Culture’s Biggest Night has just gotten a little bigger. Added to the lineup of the BET Awards 2024 is Grammy-winning actor and recording artist Will Smith. He’ll be taking the stage to debut a brand-new song.
“From his start as a rapper to The Fresh Prince to being a box office king as one of the Bad Boys, Will Smith is truly a global icon, and we are honored to welcome him back to grace the BET Awards stage,” Connie Orlando, EVP of specials, music programming & music strategy at BET, said in a statement. “We look forward to Will adding to yet another defining night for the culture that is not to be missed.”
Will, who stars in the recently released Bad Boys: Ride or Die, joins performers GloRilla, Ice Spice, Latto, Ms. Lauryn Hill & YG Marley, Muni Long, Sexyy Red, Shaboozey, Tyla, Victoria Monét and BET Amplified stage performer Tanner Adell.
Taraji P. Henson will serve as host, and Usher will receive the Lifetime Achievement Award.
The BET Awards 2024 will air live on BET on Sunday, June 30, at 8 p.m. ET.
Chlöe‘s sophomore album, Trouble in Paradise, is on the horizon. Speaking with Nylon, she revealed she turned it in to her label just a few weeks ago.
Ironically, most of the album was recorded in her place of refuge, where she often finds pleasure and peace: Saint Lucia. Unlike the stories of heartache heard on her debut, In Pieces, she says this project is “a coming-of-age celebration of being a woman and having fun, not taking life too seriously.” It features the sounds of the island — calypso, gospel, Afrobeats, Carnival band music — as well as stories inspired by “multiple situations.”
“The story of this album is like when you have a summer fling,” she explains. “You’re a hopeless romantic and you fall in love, deep. You know it won’t last forever, but it feels too good to really care.”
Fans can also expect a few collaborations on Trouble in Paradise, including Anderson .Paak, Jeremih and the first song with her sister Halle in three years, “Want Me.”
“I was talking to one of my engineers, and she was telling me about this guy and how into her he is, and I was sharing a similar story. I was like, ‘But am I that much into him? Why is it that the ones we want don’t want us like this?’” Chlöe said. “I immediately wrote it down in my notes, and the song wrote itself in, like, five minutes.”
Hoping to keep the conversational feel of the track, she asked Halle to join her on the song, and the two met up in a New York studio for a session that “felt like old times.”
Travis Scott is making light of his recent arrest for intoxication and trespassing, all while being charitable. Now being sold on his website are $35 T-shirts with a picture of his mugshot over the words “It’s Miami,” which is what he told police after he admitted he’d been drinking alcohol. Five dollars from each sale will benefit his Cactus Jack Foundation.
A$AP Rocky‘s fourth studio album, Don’t Be Dumb, finally has a release date: Aug. 30. He is said to have announced the date after teasing clips toward the end of the AWGE “American Sabotage” show during Paris Fashion Week. Links to presave the album and shop for merch from the American Sabotage collection were shared.
Snoop Dogg is praising Kendrick Lamar for uniting people at his Pop Out concert Wednesday. “Sending a big shout-out to K. Dot and all the homies from the West that stood together unified, organized in peace [and] love,” Snoop said. “That was fun to watch. Beautiful to see all my peoples come together… K. Dot, you are the King of the West. That’s the kind of s*** kings do, we unite.”
Many have noticed Sean “Diddy” Combs has wiped his Instagram clean amid the sexual assault allegations against him. His posts on the social platform X are still up, with a pinned statement from December 2023 in which he claimed people tried to “assassinate my character, destroy my reputation and my legacy.”
Cheers to another New Music Friday! Here’s some of the latest to hit the culture:
Kehlani‘s Crash is out now, featuring 13 tracks she thought would be great to tour. “A crash, in any form, is the peak height of the moment,” she says of her new project. It finds her “at my most free, most fun, most loud, most fueled, so far.”
