When Forrest Frank and his booking team at UTA opened up ticket sales for the Christian music singer’s 26-city Child of God Tour Part 2 in December 2024, they made a calculated risk — taking the artist from the 2,000- to 5,000-seat standing-room clubs where he had been performing hits including “Good Day” and “Up!” to 6,000 to 7,000 average paid capacity venues that would offer more comfortable seating for the families and younger fans attending his shows.

“We were very intentional about wanting to play smaller arenas,” UTA music agent Jonathan Roberts says. Forrest Frank had also just released “Your Way’s Better,” a catchy pop song that was bolstered by a viral TikTok dance in 2025, resulting in his solo Billboard Hot 100 debut.

“All the songs had snowballed. Dickies Arena in Fort Worth [Texas] sold out [12,000 tickets] on day one of the presale,” Roberts says. “We couldn’t add dates because of certain parameters of time we could work with, so the only thing we could do was find every seat in the buildings we were in and get as many people in as possible.”

For the tour stop at Nashville’s Bridgestone Arena in April 2025, that meant opening upper levels. “We had the intention of only playing the lower bowl, up to the 200 level, because that still would have been 8,000 people,” Roberts says. “We ended up with 13,000 people in the building.”

According to Luminate’s 2025 Year-End Report, the global music industry earned 5.1 trillion on-demand audio song streams, rising 9.6% from 2024. The Christian music genre outpaced the industry’s general growth, rising 18.5% in on-demand global audio song streams in 2025 compared with 2024.

Several Christian artists have found themselves in the middle of the genre’s commercial swell.

In May 2025, two Christian music songs appeared on the Hot 100 simultaneously for the first time in 11 years: Forrest Frank’s “Your Way’s Better” and Brandon Lake’s “Hard Fought Hallelujah.” After first releasing a solo version of “Hard Fought Hallelujah,” Lake teamed with country artist Jelly Roll for a collaborative version, vaulting the song into the Hot 100’s top 40. Christian artist Josiah Queen, who is booked by the Jeff Roberts Agency, also made his Hot 100 debut in 2025 with “Dusty Bibles,” as did Phil Wickham with “What an Awesome God.”

Forrest Frank released his Child of God II project in May 2025, reaching No. 1 on Top Christian Albums and No. 12 on the Billboard 200. In June, Lake released King of Hearts, which peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 and No. 1 on Top Christian Albums. Lake followed “Hard Fought Hallelujah” with such songs as “Sevens” and a featured performance on Queen’s three-week Christian Airplay No. 1, “Can’t Steal My Joy.”

UTA, which launched its Christian music division in 2024 and represents artists including Forrest Frank, Lake, Wickham, Lecrae, Elevation Worship, Elevation Rhythm and bodie, has seen that uptick in consumption translate to wins on the road.

According to UTA, average attendance for Forrest Frank’s shows nearly tripled from 2024 to 2025, rising from 2,840 to 8,320, as part of his Child of God Tour Part 2 arena trek, which included sold-out shows in Nashville; Anaheim, Calif.; and Tulsa, Okla.

UTA also reports that Lake’s 2024 tour dates brought an average of 8,199 attendees per show, while his 2025-26 King of Hearts tour has drawn an average of 11,436 to date. Lake and Wickham’s co-headlining Summer Worship Nights run drew 10,325 average attendance per show in 2024 and rose to an average of 16,823 in 2025.

“Ever since I got back into [venues] after 2020, it felt like there was something that broke open, that has not changed, just a hunger in the church for the presence of God, a longing for real connection with each other in God,” Wickham says. “It doesn’t feel like I’m preaching that from the stage, hoping people will respond. It feels like people are preaching it back to me with their faith in the room. I’m joining a wave of what’s happening and it’s so beautiful.”

For UTA agent Nick Barnes, who leads the agency’s Heartland initiative (a group focused on shared values of community, faith and family), a few other moments that signaled the genre’s influence on mainstream culture happened backstage at the Bridgestone Arena shows on Frank’s Child of God Tour Part 2 and the Lake-Wickham trek.

