Author: Rap Hooks

She did it! After generating Grammy buzz for months with smash hit single “APT.” featuring Bruno Mars, ROSÉ has now secured nods for both song and record of the year, as well as best pop duo/group performance.

In a video posted by one of the BLACKPINK star’s friends, which ROSÉ reposted on her Instagram Story, we get to see how she reacted to the news — as well as the tense few moments that led up to it. In the clip, she and her pals watch the Friday (Nov. 7) nominations ceremony while on a group FaceTime call. As the names are listed off for record of the year recognition, ROSÉ says nervously, “Are we not going to get it?”

“Aw, maybe we’re not going to get it,” she adds, hiding behind her fists clenched with anticipation.

When ROSÉ and Mars’ names come on screen, the K-pop star and her friends absolutely lose it. Letting out loud, wordless cheers, she says in disbelief, “Oh my god!”

The reaction clip comes shortly after the full list of 2026 Grammy nominations was unveiled Friday morning, revealing Kendrick Lamar as the frontrunner with nine nods and Lady Gaga, Jack Antonoff and Cirkut as having the second-most with seven apiece. ROSÉ’s song and record of the year honors are particularly special, however, as they mean she’s made history as the first K-pop musician to ever score one, much less two, Big Four nominations as a lead artist.

“It’s still a dream for me,” the New Zealand native recently told The Hollywood Reporter of winning a Grammy someday. “It’s still a fantasy — a moment that proves to myself so many things.”

Grammy-wise, this year was huge for K-pop in general. In addition to ROSÉ’s triumphs, KPop Demon Hunters earned nominations for song of the year, best song written for visual media and best pop group performance for Billboard Hot 100 topper “Golden,” as well as best compilation soundtrack for visual media.

Drake is back in his acting bag. The 6 God teased a clip from his cameo in an episode of season 2’s The Office Movers, which landed on the Crave streaming service on Friday (Nov. 7).

Drake posted a hilarious interaction from his scene on Instagram, which finds him in a misunderstanding with one of the show’s creators, Jermaine “Jae” Richards, as they have different contexts when using the word “guy.”

“Like, you guys have movers, but do you guys have guys, you know, like real guys,” Drake repeatedly asks. He thinks it’s a joke at first and continues to hammer away until realizing they’re just not on the same page.  

Drake added in some comic relief, which felt like he was having his Justin Bieber “It’s not clocking to you” moment. “It’s not making sense to you? Maybe I’m not even speaking English. I don’t know,” he continued. “Maybe I’m speaking Guyanese. Everything we use to live is made in Guywan. I’m losing it, bro.”

Plenty of Drake’s rap peers had a laugh in his Instagram comment section, with Boi-1da, Oz, Reese LaFlare, Chinese Kitty and Niko Brim chiming in.

Season 2 of The Office Movers arrived in full on Canadian streaming service Crave on Friday. Created by brothers Jae and Trey Richards, the comedy series follows the Richards brothers’ journey working for an office moving company in Toronto.

“The Office Movers is a hilarious slapstick comedy that also has some heart,” said Justin Stockman, who serves as the vice president, content development and programming at Bell Media said in a statement. “Jae and Trey’s sharp, culture-savvy comedy keeps the show perfectly tuned to the pulse of the moment, and we’re ecstatic they’ve landed a special appearance by one of Canada’s most iconic cultural ambassadors.”

Drake has teamed up with the Richards brothers in the past, as he sampled their work on his 2017 More Life project. Obviously, the OVO boss is no stranger to the acting world, as he previously got his start starring in Degrassi. More recently, he’s made cameos in shows like Lil Dicky’s Dave series.

Watch Drake’s scene below.

Leonardo DiCaprio starred in the One Battle After Another movie, but Katy Perry lived that title to the fullest in her “Bandaids” music video, which arrived on Thursday night (Nov. 6).

“Bandaids” serves as Perry’s first solo single of 2025, as she displays emotional vulnerability while looking back on her journey in the spotlight. “If I had to do it all over again. I would still do it all over again,” she sings.

The accompanying visual finds KP nearly meeting her demise on multiple instances as she faces near-death experiences while life continues to throw hurdles at her, but the pop star doesn’t stop trudging on.

