Category: Music

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 16^th 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’s 2025 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.”

Watch “Vida de Rico” below.

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 Post report 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 told New 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 on Popcast.

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.

Stream Dillagence II below.

Vince Staples is heading back to Australia. The “Norf Norf” rapper has announced a run of headline shows for January 2027 in support of his latest album Cry Baby, marking his first solo Australian dates in nearly a decade.

Presented by Untitled Group and Beyond the Valley, the Cry Baby Tour will take in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, wrapping around Staples’ set at Beyond the Valley, the sold-out Victorian festival where he is among the headliners. The run marks his first headline shows in the country since 2018.

The tour supports Cry Baby, Staples’ seventh studio album, released in June via Section Eight Arthouse, Loma Vista and Concord. A departure from the introspective, hometown-focused work of 2022’s Ramona Park Broke My Heart and 2024’s Dark Times, the album is a more outward-facing piece of social commentary built around live instrumentation, and was trailed by videos for “Blackberry Marmalade,” “White Flag” and “Cotton.” Staples has been performing the material with a live band, a shift he first showcased at his sold-out Los Angeles album-release show. The Long Beach, California, native broke through with his 2015 debut Summertime ’06 and its platinum single “Norf Norf.”

His 2017 sophomore album Big Fish Theory debuted at No. 16 on the Billboard 200 — his highest-charting album to date — and he has continued to chart with each subsequent release, including his 2021 self-titled album, which reached No. 21. Beyond music, Staples has expanded into television, creating and starring in the Netflix comedy The Vince Staples Show, which premiered in 2024.

Tickets go on general sale Tuesday, Sept. 1 at 3 p.m. AEST, following an Untitled presale from Aug. 31.

VINCE STAPLES — CRY BABY TOUR 2027

Jan. 2 — Perth — Ice Cream Factory

Jan. 5 — Brisbane — The Tivoli

Jan. 6 — Sydney — Enmore Theatre

Jan. 7 — Melbourne — Forum

Justin Timberlake recently shared a photo reel of his adorable family’s epic summer vacation, full of fun adventures, new experiences and a trip to the rodeo. But in a The Godfather Part III-type scenario on Saturday (Aug. 22) at Don Toliver‘s headlining show on his Octane world tour in Miami, Fla., just when JT thought he was out, the stage pulled him right back in.

In an Instagram video from the show at Kaseya Arena, Justin is first seen bobbing his head and enjoying the show as Toliver jams in the background, before a SpongeBob SquarePants-inspired dissolve magically transports the “SexyBack” star to the stage alongside the “No Idea” singer/MC. The caption to the post said it all: “I just wanted to watch the show from the VIP.”

Toliver invited JT up to perform his iconic 2003 single “Rock Your Body,” as well as Toliver’s own “Body,” which samples the song from Timberlake’s 2002 debut solo album, Justified. Dressed in baggy black pants, an oversized cream-colored shirt and khaki baseball hat, Timberlake sounded in peak shape during his song and bounced across the stage during Toliver’s “Body,” letting the headliner retake the spotlight as the former *NSYNC star danced, hyped up the crowd and threw in the occasional harmony vocals on the hook. Toliver thanked JT for coming and Justin returned the favor by asking the crowd to give it up for the man on the marquee. “I love you guys. The biggest rock star on the planet! Don Toliver!” Timberlake said before running off stage.

Timberlake has been largely off the radar since winding down his Forget Tomorrow world tour in Istanbul, Turkey last July.

The singer, who revealed that he’d been battling the effects of Lyme disease while on that tour, did, however, spring a similar surprise on the audience at the Recording Academy Honors Black Music Collective event in Los Angeles in January honoring his frequent collaborator Pharrell. At that show, Timberlake ran through a series of his hits, including the Neptunes-produced “Señorita,” “Rock Your Body” and “Like I Love You.”