Trilogies seem to be the thing in popular music these days. The Weeknd rode his After Hours–Dawn FM–Hurry Up Tomorrow series to a record-breaking tour, and Drake made Billboard 200 history with his recent Iceman-Habibti-Maid of Honour pseudo-surprise triple-drop. And, of course, the world is still waiting on Act III to wrap the history-illuminating trilogy Beyoncé launched with Renaissance and Cowboy Carter. For Jamaican singer Runkus, that whole approach is becoming quite passé.

From 2016-2022, Runkus (born Romario Sebastian Anthony Bennett) fired off a trio of genre-blurring projects that traced life before and after the world-changing lockdowns of the COVID-19 pandemic. Featuring collaborations with the likes of contemporary reggae stars Naomi Cowan, Chronixx and Ky-Mani Marley, Runkus’ first three projects helped establish him as a burgeoning force in Caribbean music who truly understands the sanctity of roots reggae. From notes of trap dancehall to more straight-up R&B-infused fare, Runkus relentlessly expanded his sonic profile while maintaining his commitment to his Rastafari principles. After dropping OUT:SIDE in 2022  — he knew it was time for a reset.

“I think I might be addicted to making music,” he tells Billboard. “I knew I was ready to move on from that trilogy, so I took a pause from making music to focus on production and delve into art. I wanted to look at music more as an art form, rather than just [something to get on the] charts. I started scoring films and going to galleries and museum exhibitions. From there, I started scoring my music instead of making it.”

With that new approach, Runkus crafted Supernova, a rich, cinematic collection of songs that lean on juxtaposition to explore the malleability of Caribbean music. From blending an astronomy talk at Occidental College with the classic “Punany” dancehall riddim on the opening track to recontextualizing mid-performance Peter Tosh speeches on “Sheep,” Supernova is an incredibly layered tapestry of science, music and even visual art.

To bring the record to life, Runkus tapped Bahamian-born, New York–based multidisciplinary visual artist Tavares Strachan, whose Eve-inspired ‘A Map of the Crown (Fulani Red)’ sculpture appears on the album cover. Runkus is also readying his Supernova Sessions, a live performance video series filmed in “the hills of Jamaica, where a river runs through a friend’s backyard.” Featuring a three-person backing choir, acoustic renditions and Rastafari chants, the Kadiya McDonald and Carleene Samuels-produced Supernova Sessions promise a multilayered reimagining of Runkus’ newest LP.

Like real-life supernovas embody the simultaneous death of a star and birth of something new, Runkus’ new LP emerged from a recording process that produced over 170 songs and a scrapped album titled Full Circle. Now, the ascendant musician has a whole new solar system to explore.

Below, Runkus details the making of Supernova, his love for the movies and how losing his father, the late “Kette Drum” reggae singer Detemine, impacted his creative process.

This album feels particularly cinematic in the way that it’s mixed and sequenced. What’s your relationship with film?

I remember sneaking into the drive-in movie theater in Kingston with my parents and watching Matrix, Rude Boy, Shottas, all the classics — from Jamaican movies to international ones. I actually rewatched Matrix recently, and it hit me on a whole new level. I also love weird films, and horrors normally have great scores. I really like psychological thrillers like Inception, too.

Because I love film, I wanted to start looking at my music as scores. And all the greats, like Quincy Jones and Babyface, did that. Lee “Scratch” Perry might not have written the music in terms of notation, but he was also scoring. Every section was intentional.

On the opening track, you juxtapose an astronomy talk at Occidental College with the famous “Punany” riddim. How did that song come together?

I was actually at Occidental [College] for that conversation. I’m always looking for a way to make something unique out of something familiar. Everyone has heard the “Punany” riddim, but I’ve never heard it start the way I did it. There’s nothing new under the sun, but there will always be new suns. There will always be a new way to interpret an old thing because that’s what music is. The starting and ending of things are very important to me. How things start is important, because that’s what’s going to grab you, and how they end determines whether you continue listening.

You did a similar thing on “Sheep.” Why did those words from Peter Tosh resonate with you?

He’s talking about my life. But I also recontextualized his words, so they’re not necessarily about other people; it’s also about myself. Sometimes I wear wolves’ clothing, and sometimes I wear sheep’s. We each have two beasts inside of us. The whole speech resonated with me in that sense; Peter Tosh was very eloquent and intelligent in how he speaks about issues of now, which will probably still be the issues of the future.

Why was it important for you to center yourself and your experiences in your songwriting instead of preaching to your fans from a hill?

You ever heard the [phrase] “live and exemplify?” That’s the reason why.

Rastafari teaches a couple of things: self-sufficiency, self-reliance, etc. But one of the most important ones is to live and exemplify. It’s not going to be perfect, but just live and exemplify.

