Dick Clark Productions (DCP) announced on Friday (July 25) that it has appointed Mike Chuthakieo as its first chief commercial officer. In this newly created role, Chuthakieo will lead all commercial strategy and revenue generation efforts, including brand partnerships and the expansion of DCP’s intellectual property across media platforms. 

He will report directly to CEO Jay Penske and officially join the company on July 28, based in Los Angeles.

Chuthakieo brings over 20 years of experience in media, entertainment and advertising. Most recently, he served as chief revenue officer at 88rising, where he led global commercial operations and monetization strategies for music projects and original IP, including the internationally recognized Head in the Clouds music festival. His career also includes leadership roles at Pinterest, Pandora, FOX, Myspace and Wasserman Media Group.

“Mike brings a wealth of expertise in accelerating business growth for iconic brands and forging groundbreaking, innovative partnerships,” said Penske. “His broad experience across a diverse range of platforms makes him a key addition to our team and the ideal leader to help guide our next phase of global expansion.”

Added Chuthakieo: “I’ve long admired Dick Clark Productions for its rich legacy of shaping culture through live event programming. I’m excited to join the team and expand the potential of these legendary properties while exploring new opportunities for growth in today’s dynamic media landscape.”

DCP’s portfolio includes the Golden Globes, the American Music Awards and the Academy of Country Music Awards, as well as the Billboard Music Awards. The company also owns one of the world’s most extensive entertainment archives, spanning over 60 years of programming.

DCP is owned by Penske Media Eldridge, a Penske Media Corporation (PMC) subsidiary and joint venture between PMC and Eldridge. PMC is the parent company of Billboard.

Kelly Osbourne is speaking out after the loss of her dad, Ozzy Osbourne, who died at the age of 76 earlier this week.

In a post on her Instagram Story on Thursday (July 24), the TV personality wrote, “I feel unhappy I am so sad.”

“I lost the best friend I ever had,” she added, along with a heartbroken emoji.

The lines reference lyrics in Black Sabbath’s “Changes,” a version of which Kelly and Ozzy released as a father-daughter duet in 2003. The Fashion Police alum’s post comes two days after the Prince of Darkness’ family announced his death via a statement that read, “It is with more sadness than mere words can convey that we have to report that our beloved Ozzy Osbourne has passed away this morning.”

“He was with his family and surrounded by love,” it continued. “We ask everyone to respect our family privacy at this time.”

Countless musicians and fans have since flooded social media with posts about Ozzy’s life and career. Many were particularly shocked by the news as the icon had played his last Black Sabbath show just a few weeks before his death. Also at the concert in Birmingham, England, Ozzy was able to watch Kelly get engaged to Slipknot’s Sid Wilson backstage.

Ozzy and Kelly — whom the heavy metal pioneer shared with wife Sharon, along with daughter Aimee and son Jack — were close. Fans first got a look at their family dynamic on The Osbournes, a reality show that ran on MTV for three years in the early 2000s.

This past Father’s Day, Kelly honored her dad with a heartfelt post on Instagram, posting a slideshow of photos of Ozzy and her young son, Sidney, whom she shares with Wilson. “Happy Father’s Day daddy,” Kelly wrote at the time. “I love you more than anyone or anything in the world! I am so proud to be your daughter and Beyond honored to watch you be the best #Papa in the world to my son!”

Digital audio workstations (DAWs) like Ableton Live and Logic Pro, used by many artists to make electronic music, aren’t necessarily beginner-friendly. One might call them intimidating. Sitting in front of one such program for the first time years ago, Bambii wasn’t convinced she’d ever figure out how to conjure music from it.

“It’s definitely not user-friendly,” she says. “Nobody’s trying to make it easy. They’re not sexy.”

But she was committed, and through a process the Toronto-born artist calls “true trial and error,” she started making things “that sounded like absolute garbage and did not resemble a song. It sounded like [banging on] pots and pans.”

After a year of experimenting, however, she finally had something she knew was good. “It was honestly a little baby loop, but I was so obsessed with it,” she says. “When you have those moments, it pushes you.”

