King Combs is relieved that his father’s trial is over.

The son of Sean “Diddy” Combs — who was recently found not guilty of sex trafficking and racketeering, but guilty of illegal prostitution, for which he is awaiting sentencing — sat down with Billboard over Zoom to talk about his seven-song EP Never Stop executive produced by Ye (formerly knows as Kanye West) and the past year he’s had as his father was in jail awaiting trial.

Once the verdict was in, ABC News caught up with King Combs outside of the Manhattan courthouse where he was notably in high spirits and expressed positivity, which will be a common them in our interview. “We love y’all. We love everybody watching. I’m so happy,” Combs told the outlet. “Pops coming home. God bless the whole world.”

Combs has songs dedicated to both of his parents on his Never Stop EP that he dropped last month.

The song “Kim,” about his late mother Kim Porter who passed away unexpectedly at 47 years old in 2018, features lines like, “When it rains, I feel your pain, it got my vision cloudy/ Tryna keep my head up, but that watеr, it feel like I’m drownin’,” and on the track “Diddy Free” (about his incarcerated father), he raps, “Tired of n—as speakin’ on the family/ N—as claim they brothers, but they can’t be.”

The project also features Ye on the track “People Like Me” and his daughter North West on the intro “Lonely Roads.”

Check out our convo with King Combs below, where he talks about how the project with Ye came together and where he and his family go from here.

So, it’s been an interesting year for you. I know your father is still waiting on his sentencing, but how do you feel now that the trial is over and the verdict is in?

I feel good. The whole family. We feel good. We just, you know, humbly, just waiting for the sentencing and waiting for pops to come home. We got good expectations. My new tape Never Stop is out right now. It’s going crazy. I’m happy to be here with Billboard. Thank y’all for having me.

How did the tape come together? How did Ye get involved?

Shout out Ye, too. He reached out to me during a time where, you know, a lot was going on, probably the worst times in my life. And he reached out to lend support and we talked about a Sean John collab. A lot of people may not know, we’ve been was gonna do a Sean John collab. Then we were gonna work on some music and stuff, but we never got a chance to. So, we started talking about the Sean John collab and he said he wanted to do a five-song EP with me. And then from there, I was like, “Yo, it’s no brainer, of course.” And we just made it happen.

And whose idea was it to have North on the intro?

Yeah, it actually was his idea. She was just in the studio one day. We was at the warehouse studio, and she was just real eager to work and real eager to hop on a track. It came out dope.

There’s a line where you’re like, “When they needed our help, they didn’t have to ask for it.” Do you feel like you and your family were betrayed by certain friends during this process?

I wouldn’t say betrayed, but you know, Ye definitely showed love and showed support when it was needed. And it definitely was a little quiet out there, but I wouldn’t say betrayed.

Because you do mention the “No Diddy” phrase on “Pick a Side.” I’d imagine that a phrase like that bothered you. Did seeing it take off online affect you in anyway?

I never really heard it in person. I seen it on the on Instagram and stuff like that. That’s about it.

So, how does that stuff change now? Because people kind of left your pops for dead and you came out with “Pick a Side” trying to respond to things.

I think now that the truth is getting out and pops is on the way home, God willing. I think we just need to stay with positivity, spread love. I just hope all the hate and all the negative stuff is past us and we can just move forward and with just love and good vibes. That’s what we’re here to do: never stop. I get vulnerable on this tape a little bit but for the most part it’s just good music for people to feel good and get through whatever they’re going through.

Do you regret releasing that track? You had some lines in there that had people talking.

Just creative expression, you know? But like I said, sometimes you can speak from emotional places. Let the truth just come out. Sometimes it’s better.

There’s a track named after your mom where you mentioned that she cried during one of your first performances.

That was a theme with my mom. Every time she seen me do something, even if it was something little she would start tearing up, start crying, especially when I perform, she always would cry.

You also mentioned that you didn’t know the difference whenever you watched her cry. How did she react when you told her you wanted to be a rapper?

