Tones And I will get the place bouncing when she performs next month for an historic series of pre-season NBA games in Australia.

Association franchise New Orleans Pelicans will make the long haul to Melbourne, where they’ll tackle NBL finalists Melbourne United on Friday, Oct. 3, and semi-finalists South East Melbourne Phoenix, Oct. 5th, 2025, both at Rod Laver Arena.

Confirmed today, Sept. 5, the “Dance Monkey” star is the halftime entertainment for the Friday spectacle, and she’ll headline a “Fan Night” the following evening.

Tones (real name Toni Wilson) is a regular courtside guest for Melbourne United home games, and is a passionate fan of the sport. She’s the “Number 1” ticket holder for the franchise, effectively an ambassador for the team, and she performed at a half-time show and a Fan Night in October 2024.

With 2019’s “Dance Monkey,” Tones crushed chart records and landed one of the most-streamed songs in history. The track led Australia’s ARIA Chart for a record 24 weeks; held top spot on the Official UK Chart for 11 weeks, a record for a solo female artist; and went top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. All told, the song hit the top spot on sales charts in more than 30 territories, and has danced past 3.3 billion streams on Spotify.

Tones has two ARIA No. 1 albums to her name, a slew of ARIA Awards, and she’s said play the point guard position like a pro.

The NBAxNBL games will be the first played by NBA squads in Australia, one of the Association’s most fanatical international markets. Australia is said to be the No. 2 territories outside of the United States for subscriptions to the NBA’s League Pass app.

The NBA’s long-overdue crossing to Australia follows the announcement by the NFL this year of a multi-year arrangement to play regular season games at the Melbourne Cricket Ground from next year, featuring the Los Angeles Rams. 

The forthcoming Netflix series Black Rabbit stars Jude Law and Jason Bateman as the brothers behind a white-hot restaurant and VIP lounge in New York City. If that premise isn’t enticing enough, the show will also get a heavy dose of glamour via RAYE, who will appear in an episode of the show playing herself while performing the show’s titular establishment. Billboard is premiering exclusive images from her appearance on the show.

In tandem with the news, RAYE has released a cover of “What a Difference a Day Makes,” a beloved standard whose 1959 recording by Dinah Washington won a Grammy for best rhythm & blues performance. RAYE’s take on the song is out now.

Premiering on the streamer Sept. 18, Black Rabbit is a limited series with a premise that follows “the owner of the hottest restaurant in New York” (Law) who allows his troubled brother (Bateman) to return to the family business, a move that “opens the door to old traumas and new dangers that threaten to bring down everything they’ve built.”

Directors of the eight-episode series include Bateman, Laura Linney, Ben Semanoff and Justin Kurzel.

“I am very grateful to Netflix and the Black Rabbit team for inviting me to be a little part of this series,” says RAYE. “To Miss Laura Linney for having me, it was such a privilege to play a teeny tiny part under your vision. Reading my very first ever ‘on screen’ lines, whilst staring into Jason Bateman’s eyes is a life experience I will never forget, hahahah!

“Regarding the music,” she continues, “I’m absolutely head over heels in love with Dinah Washington, who sang the version of this song I am most in love with. It’s always tough to cover a song sung by the irreplaceable inimitable voices of the jazz age but I hope my love of the song shines through.”

Ladder safety is no laughing matter.

Saturday Night Live vet Jorma Taccone, a member of The Lonely Island comedy troupe, shattered his pelvis and detached his sacrum in a fall from a 20-foot ladder at his farmhouse in Connecticut.

The accident was on Aug. 31, his daughter’s 5th birthday. “It wasn’t the coolest way to start the day,” Taccone said.

Taccone, 48, recounted the scary incident from his hospital bed during Tuesday’s episode of The Lonely Island & Seth Meyers podcast, which he co-hosts with fellow Lonely Island members Andy Samberg and Akiva Schaffer and late-night talk show host Seth Meyers.

“There’s a barn, and the back half of the barn has a big white wall. And I was like, ‘Oh, this is great. We can do a big mural.’”

Taccone said that he borrowed ladders to hang lights around the barn to highlight the mural when he fell 20 feet onto his butt. “I literally have enough time as I’m falling to be like, ‘I’m going to die,’” he said.

While the injuries were serious, Taccone said his doctors expect him to walk again within three to six months, which was a huge relief to his Lonely Island colleagues – friends since childhood.

“It’s been a really scary week, and we’re glad that you didn’t hit your head and that you’re not dead,” Schaffer said.

The Lonely Island have proved highly successful at blending music and comedy. They put seven songs on the Billboard Hot 100, topped by “I Just Had Sex” (featuring Akon), which reached No. 30 in 2011. Their other Hot 100 hits featured T-Pain, Nicki Minaj, Michael Bolton, Adam Levine & Kendrick Lamar and Tegan & Sara.

They released three studio albums, all of which made the top 15 on the Billboard 200: Incredibad (No. 13 in 2009), Turtleneck & Chain (No. 3 in 2011) and The Wack Album (No. 10 in 2013).

In February 2025, the group performed a medley of their greatest hits on SNL50: The Homecoming Concert.

They won a Primetime Emmy for co-writing “Dick in a Box,” which Justin Timberlake and Samberg performed on SNL in 2007. They subsequently received five additional Primetime Emmy nods for outstanding music & lyrics for co-writing “Motherlover,” “Shy Ronnie,” “I Just Had Sex,” “Jack Sparrow” and “3-Way (The Golden Rule).”

They also received three Grammy nominations: best rap/sung collaboration for “I’m on a Boat” (featuring T-Pain), best comedy album for Turtleneck & Chain, and best song written for visual media for “Everything Is Awesome!!!,” on which they backed Tegan & Sara. They wrote the latter song for The Lego Movie.

Taccone has also received four Primetime Emmy nods for writing for SNL and one as an executive producer of Pen15, which was nominated for outstanding comedy series in 2021.

In 2010, Taccone co-wrote and directed MacGruber, which was his directorial debut. He directed his second feature alongside Schaffer, the musical comedy Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping, which he also co-wrote and co-starred in with Schaffer and Samberg.

Taccone’s latest film Over Your Dead Body, which he directed, was acquired by IFC in May, according to Deadline.