Eventually, in 2019, after fives years of DJing clubs and events, she finally had her own debut single. Her subsequent track and EP releases built up to the third Bambii EP, Infinity Club II. Out last month, the project further establishes a sound that amalgamates club music and the Caribbean sounds Bambii grew up with into a sound she calls “future dancehall.” 

With it, she’s carved out a tour schedule that has included performances at Electric Forest and Glastonbury, British Columbia’s Shambhala this weekend and festivals like London’s All Points East and Miami’s III Points this late summer and fall.

Becoming a buzzy name of the new gen dance world wasn’t an obvious path for Bambii, who struggled in school and never had a clear sense of what she wanted to do. She calls her younger self “not even a [more passive] type B, but a type D. I really had trouble attaching myself to an identity.”

She did have a natural ability to gather groups of people, often hosting dinner parties and eventually organizing an ongoing Toronto block party called Recess, for which she’d invite adult attendees to play double dutch, tag and other playground classics. At a 2014 Recess event, she recalls that “the DJ was not really playing what I wanted to hear,” so in a moment of “bossiness” she took over the decks. It was galvanizing.

“I was affected by the way I was suddenly communicating with people,” she says. As she played more Recess gatherings, she was compelled “by the conversation that happens between DJs and everybody in the crowd.”

With this, she’d found an identity. She started playing around Toronto, then in Montreal and eventually making the jump to New York’s club scene. She went on tour with Mykki Blanco in 2016, finding that everywhere she played “I felt well received.” Her own solo tour followed, although she was still playing other peoples’ music, as making her own “felt scary, or like something I never thought I could personally do.”

But encouragement from her manager got her in front of a DAW, and by the time her first track “Nitevision” was released in 2019. It was clear to her that all those hours spent making making s–tty sounds paid off.

“DJing is pretty oversaturated and kind of intersects with influencer culture and corporate culture,” she says. “Everyone DJs now, but making music still feels revered. People understand that you’ve put time in, so I saw a shift when I dropped my first song. People supported and trusted me in a different way.”

This trust was culled not simply via the act of music making, but because Bambii was also doing something much rarer in the scene — developing a unique sound.

“I was constantly in house and techno spaces, and I was constantly in dancehall spaces,” she says. “‘Nitevision’ touches on those two sonic points, and the vocal is reminiscent of what I grew up listening to in a very Caribbean household where Lady Saw would be blaring in the house.”

This future dancehall sound and it shimmers (and shimmies) across Infinity Club II and its 2023 predecessor Infinity Club. Featuring collaborators including Aluna, Ravyn Lenae, Jessie Lanza and Yaeji, this latest project was released via Because Music, the home of artists like Shygirl, Justice (Because is the parent company of Justice’s longtime label Ed Banger) and an esteemed group of fellow indie and electronic artists. Because is the only the second label she’s ever been signed to, and she calls the French imprint “honest” and “artist centered.”

This jump to a bigger label co-signs her ambition to make music that connects electronic music and global club music, a goal she adopted after experiencing division between the scenes she’s come up in.

“It felt like house and techno spaces were almost impenetrable,” she explains. “I was very bent on creating the relationship between all these genres and doing something that felt experimental and genre-breaking. That conversation is in the forefront of DJ-ing right now, but at the time in the spaces I was experiencing, I didn’t see it.”

She feels her position as a Black female producer, a demographic that’s been historically sidelined in a genre that’s come to be dominated by white men, gave her a competitive edge; it put her outside the purview of standard industry machinations. “Everyone was trying to adhere to some traditionalist way of playing house and techno that wasn’t important for me,” she says, “because I felt like I was never considered in the first place.”

“In a way you’re at a huge disadvantage, because when you’re coming in as an outsider, those can be really s–tty, male-dominated spaces,” she continues. “On the other hand, I don’t have to follow any rules or adhere to any cultural codes of these spaces. I’m just going to do what I want.”

Her current desire is to focus on music, and despite having just released the 12-track Infinity Club II, she’s already working on her next releases. The idea is to shorten the length of time between releases, with the two years between Infinity Club and Infinity Club II being a function of still honing her skills as a producer. Now, she foresees being able to “push forward faster.” The goal is also to use her growing platform to spotlight new artists, and she calls out London rapper 3monzo, L.A. rapper Vanessa the Finessa and producer 111SYRI as artists to direct your attention to.

