Shawn Desman is not back. He’s still here.

“It’s not a comeback, it’s a continuation,” he tells Billboard Canada.

In the past year, the Canadian pop singer has played sold-out shows across the country, signed a lucrative songwriting deal with Anthem Entertainment and popped up all over NXNE with exclusive performances for his most dedicated fans. “Body,” his collaborative track with Jamie Fine, is climbing the Billboard Canadian Hot 100 chart, sitting at No. 87 after five weeks on the chart. It’s a hit on radio too, now in the top 10 of the Canada Hot AC Airplay chart.

Not bad for a singer who’s been performing for well over 20 years.

Desman was the soundtrack to the childhood and adolescent years of many Millennial and Gen Z-aged Canadians. With bona fide hits like “Shook” and “Electric,” he was a pop radio and MuchMusic mainstay in the early 2000s with the total package — catchy, upbeat songs, hypnotic dance moves and good looks.

He’s had multiple hits, but has been dropped by labels twice, most recently in 2015. 

“It was hard and devastating, and made me hate the business,” he recalls. “Success has many parents, but failure is an orphan. When you’re hot, everybody’s on you and wants to be a part of it, but as soon as something goes wrong and you’re not hot, everybody forgets your number.”

In 2022, after a seven-year break, Desman’s life would change. He received a call from Drake, asking him to perform at the All Canadian North Stars concert at OVO Fest.

The crowd went wild for Desman’s nostalgic hits. Afterwards came a heartfelt moment with Drake that subconsciously prompted his return to music.

“He thanked me and said he grew up watching me perform, and I was a big part of his career, which felt crazy. When you’re young, you’re not thinking about creating a legacy and inspiring people,” he recalls. “He told me the crowd loved me and I needed to start making music again.” 

Read more about his unique comeback here. – Heather Taylor-Singh

Spotify Reports Francophone Music Is One of the Top Genres On The Platform

Francophone music is thriving on Spotify — and Quebec is playing a key role.

Spotify has shared new data that highlights French-language music and content as one of the top-performing genres on the platform. One hundred million global users are listening to French content, according to the report, while French music streams are up 192% since 2019.

The data follows the release of Spotify’s Loud & Clear streaming report earlier this month. While Francophone music’s reach is global — a staggering 100 million users reside outside of traditionally French-speaking countries, it reported — Quebec is a major amplifier. Nearly half of Quebec Spotify users regularly listen to media content in French, Spotify says.

In May 2025 alone, Quebecers listened to nearly 10 million hours of Francophone music — and the number only continues to go up. The consumption of Francophone content on Spotify has grown almost 20% year over year among local users, boasting 130% growth since 2019.

The province’s Francophone listeners are getting younger, too. Nearly 40% of Quebec-based Spotify users who engage with Francophone content are under the age of 29, which is seen as a powerful signal that the French language continues to resonate deeply with the next generation of music listeners.

That data is translating into dollars. According to Spotify, French music royalties generated globally are up 15% from 2023. This includes many Quebecois artists, whose musical richness appeals nationwide and internationally. Last year, indie artist Patrick Watson’s “Je te laisserai des mots” was the most popular Francophone track on Spotify — and the first French track to surpass a billion streams. The Montreal native’s track was added to over 6.6 million playlists last year, showcasing its global appeal.

Last year, almost the entire top 10 list of the most popular Francophone songs among Quebec’s users on Spotify was performed by Franco-Quebecois acts. Beloved artists like rock band Les Cowboys Fringants, singer-songwriters Watson and Charlotte Cardin and rapper Enima are mainstays on the Spotify charts in their home province.

Read more here. – HTS

Oak View Group Announces New Name for Hamilton, Ontario Arena: TD Coliseum

Hamilton’s splashy new arena project has a new name: TD Coliseum.

When the former FirstOntario Centre was taken over by venue giant Oak View Group (OVG), it was referred to by the generic name of Hamilton Arena.

The courtship of sponsors is over with the announcement on Wednesday (June 25) that TD Bank Group (TD) has entered into a multi-year naming rights agreement with OVG.

The name TD Coliseum hearkens back to the building’s original incarnation as Copps Coliseum. Built in 1985 for $42 million, the 18,000-capacity arena hosted multiple Juno Awards, major national and international sporting events and concerts from A-list Canadian and international musical stars. It became FirstOntario Centre in 2014 when the credit union of that name paid for naming rights.

The arena is currently undergoing a major transformation under the leadership of OVG, one budgeted initially at $290 million. Construction began in May 2024 and the work is expected to be completed by the end of 2025. The first shows are already booked: Andrea Bocelli (Dec. 9) and Brad Paisley (Dec. 12). TD Coliseum will also host the 55th annual Juno Awards next year, on March 29.

