Over the weekend, international vocal powerhouse and visionary artist Tia Ray unveiled her newest English single “PRESSURE” across global streaming platforms, paving the way for her eagerly awaited debut English album.

An internationally recognized R&B/soul artist, Ray’s forthcoming album — developed over three years — promises to showcase her complete artistic vision with richer diversity and innovative styles.

“PRESSURE” fuses the romantic freedom of R&B with the wild, untamed energy of Afrobeats, embodying Tia Ray’s signature vibrant spirit — a free and vigorous life force that flows through love and desire, raw and unrestrained. The track opens with a provocative guitar riff, setting the stage for a fierce jungle hunt rather than a dull cat-and-mouse game. The bold declarations in the lyrics express that those who want to love give it their all.

Co-written by Ray, the single continues her collaboration with top international producers, helmed by Grammy-winning producer Khris Riddick-Tynes, known for his work with Ariana Grande and SZA. Riddick-Tynes’ production highlights the delicate sensitivity of female artistry while amplifying Ray’s uniquely free-spirited vitality.

“PRESSURE” is now available on Tencent Music Entertainment’s QQ Music, Kugou Music and Kuwo Music, as well as Apple Music, Spotify, KKBOX and other major global platforms. The track has been winning over music critics, further amplifying anticipation for what industry insiders are calling “a sophisticated Chinese urban record elevated by pristine pop production.”

Country music artist Morgan Wallen initially denied throwing a chair off the roof of Nashville bar Chief’s in 2024, according to police video footage obtained by The Associated Press.

The Metro Nashville Police Department released the footage from Wallen’s April 2024 arrest, after the AP filed a public records request. The video was taken through police car cameras and officers’ body cameras.

As shown in the body camera footage, officers are standing next to Wallen outside of the Chief’s bar on Broadway. An officer asks him what happened, and Wallen replies, “I don’t know.” The musician also tells an officer, “We’ve not tried to cause no problems, man. I don’t know what they are, I don’t know why.” The officer tells Wallen that the police were attempting to understand what happened after a chair fell from the bar’s rooftop and landed by the policeman’s patrol car. Wallen answers, “As you should.”

According to the video, officers “spoke to witnesses who identified Wallen as the one who threw the chair, and reviewed security cam footage.” Later footage shows the musician in the backseat of a patrol cruiser, and saying, “I ain’t done nothing wrong.” The footage also shows officers handcuffing him.

Billboard has reached out to reps for Wallen for comment.

Wallen was arrested on April 8, 2024, and briefly jailed after he threw a chair from the sixth-floor rooftop of the bar Chief’s on Lower Broadway in downtown Nashville. The chair reportedly landed a few feet away from where two Metro Nashville police officers were standing. The country star was charged with three counts of reckless endangerment and one misdemeanor count of disorderly conduct. In December 2024, Wallen pled guilty to two misdemeanor charges of reckless endangerment in Nashville court and was sentenced to two years’ probation and seven days in a DUI education center.

Nearly two weeks after Wallen’s arrest, he addressed the incident, writing on social media, “I didn’t feel right publicly checking in until I made amends with some folks. I’ve touched base with Nashville law enforcement, my family, and the good people at Chief’s. I’m not proud of my behavior, and I accept responsibility…. I have the utmost respect for the officers working every day to keep us all safe. Regarding my tour, there will be no change. -MW”

Since that time, Wallen has seen his most recent album, I’m the Problem, spend a dozen nonconsecutive weeks atop the all-genre Billboard 200, and has regaled fans with his stadium-headlining I’m the Problem Tour this year.

Watch the video obtained by The Associated Press below:

The Contenders is a midweek column that looks at artists aiming for the top of the Billboard charts, and the strategies behind their efforts. This week, for the upcoming Billboard 200 dated Oct. 11, we look at new sets by several major artists, all getting in before the biggest pop star in the world sounds perhaps the final buzzer for 2025 next week.  

Doja Cat, Vie (Kemosabe/RCA): Doja Cat has become one of the defining pop stars of the 2020s without a No. 1 album on the Billboard 200: Her career-best to date is still the No. 2 peak of 2021’s Planet Her, blocked from the top spot by Tyler, the Creator’s Call Me if You Get Lost. Still, she’s scored two No. 1s on the Billboard Hot 100, and nine top 10 hits — including a pair from her previous album, 2023’s more hip-hop-focused Scarlet: the chart-topper “Paint the Town Red” and the No. 7-peaking “Agora Hills.”  

