The “Rumors” are true: Lizzo‘s new album has arrived.

On Friday (June 5), the Grammy-winning pop star unleashed Bitch, her first studio album since 2022’s Special. The set’s lead single, “Don’t Make Me Love U,” arrived on March 20, with its title track following May 1.

The title of Lizzo’s new album — which houses songs such as “She Stole My Man,” “Whose Hair Is This” and “Sexy Ladies” — is certainly eye-catching. For the “Truth Hurts” singer, naming her record an expletive was an act of reclamation.

“Reclaiming the word ‘b—h’ is power. It’s taking a label once used to diminish women and turning it into a declaration of confidence and unapologetic self-love,” she said in a statement. “So many incredible women in music have used the word for positivity like Meredith Brooks and Missy Elliott. It was only fitting to name my album Bitch because it has become my favorite word when using it on my own terms, and because I am 100% that b—h!”

At one point, Lizzo had an entirely different name for the project. Back in February, she released the then-lead single and title track for Love In Real Life, which was originally set to serve as her fifth studio LP. After telling Vulture that Love In Real Life “just wasn’t what I was feeling right now,” Lizzo later clarified to Billboard that “[Bitch] is technically the same album… I just changed the name. The music is the same.”

In the interim between pausing the Love In Real Life rollout and launching Bitch, Lizzo returned to her hip-hop roots for her My Face Hurts from Smiling mixtape. Featuring collaborations with Doja Cat and SZA, the rollicking tape also included freestyles over 2025 rap hits like PLUTO & YK Niece’s “Whim Whamiee.”

Lizzo has made herself virtually inescapable in the lead-up to Bitch. She explained why she refuses to settle her career-shifting sexual harassment lawsuit on CBS Mornings (May 4), cracked jokes and whipped out her signature flute at The Roast of Kevin Hart on Netflix (May 10), and lambasted social media algorithms for “destroying the music industry” (May 12).

The Detroit-born star’s last studio album found her helping the world dance its way out of the pandemic. “About Damn Time,” the lead single from Special, hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and won the Grammy Award for record of the year. Two other songs from that project hit the all-genre singles chart: “2 B Loved (Am I Ready)” (No. 55) and “Special” (with SZA, No. 52).

Notably, Bitch arrives the same weekend Scary Movie, for which Lizzo recorded an original song, hits theaters. Two weeks ago (May 22), she linked up with Sexyy Red for “Hoes,” which will appear on the official soundtrack for the horror-comedy film.

Stream Bitch now.

After teaming up with Grindr to take over the gayborhood grid in April, Madonna and the LGBTQ+ app joined forces on Thursday (June 4) to transform Times Square with a surprise Pride Month pop-up performance at a new venue, The Square.

The venue is unusual in the sense that you don’t realize it’s a concert space until suddenly it is. One moment you’re looking at an LED screen in Times Square, the next moment its previously invisible walls are diving inward to reveal a performance space; it’s as if one of the Times Square skyscrapers suddenly opened up to reveal the coolest secret party going on behind the walls of the world’s most photographed intersection. And you don’t have to squint: 18,000 square feet of LED screens are there to help boost what’s going on inside the in-building space (at least until the walls close back up).

At 6:27 p.m. ET, the more-or-less invisible doors of a Times Square LED screen opened to reveal the Queen of Pop’s surprise performance, which opened with the undeniable Confessions II jam “I Feel So Free” backed by Stuart Price on the turntables. (Price is the visionary producer behind her 2005 classic Confessions on a Dance Floor, who has returned to the studio for Confessions II.) After touching forefingers like God and Adam, Madonna and Price invited New York into their confessional jam session, which encompassed three tracks from Confessions II and three tracks from Confessions on a Dance Floor.

“All right New York City, are you ready for this?” asked Madonna, a human who showed up to New York City in the late ’70s with $35, a dream and a lot of moxie and then conquered the world. “C’mon, gays. Happy Pride!” The Grindr-sponsored event opened with “I Feel So Free,” “Bring Your Love” (minus duet partner Sabrina Carpenter) and new track “Love Sensation.” Even in the live setting amid one of the world’s busiest intersections, “Love Sensation” felt like an astoundingly strong tease of Confession II — not a pop single, but a future fan favorite.