“I noticed the amount of crossover musicians, celebrities, actors, artists that were backstage, wanting to hang in the culture,” Barnes says. “When you see that, you know the tide is turning.”

WME partner of Christian music Mark Claassen says, “A big part of this is the breaking down of genre walls, especially with Gen Z. Their playlists consist of Christian and worship songs mixed right in with country, hip-hop, pop, alternative and more. It’s just not separated or segmented the way it was in the ’90s and 2000s.”

Genre mainstay artists such as Chris Tomlin and tobyMac, who are booked by Platform Artists, have long headlined at storied venues such as Kia Forum in Los Angeles and Colorado’s Red Rocks Amphitheatre. But Claassen notes that historically, younger and newer Christian artists were limited to headlining church venues or Christian colleges. That has changed, as agencies have increasingly worked with not only established Christian music promoters such as Awakening Events and TPR but also Live Nation and AEG. Elevation Rhythm’s Goodbye Yesterday tour included stops at New York City’s Irving Plaza and Nashville’s Cannery Hall. Queen’s Mt. Zion Tour includes stops at Phoenix’s Arizona Financial Theatre and Boston’s Citizens House of Blues.

“We are in a season where all concert promoters are seeing the value and ticket sales and want to work with these artists, all the way down to local independent clubs and theaters,” Claassen says.

After his Child of God Tour Part 2 ended in May, Forrest Frank continued releasing a deluge of songs that reached the top 10 on Billboard’s Hot Christian Songs chart, including “Nothing Else” (featuring Thomas Rhett), “God’s Got My Back” and “Lemonade” (with The Figs).

All those hits primed the recent on-sale for his 29-city The Jesus Generation Tour presented by TPR, which launches in June. Forrest Frank will play a mix of arenas and outdoor stadiums, including Nashville’s GEODIS Park (23,000 capacity), Pennsylvania’s Hersheypark Stadium (30,000) and Arlington, Texas’ Globe Life Field (35,000) while arena stops will feature in-the-round seating. Roberts estimates that over 500,000 tickets have already been sold for the tour.

Awakening Events founder and CEO Dan Fife has also witnessed the growth in the genre. Among the promoter’s current tours are tobyMac’s Hits Deep Tour, Seph Schlueter’s Counting My Blessings trek and Chris Tomlin’s annual Good Friday Nashville event (which, in 2024, set the record for the largest ticketed Christian concert at Bridgestone Arena with 15,889 attendees). According to Awakening, last year it promoted 355 shows, selling over 820,000 tickets, with 2026 projections to be over 400 shows.

“This has been my primary genre for the past 25 years and it’s been fun to see the growth,” Fife says. “It’s a genre where radio is still as important as streaming. Between the [digital service providers] and some of the great radio networks out there, that’s a one plus one equals three situation.”

WME launched its Christian division, WME CMG, more than 10 years ago and has seen its touring income nearly double since 2018, largely due to more arena tours from clients including Lauren Daigle, Kirk Franklin, worship collective Maverick City Music, MercyMe and Crowder. (Former Maverick City Music members Chandler Moore and Naomi Raine are now signed as solo artists with WME.)

From 2023 to 2025, WME CMG continued having steady growth, from booking 800 shows with 3.3 million in attendance in 2023 to booking over 900 shows in 2025 with over 4 million attendees.

WME’s Claassen points to the opening weekend of Daigle’s 2020 global tour — which was cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic — as a turning point. “At that time, no artist coming directly out of the Christian music space had reached that level of ticket counts or grosses,” Claassen says. “We were selling out arenas at on-sale. That tour was doing comparable business to artists like Carrie Underwood and the Jonas Brothers, which made it clear this wasn’t niche growth anymore. It was mainstream-level demand.”

According to WME, gospel music artist Kirk Franklin and Maverick City Music’s 50-city Kingdom Tour in 2022 marked a major milestone by grossing over $1 million for individual shows.