Doja’s latest set, Vie, eschews the rap focus of Scarlet a bit for a brighter, more ‘80s-hued pop sound — exemplified by the lead single “Jealous Type,” which she opened the MTV Video Music Awards with in September. Released on Friday (Sept. 26), the 15-track set is light on special guests, but does include one big-name feature in pop/R&B superstar SZA, who appears on “Take Me Dancing,” a sort of unofficial sequel to the pair’s Planet Her teamup, the Grammy-winning crossover smash “Kiss Me More.” (Another big name, Jack Antonoff, is a major presence in the album’s writing and production credits.)  

The album is available for purchase in eight vinyl variants and two CDs — with one signed option in each format — as well as in a CD boxed set (with a signed CD and branded T-shirt), standard and deluxe iTunes versions (the latter with bonus videos), and a cassette.  

It will need to do robust sales numbers to challenge for the No. 1 spot, because the streaming tallies its songs have posted so far have not been massive: As of posting, Doja only has one song in the top 100 on the Spotify Daily Top Songs USA chart, and zero in the top 100 on Apple Music’s real-time lasting. With the KPop Demon Hunters soundtrack still pulling weekly numbers in the low six digits — and Scarlet bowing with 72,000 units two years ago — it may be tough for Vie to get over the top.  

Young Thug, UY Scuti (YSL/300/Atlantic): The rapper born Jeffery Lamar Williams II was a regular presence atop the Billboard 200 albums chart at the turn of the 2020s, even topping it twice in 2021 alone (with his solo Punk set and his Young Stoner Life: Slime Language 2 full-label effort). But in the four years since then, he’s gone to jail, fallen out with his former partner-in-rhyme Gunna and made more headlines for being at the center of public messiness than for anything he’s done with his music.  

Young Thug is looking to change the narrative with the release of UY Scuti, his first full-length since 2023’s Billboard 200 No. 2-peaking Business Is Business. The set is consumable in 20- and 21-track editions on streaming and digital retailers, with a pair of digital-only 22-track archive editions also offering an exclusive bonus track each. Multiple vinyl, CD and CD boxed set editions are also available.

The set features such big names as Lil Baby, 21 Savage, Travis Scott, Future and even current Billboard 200-topper Cardi B as guests. However, like Doja’s Vie, Scuti has yet to produce a major breakout streaming hit – after a strong Friday start, only opener “Ninja” ranks in the top 100 on Apple Music’s real-time chart (as of Wednesday), and it’s only No. 104 on Spotify’s Daily Top Songs USA — and the set has also been attracting as many headlines for its controversial album cover as for any of its songs.  

Mariah Carey, Here for It All (Mariah/gamma.): The most chart-accomplished artist with a new album out this week is certainly Mariah Carey, who has topped the Billboard 200 six times — although not since 2008, when she last visited No. 1 with her E=MC2 album. Still, Mariah has at least hit the top 10 with every studio album, and has reached the top five with each of her four full-lengths since ‘08.  

That last streak may be in slight jeopardy with the release of Here for It All, her first new album of the 2020s, which will have to do most of its damage in sales, without much to talk about in the way of big streaming numbers. But it should sell fairly well, with help from a trio of alternate variants each on CD and vinyl (two with different covers, one signed), as well as two cassette editions and a deluxe download edition, the latter with an exclusive bonus track.  

IN THE MIX 

Olivia Dean, The Art of Loving (Capitol/Polydor): One artist who is doing just fine on streaming — and better every week — is U.K. singer-songwriter Olivia Dean, whose global breakthrough single “Man I Need” climbs to No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 this week. It should shoot up even higher next week following the release of The Art of Loving, which is also available on seven CD variants, and already appears on its way to a second breakout hit, “So Easy (To Fall in Love).”  

P1Harmony, Ex (FNC Entertainment/Hello82): South Korean pop group P1Harmony has already visited the Billboard 200 once this year, reaching No. 23 on the chart with May’s Duh! EP. The sextet is on track to do even better with September’s five-track Ex EP, helped by a whopping 17 CD variants, as well as six vinyl variants, all with collectible items (some randomized) inside the packaging. 

