A Jay-Z 30 pop-up experience is set to land at London’s UMusic Shop Camden this week, giving fans a chance to celebrate the rapper’s upcoming shows at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium .
Located at The Stables Market, the pop-up will be open daily from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. between Aug. 27 and Sept. 2, ahead of Jay-Z’s only U.K. performances of the year on Sept. 4 and 5. The Brooklyn-born rapper last toured the U.K. in 2018 as part of his On The Run II trek with Beyoncé, visiting stadiums in Cardiff, Manchester, Glasgow and London.
Fans can shop a curated selection of limited edition merchandise created exclusively for the London concerts. The experience will also feature a series of DJ sets, with the likes of DJ Target, DJ Manny Norté, DJ Semtex and DJ Esi taking over the decks from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. each day.
The London double-header follows Jay-Z’s three-night run at Yankee Stadium in New York City, which took place in July. Across the shows, the rapper was joined by a star-studded line-up of guests that included Beyoncé, Alicia Keys, Usher, Eminem, Nas, Pharrell Williams, Rihanna, Slick Rick and more. The shows are billed as a celebration of the 30th anniversary of debut LP Reasonable Doubt, which kicked off the 56-year-old’s illustrious career in 1996.
Reporting from night two of the Yankee Stadium residency, Billboard’s Angel Diaz described the show as “a masterclass show.” She continued: “Jay went through each song at what felt like a feverish pace, giving fans little time to rest. And they didn’t mind – they just kept getting louder. It was impressive to see in person, especially when the surprise guests hit the stage.”
Beyond London, Jay-Z is scheduled to bring the 30th-anniversary celebration to Paris’ Stade de France on Sept. 10, followed by two Los Angeles shows at SoFi Stadium on Oct. 23 and 24. He kicked off his run of comeback live shows by headlining Philadelphia’s Roots Picnic in March, which marked his first solo show in over six years. The performance spawned the “Roots Picnic Freestyle,” which, in June, Billboard crowned the best rap song of 2026 so far.
Jay-Z has reigned as one of the biggest names in hip-hop for the past 30 years, and counting. Reasonable Doubt peaked at No. 23 on the Billboard 200 upon release in 1996. Jay-Z’s breakthrough LP The Blueprint was released five years later in 2001, debuting at No. 1 on the all-genres albums chart. Over time, Jay-Z has amassed 14 No. 1 albums on the Billboard 200, holding the all-time record among solo male artists. He has also scored four No. 1 hits on the Billboard Hot 100.
Nene Royal didn’t enter America’s Got Talent to dilly-dally about. She came to rock.
Hailing the Phuket, Thailand, the teenager made the long-haul to the United States to compete in the current, 21st season of AGT, getting it done with an electric guitar and a knack for cast-iron metal. From the top, Royal caught the attention of millions when she auditioned with The Cranberries’ mid-‘90s protest anthem “Zombie.”
If you weren’t already paying attention, the penny dropped when she covered “Hysteria” by Muse,” laid out on a bed of licks, squeals and technical tricks that Hendrix would’ve approved of.
For Tuesday night’s (Aug. 25) Quarterfinals, Royal cranked it up yet again with a performance of Soundgarden’s signature song, “Black Hole Sun,” a grunge-era classic which was released in 1994 on the band’s album Superunknown.
Royal literally lit up the stage, for a heavy, and fiery, moment. The roar from the crowd told you all you needed to know.
“I know I’m not supposed to say this. NBC, give her the million right now,” Howie Mandel enthused.
“Nene I think you could really win this competition,” remarked Sofía Vergara. “Because you can sing and you can play that guitar. I mean, insanely. The way you look. No wonder everybody in the street asks me about you. I think you can win.”
Mel B met the youngster and other contestants backstage. “You are just like the most quietest, humblest, sweet-like young lady. And then you’ve come out on this stage and it’s a different vibe,” she said. The Spice Girl, like her fellow judges, struggled to be heard over the raucous audience. “I have to say that I love really good vocals. I’m a ‘90s girl. I’m into pop music. That kind of music is not my vibe. But, your vocals are on point, your guitar is on point, your look, your energy, your vibe. How could I not do this.”
And with that, Mel B dramatically activated the Golden Buzzer. Cue golden glitter, and tears of joy, hugs.
Royal is now fast-tracked to the Finals. Her fellow Quarterfinalists will learn their fate during Wednesday night’s results show. America votes, and three more acts progress to the semifinals. Also on the night, Season 20 standout country singer Steve Ray Ladson returns to the stage alongside Grammy-nominated act The War and Treaty.
