Billboard Unfiltered returned on Wednesday (June 18) with another brand-new episode featuring a special guest: Rapsody was in the building.

This week, senior director of R&B/Hip-Hop Carl Lamarre returned with hip-hop editor Angel Diaz alongside Rapsody to debate who is the greatest rapper/producer combination of all time.

First up, Lamarre made the case for Nas and Hit-Boy, who connected for five projects over the course of 36 months with three installments of the King’s Disease series, which Lamarre holds in the upper echelon of rap album series, and a pair of Magic projects.

“When they came into each other’s lives, I think they changed the dynamic of what hip-hop is today in terms of what we look at from a rapper and producer standpoint,” Lamarre declared. “From 2020 to 2023, we saw the best rapping of Nas’ career.”

He continued: “King’s Disease is probably one of the best series in hip-hop of all-time. Magic one and two, flawless. We introduce Nas in a new era… Some of the best beats in Hit-Boy’s career came from working with Nas and they got a Grammy out of it.”

Angel Diaz laid out the case for Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre, as he believes the duo put the West Coast on the map. “They had The Chronic and Doggystyle back-to-back and then they came back with 2001,” he said. “They put the West Coast on the map.”

Taking things a step further, Diaz explained that there’s still remnants of Dre and Snoop’s G-funk DNA in West Coast rap decades later as seen in Kendrick Lamar’s GNX.

As for Rapsody, she elected to spotlight the Clipse and Pharrell. “From their first project Lord Willin’ to this one — I haven’t heard all of it — but it’s setting up to be a phenomenal classic,” she said. “It’s like they’ve evolved and haven’t missed a step. This ain’t gon’ be a miss, we can feel the energy.”

The North Carolina rapper added: “When you have a producer and a rapper come together and they always create their best work together, it’s undeniable,” “Those two, that’s always their best work.”

There was plenty of back-and-forth, but moderator Delisa Shannon gave the victory to Carl Lamarre and his pick of Nas and Hit-Boy on Wednesday’s show.

Watch the full episode below.

NIVA ‘25 — the fourth annual conference for the National Independent Venue Association, slated to take place June 22-25 in Milwaukee — is happening against the backdrop of some of the fiercest ticketing battles heating up around the country. According to NIVA executive director Stephen Parker, this year alone throughout the U.S., there have been nearly 70 bills introduced in almost 30 states pertaining to ticketing, and the conference is set to address the good, bad and the ugly amid the fight.

“Ticketing continues to be the singular focus,” Parker tells Billboard. “Ticketing is turning into the proxy battle in legislatures — federal, state and local — for the future of live performance.”

The conference will include panels such as “Battling Scalping Goes to Washington, D.C.”; “Turn the Tables: Make the Ticket Resale Market Work For You”; “How We Solve a Problem Like Chargebacks”; and ticketing network sessions, all of which will focus on different ticketing issues facing independent venues. The subject of ticketing will also be part of conversations about local and federal regulations and be weaved into various other panels.  

“This conference is an opportunity and a catalyst for us to come together, assess what’s happened this year — our wins and losses in states fighting against predatory resellers,” Parker continues, “and come out of this conference with a plan to make sure that any sort of anti-consumer policy that’s being pushed by predatory resale platforms and brokers, we have a renewed strategy to address it and make sure that the freedom that fans should have from deception and fraud continues to reign supreme.” 

Poor ticket buying experiences are impacting fans’ desire to attend more shows and hiking prices so high that many can only afford a limited number of shows each year. And on the venue side, credit card chargebacks have become a major issue.  

One of the conference discussions will be “what can we do to make sure that that credit card chargebacks don’t take us down,” Parker says. “Especially given that most of those chargebacks, it seems, are coming from predatory resellers that have sold the tickets and are just trying to maximize their profits that they’re making off the backs of small venues and independent artists.” 

While the subject of ticketing will take center stage at the conference — which is being held across the city at different independent venues — the conversations will touch on many other topics. After every conference, NIVA reaches out to its 1,500 members and asks them what subjects they would like to see represented at the following year’s gathering — and the organization, through programming director Jamie Loeb, has managed work more than 100 issues that affect independent venue owners into this year’s program. Among them, NIVA ‘25’s programming will also address declining alcohol sales, the purpose of middle agents, the performing rights and licensing landscape, marketing, and breaking through in the attention economy.  

“If I were to say what the theme of this conference [is], it’s ‘How do we break through?’” says Parker.  

One of the key methods for breaking through is telling the story of independent venues and the impact they have on local communities, as well as globally. During the conference, NIVA plans to unveil extensive data on the economics of independent venues, which the association hopes will help tell that story.  

“I can tell you that it’s a mixed bag,” Parker says of the data. “There’s such promise and optimism and potential growth for the sector, but that growth and optimism is suppressed by the continued threats of predatory resale and monopolies and inflation. We’re going to talk about what we do moving forward in terms of how we address those monopolies.” 

