With just over a week to go until the 2024 U.S. Presidential Election and the announcement of the 2025 Grammy nominations, Q4 is living up to its reputation as the most hectic time of the year. To ease us into what’s sure to be a tumultuous next few weeks, stars across hip-hop and R&B have stepped up to keep us entertained and engaged.

Last week, music icon Beyoncé delivered a powerful speech in support of Vice President Kamala Harris‘ bid for the presidency, alongside Kelly Rowland, Tina Knowles, Willie Nelson and Willie Jones. The Oct. 25 rally in Houston activated both the Beyhive and the K-Hive, with around 30,000 people in attendance, according to the Harris campaign.

Megan Thee Stallion, another H-Town superstar, used last weekend to launch Act II of her Megan LP, which topped R&B/Hip-Hop Albums back in June. Her new release features the breakout hit “Bigger In Texas,” whose hometown-hailing music video features HTX legends like Scarface, Paul Wall and Slim Thug. Opting for an non-traditional Monday release (Oct. 28), Tyler, the Creator dropped off Chromakopia, his seventh studio album, which features appearance from Daniel Caesar, Childish Gambino, GloRilla, Lil Wayne, Teezo Touchdown, ScHoolboy Q, and Sexyy Red.

In more somber news, hip-hop legend DJ Clark Kent — a Brooklyn giant who worked closely with hip-hop heavyweights like Jay-Z and The Notorious B.I.G. — passed away last Friday (Oct. 25) after a three-year battle with colon cancer.

With Fresh Picks, Billboard aims to highlight some of the best and most interesting new sounds across R&B and hip-hop — from Jordyn Simone and Joseph Solomon’s new wedding anthem to Ms Banks’s fiery comeback track. Be sure to check out this week’s Fresh Picks in our Spotify playlist below.

Freshest Find: Melanie Fiona, “Say Yes”

For the first taste of her forthcoming EP (due next year), Grammy-winner Melanie Fiona is preaching the gospel of saying “yes.” With Thundercat on bass, SiR on backing vocals and longtime collaborator Andre Harris overseeing production, “Say Yes” finds Fiona crooning, “I lay my cards, out on the table / Showing hearts like never before / Tell me will you be ready willing and able / When I come knocking at your door.” As a veteran soul singer, Fiona expertly finds the pockets of groove in the track’s live instrumentation. Inspired by her mental health journey over the past decade and the freedom she internalized after the birth of her son in 2016, “Say Yes” is a gorgeous ode to the perseverance of the human spirit — and the beauty that comes with keeping yourself open when you most want to shut out the world.

Ms Banks, “Boss B—h”

After a two-year break, Nigerian-British MC Ms Banks is back with a fiery new single titled “Boss B—h.” “They tryna rub me out, but I don’t see a b—h fit/ Running up ya lips, but in school you was a prick/ Looking for some shit on me that could get me eclipsed/ But like an Air Force with no tick, it don’t exist,” she spits over a bass-heavy A Class beat that takes a few sonic cues from Detroit rap. Fresh off serving as the opener for the European leg of Megan Thee Stallion’s Hot Girl Summer tour, Ms Banks is poised for a stellar run in 2025 — and “Boss B—h” is a very promising preview.

Dc the Don & Ambré, “Knock Me Off My Feet”

Milwaukee rapper DC the Don’s latest album is finally here, and this Ambré duet is one of the best tracks. Rebirth continues his melding of hip-hop, rock and trap, with “Knock Me Off My Feet” offering an Afrobeats-inflected, romance-minded feel to his musical mosaic. “You was runnin’ ’round the city off no sleep when you met me/ Knock me off my feet when you met me/ That put me on defense/ Back against the curb, now I’m OD, OD,” he croons in the refrain, flaunting an unexpected affinity for slick pop melodies. Ambré’s ethereal tone provides a smart complement to DC’s more grounded delivery that’s filled out by a slightly raspy edge. This link-up arrived in just in time for cuffing season.

