Actively Black, a Black-owned global sportswear brand, has partnered with the Shakur Estate to introduce a new collection: Tupac X Actively Black. Inspired by the late rapper’s enduring legacy as a music icon and poet, the first drop in the new line will be available for purchase on Christmas Day (Dec. 25), exclusively at activelyblack.com.

In a statement announcing Tupac X Actively Black, the Shakur Estate commented, “With this collaboration, Actively Black celebrates Tupac’s enduring impact on culture, creativity and artistry. Actively Black’s commitment to empowering the Black community perfectly aligns with Tupac’s mission to inspire and spark meaningful change. Inspired by [the poem] “The Rose That Grew from Concrete,” this collection honors Tupac’s voice and message, ensuring it resonates with a new generation.”

The first drop features a collection of unisex hoodies and T-shirts illustrated with custom co-branded artwork and imagery from Tupac’s archives. The standout piece in the new collection is a relaxed hoodie in washed grey with a graphic rendering of the poem in the late rapper’s own handwriting.

“I grew up listening to Tupac, and even before I fully understood the content of his music, there was something moving about his delivery that resonated with me and so many others still, to this day,” said Lanny Smith, founder of Actively Black. “In early interviews of Tupac, you can see his passion to breathe new life into the Black pride movement. His awareness about the truths of society and determination to improve the lives of his people was awe-inspiring.”

Tupac X Actively Black is the latest collaboration from Actively Black. The company recently introduced a new apparel collaboration with Disney in celebration of the latter’s Mufasa: The Lion King. Earlier this year, Actively Black partnered with the Nigerian Olympic delegation, serving as the official outfitter and apparel sponsor for team Nigeria at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. The company’s additional partnerships and collaborations include the estates of Muhammad Ali, Michael Jackson and Bob Marley as well as sports franchises the Sacramento Kings and Houston Rockets.

A former NBA player for the Sacramento Kings, Smith launched Actively Black in 2020. Of the upcoming debut of Tupac X Actively Black, Smith singled out a favorite Shakur quote in the announcement release. “One of his quotes has always stayed with me: ‘I may not change the world, but I guarantee I will spark the brain of someone who will.’ I am one of the minds Tupac sparked; and Actively Black is an extension of our shared mission to uplift and empower our people. Tupac X Actively Black is an ode to the genius of Tupac Shakur. He represented us: the Black community, boldly and unapologetically; his legacy embodies what it means to be ACTIVELY Black.”

The life and times of beloved Swedish DJ/producer Avicii are celebrated in the first official trailer for the upcoming Netflix doc chronicling his life, Avicii – I’m Tim. The nearly two-minute preview of the film due out globally on Dec. 31 opens with an image of Avicii (born Tim Bergling) posted up behind his decks in front of a massive festival crowd as towering pyro flames fill the frame and the audience shouts “AVICII! AVICII!”

Featuring voiceover narration recorded with the late global superstar before he died in 2018 at age 28 by suicide, the trailer flips through images of Avicii in his youth, landing on a snap of a teenage Tim strumming an acoustic guitar as he explains, “I’ve always loved music. I knew that whatever I wanted to do later in life, I wanted to do something creative.”

He describes working on his music at home, constantly sending his tracks out in the hope that someone would notice. “In such a small time, he completely killed it,” says fellow global DJ superstar David Guetta. The focus then shifts to a series of pics and video clips of Avicii in the studio with stars including Coldplay’s Chris Martin, Chic’s Nile Rodgers and others, as Martin recalls that it was Avicii’s signature 2011 hit “Levels” that introduced him to Bergling’s music.

“I had that feeling that I get when I really love something,” Martin says about the inescapably catchy, Grammy-nominated house tune that topped the charts in the DJ’s native Sweden and became his signature hit. The trailer also hits on one of the most audacious, and successful, chances Avicii took in his life when he got booed after debuting the genre-busting Aloe Blacc collab “Wake Me Up” at the Ultra Music Festival in 2013 with a live band — including a banjo and two guitars. The song would go on to be his biggest hit, and his only top 10 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, where it reached No. 4 in October 2013 on its way to more than three billion streams.