Attendees will be able to learn about best practices for dealing with government entities, from city councils to state legislatures, as well as hear about how other countries are moving to save their own cultural spaces.  

The association will also use the conference to detail the expansion of its collective bargaining agreements. While NIVA introduced its collective bargaining program nearly 18 months ago, its efforts are continuing to expand.

“At least a quarter of our members have taken advantage of this program, either for discounts for food, discounts for equipment, discounts for sound and lighting. We’re thinking beyond just the physical and going to services and fees and things that every venue has to pay every day,” says Parker. “We will be announcing some exciting new opportunities for our members on that front to try to make the cost of doing business lighter for them.”

NIVA ‘25 kicks off this Sunday with an opening keynote from My Morning Jacket’s Jim James. Other discussions will include producer Jimmy Jam, former Capitol Music Group CEO Michelle Jubelirer and High Road Touring founder Frank Riley. For more information on NIVA ‘25, head here.  

Grupo Frontera and Grupo Firme have both achieved their first-ever entry in YouTube’s coveted Billion Views Club thanks to their collaboration “El Amor de su Vida” (the love of her life).

The music video, which premiered on Aug. 3, 2023, surpassed the one billion views on Tuesday (June 17). Both Música Mexicana groups shared the news on their social media platforms.

“El Amor de Su Vida” finds Frontera’s frontman Adelaido “Payo” Solís and Firme’s own Eduin Caz weeping over the ex of their lives, who has moved on to a new relationship. “Today I saw the love of my life/ as happy as ever kissing the love of her life/ she looked at him the same way she looked at me before/ I realized I’ve lost this war,” says the sappy chorus.

In the music video, the two power groups are seen performing in front of a house as they passionately interpret the track.

“El Amor de su Vida” peaked at No. 1 on the Regional Mexican Airplay chart, where it topped for four weeks in 2023, and a No.67-high on the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 chart. The song is part of Frontera’s debut album El Comienzo, which scored the Texas-based group its first top 10 entry on any chart, reaching No. 4 on Top Latin Albums, No. 2 on Regional Mexican albums and No. 39 on the all-genre Billboard 200.

Frontera’s next video to reach one billion views is “UN X100TO” with Bad Bunny, which has over 970 million views.

Watch the music video for “El Amor de Su Vida” below:

Bruce Springsteen isn’t backing down when it comes to his thoughts on President Donald Trump.

In a wide-reaching interview with The New York Times published Wednesday (June 18), the rock star criticized everything from the politician’s leadership to his effect on the social fabric of the United States. Springsteen is currently on his Land of Hope & Dreams Tour, on which he performs a setlist every night that he says “addresses our current situation” under Trump’s administration.

And how would Springsteen describe the current situation? “It’s an American tragedy,” he told the publication. “I think that it was the combination of the deindustrialization of the country and then the incredible increase in wealth disparity that left so many people behind. It was ripe for a demagogue. And while I can’t believe it was this moron that came along, he fit the bill for some people.”

Reflecting on Trump’s first few months in office since winning a second term, Springsteen added that “what we’ve been living through in the last 70 days is things that we all said, ‘This can’t happen here. This will never happen in America.’ And here we are.”

The Boss has long been vocal in his opposition to Trump, endorsing Kamala Harris in the 2024 election and telling The Atlantic four years prior that the twice-impeached POTUS was a “threat to our democracy.” Trump, however, hit back at Springsteen a few weeks ago after the rocker slammed his administration as “corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” during a May concert in Manchester, England.

“I see that Highly Overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a Foreign Country to speak badly about the President of the United States,” Trump wrote on Truth Social shortly after the show. “Never liked him, never liked his music, or his Radical Left Politics and, importantly, he’s not a talented guy — Just a pushy, obnoxious JERK … This dried out ‘prune’ of a rocker (his skin is all atrophied!) ought to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT.”

The insults didn’t phase Springsteen, who has since continued to voice his dismay with the current state of affairs in his home country on stage. In late May, he released an EP featuring a recording of the speech that ticked Trump off.

And in his NYT interview, the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer didn’t shy away from criticizing Trump’s immigration policies, which in recent weeks have manifested in widely criticized ICE raids in places like Los Angeles. “There’s a large migrant population that lives and has altered Freehold in a very vibrant way,” Springsteen said of his hometown in New Jersey.

“There are communities all across America now that have taken in immigrants and migrant workers,” Springsteen continued. “So what’s going on at the moment to me is disgusting, and a terrible tragedy.”

Despite everything, though, the musician says he still has a lot of hope for the future of the country he’s spent his career writing about in his songs. Why? “Because we have a long democratic history,” Springsteen said. “We don’t have an autocratic history as a nation. It’s fundamentally democratic, and I believe that at some point that’s going to rear its head and things will swing back.”

He added, “Let’s knock on wood.”