The judge in Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ sex trafficking trial has formally dismissed a juror for giving inconsistent answers about where he lives, rejecting warnings by the rapper’s defense attorneys about a “thinly veiled effort to dismiss a Black juror.”

Prosecutors moved to remove the juror last week, citing a “lack of candor” in his answers before he was picked for the trial. The defense blasted the move, arguing in a court filing over the weekend that he was “one of only two black men on the jury” and that Diddy would be “severely prejudiced” by his removal.

But at the start of Monday’s proceedings Judge Arun Subramanian said it was “inappropriate to consider race” in deciding whether the juror had been truthful in his answers, according to ABC News.

“The record raised serious concerns as to the juror’s candor and whether he shaded answers to get on and stay on the jury,” Subramanian said. “There’s nothing the juror could say at this point to put the genie back in the bottle.”

The judge replaced the juror, a 41-year-old Black man, with a member of the alternate pool, a 57-year-old white man.

Combs is standing trial over accusations that he ran a sprawling criminal operation aimed at facilitating “freak-offs” — elaborate events which he allegedly forced his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura and other women to have sex with male escorts while he watched and masturbated.

Prosecutors also say the star and his associates used violence, money and blackmail to keep victims silent and under his control. (Read Billboard‘s full explainer of the case against Diddy here.) Combs has pleaded not guilty to the charges, which include on racketeering and sex trafficking; if convicted, he faces a potential sentence of life in prison.

Five weeks into a trial that’s expected to run until early July, prosecutors moved to dismiss Juror No. 6, citing alleged inconsistencies about where he lives. During jury selection, the man said he lives in the Bronx, but he later revealed that he had been living some of the time in New Jersey – a residence that would make him ineligible to sit on the jury.

Diddy’s team, which criticized prosecutors during jury selection for striking several Black candidates, vehemently opposed the removal. In court last week, defense attorney Xavier Donaldson called it a “thinly veiled effort to dismiss a Black juror.” And in a motion filed with the judge on Sunday, Diddy lawyer Alexandra A.E. Shapiro said the government had a “discriminatory motive” and was seizing an opportunity to “strike yet another black male from the jury.”

“The fairness of the trial depends in part on having jurors with backgrounds similar to Mr. Combs share their perspectives on the evidence with other jurors from diverse backgrounds during deliberations,” Shapiro wrote. “Removing this particular juror will deprive Mr. Combs of that important perspective.”

In the filing, Shapiro warned that removing the juror “at this late stage” would warrant a mistrial: “There is no question Mr. Combs would be severely prejudiced if the juror in question were removed,” she wrote. “Their pretextual motion to dismiss [the juror] is just one more attempt to gain an unfair advantage at the expense of Mr. Combs’s right to a fair trial — which is all we ask this Court to preserve.”

At Friday’s proceedings, Judge Subramanian tentatively dismissed the juror, though he vowed to consider the defense’s objections over the weekend. On Monday, he stuck by his earlier decision, including rejecting the complaints about race: “This jury does not raise those concerns.”

After blockbuster testimony last week from an alleged victim known as “Jane,” the Diddy trial will now continue into its sixth week. Prosecutors are expected to wrap up their case by the end of the week, allowing Combs’ team to begin presenting their own witnesses. A verdict is expected by July 4^th.

Few artists fib as sweetly as Zach Top. On breakout hit “I Never Lie,” he sings about his life as a model citizen — an unfailingly punctual teetotaler who always gets a full night’s rest and remains impervious to heartbreak. It’s only at the end of the chorus that the illusion is shattered. “I wish I could say I miss you,” Top croons. “But you know I never lie.” The last falsehood is impossible to believe, and the rest of them fall like dominoes. 

“I Never Lie,” which sounds like it could have been released in Nashville in the 1980s — maybe around 1987, when George Strait turned his own series of fibs into the hit single “Ocean Front Property” — cracked the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time in September. It has climbed the chart at a stately pace, peaking at No. 24 in May, an impressive accomplishment for Top — and for Leo33, the fledgling independent label who made the singer their first signing in the summer of 2023.   

“We knew that he was an important signing for us for a lot of reasons,” Katie Dean, label head at Leo33, says of Top. “We had a great plan, and Zach is absolutely a once in a lifetime kind of artist. But you can hope and dream — to have the audience react this way has been unbelievable. And to have the success with him that we’ve had has also helped put our stamp on, ‘These are the kinds of artists that we want to sign.’”

Dean spent close to two decades at labels in the Universal Music Group family, specializing in radio promotion, before helping to launch Leo33 in April 2023. Like many veterans of the majors who transition to the independent sector — and some veterans who are still working at the majors — she worries that the artist development process has “fallen to the wayside” as those companies prioritize “picking up what’s popping and running with it.” 