At the time, Avicii was “really broken about it,” according to the doc, with a voiceover noting that the constant jet-setting touring was “really taking a toll” on Bergling. “I was running after some idea of happiness that wasn’t my own,” Avicii says. “I didn’t like being a persona.”

Avicii struggled as the line between performer and persona got blurred, and in a poignant moment at the end of the sneak preview, the interviewer wonders what his answer would be if someone asked “What’s your story? Who are you?”

Haltingly, Bergling confirms, “I’m… Tim.”

The doc directed by Henrik Burman premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year also features interviews with Avicii’s parents, friends, colleagues and fellow artists. Along with the documentary, Netflix will stream Avicii’s final performance at Ushuaïa Ibiza in August of 2016, his final live set before he stopped touring at 26.

Watch the trailer below.

If you or anyone you know is in crisis and/or experiencing suicidal ideation, reach out to the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling 988 or visiting the website. Confidential support is available 24/7, 365 days a year.

For Alessia Cara, emotion and connection is at the heart of her creative endeavors — hence why each of her three studio albums live in a unique world full of signature concepts, colors and themes built around them. Her music isn’t just a listening experience, it’s a feeling.

Her upcoming Feb. 14-slated project, Love & Hyperbole, continues that process, as she splashes her music videos and promotional content with deep berry and maroon tones, amplifying the passion that love entails. “Love is very red to me,” Cara tells Billboard. “Every time you see love portrayed anywhere, it’s usually red, like Valentine’s Day colors. Even before I knew that the album was going to come out on Valentine’s Day, it just always felt a little bit deeper, a little bit richer. The textures and the songs felt a little richer and more sophisticated, so that wine color just always came into my mind, even before I knew what the concept was going to be. It feels warm and it feels like love.”

That’s why it was a perfect fit when she teamed up with Lenovo, Intel and Universal Music Group for Brands for their “Made By” campaign, which intersects music, creativity and technology — something Cara has been a pro at throughout her career. “Each song has such a story to it that’s so specific and getting the chance to showcase each song in a way that non-singles don’t really get to be showcased, it’s really awesome to be able to do that,” she says of the partnership.

The team-up will lend to a series of visually stunning pieces surrounding Love & Hyperbole, including an album trailer with custom graphic designs and key scenes, as well as an accompanying miniseries that documents the journey behind the development of the trailer, capturing how Lenovo and Intel supported and inspired Cara’s vision. They’ll also emphasizes the integral roles of Maris Jones and Gaia Esther Maria in shaping the project’s artistic direction. The Grammy winner adds with a laugh, “It’s a little bit indulgent for the artist in me. This was an incredible opportunity, and everyone has been so amazing creatively, and so collaborative while giving us the freedom to explore and play. We had a great time.”

Exploring seems to be a key theme in Cara’s career, as her music earnestly captures the complexities of growing into adulthood and how romantic relationships stir up all kinds of emotions. Her self-discovery both as a songwriter and human being is showcased in the Love & Hyperbole single, “Isn’t It Obvious,” a breezy hug of reassurance for a love interest who is scared to lose her. “Fears are only constellations/ Only glowin’ if we make them, we’re just fine/ If it’s any consolation, you’re my favorite/ It’s you and I, you gotta know that, right?” she sings on the track, bolstered by a guitar solo from one of Cara’s personal heroes, John Mayer (“I still can’t believe that happened,” she says.)

“Obviously, my perspective of love has transformed and changed and grown throughout my life,” She says of “Isn’t It Obvious,” in comparison to some of her previous fan-favorite tracks like “Comfortable” and “I’m Yours.” “Being a young woman, I think sometimes when you’re experiencing love for the first time and you’re a little bit more inexperienced — I can give a lot of myself and almost treat love as something that makes me feel smaller, rather than something that expands me, and thinking that that was the right way to do it. I always used to think if it was really intense, and if it took energy out of me, that it was the right thing.”

