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RAYE has been named brand ambassador for Dyson’s OnTrac headphones, the tech company known for air purifiers, fans, headphones, vacuums and hair tools, revealed earlier this month.

“Musicians work tirelessly to create a very specific vision. From the frequency level, volume, timbre and texture, every single detail of a musical composition matters, to get to a place where you’re happy to hand it out to the world,” the British singer said in a statement. “When I listen to music, I want to hear it in the most beautiful way. As an artist, I want people to listen to exactly what I signed off on, and to experience my music as I envisioned it to be heard when I recorded it in the studio. I absolutely love music. Put simply, I love good quality sound, and the Dyson OnTrac headphones offer that.”

In honor of the new partnership, Dyson shared photos of RAYE sporting OnTrac headphones and a dreamy, video campaign starring the 26-year-old singer. “See how RAYE creates a melody by blocking out noise with Dyson OnTrac headphones,” reads a caption on the Dyson Instagram account posted last Sunday (Oct. 13).

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Aside from offering up to 55 hours of playtime, crystal-clear sound and seamless integration between iPhone and other devices, Dyson OnTrac features customizable ear cuffs, 40mm speaker drivers and Active Noise Cancellation.

RAYE joins fellow recording artists, Jisso from BLACKPINK, in becoming a Dyson ambassador.

Dyson introduced its $500 OnTrac headphones in July. The headphones are available at Dyson.com and major retailers such as Amazon and Best Buy.

“We are delighted to continue to work with RAYE, welcoming her as our global ambassador. Her inspired approach to creating music and creativity aligns perfectly with Dyson’s drive for innovation and pushing boundaries. The Dyson OnTrac headphones embody our commitment to delivering industry-leading audio technology that empowers artists like RAYE to flourish,” said Dyson’s chief engineer, Jake Dyson.

Earlier in the month, Billboard caught up with the “Oscar Winning Tears” singer at the American Music Awards 50th anniversary special where she chatted about her performance and opening for Taylor Swift on the Eras Tour in the U.K. “It was so intimidating and an honor as well. [Taylor] is also just the nicest, sweetest human being,” said RAYE. “I don’t understand how that beautiful woman gets on stage for three hours, slays the thing down and still takes the time to say hello. We had a lovely chat, she’s a really normal, lovely person. I fell in love with her even more during that whole experience.”

Shaq has some advice for Lil Wayne.

During a recent episode of The Big Podcast with Shaq, the Big Fella asked his fellow LSU Tiger alum Leonard Fournette a hypothetical question suggesting that Wayne should consider attempting to upstage Kendrick Lamar and the NFL with a concert of his own during this upcoming Super Bowl Halftime Show.

“I have a hypothetical question, because you know I’m a businessman … let’s just say the Super Bowl halftime show was from 12 to 1 — should Lil Wayne do a concert in New Orleans at the same time and televise it?” he asked. “Definitely,” Fournette answered, adding, “he would sell out.”

Shaq then answered his own question, saying, “I would do that” and agreed when his co-host Adam Lefkoe brought up the time Fox’s In Living Color upstaged CBS and the NFL in 1992, saying, “Stream it and then give people a choice.”

During the 1992 Super Bowl XXVI “Winter Magic” Halftime Show, the legendary sketch comedy show aired a special live episode, drawing 20 million viewers away from the the Super Bowl, and led to a new era in Super Bowl Halftime Shows. Michael Jackson performed the next year and the rest is history.

Lil Wayne has been at the center of a conversation around Kendrick Lamar being tapped to headline the Super Bowl LIX Halftime Show in New Orleans instead of him. The rap legend admitted to being heartbroken about not getting the opportunity to headline the show in his hometown. “I blame myself for not being mentally prepared for a letdown, and for automatically mentally putting myself in that position,” he said in a video response at the time. “I thought that was nothing better than that spot and that stage and that platform in my city, so it hurt. It hurt a whole lot.”