“Combining the biggest gospel act of all time with the hottest [contemporary Christian music] and worship act at that moment hit at exactly the right time. It felt like a true crossover of worlds, where everyone in the room felt welcome, and it became a never-been-done-before kind of show,” says Mike Snider, partner, Christian music at WME.

Like their Gen Z and Gen Alpha fans, today’s rising and established artists are social media-savvy, harnessing TikTok, Instagram and other platforms to promote their music, with more faith-based songs finding homes on secular playlists.

Over the past several years, artists ranging from Ye to Florida Georgia Line and Carrie Underwood have released faith-inspired music or albums. Barnes predicts the next several months will have more mainstream artists entering the contemporary Christian music space: “They’re inviting people into the CCM world [to be] themselves, and that’s working.”

Christian artists have also increasingly made appearances at mainstream festivals in recent years, with NF and Daigle playing Lollapalooza, Lake performing at CMA Fest, Anne Wilson performing at Stagecoach and Franklin appearing at All Points East. Forrest Frank will perform at RodeoHouston this year, and Christian artists Caleb Gordon, 1KPhew, whatuprg, Anike, Nathan Davis Jr. and JAN will play hip-hop sets that will open the final day of this year’s Rolling Loud festival.

“We’ve got these artists on our roster that are completely unashamed about who they are and are running headfirst toward it,” Barnes says. “That’s what’s drawing the Gen Z and Gen Alpha kids toward this music, and these kids are looking for something to believe in.” 

Top Christian Artists

1. Forrest Frank
2. Brandon Lake
3. Elevation Worship
4. Josiah Queen
5. Phil Wickham
6. CeCe Winans
7. Lauren Daigle
8. Anne Wilson
9. Ye
10. Leanna Crawford

Top Christian Artists ranks the best-performing acts of the chart year based on activity on the Top Christian Albums and Hot Christian Songs lists, as well as Billboard Boxscore. The 2025 tracking period ran from Oct. 26, 2024, to Oct. 18, 2025.

It was the news that Swifties had long waited for: “Opalite,” the fan-favorite second single from Taylor Swift’s blockbuster The Life of a Showgirl album, was getting a music video. 

The official visual for the breezy pop-rock hit was released to Apple Music and Spotify on Friday morning (Feb. 6), with the YouTube premiere to follow on Sunday. The video co-stars Domnhall Gleeson, who’d joked during a recent co-appearance with Swift on The Graham Norton Show about being in her new video. (Norton also makes a cameo, as do Greta Lee, Jodie Turner-Smith, Lewis Capaldi and Cillian Murphy, who were all also on the episode with Swift and Gleeson.) 

In addition to the video premiere, the song is now out on on 7-inch vinyl for the first time — with the “Life Is a Song Acoustic Version” of “Opalite” on the single’s B-side — and will be available for purchase for just 48 hours. The 7-inch is currently up for pre-order on her website, and is listed as being ready to ship “on or about February 9,” or this coming Monday. (The acoustic version is also available for streaming on DSPs.) 

The lining up of the video’s premiere with the 7-inch’s release in the same tracking week (Feb. 6-12) will undoubtedly lead Swifties and other chartwatchers to be paying close attention to the next week’s Billboard Hot 100 (dated Feb. 21), where we will see if the corresponding bumps in streams and sales can lead the song to capture the No. 1 spot for the first time. “Opalite” previously bowed at its No. 2 Hot 100 best during Showgirl’s debut week on the chart, and has spent most of its chart run since hanging around the top 10 — ranking at No. 10 this week. 

Swift’s decision to premiere the video first on Spotify and Apple Music follows YouTube’s December announcement that it was withdrawing its streaming data from all of Billboard‘s charts. YouTube’s withdrawal followed Billboard‘s Dec. 16 announcement of a change to chart methodology that will continue to weigh subscription streams more favorably than ad-supported streams, in a bid to better reflect changing consumer behaviors and the increased revenue derived from streaming in the industry. (The change means that paid/subscription streams will be weighted against ad-supported streams at a 1:2.5 ratio, narrowed from the previous 1:3 ratio.)