She continues, “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that love is supposed to feel like something that calms the storm rather than creates it. It should just kind of feel easy. That’s why I think a lot of these songs, even though some of them are laced with elements of fear or worry, they’re always very steadfast in themselves and there’s a sense of reassurance there. I did not have that when I was growing up and finding out what I wanted in early stages of love for me.”

Keeping in the album’s theme of love, Cara is eager to spread it to fans. As part of her partnership with Lenovo and Intel, she’ll be hosting an exclusive album event for fans in early 2025, which will feature a live performance as well as interactive projection mapping and other immersive elements.

She concludes of the message she hopes Love & Hyperbole gives to listeners, “I just hope that if they’re going through something or if they’re in a similar stage in their life, that they can understand that at the end of the day, we’re all a product of everything that has happened to us, good and bad. We actually need those bad things in order to find the good. We need to know what we don’t want in order to find what we do want. We need loss in order to really feel love. Those things can work in tandem with one another instead of clash. That’s the main thesis, but I hope they just take anything from it.”

Pre-save Love & Hyperbole here.

Mickey Hart was with Zakir Hussain right until “the moment that he left this plane” on Dec. 15 at the age of 73– as well he should have been.

The Grateful Dead percussionist and Indian tabla master were tight, as friends and as musicians. They met in 1970 when Hussain’s father, Allarakha Qureshi, sent Hussain to knock on Hart’s tour and begin an association that started with Hart’s first solo album, Rolling Thunder in 1972, and continued until Hussain’s death, when the two were still working on a project that includes tuned hand drums, drones and sonic bathing. In between were Grammy Award-winning works as Planet Drum and the Global Drum Project, as well the Diga Rhythm Band in 1976 and number of other collaborations on Hart albums such as 1990’s At the Edge and Mickey Hart’s Mystery Box in 1996.

Hussain’s legacy also includes four Grammy Awards (three of them earlier this year), founding membership in the fusion band Shakiti and recordings with Pharoah Sanders, Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer, John Handy, L. Shankar Charles Lloyd and more. Hussain also taught at Princeton University and Stanford University and received a Doctor of Law degree from the University of Mumbai.

Hart tells Billboard that “the shock is still with us” from Hussain’s passing, but he was happy to share the great memories he has of his friend and fellow rhythmist.

“You talk about someone who is a great rhythm master, you have to start with Zakir. He was an enormous influence on all genres, considering he crossed more borders, musically, than anybody I’ve ever met or known in history. There is no one that has traveled as far to do so much than Zakir, because he was constantly on the road, constantly spreading the rhythm seeds everywhere he went. Maybe every 1,000 years you get somebody like Zakir. He was the Mozart of his instrument, one of the greatest musicians who ever lived, a great tabla player and a great rhythmist. Zakir can play everything from spoons to his nose — he can play nose flute like a maniac, he does it all.

“He comes from a lineage of drummers, so it’s part of his DNA He’s born to drums, so he was nurtured as a baby, when his father recited rhythms in his ear as an infant. Allarakha was my mentor, my teacher. I met him when Phil Lesh gave me a record called Drums of North and South India; he handed it to me and said, ‘You should hear this. This is for you,’ or something like that. When I listened to it I was just riveted. I really heard it, and I was never the same after that. It contained Allarakha, and I couldn’t believe what he was playing. It influenced a lot of Grateful Dead music because of the unusual time signatures…those kind of very complicated rhythmic gems that we really practiced for long periods of time to learn. I found (Allarakha) in New York in 1967, and he became my teacher.

“Then in 1970 Zakir knocked on my door; his father sent him to me because his father comes from the analog world, quiet, and Zakir was a young man when I met him. We lived together for awhile, and we really bonded and he opened himself up to the feel and the rhythms of the West. He was very strict — as he should have been from north Indian classical music where you’re supposed to be very accurate and everything is composed and traditional, ancient rhymes that are codified and only played one way, by everybody. In the West it was loud music and a new kind of rhythm, kind of funkier than he had played in the past, and he accepted that. I play that serpentine kind of way, move in and out of the groove and it slips and slide and everybody goes with it; that makes for an amazing, living creature as opposed to a pre-ordained rhythm.

