Author: Rap Hooks

John Legend will throw his hat into the ring for Ohio gubernatorial candidate Dr. Amy on Monday (Oct. 26), when he is slated to appear with the former state director of the Ohio Department of Health at a rally in Dayton.

Legend is just one of the bold-faced names Acton will bring out on the road with her in the lead-up to the Nov. 3 midterm election in which she is facing off against tech mogul and former DOGE co-lead Vivek Ramaswamy. First up on Sunday (Oct. 25) will be a joint appearance in Akron with Democratic U.S. Senator from Georgia Rev. Raphael Warnock, followed by a rally in Cincinnati on Oct. 28 featuring Queen City natives Aaron Dessner and Matt Berninger of The National.

Springfield, Ohio native Legend has long used his platform to stump for candidates and causes, backing former President Barack Obama in 2008 and endorsing former Vice President Kamala Harris in her 2024 presidential bid. He also spoke out during that campaign against unfounded, “hateful” racist attacks by then-candidate Donald Trump and running mate and Ohio native JD Vance against the Haitian resident of Springfield.

Legend’s support for Acton comes as Ramaswamy’s campaign has come under fierce bipartisan pushback for a campaign ad in which Acton’s long-estranged mother repeatedly calls her daughter a “liar” while insinuating that Acton’s claims that she was sexually abused by her stepdad, and that the family was homeless and lived in a tent for a period, are untrue.

“It’s not easy for a mother to say this, but Amy has a serious problem,” Donna Arthur says in the ad. “She lies about her past. She says she grew up living in a tent. None of that is true. She’s lied her entire life.” Acton, 60, has said she hasn’t spoken to her mother since she was 12-years-old, when officials removed her from her mother’s custody. Police arrested Acton’s stepfather in July 1978 on rape charges, with a grand jury later indicting Arthur for engaging in sexual conduct with Acton when she was under the age of 13.

Arthur, who pleaded not guilty to the charges initially, did not appear in court and later fled, along with her mother, and became a fugitive. 13ABC also reported that documents provided by Acton’s campaign include police and court records and a 1982 sheriff’s report in which a park manager confirmed that Acton’s stepfather, Cledith Arthur, lived at the campground years earlier.

The ad, which many political pundits have called the most disturbing of a very heated political season, has gotten pushback from Acton, who called it “horrible,” “hideous” and “exploitative.” In a statement, her brother, Philip Stearns, dubbed the spot a “despicable low,” saying the attempt to turn “the sexual abuse Amy endured at twelve years old from our birth mother’s husband into a political talking point.”

Her former boss, Ohio’s Republican Gov, Mike DeWine, also weighed in, saying the commercial — which the Ramaswamy campaign has poured $4 million into airing in the final week of the race — “deeply, deeply troubling,” saying the campaign “needs to take it down.”

Trump and Vance, however, have given it their full-throated support, with Trump on Thursday repeatedly defending it, including in a Truth Social post, writing, “Vivek Ramaswamy put up a very powerful Ad about a mother saying that her daughter, Amy Acton, who is running for Governor of Ohio, is a liar, and much worse.” The President went on to call the backlash a “well-coordinated attack” from the press, even as he lambasted fellow Republican DeWine for his comments and encouraged Ramaswamy to keep the ad up.

During a visit to his native Cincinnati earlier this week, Vance said it was “not really my concern” if the ad was appropriate, adding, “I’m a little bit disgusted when I see Republicans across the country who are whining more about that advertisement than they are about what the congressional Democrats and other Democrats want to do to the United States of America.”

Trump has been hitting the campaign trail very hard over the past few weeks, including visiting deep-red states where Republicans typically feel safe during midterms, with polling showing him reaching historically low approval numbers as Americans struggle with high gas and goods prices amid the president’s unpopular war in Iran and costly tariff regime.

At press time, it did not appear that Legend had commented on the Ramaswamy ad and a spokesperson for the singer had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on his upcoming appearance with Acton. The Grammy-winning singer released his new Pharrell Williams-produced album, Muse, on Friday (Oct. 23).

Jazzy had made a lot of music for her debut album — and when it came time to decide which songs would make it onto the project, she selected tracks around two related themes.

These concepts were so crucial to the music and the experiences that informed it that she ultimately made them the name of the album. This 13-song set, Peace & Patience, is out today (Oct. 23) via Chaos Records. A tight 36 minutes of sumptuous house-leaning dance pop, the album is centered around Jazzy’s gorgeously textured voice and cements her as a crucial next-gen dance pop hitmaker.

