Fireworks are returning to New Orleans on Independence Day thanks to Will Smith.

Smith is picking up the roughly $100,000 tab for the pyrotechnics over the Mississippi River after learning New Orleans didn’t plan a 2021 show, city officials told news outlets.

New Orleans canceled last year’s fireworks because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Smith is in New Orleans working on his latest film Emancipation, which will tell the story of a slave, Peter, who escaped a Louisiana plantation and whose photo of scars on his back from being whipped exposed the brutality of slavery. He would also fight for the Union in the Civil War.

Smith moved production of the film from Georgia to Louisiana in early April after Georgia passed a new voting law that prompted a federal lawsuit saying the overhaul was intended to deny Black voters equal access to the ballot.

Tyler, the Creator scores his second No. 1 album on the Billboard 200 chart as his latest studio effort, Call Me If You Get Lost, debuts atop the tally. The set was announced on June 17, released on June 25 via Columbia Records and earned 169,000 equivalent album units in the U.S. in the week ending July 1, according to MRC Data.

In total, Call Me is the artist’s sixth top 10 (the entirety of his charting efforts). Tyler previously hit No. 1 with his last release, 2019’s Igor.

The Billboard 200 chart ranks the most popular 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 new July 10, 2021-dated chart (where Call Me debuts to No. 1) will be posted in full on Billboard’s website on Wednesday, July 7 (one day later than normal, owed to the post-July 4 Monday holiday in the U.S. on July 5). For all chart news, follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both Twitter and Instagram.

Of Call Me If You Get Lost’s 169,000 equivalent album units earned in the tracking week ending July 1, SEA units comprise 114,000 (equaling 152.96 million on-demand streams of the album’s tracks), album sales comprise 55,000 (largely from deluxe box sets sold exclusively via the artist’s webstore) and TEA units comprise less than 1,000.

Call Me was released on June 25 as a 15-track standard digital download album, as well as in a 16-track deluxe digital and a streaming edition with one bonus track (“Safari”). The 16-track physical edition of the album, on CD and cassette, added a different bonus cut (“Fishtail”). Of Call Me’s total album sales for the week, 40,000 were CDs, 10,000 were cassettes and 5,000 were digital downloads. A vinyl LP release has yet to be announced.

The CD and cassette were exclusively sold via the artist’s webstore and sold out within a day. They were available a la carte, as well as in four limited edition deluxe box sets that sold for $25 each. (The box sets included either a CD, shirt and poster or a cassette, shirt and poster.) It has not been announced if any further CDs, cassettes or box sets will be manufactured, nor if they will become available to any other retailers.

While Call Me’s sales were sturdy, it’s worth noting that the album would have still arrived at No. 1 without any sales thanks to its solid streaming figures. It tallied 114,000 SEA units — which would have been enough to make it No. 1 by about 5,000 units over the No. 2 title of the week, Doja Cat’s new studio album, Planet Her.

Planet Her debuts at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with 109,000 equivalent album units earned. It’s the singer-rapper’s best week in terms of units earned, and highest charting effort yet, surpassing the No. 9 peak of her last release, and lone prior top 10, Hot Pink. The new album boasts the top five-charting Billboard Hot 100 hit “Kiss Me More,” featuring SZA, as well as guest turns from The Weeknd and Ariana Grande.

Of Planet Her’s starting sum of 109,000 units, SEA units comprise 96,000 (equaling 132 million on-demand streams of the album’s tracks), album sales comprise 10,000 and TEA units comprise 3,000.

Planet Her was initially released as a 14-track standard album on June 25. A deluxe digital and streaming edition followed on June 27, adding five additional tracks. Of the album’s 10,000 sold for the week, 6,000 were via digital download and 4,000 came via CD. (The CD had a limited pressing and was only available via Doja Cat’s webstore.)

A quartet of former No. 1s follows on the Billboard 200: Olivia Rodrigo’s Sour (falling 1-3 with 93,000 equivalent album units earned; down 11%), Lil Baby and Lil Durk’s The Voice of the Heroes (3-4 with 52,000 units; down 9%), Polo G’s Hall of Fame (2-5 with 49,000 units; down 27%) and Morgan Wallen’s Dangerous: The Double Album (5-6 with 47,000 units; down 3%).

MigosCulture III descends 4-7 with 37,000 equivalent album units earned (down 31%), Bo Burnham’s Inside (The Songs) rises 9-8 with 32,000 units (up 4%), and Dua Lipa’s Future Nostalgia dips 7-9 with 31,000 units (down less than 1%).

Justin Bieber’s Justice returns to the top 10, with a 14-10 hike, thanks to its vinyl release on June 25. The former No. 1 earned 30,000 units for the week (up 20%), with album sales comprising 7,000 of that sum (up 618%), of which vinyl LP sales equaled 6,000.

