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T.I. responds to multiple sexual abuse allegations against him and his wife Tiny in his music video for “What It’s Come To.”

The 40-year-old rapper (real name Clifford Joseph Harris Jr.) and his wife (Tameka Dianne Harris) have been at the center of serious sexual assault allegations from more than a dozen women. Now he’s taking aim in the visual, which depicts T.I. and Tiny at the center of a grand scheme to publicly take them down by their accusers, whom he labels “The Parasite” and accuses of lying.

“The object of the game is kill the king/ So till the blade meet my neck on the guillotine/ But I’ma be standin’ tall like a statue/ N—a f— that, ‘He say, she say’/ If the receipts, say that shit ain’t factual/ I was built for all this sh–, God sent me here with a mission/ That’s somethin’ can’t let no human or no demon interfere with,” he raps.

While Tiny makes a cameo, T.I. enlists characters to mock Sabrina Peterson, who accused him of putting a gun to her head, and attorney Tyrone A. Blackburn, whom the The New York Times reported is seeking a criminal investigation and approached law enforcement authorities in Georgia and California on behalf of 11 people claiming they were victimized by the couple or their entourage.

At the end of the music video, T.I. announces that his 12th and final studio album, Kill the King, will be “coming soon.”

Peterson responded to the video in a since-deleted Instagram Story, writing, “I have been in federal trouble before, no matter how the public feels about they can’t save you. Since your million dollar team won’t tell you I will. You aren’t taunting me you are taunting your investigators. You aren’t taunting me you are igniting more women that have stayed quiet that you victimized. Dummy.”

Stories about sexual assault allegations can be traumatizing for survivors of sexual assault. If you or anyone you know needs support, you can reach out to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN). The organization provides free, confidential support to sexual assault victims. Call RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline (800.656.HOPE) or visit the anti-sexual violence organization’s website for more information.

If you haven’t heard, Broadway is almost back — and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon is ready to celebrate.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced last month that Broadway could return to business as usual in September, and many major shows — including Hamilton, Lion King and Wicked — already have tickets on sale for the fall. On Tuesday night’s (June 8) Tonight Show, Lin-Manuel Miranda and Jimmy Fallon will welcome back the Great White Way by re-creating  some of Broadway’s most iconic moments in a musical number.

And they won’t be alone: As you can see from the photo above, Billboard can exclusively reveal that Kristin Chenoweth (Wicked), Christopher Jackson (Hamilton), Phylicia Rashad (August: Osage County), Laura Benanti (Gypsy) and In the Heights film stars Jimmy Smits and Olga Merediz will also be part of the segment.

The Broadway celebration will include music from The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, Dear Evan Hansen, West Side Story, The Lion King, The Book of Mormon, Wicked and many more classic shows — including, of course, Miranda’s blockbuster hit Hamilton.

Also along for the ride for the first time this week is a packed studio audience inside 30 Rock, after a year-plus of remote shows followed by audience-free tapings in the studio.

Another Miranda production, In the Heights, is hitting the big screen this weekend, starring Anthony Ramos as Usnavi de la Vega, the role originated by Miranda himself on Broadway in 2008.

The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon airs at 11:35 p.m. ET on NBC.

Watch “Broadway’s Back!” below.

Mariah Carey has departed Roc Nation and partnered with Range Media Partners for management, Billboard can confirm. Carey will work with Melissa Ruderman, her former rep at Roc Nation who joined Range Media in January. Variety first reported the news.

Carey’s move to Range Media follows a report in U.K. tabloid The Sun that the singer and Roc Nation founder Jay-Z fell out following an “explosive meeting.” Carey, who signed with Roc Nation in Nov. 2017, subsequently set out to quell the rumor by tweeting, “The only ‘explosive’ situation I’d ever ‘get into’ with Hov is a creative tangent, such as our #1 song ‘Heartbreaker.’”

Ruderman and Carey’s relationship goes back over 15 years, when Ruderman worked for manager Benny Medina and handled day-to-day management for Carey during the release cycle for her 2005 album The Emancipation of Mimi. During her five-year stint at Roc Nation, Ruderman helped execute several major deals for Carey, including two consecutive residencies at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace, a TV deal with Apple and a publishing contract that led to the publication of the New York Times-bestselling memoir The Meaning of Mariah Carey.

Carey has had a long list of managers over the years. Before signing with Roc Nation, she was with Stella Bulochnikov and, before that, Kevin Liles, with whom she signed in 2014 following the dissolution of her management relationship with longtime collaborator Jermaine Dupri. At various points earlier in her career, Carey was managed by ex-husband Tommy Mottola, Randy Jackson and Red Light Management.