Swift and her fans would no doubt love to see “Opalite” top the chart, giving Showgirl its second No. 1 hit on the Hot 100, following lead single “The Fate of Ophelia” reigning for a career-best 10 total weeks between late 2025 and early 2026. Swift has racked up a stunning 13 No. 1 hits on the chart since she first led in 2012 — leading Drake, by one, for the most among all artists over that timespan — but, in the past decade (since reputation in 2017), they’ve all come from different albums. Her last LP to generate multiple No. 1 hits was her epochal 2014 blockbuster 1989, which spun off three: “Shake It Off,” “Blank Space” and “Bad Blood” (with Kendrick Lamar). 

But the competition on the Feb. 21 chart is already set to be stiff. Previous No. 1-bowing 2026 hits from Bruno Mars (“I Just Might”) and Harry Styles (“Aperture”) have receded in weekly sales and streams from their debut weeks, but are beginning to make up for it with steady radio growth (and, for Mars, a big look on Grammy night last Sunday). Ella Langley’s “Choosin’ Texas” also remains mighty on streaming and country radio — with pop radio starting to come around, as well — and Olivia Dean’s “Man I Need” remains a cross-platform smash, with Dean’s entire catalog seeing major gains following her own huge Grammys night. (The Langley and Dean hits are expected to be the primary contenders for No. 1 on next week’s Hot 100, dated Feb. 14.)

This Friday also brings with it the re-entry of a major chart force in rap superstar J. Cole. While Cole is not as familiar with the top of the Hot 100 as Swift, Mars or Styles — he’s only made it once, as a featured artist on Drake’s “First Person Shooter,” having topped out at No. 2 as a lead artist (“my.life” with 21 Savage and Morray in 2021). But he has still been an impactful presence on the Hot 100 for many years — with 13 total top 10 hits since 2016 — and new set The Fall-Off has the advantage of not only coming after years of anticipation, but being billed as Cole’s final album. 

But perhaps the biggest challenger to Taylor Swift immediately scoring her second Showgirl No. 1 is Bad Bunny. The global superstar is experiencing the biggest gains of anyone from Grammy night, thanks to multiple memorable moments on stage and in the audience, and a trio of wins, including album of the year for his Billboard 200-topping 2025 set Debí Tirar Más Fotos. Bad Bunny’s whole catalog has risen as a result, with Fotos’ total streams tripling on the Monday after the Grammys (Feb. 2). 

The biggest beneficiary of all Bad Bunny songs has been “DtMF,” which has since claimed the top spot on both Spotify’s and Apple Music’s daily charts. The track has averaged more than 3 million official on-demand U.S. streams a day since the Grammys, compared to “Opalite” being in the daily low 1-million range. “DtMF” could return to the Hot 100 in the top 20 or even the top 10 on next week’s chart (dated Feb. 14) — possibly higher than “Opalite,” despite the Grammy bump only impacting the final four full days of its tracking week. 

And it might not even be the biggest streaming bump that “DtMF” gets this month. Even with his big night at the Grammys, Bad Bunny didn’t perform any of his songs — outside of humoring Trevor Noah with a couple bars of “DtMF” during the host’s own rendition of the song — because he was waiting to take the biggest stage of them all: Super Bowl halftime, which he’ll be headlining for the first time this Sunday (Feb. 8). 

Last year, Kendrick Lamar showed the power of what can happen when one of the hottest contemporary performers in music performs at Super Bowl halftime, particularly when they’re coming off a huge Grammys night, as Lamar also was when he went 5-for-5 with “Not Like Us” in 2025. The week after the rap superstar’s Super Bowl performance, he charted 13 songs on the Hot 100, including a stunning four of the top chart’s five — with “Not Like Us,” the most buzzed-about song from his performance, returning to the top of the chart. (“Luther” with SZA, which ranked behind it at No. 2, would claim the top spot the next week and rule for 13 weeks.)