After teasing Confessions II with a coterie of choreographed dancers, Madonna offered up a pinch-me medley of tracks from Confessions on a Dance Floor, starting with the low-key fave “Get Together,” moving into the saucy “I Love New York” and concluding with “Hung Up” (and briefly straddling the plastic barrier separating her from the crowd with her leg, naturally). Between the Confessions to Confessions II switchover, Madonna flipped the in-venue lights to the Pride flag and turned Times Square into a massive screening room for a montage of Pride’s radical, riotous roots.

Of the audience, a select lucky group of fans caught the best vantage point of the 15-minute show from the TKTS red steps in Times Square, courtesy of Grindr; meanwhile, despite the on-street barriers, a slow but steady stream of tourists filtered through the Times Square hub, many of them jamming out to era-defining hits like “Hung Up” while walking down the sidewalk, seemingly oblivious to the fact that the artist herself was performing the music above them.

The Madonna x Grindr collab launched in late April with an exclusive picture disc of Confessions II, the hotly anticipated sequel to Madonna’s 2005 masterpiece Confessions on a Dance Floor. The collab continues with a limited-edition Madonna x Grindr merch capsule collection including hats and t-shirts sporting lyrics and imagery from the picture disc artwork (some of the merch was available at a nearby Times Square after party).

Recently, Madonna sat down with Ivy Mugler, Raul Lopez, Jeremy O. Harris, Bob the Drag Queen and Marcelo Gutierrez for a genuinely confessional Grindr chat, where she revealed the best sex of her life and talked about the best bedroom playlist.

What The Sphere has been to Las Vegas, The Square hopes to be for New York City, reimagining concerts as cultural multimedia experiences. One bonus: the space operates within a hotel, so artists can potentially move from their hotel room to a worldwide stage without ever exiting the building. While Madonna isn’t the first to occupy this space (Charli xcx and others have performed there recently in more limited capacities), she’s the first to play The Square at its full operational strength. As always, many artists will likely follow in Madonna’s footsteps, taking this one-of-a-kind Times Square stage before the year is over.

“We thought she was the right person to talk across multiple generations of fans,” says Jeff Marks, the CEO of Innovative Partnerships Group, the company behind turning the Times Square space into The Square. “Young fans still like her, as we saw when she popped up at Coachella with Sabrina. She’s at the World Cup [headlining its first halftime show alongside BTS and Shakira on July 19]. You don’t get someone better than her, who can talk to anyone in the world. I don’t think anyone would say they don’t like her. And, with the brand that was chosen, I think it’s going to give them their big Hollywood moment, and they’ve been around for a while.”

Twenty-four hours after turning Times Square into a dancefloor, Madonna will appear at Tribeca Festival on Friday (June 5) night, screening a 10-minute visual project centered around the first six tracks from Confessions II. After the premiere, Madonna and the project’s directors — David Toro and Solomon Chase (TORSO) – sit down with Jimmy Fallon for a conversation.

In late April, Madonna popped up with Sabrina Carpenter during Sab’s second weekend at Coachella; their duet “Bring Your Love” dropped shortly thereafter and hit the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 74. Album preview “I Feel So Free” went No. 1 on Billboard’s Dance/Mix Show Airplay chart, becoming her first No. 1 on that tally in 18 years. Confessions II, which reunites her with OG Confessions producer Stuart Price, drops July 3.

Yung Miami recently sat down with former NFL star Cam Newton for his YouTube show Funky Fridays and told a funny story of the time she tried to get Drake on a song while he was in the middle of his beef with Kendrick Lamar and Metro Boomin back in 2024.

“I got a song called ‘Take Me to Chanel’ and I was trying to get him on the song,” she recalled. “I remember DM’ing him, but that was at the time when he was going through all his sh–. And when people going through they sh–, like, I get it, I understand. … But I DM’d him like, ‘Drake, I think you’ll sound good on ‘Take Me to Chanel.’ He just liked the message like come on, now, don’t do that! Drake, don’t do that now ’cause when you called me I was there! But, nah, I f— with Drake, I understand.”

She then added that she’s hyped for ICEMAN and Drake’s return to rap’s forefront. “I’m excited. I love Drake, she began before explaining why. “He’s so special that it’s like his music is like, ‘You gotta know to know.’ He’ll say some sh– and it’s like what made him … he’s clever. And I just love how he does his interludes. He’ll go and get a soundbite and blow it up, and he’s gonna show you love. It just be little things like that. And he just always got one. You can play Drake at a graduation, any function and you’re gonna feel good.”