“Majors are sort of designed to do high volume: It’s signing a lot of artists and taking a lot of shots,” Dean says. “I wanted to be in an environment where we could really focus and know everybody who was touching the project at any given time, rather than walking into a boardroom where there’s a bunch of new faces from week to week.”

Dean joined Universal Music Group in 2005, eventually rising to senior vp of promotion at MCA Records Nashville. During that time, she worked with George Strait, Reba McEntire, Taylor Swift, Sam Hunt and Kacey Musgraves, among others. Her resume was part of the reason Top signed with Leo33. “It meant a good bit to me that Katie Dean had worked on a bunch of records that had made me fall in love with country music,” he told Billboard last year. 

She launched Leo33 along wit​​h Rachel Fontenot, former vp of marketing and artist development at UMG Nashville; Daniel Lee, former president of artist development company Altadena; and Natalie Osborne, former Downtown Music Nashville senior creative director. Leo nods to the constellation of the same name; Fontenot said in 2023 that it was meant to signify lion-like traits, namely courage and agility. (She left a few months after the label was born.)

At a time when labels who have not previously shown interest in country music are storming into Nashville, a newcomer needs to be able to offer competitive advances. Leo33 has backing from Firebird and Red Light Ventures, which provide “fantastic resources and additional marketing support,” according to Dean. Firebird, which has invested in labels, management companies and publishers, also serves as Leo33’s distribution partner, as well as “another voice” advocating for the label’s artists at the streaming services.

Dean promises singers plenty of direct attention. “We are all on group texts with each of the artists, so anyone is available at any point,” she says. On top of that, “We don’t have the luxury as a new label to rely on 30 years of catalog. Success is the only option.”

That hunger appealed to Top. He was being pursued by other record companies, but “the fact that [Leo33 executives] are all veterans in this industry and they are trying this new [label], it feels like they are at square one again just as much as I am and have everything to prove,” he said.

Osborne, an A&R executive at Leo33, had gone to Whiskey Jam in Nashville to see another act when she stumbled on a performance by Top, a bluegrass artist turned country singer. She played his music at the Leo33 office the next morning before setting out to find Top’s manager. 

Dean was also “immediately smitten” by what she heard. “He made the kind of music that made me fall in love with this format,” she says. And Leo33 executives believed “there is an audience of people who are craving that kind of music,” precisely because it has been out of favor in the country mainstream. 

Top co-wrote his debut album, Cold Beer & Country Music, with Carson Chamberlain, who had a hand in No. 1 hits for legends like Strait and Alan Jackson. Leo33 picked the uptempo dance number “Sounds Like the Radio” — which references Jackson in its very first couplet — as the lead single. It serves as a manifesto of sorts: “It sounds like the radio/ Back in ’94, ya know.” 

Roughly three months after releasing “Sounds Like the Radio,” when it was hovering just inside the top 40 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart, Top put out the rest of his album. “With most major labels, that would not have been the case,” Dean explains. “It would have been, ‘Wait for multiple singles to come out, wait for enough of a consumption threshold to be met.’ But we all felt really strongly internally that if somebody discovered Zach, they would want to discover more than a few songs.”

Their faith was rewarded when listeners started to gravitate to “I Never Lie,” streaming it and using it in TikTok videos. The album’s other high points include “Bad Luck,” which plays like a sequel to “I Never Lie,” where the protagonist finally catches a break; and “Use Me,” a slow-burn ballad about a one-night stand.

The rest of Leo33’s roster includes Jenna Paulette, who lives on a working ranch in Texas and shares Top’s appreciation for fiddle and pedal steel guitars; Jason Scott & the High Heat, whose ramshackle rock sprouts with sweet harmonies; Ashland Craft, who favors a rugged country sound; and a fifth signing that the company hasn’t yet announced.

In addition to reaching the top 25 on the Hot 100, “I Never Lie” peaked at No. 2 on Billboard‘s Country Airplay chart in May. Top’s catalog has earned 798,000 equivalent album units to date in the U.S., according to Luminate, including 963.9 million on-demand streams. 

Leo33 now has eight full-time employees. In March, Ana Shabeer joined as director, business intelligence; and Joseph Manzo started as a marketing coordinator.

Jason Scott & the High Heat put out American Grin in March, and Ashland Craft just released her debut album on Leo33, Dive Bar Beauty Queen. Top will follow Cold Beer & Country Music with Ain’t In It For My Health on August 29. The lead single, “Good Times & Tan Lines,” was promptly put into rotation by 50 country radio stations, making it the most added track of the week in the format.