Watch Nene Royal’s Golden Buzzer-winning performance below.
Welcome to the club, Camilo. That is, YouTube’s Billion Views Club.
The Colombian singer and songwriter passes one billion streams on YouTube with his feel-good tune from 2020, “Vida de Rico.”
Directed by Camilo’s wife Evaluna Montaner, the music video for “Vida de Rico” is his second to reach the 1 billion view mark, following his breakthrough collaboration with Mau y Ricky and Manuel Turizo, “Desconocidos,” which dropped in 2018.
Following its release, “Vida de Rico” climbed to No. 1 on the Latin Airplay chart (dated Jan. 30, 2021), doing so in its 16th week, and notched multiple weeks atop the Latin Pop Airplay tally.
He also performed the number during Billboard‘s virtual Latin Music Week in 2020, presented during the pandemic, and the following year during the 22nd annual Latin Grammy Awards.
The Latin star is currently on the road with his Camilo Worldwide Tour, which continues in Mexico with 14 dates, starting in the capital, Mexico City, on Aug. 28, and ending Sept. 20 in Acapulco, before heading to San Juan and Santo Domingo, and returning to the United States in October. The trek will visit almost 40 cities across more than 15 countries in Europe and the Americas, coming to an end in his homeland, with a concert Dec. 11 at Bogotá’s Movistar Arena.
“The best motivation while I finish my next album is that we already have the first dates to see each other,” Camilo said in a statement ahead of his tour, which began June in Spain.
The six-time Latin Grammy winner is currently working on what will be his fifth studio album, the followup to his fourth album, cuatro, which arrived in May 2024.
“When it comes to writing my songs, I’m systematically opposed to being a perfectionist. For me, perfectionism is a burden, a mask of cowardice,” he told Billboard’s2025 Latin Alternative Music Conference. “We’re going to perceive excellence and it’s measured in the final product. It’s measured in the totality. I have the philosophy of ‘good enough.’ If I feel the song is good enough, that’s it — we’ll move on to the next one. When your creative brain is burned out, that’s when you start creating, and you ask yourself, ‘Is it good enough?’ Yes, next! Whatever is closest to the first creative seed is almost always the best.”
New Girl and Furious screenwriter Liz Meriwether has been doing all the things one does when preparing for a biopic on one of the world’s most famous pop icons. She’s listening to the Michelle Williams-read audiobook of Britney Spears‘ 2023 The Woman in Me memoir, and, in news that should warm the hearts of the Britney Army, she is seemingly doing a deep dive into Brit’s music, at least as evidenced by which tracks she told The Hollywood Reporter are her current favorites from the singer’s nine-LP catalog.
Meriwether spoke to the magazine about the task of adapting the tell-all into a film and though details of what the movie will look, and sound like are scarce, she did delve into her prep for the project that will team her with the creative hive mind behind the pair of hit Wicked films, director Jon M. Chu and producer Marc Platt; Universal has not yet confirmed any details about the adaptation.
Meriwether told THR that it’s still early in the process, but she’s spoken to Chu and Platt “so much” already and found them to be very collaborative. “I’m so used to being the final word on everything,” she said of her frequent dual roles in the past as writer and showrunner. “But it feels really relaxing at the moment because I’m writing something and I don’t have to be the one to figure this out … I get to just be a writer and that’s fun.”
She noted that she’s both read the hard copy and listened to The Woman in Me audiobook “multiple times,” praising her former Dying For Sex collaborator Michelle Williams for just crushing the audiobook read. “Michelle is unbelievable. It’s like a monologue. I told her that her performance of the audiobook broke my heart in so many ways,” she said. “She’s being true to Britney and also telling a story in the way she’s reading it. Another spoiler: Michelle’s a really good actor. Maybe I’ll turn a script in to Mark and Jon that’s just Michelle on a stage, reading. I wonder what will happen.”
Spears’ plainspoken memoir traces her career from her humble beginnings in Louisiana to her rise to pop superstardom in the late 1990s and early 2000s. It tackles her often contentious relationship with her family head-on, as well as her tabloid catnip romance with then-*NSYNC superstar Justin Timberlake and the public mental health struggles that led a 13-year stint in a tightly controlled conservatorship she fought for years. The book was a bestseller and the Williams-read audiobook became the fastest-selling in publisher Simon & Schuster’s history.