Mereba, “Counterfeit”

Buzzy R&B star Mereba has a new project due next year called The Breeze Grew a Fire, and “Counterfeit” is her first offering. Over twinkling, barely-there synths and neo-soul percussion, Mereba’s airy tone soars: “You’re the original/ You never do what they do/ You’re the original/ Don’t let ’em counterfeit you,” she sings in the chorus. For its cinematic outro, the song loses its beat and opts for acoustic guitars wrapped in a swelling string arrangement. “We’re all high, whole function flying/ Look up high, wild sky,” she repeatedly coos, each recitation broadening the expanse that the “original” can claim dominion over.

Jordyn Simone & Joseph Solomon, “I Do”

There’s been some talk about a lack of traditional love songs in modern R&B, but Jordyn Simone and Jospeh Solomon have something to say. A formidable contender for the best wedding anthem released in 2024, “I Do” finds the two vocalists redefining chemistry. “I never thought a love like this would find me/ All on my own, oh, I was just fine when/ You pulled me close, and then I couldn’t fight it/ Deep inside, I knew I couldn’t let go,” they harmonize in the pre-chorus, with Jordyn’s lovestruck timbre blending beautifully with both Joseph’s gentle falsetto and the production’s soulful strings. Love songs about the little things — with a little modulation, to boot! — will never go out of style.

Leo Waters & Kaash Paige, “Smoke + Mirrors (Remix)”

Ever the dependable R&B collaborator, Kaash Paige brings new life to Leo Waters’ “Smoke + Mirrors” with her sultry new remix. Waters dropped the original version of the song last Decemeber, and its plucky piano-inflected groove proved the perfect soundscape for Paige. “Baby, pull up on me/ I’m just tryna feel ya, hear ya/ I’ve been loving you better/ Touching you better than he ever could, ever would/ Now I see smoke and mirrors,” she haughtily promises, blurring the dual metaphors of steamy post-sex mirrors and the lightweight “smoke and mirrors” excuses we lean on to avoid giving into the things we want and fear the most.

As a born aesthete, Tyler, The Creator’s always thought in shapes and colors rather than hard numbers. He leaves that stuff to folks like Silent House president Alex Reardon, a creative director he’s worked with since Igor. 

On Sunday night (Oct. 27), fans in L.A.’s Intuit Dome saw the pair’s synergy unfold for Tyler’s listening event for Chromakopia, his eighth studio album that dropped this morning. With flashes of Kelly Green lights beaming down on a cross-like stage and emanating from square pockets between the seats, it was simultaneously trippy and restrained — as much about functionality as aesthetic.

“We are creating a semi-static lighting and scenic look so that the hearing is the sense that is most activated by the experience,” he explains to Billboard, referring to a lighting arrangement that avoids dramatic fluctuations. “You walk in, you see the thing that looks cool, you take a picture of it and it anchors the experience, but after that, it doesn’t start with massive color change and scenic changes and costume changes and drama and pyros and all the stuff that we would add to his performance because there is no performance underpinning that. And therefore to do that will be visually distracting and therefore detract from the audio or the auditory sense.” 

The set for the project, which began about six weeks ago, is set to be a fixture of his upcoming Chromakopia Tour featuring Lil Yachty and Paris Texas. It’s just the latest entry into a 30-some-odd-year career that’s seen Reardon work alongside everyone from Tyler to Tears for Fears and The Weeknd. Threading all of his creations together is a methodological philosophy his architect father taught him years ago. “A designer has to be as creative as an artist,” Reardon explains. “Except to a specification.”

In a discussion with Billboard, Reardon talks about some of those specifications, his working relationship with Tyler and more. 

How would you describe Tyler’s thought process when it comes to merging the aesthetics with the sound of his music?

Each album cycle, he creates a unique aesthetic that goes along with it. Now, if we just look back to Call Me If You Get Lost, when we were at this stage of that album cycle, we started the conversation about the tour and he was like, “Okay, I want video screens, I want rises and I want this sort of stuff.” And I said, “Let’s pause on that for a second and take a slightly higher level look at the album as a whole. What does the album mean to you? What are the underpinning motifs that you think are relevant and don’t think about the stage set? Just talk to me about the album.” And he was referring to travel, global travel, broadening your horizons, getting out of where you’re from, just looking at the world in wonder — but always in luxury. 