She’s developed this reputation in her native Ireland and nearby U.K. over the last half-decade with a series of chart hits, including 2023’s “Giving Me” — her first solo single, which reached No. 3 on the UK Singles Chart and hit No. 1 on the Official Irish Singles Chart, knocking “Miracle” by Calvin Harris and Ellie Goulding into the No. 2 position.

Harris noticed, which led to him and Jazzy pairing up for May’s “Satisfy,” which itself hit No. 1 on Billboard‘s Dance Airplay chart this past June.

All in, the Dublin-born DJ/producer has made these successes look pretty easy — and in fact, she makes her journey from Dublin child violinist to chart-topping dance star sound pretty breezy too. Meeting with Billboard in a sunny office in the Capitol Records building in Los Angeles on a recent Friday morning, Jazzy — dressed in athleisure — is cheerful and warm. Tonight (Oct. 23), she’ll play a set at the nearby nightclub Sound, the second to last date on an American club tour around Peace & Patience.

The album’s release party will find her back in her native Dublin, where she plans celebrate at the pub with a handful of friends before joining many thousand more the next evening for a show at the city’s 3Arena that will mark her biggest headlining performance to date.

Here, Jazzy talks about her origins, her album and being in the studio with Harris.

You’ve said you had a lot of music to choose from for the album, some of it a few years old. Were you selecting songs around a theme in terms of what ultimately made it on?

Yeah, I wanted them to be cohesive, and I wanted to pick ones that meant the most to me — ones with stories I wanted to tell. I feel like people might think I’m a closed book sometimes, a woman of not a lot of words. So I just wanted to open up a little about experiences I’ve had in life and stuff I go through now.

Tell me about how the title track relates to that desire to open up.

“Peace and Patience” is a big one for me. The lyrics are quite uplifting — they give people a push. With everything going on in the world right now, and especially at home in Ireland, I think people need that.

In terms of Ireland, you’ve talked about how if you “lose the run of yourself” there, people will bring you back down to earth. What does that mean?

It’s just an Irish thing. It’s important not to forget where you came from. It baffles me when I hear stories of people carrying on the way they do because they have success. If anything, you should be happier. You should be kinder. I don’t see why you can’t have success and be a normal person.

Tell me about your musical origins. You didn’t start with electronic music.

No, my first experience with music was classical. My school had a violin project, every child got a lesson every week, and I ended up studying violin for years. I was actually going toward being a violin teacher. Then as I got older I started singing, and eventually started listening to electronic music around 18. I started going to underground clubs in Dublin — tech house, minimal. I just dove in and got really curious, and that led to wanting to learn to DJ.

How did you learn?

My partner Ross was a resident DJ at one of the clubs in Dublin, so I approached him for lessons. I had a controller at home and practiced for about a year before I felt ready to perform.

What was it about dance music that made you want to be part of it as an artist, rather than just a fan?

I just absolutely loved it. When I first started going out I was out Monday, Wednesday and Friday — there were so many club nights in Ireland back then. Looking at the people on the decks just gave me the curiosity to want to learn. I was curious for a long time before I took the leap to ask for lessons.

Your Calvin Harris collaboration “Satisfy” came out in May. How did that collaboration come to be?

It had been on the hit list for quite a while. It was actually a running joke with my A&R that we’d get a Calvin collab one of these days. The first time I actually spoke to him was after I released “Giving Me,” because we were in the charts against each other. He had a No. 1, and when “Giving Me” went to No. 1 I’d knocked him off. He sent me a message on Instagram saying how much he loved the track, which was lovely.

Then a couple of years later, I work with a songwriter called Theo Hutchcraft from The Hurts quite a lot, and he’s a close friend of Calvin’s. He came to me in a session one day and said Calvin had this track and would I want to try something on it. I flew to London in December and we got in the studio — me, Theo and Calvin — and it was so fun. Calvin was very down to earth and he really knew what he wanted for the song.

You’ve had enormous chart success. Do you pay attention to those numbers?

Not really, no. It’s nice, but it’s not the reason I do it. I try to focus on the music — because I think if you do focus on the numbers, it takes the focus away from creating what’s supposed to come naturally. You see it quite a lot — people going into the studio trying to make a song that’ll make big numbers. I think that’s not the way to do it. You have to go in strictly to create, and not subconsciously be trying to make a hit.

And yet you keep making hits.

I think if you create from a pure place, people can feel that.

You’re just finishing up a U.S. club tour. How have American audiences been?

Amazing. Every year I come back the reception gets better and better. People in the crowd ask for my deep cuts, songs I made so long ago that I didn’t think people would be interested in over here. It just goes to show how much they share the love so far away from home.

What does success for Peace & Patience look like to you?

For people to feel joy when they listen to it.

