Fat Joe’s commitment to healthcare price transparency is unwavering. With 32 days until the presidential election, the Bronx native is launching a PSA calling on elected officials to stop the price gouging and “robbing all of us.”

The 54-year-old is looking to bring the power back to the people and is putting pressure on those in office. Teaming up with unions, workers and employers, Fat Joe’s healthcare price transparency PSA went live on Thursday (Oct. 3).

“To every elected official and politician in America, the people stand united,
desperate for you to listen,” he says in the spot. “If you’re not advocating for prices and transparency in healthcare, you’re compromising every single American across this country.”

Joe continues: “Because when we can’t see prices, hospitals, insurers, and their middlemen charge us whatever they want. Our very own healthcare system is robbing all of us. We just need the prices. That’s how our economy works!”

With more than 100 million Americans mired in medical debt, the “Lean Back” rapper hopes to see political leaders take a more honest approach when it comes to crafting a more affordable health care system.

“If you want to do right by workers, employers, and unions, then you’ve gotta to do right by the people they represent and the families who depend upon them,” Joe, 54, (born Joseph Cartagena) demands. “And we gotta hear it. Prices now! Power to the Patients.”

Fat Joe’s latest PSA is part of an ongoing advocacy campaign with Power to the Patients looking to garner even more momentum toward significant legislative change for Americans. Before leaving office in 2021, President Donald Trump’s executive order went into effect requiring hospitals to make prices of health services publicly available.

President Joe Biden followed-up with an executive order of his own in 2023 demanding that the Department of Health and Human Services enforce it. However, a nonprofit called Patient Rights Advocate discovered that most American hospitals are refusing to comply with the rules outlined.

Watch the clip below.

Four women have been there for Beyoncé, Billie Eilish, Selena Gomez and Travis Kelce on their respective rises to superstardom over the years, and they aren’t their agents, managers or publicists. They’re their moms.

Tina Knowles, Maggie Baird, Mandy Teefey and Donna Kelce got a rare moment in the spotlight on Thursday (Oct. 3) with the publication of Glamour‘s new Women of the Year cover story, which features all four of the women posing together. In a group discussion, the quartet opened up about the best and worst parts of parenting kids who become globally famous, from watching their children perform in front of thousands of people to feeling limited on when and where they can go without being bombarded by fans and paparazzi.

At one point, Knowles and Teefey — moms to Bey and the Wizards of Waverly Place alum, respectively — bonded over making sure their daughters didn’t turn into divas despite finding fame as teenagers.

“We had some moments where I was like, ‘Listen, they can pick up their own suitcases,’” Knowles recalled of the “Break My Soul” singer. “’You look people in the eye, say hello, don’t turn into a diva. That’s not going to work here.’ You have to teach your kids that … because everybody’s trying to handle everything for them and kissing their butts sometimes. And I am like, ‘No, no, no, you’re not helpless.’”

Teefey had a similar story about Gomez. “She was getting out of the trailer, and there was an umbrella, and they were holding it for her, and then they were bringing her food and all this stuff,” the producer told the other three moms. “I was like, ‘She can hold her own umbrella.’ She needs to learn how to pump her own gas in her car. She needs to be a person first.”

Baird — mom to the “Bad Guy” musician as well as producer Finneas — and NFL matriarch Kelce also found common ground when talking about their family’s home lives pre-fame. “My husband and I are working class actors,” Support + Feed founder Baird said. “We eked out a meager living, and it afforded us a lot of time with our kids, which was awesome. But the industry is primarily people like us or even people not even like us who couldn’t even do that. So when all of this happened to our kids, we’d never been on that side of it.”

“It was like, ‘Oh, Billie is a nepo baby,’” Baird added of the internet’s past response to finding out she was an actress. “And I’m like, ‘Did you know that I got that episode of Friends because I was about to lose my health insurance?’”

“I was a commercial banker for a bank in several different states,” said Kelce, who shares both Travis and retired Philadelphia Eagles center Jason Kelce with ex-husband Ed Kelce. “I was a major breadwinner in the family… My husband and I knew that our marriage was not working, but we stayed together for the kids. Ours was a very friendly relationship. So, we could do that and make sure that their life was normal as possible.”