Watch the new episode of Shaq’s podcast below:

Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” hits No. 1 on Billboard’s Adult Pop Airplay chart dated Oct. 26.

The song becomes Eilish’s second leader at the radio format, after “What Was I Made For?” reigned for two weeks this March.

Meanwhile, “Birds of a Feather,” released on Darkroom/Interscope/ICLG, perches atop the Pop Airplay chart for a fifth week. It becomes Eilish’s first song to crown both pop surveys.

(The Adult Pop Airplay chart ranks songs by weekly plays on 80 adult top 40 stations and Pop Airplay ranks songs by plays on over 150 mainstream top 40 radio stations. All stations are monitored by Mediabase, with data for airplay charts provided to Billboard by Luminate.)

The singer-songwriter boasts three Pop Airplay No. 1s, as “Therefore I Am” led for two weeks in April 2021 and “Bad Guy,” for two weeks in August 2019.

Plus, Eilish has notched four No. 1s on Alternative Airplay — the most among soloists in the chart’s 36-year history.

In ruling Pop Airplay and Adult Pop Airplay, “Birds of a Feather” joins two other of Eilish’s hits that have led multiple radio rankings — “Bad Guy” and “Therefore I Am” each topped both Pop Airplay and Alternative Airplay.

“Birds of a Feather” is from Eilish’s latest album, Hit Me Hard and Soft, released May 17. The song has additionally ascended to No. 2 on the all-genre, multimetric Billboard Hot 100. It has drawn 637 million in radio audience and 479 million official on-demand U.S. streams and sold 74,000 downloads (through Oct. 10).

The track also crowned the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts for three weeks each in August.

All charts dated Oct. 26 will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, Oct. 22.

From Beyoncé’s Billboard 200-topping Cowboy Carter LP to Shaboozey’s Billboard Hot 100-topping “A Bar Song (Tipsy),” 2024 has been a watershed year for Black artists in the country music space – and BRELAND is looking to close out the year with a bold new agenda of his own. 

Titled Project 2024, the six-song EP is rooted in the country star’s experience visiting Selma, Alabama, the historically significant city from which his mother’s side of the family hails. The duality of Selma’s impact on the Civil Rights Movement and its current state inspired BRELAND to put together a project that speaks to the unshakeable freedom of creativity. He infuses the set’s country foundation with notes of gospel and disco, while also finding time to collaborate with other Black country acts like the Grammy-nominated husband and wife duo The War and Treaty, who appear on the EP’s moving closer, “Same Work.” 

“The music is not political and obviously it’s an eye-catching title,” BRELAND tells Billboard of the new EP, out today (Oct. 18) — whose title nods to The Heritage Foundation’s controversial Project 2025 political initiative. “But I think what I’ve really done in the songs here is create a body of work that is as inclusive as possible.” 

Already a Billboard chart-topping artist – he hit No. 1 on Country Airplay with Dierks Bentley’s “Beers on Me,” which also featured HARDY – BRELAND also boasts hits of his own like 2019’s “My Truck” and 2022’s Thomas Rhett-assisted “Praise the Lord,” which hit Nos. 24 and 21 on Hot Country Songs, respectively. He also sports a unique perspective as a Black country artist who broke through before 2024 flipped the genre on its head. It’s that perspective that grounds his sonic amalgamation of American history, his family’s lineage and his vision for country music’s boundless future.

Project 2024 serves as BRELAND’s first studio project since 2020’s Rage and Sorrow EP, which was written and recorded in response to the fallout of the murder of George Floyd. Last year, he won the inaugural Lift Every Voice Award from the Academy of Country Music (ACMs) for his role in elevating underrepresented voices in country music. 

In a candid conversation with Billboard, BRELAND gets real about navigating country music as a Black artist, the making of Project 2024, his upcoming project with NBA star Jimmy Butler and not being featured on Cowboy Carter.