Meriwether said she’s also been listening to Spears’ music “a lot,” as well as the other music that was released during the years Spears was making albums; since getting out of the restrictive 13-year conservatorship in Nov. 2021, Spears has vowed not to return to the music business and has not released any new songs since her July 2023 one-off with Will.i.am “Mind Your Business.”
“I want to just get the feeling that moment in time or just remind myself,” said Meriwether of her musical deep-dive. “I’m exactly Britney’s age, so a lot of that music just takes me, like, immediately back.”
And, in a detail that should make Spears’ legion of fans happy, Meriwether has also been doing a serious excavation into Brit’s catalog to get into the mood. While making playlists of her favorites, she couldn’t point to a single song, but nodded to two deep tracks from late-period Britney as her current go-tos. She’s said she’s been loving the emotionally turbulent love triangle tale “Perfume” (from 2013’s Britney Jean), as well as the fan-favorite electropop banger “If I’m Dancing,” which appeared on the singer’s most recent, and possibly final album, 2016’s Glory.
“She’s made a lot of albums,” Meriwether said. “Her hits have been such big hits that I think there are a lot of songs that people don’t think of.”
Jelly Roll took several jabs at President Donald Trump during his opening monologue as guest host of Jimmy Kimmel Live on Monday (Aug. 24), turning his fill-in stint into a pointed political set.
The country star, who is guest-hosting the ABC late-night show for four nights while Jimmy Kimmel is away, opened by noting it was the first time he’d “worn a suit and a tie ever.”
“I didn’t wear one to the Grammys. I didn’t wear one to court. I didn’t wear one to my father’s funeral,” he said. “But I look alright, don’t I?”
Referencing a Washington Postreport on the president’s recent weight gain, Jelly Roll noted that he has dropped around 300 pounds himself in recent years — “that means I’ve lost an entire Donald Trump,” he said, before tacking on a jab at the president’s approval numbers.
He also mocked Trump’s appearance at a Washington, D.C. IndyCar race over the weekend, and ran a montage of the president mocking other people’s appearances after wryly insisting the audience shouldn’t stoop to weight jokes.
“Well Mr. President, from one fat pig to another, take it from me that physical fitness is very important,” Jelly Roll concluded.
Back for his second consecutive summer filling in for Jimmy Kimmel, Jelly Roll is hosting for four nights, with guests including podcast host Jay Shetty and actor Glen Powell — who revealed that Jelly Roll has a small role in his upcoming film The Comeback King — and Stevie Nicks booked as a musical guest later in the run.
The guest hosting spot comes at a career high point for the country star, born Jason DeFord, who has become one of the most successful crossover artists in country music.
Earlier this year, he won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Country Album for Beautifully Broken, the 2024 release that became his first No. 1 on the Billboard 200. Its single “I Am Not Okay” reached No. 14 on the Hot 100 and became one of six career No. 1s on the Country Airplay chart, alongside “Son of a Sinner,” “Need a Favor,” “Save Me” (with Lainey Wilson) and “Halfway to Hell.”
Nearly 20 years after the original, Busta Rhymes has posthumously collaborated with the late J Dilla to release their joint Dillagence II project. The anticipated sequel arrived on streaming services on Tuesday (Aug. 25).
The project boasts 19 tracks and is loaded with a range of features, including Dilla’s mother, Ma Dukes, R&B legend D’Angelo, Big Sean, Ludacris, Lil Wayne, Common, Talib Kweli, Anderson .Paak and upstarts like La Reezy and Honey Bxby.
D’Angelo, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2025, appears on “This Woman” and Busta revealed that the track came from an unfinished collab between the Voodoo singer and J Dilla over 20 years ago.
“I was gifted with something that they did that they didn’t finish when the word started to spread about this project. I didn’t know that it existed because it was done 20-something years ago,” Busta toldNew York Times’Popcast. “They started something and it just never got finished. I love both of them, so I wanted to do whatever justice I could do and continue to uphold the legacies of these brothers.”
Busta also teased a music video for “This Woman” on social media directed by Hype Williams, who has an extensive history working with both the New York rapper and D’Angelo.
Bus-a-Bus has been sitting on nearly 300 J Dilla beats, a portion of which he polished to make up Dillagence II. “In my experience with Dilla, he was a man of few words. I heard him talk more when he was rhyming than in actual conversation,” the 54-year-old explained onPopcast.
Dilla and Busta originally joined forces for Dillagence in 2007, which came just over a year after J Dilla’s death in February 2006.
Even at 54, Busta Rhymes has stayed in the studio. Busta’s Dragon Season… Equinox project arrived last year and he released his BLOCKBUSTA album in 2023.