How will you celebrate on release day?

I’ll be in Dublin, so I’ll probably go to the pub with my friends. Then the next day I have my biggest headline show yet in Dublin — 7,000 capacity — so it’ll be quite the celebration.

Even if you’re in a complicated love triangle (or rectangle), it doesn’t mean you’re about to make the next Rumours.

That’s the message Gus (played by Lukas Gage) sends to his friend Lou (Chloë Grace Moretz) in an exclusive clip from the new rom-com Love Language, which hits theaters and digital/video on demand on Friday.

“It’s just a little writer’s block; it’s, like, not a big deal at all,” Moretz says to Gage as they sit in the nail salon alongside their friend Tilda (Billie Lourd). Lou is venting about not being able to write wedding vows for Olivia (Isabel May) to say to Warren (Manny Jacinto), who was the college friend (and crush) of Moretz’s character. “It’d be so much easier to write these vows if it just, like, made sense as to why they were together.”

“For sure, like the way you and Warren make sense,” Gage shoots back, to which Moretz replies: “A lot of artists get their sh– tangled up! Stevie Nicks?”

“Do not ever compare yourself to Stevie Nicks!” Gage demands.

“I’m comparing our burdens, which are simliar,” Moretz insists.

For anyone unfamiliar with the tangled web of Nicks’ personal and professional lives, the singer/songwriter joined Fleetwood Mac just as she was breaking up with her longtime boyfriend and musical partner Lindsey Buckingham only to then engage in a secret affair with the band’s co-founder Mick Fleetwood, who was going through his own divorce from bandmate Christine McVie. Whew.

Meanwhile, in the movie, Moretz’s Louisa “Lou” Klaussner is an aspiring author who ends up writing wedding vows as a side hustle when her new business gets complicated as she starts dating Dash (Anthony Ramos) just as she reconnects with her college best friend and secret crush Warren.

Are Stevie and Lou’s situations comparable? You’ll just have to check out the new film — written and directed by Joey Powers and distributed by Vertical — in theaters or digital Friday.

Aside from the Stevie Nicks connection, music supervisors Kayla Monetta and Alison Moses also curated a star-powered soundtrack for the film, which includes Chappell Roan’s “Red Wine Supernova,” Daddy Yankee’s “Gasolina” and HAIM’s “Little of Your Love.”

Watch the Billboard exclusive clip below:

Queens of the Stone Age rolled out the dates for a spring 2027 U.S. tour in support of their upcoming ninth studio album, Perfecth. The nine-track Matador Records LP co-produced by lead singer/guitarist Josh Homme and bassist Michael Shuman is due out on Oct. 30 and next year’s dates are slated to kick off on May 1 with a show at Viejas Arena in San Diego.

The Pixies and Wheelchair Sports Camp will support on all the dates, with a general onsale slated to open on Oct. 29 at 10 a.m. local time after a presale beginning on Oct. 28 at 10 a.m. local time; sign up for the artist presale here by 11:59 p.m. ET on Sunday (Oct. 25).

After an upcoming run of November and December shows in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand, the 2027 tour picks back up on March 6 in Mexico City at Estadio Ciudad de Los Deportes for a show with Interpol, followed by appearances at Lollapalooza Argentina, Chile and Brazil. The 2027 U.S. tour will also feature stops in Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento, Seattle, Portland, Salt Lake City, Red Rocks in Morrison, Co., as well as Milwaukee, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh and Detroit before winding down at TD Garden in Boston on May 24.

In the wind-up to the album’s release, QOTSA have announced HalloQueen, in which they’ll celebrate Halloween with sponsored retail events around the world on Oct. 31. Fans are encouraged to dress up for the events, where they can hear the new album, snag exclusive merch and buy a limited-edition Perfecth picture disc; click here for participating retailers. To date, the group has released a trio of singles from the album, “Where the Goth Girls At?,” “Insignificant Other,” and “Easy Street.”

According to Billboard Boxscore, to date, QOTSA’s career touring totals are $42.4 million on 815,000 tickets sold for 201 shows, not including festival gigs or sets as opening acts.

Check out the dates for QOTSA’s 2027 tour below.

+ w/ Virgin Orchestra 

* w/ Primus, Tropical Fuck Storm

^ w/ Pixies, Wheelchair Sports Camp

Cardi B has almost reached her limit with female rap beef.

In a Wednesday (Oct. 21) chat with followers on X Spaces, the rapper addressed chatter online about her calling Madonna, Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown and Trina her main sources of inspiration growing up in the New York Times Style Magazine interview published earlier that day. Clapping back at haters who’d accused her of lying about who actually inspired her or purposefully leaving people out in the interview, she pointed out that at 34 years old, the artists she looked up to as a kid would naturally be different from the more modern ones she’d supposedly excluded from her list (ahem, Nicki Minaj).