Yung Miami and her former City Girls bandmate JT lent their vocals to the Toronto rapper’s 2018 smash hit “In My Feelings” — a 10-week No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 — and she also talked about how it helped launch their careers. “That was the breakthrough for the City Girls,” she said. “I would never forget that phone call that we got like, ‘Drake wants y’all on his album.’ And it was like April Fool’s Day. This gotta be a joke and it was like, ‘Nah, y’all gotta come to the studio, we gotta play the record.’ And we press play and it’s like Drake saying our names.”

You can watch the full interview below.

In recent years, the National Independent Venue Association’s advocacy efforts have been focused on the Department of Justice’s monopoly case against Live Nation, which resulted in a jury finding that the company illegally monopolized the market for ticketing services and the use of amphitheaters. In April, it also found that Live Nation illegally tied the use of its venues to its concert promotion services.

Now, as the association heads into its fifth annual conference, NIVA executive director Stephen Parker says the association is turning its attention to ticketing resale caps and building a more stable future for independent venues and promoters.

“This conference is more about our vision for what live entertainment looks like in a post-monopoly world. My hope is that our NIVA members are able to articulate what that vision should be,” Parker tells Billboard of the NIVA ‘26 gathering that will take place June 7-10 at various independent venues in Minneapolis. “We have been working towards a future that’s better, not just working to make sure that one company is help accountable.”

The four-day conference will kick off with a Sunday night opening party in celebration of Prince, who was a frequent performer and visitor of renowned indie venue First Avenue, where the opening party will take place. From there, NIVA will address the attendees on the current “state of live,” followed by panels on everything from marketing, ticketing platforms, food and beverage strategies, dealing with the growing number of performing rights organizations and the resale cap legislation that is being introduced across the country.

As of June 2026, 20 states across the U.S. have introduced legislation that would cap the price of concert tickets on secondary ticketing platforms like StubHub, SeatGeek and more. The wave of bills comes as fans are feeling gauged by sky-high ticket prices, while the price of a night out also continues rising.

“There’s not a single state that introduced a resale price cap this year that we went to and said, ‘Please introduce this legislation.’ In some cases, we just saw it drop,” says Parker. “The fact is, this has been such an organic movement, a bipartisan organic movement, to see a problem and see a solution and work towards that solution.”

Maine and Vermont are the only two states that have signed resale cap legislation into law, while states including New York and California have similar laws up for consideration. “We’re going to talk about all the dollars that have been spent to defeat this legislation and how we have spent very little getting a couple of these passed in the last year,” Parker says. “We’re gonna talk about how this is basically artists, fans and everybody who actually is in the live entertainment industry against scalpers.”

The conference will take place across what Parker calls an “incredible indie venue scene” in Minneapolis including First Ave and 7th Street Entry, storied Jazz club The Dakota, new space Green Room and the musician hangout Ice House. Despite the turmoil Minneapolis faced earlier this year with the Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations and the killing of civilians Renée Good and Alex Pretti, Parker says Minneapolis NIVA members wanted the conference to take place in the city.

“We heard from the community early on, the one thing that the venues and the community leaders wanted more than anything was for people not to abandon them,” Parker says. Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey will welcome attendees to the conference on June 8 at the Pantages Theater.

Other notable speakers at NIVA ‘26 include CAA agent Carly James, The Daily Show comedian Jordan Klepper, as well as musicians Jimmy Jam, Cornbread Harris, Cory Wong of Vulfpeck and The Black Keys’ Patrick Carney.

The main focus, Parker says, will be detailing plans for a more sustainable independent live sector. The conference will discuss what the association and its members are doing to support the cultural infrastructure across the country by lobbying for tax credit programs or live performance funds that can help independent venues and creating more music offices at the city and state levels.

“What can we do to make sure that live performance isn’t just something that politicians and policy makers go to, but something that politicians and policy makers create a seat at the table for at the state and local level, and at the federal level across the country,” Parker says. “Let’s get past the monopoly. Let’s get past the predatory resale and let’s focus on the things that matter which is building the infrastructure that we need for independent venues and festivals and artists and fans to actually be able to connect without all these other things getting in the way.”