She plays equally as much in Europe and the U.S., but says the American market is harder to crack: “It feels so celeb-focused, whereas Europe feels more artist-focused. Things are a bit more sensationalized in American markets, so it feels like concept is coming after numbers. Not to over-romanticize, but Europe feels like a reprieve for artists, because it feels like people are searching for concept more than buzz or numbers.”

In any case, she has no illusions of skyrocketing to fame via a viral track or moment, instead considering her career thus far to be cumulative: “Other people can point to a single moment where they’ve had something that feels meteoric. For me, all the things I’m doing collectively are building this narrative.”

Doing things incrementally, however, has worked very well so far for an artist who once struggled to make pots and pans sounds on the computer, and who now creates hits.

“The feeling of being terrible at something is enough to turn someone off and make them close the laptop,” says Bambii. “I teach DJ workshops now, and one of the things I try imparting is that you have to sit through the discomfort of being bad.”

Tommy Genesis straddles the line in all aspects of life, making the genre-blending rapper nearly impossible to box in or singularly define.

This week, TG trades her typical minimalist approach for unhinged maximalism, baring her soul for her most intimate album to date, which leaves her with nothing else to give. Genesis, her birthname, redefines Tommy while exploring identity, bisexuality, religion and not holding back her deepest and darkest thoughts, which she’s compared to “open heart surgery.”

“I’ve rapped about my pussy and I’ve rapped about my ex, but what would you do if I gave you me and just talked about Genesis?” she asks to close out raw album opener “Rainbow Child.”

Production duo Take a Daytrip is on board as executive producers for the new set, out today (July 25), while helping sonically guide Genesis to reclaim her power with self-reflexive spoken-word raps, inspired in part by Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged.

“I recorded and sat with it for like six months because it was so heavy,” she tells Billboard. “It was like pulling a tapeworm out when I first did it. I didn’t know if I hate this or love it.”

The project’s second single, “True Blue,” delved further into Tommy’s contradicting feelings of being too queer for church — as her family converted from Hinduism to Christianity — and grappling with being half-brown, half-white, while coming to terms with her demons. An accompanying Parris Goebel-directed visual sparked backlash ,as viewers condemned Genesis for appearing as Hindu goddess Kali and holding a cross.

TG tuned out the noise, touting she has the “best type of personality” when responding to online outrage, or lack thereof, as she probably went for a jog with her Doberman or penned another chapter in her upcoming sci-fi novel in response.

“I’ve always felt very comfortable in that position of if I’m paving a new highway here, then that’s what I’m doing. If I’m making women feel empowered, that makes me happy,” she says. “I think the rest is always just noise because you can never make everyone happy. If you care what people think about you, what’s the fun in that? Life is supposed to be fun.”

Genesis has a deluxe for the project in the works and is plotting a tour where she’ll perform one-night-only shows in select North American cities. Dive into her world below, as she heals her inner child and pulls back the curtain on the real Tommy Genesis.

What was the last year like for you going into the album to record that, and how did you get in that state of mind?

It was a few years loading. I got the first initial guitar production [that] I think I wrote 12 of the songs to in April 2022. I didn’t write them or record them right away. I don’t know how to feel or if I’m ready for this. I was like, “F—k it.” Recorded it in early 2023, the year all of the Lana [Del Rey] stuff happened. It grounded me. It was a really important project for me as a person. 

Was it hard to record, or cathartic — then tough to show people?

To start writing, I feel like I channeled 12 of the songs. It was almost like a download that hit me, and I had to find my phone to write it down as quickly as I could. I wrote it in the order of the album. I say it was like my angels came and delivered it to me, but it was just like it came through me and out. That was really easy, like touching it as it was falling. To record it, because I had waited so long, at that point, I had already called all my best friends like, “Come over, I’m gonna perform my album for you.” I had taken meetings with people and performed in person for them. I was doing weird a cappella live shows. I would play the guitar loop on my phone and rap it. 

When I finally went to record it, it was first takes. I just like threw it up and there it is. It was a pretty quick process to get the vocals out. I waited so long in between because of the energy. I was like, “I don’t know if I’m excited or deathly afraid, but let’s go.” 