She was just proud of me and really excited. She was my No. 1 fan. There would be times where I would perform in front of her in like the bathroom and stuff like getting ready, showing her what I’m gonna do and she would just start crying, like, bawling out.. And for me, it was just confusing that’s why I said I didn’t know the difference. I didn’t really understand.

What advice did she give you that you still think about and cherish?

Some advice she gave me that I still think about is to follow my dreams. The album title is called Never Stop. It’s one of my mottos I kind of get from her too because she always taught me to be myself, and just keep going. In life there’s going to be a lot of obstacles, a lot of people trying to doubt you, a lot of people trying to push you in different ways and just to stay focused and do what I want to do.

How do you guys plan on moving forward once the sentencing comes in?

Like I said, we feel like just moving forward with positive vibes, love. Me? My tape just dropped. I got videos dropping. My sisters got a clothing line coming out. My brother Quincy’s into acting, Justin business. My little sister Chan, she’s in college right now, going to NYU. Baby Love is growing up. So, yeah, just, you know, continuing to live life and just bring positive vibes to the world. I think that’s just the main focus.

You’re in town visiting your pops, right? Have you gotten a chance to see him yet?

Yeah, I saw him. Of course, it wasn’t in the ideal place. Was is it in person or was it like a video call? In person. We dapped up and all that. At least it’s not like behind the wall, but it’s definitely not it. Any advice that he gave you while he was inside this past year? You had came out with “Pick a Side” trying to fight back at the narrative a bit. It was really just to be positive and not let everything that’s going on get to me. And, you know, don’t react off of emotion. Just be me and do what’s true to myself.

Do you think the Bad Boy and Diddy brand can bounce back from this?

Yeah, for sure. We’re definitely gonna keep going. Like, I said, “Never Stop.” We can’t stop, won’t stop, and we’re going to just continue to spread love and hopefully receive that back.

What you got going on in New York now that you that you’ve seen your pops, you’re gonna, you’re gonna stay out here for the weekend?

Yeah, we here in the city, but I’ma just be here, be working, cooking up some new heat, cooking up a video. Billboard might have to come get the behind the scenes.

Never Stop dropped about a month ago. What other plans do you have in store?

After this, we never gonna stop. We’re gonna keep going, keep dropping hits. We got some videos coming out for this tape. I can’t tell y’all which one, so it’s a surprise. We’re just gonna keep it going.

Is there any anything else you you want to talk about or add?

Goodfellas is my new record label. We’re going to go crazy starting my entrepreneurship at an all-time high. Also want to say, I love all the supporters and fans who stuck with us through this hard time, through this dark time, who stream Never Stop, all the people who showing love, spreading love, that’s what it’s all about. And I want to say, Thank y’all. Love y’all so much. Thank you, Billboard. Yeah, Never Stop out now, Goodfellas, Bad Boy. CYN.

Fifty-five years ago, Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice set out to create a musical that asked a central, controversial question about the central figure of Christianity: what if Jesus Christ wasn’t the Son of God, and was just a man trying to make a difference? “It’s not really a religious piece,” Rice said in a 2023 interview. “It’s a story.”

Half a century later, Jesus Christ Superstar, the award-winning 1971 musical created by Webber and Rice, has become a global phenomenon, with hundreds of major productions put on around the globe since its Broadway debut. Stars like Deep Purple’s Ian Gillan, Mel C, John Legend and Sara Bareilles have all starred in the show, with new productions regularly cropping up around the world.

The latest production of the show promises to be one of its buzziest — starting Friday (Aug. 1), Jesus Christ Superstar is set to take over the Hollywood Bowl with a star-studded cast, including Cynthia Erivo in the titular role and Adam Lambert opposite her as the show’s tragic protagonist Judas Iscariot.

Just as it was in 1971, this modern production is still proving to be controversial. After Erivo was cast in the role of Jesus, conservative Christians quickly called the choice “blasphemous” due to the fact that Erivo is Black, queer and a woman. “You can’t please everyone,” Ervio told Billboard about the backlash for her June cover story. “It is legitimately a three-day performance at the Hollywood Bowl where I get to sing my face off. So hopefully they will come and realize, ‘Oh, it’s a musical, the gayest place on Earth.’”