“Go with that s–t with Trim and that white big b—h, don’t do that with me,” Cardi quipped, referring to Gen Z hip-hop stars who grew up with different idols than she did.

When viewers commented that her remarks would be sure to stir up drama with other artists, the Grammy winner shrugged it off. “I don’t even give a f–k about these b—hes anymore,” she mused. “To be honest with you, it’s like, I don’t even like beefing with rap b—hes anymore, because it’s kinda boring.”

“I wanna be for street b—hes,” she continued. “Y’all boring me, for real. Like, I don’t even give a f–k about this s–t anymore. It’s just like, whatever. Matter of fact, I don’t even wanna be for nobody … I feel like I’m outgrowing a lot of s–t.”

The Bronx native has had no shortage of feuds with other women in rap over the years. She’s famously sparred with BIA, JT of City Girls and, of course, Minaj, both on social media and in the studio.

But while she may be over the drama for the most part, Cardi did drop in a little bit of shade during her spiel. “I hope y’all don’t think that was trying to be shady to Trim,” she clarified. “I love her music, I think she’s so talented. I don’t like the other b—h, though. I don’t give a f–k. B—h, who the f–k you be feeling like? This ain’t no Jim Crow s–t, b—h, shading me and s–t. You don’t even know me.”

Though she didn’t name the “other b—h” in question, her earlier description — “white big b—h” — led fans to believe that Cardi was shading 24-year-old rising star Sunshine Benzi. Even Benzi seemed to think so, entering the ring on X with pointed posts after Cardi’s Spaces.

“call your writer ho @iamcardib,” she wrote, followed by, “how you changed your face more times than you’ve written a rap? @iamcardib.”

Billboard has reached out to Sunshine Benzi for comment.

Fans will have to see if Cardi engages with Benzi, but according to the “Up” artist, she’s too busy with her career to keep up with any beefing. She has had a packed schedule as of late, traveling to Milan in September to walk in the Vogue World fashion show. Her single “AH HA” dropped in August and debuted at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100, following up her 2025 Billboard 200-topping sophomore album Am I the Drama?

“I’m focusing on myself,” she said Wednesday. “There’s a lot of things coming up, and nothing is gonna stop it … having money feels too good. Being successful feels too good.”

North West could have gone the obvious route and returned the favor to her mom after Kim Kardashian dressed up as her eldest daughter for an early Halloween gag. But instead, the aspiring 13-year-old rapper paid tribute to a different reality TV icon on Wednesday (Oct. 21) when she unveiled her 2026 dress-up choice.

In a TikTok that has already rolled up more than one million likes and nearly 8 million views cued to a Nicki Minaj lyric from her 2023 collab on Lil Uzi Vert’s “Endless Fashion” — “Even if my name was Natalie Nunn/ None of these b–ches still couldn’t chin check me” — North lip syncs along and then transforms from her blue-haired self into Baddies star Natalie Nunn.

And, keeping it 100, the costume includes a wildly exaggerated version of Nunn’s notoriously prominent chin, as well as a replica of Nunn’s glittering “CEO Baddies” chain. North West posted a series of TikToks featuring her lip syncing to Nunn quotes, showing off her “Baddies” bling and doing an A-B comparison between her all-black outfit and some of Nunn’s looks. And, wouldn’t you know it? A short time later, Bad Girls Club alum Nunn weighed in on the homage.

“I GOTTA GET @northwest her baddie chain now! ❤️❤️❤️❤️ SHE GETS A BADDIE CHAIN HAPPY HALLOWEEN MONTH !!” she wrote on Instagram in a repost of North’s original video.

North’s bid to be the crowned the early Halloween Queen came just a day after mom Kim mimicked her daughter’s emo look in an Instagram photo shoot on Tuesday (Oct. 20) in which she rocked a North4evr shirt — a reference to the title of North’s 2026 EP — along with a turquoise wig, hand and face piercings, an iced-out chain, spiky metal bracelets and metallic nail art.

The comments were filled with praise from fans, as well as Kim’s mom, Kris Jenner, who wrote “This is so fun,” and sister Khloe, who said, “Twins!!!!”

Though they’ve so far gone their own ways this year, in the past mother and daughter have teamed up for joint costumes, including in 2023 when they dressed up as Cher and Dionne from Clueless and in 2019, when the Kardashian-West family channeled The Flintstones; Kardashian’s divorce from ex-husband Ye, North’s father, was finalized in 2022.