What was Take a Daytrip’s involvement as executive producer?

Take A Daytrip is a duo, David [Baptiste]and Denzel [Biral]. David is one of my really good friends. I had written the project to a lot of production by Andre Denim. This album is all made with all my friends, I love it. We got it to a point where we liked it, but it needed energy and it was originally inspired by Lauryn Hill’s MTV Unplugged. I was pretty into the whole stripped-back acoustic guitar poetry angle. I played it for David and I was like, “Do you want to executive produce it?”

It was a conversation where I’m always hesitant to ask my friends, because I love them so much. Work and friendship are so different for me. At the end of the day, I care the most about my friends and my family and work is just something I do for fun. So he got on it and I was like, “Channel your inner-child.” Because that’s all I did and he went insane. The sounds he brought in, I explain it as he reached into the underworld and grabbed a bunch of sounds and threw it at the wall and it felt so much bigger. I’m very grateful. 

What do you hope fans take from this album about you?

It’s so different than my other music. As an artist, I’m really interested in making art that feels reflective of who I am now. Otherwise, I feel dormant the more I play old songs. It’s like you’re stuck in a time loop. I love doing that for OG fans, but I’ve never been someone who’s for everyone.

I’ve always sat comfortably in a controversial space. I’m not really looking to convince anyone to like it. It’s more if it resonates with you and that’s what I want — to find my people. The people who resonate with it are gonna have maybe similar experiences because I talk a lot about my identity and my childhood. Everything is in there. Everything I could possibly say, I said. If you relate, you’re gonna relate really hard and that’s what I’m excited about. I think they’re gonna take away a piece of me because I gave everything. I have nothing left to give for now. 

Do you feel like your older music doesn’t represent you?

It definitely represents who I was. I was always true. It’s just that I’ve grown and years have passed. I’m not at that same place in my life. It’s cool to see art jump timelines. Even having Lana [Del Rey] take “Angelina” from 2015 and repurpose it on her [Did you know that there’s a tunnel under Ocean Blvd] 2023 album. Suddenly, the song hits in a different way. When you made it, you put it out there and now it can have its own life. Maybe there’s a glitch or it will jump and go to bed forever. The act of getting it out is cathartic. 

You said “Genesis” was going to be the song that was most vulnerable for you. Were you talking to yourself in the third person? 

That song is me talking to myself. I kinda have this rule for myself with this album: where there are no rules. I say that a lot, but I took it to heart. I’m gonna say everything and explain to myself how much I love you in a weird way. I started off with, “How do I tell you you’re more elegant than this?” There’s always this push and pull inside me of, “I know who I am, but they don’t know who you are” — but that’s okay. They don’t know who you are, so let’s tell them. I get misrepresented a lot. My music is, in ways, empowering and free and explicit. Because of that there’s this misconception that I’m this freak — well, I am a freak — that’s open for business. I’ve had to tell fans that you can’t just grab me like that. 

The way I actually am is, I’m bi, but I do love actually being in love — and I have this tunnel vision and I’m really picky and I’m actually not attracted to many people, so when I am, I really am. My sexuality is very specific and connected to emotional attachment. There’s all these things about where, yeah, I am a freak, and that’s where I can pull all this energy from because I’m brave and blunt and I don’t give a f—k. But at the end of the day, I’m not how I’m always perceived.

It was fun for me to go into myself and be like, “This is how I feel about this. This is how I grew up.” I literally grew up under the Northern Lights. I also wasn’t born in Vancouver. People think I was, but I’ve just never corrected anyone. There’s so much about me people don’t know. In the album, I said, “Everything I’m comfortable saying to the max. At this point of my life, I’ve given everything I’m comfortable saying.” After that, there will be more because I’m gonna keep living. I usually give [the] minimum and I gave the maximum. I think that’s what art is. You can be a minimalist, you can be a maximalist. [On] this album, I was a maximalist.

I always felt like there was this wall between us and that was just shattered here. 

I literally just kicked it down. I was like, “It’s time.” 

Walk me through “True Blue” and your reaction initially to the backlash you received from it.