In conjunction with the naming rights announcement, Tom Pistore, president of OVG Canada and a 2025 Billboard Power Player alongside OVG chairman/CEO Tim Leiweke, led a tour of the venue following the announcement this morning.

“Naming rights is always the longest process,” Pistore said. “Sponsorship and finding the right partner is always a challenge, but we know we have a great partner in TD. They’re the sixth largest bank in North America and they share our vision for what this venue is for Hamilton and the Golden Horseshoe.”

Pistore did not give specifics as to the length of this partnership and the dollar figures involved, other than noting “it is commensurate with a $300 million investment” and that the figure exceeds the $350,000 per year paid by FirstOntario over a decade ago. “It is a multi-year significant investment by the bank,” he said.

Read more here. – Kerry Doole

A lawyer for Sean “Diddy” Combs delivered his final pitch in the rap mogul’s racketeering and sex-trafficking trial in much the way the defense began over a month ago: by telling jurors that Combs and his girlfriends were “swingers” whose sex was always consensual.

Marc Agnifilo, one of the many defense attorneys representing Combs, urged a jury in New York federal court to acquit the musician on Friday (June 27). Prosecutors had already given their closing argument the previous day, seeking a conviction based on charges that Combs used violence, money and blackmail to force his girlfriends to have sex with escorts during dayslong hotel parties he called “freak-offs.”

Agnifilo said Combs’ freak-offs didn’t come anywhere close to sex trafficking, according to CNN. Instead, he argued, the evidence during the seven-week trial showed that both the singer Cassie Ventura and an anonymous ex-girlfriend known as “Jane” wanted to have sex with escorts.

“They are swingers,” Agnifilo told the jury. “They are avowedly swingers. This is their lifestyle.”

The defense lawyer pointed to text messages introduced throughout the trial in which Ventura and Jane conveyed enthusiasm for the freak-offs, as well as videos from the events where “the music’s nice, the mood seems friendly and easygoing, and everyone is smiling,” he said.

While acknowledging that there was some domestic violence in Combs and Ventura’s relationship (a now-infamous hotel surveillance video from 2016 makes it difficult for the defense to escape that fact), Agnifilo said the pair shared “a great modern love story.”

Agnifilo argued that Ventura and Jane are only saying now that the freak-offs were coerced for one simple reason: money. He reminded the jury that Ventura first put the spotlight on Combs by bringing a $30 million civil lawsuit against him in November 2023, which quickly settled for $20 million.

“Cassie Ventura sued Sean Combs for $30 million because Sean Combs has $30 million,” Agnifilo said. “This very investigation came out of that civil case. No $30 million, no lawsuit, no criminal case. That’s why we’re here. We’re here because of money.”

In addition to sex trafficking, Combs is charged with using his music empire to operate a criminal syndicate as defined by the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — the federal “RICO” statute often deployed against mobsters and cartels.

To convict Combs under RICO, the jury must find that the rapper and his underlings conspired to commit at least two underlying crimes. Prosecutors have said sex trafficking can be one of these crimes, as can drug-dealing, bribery and arson.

However, Agnifilo said bluntly on Friday that Combs is “not a racketeer.”

The defense lawyer said Combs only bought narcotics for personal use and didn’t sell them (“he obviously has a drug problem,” explained Agnifilo), and argued that it wasn’t bribery when the rapper bought the infamous 2016 surveillance video because he was just trying to protect his reputation.

Regarding arson, Agnifilo denied the bombshell allegations that Combs planned to have a Molotov cocktail thrown into Kid Cudi’s Porsche due to jealousy over the fellow rapper’s relationship with Ventura in 2012.   

“There is no evidence that he had anything to do with the Porsche,” Agnifilo said.

Prosecutors got to have the last word with a rebuttal argument after Agnifilo’s closing wrapped on Friday. The jury will return Monday to hear legal instructions and then begin deliberating — a process that can take anywhere from an hour to a week, depending on how long it takes the 12 New Yorkers to agree on a verdict.

In music and art, the search for identity is fundamental. Perhaps that’s why Adrian Quesada has achieved such a deep connection with Latin American romantic ballads, an eccentric musical style that the prolific Grammy-nominated songwriter, musician and producer discovered during his teenage years in his hometown of Laredo, a border city between Texas and Mexico. There, he grew up in a Mexican family speaking both English and Spanish.

Now, almost 30 years later, the co-founder of the soul, jazz and funk duo Black Pumas revisits songs from acts like Los Pasteles Verdes, Los Ángeles Negros and Joseles in his new album Boleros Psicodélicos II, released Friday (June 27). His goal: to preserve the timeless essence of this musical genre and contribute to modernizing its sound by fusing it with hip-hop and electrifying guitars to connect with a younger audience.