Bad Bunny could certainly be in line for a similar chart-swarming week on the Hot 100 following his own Grammys-Super Bowl back-to-back. And if he performs “DtMF” during his Super Bowl set — which, as the Grammy-nominated quasi-title track to and biggest global hit from his most recent album, seems highly probable — it could pour significantly more gasoline on the song’s already-raging fire, potentially setting it on a path to contend for the No. 1 the next week.  

“Opalite” will certainly have a major radio advantage over any Bad Bunny competitor on the chart, as the song currently ranks in the top 10 on Radio Songs, while nothing from Fotos is nowhere to be found in the 50-song chart. But it will likely ultimately come down to how much the “Opalite” video can help compensate for the likely streaming gap between the two songs, and then if Swift ships enough of those vinyl 7-inches to make for a significant sales margin, as well. 

Regardless, for anyone unsatisfied with the Super Bowl matchup this year, they’ll also have a likely showdown between the Billboard staff’s picks for the two Greatest Pop Stars of 2025 to look forward to. 

On Jan. 5, the day bluegrass star Molly Tuttle performed “That’s Gonna Leave a Mark” on Jimmy Kimmel Live!, news broke that the long-running ABC late-night talk show would soon reduce its number of weekly musical acts to two. Tuttle’s name and image appeared in several news stories about the change — good press despite the bad news. “I’ll take the windfall,” says Kevin Spellman, her manager. “Unfortunately, what we have is a significant limitation on opportunities to expose your music to a national audience, particularly in the smaller genres.”

Kimmel’s music reduction, along with Late Night With Seth Meyers cutting its Fred Armisen-founded house band in 2024, and CBS’ cancellation of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert kicking in this May, means The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and Saturday Night Live! are the only major late-night shows continuing to emphasize live music. It’s a cultural shift away from the all-powerful TV era when an appearance on Johnny Carson’s or David Letterman’s shows could single-handedly break new stars, and it leaves the music industry flailing for big-swing promotional appearances.

“It’s just making it harder and harder for us to find outlets outside of social media and radio to really reach a lot of people,” says Brian Schwartz, manager of Dawes, which memorably covered the Beatles‘ “With a Little Help From My Friends” on Kimmel with guests Aloe Blacc and others in December, to promote their benefit show for Southern California fire victims. “Late-night television, and TV in general, has become harder and harder. To take three nights away from us on yet another show, it’s difficult.” 

Reps for Jimmy Kimmel Live! did not respond to inquiries, but the show’s change in music over the last year reflects the diminishing power of late-night talk shows for artists — especially their initial airings on television. In the 2000s, Letterman and his top rival, Jay Leno, frequently drew between 4 million and 6 million TV viewers nightly, while their successors averaged between 1.2 million and 2.5 million throughout 2025. 

For artists, managers and labels, the dwindling promotional opportunities has meant tougher decisions: Most talk shows do not pay for performances, and artists frequently must cover travel expenses as well as luxuries like makeup and wardrobe. Sources told Billboard in 2024 that such expenses can range from $150,000 to $225,000, or as high as $700,000 for Saturday Night Live!. “They have, like, 2 million viewers of these shows, and that’s what we get on daily posts on TikTok,” Ethan Curtis, manager of singer-songwriter JVKE, who played Fallon in 2022, said at the time. “It’s an energy drain. We travel and train for the performance and do it in one take. It doesn’t feel worth it for every song.”

Traditionally, labels have paid for the performances, which, when they go well, can significantly boost music sales and streaming — not to mention draw attention to upcoming tour dates. (They frequently take the costs out of the artists’ own budgets, to be paid back after artists recoup their advance payments, according to standard record deals.) Some labels, says a source who used to work on music in late-night television, have recently insisted that the talk shows themselves cover these expenses — which may be one reason the shows are cutting back. “I imagine they’re being much more careful,” the source says. “Someone that could have a song on the Hot 100 isn’t as attractive to bookers. Maybe they’re only looking at the Top 10.”