Wherever he turned up at an event, he always had luggage with him. So I said, “Okay, if I’m hearing you correctly, this sounds like the photography of Slim Aarons. It sounds like a mansion on the banks of Lake Como. It sounds like Riva Powerboats, that kind of vibe. And he went, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s it.” That made my job much easier — because for that tour, we literally built him a mansion on the banks of Lake Como with a Riva powerboat that took him out to a B stage. It made sense, because I asked him what the album was about, not, “What do you want on your stage?”

So with this album, we’ve had those conversations about what’s the central visual iconography that Tyler wants to associate with this album. So we’ve had those conversations and those are the conversations that have spawned the design direction that we’re going in. It’s so refreshing to be able to talk to an artist about the highest level intent of the album rather than, “I want lasers, I want pyro.”

What were some of the logistical challenges that went into putting this whole thing together? 

There are three metrics for a successful design in a live production: There’s the aesthetics, logistics and finance. The aesthetics, obviously we’ve been discussing now the logistics are, “Is it going to fit in the venue? Is it going to fit in the trucks to get from A to B, to C to D, and is it going to come in within budget?” And I think that because we Silent House have been doing this for so long, we’re quite good at gut check estimations about, “Okay, this is going to come in around the right amount of budget. This is going to fit in.”

But then what we do is we’ve also been doing this for long enough. We know which questions to ask, and I think if it’s with a new venue, our first questions were, “Okay, we’ve got to A, go down there, B, meet with all the relevant in-house tech people, and then C, come up with a design, a creative that will fit bearing in mind what they tell us we can and cannot do.” I think it would’ve been entirely the wrong way to go by selling this concept, doing this amazing thing, and getting to the venue and realizing he couldn’t do it.

So I think we as designers have to really work out, “Where is this event happening? What can we do [in] there?” We then apply his input, we then apply our input, we mix that up in a big cauldron and then comes the idea which we then refine with his input. So logistically, we have to work very closely with the production management team, with the venue, with the vendors, with everyone. And it creates a huge amount of work.

But because we have been working with all these people for decades, it becomes a kind of shorthand. There’s a hell of a lot that goes into this. Will this element that we are designing fit into the loading dock? Can we get it on a truck? How do we get it onto the floor? How do we do this? We’ve had a lot of meetings on site, a lot of meetings with very helpful people, and I want to give a little shout out to Intuit in the middle of their first Clippers game. They got another gig loading in, and they’re still responding to emails. They’re still engaging with us, they’re still being wonderful and collaborative, and I know they’re under the hammer at the moment.

What is it like to work with Tyler?

He is such a phenomenally pleasant human being. We’ve all got notes from people that employ us. The artist has got notes, and normally that’s received with a slightly sharp intake of breath and “Oh, here we go” — but with him, he’s like, “Cool.” I wonder what he’s going to say. We walk into an award show and he shakes everyone’s hand and says hello to the cable pager and the guy who brought him a coffee. He’s just extraordinary. 

He’s very good at storyboard sketches. Sometimes, he’ll actually storyboard loose ideas. “I feel it should do this, then this, then this and like this.” And then we who work behind the curtain, the production team, creative team, video content, everyone, we shuffle off and spin up some different concepts. And he goes, “I like that. I don’t like that. Let’s do a bit more of this and this looks cool.” And then the process continues. But sometimes he’s very specific, sometimes he’s not. Sometimes, he’s like, I feel it should be kind of like this. There’s no real prescribed path per se. It’s just either a sketch or a conversation or however he feels in the moment.

It’s cool Tyler values two-way communication. A lot of artists just have a lot of “yes men” around them, and it shows. They put out some of the most contrived stuff with their visuals. 

There is something [to] a lot of great artists where nothing is contrived when they literally open their soul to the people who are listening, watching, absorbing. And we, too, as humans instinctively respond positively to that honesty. Tyler is a man entirely without artifice. I think that that transcends genre of music. I think it works with painting, poetry, music, any form of artist expression. That genuine revelation of the soul is something that the people who are absorbing that music will empathize with and love. And I think that he has always had that being completely without artifice. That’s one of the many reasons he’s so successful. 

I’d imagine you’re a “form follows function” kind of guy, being a designer. The lasers and explosions aren’t as important as the big idea. 

No, and I think there are a lot of design firms or designers in live event production design that come from the technological background. So they tend to emphasize the new technology or look at this lighting rig. It’s got so many quantities of lights in it, or they look at the physics of it. And that works for some acts. But I think if you have an artist who doesn’t think that way, why force them into getting excited about some technology. Technology needs to serve a higher purpose and the higher purpose should be what the goal of the artist is in making that album. 