Ice Spice drew comparisons to Nicki Minaj when she posted a teaser of “Phat Butt,” but now the song is out with a new video. “Rap b**** on the pop chart/ toasting b****** like pop tarts,” she raps. “Fat butt and a back tatt /and I been bad like Mike Jack.”
6lack reflects on his journey as a man and in the music industry on his new single, “FTRG” (F*** The Rap Game)”. It was released alongside a music video that “brings to life the many sentiments at play in this song.”
GloRilla‘s “TGIF” is finally here. Among the most memorable lyrics is “It’s 7pm Friday, it’s 95 degrees…I ain’t got no n**** and no n**** ain’t got me,” which is already viral on TikTok.
The new song and video from Jaden, “Roses,” is “about young love and healing.” He says it’s “a Therapy Session set to the key of Bb Major and at the tempo of 165 Bpm.”
Rema teams with fellow Nigerian Shalipoppi for “Benin Boys,” a tribute to their native Benin City. The video captures the city’s landmarks.
Capella Grey wants fans to Vibe Responsibly, according to his debut album, which was three years in the making. It features Caribbean, R&B and New York vibes.
It’s been three years since fans heard from G-Eazy, but he’s back with Freak Show, featuring “Love You Forever,” a song dedicated to his late mother, Suzanne Olmsted.
If there are two things Saweetie is known for outside of her music and beauty, it’s her food concoctions and business acumen. Both are displayed in her latest venture, a partnership with The Boiling Crab and Postmates. Per the deal, she’s bringing a variety of seafood feasts inspired by her food combos to her fans. The Hot Mess, The Bigger Hot Mess and The Biggest Hot Mess — all of which include snow crab, shrimp, corn, andouille sausage and fries — are now available at The Boiling Crab through July 7, with Postmates exclusively delivering from participating locations.
Speaking to People, Saweetie says she got her food concoctions, which include oysters in honey barbecue sauce, from her father.
“Honestly, I get a lot of the concoctions from my dad because, as a young dad, he would make me spreads,” Saweetie says. “He would make me these cool ‘Scooby-Doo’ sandwiches with a whole bunch of chips, fries, however he wanted to make it.”
“But I’ve always just had a love for concoctions and for tasting new foods. I’m a really big foodie,” she adds. It’s why she was open to the collab: It’s something she already enjoys doing.
“At this point in my career, I’m not doing things for financial benefit. I’m doing things out of passion,” Saweetie says. “It’s always a special moment when you’re able to do business with people who you share a common interest [with]; in this case, it’s seafood.”
“The fact that it’s dropping the day of Cancer season, and I’m a Cancer (my sign is a crab), it just feels so aligned and so in sync with everything that’s going on for me right now,” she tells People, “especially with just having new music out.”
When Moneybagg Yo was working on his Speak Now album, his goal was to “deliver a body of work for my day-one fanbase who been rocking with me since Federal 3x.”
The album features melodic tunes like “Drunk Off U” with Chris Brown and the Morgan Wallen-assisted “Whiskey Whiskey,” but Moneybagg says he’d been experimenting with his singing voice long before he collaborated with either artist.
“I got 80 of those type of songs before even Chris [Brown] got on it,” he tells Billboard. “I was experimenting and playing with the craft and the talent. It came out good and I put Chris on it. I got one called ‘I Feel It,’ and the Morgan Wallen situation.”
Of the Morgan collab, he says it was two to three years in the making, adding it came together because Morgan’s a fan of his work.
“He’s actually a big fan of me. We been locked in for like two or three years,” the rapper says. “We had the song when we first locked in off the rip. I had it for like a year and a half, or two years, and he’s been on me about putting it out. … The perfect time is now.”
Bagg notes that he’s in the part of his career where he’s “really about enjoying what I’m doing and expanding at the same time” because he feels he has “nothing else to prove.”
“I got all these plaques, I got success,” he says. “Just basically coming off a two-year break. I’m just letting them know I really do this. Don’t play.”