She lives out every kid’s nightmare of having their shoelace stuck in an escalator while walking through the Puente Hills Mall and then the hits keep coming.

Perry proceeds to get electrocuted at a car charging station, has her coffee date interrupted by an explosion, a faulty GPS nearly leads to a car accident and then she gets stuck in the third rail while facing an oncoming train.

Even after hopping out of the train tracks, KP ends up in a muddy sinkhole. At this point, she’s had enough and can’t catch a break. Perry decided to take her dirt-stained clothes and money to buy a pack of cigarettes. As she lights one up in an attempt to process her terrible day, a relatable situation for many smokers.

The 41-year-old launches into a new musical era while putting a bow on 143, her 2024 album, which debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 album chart. She launched the eras-spanning Lifetimes Tour in Mexico City in April, which grossed over $80 million when accounting for the U.S., Canada and Australia legs.

Perry’s currently wrapping up the European leg with shows in France and Spain, before heading to China later this month. The trek will finish with a show in Abu Dhabi on Dec. 7.

Watch the “Bandaids” video below.

Echoing disagreements between YouTube and music rights holders, Alphabet-owned YouTube TV is currently in fraught negotiations with Disney over the amounts the pay TV streaming platform is willing to pay for the company’s TV channels, which were pulled from YouTube TV on  Oct. 30 after the two sides failed to agree on the terms of a licensing renewal.  

The fracas is part of a larger pattern, artist manager and businessman Irving Azoff wrote in a Nov. 5 op-ed at Billboard. Azoff, a longtime YouTube critic, called the company “a behemoth bully” that uses its vast market power to coerce content owners. “The playbook is always the same: if you refuse to accept YouTube’s below-market terms, YouTube threatens to go dark until you capitulate.” 

Similar disagreements have plagued the music industry’s relationship with YouTube over the decades. (YouTube TV is run separately from YouTube, which generates most of its income from advertising.) Most notably, Warner Music Group pulled its catalog off YouTube in 2008 after licensing negotiations broke down. Over the years, rights owners have frequently — and publicly — complained about YouTube’s relatively low royalty payouts and a business model that allows for user-generated content that often includes copyright-protected music. 

The pay TV dispute pits one of the world’s largest tech companies against the owner of some of America’s most popular TV channels. Disney owns more than 20 TV channels that span sports (ESPN, ACC Network, SEC Network), entertainment (FX, Freeform, Localish), family (Disney Channel), National Geographic and ABC and its local affiliates. Disney CEO Bob Iger has called these broadcast TV brands an “asset” that operate alongside its growing streaming platforms, Disney+ and Hulu. 

News reports say that Disney offered YouTube TV terms commensurate with its latest deals with the largest pay TV providers, Comcast and Charter, while YouTube insists it has “been working in good faith” on a deal “that pays them fairly” for their content. However, Disney has cited YouTube TV’s “repeated refusal to negotiate in good faith” and demand for preferential treatment.  

Disputes over carriage — the agreements in which a multi-channel video distributor includes a TV network’s channels — are not uncommon. YouTube also removed Televisa/Univision channels in October and narrowly averted a blackout with Fox in August. As for Disney, carriage disputes caused its channels to briefly go missing from DirecTV in 2024, Charter in 2023 and Dish in 2022.  

But the Disney-YouTube battle isn’t a battle of equals — or close to it. A relative newcomer to the pay TV business, eight-year-old YouTube TV is the fourth-largest pay TV provider in the U.S. with nearly 10 million subscribers. But YouTube TV is a small fraction of parent company Alphabet’s total business. At $83 per month and 10 million subscribers, YouTube TV generated $7.4 billion in the first nine months of 2025 — just 2.6% of parent company Alphabet’s $289 billion of revenue in that period.  

For Disney, the loss of carriage fees works out to approximately $2 billion annually, or 2% of Disney’s revenues, Lightshed Partners’ Rich Greenfield told CNBC on Monday (Nov. 3). That weighs more heavily on Disney, which generated $72 billion of revenue in the first nine months of its fiscal year (the company releases fiscal year results on Nov. 13), than YouTube TV. “When Charter loses ESPN, everybody goes, ‘How can Charter survive?’,” said Greenfield. “There’s not one investor going, ‘God, is Google going to survive this?’” 