The interview comes as the Kansas City Chiefs tight end is at peak levels of fame, thanks in large part to his romance with Taylor Swift. The same could be said for Bey, Gomez and Eilish as well, with the Destiny’s Child star garnering Grammy buzz for her latest Billboard 200-topping album Cowboy Carter, the Rare Beauty founder recently crossing into billionaire status and the “Happier Than Ever” artist embarking on a global arena tour over the weekend.

After the Glamour cover story came out, Gomez shared it on her Instagram Story and wrote, “Congratulations mommy.”

See Knowles, Baird, Teefey and Donna Kelce on the cover of Glamour below.

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On Thursday (Oct. 3), one day before first-round voting opens for the 67th annual Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy released its 2024 Membership Report. The most eye-popping statistic: 66% of the current Grammys electorate has joined since the Recording Academy introduced its new membership model in June 2019. Under that model, the academy invites large new member classes to join, with an eye on boosting the numbers of women, people of color and people under 40 in the academy.

Thus, the voting membership that delivered album, record and song of the year to Adele in 2017 and those same three awards to Bruno Mars in 2018 is much different today. We started to see a shift in voting patterns in February 2019, even before the new membership model was introduced, when Childish Gambino’s “This Is America” became the first hip-hop hit to win record or song of the year. (It won both.) That same year, Kacey Musgraves’ Golden Hour won album of the year.

Since 2019, approximately 8,700 creators have become voting members of the Recording Academy. Of that total, more than 2,000 joined just this year. There are now more than 13,000 total voting members, according to the Academy.

Other key takeaways from the report include:

Boosting Numbers of Women

In 2019, the Recording Academy set an ambitious goal to add 2,500 women voting members by 2025. With a year to go, the Academy has already surpassed this goal, adding more than 3,000 women voting members.  Since 2019, the percentage of women voting members has grown by 27%.

Increasing Racial Diversity

The Academy reports that the percentage of people of color has grown by 65% since 2019 among voting members. Since 2019:

The current voting membership, counting the new voting members added this year, is 49% white or Caucasian; 38% people of color; and 13% prefer not to disclose or unknown. That “people of color” slice breaks down like this: 19% Black or African American+; 10% Hispanic or Latin+; 4% Asian or Pacific Islander; 2% prefer to self-describe; and other smaller slices.

The current voting membership is 66% men; 28% women; 6% prefer not to disclose/unknown; and other, smaller slices.

Too Much Jazz. Not Enough Country

By genre, the current voting membership is 27% pop; 19% jazz; 17% R&B; 17% rock; 13% American roots; 13% alternative; 12% classical; 10% global music; 10% Latin music; 10% other; 10% rap; 9% dance/electronic; 9% country; 8% gospel/Christian; 8% visual media; 7% contemporary instrumental; 5% new age; 4% children’s; 4% musical theatre; 3% reggae; 3% spoken word; and 1% comedy. (Members could select more than one genre.)

Jazz and classical are overrepresented, relative to their share of the music market. Country lags behind its share of the music market.

By area of specialization, the current voting membership is 46% songwriters/composers; 33% producers; 33% instrumentalists; 32% vocalists; 19% engineers; 12% arrangers; 6% other; 4% music video; 3% album packaging; 3% album notes writers; 2% music supervisors; 2% conductors; 2% spoken word.

In a letter accompanying the release of the report, Harvey Mason Jr., CEO of the Recording Academy, said in part: “The Recording Academy membership has never been more reflective of the music community than it is today. It has more women, more People of Color, and a broad representation of diverse genres and crafts. But we’re not just celebrating numbers. Our organization has been fundamentally transformed by this extraordinary infusion of new talent, making us an unquestionably better, stronger, more successful, and more impactful organization.

“And we’re not done yet. Even though we’ve made huge strides towards creating a diverse and representative membership body, there is still much work to be done. We want to recruit more young voters, because the future of music is in their hands. We want to see an increase in the percentage of women and people of color, because our goal must always be to accurately represent our community.

“And as we globalize our mission, we want a membership body that reflects every corner of the music world.”

Mason added some specifics in an interview with Billboard this week. “It’s been a very intentional effort to try and make sure that our membership is the most relevant, the most diverse. …We’re not just trying to build numbers. We’re looking at, what is the music community made up of? … A big goal for us is to make sure that we’re matching or coming close to the community that makes music. That’s not the same as the general population of our country. We know that R&B/hip-hop is roughly 33%-34% of all music created and consumed. We know what the numbers are for Latin music, women, and other groups. We have a rough idea of what the numbers feel like.”