Project 2024 is obviously a very loaded title. Walk me through the thought process that brought you to that title. 

Yeah, definitely a loaded title in some ways — but literally, this is a project that I am putting out in 2024. You don’t really have to look any further than that. This is a project that was largely inspired by a trip that I took down to Selma, Alabama, which is the land of my ancestors. I had never been, and seeing that rich history of what it means to be Black in America — seeing a lot of the issues that they were fighting for in the ‘60s back on the docket — I feel that this is a project that is really born out of creative freedom, in a world where we can’t always take certain freedoms for granted.  

I wanted to put this out, not as a political agenda, but as a creative one — to say, “I’m going to continue to push the boundaries of what country music can mean.” 

The EP ends with a really touching collaboration between you and The War and Treaty. Why were they the right choice to be the only feature on the project? 

Since I’m only doing six songs, and I haven’t really put much music out this year at all, I wanted to make sure that I could actually tell some stories on my own. But this is one that felt like it really deserved an additional vocal and an additional storyteller. “Same Work” is based on a true story. 

After one of my shows [at CMA Fest], an older gentleman, who was a veteran, came over and told me how much he appreciated what I do and told me a little bit about himself. He served for a number of years and has since been working as a freelance nurse, and he’s been giving free healthcare to veterans [who] need it in the Memphis area. And he was like, “Well, you and me do the same work.” 

I [got] what he was trying to say, but let’s be clear: First responders are [very different] from musicians. He was like, “No, we do the same work. At the heart of my work is helping and serving people and to my knowledge, that’s what you do as well. If you keep that at your center, then we will always do the same work.” I just thought it was such a beautiful interaction and a reminder of why what I do is so special and why I’m so grateful to be able to do it — because I get to have interactions like that. [I can] impact people on that level, but then have people impact and influence me on that level [too.] 

So, I ended up writing the song with Tenille Townes. We were doing this holiday train tour. I told her about the interaction, and we ended up writing the song right then and there. When I was gearing up for this project, it felt like one that fit the overall tone and would be a nice closer. I really didn’t want people to think that I was equating being a musician to serving in the military or being a healthcare professional. I wanted to make sure that I could have someone singing with me on this song that understood the message from a different perspective. Michael [Trotter Jr.] being a vet himself definitely understood it and I felt like him being able to help tell this story with me would alleviate some of those concerns that I was having. 

You move through genres so freely and that’s always been a big part of your artistic ethos. What inspired the poppy, almost post-disco bent of “What You’ve Been Through”? 

I come from a very matriarchal family, and it’s my mom’s side of the family that hails from Selma. [All the women in my family] have overcome a lot. I wanted to have a song that speaks to that resilience, but I didn’t want it to be this sad, melancholy type of record. I wanted to do it in the form of a celebration because I feel like these women need to be celebrated. 

You might see a woman on the street and think, “Oh, wow, she’s got it all together.” But you don’t know exactly what it is that she’s been through. I have a lot of women in my life for whom that is true. We’re putting this project out in October, which is breast cancer awareness month and domestic violence awareness month. I have women in my family [who] have been affected by both. I felt it would be a fun approach to a concept that could be done in a very different way. 

You say Project 2024 isn’t political. What do you say to people who might argue that invoking the concept of Project 2025 must come along with some kind of substantive commentary on it, given the gravity of the situation and how close we are to the election? 

We are in very challenging times. We’re seeing a lot of families and friendships being broken along political and ideological boundaries. While my music has never been political, my existence in this space as an outspoken young Black country artist is. If you listen to this music and listen to the heart of the music, I care about people. I care about people being able to have rights, freedom of expression, freedom to love and freedom to live — and that’s something that I stand on. I want to remind people that there are certain freedoms that people can never take from us. To me, that’s where the music comes in.  

Hopefully, [this project inspires] people to do their own research about some of the different issues that I touched on in this project — and some of the issues that I don’t touch on in this project, but may exist in the larger political landscape that we live in. When they think about things like Project 2025, I want people to be able to come to informed conclusions about their own opinions.  