Range Media Partners was launched in Sept. 2020 by former Entertainment One chief strategy officer Peter Micelli and a coalition of former CAA, WME and UTA agents.

It’s been over two years since renowned music video director Nabil Elderkin premiered his first feature film Gully at the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival, and on Tuesday (June 8), he can finally take a deep breath once it’s finally out for the world to see.

Elderkin has directed dozens of iconic music videos for Kanye West, Frank Ocean, Kendrick Lamar, SZA, Billie Eilish and more. But over the last few years, the Australian-American director and photographer has been working on his feature-film directorial debut Gully, which premiered in select theaters on Friday and is available on-demand Tuesday (June 8).

Gully follows a trio of troubled teens in Los Angeles played by Jacob Latimore (The Chi, Collateral Beauty), Charlie Plummer (Lean on Pete, Looking for Alaska) and Kelvin Harrison Jr. (Waves, Monster). The gritty feature film depicts how the three boys are byproducts of their ‘hood who “don’t really get to play astronaut and stick fight because there’s so much being demanded [from them],” says screenwriter Marcus J. Guillory. In spite of being subject to their respective cycles of violence and abuse at home, their brotherhood remains the most unfailing force in their lives, as Gully portrays a gutting picture of what it means to be a “ride-or-die.”

“Music videos was my film school,” Elderkin tells Billboard. Of course, he’s not the only music video director to transition into film: In 2019, two-time Grammy winner Melina Matsoukas, who’s helmed visuals for Beyoncé, Rihanna, Lady Gaga and more, made her directorial debut with the romantic crime drama Queen & Slim, starring Daniel Kaluuya and Jodie Turner-Smith, among many other examples.

And he’s not the only one making a debut of sorts in Gully: Travis Scott makes his feature film debut with his small role as Derek, a video store clerk who observes a crucial scene in the boys’ destructive conduct. While Calvin (Latimore), Nicky (Plummer) and Jesse (Harrison Jr.) engross themselves in a violent video game that mimics the level of brutality they’re used to witnessing on the streets — which later becomes a motif as to how the boys center themselves in and interact with their surroundings — they unleash utter chaos in Scott’s store by casually tossing entire shelves of DVDs onto the floor. The “Sicko Mode” rapper, who’s synonymous with the word “rage” by way of his frenetic onstage demeanor, is irritated but not incensed in the way fans might expect to see him.

“He came through. There were moments where you could tell he was like [makes angry grunting noise], but he got into his mode,” Elderkin says. “He’s got a future in acting, for sure. Travis can act. Having him be in the film and be executive producer of the film is a blessing.”

Apart from cameos made by Scott and fellow rapper Vince Staples, Elderkin recruited a star-studded cast for the official Gully soundtrack. Epic Records released the nine-song set on Friday, which features Dua Lipa, Don Toliver, Ty Dolla $ign, 21 Savage, Gary Clark Jr., Miguel, Buddy, Snoh Aalegra and more.

Lipa, who led the at-home dance revolution during the pandemic last year with her disco-inspired album Future Nostalgia, takes charge with a completely different sound on the saxophone-driven rallying cry “Can They Hear Us.” Laced within the production of “Can They Hear Us” and Clark Jr.’s “We Stay Up” is the film’s score by Daniel Heath, who identifies the DNA of the soundtrack as a “beautiful” blend of the “hip-hop scattered throughout an intense film with lots of violence” with “something quite classical and orchestral and piano-based and string-based.” Before working with the “Levitating” superstar, whom he says “has got a hell of a voice,” Heath worked with another major artist, Lana Del Rey, on producing the orchestral version of “Young and Beautiful,” heard in the 2013 romantic drama The Great Gatsby.

“Nabil was super, super involved in the score as well. He was very interested in pushing sounds,” Heath tells Billboard. “There was this one scene toward the end where one of the lads was being arrested … and Nabil had an idea to come up with a sound that sounded like crying but in an instrument. So I recorded a solo violinist, and we called it a ‘cryolin’ instead of a violin. And the violin just made these sort of beautiful weeping sounds.”

Adds Elderkin about Heath’s work scoring the film: “I wanted to make it feel like the different emotions and parts of the movie and feel natural and have it come out of the places that it would come out of naturally, like a speaker or headphones, and be interweaved into the film as the sonic tapestry rather than just put music behind things. I don’t want people to get taken out of the film with a song coming in, you know what I mean? And Daniel does what he does beautifully, [which] is find that balance of complementing what’s on the screen.”

Elderkin juggled wearing even more hats on Gully by also serving as executive producer of the soundtrack, which on the business side required dealing with a taxing amount of rights and clearances over six months, but on the creative side was “one of the most exciting experiences I’ve had.”