This was a mostly solo affair, but you have Sean Paul on “Sure as the Sun.” How did that collaboration come together?

Sean Paul is one of the greatest musicians of all time, and he’s also one of the most hardworking. That’s why Jah keeps blessing him; that’s the kind of energy that I would like to live and exemplify. We’ve been talking about making a song together for years, and when we finally linked up, it was two hours of talking and reasoning before we even made anything. He actually made a whole speech about how people always link him for gyal tunes, and then we went with a gyal tune. [Laughs.]

I was in a moment of going with the flow, so I picked up the guitar and the first thing I sang was, “Sure as the sun will rise, you’re goin’ alright.” And that was really a message to myself because it was a very hard time.

When did you cut that song?

March 2025.

So right after your dad passed.

Yes. I remember getting crazy calls during that session. Grief will bring out the worst in people. And I’m the last to fight; I don’t trouble nobody. In that sense, whenever people are fighting, I’ll be alright. What I have for them is minuscule compared to what Jah will do to them, so why fight? That tune came out of a really personal space.

How did your grieving process impact the creation of Supernova?

The music that I’ve written so far regarding the passing of my father is not on Supernova. I purposely didn’t want to make a record about that. It’s too soon. I’m not trying to turn that moment into a PR stunt. We’re living in a very performative world right now, to the point where enough people don’t know what’s real. What’s real is somebody losing their parents and choosing not to talk about it. I’m living with it. I remember getting a very nice review of this record from a renowned DJ, and I tried to send it to my dad, and in that moment his absence really hit me. It was a reflex for me. Some artists need liquor and ten girls; I just need my family and friends.

Which song demanded the most from you?

“The Boy Who Cried Wolf” was very difficult; it was a real headache because I mixed it myself, but it sounded great in the end. Everything else came out with ease. There were some issues with the sample [Soothsayers’ “Slave”] on “Sniper Rifle,” though. But my little brother came in and rebuilt the beat while keeping elements of the previous one, and it was mad.

How do you hope to continue building out the visual world of Supernova?

Sometimes when the music comes out with visuals, it’s hard to focus on just the music. We have something called Supernova Sessions coming, and we’re creating a visual work to align with anyone who is a yute and wants to exist in the world of music. Especially if they don’t want to be confined but also don’t want too much worldly influence.

What else can we expect from you in 2026?

I want to make way more music with my brother. He’s only 19 and produced six songs on Supernova: “Sniper Rifle,” the second half of “The Boy Who Cried Wolf,” the title track, “Sheep,” “3310” and “Every Ghetto Youth Is A Star.”

I want to produce for a lot of other people and do some live, immersive shows. I also want to learn keys properly, but it’s only 24 hours in the day. This is just the beginning of the Supernova campaign.

What are you listening to these days?

Bob Marley and Stephen and Ziggy, “Jah Promise” by Johnny Osbourne, the new James Blake album [Trying Times], “Oye Cómo Va” by Santana and “Fight the Power” by Public Enemy.

The world knows that the members of BTS spent about two years in the South Korean military, but only they will ever understand how difficult it really was.

RM opened up about the subject in a Weverse livestream on Thursday (May 28), recalling an emotional gathering at Jimin’s house that arose from the bandmates fulfilling their mandatory enlistment periods between late 2022 and June 2025. “When Jin-hyung was discharged from the military [in June 2024] … at that time, everyone was in a bad mental state,” he began, according to the site’s auto-generated English translation.

Around that time, the Bangtan Boys got together at Jimin’s place for dinner, where “tears” ensued, according to RM. “We talked about a lot of things,” he continued, noting that one thing he discussed with his bandmates was how he needed “to work harder to hold this [team] together.”

The band also felt the weight of ARMY’s high expectations for BTS’ return post-military. “After making the album, this wait for those who’ve been waiting,” RM added. “I wanted to pay back for that.”

BTS would eventually reunite in front of the world in 2026 looking stronger than ever, dropping Billboard 200-topping album ARIRANG and embarking on a global stadium tour that’ll wrap in 2027. All but one of the tracks on the project appeared on the Billboard Hot 100 the week of its debut, including No. 25 hit “Body to Body” — which RM revealed on his livestream used to be titled “Body on Body” and was a lot more sensual than it is now.

“It was a very sexy song … the body overlaps with the body, you know what I mean,” he told viewers.

RM also said that he didn’t think the band should have reservations about singing lyrics that are more explicit, as the members — aside from Jung Kook, who’s 28 — are 30 and up. That said, he didn’t think they should go the sexual route just for the sake of it, and ultimately decided “that’s not what we need to do right now.”

