Getting singled out by Sacha Baron Cohen‘s most infamous character turned out to be good publicity, not an insult, for Ed Sheeran.
Cohen’s Ali G: Who Iz I?, due in theaters Oct. 23 via Amazon MGM, resurrects the fictional interviewer 24 years after his last film outing. The character narrates his own return in the trailer, listing everything that went wrong during his two decades away — wars, the pandemic, and Sheeran by name — before pivoting into the film’s premise: a “documentary” built from real interviews and unsuspecting public figures, in the spirit of Cohen’s late-’90s TV show.
Sheeran took the jab as an honor rather than a slight. “Tell 10-year-old me that Ali G would put him in his movie,” he wrote on Instagram. “Restecpa” — the character’s signature butchering of “respect,” first used in 2002’s Ali G Indahouse.
The film marks Cohen’s first time directing a feature himself, after previous Ali G and Borat projects were helmed by other directors. Production was kept under wraps entirely; Cohen reportedly showed up in character at Wimbledon this year without tipping off the film’s existence. The plot centers on Ali G discovering his girlfriend, played by Morgana Robinson, is pregnant after he resurfaces in the public eye.
Not every reaction has matched Sheeran’s good humor. The trailer has stirred real objections in the U.K., where critics and a cinema-boycott push have called out the character’s styling — dreadlocked wig, Rasta-style hat — as racial caricature that hasn’t aged well since Ali G’s original run.
Cohen built Ali G into a defining piece of British comedy before moving on to bigger disguises: Borat, Brüno, a Madonna video cameo, and eventually straight dramatic work in projects like The Trial of the Chicago 7 and Marvel’s Ironheart.
Young Thug and his YSL Records surprise-dropped the Slime Language 3 double album late Friday (Aug. 28).
In addition to the YSL roster, the 41-track project also includes appearances from Lil Baby, Travis Scott, Future, Yeat, Trippie Redd, Cash Cobain, Veeze, Rob49 and more. Among the YSL vets and rookies onboard across the two-plus-hour album: Lil Keed, diamond*, Tezzus, Pz’, Sk8star, 1300SAINT, Yung Kayo, Biggs, iyrus, Yume, Lil Unky, Unfoonk and more.
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Slime Language 3 is the latest in a trilogy of YSL compilation albums that started with 2018’s Slime Language and continued with 2021’s Slime Language 2. The series became progressively more popular, with the original project debuting at No. 8 on the all-genre Billboard 200 albums chart, while the most recent entry topped that chart as well as Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums.
The two biggest songs to come from Slime Language 2 were Young Thug and Gunna’s “Solid” (featuring Drake) and Young Thug and Gunna’s “Ski,” both top 20 hits on the Billboard Hot 100. Of course, Gunna is nowhere to be found on this new project, after fulfilling his contractual obligations to YSL with his 2025 album The Last Wun following a falling-out with Young Thug involving the RICO charges that plagued the label.
In October 2024, Young Thug was sentenced to 15 years’ probation and no prison time after pleading guilty in the criminal case accusing him of leading an Atlanta street gang. He released his first post-prison album, UY Scuti, in September 2025.
Listen to the double album and find the full track list below:
Cardi B took it to the streets of NYC for the gritty “AH HA” music video, but it cost more than she anticipated, as Cardi revealed the total price tag for shooting the visual was north of $1 million.
The Grammy-winning rapper hopped on Spaces on Thursday (Aug. 27), where Cardi detailed the exhausting process of getting permits in NYC and working with the NYPD, who she feels overcharged her throughout shooting the video because of her A-list celebrity status.
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“I don’t understand how the f— this music video was expensive. I swear to God, I wanted this music video to be simple. I wanted a very street New York summer vibe,” she said. “A lot of artists do videos in the streets, that this video would be about $250,000. Bro, this video came out to be over a million.”
Cardi explained that she originally wanted to shoot the visual in her home borough of the Bronx, but ultimately was steered toward Sunset Park in Brooklyn.
“If you look at the video, it doesn’t even give that. Because I’m Cardi B, I be getting overcharged. To get permits, I know for a fact the average rapper that do music videos on blocks, it doesn’t cost that much. I really wanted to do my music video in a small block in the Bronx,” she added. “No, they made me do it in different places.”
