platforms. If 1,500 songs are streamed from the same album, that counts the same as an old-school sale of an album. Radio airplay plus sales and TEA and SEA are supposed to give the industry an accurate and complete picture of how a certain release is doing.

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Put this all together and we have a chart compilation situation that is vastly different from what late broadcaster, Casey Kasem, used to count down every weekend. There’s plenty of gamesmanship happening.

When Taylor Swift puts out an album, like her latest, The Life of a Showgirl, Swifties buy up all the available physical copies of the record. There’s the standard vinyl release and seven additional variants, each with its own artwork and on various colours of vinyl. No Tay-Tay collection is complete without all of them, and each sale of a variant counts as an individual sale. Talk about juicing the numbers.

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Swifties also stream her music by the tens of millions, increasing the SEA units for The Life of a Showgirl, pushing the album even further up the charts. And because streams also factor heavily in compiling the Billboard Hot 100 (which, of course, includes the official Top 40), Swift dominates. For the week ending Nov. 8,  the performer has three songs in the Top 10 and 12 in the Top 40, leaving just 28 spaces for everyone else.

Other artists are currently benefiting from the current chart rules. HUNTR/X (Huntrix), the fictional girl group from KPop Demon Hunters, is a streaming sensation with four songs in the current Top 40, leaving 24 spots — 23, if you count the song released by Rumi, Jinu, EJAE and Andrew Choi, the human voices behind HUNTR/X.

Then there are the Saja Boys, the fictional boy band from KPop Demon Hunters, who hold down two spots of their own.

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Add in Morgan Wallen (two songs), Chris Brown (two songs) and Sabrina Carpenter (two songs), and there are only 17 spaces up for grabs. Those are divided up among pop artists like Olivia Dean, Alex Warren, Justin Bieber, Benson Boone, Tate McCrae and Kehlani.

Michael Jackson also made his annual appearance with Thriller (No. 32), which is always big around Halloween. There was only one debut last week, and that’s Love Girl from Megan Thee Stallion, which is more smooth R&B than anything else.

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There’s another factor, too. Billboard just changed the rules regarding eligible songs. Luther by Kendrick Lamar and SZA was kicked out of the Top 40 after 46 weeks, including 13 weeks at No. 1. Why? Because it didn’t stick at No. 25 or higher after its 26th week on the chart. Boom. Gone. The song is now deemed “recurrent,” a radio term for a big hit that’s still popular after an extended period of time but no longer current. No Luther, no hip-hop/rap in the Hot 100.

Have your eyes glazed over yet? If they have, I don’t blame you. I do this for a living, and I’m having a hard time staying awake.

Remember all this the next time someone tells you that Taylor Swift is bigger than The Beatles. When they were around, Billboard operated its charts much differently. Comparing The Beatles’ chart performance to Tay-Tay’s is silly since the rules are vastly different. It’s not just apples and oranges. It’s apples and mushrooms.

Does this mean that hip-hop/rap is on the way out? Hardly. It’s a quirk of the mathematics involved in compiling charts, combined with the phenomenon of Taylor Swift and KPop Demon Hunters.

YoungBoy Never Broke Again; BigXthaPlug and Ella Langley are rap tracks bubbling under at the moment. They’ll probably advance upwards as Tay-Tay and the Demon Hunters are streamed less, and hip-hop/rap will return to the Top 40.

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Anyone who grew up with Top 40 radio in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s was exposed to a wide variety of sounds and genres. Not so much anymore, right? The Billboard charts may matter less than they ever did.

 

 

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&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

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Grace Ives Comes Back With New Songs: Listen
Music

Grace Ives Comes Back With New Songs: Listen

by jummy84
written by jummy84

In and out of the studio, I felt myself existing in a world bigger than my house in Brooklyn. I wrote in different libraries all over LA, trying to figure out what to say in these songs. Somehow, this time around, I felt safer out in the world than I did holed up in my nest. Like trying to be a good person while surrounded by new places and people was a more secure plan than trying to change all alone at home. I felt safe getting lost, driving with friends, driving alone. Stopping in random motels and going down wrong roads felt way less dangerous than the life of falling, flailing and sneaking around I had gotten so used to in New York. Out in the open, in the wild, on the road, there was nowhere for me to hide. Nothing to steal. Nothing to chase. It’s a proper antidote to self-inflicted isolation and sedation.

This music feels more real to me than anything I’ve made before. I’ve played more instruments in the past year making this record than I’ve played in the majority of my life. I’ve let my heart and my hands work freely. I wanted to live in LA alone. I lived in LA alone. I wanted people to trust me. I tried to be open and treat people with more sincerity. I learned how to drive. I drove. The sky expanded around me and reminded me that I was not, in fact, the center of the universe. Just a small part of it. Thank god.

This era of my life feels like freedom. There’s still some shrapnel on the ground from my chaotic years, but it doesn’t drag me down so much. I think I can hear this in the music. The songs I’ve made feel spacious, clear and confident. I feel their darkness, but also their buzzing energy to keep moving. The music is serious, but also bursting with joy. I talk more these days, I say yes to plans, fall in love with strangers and try to fix the things I break. I’ve been on a road, and I’m a confident driver (maybe to a fault). I’m not lonely, I’m alive and I’m laughing, and I feel my heart beat really fast, and it doesn’t scare me like it used to. I’m really here, and I’m trying not to hide or bail.

Grace Ives’ Hot Mess Anthems
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10 Young Bleed Songs You Should Know
Music

10 Young Bleed Songs You Should Know

by jummy84
written by jummy84

After a week of speculation and online rumors surrounding the death of Louisiana rap legend Young Bleed, the news was confirmed by his eldest child, Ty Gee Ramon Clifton, in a heartfelt social media post.

On Monday (Nov. 3), Clifton revealed that his father had passed two days earlier, on Saturday (Nov. 1). According to Ty Gee, the revered lyricist suffered a brain aneurysm shortly after his electric appearance at the No Limit and Cash Money Verzuz battle, where he sent the crowd into a frenzy with a performance reminiscent of his prime years.

For many younger fans, that Verzuz appearance served as a powerful reintroduction to a figure who played a pivotal role in shaping Southern rap’s golden age.

Viewers born in the new millennium may not have been privy to Young Bleed’s history prior to gracing the Verzuz stage, but if they were to do their research, they’d quickly discover that he was a key cog in one of the greatest Hip-Hop movements of all-time and a star prospect in his own right.

A native of Louisiana, Young Bleed began carving out his reputation in the mid-1990s with the Concentration Camp collective—featuring C-Loc, Max Minelli, J-Von, and Chris Hamilton—whose underground success helped put Baton Rouge hip-hop on the map.

His breakout moment came with the indie single “How Ya Do Dat” in 1997, a regional smash that caught the attention of Master P, who jumped on the remix and introduced Bleed to a national audience.

That momentum led to the release of his solo debut, My Balls and My Word, in January 1998 under No Limit Records—an era-defining label at the time. The album was met with critical acclaim and commercial success, swiftly moving over one million copies and earning a platinum certification.

The project showcased Bleed’s lyrical precision and calm authority, cementing his place as one of the South’s most respected voices.

Over the following decades, Young Bleed continued releasing music, collaborating with legends and new artists alike, always maintaining his signature blend of wisdom, grit, and melodic storytelling. His passing leaves a void in Southern rap, but his influence remains.

In light of Young Bleed’s passing, VIBE compiled a list of 10 songs from the rapper’s catalog that pays tribute to his legacy and speak to his musical excellence.

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