“They’re cutting back because some of the monologues are getting longer, or you have multiple guests and there’s movie studios who put these actors on media campaigns to sell movies. They’re pushing for ‘You want one of our top stars? I want to get two segments,’” Spellman adds. “I get it. There’s a lot of money invested in these promotions.”

For artists who’ve booked performances recently on top late-night shows, the payoff is still worth it. Dawes and Friends’ Kimmel performance has landed more than 66,000 YouTube views, and Tuttle’s Kimmel appearance earlier this month drew nearly 50,000 YouTube views, plus 4,500 likes on Instagram — not to mention what Spellman calls “cut-downs,” or snippets and excerpts posted not only by fans but media reports, including those about Kimmel‘s music reduction. Referring to ABC briefly yanking Kimmel’s show due to political pressure last September, Spellman says, “Since Kimmel came back, his audience is significantly higher. It’s hard to measure exactly the impact on eyeballs and views on social platforms, but it is incredibly significant. That’s the part that is a bummer, that we’re going to miss out on.”

Career-making late-night TV performances have been rare in recent years, compared to, say, Phoenix‘s 2009 SNL appearance that turned its album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix into a smash. But they still happen: In late 2023, Kimmel aired R&B singer October London‘s performance of “Back to Your Place,” complete with a Snoop Dogg introduction and a pricey seven-piece band. The clip landed some 300,000 YouTube views — and enough buzz to increase ticket sales for London’s show at Brooklyn Steel later that night by 100. “It’s not nothing,” Adrian L. Miller, then London’s manager, later told Billboard.

The Kimmel music reduction, as well as the loss of music on Meyers and the impending cancellation of Colbert, is a “blow to everybody — the artists, the labels, the teams, the show,” Schwartz says. “It’s just another kick in the marketing shins, so to speak.”

Nearly a decade into his rap career, LaRussell is finally starting to enjoy the fruits of his labor. The Bay Area native has been hard at work, rewriting the script as an independent trailblazer, which caught the watchful eye of Jay-Z.

LaRussell met Hov last month at the Roc Nation offices in Los Angeles, which resulted in the rapper inking a deal with Roc Nation. The 31-year-old partnered with ROC Nation Distribution, while retaining rights to his masters. In a way, LaRussell took both the $500,000 and the meeting with Jay, which has been a nauseating debate on social media for years.

“I got to a point in my journey where I’m the first in my lineage to do a lot of these things, so I no longer have a guide,” LaRussell tells Billboard. “And Hov is who is now another guide for me that I could look to and say, ‘Hey, man, how did you navigate this?’”

Doors are already starting to open, as the NFL took note of LaRussell’s movement, who will be curating the house band for Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium, and is also slated to perform in Santa Clara on Super Bowl Sunday (Feb. 8) at the Tailgate alongside headliner Teddy Swims.

Inspired by Nipsey Hussle’s entrepreneurial $100 mixtape approach, which saw the late Los Angeles rapper sell 1,000 copies of his Crenshaw project in 2013 (Jay-Z was a buyer), LaRussell is looking to sell 100,000 copies of his Something’s in the Water album.

Delayed until March after falling short of his six-figure goal, LaRussell’s “pay what you want” model charges fans as little as a dollar for early access to the LP on the EVEN platform. Plenty of celebrities have also stepped up to support LaRussell with four and five-figure purchases. The list notably includes NBA star Kyrie Irving ($11,001), Snoop Dogg ($2,500), E-40 ($1,000) and Raphael Saadiq ($10,000).

“Shout-out [Nipsey Hussle]. He did the $100 album. And this was my way of just giving a nod to Nip, but opening the door for more people to have access,” LaRussell adds. “It’s been really dope to see, especially the artistic community, because you don’t often see artists supporting artists in this fashion.”

Check out our full interview with LaRussell ahead of Super Bowl LX, which finds him detailing his meeting with Jay, getting love from his peers and advice for independent artists.