If you had to compare Tyler’s instincts for aesthetics to anyone in history, who would it be? 

That’s a really good question that I may take a lifetime to answer. And I don’t want to sound facetious. I’m not at all because my references to artists would be so different. It is such a subjective answer that I don’t want to set the internet a light with people saying, “Are you kidding? How can you? This guy?” But one of the things, and this is entirely subjective, and just my personal thing, is that obviously having grown up in the U.K., I think Tyler is, to me only, kind of a David Bowie of his generation. 

Wow. 

He’s an artist of his generation. I don’t think comparisons to anyone else that’s around are really relevant, because they would be derivative and he isn’t. But if I explain why I, from my own humble opinion, think that there’s a David Bowie-ishness to him, it’s because he exists as a musician also with equal amount of strength in visual medium as he does in the auditory medium. He has an ability to reinvent while not losing himself, which I think Bowie and he both have both share. I think neither of them really followed a particular zeitgeist. They just thought, this is what I think is great. And the whole world went, “Yep, I’m on board.”

And I think as a result, I think his career will be as long as David’s, I think there’s absolutely no reason why it wouldn’t. I mean, he will continue to be his honest self for as long as he chooses to do this. And I think whatever form of creativity he chooses to get into, if he will bring those attributes to and be wildly successful in. 

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Nick Cannon is opening up about his experience with insecurities during his marriage to Mariah Carey.

“I didn’t actually really care what the world thought because the perception, you know, that is what it is. People are going to love you one day, hate you the next day,” Cannon explained during a new episode of the Ray Daniels Presents podcast. “I could care less about that. … But going to myself with that pressure of, ‘Who am I?’”

“I got married in my 20s, you know what I mean? To the biggest star in the world. My trajectory was here,” he added, putting his hand lower, “and then hers — she’s already in a different stratosphere.”

He noted that he struggled to find his identity outside of the relationship, as well as his sense of masculinity. “I would lay up at night thinking, like, ‘Is is this who I am? Am I Mariah’s man? Is that what my life is supposed to be?’ There’s nothing wrong with it,” he shared. “I’m carrying a purse, the diaper bag and, you know, I’m standing on the corner like, ‘Wait.’ She’s rocking being the alpha.”

“I believe she needs a dude like that. I’m just not that dude,” Cannon concluded, agreeing that she “deserves” to be the “alpha” in her relationships.

Carey and Cannon tied the knot in the Bahamas in 2008, and welcomed their twins, Moroccan and Monroe, in April 2011. The five-time Grammy award winner and comedian separated in 2014, and their divorce was finalized in 2016. Cannon still has nothing but glowing words to say about the superstar singer. “I get a lot of this delightful disposition from her,” he told The Shade Room in 2023. “She’s just always happy, always doing for others. No matter what’s happening in life. I’m like, ‘Wow, a person can really operate like that and don’t allow negative energy into their space.’ When I found that out, about how remarkable she was, that woman is not human. She’s a gift from God.

The Masked Singer host has since fathered 10 more children. He shares twin sons Zion and Zillion, as well as daughter Beautiful Zeppelin with Abby De La Rosa; Golden Sagon, Powerful Queen and Rise Messiah with Brittany Bell; Zen — who died in December 2021 — and Halo Marie with Alyssa Scott; and Onyx Ice Cole with LaNisha Cole. Most recently, he welcomed son Legendary Love with Bre Tiesi.

ROSÉ and Bruno Mars’ “APT.” moves in at No. 1 on both the Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts.

BLACKPINK member ROSÉ achieves her second No. 1 as a soloist on each chart, after “On the Ground” likewise led in its debut week in March 2021. As a group, BLACKPINK boasts two leaders on the Global 200 and three on Global Excl. U.S. She is the first member of the quartet with multiple No. 1s on the charts; the act’s Jennie and LISA have notched one Global Excl. U.S. No. 1 each.

Mars, meanwhile, dethrones his first No. 1 on both surveys: “Die With a Smile,” with Lady Gaga, dips to No. 2 on each chart. He’s both the first act to replace himself at No. 1 and take the top two spots simultaneously on each list since Sabrina Carpenter earlier this year with “Espresso” and follow-up “Please Please Please.”