Below, Lambert talks with Billboard about the rehearsal process for the three shows this weekend, how his starring role in Broadway’s Cabaret helped prepare him for the role of Judas, and why he thinks Erivo’s casting continued the show’s tradition of pushing the proverbial envelope.

You’re performing as Judas just a few months after wrapping your run as the Emcee in Cabaret — how do you feel performing nightly on Broadway helped prepare you for this show?

Returning to the theatre and making my Broadway debut this year was a dream and definitely prepared me for Jesus Christ Superstar at the Bowl. Emcee and Judas have long been two of my absolute dream roles so this year has been full of “pinch-me” career moments.

The company has been rehearsing for the last couple of weeks. Tell us a little bit about what that process was like; what stood out to you about the cast and direction during rehearsals? Were there any particular difficulties when it came to putting this together?

I first heard the original concept album when I was 10 and my Dad would play it on vinyl, so I came in super familiar with the musical and excited to hit the ground running. We only had about nine days of rehearsal, but this cast is truly next level. I’m blown away every day by the talent and professionalism of the cast, and excited for the audiences to hear us sing our faces off.

You’re performing with a truly stellar cast and starring opposite Cynthia Erivo. What has Cynthia been like to work with, and what did you make of the backlash to her casting as a Black, queer Jesus?

Cynthia’s brilliant. Her voice, presence, and simultaneous power and vulnerability absolutely blows my mind and working with her has been a dream. I’m excited by the challenge of presenting the audience with a production led by a female, Black “Jesus” and encourage the audience to expand their minds a bit. Originally utilizing rock and roll, Jesus Christ Superstar is supposed to provoke and challenge, that’s the point. And shouldn’t the teachings of Jesus transcend gender?

Judas gets some of the best songs in the show, “Heaven on Their Minds” and “Superstar” being the most popular among them. Do you have a favorite song that you get to perform in this show? 

I love them both but opening the show with “Heaven on Their Minds” is electric. And even more special as I was asked to record a studio version of it by Andrew Lloyd Webber, which is such an honor.

For practically half of her life, Indy Yelich says she’s played the “supporting act” to her big sister: Ella Yelich-O’Connor, better known as Lorde, whose sudden catapult to global fame with “Royals” turned her entire family’s life upside down in 2013. But the 26-year-old pop singer-songwriter has no qualms about that.

“There’s the main actress,” Yelich tells Billboard, but “the supporting act is still a really big part of the story. All you can really do is be yourself, and deal with the cards you’ve been dealt.”

On Wednesday night (July 30), the Auckland native was fully the leading lady at The Wayland bar in New York City’s East Village, where she played songs from her new EP, Fame Is a Bedroom, for the first time ahead of its release on Friday (Aug. 1). The space was packed with Yelich’s fans and a collage of friends who make up the small community she’s managed to build in the city, more than 8,000 miles away from home. One of them, a SoulCycle instructor, met her after she took his “Lorde vs. ODESZA”-themed class. Many sipped on Yelich’s favorite kale-infused margarita, upon her bubbly insistence that they absolutely had to try it as she got set up.

Yelich has spent the past few years in New York, originally moving to the States at age 18 to pursue acting but later shifting over to music. In 2022, she dropped her debut single, “Threads,” carving out her own sliver of the space her sister had dominated for years, and steadily building up a fan base of her own.

As she’s strengthened her creative voice with subsequent releases, she’s now ready to reckon with the insanity of her life — some of which can be chalked up to being sister with a global pop star, but most of which is due to the inherent chaos of being in one’s mid-20s — on Fame Is a Bedroom, a lucid dream-pop blend of influences both classic (Fleetwood Mac) and modern (Holly Humberstone, Mk.gee).

“A lot of it is saying goodbye to past versions of myself,” she tells Billboard, over the noise of guests chattering, mixed drinks being shaken and a downpour outside, perched on a stool at the end of the bar minutes before her set. “With fame, it’s influenced my desire to be understood. It drove me to want to express my own version of myself in music. I would’t be here without it, but it’s kind of the little devil on my shoulder. It’s something that I’ll never necessarily want for myself, but I love it in a weird way, and I’ve made friends with it.”