You’re curating the house band for the Super Bowl. How does something like that even come about?

A lot of long conversations. We’ve been meeting with the NFL for the past few months, speaking our piece and stating why we think we deserve the opportunity and it finally came around. They sent it up to the top, and the Tailgate was something that was last-minute. But the house band curation is something we’ve been working on for a minute.

What’s your vision for that and the Tailgate performance?

It’s just gonna be a nice welcome to the Bay Area. A nod to my region and where I’m from. You’re gonna hear a lot of sounds that, if you’re not from here, you might be unfamiliar with. It’s gonna be a lot of collar popping and a lot of collar holding. It’s gonna be a lot of head-swinging and shaking.

I’m here to represent the region and the turf, and I wanted to show the rest of the world what we got to offer. Historically, we haven’t gotten an opportunity to really be on this level and on these kinds of platforms. So I feel like it’s rightfully due.

You pushed the album back to March; we got more albums to sell.

It’s crazy because the day after we bumped it back, I got a sale from Gary Vee for $18,000 and Raphael Saadiq for $10,000. So I’m really grateful that I stuck with my gut and chose to push it back, and just campaign some more. I wanted to get the people more involved.

Touch on some of those celebrity purchases, like Kyrie Irving paying $11,000.

Kyrie Irving, $11,000 and we donated that back to the hood. E-40, $1,000. Cedric the Entertainer, Snow tha Product ($5,000) and Snoop Dogg ($2500).

I just saw Raphael Saadiq did too.

I was surprised, yeah, I didn’t know. That’s so cool for somebody who shares the same lineage and legacy as me to do that. That’s a special moment.

It’s been cool to see how much love you’re getting on social media from like Busta Rhymes to Charlamagne Tha God.

I feel like it’s been years and years of build-up. Charlamagne gave me one of my first really big opportunities by allowing me to come on The Breakfast Club and rap. That really expanded my career beyond just my region. He watched me turn down Roc Nation and watched me go through all these different phases of my journey. This full-circle moment of like, “Damn, you did it and you stayed indie and you stuck to your guns.”

How cool is it to see J. Cole on the EVEN platform with Birthday Blizzard?

That’s really insane — because, yeah, we was really in the bedroom in my mama’s crib during that first launch. How do we make this efficient? How do we make it effective? How can this benefit everybody? And to go from that all the way to J. Cole, Wale, 21 Savage. We’ve had so many people use the platform and sell more units than they’ve ever sold, and be able to make more money than they’ve made traditionally off streaming. It’s been a beautiful thing. That’s something that came from us. That exists because I’m alive.

How about the new single “I’m From the Bay” with Lil Jon?

Yeah, we fired up. It’s produced by Lil Jon and my homies. That’s the part that makes me feel really good. I put Jon in the studio with people that I’ve been building with, who’ve been here with me from the jump. Hokage Simon, we did our first show out of town together, my very first booking, and to make it to a point where he’s working on records with Lil Jon beside him for this album is a special moment.

How was linking with Jay-Z? You didn’t take the $500,000.

I took both; it was really incredible. It was dope to see somebody climb so high up the ladder and still have their feet on the ground. You don’t experience it often. You get to a point where you can have money, where you don’t have to deal with anyone and still take your time out to deal with people that you don’t have to and share how it makes you feel and your experiences.

Take us into those conversations with Jay. What game did he give you or what were those questions you were looking for guidance on?

We talked about what the future looks like and what the past looks like, and how we can’t replicate the past, and how necessary it is for us to move forward, and how all the infrastructure needs to shift to look different and just how many blows Hov has to take by being innovative. We allow everyone else to do anything that he does, but Hov does it and it’s an issue. We allow everybody else to make streaming platforms, but Hov does and it’s an issue. And that’s something that’s deeply rooted, far beyond him. But he’s really in a fight for what we’re after, the same fight that I’m fighting. That’s why it meant so much to me, because he understood what it took for me to get to where I am.