How important is it to you that you speak truth to power in your music as a Black artist in country music? 

I don’t think that my race is at the forefront of the music that I’m making, but I do also recognize the ways in which representation in this space is ever important and why me being a Black artist in this space comes with an additional level of responsibility. I always want to make sure that I rise to the occasion. 

These are songs that I hope Black people like, I hope white people like — I hope every culture and every community of people can relate to it because all of these songs are really about universal human experiences. That, to me, is more of the focus here. I think that representation in this space matters and trying to navigate how much I want to engage with that or even talk about that… these are things that a lot of my white peers don’t really ever have to consider. I also feel like I have to be additionally prepared to respond to certain types of questions or be able to guide conversations in a certain way. I think that I’m uniquely equipped and capable [of having] those conversations as they arise, and I’ve never really shied away from that in my art. 

It can be a challenge at times to have to bear that burden, but at the same time, I also feel like it’s a blessing for me to be able to do that, and pressure is a privilege. I’m definitely grateful to be in a position where I can have conversations along the lines of racial discourse and contribute with my art in a meaningful way. 

You mentioned earlier that your existence in country music has always been political. Was there a moment or a series of moments that truly crystallized that for you as an artist in this space? 

I [remember I had] just put out my first ever EP, which was the Breland EP, and then literally a week and a half [later], you’ve got the George Floyd murder and subsequent protests. In country music, in particular, there was a lot of finger-pointing of, like, “Well, you didn’t post a black square and this person did.”  

There was a lot of having to remind people that freedom and equality are not political. These are human rights and basic human liberties that we should have as human beings in general, and as citizens of America — which is a country that, in theory, should be able to help, support, maintain and establish that for its citizens. I don’t think that recognizing that racism still exists in America and trying to figure out ways to combat that is a political conversation. It has been politicized. 

As a completely new artist, I ended up putting out Rage and Sorrow, a short little EP that talks about the rage of that situation — but also the deep and very real sorrow that I think a lot of people were experiencing, myself included. 

I’ve also had situations like when I sang the National Anthem at the Daytona 500. When it was announced, it was met with a lot of criticism, and hate online from people who were like, “Here we go, they’re trying to make a political statement.” I’m like, “Hey, just so you know, I’m not kneeling when I do the anthem. I’m not putting up a Black Power fist. I’m not singing the third stanza of the National Anthem. I’m not making a political statement here. I’m singing the National Anthem just as adequately, and if not more competently, than some of your favorite white artists.” So, I sang it, did a great job and those same people were like, “Wow, that was actually very good.” And I’m like, “Why did we have to go through this in the first place?” 

I have [also] had some really amazing triumphs as a Black artist in this space, but I’ve also faced some pushback and resistance from specific people who maybe aren’t on the same page as me as far as those things are concerned. I recognize that simply being here, putting out music and being successful in this space helps change the conversation. 

2024 has obviously been a banner historic year for Black country artists, both in terms of commercial success and the critical and cultural conversation around it. What’s your biggest takeaway from this year, especially as a Black artist who was able to have a breakthrough before this particular moment? 

It feels like a long time coming. I think back on some of the artists that never really got their moment. I mean, obviously you have the Charley Prides of the world who experienced tremendous commercial success. But you also have artists like Linda Martell, who experienced some success, but probably would have experienced significantly more had certain doors not been closed to her. I think about artists like Rissi Palmer or Frankie Staton, or even Mickey Guyton, who were a bit ahead of their time, and really shouldn’t have been ahead of their time — because they’re talented artists who have stories to tell that are just as valid and creative and valuable as everyone else’s. 