On the soundtrack, LA-bred artists Ty Dolla $ign, ScHoolboy Q and B-Real link up on “Blacks N Mexicans,” which B-Real starts off with a testimony about how white people divided two of the most prominent racial communities in the metropolis. Three tracks down, fellow local Buddy maps out gang violence and persuades his peers that it’s not the life they really want to live (“You are not a killer, I can see it in your eyes,” he raps) in the twinkling Hit-Boy-produced track “Murderer.”

“There was even people that aren’t on the soundtrack — Cordae, Joey Bada$$ — people that were there, ready to do things, [but] there’s only so many songs you can put in,” Elderkin explains. “I’m so grateful to have all the artists that I’m friends with and some that I’ve worked with creating something for the film that was real special and touching. I wanted that music to emulate, feel like LA or feel like what the youth would be feeling or wanting to hear from each scene.”

When Guillory wrote the script 15 years ago, he had one distinct album that’s colorfully inked around his arm act as his personal writing soundtrack: Miles Davis’ 1970 double album Bitches Brew.

“That’s what I wrote Gully to, that album. That is the only thing I listened to when I wrote that. I wasn’t listening to hip-hop. It was bumping out in the street. So I could definitely dig what Daniel [Heath] was doing,” Guillory says, explaining how crosscutting the hip-hop and classical elements of the music in Gully ran parallel to the script. “The juxtaposition is very important. Even when we have a moment where Calvin [Latimore] and them are talking feel like iambic pentameter, taking an animated character and giving them what I call heightened language in certain moments juxtaposed to what you would normally hear in the ‘hood.”

Guillory’s upbringing in the South Park neighborhood of Houston and experience living in Morningside in South Central LA at the time of writing Gully in 2006 shaped the story and told it from the point-of-view of its intended audience: kids living in rough neighborhoods “mired in poverty and low expectations” who aren’t involved in gangs, drugs or anything else stereotypically depicted in the “‘hood narrative.” And with Nabil’s music video work reaching the same people, paired with his ability to naturally blend in the elements of their East 43rd Street and South Avalon Boulevard shooting location, Gully became a product of the people, by the people, for the people.

“The cool thing with Nabil’s visuals, just with the music video stuff, he was tapped into the same demographic too. So we were both creating content for the same demographic. It wasn’t a hard reach for us to figure out what they would wear, what they would say, what they would be doing,” adds Guillory. “But you know what was cool for me? Man, the people that I wrote it for, the people that Nabil shot it for, they get it. And I feel so good about that…. I’ve been getting hit up, like my dudes in Houston was like, ‘Kids was sneaking in [to see Gully].’ Yeah, that’s for y’all.”

Gully is currently out in theaters and on demand. All proceeds from the film’s merchandise will be donated to Surf Bus Foundation, which empowers inner-city youth to have a healing connection to the sea.

Natanael Cano knocks himself out of the No. 1 spot on Billboard’s Regional Mexican Albums chart as A Mis 20 debuts at No. 1, replacing Corridos Tumbados on the June 12-dated ranking. The latter spent 31 nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 since it bowed atop the list dated Nov. 16, 2019.

Cano’s sixth studio album starts with 5,000 equivalent album units earned in the U.S. in the week ending June 3, according to MRC Data, mostly stemming from streaming activity. It registered 6.9 million on-demand streams of the album’s tracks in its first tracking week.

The Regional Mexican Albums chart ranks the most popular regional Mexican albums of the week in the U.S. based on multi-metric consumption as measured in equivalent album units. Units comprise album sales, track equivalent albums (TEA) and streaming equivalent albums (SEA). Each unit equals one album sale, or 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams generated by songs from an album.

The 11-track A Mis 20 was released May 28 via JHRH/Warner Latina and earns Cano his second No. 1 on the tally. The 20-year-old becomes the first act to oust himself from the top since Christian Nodal’s Ahora pushed Me Dejé Llevar from the lead in May 2019.

Corridos Tumbados’ 31 weeks at No. 1 remains the third-most on the chart following only Selena’s 97-week reign with Amor Prohibido and Nodal’s Me Dejé Llevar (73 weeks at No. 1).

A Mis 20 concurrently debuts at No. 9 on Top Latin Albums, Cano’s highest start since Corridos debuted at No. 5 (No. 4 peak). The latter is in the list’s top 30 in its 83rd week.

Back on Regional Mexican Albums, A Mis 20 becomes just the third album to debut at the summit in 2021. It trails Eslabon Armado’s Corta Venas (Jan 2-dated tally) and Cano’s labelmate Junior H’s $ad Boyz 4 Life (Feb. 27-dated list).

A troubling trend of gun violence leaked into Miami-Dade County’s south end early Monday morning when police said a disturbed gunman shot and killed his girlfriend and her son and … Click to Continue »