Henry Walter may be seated in a spacious Los Angeles recording studio, but he’s still having audio trouble. A full digital workstation sits about five feet behind him as he scoots around the room on a swivel chair, trying to fix the feedback coming from his laptop. “I haven’t opened Zoom in, like, a month,” he says with a sigh as he presses a few buttons on his keyboard. Once he finds the problem, he triumphantly puts his hands in the air. “I think we did it.”

There’s a charming bit of irony in watching one of the most prolific and successful producers in the music industry fumble with his audio output. Since starting his production career in 2008, Walter — better known by his moniker, Cirkut — has been behind some of this century’s biggest hits, helping to write and produce massive singles for Rihanna, Kesha, The Weeknd and dozens more throughout the 2010s. Today, the 39-year-old Grammy-winning producer’s sonic soundscapes score music by a slew of contemporary artists, including Jungkook and Latto’s Billboard Hot 100-topping collaboration, “Seven”; Charli xcx’s “360,” “Rewind” and “365”; and even Rosé and Bruno Mars’ “APT.”

“I think new producers and artists are inspired by his work, especially right now,” says pop singer Kim Petras, who collaborated with Cirkut on “I Don’t Want It at All,” “Can’t Do Better” and the Hot 100 No. 1 Sam Smith collaboration, “Unholy.” “He’s kind of a master at electropop. I think people are going to be inspired for a while by him.”

And on his latest collaboration, Walter hit an even loftier high. “I still kind of pinch myself,” he says with a grin of co-producing most of Lady Gaga’s lauded 2025 album, MAYHEM. “Like, ‘Wow, I helped produce a Gaga album.’ It’s really cool and I’m really proud.”

The feeling is mutual. Gaga, who co-produced the project alongside Walter, Andrew Watt and her fiancé, Michael Polansky, says she was astounded by Walter’s skill in the studio. “He has this incredibly positive energy that makes a beautiful space for songwriting and production,” she tells ­Billboard. “On the musical side, it was his intuition about production that struck me the most. Cirkut is incredibly gifted as a programmer. His technical proficiency is astonishing but also extremely musical — his musicianship is so well-­rounded and rich.”

But the electropop gems he crafts now are a far cry from his humble origins. Growing up in Halifax, Nova Scotia — which he affectionately describes as “not exactly a mecca of music” — Walter’s friends were hip-hop heads. Some were DJs who would invite a 14-year-old Walter over to watch them spin and scratch their records on Technic 1200 turntables. “I saw that and I was like, ‘I need whatever that is. I need to do that,’ ” he recalls.

In his adolescence, Walter became fascinated with “deconstructing songs and learning what makes them tick,” listening to as many CDs as he could and trying his hand at minor DJ gigs for school pep rallies, dances and a small school radio show. When he turned 18, Walter moved to Toronto, seeking out a career as a hip-hop DJ and discovering other sonic worlds in the process. “You’d go out for the night and you’d hear dancehall, soca, reggae, hip-hop and just all this incredible dance music,” he says.

The Toronto club scene helped cement Walter’s fascination with electronic music. By 2008, he formed indie electronic trio Let’s Go to War, and on the suggestion of fellow dance duo MSTRKRFT, he met with music attorney and record executive Chris Taylor, who subsequently signed the act to his label, Last Gang Records. As the group began to work on its album Karmageddon, Walter and his bandmates also started making production packages on the side. Taylor compiled the threesome’s beats onto CDs and sent them to songwriters in his orbit — among them Nicole Morier, who decided to write a song to one of their beats during a session with Britney Spears.

The result was Spears’ “Mmm Papi” off her No. 1 album Circus. It earned Walter, through Let’s Go to War, his first production credit for a mainstream pop star. While he remains awed by the “luck” that got his name in Circus’ liner notes, he also cringes as he reflects on the song. “I kind of just hear a person who didn’t know what he was doing,” he says with a laugh. “In all honesty, I didn’t know how to produce songs back then.”

Still, his work caught the attention of hit-maker Dr. Luke, who reached out within a year of Circus’ release to sign Walter to his burgeoning publishing label, Prescription Songs. At first, Walter worked remotely from Toronto, where he opened Dream House Studios with producer Alex Bonenfant and his former bandmate Adrien Gough, whom he worked with on the song “High for This” for an up-and-coming R&B artist called The Weeknd. After a few years of operating as Cirkut, Walter left Toronto for Los Angeles and, under the tutelage of Luke and the other songwriters on the prestigious label, began creating a career for himself. “I was given the opportunity to work with a ton of writers and artists who I wouldn’t have had access to previously,” Walter says. “It’s where I really cut my teeth and learned to produce pop and not just make beats.”