Were you starstruck talking to Hov?

Oh yeah! After he walked in the room, my whole crew was starstruck. We just started fiddling. We just started hitting buttons on our computer with nothing on the screen. And I felt really grateful for that experience, because I don’t get that anymore. I often give that to people, but I don’t get that experience. So that was the first time for me in a long time where I met someone who made me feel like, ‘Damn, larger than life.’ Hov is tall, but he’s a giant outside of his height.

How was putting together that $1,000 Backyard Experience for your fans?

Legendary. That was my first time asking my community to support me that deeply. Yeah. And it was another thing, like the $100,000 album sold campaign. We’re just on a walk, popping our s–t. And I decided to launch the next day, and it sold out immediately. The first show went just like that. Within hours, we announced the second show. We sold 250 tickets total, quarter of a million dollars off a low-capacity show. I feel like I got the Guinness World Record for the lowest amount of tickets sold for the highest amount of revenue.

Does it feel awkward charging fans that much, like I gotta deliver on this experience?

It don’t feel weird because I meet people for a dollar. They paid because they believed in what we were doing and cultivating an experience. But like, whether you pay $1000 or you pay a dollar, if you come to my show, you’re gonna meet me, you gonna get a hug. But this one was just more intimate, because we’re gonna go to dinner and come to the crib early. This was really the community rallying around somebody they believed in. You’ve never seen your favorite artists in their backyard. Only my fans get to say that for the rest of every artist’s career.

What’s the plan for when you run it back?

I am going to run it back, but I’m gonna scale it up each time. We’re gonna make new history every time. And I want to add more amenities. We’ll do pop-up shows, and then I’ll go play pickleball with the fans. We’ve been really finding ways to cultivate and build that relationship deeper than just come watch me rap.

What makes a star in this era? Mainstream stardom is very different from when we grew up. It’s very niche, like you got a Rod Wave, an NBA YoungBoy and now a Don Toliver. How do you view that?

I think they’re very popular, but they’re not stars. Stars are hard to come by, like a star shines everywhere, not just in the niche, not just like in random places, but no matter where you at. I think that only God could cultivate that. You know, everyone’s not chosen for that role. I don’t even think there’s an amount of work you could do to get that. Like Michael Jackson was chosen. He earned it, and he worked his a— off, but he was chosen. There was a certain light about him that just existed. I don’t think we really have too much say in that; it’s just a life that’s unfolding. Like, I’m really a n—a from Vallejo who had no star quality at one point.

Looking at the music landscape now, what are your tips for independent artists?

Be hyper authentic. I think that’s like a very cliche one, but it’s the most important, like I’ve gotten this far, because when people see me outside, it’s the same person that they seen online. They never encounter a different version of me, and they can relate to that. They feel the human. They feel like they can bring their kids to me, they can bring their grandmother to me. And that’s all due to authenticity, like they connect at a real, genuine level. It’s not like I’m some star and I’m up here and they’re down here and you just got to witness me be that. People come up to me like I’m their cousin. Like there’s certain people you’re scared to meet, but then people treat me like I’m literally a relic, like they grew up knowing me their whole life. I think being really consistent, honing your craft to the point where you become undeniable.

2021 was my first viral moment on the scene, and I lasted five years independently, spending my own money and building my own ecosystem. There’s artists who have been on majors who disappeared completely. It’s a really hard feat, but you can only do that by making yourself undeniable. You stay consistent, and you do so much work that it’s even if you don’t want to see me, you have to see me.

How was linking with Wiz Khalifa?

Legendary, I got to hit a joint. It was really beautiful, especially the moment we had after, when the world took to it, and it was like the narrative of, “Man, I haven’t heard Wiz like this in a long time. This is Kush & Orange Juice Wiz.” It really lifted the tide. Him dropping the album after that, I felt like I added a pillar moment to that journey leading into that album. I was just grateful to contribute to his journey in that way, and vice versa. It was a special moment. I do my vlogs because I used to watch DayTodays.