On July 26, Mason sent a pointed letter, via email, to the Academy’s voting members, “It’s about the current year and the quality of the work, period!,” he implored. “There should be no other rationale for voting. If you are taking into account an artist’s older work, or their reputation, or race, or gender, what label they are on, who their manager is, how many friends participated in the project, or anything else like that, you’re not doing your job.”

Talking to Billboard, Mason expressed a little more sympathy for members who may be inclined to take other factors into account, though he again said he hoped the focus would be on the music. “Voters have their own ideas around how they vote and what they chose to vote for and we want to give them some latitude to be able to do that but it’s my hope and I believe it’s the Academy’s desire that our voters will evaluate the music based on the merit of that music exclusively. It’s not about past sins [of the academy]. It’s not about genre representation. It’s really about the quality of the music. My hope is that people listen to the music and evaluate it based on the merits.”

At another point in the conversation, he said “The whole idea of this membership [drive] is not just to hit numbers, it’s to try to get the right results and the right outcome.”

Asked to be more specific about that statement, Mason said, “I’m not saying the positive result is any specific album or genre winning any specific award. I’m just looking for accuracy and relevance and making sure the outcomes are reflective of what’s happening in music. I don’t care what genre that is. I’m definitely not looking at making reparations [for past Grammy outcomes]. I’m just saying the outcomes for our academy … are all driven by our membership and if we have the right membership, we’re a better organization.”

First-round voting for the Grammy Awards opens on Friday Oct. 4 at 9 a.m. PT, and closes on Oct. 15 at 6 p.m. PT. Grammy nominees will be announced on Nov. 8. Final-round voting will be held from Dec. 12 to Jan. 3. All voting members, including those welcomed in the 2024 new class, are eligible to participate in the voting process. The 67th annual Grammy Awards will be held on Feb. 2 at Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles. The host has yet to be named. Trevor Noah hosted the last four Grammy telecasts.

The 66th annual Grammy Awards were held on Sunday, Feb. 4.  Ben Winston, Raj Kapoor and Jesse Collins were executive producers. Hamish Hamilton directed. The show received a Primetime Emmy nomination for outstanding variety program (live), but lost to The Oscars (which was also executive produced by Kapoor). The Recording Academy has yet to announce the host, producer or director of the 2025 show.

Mexican music merges with rap in Fuerza Regida‘s groundbreaking new project. The entrepreneurs of the San Bernardino band announced their inaugural Don’t Fall In Love Fest on Thursday (Oct. 3), a nod to their latest Jersey corridos album Pero No Te Enamores — an album that blends Jersey club and hip-hop with a corridos bélicos mindset.

A homecoming of sorts, the Nov. 2 event at the NOS Event Center will be Fuerza Regida’s first performance in their hometown of San Bernardino since 2018.

The festival that the group will headline showcase a dynamic array of stars from both the OG Cali rap scene, hip-hop new heads and Latin music superstars. The lineup includes high-profile names such as Lil Baby, Kodak Black, and Luis R Conriquez, alongside Chino Pacas, Sexy Red, Xavi, and Clave Especial. Also gracing the stage will be Los Rieleros del Norte, Mi Banda El Mexicano, Bone Thugs N Harmony, Too $hort, Roberto Tapia, Larry Hernandez, MC Magic, Baby Bash, and Lil Rob.

Additionally, another major headliner will be revealed on Monday (Oct. 7).

“I wanted to do something big for San Bernardino,” said Fuerza Regida frontman JOP (real name Jesús Ortiz Paz) in a press release. “I’m bringing hope to the city with this festival.”

The SoCal band have earned plenty of critical praise. The group are finalists for eight 2024 Billboard Latin Music Awards, including Artist of the Year, Top Latin Album of the Year and Regional Mexican Album of the Year for their 2023 Pa Las Baby’s Y La Belikeada, and more. Additionally, JOP is up for Songwriter of the Year and Producer of the Year. Last year, the quintet made Billboard history by becoming the first Latin band ever to be crowned No. 1 on the Top Artists – Duo/Group list of Billboard‘s year-end charts.

See the full lineup below:

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JOP will star on the The Sony Music Publishing Icon panel, presented by Sony Music Publishing during the 2024 Billboard Latin Music Week, taking place on October 14-18 at the Fillmore Miami Beach. Get your tickets here.