Over the next few years, Walter helped pen seminal No. 1 hits like Miley Cyrus’ “Wrecking Ball,” Katy Perry’s “Roar” and Maroon 5 and Cardi B’s “Girls Like You,” ­developing his reputation in tandem with his production philosophy: to steer the ship without taking up too much space for himself. “I want to be able to lead the room and lead it to a good place,” he explains. “My duty as a producer is to see through the song and make sure it gets to the best place possible while also not making it about me. It’s about the artist and the song.”

The philosophy has stuck with his artist collaborators. Petras fondly remembers not just the “fun” atmosphere Walter creates in the studio, but the skills he employs to perfect the final product. “He has an amazing brain for melody and production, of course, but he’s also probably the best and fastest vocal producer I’ve ever worked with,” she says. “He just has an incredible ear for pop vocals and pop melodies, and I’ve learned so much working with him.”

After leaving Prescription Songs in 2018 to strike out on his own, Walter leaned on his industry contacts for new work. He collaborated with Watt on Spears and Elton John’s 2022 single, “Hold Me Closer,” and when Watt subsequently asked if he would be interested in working on a new Gaga project, Walter leaped at the opportunity. “I tried not to go in with any expectations because I hadn’t met her before,” he says. “There’s always an initial phase of feeling each other out, figuring out if you vibe with them. Either you have chemistry with someone or you don’t, and I’m glad that we did.”

According to Gaga, that studio chemistry with Walter came quickly. “The first song we worked on together was ‘Vanish Into You,’ which started out as just an analog synth Moog bassline, and as the song took form, his sonic choices for the drums struck me ­instantly,” she says. “We hadn’t spent a lot of time together, but he was naturally drawing upon all our musical influences … right away, I heard the Justice influence, the Franz Ferdinand coolness, The Cure’s vulnerability and softness. We were just an instant match.”

Walter credits Gaga’s singular vision for MAYHEM — which she describes as a mix of “well-written pop songs” and creating “free space to try different sounds” — as the driving force behind the final product. “She’s intentional about everything while also being humble in the sense that she’s willing to say, ‘OK, we tried that, it didn’t work,’ ” Walter says. “Her musical taste is broad, and she would know the exact reference to help us unlock something.”

That collaborative spirit let Walter leave his mark on MAYHEM while still making an album that is unquestionably Gaga’s — something they both say its single “Abracadabra” exemplifies. The songwriting process for the album’s breakout hit started with the track’s grinding post-­chorus breakdown, which Walter had created on a whim. “That was just a 30-second, very incomplete beat I had made, but when Gaga heard it, she was like, ‘Wait, what was that?’ ” he remembers.

Gaga recalls that same moment with a sense of awe at how Walter didn’t just create the song’s sound but also specifically tailored it to her. “That moment that he played [the post-chorus] was powerful, sort of like a dare, as if he were secretly saying, ‘You know what you need to do,’ ” she says. “That is a beautiful feeling with a producer, when you know they’re excited to hear what story you will tell together and you feel an urge to rise to the occasion.”

That’s not to say that creating MAYHEM was all business. Walter recalls creating “Killah,” the ­electro-funk standout featuring fellow producer Gesaffelstein, in a session where Gaga let loose in a way he wasn’t expecting. “There’s that part in the bridge where she lets out this long scream, and we were all sitting there like, ‘Holy s–t!’ ” he says. “We even put a track in the song where we just put up a mic in the room while we were all yelling and laughing because that vibe was infectious.”

It’s easy to see why, even with only about a decade-and-a-half spent actively working in the music industry, Cirkut ranked No. 4 on Billboard’s Top Producers of the 21st Century on the Hot 100 chart, only behind veteran hit-makers Max Martin, Luke and Stargate and outpacing world-famous production stars like Jack Antonoff and Benny Blanco.

Yet when asked if he would be interested in receiving the same kind of household recognition as someone like Antonoff, Walter hesitates. “It’s a balancing act. Of course we all want recognition for what we do, but I also value my privacy,” he says. After a beat, he gestures to the well-appointed walls of his workspace. “Honestly, I just feel like my place is in the studio,” he says, smiling. “I like being here and making things that people love.”

This story appears in the Oct. 4, 2025, issue of Billboard.