The livestream comes shortly after BTS appeared at the American Music Awards in Las Vegas Monday (May 25), where the septet accepted artist of the year, best male K-pop artist and song of the summer for “SWIM.” The group also opened the program with a pre-filmed performance of “Hooligan.”

After wrapping a four-night stay at Allegiant Stadium in Vegas on Thursday night, BTS will continue its ARIRANG World Tour with shows in South Korea.

As the Red Clay Strays packed up to leave the sessions for their 2024 sophomore album, Made by These Moments, they were confident in what they’d just created. Still, they worried: Would a last-minute mishap mean they’d never get invited back to eminent producer Dave Cobb’s studio?

“We had just made our first record with him, and we were leaving, and [guitarist] Drew [Nix] spilled Coke all over [Cobb’s] freshly painted stairs,” recalls the band’s charismatic frontman, Brandon Coleman. “We were like, ‘You ruined it!’ ”

He needn’t have been concerned: Made by These Moments became the band’s full-length breakthrough, and The Red Clay Strays would soon return to Cobb’s Savannah, Ga., studio to record much of their new album, Grateful, out June 5 — and it would likely take more than just some spilled soda to slow the Alabama group’s momentum. After breaking out on TikTok with the 2022 single “Wondering Why,” the soulful country-rock ensemble has become one of the fastest-rising acts in the country world, with second-line billing at this year’s Stagecoach Festival and its first arena tour on tap. An impressive ascent — especially for a band that doesn’t even necessarily see itself as “country.”

How the band is classified, Coleman says, “doesn’t matter. I’ve always just said ‘rock’n’roll,’ because we don’t have any fiddles or anything like that. We’re just three electric guitars, bass, drums and piano.
“We’re definitely country boys with Southern heritage,” he continues, “but I just never really thought of ourselves as a country music band.”

“This new record is another step away from the country sound,” interjects bassist Andy Bishop, but “we always keep a toe in that country world.”

“So we can go to the CMAs!” Coleman responds.

Today, the band — which, as it happens, won vocal group of the year at last year’s Country Music Association Awards and group of the year at May’s Academy of Country Music Awards — is gathered in a nondescript Southern California office space as it prepares for its Stagecoach play later in the week. The members are known for their stylishness onstage, but over Zoom, they’re just a crew of normal dudes in their late 20s and early 30s, clad in T-shirts (Bishop’s Pat Benatar one takes the cake) and good-naturedly s–t-talking while still marveling at their hard-won success after years of playing to small audiences.

“We started out playing in barrooms,” Coleman says. “The barrooms just got bigger,” guitarist Zach Rishel adds. Either way, as drummer John Hall puts it, “I’m just sipping on Miller Lite.” (Keyboardist Sevans Henderson rounds out the group.)

The band’s unpretentious attitude has resonated with audiences and driven its rapid growth — because The Red Clay Strays haven’t only eschewed pageantry, but the industry machine writ large. “Born and bred in the red dirt clay of South Alabama,” as the band’s website proudly declares, its members remain based in their native Mobile. (Coleman: “What does it matter where you pay your bills?”) They keep the Nashville establishment at arm’s length, even if they mostly chalk it up to better weather and cheaper cost of living.

That outlook extends to its radio philosophy. The band has just one entry to date on Billboard’s Country Airplay chart — “Wondering Why” logged a week at No. 58 two years ago — which is actually one more than the Strays estimate they’ve had. “It’s ­never been a goal of ours to make a radio song,” Bishop says. “Look how far we have gotten with no radio play. We got a CMA [Award] with three country radio stations playing us, and one of them is our local radio station. People are bending over backward for radio, and especially in the day of social media, I don’t think you have to have it. Honestly, I think radio is dead.” (Coleman qualifies this somewhat: “We’re certainly not going to change to try to get on the radio, but if the radio decides to start playing what we’re doing already, then we’ll take it.”)

So, too, are the aesthetic boxes that once separated genres and subgenres. The Red Clay Strays hail from the storied country-rock lineage of the Allman Brothers Band and Lynyrd Skynyrd, who its members proudly cite as influences. But their taste goes far beyond that to revered country acts from Waylon Jennings to Tyler Childers, but also The Rolling Stones, Stevie Ray Vaughan and Ray Charles. “I found Nirvana when I was 13 and that changed my life,” Hall says. Then again, “When I was 13, top 40 country radio rocked.”

On Grateful, its second album for the Los Angeles-based RCA, the band amalgamated all those influences into its most ambitious creative statement yet — even if the sessions were “very low intensity, very chill,” according to Bishop. Religious themes pervade the album’s lyrics (and the band’s marketing around it) and bleed over to the music, which is supplemented throughout with backup gospel singers. Despite that, “I wouldn’t say we’re a religious band,” Coleman says. “We make music about our life, and God is a big part of our life, so he’s in our music. We’re not trying to be anybody’s worship leaders or spiritual leaders or anything like that, because we’re just dudes playing music.”