“So he opened himself up to the West and he flourished in it. He loved it. We played together like it was meant to be. For me to be playing these north Indian classical rhythms was very difficult at first; it took months, years to come up to a level where Zakir was. He kinda came down and I went up and we met in the middle, that kind of thing. But it was very resonant; we felt love in the groove, and the groove was deep. He and his father both played on Rolling Thunder, my first solo work, and we went on to do so many records together. He was a colleague and a rhythm master, and our deep friendship translated into rhythm — I would say bliss is a good word to describe how it feels when we play together.

“It’s hard to say who he influenced — anybody who ever heard him, let’s put it that way, was not the same. A lot of people can’t understand him, but they can feel him. They hear someone with great passion playing rhythms they’ve never heard before. He’s the Einstein of rhythm — that’s a good way of thinking of him as a rhythmist and what he could do and speak in the rhythm language. He’s way above any other percussionist or rhythmist I’ve worked with on this planet. Maybe there’s somebody better on Mars, but no on earth — and I’ve heard a lot of them.

“Jerry (Garcia) joined us for At the Edge (1990). Jerry and Zakir got along really well. Jerry noticed immediately who he was and Zakir, of course, just loved Jerry’s musical style. The banjo, of course, is like a rhythm instrument and Jerry plays the guitar like a banjo. A lot of the bluegrass instruments work perfectly within Indian rhythms because of the nature of it, three against two, all these intertwining rhythms that go on in banjo playing and also in tabla. And, of course, that explains (Hussein’s) Bela Fleck collaboration, because of course he’s a master banjoist, or banjolero.

“(Hussein)’s just a very kind man, and he plays like that, too. He’s really good as a composer as well, and arranger. He can do it all. He can play anything, but he’s a kind man — very thoughtful, unbelievably generous. He started to each in the 70s; he had thousands of students all over the world and he dedicated himself to teaching hem the traditional rhythms. He traveled everywhere, constantly; even when we were on tour, if we had three days off he would go to India to conduct the national symphony or accept the greatest honor and come back for sound check on Monday. He was able to travel long distances, and he had this system of meditation he would so he wouldn’t get jet lag, and that increased his proficiency. He was able to perform more and travel because of that. He just wouldn’t stop.

“We’re starting to unearth so much of what we never got (released), never hit the street, which is voluminous. You’ve got to remember we’ve been recording since 1970, so there’s a lot of Zakir Hussein, and you bet I’d like to work on a Zakir Hussein compilation and keep his music alive, and that’s what I’m about to do.”

In the meantime, Hart and Grateful Dead mates Bob Weir and Bill Kreutzmann will be featured on CBS’ broadcast of the Kennedy Center Honors, where they were feted on Dec. 8, on Dec. 22. “It was surprisingly a lot of fun, and profound in many ways,” Hart says of the ceremony, where the Dead men were celebrated alongside Francis Ford Coppola, Bonnie Raitt, Arturo Sandoval and The Apollo theater. “It was nice to be honored, but it was not essential. It’s hard to be honored for something that it’s a privilege to do, you know? You don’t do it for medals…but it was a great show for the arts, to be able to show how powerful (it is) and that music can cover so much ground in so many different ways.”

The group’s current incarnation, Dead & Company, will become the first act to launch a second residency at Sphere in Las Vegas, with an 18-show Dead Forever — Live At Sphere that starts March 20. The six-weekend run will celebrated Dead & Company’s 10th anniversary, and Hart promises “all new compositions and ‘Drums and Space,’” that will build on what the group did earlier this year. “

“If you’re in a place for a long enough period of time you start to learn the room; you play the room as if the room is your instrument,” Hart explains. “We’re just playing it loose and playing it from the heart, and we serve the music. That’s what musicians do. We’re just working musicians, and Sphere is such a great place to work.”