Rauw Alejandro arrived at the 2023 Latin Grammys on Thursday (Nov. 16) with his beloved mom as his date—and soon after strutting the red carpet with his suave appeal, he took center stage at the awards ceremony.

The Puerto Rican artist, who was nominated for best urban music album with Saturno, performed an energetic dance medley that kicked off with his own melancholic rendition of Laura Pausini’s (the 2023 Person of the Year) “Se Fue.” Wearing an all-white suit, Rauw’s watery eyes glistened as he remembered a past love. 

Shortly after, he picked up the mood by going backstage and teaming up with a group of dancers for a killer choreography as he sang his ‘80s retro-inspired “DIME QUIÉN ????” Now changed to an edgy, leather fit in red, Rauw went back on stage to perform the electro-pop “Baby Hello.” 

To everyone’s surprise, he was joined by Juanes, who in true Colombian rockstar fashion, performed an incredible guitar solo.  

The 2023 Latin Grammys, led by top nominee Edgar Barrera, featured performances from Andrea Bocelli, Alejandro Sanz, Bizarrap, Borja, Camilo, Carin León, Christian Nodal, David Guetta, DJ Premier, Édgar Barrera, Eslabón Armado, Feid, GALE, Iza, Joaquina, Juanes, Kany García, Laura Pausini, Leon Leiden, Maluma, Manuel Carrasco, Maria Becerra, Milo J, Natascha Falcão, Ozuna, Pablo Alborán, Paola Guanche, Peso Pluma, Rauw Alejandro, Rosalía, Sebastián Yatra, and Shakira.

For the first time airing internationally, the 24th annual award show took place on Thursday (Nov. 16) at the Conference and Exhibition Centre (FIBES) in Seville, Spain. It aired on Univision, UniMás and Galavisión. It was broadcasted on Radiotelevisión Española (RTVE) in Spain. Check back to Billboard.com throughout the night for the latest news on performances, special awards and more.

Amid the offerings at the LA3C festival that took place in downtown L.A. this past weekend (Nov. 11-12), a presentation from the Saudi Arabia Music Commission put forth a broad view of the music industry currently being developed in the country.

Hosted by VIBE editor-in-chief Datwon Thomas, panelists included Paul Pacifico, CEO of the Saudi Music Commission; Ahmad Alammary, chief creative officer for the Saudi electronic music festival Soundstorm; Gigi Arabia, the founder/CEO of Saudi heavy metal organization Heavy Arabia; Mexican-American songwriter, producer and academic Fernando Garibay, who has worked in the Kingdom; and Saudi singer-songwriter Tamtam.

Saudi Arabia has seen significant social changes in the last decade, as the government has eased restrictions around formerly prohibited activities like playing music in public and co-ed gatherings. These new freedoms have helped lay the groundwork for the formation of a music industry, with the bulk of the panel discussion focused on how this industry is currently being built from scratch.

“We have huge pent-up supply of creativity and music,” said Pacifico, a Brit who joined the Music Commission as CEO in January 2023. “We have huge pent-up demand among audiences that have grown up wanting to go to festivals, concerts, events, to listen to music and enjoy themselves.”

“But we lack enablers,” Pacifico continued. “So over the next one year, three years, five years, it’s going to be all about building the structures that connect those dots that allow people to express themselves creatively and to build platforms that will enable Saudi artists to tell their stories in a way that will be heard around the world.”

“A lot of people working in the [global music] industry ask how we can fix our industry, or how we can rethink our industry,” added Garibay, “but I don’t think we’ve ever had in the history over the past 100 years a chance to think about, ‘How would you start over? How would you start from a new perspective?’”

The discussion emphasized that while Saudi Arabia does not yet have venues, a collecting society and other essential infrastructure, this clean canvas is allowing key players to, Alammary said, “shape it the way we want to learn from the lessons around the world and actually serve artists.”

Pacifico cited the major opportunities for artists in Saudi Arabia with respect to the country’s demographics, saying that “70% of the people are under 35 years old, and the country has 98% Internet penetration. So you have a young, connected, dynamic and unbelievably energized population.”

The panelists agreed that this audience and the emerging industry combined are creating huge opportunities for Saudi artists, as formerly underground scenes are coalesced and, as Alammary said, “unveiled.” These formerly underground scenes include those around genres like electronic music, the focus of the Saudi mega-festival Soundstorm that launched in 2019, along with hip-hop, heavy metal and more.

“All of the events took place in super unconventional places,” Arabia said of the Saudi metal scene before music-related restrictions were lifted. “We have something in Saudi called rest houses, little houses in the middle of nowhere for people to rest in if they’re going on a road trip, where events took place.”

“We’re still growing it event by event,” Arabia added in regard to the country’s current aboveground metal scene. “With the help of the Music Commission and its leadership, now we have been able to go and represent it in the genre globally.” She foresees Saudi Arabia becoming a “hotspot for metal heads” in a fashion similar to the Nordic region.

The Music Commission exists under the Saudi Ministry of Culture, a government entity focused on expanding the country’s entertainment sector through endeavors into music, sports, film and more. These entities exist as part of Vision 2030, the Saudi government’s plan, it says, to diversify the country’s economy, society and culture. (The LA3C panel did not touch on the challenges of building an industry amid the still-existing restrictions of the Saudi government, which does not protect freedom of speech and which, despite some recent advancements, still imposes myriad restrictions on women.)