Failing to reach a resolution could drive consumers to find Disney programming elsewhere. Consumers can access Disney or any other TV content in numerous places. Desired sports content such as Monday Night Football is available through ESPN Unlimited for $29.99 per month or $299.99 per year. Bundling ESPN Unlimited with Hulu — wholly owned by Disney — and Disney+ offers sports and a wider variety of programming that costs $29.99 per month with ads or $38.99 per month without ads.  

A new survey from Drive Research found that 24% of YouTube subscribers have already canceled or plan to cancel their YouTube TV subscription as a result of the dispute. Additionally, 30% of subscribers said they have subscribed or intend to subscribe to ESPN Unlimited or Hulu’s live sports plan to maintain access to sporting events. Clearly, the backlash to the Disney fracas is real — but a giant like YouTube TV can afford to shed subscribers in a way other carriers likely couldn’t.

Tems‘ Leading Vibe Initiative and Native Instruments released a mini documentary on Thursday (Nov. 6) that follows three female producers in Lagos, Nigeria.

The 72 Hours in Lagos doc follows Saszy Afroshii, TinyBraz and Gbots around the “chaotic” city (as all three women, plus Tems, individually describe the hub) during the inaugural edition of the Leading Vibe Initiative, which “aims to support, connect and amplify the next generation of women in music,” according to the doc. Native Instruments contributes training, mentorship and industry-leading software and hardware. Tems is also on the Native Instruments artist board, a collective that also includes Alicia Keys, Noah “40” Shebib, Jacob Collier and Ludwig Goransson, among others.

Saszy Afroshii, who’s produced for Fave, Qing Madi and Tiwa Savage, says inspiration strikes anywhere in the midst of Lagos’ hustle and bustle, but opportunities aren’t always that easy to find. “I think it’s very important for females to support each other. This is an industry that is occupied by males and people think, ‘Ok, this is just a man’s world.’ When you walk into a session and they’re like, ‘So where’s the producer?’ And you’re like, ‘Hi! I’m here,’” she said. “It’s just trying to shift the mindset of people. Having to go the extra mile because sometimes they don’t give you as much opportunities. So it’s very, very good when you see a female doing something that people really thought, ‘Oh, maybe she can do it.’”

In her Billboard cover story earlier this year, Tems said she taught herself to produce and engineer her own music through YouTube tutorials while studying economics at IIE MSA in Johannesburg, South Africa. “Learning how to produce definitely made me solidify my sound because usually, you have a producer that gives you a beat and you have to go on the beat. But being a producer myself, it’s more authentic now. The music became more genuine and more true to me and more distinctive,” the Grammy-winning star said in the doc.

Tems launched the Leading Vibe Initiative this past August, which Billboard exclusively announced. She hosted a two-day seminar for approximately 20 women to gain hands-on training, access to world-class tools and connections to industry executives and creatives through a series of workshops, masterclasses and panel discussions. She also launched the Leading Vibe Initiative in Nairobi, Kenya in September.

Singer-songwriter TinyBraz (who’s also a DJ/producer known as Purple Halo) echoed Tems’ sentiments about authenticity, describing it as the core message behind the Leading Vibe Initiative. “That really cut deep to me because as an artist, you can tell I’m kind of androgynous. I’m in between being girly and being masculine. The label I was in really wanted me to be on that girly side. And to be honest, it wasn’t what I was feeling,” she explained. “I just wanted to find myself again because they were basically imposing their idea of what they think a female artist should be on me, and I didn’t want that. Hearing Tems say, ‘You have to double down on what you believe in’ made me realize that it was a good decision for me to say, ‘I don’t want to do this anymore with you guys. I want to go on my own. I want to be independent and find my way.’”

TinyBraz took the cameras from her current makeshift studio to her former apartment, which she called “Purple Island” “because it’s a creative space. It’s a space where I truly found the people that I was meant to align with,” such as dancers, graphic designers, engineers and artists, she explained.

Gbots, who’s worked with Olamide, CKay and P. Prime, described herself as “an outlier” because “I noticed I was one of the fewest female music producers. At that time, I even thought I was the only one making music.” In 2022, she founded the female music community, We Are ProducHERS. “Female music producers and artists and songwriters should just have a place and a safe space where they feel like because you can do it, I can do it,” she added.

Watch 72 Hours in Lagos below.