Lucian Grange accepts the No. 1 Award from Sherry Lansing & Billboard’s Executive Director, Leila Cobo, at Billboard’s Power 100 Party 2026.
He can strike a pose, but Connor Storrie confesses he’s not much of a dancer.
At Paris Fashion Week yesterday (Jan. 27), the Heated Rivalry actor was reminded of the viral video of himself dancing to Madonna’s “Like a Prayer.” When asked by Dazed to name something he’s bad at, but loves to do, Storrie joked, “I’m not bad at anything,” and then added “uhm, I don’t know dancing?”
The Dazed reporter replied “I saw the Madonna dance, I think you’re good,” with Storrie responding, “That was me, that was me just living.”
Dazed spoke with Storrie at Saint Laurent men’s fall 2026 ready-to-wear show in Paris, where he was seated in the front row alongside fellow Heated Rivalry actors François Arnaud and Robbie G.K. The Saint Laurent moment comes after the show’s co-star, Hudson Williams, walked the runway at Dsquared2’s fall 2026 runway show in Milan on Jan. 16.
It’s been a month since Storrie lit up social media with a video of himself dancing and lip-syncing to Madonna’s classic hit. The short was filmed for Interview magazine and uploaded on Dec. 27. Since then, it has generated over 9 million views across the publication’s Instagram, TikTok and Twitter accounts.
As for numbers around Madonna’s own “Like a Prayer” song, it generated 1.420 million official on-demand streams in the United States in the week ending Jan. 22, according to Luminate — marking its biggest streaming week in seven months. It last posted a bigger streaming week in the week ending June 5, 2025, when it tallied 1.473 million clicks.
“Like a Prayer” topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart for three weeks in 1989.
Sharon Osbourne accepts the Visionary Award from Clive Davis, Michelle Anthony & Billboard’s Executive Director, Leila Cobo, at Billboard’s Power 100 Party 2026.
Astronauts, as we know, are the rarest of people. Ron McNair was the rarest of astronauts.
McNair was just the second African American to fly in space, doing so in February 1984, and he was a talented artist. A jazz musician. By taking a curved soprano saxophone aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger STS-41B mission that year, he became the first person to play a musical instrument in space.
Four decades ago, McNair was on the cusp of creating another piece of music history, by performing a sax solo that would’ve resonated around the world.
Jean-Michel Jarre had planned the out-of-this world performance, which would’ve seen McNair play the part from the final track on the French electronic composer’s eighth album, 1986’s Rendez-Vous.
Sadly, the performance never happened. On Jan. 28, 1986, just 73 seconds after liftoff, the Challenger shuttle exploded. None of the seven crew members survived.
“Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle tragedy,” writes Jarre in a social post. “My heart is with all the families and loved ones who continue to carry the weight of this loss.
“I pay special tribute to my dear friend Ron McNair – astronaut, musician, and pioneer – who was due to perform a saxophone solo live from space as part of my Houston concert.”
As a salute to McNair, the album’s sixth and last piece is entitled “Last Rendez-Vous (Ron’s Piece) – Challenger.”
Later on April 5, 1986, Jarre paid tribute to McNair and his colleagues on the space shuttle with “Rendez-vous Houston: A City in Concert,” an open-air concert that celebrated the city’s 150th anniversary and NASA’s 25th, and featured a state-of-the art laser show which turned the city’s skyscrapers into art installations.
The concert set a Guinness World Record for the largest concert audience (1.5 million), and was later released as a live album.
A South Carolina native, McNair experienced segregation as a child. That didn’t rob him of chasing his dreams. In 1976, he completed a PhD in physics from MIT, he earned a 5th-degree black belt in karate, and mastered the sax. He was posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor in 2004, and his pioneering work is preserved with The MIT Black History Project and through The Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, established to encourage underrepresented students to pursue doctoral studies.
His musicianship lives on, too.
“That performance never took place,” Jarre writes, “but Ron’s Piece lives on. His heartbeat is in the music, echoing into eternity.”
Pusha T & Billboard’s Chief Brand Officer, Danna Droppo, present Alex DePersia with the Breakthrough Executive Award at Billboard’s Power 100 Party 2026.
Mariah Carey & Billboard’s Executive Director, Jason Lipshutz, presents Jody Gerson with the Executive of the Decade Award from at Billboard’s Power 100 Party 2026.
Nicki Minaj once rapped that Ye (formerly Kanye West) was the only person who could stand beside her, but she met President Donald Trump for the first time on Wednesday (Jan. 28) and received a Trump Gold Card, which will expedite her path to U.S. citizenship.
Minaj was in Washington, D.C. for the Trump Accounts Summit, where she spoke glowingly of the president, who returned the favor and crowned her the “greatest and most successful female rapper in history.”
