Tommy Lee Jones and his family are mourning the death of his daughter, Victoria Jones, who was found dead in San Francisco on New Year’s Day. She was 34.

In a statement shared on Jan. 2, Jones and his family asked for privacy as they grieve.

“We appreciate all of the kind words, thoughts, and prayers,” the statement read. “Please respect our privacy during this difficult time.” No further details were provided.

San Francisco Fire Department officials confirmed that emergency responders were called to a reported medical emergency at a downtown San Francisco hotel in the early hours of Jan. 1.

“Our units responded to the scene, performed an assessment and declared one person deceased,” said a spokesperson.

Authorities did not publicly identify the victim at the time, and an official cause of death has not yet been released by the Medical Examiner’s Office.

Victoria Jones was the only daughter of Tommy Lee Jones, whom he shared with his former wife, Kimberlea Cloughley. The former couple also share a son, Austin Jones. Jones has been married to Dawn Laurel-Jones since 2001.

Victoria Jones was introduced to film audiences at a young age, making her screen debut at 11 in Men in Black II, starring opposite her father and Will Smith.

The sequel, scored by longtime film composer Danny Elfman, was a major box office release of the early 2000s and part of one of Hollywood’s most commercially successful franchises, bridging pop culture, cinema and contemporary soundtrack work of the era.

She later appeared in her father’s critically regarded films The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada and The Homesman, the latter of which Jones directed and starred in alongside Meryl Streep. Her acting résumé also included a brief appearance on the television series One Tree Hill.

“She’s a good actress, has her SAG card, speaks impeccable Spanish,” the Lincoln actor told The New Yorker in 2006. “When she was a baby, I told Leticia, her nurse, to speak to her in Spanish.”

Beyond her on-screen credits, Jones has described his close relationship with his daughter as a creative influence. While discussing The Homesman in a 2014 conversation with Interview magazine, he reflected on the women in his life — including his daughter — as shaping his interest in stories centered on historical injustice and gendered experience in America.

“My grandmother, my mother, my wife, and my daughter are all women,” Lee told costar Meryl Streep in a 2014 Interview magazine feature.

“A lot of my dear friends, yourself included, are women. I am just interested in how they feel, and what’s wrong. And if you want to know what’s wrong today, looking at what was wrong yesterday is a pretty good place to start.”

A new class action lawsuit alleges Drake has used his partnership with online casino Stake to funnel millions of dollars towards artificial stream-boosting campaigns.

The claims come in a legal complaint filed Wednesday (Dec. 31) against Drake, Stake, streamer Adin Ross and Australian national George Nguyen. It’s the latest in a series of recent class actions over Ross and Drake’s endorsement of Stake, which lets users play traditional casino games over livestreams.  

Like in the previous lawsuits, Virginia residents LaShawnna Ridley and Tiffany Hines allege here that Drake and Ross are complicit in Stake’s illegal use of “virtual currency” to evade anti-gambling laws. But they also go further, claiming Drake is using the platform for streaming fraud.

“Since at least 2022, Drake and those acting under his direction — including Ross and Nguyen — have made use of Stake.com and Stake.us to covertly finance the orchestrated procurement of botting and streaming farm activities to artificially inflate the number of plays attributed to Drake’s catalogue across major digital streaming services such as Spotify,” reads the complaint.

According to Ridley and Hines, Drake and Ross have used Stake’s “tipping” feature to transfer millions of dollars to Nguyen without any scrutiny from the public or financial regulators. They claim to have seen chat logs and other records proving that Nguyen used these funds to pay for bot vendors at Drake’s behest.

“These inauthentic streams, injected via interstate digital pathways, were calibrated to mislead royalty and recommendation engines; manufacture popularity; distort playlists and charts; and divert both value and audience attention,” the lawsuit says. “In tandem, this manipulation has suppressed authentic artists and narrowed consumers’ access to legitimate content by undermining the integrity of curated experiences.”

Ridley and Hines are accusing Drake, Ross, Nguyen and Stake of operating a criminal enterprise in violation of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act — the so-called “RICO” statute typically used to prosecute mobsters and gangs. The lawsuit seeks financial damages and an injunction.