At the heart of Fame Is a Bedroom are tender yet messy relationships — and yes, that does include the one she shares with her sister. A devastating split from a much older man — Yelich calls it her “Mr. Big” era — informed the simmering breakup ode “Up in Flames,” which includes a shout-out to The Wayland, previously a favorite date-night spot for her and her ex. She’s had no trouble reclaiming the bar for herself post-breakup, though, because, as she says with a glint in her eye, “It was always mine, baby. I’m an East Village girl, he lived in FiDi. This was mine from the start.”

There’s also “Sail Away,” which she says was inspired by a confusing relationship with a female friend whom she “put on a pedestal,” developing unreciprocated romantic feelings that blurred with the innately “primal” way “women love each other.” But the standout track — also the most healing to write, according to Yelich — is “Idol,” on which she was finally able to articulate all of the emotions she’s accumulated over the complexities of sharing her sibling with the public for so many years.

The lyrics are unflinching: “They don’t understand your love/ Never be bound by blood,” she sings of Lorde’s fans over a bed of synths and electric guitar. “I’m the one that you’re running to.”

“Idol” isn’t intended as a message to the rest of the world, though. “It’s a love song to my sister,” Yelich emphasizes. “It’s saying everything I wanted to say [about her fame] and putting it to bed. It’s really about coming to terms with a private relationship where there’s such trust and love, and also grappling with the emotional tug-of-war of sharing someone that I’m so close to.”

That said, Yelich admits that she was a little nervous to play “Idol” for Lorde (whom she, of course, knows simply as Ella), having some reservations about putting confessions such as “You crush me/ And trust me, I know that you love me” so plainly. Fortunately, both sisters were working on their most recent projects at the same time, and they often listened to each other’s demos as they were still being made. And with Lorde also pulling back the curtain on a tricky family dynamic on her June album Virgin — the fifth track of which finds her confessing her desperation to be mom Sonja’s “Favourite Daughter” of three girls — Yelich felt the runway clear for her to dig deep, too.

“I was really inspired by her honesty,” she says earnestly of her sister. “I was just really proud of [her writing about] the muse that is our mother. I can relate to it so much. There’s a complexity in, you know, the intimacy of sisterhood. I really grew alongside that song.”

Taking that lesson with her, Yelich is continuing to move forward with her heart on her sleeve. “Am I shiny?” she asked at The Wayland with her brow furrowed, powdering her face, divulging that a guy she has a crush on is in the audience, and taking the makeshift stage in the corner of the pub. More shows are in her future — she’ll play Baby’s All Right in Brooklyn in November — but on Wednesday night, she radiated happiness at the small gift of performing at her favorite bar in front of people who love her.

Right before she started singing, the most important of them walked in. Looking low-key in a simple white button-down and ponytail, Lorde quietly camouflaged herself in the rest of the crowd, and as Yelich sings “Idol” straight to her, the cheekbones she and her baby sister share crinkle with unspoken emotion, pride glowing on her face. That night, she was the supporting act, and she didn’t seem to mind at all.

Listen to Fame Is a Bedroom below.

Madonna continues to be in a reflective, dance floor-ready mood. A week after finally dropping the long-rumored Ray of Light remix album Veronica Electronica, the singer was back in the groove on Friday morning (Aug. 1) with a 40th anniversary celebration of her beloved Like a Virgin single “Dress You Up.”

The final single from the diamond-certified 1985 album is bundled in a three-song digital drop featuring a bouncy official remix and a nearly six-minute “12” Formal Mix” that includes an funky, extended bass-slapping, bell-ringing midsection of the song produced by Chic’s Nile Rodgers, who also plays iconic chicken scratch guitar on the track. The final version is a four-and-a-half minute “Casual Instrumental Mix” that strips away the vocals to focus on the song’s insistent, hypnotic melody.

