At this weekend’s Bonnaroo, Lizzo was set to make history as the festival’s first-ever female headliner. Instead, due to heavy rains from Hurricane Ida flooding the fest’s Manchester, Tenn., grounds, the 2021 event was canceled Tuesday (Aug. 31), and the weekend’s scheduled performers are lamenting the loss on social media.

“Honored to be your first female headliner @bonnaroo,” Lizzo wrote Tuesday on her Instagram Stories. “Take care of yourselves everyone who is in the path of the storm. Safety first,” she wrote, adding a red heart emoji.

Run the Jewels, Jason Isbell, Incubus and more also shared their disappointment on social media, with Isbell tweeting, “I’m sorry y’all had to make this choice but I believe it was the right one. I was really REALLY looking forward to it, but ya gotta be safe and smart. Love to everybody on the crew with a broken heart today.”

Electronic pop duo Sylvan Esso didn’t let the news get them down, writing on their IG Stories: “Anybody gotta good outdoor venue in Tennessee for this sick ass band? @Bonnaroo got cancelled but we are still practicing anyway cuz music is joy.”

Bonnaroo hasn’t hosted a festival since 2019, with the coronavirus pandemic forcing organizers to pull the plug in 2020 as well.

See all the performer reactions below:

“All the traditional hates the new, always,” Nelly tells Kane Brown and Breland, as the three country performers discuss their experiences working in music, during a scene from the forthcoming CMT Crossroads: Nelly and Friends, which premieres  Wednesday at 9 p.m. CT on CMT. “Like people will call ‘Country Grammar’ a classic now. They didn’t call it a classic when I first came out.”

Brown, known for country hits including “Heaven” and “What Ifs,” as well as his cross-genre collaborations with artists like Marshmello, Khalid and Swae Lee, deadpans in response, “They look at me like I’m the bad guy.”

“Who?” Nelly asks.

“Like a lot of the country people,” Brown clarifies.

“Traditional hip-hop looked at me like I was the bad guy,” Nelly responded.

Since CMT Crossroads debuted in 2002, the series has become known not only for smart musical pairings of country artists with musicians from other genres, but also for bringing fans deeper into the creativity and mutual respect the artists have for music.

The conversation with Brown, Breland and Nelly showcases a vulnerable, honest moment between the hitmakers on CMT Crossroads: Nelly & Friends, which also features Blanco Brown and Florida Georgia Line.

Several of the performances featured during the 60-minute CMT Crossroads special will highlight Nelly’s collaborative, country-inspired Heartland EP, which came out on Friday. The album features Nelly’s current radio hit with FGL “Lil Bit,” plus “Grits & Glamour” with Kane Brown, “High Horse” with Blanco Brown and Breland, and more.

Nelly, of course, is no stranger to the country scene, having teamed with Tim McGraw for the 2004 hit “Over and Over,” followed by his smash hit collaboration with FGL on the remixed version of the duo’s “Cruise” in 2012. His collaboration with Jimmie Allen on “Good Times Roll” appears on Allen’s Bettie James EP (the song also appears on Nelly’s Heartland).

During a separate interview segment with Nelly for the show, Kane Brown gives Nelly credit for pulling him back into country music, saying, “I grew up on ’90s country, then I got into hip-hop and everything, and that kind of rooted me back in country, when I heard you on the ‘Cruise’ track.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Nelly sits down with longtime friends and collaborators, FGL’s Brian Kelley and Tyler Hubbard, for a discussion on the impact hip-hop has had on country music, saying, “Hip-hop is the ‘youngest’ music, so it only goes back maybe 40, 50 years. But now, you can’t have anybody 45 years or younger that don’t have some type of affinity for some form of hip-hop. And hip-hop is the only genre of music that touches every other genre.”

Over the years, CMT Crossroads has offered unique pairings, including Ray Charles with Travis Tritt; Kelly Clarkson with Reba McEntire; Def Leppard with Taylor Swift; Alicia Keys with Maren Morris; Halsey with Kelsea Ballerini; and more.

Radio and television personality Bobby Bones — host of the Premiere/iHeartMedia nationally syndicated radio program The Bobby Bones Show – took to social media on Sunday to allege that voting for the Academy of Country Music and Country Music Association Awards are “manipulated” by labels and that behind-the-scenes dealings at country labels affect which songs reach No. 1 and for how long, claiming that half of chart-topping country hits are illegitimate No. 1 hits. His comments have drawn considerable feedback in the country community and refutation from the awards shows.

In one TikTok post concerning country radio chart-toppers, Bones takes country record labels to task, saying, “Here’s the truth about No. 1 songs: It’s politics. They trade them out like baseball cards. A record label will talk to another record label and go, ‘OK, I’ll give you this No. 1 on this date; you give me that No. 1 on that date.’ Which really, it just should be the song that’s the most wanted, the most listened to, the song that people demand … and so when you hear someone talk about a No. 1 song, I would say half of them aren’t legitimate No. 1 songs. They have to be good to get to the top 10. There’s a lot of research done into these songs. But when it gets to being a No. 1 song, it’s people going, ‘OK, I’ll give you this; you give me that.’ And it’s everybody trying to create as many No. 1s as possible, because everything’s the same. Everybody gets a participation trophy at No. 1.”

Though Bones did not say which specific songs he felt were undeserved chart-toppers, he did mention Luke Combs and Maren Morris as artists whose songs he felt should have had longer stints at No. 1.