Heart‘s Nancy Wilson and her bandmate and sister Ann Wilson are proud daughters of a Marine Corps major, but the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame guitarist said in a pointed Instagram post on Saturday (June 14) that their band’s music is not meant for political purposes. “Earlier today, during a parade held in support of our nation’s military and organized by President Donald Trump, the song ‘Barracuda’ by Heart was played without permission or authorization from us,” she said of the playing of the group’s Billboard Hot 100 No. 11 1977 hit during the military showcase.

“‘Barracuda,’ written and performed by Ann and I, is a powerful piece of music that was never intended for political use,” continued Wilson, who drove home her point by wearing a “No Kings But Us” hat on a day when a historic number of Americans took to the streets from coast to coast to protest against what they called the creeping authoritarianism of the second Trump administration in a series of “No Kings” protests.

“As daughters of a U.S. Marine Corps major, we hold a deep and abiding respect for the men and women who serve in our Armed Forces,” wrote Wilson. “On a day meant to honor that service, it’s important that music used in such settings reflects not only the tone of the event but also the wishes of the artists who created it.🤘🏻”

According to reports. instrumental versions of Heart’s “Barracuda” and Journey’s “Separate Ways (World’s Apart)” were among the songs played at the event that appeared to draw modest crowds at a reported price of $25-$45 million, while the ACLU said that an estimated five million people took part in more than 2,100 “No Kings” rallies across the nation, making it the largest protest in the nation’s history.

Trump’s military parade, which was intended to celebrate the U.S. Army’s 250th birthday, also fell on the president’s 79th birthday. The parading of military hardware through the streets of the nation’s capital is an unusual site in the U.S., though Trump has long mused out loud about wanting to hold such an event. The D.C. event came amidst a day of dramatic news, including Iran and Israel battering each other with missiles in what is ramping up to be a major escalation of hostilities between the two nations. In addition, officials in Minnesota launched a massive manhunt for the suspected shooter who assassinated a Democratic state legislator in that state and attempted assassination of another; the now-captured 57-year-old man, Vance Boelter, allegedly had a list of 70 other potential targets in his car.

Nancy Wilson has long objected to politicians using her band’s music at their rallies, and earlier this year she said she feels “embarrassed” to call herself an American at this time. “We were kind of embarrassed at that time to call ourselves American because of the dirty politics of the Vietnam War,” Wilson said of the period that inspired some of the band’s most beloved hits, including the anti-Vietnam war single “Crazy On You,” whose lyrics she added are relevant again. “To be as subtle as possible, it’s more embarrassing now.”

She noted that “Barracuda” was initially written about a sleazy industry figure at the time, though Wilson twisted it to fit the current commander in chief, saying the song is “even more relevant in the salacious billionaire culture with the grab-them-by-the-(expletive) mentality,” the latter phrase a reference to an infamous sexist comment from Trump.

The Wilsons were also peeved when Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin played “Barracuda” at the 2008 Republican National Convention, sending a cease and desist order to the former Alaska governor demanding she stop using the track as her unofficial theme song. In 2018, singer Ann Wilson told The Hill that any politician was free to use “Barracuda” on the campaign trail in 2020. “I think anybody but Trump,” she added.

The life and legacy of late Australian musician Conway Savage will be honored with the launch of a new music festival in Ireland.

The event, dubbed These Are the Waves: A Celebration of the Music of Conway Savage, is set to take place from Sept. 12-14 in Irish county town Dundalk.

Per a report from the Dundalk Democrat, Savage’s lasting relationship with the location began in 2000 when he performed at Dundalk’s Spirit Store venue alongside Falling Joys’ Suzie Higgie. Having also launched a creative relationship with local musician Mark Corcoran, Savage would perform in Dundalk many more times and recorded at the local Tumbleweed Studios on numerous occasions.

Taking place at Spirit Store, the forthcoming festival is set to feature a number of musicians close to Savage, including former Bad Seeds bandmate Mick Harvey, and Higgie, who will contribute a full performance of the Soon Will Be Tomorrow album she and Savage released in 1998.

Additionally, the lineup will feature PJ Harvey collaborator Terry Edwards, alongside Jim Yamouridis and Robert Tickner, who had previously collaborated with Savage at some point either in the studio or in his band.

Having performed since the early ’80s in bands such as Feral Dinosaurs, Dust on the Bible and Happy Orphans, Savage rose to prominence in 1990 when he joined Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds as their pianist, organist and occasional backing vocalist. He remained with the band for 27 before departing in 2017 to undergo treatment for a brain tumor. 

In September 2018, it was reported that Savage had passed away as a result of his ongoing health battle at the age of 58.

“Conway was the anarchic thread that ran through the band’s live performances,” the band wrote in a statement following his passing. “He was much loved by everyone, band members and fans alike. 

“Irascible, funny, terrifying, sentimental, warm-hearted, gentle, acerbic, honest, genuine – he was all of these things and quite literally ‘had the gift of a golden voice,’ high and sweet and drenched in soul.”