Cardi continued: “To get permits, it was so expensive. I feel like they overcharged me for permits. They made it a big deal because I guess I’m Cardi B. It was about 40 NYPD cops, which made it impossible to motherf—ing shoot. NYPD was being so… They was just doing too much.”
The 33-year-old claimed this will be the last time she does a video shoot with fans being able to watch from a distance due to it being an open set, as she gets nervous with hundreds of onlookers.
“This will be the last time I ever do music videos in a public setting that I cannot get control. I was so overstimulated, I was so underwhelmed,” she said. “I did not enjoy doing this music video. … I’m not doing music videos in open settings ever again.”
“AH HA” served as Cardi’s first single of 2026, which arrived on July 31, while the music video was released nearly a month later on Friday (Aug. 28). The DJ SqanQo-produced hit debuted at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and currently sits at No. 40 on this week’s chart.
The first week of Lil Durk’s murder-for-hire trial featured text messages, an unreleased music video and key testimony from a former member of the Chicago rapper’s Only the Family (OTF) crew.
You’re reading Billboard’s weekly Lil Durk trial recap, a one-sheet breakdown of everything that happened in the murder-for-hire case over the past week. Stay tuned here each Friday for all the testimony and big events you might have missed.
The trial began Monday (Aug. 24) in Los Angeles federal court, where the “All My Life” hitmaker (Durk Banks) is charged with ordering OTF members to kill rival rapper Quando Rondo in retaliation for the 2020 killing of his close friend and collaborator King Von. Rondo was shot at a Los Angeles gas station in 2022 and survived, but another man known as Lul Pab was killed in the crossfire.
During opening statements, prosecutor Daniel Weiner argued that Durk was “consumed with revenge” after Von’s death. Weiner said Durk arranged for numerous OTF associates to travel from Chicago to L.A. and “track, stalk, hunt and kill” Rondo while he waited for updates in a nearby rental house. Two alleged participants in the killing, David “Browneyez” Lindsey and Deandre “OTF Dede” Wilson, are also on trial.
Defense lawyer Marissa Goldberg responded in her own opening statement that the rapper had “nothing to do with” the shooting, arguing that there isn’t any evidence showing he paid for a hit on Rondo. Goldberg said the real mastermind of the plot was Kavon “Vonnie” Grant, one of the shooters who has flipped and become a government witness.
“He thought, ‘Oh man, I’ve got an insurance policy,’” said Goldberg of Vonnie’s decision to point the finger at Durk. “I’ve got a big fish I can give them.”
After openings, the first two days of Durk’s trial focused largely on hard evidence. Surveillance video was played on Tuesday (Aug. 25) from an In-N-Out Burger restaurant, where the shooters allegedly stopped for a bite after killing Pab. A detective who reviewed the tape testified that the men seemed to be “joking around” and “having a good time,” according to Los Angeles Magazine.
Also on Tuesday, prosecutors showed numerous text messages sent by Durk after Von’s 2020 death. This included messages where Durk wrote, “I gotta go all out for him,” “I can’t let this slide” and “him dying turning me a different animal.”
On Wednesday (Aug. 26), the jurors heard the first of what is expected to be multiple Durk songs admitted as evidence of Durk’s alleged motive. The prosecution played an unreleased 2021 music video for the song “Redman,” which depicts Durk reading news stories about Von’s death and then shooting a man that prosecutors describe as a Rondo “look-alike.”
Durk’s lawyers maintain that his music should not be taken literally, but instead ought to be viewed as a performance in which he’s “challenging his emotions through his artwork.” Durk attorney Brian Steel drilled down on this argument while cross-examining an FBI agent about the “Redman” video on Wednesday, per Rolling Stone.
“You know that Durk is a musical artist, a poet, true?” Steel asked the agent.
The real fireworks began later on Wednesday when the first of multiple cooperating witnesses took the stand: Kacey “OTF Jam” Hester, a Chicago gang member and former friend of Durk’s who has admitted to being one of the shooters who targeted Rondo.
According to Courthouse News Service, Jam said during direct testimony on Wednesday and Thursday (Aug. 27) that he regretted participating in the murder of an “innocent” man. He told the jury, “I wasn’t feeling good about it at all. I felt it was sloppy.”
Jam testified Thursday that Durk offered a hefty cash reward for the shooting. While this promised sum was never paid, he allegedly received $10,000 to record a track with Durk. After being arrested in 2023 on separate gun charges, he wrote in a note to police, “I know about murders.”