Big Red Machine’s new song “Renegade,” featuring Taylor Swift, has topped this week’s new music poll.

Music fans voted in a poll published Friday (July 2) on Billboard, choosing the upbeat collaboration between the indie-folk duo of The National’s Aaron Dessner and Bon Iver’s Justin Vernon and the pop superstar as their favorite new music release of the past week.

“Renegade,” which will be featured on Big Red Machine’s upcoming album, brought in nearly 72% of the vote, beating out new music by jxdn (Tell Me About Tomorrow), Doja Cat (Planet Her – Deluxe), Imagine Dragons (“Wrecked”), and others.

This isn’t the first time the trio has teamed up. Dessner co-wrote and co-produced the bulk of Swift’s blockbuster 2020 albums Folklore and Evermore, and Vernon was featured on and co-wrote Folklore’s “Exile” and Evermore’s title track.

This time around, Swift joins Big Red Machine for one of three songs recently released from the band’s second full-length album, How Long Do You Think It’s Gonna Last? The set is scheduled for release on Aug. 27 through Jagjaguwar/37d03d.

Placing second on the past week’s tally with nearly 10% of the vote was jxdn’s debut album, Tell Me About Tomorrow. Produced by Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker, the former TikTok phenom’s new set delivers the hooks, angst and gleefully sneering charisma of jxdn’s early hits. Elsewhere, songs like “One Minute” recal the sugary highs of mid-period Blink-182 and “Wanna Be” smartly brings Machine Gun Kelly to the mosh pit.

See the final results of this week’s new music release poll below.

Tropical Storm Elsa continued to churn through the Caribbean Saturday night, leaving at least three people dead as flooding and mudslides remained a threat into Sunday for Hispaniola, the island … Click to Continue »
Former Miami Beach building official Mariano Fernández won’t be going to jail for illegally accepting free hotel stays and gifts from a Spanish hotel company. In a plea deal struck … Click to Continue »
Firefighters ordered residents to evacuate a low-rise condominium complex in Miami Beach Saturday night after a building inspector flagged a flooring system failure in a vacant unit and damage to … Click to Continue »
Within days of the partial collapse of Champlain Towers South in Surfside, insurance companies sent letters to owners of condominiums 40 years and older in South Florida, asking for proof … Click to Continue »
Tyson Foods Inc. said it’s recalling about 8.5 million pounds of frozen, fully cooked chicken on precaution because of potential exposure to listeria bacteria. The recall is the largest for … Click to Continue »

Camila Cabello and Shawn Mendes appear to be spending their anniversary on a romantic getaway.

The couple, who celebrated two years together on Saturday (July 3), shared sweet messages and snapshots from the Carribean on Instagram.

“Happy 2 years my baby,” Mendes wrote to girlfriend Cabello, along with a heart emoji.

“happy anniversary Kuko,” Cabello said on her own post dedicated to her boyfriend. “here’s to more joy, more friendship, and more love.”

Cabello and Mendes, longtime friends who began dating in 2019, posted photos of themselves kissing, sharing a meal and being silly at the beach over the weekend.

They’ve opened up about their relationship in the past. In November, Cabello penned a message “about love with this guy” that read, “It’s not just the happy blissful moments you see in pictures and videos- When you’re in a relationship with someone, it feels like they are this mirror reflecting yourself back to you- I constantly have to confront my fears, my anxieties, my insecurities, my patterns of thinking, my beliefs about life and about myself.”

“It’s not as simple as it looks in pictures sometimes,” she continued at the time. “Sometimes, it’s messy and uncomfortable and ugly lol. But there’s nothing like the pull, the FORCE that is love, to be the light in the darkness- to be the gravitational pull that gives you the relentless strength to be braver,wiser, and better than you were yesterday.”

See the couple smooching in an anniversary selfie from Mendes’ account below, and swipe through more vacation pictures on Cabello’s Instagram.

Lana Del Rey’s new album Blue Banisters, which she originally said would be available on July 4, now has a release date that is “TBD.”

“Album out later later,” she wrote in a Saturday night (July 3) update to fans on social media, where she shared the Blue Banisters album art and a music video teaser for a new, as-yet-untitled single in the meantime. Del Rey says the song, in which she can be heard singing “My body is a map of L.A.,” will be “out soonish.”

“Have a good fourth,” she added. After she posted the update, “Lana” was trending on Twitter.

Billboard has reached out to representatives for Del Rey for clarification about the release date for her new music.

She previously shared three tracks, in May: “Blue Banisters,” “Wildflower Wildfire” and “Text Book.”

Listen to Del Rey’s latest song preview and take a look at her Blue Banisters album art below.