Elsewhere, Oscar Maydon and Fuerza Regida’s “Tu Boda” bounds to the top 10 of both the Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S.; Morgan Wallen’s “Love Somebody” launches at No. 8 on the Global 200; and One Direction’s “Night Changes” hits the Global Excl. U.S. top 10 following the passing of the group’s Liam Payne.

The Global 200 and Global Excl. U.S. charts, which began in September 2020, rank songs based on streaming and sales activity culled from more than 200 territories around the world, as compiled by Luminate. The Global 200 is inclusive of worldwide data and the Global Excl. U.S. chart comprises data from territories excluding the United States.

Chart ranks are based on a weighted formula incorporating official-only streams on both subscription and ad-supported tiers of audio and video music services, as well as download sales, the latter of which reflect purchases from full-service digital music retailers from around the world, with sales from direct-to-consumer (D2C) sites excluded from the charts’ calculations.

Released Oct. 18, “APT.” arrives atop the Global 200 with a staggering 224.5 million streams, as well as 29,000 sold, worldwide through Oct. 24. The song claims the second-biggest streaming week since the Global 200 began.

Here’s a look at all five weeks in which songs topped 200 million streams worldwide (with one belonging to BLACKPINK):

“APT.” introduces ROSÉ’s solo studio album, rosie, due Dec. 6.

Despite dropping to No. 2 on the Global 200, following eight weeks at No. 1 (the most for any song this year), “Die With a Smile” drew 120.6 million streams (up 10% week-over-week) worldwide Oct. 18-24. The song has tallied more than 100 million streams globally in each of the last eight weeks, the most in a row since The Kid Laroi and Justin Bieber’s “Stay” linked nine triple-digit weeks in August-October 2021.

Billie Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” slips 2-3 on the Global 200, following three weeks at No. 1 beginning in August.

Oscar Maydon and Fuerza Regida’s “Tu Boda” blasts 22-4 on the Global 200, led by 75.1 million streams (up 119%). Each act reaches the top 10 for the first time.

Rounding out the Global 200’s top five, Sabrina Carpenter’s “Espresso” descends 4-5, following three nonconsecutive weeks at No. 1 beginning in June.

Plus, Morgan Wallen’s “Love Somebody” debuts at No. 8 on the Global 200 with 38.2 million streams and 19,000 sold worldwide from its Oct. 18 release through Oct. 24. The country star scores his third top 10 on the chart.

“APT.” concurrently starts atop Global Excl. U.S. with 200 million streams and 21,000 sold outside the U.S. Oct. 18-24.

As on the Global 200, “Die With a Smile” ranks at No. 2 on Global Excl. U.S. following eight weeks at No. 1.

Eilish’s “Birds of a Feather” keeps at No. 3 on Global Excl. U.S., following three weeks at No. 1 beginning in August, and Jennie’s “Mantra” places at No. 4, a week after it opened at No. 2.

Oscar Maydon and Fuerza Regida’s “Tu Boda” jumps 17-5 on Global Excl. U.S., with 60.1 million streams (up 111%). The acts each appear in the top 10 for the first time.

Additionally, One Direction’s “Night Changes” surges 95-10 on Global Excl. U.S., up 131% to 37.6 million streams and 573% to 3,000 sold outside the U.S. Oct. 18-24, after the group’s Liam Payne died Oct. 16. The song becomes the boy band’s first top 10 since the Global 200 began; it hit No. 31 on the U.S.-based Billboard Hot 100 in 2014.

The Billboard Global 200 and Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts (dated Nov. 2, 2024) will update on Billboard.com Tuesday, Oct. 29. For both charts, the top 100 titles are available to all readers on Billboard.com, while the complete 200-title rankings are visible on Billboard Pro, Billboard’s subscription-based service. For all chart news, you can follow @billboard and @billboardcharts on both X, formerly known as Twitter, and Instagram.

Luminate, the independent data provider to the Billboard charts, completes a thorough review of all data submissions used in compiling the weekly chart rankings. Luminate reviews and authenticates data. In partnership with Billboard, data deemed suspicious or unverifiable is removed, using established criteria, before final chart calculations are made and published.