“I had to get it off my chest,” said Jam of his decision to become a government informant. “It was weighing on me.”
Steel aggressively cross-examined Jam on Thursday and Friday (Aug. 28), pointing out that his story had “dramatically” changed over time. Steel suggested that Jam, who has been in and out of prison for much of his life, is lying about Durk’s involvement because he wants a reduced sentence.
“Going home, that’s your mission?” Steel asked the witness, per Rolling Stone.
“Me, trying to go home? Yes,” Jam replied.
The trial is set to resume Monday and run for several more weeks. It has already drawn some notable spectators, including Ye (formerly Kanye West) and mgk.
“My fans have naturally kind of made me the guy that they go to to have fun,” says Luke Bryan. It was with that thought in mind that the country superstar picked the songs for Signs, his ninth full-length studio album that comes out Sept. 18.
But as the artist who brought the world such good-timing party anthems like “Country Girl (Shake It for Me)” and “All My Friends Say,” ponders further, he notes that his fans equally respond to beautifully reflective songs like “Drink a Beer.” “A big thing you always hear from fans, too, is they want to hear songs of mine that throwback to where I was right when I came out and I feel like there’s several songs on this album that could be considered throwbacks,” he says. “But there are also songs that reflect a more modern side, such as the title track, that gravitate towards pop-country.”
So maybe, the American Idol judge figures, with Signs, he’s made an album that ticks all the boxes. Bryan, who co-wrote two of the tracks on the set (“Fish Hunt Golf Drink” and “Crooked Rows of Corn”) says, he’s “really, really blessed. By the time I make an album, I’ve had a lot of songs land in my lap [from outside songwriters]… But you know, the main thing with me is to just truly enjoy the process and try to make a well-rounded album, and I certainly feel like this is [one].”
Bryan, who again played stadiums this summer with his buddy Jason Aldean (as well as arenas on his own Word on the Street Tour dates), talked to Billboard about making the album. He began rolling out the track listing on Aug. 18 via a dedicated album website, and Billboard is exclusively revealing two more song titles, “Killer” and “Woods.” First single, “Country and She Knows It,” stands at No. 15 on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart dated Aug. 29.
Billboard is announcing two more song titles on the new album, including “Killer.” That’s a song unlike any you’ve ever done before, from the perspective of a bullet in a gun.
It’s really deep subject matter, a really dark song — and really one of more well-written songs I’ve ever been a part of. These boys [Davis Corley, Mark Addison Chandler and Nate Kenyon] that wrote this song really wrote something very unique and special, and they went out there on a limb. Obviously, anytime you bring up guns — certainly in music and movies and art — it’s a slippery slope, and [there are] so many different polarizing opinions. This is just a story told from the perspective of a gun.
I don’t think it’s my job to start some pro-gun or non-pro-gun awareness campaign, but when you hear a song like this, I just think the song is so great somebody needs to sing it, and I just said, “I’m gonna be the guy that does it.”
What did you think the first time you heard it?
It took my breath away. When I think about my reaction the first time I heard “Drink a Beer,” and how it just floored me, I think this song does the same thing. I think it’ll take the listener on a ginormous emotional ride. It just gets better and better with every listen. It’s just a tremendous thought process of a song.
The other one song name we’re revealing is “Woods,” which feels very much in your wheelhouse.
This is one of those songs that I feel like my fans, when they hear me perform this, they’ll be like, “Oh yeah, that sounds like the Luke Bryan that we know. It just describes how important the relationship [between] the woods and a kid from the country is. It just really marries that relationship. I didn’t write the song, but everything in that song spoke to me as if I wrote it, and I think it’ll speak to everybody out there that has grown out in the sticks, and the way we lived. This song really embodies that.
You turned 50 last month. Though the album was likely finished before your birthday, are you selecting any songs now that you wouldn’t have selected 10 or 20 years ago?
I don’t know if I think about it. Mentally, I think I’m 30 anyway. I don’t necessarily know if I think about stuff in that context. My biggest challenge as an artist that’s been doing this for close to 20 years now is to try not to be overly redundant with your material, but then try not to stray away from what butters your biscuit. At the end of the day, I want a song to really touch me and, therefore, I think the odds are that it will do that to my fans.