According to a press release, the three-piece package is dedicated to the memory of Barbie doll designers and Madonna superfans Mario Paglino and Gianni Grossi, who both tragically died in a car crash in Italy earlier this week. “We dedicate this release to them. Thank you for dressing up so many of your creations in Madonna iconic looks over the years,” it read.

In addition to combing through the archives, Madonna is reportedly working with Deadpool & Wolverine producer Shawn Levy on a limited Netflix series based on her life and career. While it wasn’t known at press time which part of her nearly five-decade career that project will focus on, The Fantastic Four: First Steps star Julia Garner recently said that she thinks the Madonna biopic she was tapped to star in that got shelved in 2023 is “supposed to still happen.”

Listen to the “Dress You Up” anniversary bundle below.

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, Chappell Roan takes “Subway” uptown, Metro Boomin packs the guest list and Demi Lovato briskly comes back to pop. Check out all of this week’s picks below:

Chappell Roan, “The Subway” 

There’s a reason why, more than a year after Chappell Roan performed “The Subway” during a few summer 2024 festival sets, fans were still pining for a studio version, which finally arrives today: the midtempo alt-pop ballad focuses on a dissolved romance with sweeping force, culminating in an extended outro that turns the phrases “She’s got a way” and “She got away” into a wounded belt-along.

Metro Boomin, Metro Boomin Presents: A Futuristic Summa 

While it’s easy to slot Metro Boomin’s A Futuristic Summa mixtape into the tradition of star-studded compilations from well-connected producers, a la Calvin Harris’ Funk Wav Bounces series, the late-00’s tone of this new project is defined by its thrilling splicing of old and new hip-hop generations, with veteran voices like Young Duo and Roscoe Dash joining Metro’s stable of mainstays.

Demi Lovato, “Fast” 

Following a foray into rock music that included reworking her old hits as guitar-heavy headbangers, Demi Lovato makes her pop return with “Fast,” a sweaty, kinetic club track that makes good use of her far-reaching vocals; Lovato has always possessed the talent to morph into a dance floor diva, and “Fast” hints that such a path is right in front of her.

Reneé Rapp, Bite Me 

The title of Reneé Rapp’s sophomore album suggests a newfound aggression, but really, the multi-hyphenate is simply honing her pop persona and rejecting those who want to dismiss it: Bite Me bristles with gleeful pop-rock anger at times, but on songs like “Shy” and “Sometimes,” that extended middle finger is balanced out by breathtaking vulnerability that deepens the project overall.

Mariah The Scientist & Kali Uchis, “Is It a Crime” 

“Is it a crime to fall in love a couple times?” Mariah The Scientist ponders on her new collaboration with Kali Uchis, which quickly follows the viral success of “Burning Blue” with an affecting meditation on modern romance — and utilizes Uchis’ gifts as a co-star, with two artists playing off of each other with deference and soulfulness on “Is It a Crime.”

Hayley Williams, “Glum” 

“Glum” is one part of a much bigger, and more amorphous, statement from Hayley Williams, as the Paramore leader surprised fans this week with 17 new songs (but not an album, exactly); the entire musical drop is worth perusing, but “Glum” is a muted, lightly strummed highlight, with Williams’ voice pitched up in the opening verse before clarifying on the hook.  

$uicideboy$, Thy Kingdom Come 

The underground rise of $uicideboy$ is well-documented, and on Thy Kingdom Come, the duo once again prove why their cultural resonance is less unlikely than you think: their sixth studio album is full of quick-hit observations and bruising rhymes per usual, but with some of the more deeply felt hooks of their career, as their bars wrap smoothly around each melody.

Editor’s Pick: Sofia Kourtesis, Volver 

Peruvian singer-producer Sofia Kourtesis’ 2023 debut Madres stands as one of the most mesmerizing dance albums of the decade, and while new EP Volver does not sprawl out as rapturously, the six-song project (which is dedicated to the LGBTQ+ community) pushes her thumping warmth towards a different set of grooves — most compellingly on “Unidos,” an acid-house riff made with Dan Snaith’s Daphni moniker.