For me, being in this space and having been able to have some success, all of that is great. But until we are no longer having this conversation, none of it is going to be enough, so we continue to fight forward. I definitely think that this has been a landmark year, and I love seeing more and more Black people engaging with country music — not just as consumers but as creators, and seeing people [who] are coming over and wanting to engage with this because this is a genre that wouldn’t exist without the contributions and influences of Black people from day one. It’s really cool to see Black people driving around town listening to country music, pulling up to honky tonks and coming to concerts. I can visibly see a shift just since I’ve come out five years ago.

What do you think the country music industry, and Nashville in particular, can do to keep this energy going beyond moments like Cowboy Carter and “A Bar Song (Tipsy)?” 

Country music is a genre that is really built on community in a way that other genres aren’t. I think it is going to require other artists in this space to continue to collaborate with Black artists and begin to bring Black artists out on the road as openers. Country radio stations also need to play more diverse artists, because if you’re not Kane Brown — or I guess now Shaboozey with this one song — Black artists don’t really get played on country radio at all. You can have these songs that make big splashes online, but [it doesn’t matter as much] if you don’t have the same push at country radio or the same push to get in front of people and play these shows and festivals. You need all of those things for this to be sustainable. 

So, I’m hoping that “A Bar Song” and the Beyoncé album and the cultural conversation that we are now having changes things.  

Were you asked to be a part of Cowboy Carter? 

I was not asked to be a part of Cowboy Carter. It would have been great to be a part of that. There was a moment when the track listing first came out and I was getting tagged in a lot of things with people being like, “Why wasn’t BRELAND a part of this project?” And I definitely asked myself some of those questions as well. It’s challenging sometimes to feel like, “Okay, I have relationships with all of these artists, right? I’ve written with Shaboozey [and] Willie Jones, I’ve got music out with Tiera Kennedy and Brittney Spencer, and I’ve brought Tanner Adell and Reyna Roberts out to sing with me. Not being a part of it was kind of hard for me to wrap my head around. 

At the same time, I also had to remember that, maybe with the exception of Brittney Spencer, all of these artists were independent or signed to independent labels. None of them had been played in any capacity at country radio. So, looking at what Beyoncé was trying to do — I think she was really trying to amplify the voices of people [who] maybe had not been as ingratiated or welcomed into the country music landscape the way that I had been. In a lot of ways, I think those artists really deserved that platform even more than I did. I was really happy for them all, and excited for their success. I listened to all of those records that all of them are featured on in particular, because I want to see them all win, and it’s bigger than just me. 

You were part of another major country music moment this year with “Boots Don’t” from Twisters: The Album, which marks your second collab with Shania Twain. What was your experience landing a song on such a blockbuster soundtrack? 

It was great! Shania was one of my favorite artists coming up. She’s one of the people [who] turned me on to country music with some of her hits from the 90s and early 2000s. When I got a chance to finally tour with her and to be a part of the deluxe [version] of her Queen of Me album, I thought that was already fantastic. But we did have this song in the tuck, and we were looking for an opportunity to put it out and the Twisters soundtrack came along, and it ended up being a good fit. Hopefully, we can get some sort of Grammy acknowledgment on that one. 

Shania opened up a lot of doors for me when she really didn’t have to. For her, being a Canadian woman breaking into country music at the time that she came in is very similar to my experience as a New Jersey Black dude coming in back in 2019. She understands what it is that I’m trying to do. I appreciate her friendship and her mentorship, and anytime we get an opportunity to sing together or perform together, it’s one that I definitely take with a great deal of gratitude. 

What’s up next for you? 

I definitely want to get back out on the road, but that’s probably more of a top of [next] year. I’ve got a couple of potential collabs that are coming, so I will have some more music in the next few months between this project and whatever I end up doing next as a solo artist. I’m working on a project with Jimmy Butler right now, which will be a compilation album featuring a bunch of artists both inside and outside of country music. I think it’ll be a really great cultural moment, and we’ve been working on [that] most of this year.  

I’m just now starting to properly work on the sophomore full-length album. I think that Project 2024 is a really great way to get back into the marketplace and give people some new music.