The song itself was about a relationship and my own identity and doing a lot of therapy and learning to take back my power. It bleeds into everything for me. It bleeds into my childhood, sexuality — everything. I’m just reflecting back, but also it comes full circle at the end when I say, “I’m not that little, I’m not that little.” I can be the adult version of myself for my inner child, who’s strong and can take control. 

The video really began with the color blue. What’s “True Blue” to me? What’s “True Blue” when I think about my identity and the album as a whole? This is why we dropped “Loops” after “True Blue.” This is my story and the story of my family and my lineage and where I come from. The video made a bigger impact than I was even anticipating. I kinda just drop things and walk away really easy. I’m not attached to things — I’m attached to my dogs. Everything else I’m like, “I made this song, I’ll put it out.” I’m very content to let things go. 

When there was a backlash, I think I’m the best type of personality for this stuff because I didn’t really react. I think, for me, the reason why was because it’s rooted in who I am. My family was Hindu and we converted to Christianity and I grew up in the church. I grew up queer in the church. When I was really, really young, I knew I was bi. My first memories, I knew. It was a very difficult time to be in the church when you’re little, having these thoughts. The whole album is about taking back my power. I’m in a place where I’m a brown woman doing something that brown women aren’t allowed to do in certain conversations.

Then you follow up with “Loops.” Was that recorded already or a response to everything?

It was already recorded. It was made at the time I made “True Blue” like two years ago. It’s so interesting, because there’s words in “Loops” like, “Women can’t be God, women can’t be solo, women can’t be rappers, women can’t talk about sexuality.” It’s bars in there that feel like they’re predestined and given to me for this moment of the “True Blue” video in some eerie, uncanny way. I’m telling you there was a glitch. I basically had a response track ready, and it’s after “True Blue” on the album as well. I even said to my manager, “I just wish they could hear ‘Loops.’” Then he was like, “Let’s just drop it.” So we dropped it.

“Eve Ate the Apple” was another standout for me.

The second verse always gets me emotional because I always wanted to be a mom. When I was 17, people would be like, “What do you want to want to do when you’re older?” I’d be like, “I just want to make art and I want to be a mom.” I always thought I’d have my kid by now. I thought I’d have a kid really young because that’s what I’ve always wanted. I didn’t have one in my 20s. This conversation with myself, “I thought I’d have a kid by now/ I’ll wait for you.” That triggers me every time I listen to it. If I’m in a room with someone and I listen to it, I always have to look away. It’s kind of my most deepest desire in a song.

“Girl’s Girl” has a hilarious way to start a song: “If your girl wants you to unfollow me, you better do it.” 

For me, I’m such a girl’s girl. I think about the male gaze all the time in my music. I think a lot of media performs for the male gaze and I’m such an interesting case study where I have one foot in the LGBTQIA+ world, where I am queer. I have this one line not on this album: “I’m too gay to be straight and too straight to be gay.” I’m right in the middle, and I have one foot in both worlds in every part of my life. I’m half white, half brown. I’m into girls and boys. I’m very sexual and spiritual. I straddle the line always. This song was for the girls. I don’t ever want anyone to be like, “Who’s that girl you just followed?” And it’s me. You better unfollow me, because I care about the girls more than you.

First of all, I want her to follow me. I don’t want you to follow me. I think it’s an interesting conversation and you hear a lot of songs that are the opposite of this point of view. As women, we’re told you can’t be insecure or jealous. These are all natural feelings and you just want to feel safe. Sometimes it’s just a conversation. In the second verse, I’m like, “What about, ‘Hey sorry, I didn’t know that affected you/ I’ll undo what I did do.” It’s not even that deep. It’s about the action you care that someone feels safe. Girls love this song because they feel safe in it. Men need to just take some pointers.

What else do we have coming up? Are you going to tour?

Yeah, we’re going to tour. We’re announcing it very soon. We’re gonna do one-night-onlys. There’s also a deluxe in the works. I’m excited. 

What are some Tommy Genesis hobbies?