But as its platform has grown, and scrutiny of the band has increased, its members have become aware of what the public thinks — not just of its religious leanings, but its political ones, too. In October, the act released the studiously apolitical “People Hatin’,” a well-intentioned plea for Americans of all stripes to tone down incendiary rhetoric. (Sample lyric: “All this arguing is aggravating.”) The song ignited internet backlash, with some criticizing the band for bringing politics into music and others directly linking the song to the assassination of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk the prior month.

“Everybody said it was a Charlie Kirk song, but we wrote that song in April last year,” Coleman says. “Everybody in the band, we all have different opinions politically and all that, but we’ve been a band for over 10 years. It wasn’t going to be released first [from Grateful], and we decided we should put it up first, after Charlie got shot. But that’s not why we wrote the song. The song was written because of issues that we’ve been dealing with for a while now.”

If The Red Clay Strays seek a big tent, they’re pitching one themselves. The band will play its biggest headlining shows yet when it hits more than 30 American arenas from August to November, including its first play at New York’s Madison Square Garden. “It’s all kind of scary,” Bishop admits, “and we just hope people show up to these shows, or we’re going to be playing in empty arenas.”

“When you don’t have a plan,” Coleman reassures him, “you don’t panic when the plan goes wrong.” Bishop promises a “big production” with a custom-built stage, hefty lights and screens and an expanded touring band (“I think half of all our income this year is going to it”) and deadpans, “We’re selling out.” Says Coleman: “I won’t be wearing jumpsuits, though.”

But before any of that, the band will honor the fans who have gotten them this far with the Red Clay Strays Fan Fest in Rexford, Mont., in late June. “It’s in the middle of nowhere, on the border of Canada and Montana, and it’s one of our favorite places to be,” Bishop says. “We usually like to spend a week or so a year just literally doing nothing but hanging out [there]. We wanted to show that to other people.”

“We’ve always liked the idea of trying to give back to the fans somehow or another, and this is just our first sling at it,” Coleman says of the five-day event, which will feature headline performances by The Red Clay Strays, Lukas Nelson and St. Paul & The Broken Bones, as well as “Strays With Stories,” an evening of intimate performances and stories by the band. “Who knows how it’s going to turn out.”

Playing arenas from coast to coast and attracting fans to remote, rural Montana just three years after breaking out on TikTok? Seems like, for The Red Clay Strays, things are going to turn out just fine.

This story appears in the May 30, 2026, issue of Billboard.

Among Drake’s historic week on Billboard’s charts (dated May 30), he becomes the first artist ever to pass 400 career hits on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, upping his count to a staggering 402 appearances.

Notably, Drake has held the mark for the most Hot 100 visits since early 2020.

Before that, only two other acts claimed that honor going back to 1964.

The Hot 100 launched with the edition dated Aug. 4, 1958, and Elvis Presley, fittingly, assumed the throne with the most entries just more than six years later, after the likes of Chuck Berry, Johnny Cash and Fats Domino traded first place over that early sample size.

On the Hot 100 dated Oct. 10, 1964, Presley debuted the double-sided single “Ain’t That Loving You Baby”/“Ask Me,” giving him an advantage in total hits of 45 to 43 over Domino. The King of Rock n’ Roll would then have the most appearances at every checkpoint through the ranking dated Feb. 19, 2011 — a stretch of 46 years, four months and one week.

On the Feb. 26, 2011-dated Hot 100, the Glee cast debuted six songs, boosting its total to 113 and passing Presley’s then 107. The troupe from the Fox TV favorite — thanks to its unique multimedia presence and rapid, supersized release model — would stand as the act with the most appearances through the end of the decade, even with the ensemble having last charted in 2013, totaling 207 entries, and the show having wrapped its run in 2015. Ultimately, the act reigned with the most charted titles for a stretch of nine years and one month.

(The Glee cast recorded two notable covers of Presley classics — “Blue Christmas” and “A Little Less Conversation” — although those tributes didn’t reach the Hot 100, so he didn’t quite help them topple his total.)

On the March 21, 2020, Hot 100, Drake seized the baton, outpacing the Glee cast with an assist from another superstar name: That week, “Oprah’s Bank Account,” with Lil Yachty and DaBaby, debuted, marking Drake’s unprecedented 208th entry. (“You get a record!”)

As of the latest Hot 100, Drake has boasted the most total appearances for six years, two months and one week running.

(Can Drake overtake Presley’s 46-year-plus streak of leading all acts for the most career Hot 100 hits? If no one gets in his way, check back around, give or take, August 2066.)