“For example, a Luke Combs song could be No. 1 for 10 weeks, but because of politics, the label will go, ‘Ah, let’s let somebody else get in that spot,’ and they’ll move Luke Combs to No. 2 and he’ll sit there for a few weeks. The same thing with like a Maren Morris.”

Billboard reached out to several label representatives regarding Bones’ statements, though no labels would comment on Bones’ statements as of press time.

On Tuesday (Aug. 31), Bones returned to TikTok to say he was “surprised at all the controversy” his comments were causing and to highlight a story from today’s Country Insider that featured some anonymous radio sources agreeing with Bones’ assessment, while others disagreed or said the issue was far more complicated.

In a separate TikTok post, Bones also alleged that bigger labels have an advantage when it comes to voting for winners for the CMA Awards and ACM Awards because of bloc voting and the ability to “manipulate” votes.

“Let’s say you work for Record Label A, which has 3,000 people that works there and they have an artist up for entertainer of the year, and Record Label B has 250 people that work there and they have an artist up for entertainer of the year,” Bones alleges. “Well, what Record Label A does is they organize everyone to bloc vote, so those thousands of votes go to their artists, and then Record Label B, that doesn’t have near the number of workers or voters, are kind of screwed unless somehow they get votes from everybody else. But bloc voting is done in the awards shows, but not illegal actually.”

He then goes on to praise the CMA and ACM organizations for trying to keep it “as legit as possible.”

Despite Bones’ assertions, both the CMA and ACM tell Billboard they have rigorous restrictions in place that prohibit bloc voting. The CMA caps all companies in terms of the number of voting members they can have so larger companies cannot manipulate the vote. The organization also works with its accounting firm, Deloitte, to review voting patterns to determine if bloc voting has occurred, even within the limited voting members. If it has, those votes are eliminated. Furthermore, the majority of CMA members are individuals without company affiliations.

The ACM caps corporate accounts at 100 total members, regardless of the number of employees and inclusive of all imprints. Similarly to the CMA, a third party auditor monitors the voting process and any unusual voting patterns are flagged and investigated.

When contacted by Billboard, a representative for Bones said he had no other comments to add to his previous TikTok statements. An iHeartRadio representative did not reply to a request for comment.

–Assistance on this story provided by Melinda Newman

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An edited version of Kanye West’s final livestreamed listening session for his 10th album Donda is expected to go live exclusively on Apple Music Tuesday, multiple sources tell Billboard.

West partnered with Apple Music to host two listening sessions at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta and another at Soldier Field in Chicago, collectively bringing out well over 100,000 people to hear him complete his latest work. West’s Chicago show set a livestreaming record on Apple Music, with 5.9 million people tuning in to watch the spectacle.

Since the album was released on Sunday, Donda has continued to set records, becoming the first album in Apple Music history to top the charts in over 150 countries.

Donda also became the most streamed album in the U.S. in 2021 on Apple Music in its first 24 hours with over 60 million streams, which helped West land the title for most streamed artist on the service in a day this year. The 27-track album is named after West’s late mother who passed in 2007 at age 58.

The project has also put up significant numbers on Spotify, with Donda pulling in over 94 million streams globally in 24 hours on the service, which is home to 365 million monthly users. (Apple Music last reported having over 60 million users in 2019.)

After several days of testimony from women claiming they were groomed and sexually abused by R. Kelly, a man took the witness stand at Kelly’s sex-trafficking trial in New York City on Monday (Aug. 30) to say the R&B star exploited him in the same way when he was a high school student.

The witness, testifying in federal court in Brooklyn without using his real name, told a jury how Kelly lured him to his Chicago-area home in 2007 with false offers of helping him with his fledgling music career.

Kelly asked the alleged victim, then 17, “what I was willing to do for music,” the witness said. He replied, “I’ll carry your bags. … Anything you need, I’ll be willing to do.”

“That’s not it. That’s not it,” he said Kelly responded before asking him if he ever fantasized about having sex with men. He described how Kelly then “crawled down on his knees and proceeded to give me oral sex,” even though, “I wasn’t into it.”

Afterward, “he told me to keep it between him and me,” he said.

In a later episode, Kelly snapped his fingers to summon a naked girl from where she was hiding under a boxing ring to give Kelly and the witness oral sex, the man told the jury.

He kept seeing Kelly after that because “I really wanted to make it in the music industry,” he said.

The witness was testifying as part of a cooperation agreement stemming from his guilty plea in a separate case alleging he was part of a botched scheme to bribe a woman to not testify against Kelly. No charges were brought against Kelly related to the scheme.

Kelly, 54, has repeatedly denied accusations that he preyed on victims during a 30-year career highlighted by his 1996 mega hit “I Believe I Can Fly.” His lawyers have portrayed his accusers as groupies who are lying about their relationships with him.

Earlier Monday, a woman testified that Kelly sexually assaulted her at age 17 following a performance in Miami in 1994. The witness, also testifying without using her real name, claimed that Kelly’s cronies took her and a friend to his dressing room after the show before he pulled down her shorts and forced her to have unprotected sex, she said.

“I was in complete shock,” she said. “I didn’t know what to say at all. I basically went blank.”

Afterward, she and her friend “unlocked the door and ran out of there,” she said.

On cross-examination, defense attorney Deveraux Cannick pressed the witness on why, after someone allegedly “raped you,” she waited more than two decades to contact law enforcement.

“Because I didn’t want to feel more shame and trauma,“ she said.