That’s kind of the way I’ve approached every album. The bottom line is, I don’t necessarily know if I approach it with a 50-year-old brain, I think I approach it with which songs are connecting with me the most, and which songs do I believe will connect with my fans the most.
You’ve worked with Jeff Stevens almost your whole career. Now, he and his son Jody produce your albums together, including this one. What do they bring to the process?
The beauty of the dynamic with me and Jody and Jeff is Jeff is just the old rock in the room that really digs in and sticks to the core of what me and him are. Jeff and I inadvertently struck gold together. Jody [co-wrote] “Signs,” and that production on “Signs” is really young and fresh. So, Jody coming in and having that production is very important. Jody could literally build all our tracks if we wanted him to. It’s kind of like you got the old and you got the young and then you got me, and we all get in there together for one common goal. Jeff and Jody really don’t get caught up in the politics of the town. They’re kind of quiet behind-the-scenes guys that want to make their work speak for them.
Speaking of “Signs,” what made you decide to make that the title track?
I just thought it was the right way to title the album. I don’t get in the weeds. People are like, “Did you go light a bunch of incense and spend eight hours talking about the title of your album?” No, I just kind of keep it pretty basic and simple. I’m like, “Hey, let’s use Signs and let’s go take some pictures [of signs] and let’s put this bad boy out there.” I’ve tried to be the king of not overthinking things.
Your music helps other people deal with their losses. How has music helped you deal with your losses, especially your brother and sister’s deaths? Is there one song that you always go to when you’re feeling sad?
I wouldn’t say there’s one. I would rather listen to the artists that really remind me of the people that I lost. When I listen to Keith Whitley, I think about my brother. When I listen to George Strait, I think about my brother. When I listen to Lionel Richie, I think about my sister and old school Alabama, I think about my sister. When I think about a song like “Drink a Beer” and I look at all of the emotions that it’s delivered to people through the years as I’ve been on stage performing it, it’s just been an honor. When you see a 300-pound guy that looks like he’s probably been working in a factory all week on the front row, holding his wife and they’re crying together, I mean, that’s what country music is all about.
Signs track listing
“Country And She Knows It” “Word On the Street” “Signs” “Fish Hunt Golf Drink” “Made It a Memory” “Woods” “Down Goes the Whiskey” “Crooked Rows of Corn” “I Like Loving You” “Killer” “Praying By the Rules”
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One of the weirdest, and, as it turns out, most unrelated tributes, however, spun up on Thursday (Aug. 27), just days after Parton’s passing, when a new tropical storm was forming in the Atlantic Ocean. That storm’s name? Dolly.
But, according to The Associated Press, the bizarre coincidence has nothing to do with Parton at all, but is merely an unexpected quirk of the naming convention used by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO), by which a list of names is recycled every six years, with the ones in the Atlantic running in an alphabetical order and alternating male and female names.
So, while this season began with storms named Arthur in June, followed by Bertha in July and Cristobal, which flared up and then flamed out quickly earlier this month, the latest storm brewing was already fated to be called Dolly. For now, it’s not expected to turn into a major storm, but the National Hurricane Center issued a statement explaining the coincidence just in case.
“The timing of the use of the name Dolly for this storm is purely coincidental,” the organization said. “Tropical storm and hurricane names for the North Atlantic Basin originate from six predetermined rotating lists established by the World Meteorological Organization Region IV Hurricane Committee. The name Dolly replaced Diana after the 1990 hurricane season and was first used in 1996.”
The name, which was chosen 30 years ago by the WMO as part of the naming protocol using the rotating group of storm names, will not be changed. After each storm season, a committee for the North Atlantic basin reviews the names and decides if any should be retired due to severity and major loss of life and property; around 100 names have been retired from the Atlantic list to date.
There were a number of named “Dolly” storms and hurricanes during Parton’s lifetime, including 2008’s Category 2 storm, which hit southeast Texas, again in 2020 and for the first time in 1996 to replace “Diana,” a Category 2 that hit Mexico in 1990, killing 139 people.
At press time, Tropical Storm Dolly continues to move quickly westward toward the Leeward Islands, with heavy rains forecast for late Saturday into Sunday for the series of islands in the Lesser Antilles in the Caribbean, with possible further impacts on the Virgin Islands, Puerto Rico and Hispaniola on Sunday and Monday. It was unclear at press time if the storm will make landfall in the U.S.