“Welp…,” Minaj wrote while posting a photo of her Trump Gold Card. According to the official website, the elusive card costs a $1,000,000 contribution plus a $15,000 processing fee. The website adds that the Gold Card is a “visa based upon an individual’s ability to provide a substantial benefit to the United States.”
While on the mic at the Accounts Summit, Trump said that Minaj gifted “hundreds of thousands of dollars in Trump Accounts” to support children who are also Barbz. “I just think she’s great,” he added.
In a 2018 tweet that has resurfaced in recent weeks amid her Trump support, Minaj revealed she was brought to the U.S. illegally from Trinidad as a five-year-old.
It was a busy day for Minaj, who also posted a video alongside the president. “I’m with my favorite president, the best president of all-time,” she said. Trump then appears in the clip, who states: “And I’m with the queen of rap.”
Minaj took the podium at the summit after being invited personally to come to the stage by the president, where she championed herself as the “No. 1 fan” of Donald Trump and admitted that the MAGA backlash has only made her more of a supporter of the president.
“I am probably the president’s No. 1 fan,” Minaj told the audience. “And that’s not going to change. What people have to say, it does not affect me at all. It actually motivates me to support him more. And it’s going to motivate all of us to support him more.”
She continued: “We’re not going to let them get away with bullying him. And you know, the smear campaigns. It’s not going to work. He has a lot of force behind him and God is protecting him.”
Nicki has been staunch in her support of the Trump administration in recent months. She commended Trump for threatening to take military action in Nigeria over the country’s alleged persecution of Christians.
Minaj spoke at a United Nations event organized by U.S. Ambassador Mike Waltz, where she raised awareness around the issue. The Queens rapper also made an appearance for an interview with Erika Kirk, Charlie Kirk’s widow, at a Turning Point USA event in December, where she praised VP J.D. Vance.
OK Go interviews each other about their first Grammy nomination for best music video for “Love” since their win in 2006 for their viral video “Here It Goes Again,” how they feel about using AI in their music videos and more.
Damian Kulash
Hey, Billboard, we’re OK Go and we are about to interview each other. Let’s see how this goes.
Tom Nordwind
Okay. Damien, friend of mine, since we were 11 years old, let’s take a walk down memory lane. We’ve won our first Grammy for here it goes again. It’s a milestone for us. What do you remember most about that time in our lives? Where were we at?
Damian Kulash
I remember we were ending an album cycle. Yes, we thought we were about to go write and record our next album. We were playing at a festival in Moscow. When it when it when it went online, we thought like maybe 50 of our fans were going to download it that day and pass it to some other fans, and that would kind of be it. The next week, the album was back to the top of the charts again, and we started touring all over again. It was a whole another 18 month album cycle.
Tom Nordwind
I remember we were supposed to go home to Los Angeles after the festival in Moscow, we got redirected to New York, and then we didn’t go home for another year and a half.
Damian Kulash
Yeah, it was intense. It was exciting. It really was like, it felt like the kind of anything can happen. Moment, you know, like one one weird thing connects, and all of a sudden your life is different.
Tom Nordwind
Yeah, I remember also thinking, it’s pretty cool that that video, which is just like us, kind of doing what we do as friends normally dance on treadmills. Dance on treadmills, you know, but just make fun things together, like, resonated, yeah.
Watch the full video above!
Ye (formerly known as Kanye West) has a new home after signing with Gamma., according to Rolling Stone. The rapper’s Bully album was rumored to arrive on Friday (Jan. 30), but the LP has seemingly been delayed, with a new release date set for March 20, according to RS.
Kanye has a relationship with Gamma. co-founder Larry Jackson, dating back to his time at Apple, so a partnership with the independent record label isn’t far-fetched. Yeezy joins a stacked roster that includes Mariah Carey, Sexyy Red and Usher.
Related
Previous editions and intentional leaks of Bully, which will be Ye’s 12th studio album, have surfaced throughout the last year. In March, Ye released a visual helmed by Hype Williams for Bully, starring his son, Saint West.
The Chicago native took out a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal on Monday (Jan. 26), in which he apologized to the Jewish and Black communities for his erratic behavior in the past. He pointed to an untreated brain injury suffered in a 2002 car accident, which he said led to his bipolar disorder diagnosis.
“Twenty-five years ago, I was in a car accident that broke my jaw and caused injury to the right frontal lobe of my brain,” he wrote. “At the time, the focus was on the visible damage — the fracture, the swelling and the immediate physical trauma. The deeper injury, the one inside my skull, went unnoticed.”
Ye continued: “I said and did things I deeply regret. Some of the people I love the most, I treated the worst. You endured fear, confusion, humiliation and the exhaustion of trying to love someone who was, at times, unrecognizable. Looking back, I became detached from my true self.”
West apologized for his use of the swastika and emphatically stated that he loves Jewish people and is “not a Nazi.”