A rep for Drake declined to comment on the allegations on Friday (Jan. 2). Stake did not immediately return a request for comment. Contact information for Ross and Nguyen could not be located.

The claims come on the heels of a November lawsuit that alleged Drake has received “billions of fraudulent streams” on Spotify. The case did not accuse Drake himself of any wrongdoing; rather, it blamed Spotify for turning a blind eye to the problem of bots (allegations that the streaming giant has denied).

Meanwhile, Drake himself alleged in a bombshell lawsuit last year that Universal Music Group had used bots to boost the popularity of Kendrick Lamar’s hit diss track “Not Like Us.” A judge dismissed the claims as legally deficient in October, and Drake is now appealing.

Jill Scott is set to make her return in 2026. The Philly-bred singer announced plans to release her first album in over 10 years, with To Whom This May Concern slated to arrive just ahead of Valentine’s Day on Feb. 13.

To Whom This May Concern is Scott’s first album since 2015’s Woman, which debuted atop the Billboard 200. The LP will feature collaborations with Ab-Soul, J.I.D, fellow Philly native Tierra Whack and Too $hort.

Scott’s enlisting a decorated team of producers that includes DJ Premier, Adam Blackstone, Om’Mas Keith, Camper, Andre Harris, Seige Montracity, Trombone Shorty, Eric Wortham, DW Wright and VT Tolan.

The album features 19 tracks; the neo-soul legend set the stage for the project with “Beautiful People” released as the lead single.

To Whom This May Concern marks a new chapter for Scott, who will be releasing the album through The Orchard. The Grammy-winning singer’s 2015 album release was her final in a deal with Atlantic Records.

“Finally my new album entitled TO WHOM THIS MAY CONCERN drops Feb. 13th!!!! PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE and THANK YOU for your patience and your listening ears,” Scott wrote when announcing the inspirational album on Friday (Jan. 2). “Presave link available in my bio now! Much Love, Jilly from Philly.”

Miss Jill Scott joined Million Dollaz Worth of Game in December, where she detailed the direction of the project. “It’s a lot of living in this album. It’s a lot of revelation. Musically, it’s a full spectrum. Had some wonderful musicians come in. I feel touched all over, literally,” she said. “The musicianship on this project and the people that gravitated towards it, I couldn’t be happier. I couldn’t have ever even imagined who is on this album.”

Scott made an acting appearance as herself in a 2025 episode of Abbott Elementary and is set to star in Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Again? later this year.

Find her To Whom This May Concern announcement below and stream the album on Feb. 13.

While the White House has assured Americans that things are going swell at the recently re-named John F. Kennedy Center in for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., the growing list of bookings falling off the beloved arts venue’s performance roster tells a slightly different tale.

On Thursday (Jan. 1), Oscar-winning Wicked composer and lyricist Stephen Schwartz (Godspell, Pippin) told Newsday that he’s adding his name to that expanding roster or refuseniks in protest of what he said was the once apolitical arts venue’s increasingly partisan slant.

“It no longer represents the apolitical place for free artistic expression it was founded to be,” Schwartz told Newsday of what he said is the Kennedy Center’s divisive new image in an email sent by his assistant. “There’s no way I would set foot in it now.” Schwartz was slated to host the Washington National Opera Gala at the Kennedy Center on May 16.

Schwartz is the latest artist to distance themselves from the Kennedy Center in the wake of Trump’s takeover, which has included his revamp of the previously bipartisan venue’s board to include a cadre of MAGA loyalists, who named Trump chairman of the organization last year; in a break with tradition, Trump became the first sitting president to host the Kennedy Center Honors event in December.

“Last year, way before the change of Board and name of the Kennedy Center, I was invited by [director] Francesca Zambello to be part of a Washington National Opera event on May 16, 2026,” Schwartz, 77, wrote in his email. “But I’ve heard nothing about it since February 2025, so I have assumed it’s no longer happening. I can’t imagine Francesca continuing under the current circumstances. If it is happening, of course I will not be part of it.”