“There’s an incomplete picture. It’s like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing,” Pacifico said of the country’s current industry, “But we see record labels coming up, we see management companies growing. The most amazing thing is the whole music industry is going through an accelerated time of massive change, and Saudi Arabia as a country is going through a massively accelerated time of change. So nothing’s taken for granted… and we can just think again about how to do things better, quicker, more efficiently.”

The presentation also included performances from Tamtam, Saudi pop artist Mishaal Tamer — who released his debut EP in 2020 via RCA Records and opened for OneRepublic on tour this past summer — and Riyadh-based producer and songwriter NTITLED.

LA3C was built to highlight communities creating culture around the world. LA3C created a paid partnership with the Saudi Music Commission to highlight the cultural shift in the commercial entertainment sector and with regional artists that have a presence in the United States and Saudi Arabia. LA3C is owned by Penske Media Corporation which is also the parent company of Billboard. 

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Presale tickets for Drake and J. Cole’s joint tour went on sale on Wednesday (Nov. 15). The duo will be hitting the road for It’s All a Blur — Big as the What?, the second installment of Drake’s sold-out tour which launched earlier this year.

Produced by Live Nation and presented by Cash App, the tour kicks off at the top of next year with back-to-back concerts at Denver’s Ball Arena on Jan. 18, 2024.

The 24-date tour will stop in Oklahoma City, New Orleans, Nashville, St. Louis, Columbus, Memphis and other cities before wrapping up at Legacy Arena in Birmingham, Ala., on March 27, 2024.

Tickets will become available on Wednesday starting with a The Cash App Card presale. General onsale starts on Friday (Nov. 17) at 11am local time. Presale tickets are available at Ticketmaster.

If you miss the chance to get presale and general onsale tickets, don’t worry: You can still get tickets online without spending a small fortune. From what we’ve found, resell tickets are priced at around $130 and up for the cheapest seats. The more expensive seats are priced at more than $1,400 for select dates.

Resale tickets are priced at $131 and up via StubHub and $260 at Vivid Seats. You can also find resell passes online at SeatGeek for $123 (save $10 off purchase of $250+ with code: BILLBOARD10. Valid on first purchase only).

Drake’s posted about the tour on earlier this week. “Right back at it,” he captioned the post along with two goat emojis.

Drake and 21 Savage announced their 28-date, joint tour in March. The duo added another 12 dates to the schedule in April.

The It’s All A Blur tour opened in Chicago in July after being postponed for about a week. The jaunt made stop in Memphis, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, New York, Washington D.C., Columbus, Ohio, Las Vegas, Denver, Atlanta, Miami, Houston and Nashville before wrapping in the 37-year-old rapper’s hometown of Toronto on Oct. 7.

Marshmello scores his fourth No. 1 on Billboard’s Top Dance/Electronic Albums chart as his new album, Sugar Papi, debuts atop the Nov. 18-dated ranking. The set, released Nov. 3 via Joytime Collective/Sony Music Latin, is his first Latin project, and concurrently earns the DJ/producer a first entry on any Latin albums chart, with a No. 9 launch on Top Latin Albums and a No. 5 bow on Latin Rhythm Albums. It also debuts at No. 97 on the all-genre Billboard 200.

The 11-track set features such Latin stars as Anuel AA, Farruko, Fuerza Regida, Nicky Jam and Manuel Turizo. Ten of the 11 tunes are collaborations with artists who record in Spanish, while one track is a team-up with Brazilian artist Luisa Sonza, who records in Portuguese.

Sugar Papi debuts on all four lists with 11,000 equivalent units earned in the U.S. during the Nov. 3-9 tracking week, according to Luminate.

Most of Sugar Papi’s opening unit sum is driven by streaming activity, which equals to 15.4 million official streams of the set’s songs, while the remainder balance stems from album sales and track-equivalent album units. One unit equals to one album sale, 10 individual tracks sold from an album, or 3,750 ad-supported or 1,250 paid/subscription on-demand official audio and video streams for a song on the album.

Marshmello previously hit No. 1 on Top Dance/Electronic Albums with Joytime III (one week, 2019), Marshmello: Fortnite Extended Set (20 weeks, 2019; currently tied with Drake’s Honestly, Nevermind for the most weeks at No. 1 among solo male artists), and Joytime II (one week, 2018).

With a fourth No. 1, Marshmello ties Aphex Twin for the second-most leaders among male solo artists, behind Louie DeVito’s seven champs.

The set was preceded by two songs: “El Merengue,” with Manuel Turizo, which spent 13 weeks atop the Tropical Airplay chart – the second-longest-leading No. 1 on Tropical Airplay in 2023 (Chayanne’s “Bailando Bachata” remains at the lead in its 14th week), while “Esta Vida,” with Farruko, reached a No. 2 high on Latin Pop Airplay. The tracks peaked at Nos. 24 and 42, respectively, on the multi-metric Hot Latin Songs chart, while topping out at Nos. 5 and 10 on the Hot Dance/Electronic Songs chart.

Further, one other song makes its debut on the multi-metric Hot Latin Songs chart: “Harley Quinn,” with Fuerza Regida, surges 13-2 as the Greatest Gainer/Sales & Streaming song of the week. The track logged 10.2 million streams in the U.S. during the same period, enough to also place it in the runner-up slot on Latin Streaming Songs.