“My idea in creating all this was to find a way to have one foot in the roots, in the past, and another foot in the future. That was the concept: to go between two worlds,” Quesada tells Billboard Español. “So I don’t think I’m inventing anything. For me, these are songs inspired by another era.”

In this new production — a sequel to Boleros Psicodélicos from 2022 — Quesada wanted to combine psychedelia with emotion. To do so, he brought together multi-generational artists from the Latin alternative music scene, such as California indie star Cuco, Swedish-Ecuadorian duo Hermanos Gutiérrez, Colombian ensemble Monsieur Periné, and lo-fi troubadour from Chihuahua Ed Maverick. Joining them are Mireya Ramos from Flor de Toloache, Puerto Rican artist iLe, and pop singer-songwriter Angélica Garcia, all of whom participated in the first album.

But unlike Boleros Psicodélicos, which was recorded remotely during the pandemic, this second volume gave Quesada the chance to invite his collaborators to his studio in Austin and reimagine songs like “Hoy que Llueve” by Los Pasteles Verdes and “Te Vas y Yo Te Dejo” by Joseles.

“I wanted to make this album a more intimate experience, an exchange of ideas, while being in the same room full of energy with the people who participated,” the artist explains. “And another thing is that on this new album, I worked with another producer, Alex Goose, and he comes from the hip-hop world —a musical genre that didn’t invent anything but reinvented everything.”

Opening the set is “Ojos Secos,” a heartfelt vintage track performed as a duet with Cuco, blending smooth melodies with contemporary atmospheres. It’s followed by “Bravo,” a classic from Cuban artist Olga Guillot’s repertoire that iLe recommended and recorded for this project; “No Juego,” a dramatic trip-hop ballad performed by Angélica Garcia; and “Cuatro Vidas,” popularized in the 1960s by American singer Eydie Gorme and the trio Los Panchos, among others.

With Mexican artist Ed Maverick, Quesada recorded “Afuera,” an atmospheric ballad with subtle touches of hip-hop, folk, and psychedelic guitars — a seductive and hypnotizing combination.

“This collaboration was the perfect opportunity for me to delve into a territory I wanted to explore: psychedelia and contemporary music,” Maverick tells Billboard Español. “The upcoming music I have is very much in this style, so it fit like a glove.”

“Afuera” also served as a way to celebrate the Mexican roots of both musicians, at a turbulent time amidst new anti-immigration policies introduced by U.S. President Donald Trump.

“I can’t help but be Mexican,” Maverick says. “I think for a long time, many young people tried to reject that. It seemed like it wasn’t cool to be Latin American or Spanish-speaking with our roots, but now I’m very happy that there’s this current resistance, anti-colonial, and music is part of that resilience.”

Released through ATO Records, all 12 tracks in Boleros Psicodélicos II are performed in Spanish, which becomes a political and social statement at a moment when Latin music finds itself at a crucial crossroads, with increasingly strict immigration policies threatening its continued explosive growth in the U.S.

“I am the artist I am now because I come from a world of two countries, two languages,” Quesada notes. “Diversity is what they’re trying to eliminate in the United States. And if it’s a way to — being American, to make an album in Spanish is important to me, for my roots.”

LL Cool J has joined forces with NFL legend Peyton Manning to executive produce the upcoming Hip Hop Was Born Here series, which is slated to land on Paramount+ on July 22.

The five-episode series released its first trailer on Friday (June 27). The clip finds LL on a journey through NYC rap history as the Queens-bred MC speaks to an array of New York rappers — from both the new school and the old — to paint a cinematic picture of how the mecca of hip-hop came to fruition.

“To understand the power of hip-hop today, you gotta go back to where it all started,” LL Cool J narrates the clip as he walks the blocks of The Bronx where DJ Kool Herc once spun in the ’70s.

“We were lucky to partner with [LL Cool J], Rock the Bells, and Paramount on Hip Hop Was Born Here,” Manning, who executive produces through his Omaha Productions company, said in a statement. “Music is far from my area of expertise, but sports and music have a lot of similarities. Both require hard work and commitment, and at their best, both bring people together.”

The iconic NFL quarterback continued: “The story of hip hop, especially in New York City, is an important one to tell, and there’s no one better than Todd to tell it.”

There are plenty of guest appearances from NYC rap titans such as Big Daddy Kane, Doug E. Fresh, Method Man and Rev Run. Fans can also expect cameos from the likes of Jadakiss, Sheek Louch, Roxanne Shante, Lady London, Bimmy, Marley Mar and Grandmaster Caz.

Watch the trailer above. Look for Hip Hop Was Born Here to arrive on July 22.