At press time a spokesperson for the Kennedy Center had not returned Billboard‘s request for comment on Schwartz’s announcement. While Trump has had his name added to the exterior of the building, there remains a legal question over whether he broke a federal law that prohibits the board of trustees of the Center from adding another person’s name to the building. Congress passed a law authorizing the construction of the national cultural center in honor of the late president a year after his assassination in 1963 and, by law, an act of Congress is needed to make any name change.

The Kennedy Center has been roiled by turmoil over the past year since Trump’s takeover of the organization, which quickly led to a rash of cancellations by the likes of Issa Rae, Rhiannon Giddens, Low Cut Connie and the team behind Hamilton, as well as Ben Folds, Shonda Rimes and Renee Fleming stepping down from advisory roles at the center.

Another round of call-offs have taken place over the past few weeks, with musician Wayne Tucker telling Newsday that this band, the Bad Mothas, will not be performing at the Kennedy Center as planned on Jan. 22. In addition, jazz drummer Chuck Redd cancelled a planned Christmas Eve jazz show, all-star jazz ensemble the Cookers pulled out of a New Year’s eve show and New York dance troupe Doug Varone and Dancers said earlier this week that they are scotching an April performance.

The Center’s interim executive director, Richard Grenell, has threatened to file a lawsuit against Redd, demanding $1 million in damages for the cancelled show. “The artists who are now canceling shows were booked by the previous far left leadership,” Grenell said in a statement. “Their actions prove that the previous team was more concerned about booking far left political activists rather than artists willing to perform for everyone regardless of their political beliefs. Boycotting the Arts to show you support the Arts is a form of derangement syndrome.” 

While the roster of shows for 2026 at the Kennedy Center continues to take hits, the White House was in pushback mode last week over reports that the Dec. 23 Trump-hosted broadcast of the 2025 Kennedy Center Honors hit all-time ratings lows after the president promised “the highest-rated show” in the institution’s history.

“Comparing this year’s broadcast ratings to prior years is a classic apples-to-oranges comparison and evidence of far-left bias,” Roma Daravi, vp of public relations for the Kennedy Center, said in a statement. “The program performed extremely well across key demographics and platforms, despite industry and timing disadvantages, including a Tuesday air date two days before Christmas.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Nielsen Live + Same Day Panel + Big Data reported the Kennedy Center Honors special averaged 4.1 million viewers, a 26% drop in viewership year-on-year for the show honoring KISS, Sylvester Stallone, George Strait, Gloria Gaynor and Broadway legend Michael Crawford.

Olivia Dean’s sensational breakout period has stretched into a new year with The Art of Loving crowned the U.K.’s first No. 1 album of 2026 (Dec. 2). The LP, first released in September 2025, is at No. 1 on the U.K.’s Official Albums Chart following the end of the festive period where records from Kylie Minogue and Michael Bublé ruled the charts. This week’s chart eligibility period ran from Dec. 26 to Jan. 1. 

Dean has now spent three non-consecutive weeks at the summit with The Art of Loving, which initially hit the top spot upon release and scored a second week at No. 1 in early December. She also boasts four songs in the top 20 on the Official Singles Chart. 

Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend lifts two spots to No. 2 following the release of a new bonus track on Dec. 24. “Such a Funny Way,” first released on physical editions, was released via streaming with Carpenter saying it was a “thank you for such a beautiful year.” Her 2024 album Short n’ Sweet also lifts five spots to No. 6.

Taylor Swift’s The Life of a Showgirl retains its staying power by holding position at No. 3 into the new year. Released in October, the LP was credited with boosting the U.K.’s recorded music market in 2025 to brand new highs.

Greatest hits collections from Fleetwood Mac (50 Years – Don’t Stop, No. 4) and The Weeknd (The Highlights, No. 5) round out the top five. Modern classics from Billie Eilish (Hit Me Hard and Soft; No. 20), Olivia Rodrigo (Guts, No. 22; Sour, No. 25) and Charli xcx (Brat, No. 31) also benefit from the chart upheaval following the end of the holiday period.