My day consists of waking up and I really love my dogs. I’m such a dog person. I used to foster dogs. I have a Chiweenie and a Doberman. Ever since I got my Doberman, I’m like, “I actually need a new hobby.” I run with them. I jog. I’m not a fast runner, but I can jog for a pretty long time. That’s something that happened this year. I love life. I go wherever the day takes me. I like to draw. I like to paint. I’m always doing my own creative. I’m always writing. I wrote another album that I’m doing. I like drinking wine. 

Where’s Tommy Genesis in 10 years?

I have my kids and a ranch and maybe the ranch is by the ocean. I have a few more dogs and have made a few more albums. I’m writing a book. I’ll have my book out by then. Maybe there’s a sequel to my book. Can’t stop dreaming. I’m writing fiction. It’s a sci-fi. 

Billboard’s Friday Music Guide serves as a handy guide to this Friday’s most essential releases — the key music that everyone will be talking about today, and that will be dominating playlists this weekend and beyond. 

This week, Drake and Central Cee offer a mid-summer single, Morgan Wallen corrals a pair of rap stars and Sombr keeps getting better. Check out all of this week’s picks below:

Drake feat. Central Cee, “Which One” 

Comeback season continues for Drake: after scoring a surprise smash with “Nokia” and taking names on “What Did I Miss?,” he now returns to dancehall mode on “Which One,” a team-up with Central Cee built around a summer-ready beat, a nod to Rihanna’s “Work” and lyrics that are aimed at a significant other but could also apply to a resurgent Drizzy (“F–k anyone that’s bringing you down”). 

Morgan Wallen feat. Lil Wayne & Rick Ross, “Miami (Remix)” 

As Morgan Wallen has ascended to superstardom over the past half-decade, he’s added countless fans who wouldn’t consider themselves country music diehards; with a new remix of I’m the Problem track “Miami,” Wallen tries to add some more by bringing in an Auto-Tuned Lil Wayne and a grunting Rick Ross, who bulk up the song’s crossover appeal with veteran hip-hop panache.

Sombr, “12 to 12” 

Addison Rae co-starring in the music video for Sombr’s new single “12 to 12” has been worthy of headlines, but the top story here is Shane Boose’s continued growth as a pop-rock savant: here, he applies the fuzzed-out vocal longing of breakthrough hits “Back to Friends” and “Undressed” to shimmering dance music, and arrives at a sound at once propulsive and irresistible.

YoungBoy Never Broke Again, MASA 

A few months after President Trump pardoned YoungBoy Never Broke Again in March, the rap star tips his cap with the album title MASA (‘Make America Slime Again’) — although the gargantuan, 93-minute project is less of a political statement than a check-in from one of hip-hop’s most enigmatic personalities, who brings in Playboi Carti for the burbling “Fire Your Manager” but limits the guest list otherwise.

Lola Young, “d£aler” 

Since “Messy” brought her voice to the world, Lola Young has showcased different sides of her R&B-informed pop songwriting — and with her latest single from upcoming album I’m Only Fucking Myself, Young gives us a glimpse of her most skittish impulses, with her fear of being hurt morphing into a desire to run away and the bouncing synths soundtracking her vulnerability.

Tyla, WWP EP 

Summer wouldn’t feel complete without some new heat from Tyla, whose new EP WWP (‘We Wanna Party’) offers 11 minutes of movement built around sensual melodies; the previously released “Bliss” works well in context as the closing track here, while the Wizkid collaboration “Dynamite” sounds like a potential hit, the two voices intertwined and forming a flirtatious dance cut.

Tame Impala, “End of Summer” 

Anyone who’s ever boogied to “Let It Happen” or “Is It True” in a festival field understands that Tame Impala can deploy a danceable iteration of their psych-rock, but “End of Summer,” a seven-minute single that marks Kevin Parker’s Columbia Records debut, is a full-on club track, with a slow build that thumps harder than anything on The Slow Rush and an uptempo, downright sweaty payoff. 

Editor’s Pick: Tyler Childers, Snipe Hunter 

Within the first minute of Tyler Childers’ new album — the alt-country star’s voice rolling over syllables and quivering with passion on the opener “Eatin’ Big Time” — it’s clear that Snipe Hunter will ratchet up the stakes for Childers, whose audience has grown considerably as he’s moved adjacently to Nashville’s biggest trends and evolved his storytelling process. Read a full review of Snipe Hunter here.