“In that fractured state, I gravitated toward the most destructive symbol I could find, the swastika, and even sold T-shirts bearing it,” he wrote. “One of the difficult aspects of having bipolar type-1 are the disconnected moments — many of which I still cannot recall — that led to poor judgment and reckless behavior that oftentimes feels like an out-of-body-experience. I regret and am deeply mortified by my actions in that state, and am committed to accountability, treatment and meaningful change. It does not excuse what I did, though. I am not a Nazi or an antisemite. I love Jewish people.”
Ye added he has continued to work on himself as he discovers a “newfound clarity” and says he hopes to earn fans’ forgiveness moving forward, noting a new regimen of medication mixed with therapy and exercise to help him make strides in his battle. He closed with an ask — not for sympathy, but for patience.
The rapper had been signed to Def Jam/UMG until 2022, when the label dropped him — along with companies like Gap, Adidas and Balenciaga — after he made a series of antisemitic remarks.
Looking to turn to a new chapter of his decorated yet turbulent career, Ye will return to the stage in Mexico City this weekend for a pair of shows on Friday (Jan. 30) and Saturday (Jan. 31).
On the music side, Ye’s last solo album, Donda, came out in 2021, when it topped the Billboard 200. He released a sequel, Donda 2, the following year, but the project was only available on the Stem Player. Ye subsequently teamed with Ty Dolla $ign for a pair of VULTURES projects, the first of which went No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in February 2024.
Billboard has reached out to reps for Ye and Gamma. for comment.
Universal Music Group (UMG) has filed another sweeping copyright lawsuit against artificial intelligence firm Anthropic, this time potentially seeking more than $3 billion in damages by focusing on accusations that the Claude creator used “pirate libraries” of music to build its models.
Six months after a judge ruled in a separate case that AI companies could face huge damages for training models on illegally-acquired datasets, UMG said in a Wednesday (Jan. 28) lawsuit that’s exactly what Anthropic did to teach Claude to spit out new song lyrics.
The new case, which comes as UMG and other majors have begun striking huge settlements with other AI firms, claims that Anthropic’s “multibillion-dollar business empire has in fact been built on piracy.”
“Publishers recognize the great potential of ethical AI as a powerful tool for the future,” write lawyers for UMG and numerous other publishers in the lawsuit, obtained by Billboard. “However, it remains crucial that AI technology be developed and employed ethically and responsibly, in a manner that protects the rights of Publishers and songwriters, their livelihoods, and the creative ecosystem as a whole. Doing so will ensure that AI enhances — rather than imperils — human creativity.”
A spokesperson for Anthropic did not immediately return a request for comment.
The new case adds to an earlier lawsuit filed in 2023 by UMG, Concord Music Group, ABKCO and a slew of other music publishers, claiming the AI company was violating copyrights en masse by using songs without authorization to teach its Claude models how to create new lyrics. Like other AI firms facing a flood of such litigation over the past three years, Anthropic strongly denies those allegations, arguing instead that the training is a so-called “fair use” of copyrighted materials.
In a ruling last year in a separate case filed against Anthropic by book authors, a federal judge ruled that AI training itself is covered by fair use — a major legal win for the AI industry. But the ruling came with a huge catch: the judge ruled that tech companies must legally acquire the training materials in the first place and would likely be on the hook for enormous infringement damages if they didn’t.
In the wake of that ruling, UMG and the music publishers moved to update their lawsuit with new allegations that Anthropic had relied on millions of books containing sheet music it illegally downloaded from file-sharing sites. But that bid to amend the case was denied by the judge as procedurally improper.
The result of that ruling is in Wednesday’s new lawsuit, in which UMG and the other publishers expressly cite that procedural backstory and say they were forced to file a new case that is “distinct and separate” to attack Anthropic’s alleged piracy.
“Publishers recently discovered that defendants downloaded by torrenting an enormous number of unauthorized copies of publishers’ works from illegal shadow libraries to avoid paying for those works,” the publishers write. “To the extent defendants now try to absolve themselves of liability for this blatant theft by claiming that Anthropic later used some subset of these stolen works for AI training, any such claimed use is irrelevant.”
The lawsuit claims Anthropic illegally downloaded books containing sheet music to “hundreds or thousands” of songs owned UMG and the other publishers, including iconic tunes like “Wild Horses,” “Sweet Caroline,” “Bennie and the Jets,” “Eye of the Tiger,” “Have You Ever Seen The Rain,” “Bittersweet Symphony,” “She Will Be Loved,” “Viva La Vida,” “California Gurls” and “Radioactive.”
In a statement to Billboard, the music companies said they were forced to file the second case because of Anthropic’s “persistent and brazen infringement” in using illegally acquired works: “In total, we are suing for infringement of more than 20,000 songs, with potential statutory damages of more than $3 billion. We believe this will be one of the largest (if not the single-largest) non-class action copyright cases filed in the U.S.”
