Billboard Canada is celebrating the next generation of music industry leaders.

Billboard’s prestigious 40 Under 40 has long recognized the young executives and innovators shaping the global music business. Now, for the first time, Billboard Canada is bringing this recognition north of the border — highlighting the next wave of leaders driving the country’s evolving music industry.

Billboard’s 40 Under 40 list is coming to Canada. The inaugural edition will be unveiled in a special editorial package and exclusive launch event on November 20, 2025 at Soho House Toronto.

This evening will gather honourees, artists and key figures from across the industry for an evening dedicated to honouring achievements and fostering connection throughout Canada’s music ecosystem.

40 Under 40 will spotlight a cross-section of young executives, visionaries and leaders making an impact across the Canadian music industry — across labels, management, live music, streaming, radio and other sectors.

Nominations are open now. The deadline to submit is Friday, October 24, 2025. 

Read more and submit a nomination here. – Billboard Canada

Vancouver Eras Tour Audience Featured on Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ 

Vancouver makes an unexpected cameo on Taylor Swift‘s new album.

Last December, the mega pop star wrapped up The Eras Tour, after performing 149 shows over the course of 20 months — including Canadian stops in Toronto and Vancouver, where the tour concluded.

Now, those fans can hear themselves on her new album, The Life of a Showgirl.

The title track of Swift’s latest blockbuster project ends with her final address to the cheering crowd at the sold-out B.C. Place show.

In an introduction to the track on streaming services, Swift says she gets emotional hearing the crowd roar back, because being on the Eras Tour stage for the last time is a core memory for her.

“That always chokes me up because it transports me right back to that actual memory of standing on that stage for the last time on that tour that was so important to me and the tour that really inspired the album,” she shares.

The Sabrina Carpenter-featuring song tells the story of a fictional showgirl named Kitty, portrayed by Carpenter, who offers Swift’s inspired character the harsh truth of being a woman in the entertainment industry.

Swift performed three sold-out shows at the downtown Vancouver stadium after selling out Toronto’s Rogers Centre for six nights in November.

“Tonight, we get to play one last show … and we’re gonna make it count,” Swift told the Vancouver audience, marking the city as the last to witness Swift’s global Eras Tour.

Read more here. – Heather Taylor-Singh

Daniel Caesar Re-Enters the Billboard Canadian Albums Chart Following Surprise Pop-Up Concerts

Daniel Caesar is building momentum ahead of his next album.

The Oshawa-raised R&B star is back on the Billboard Canadian Albums chart this week with two re-entries after a series of viral, short-notice pop-up concerts over the past two weeks.

On the chart dated Oct. 11, 2025, his most recent release, 2023’s Never Enough re-enters at No. 80, while his fan-favourite debut Freudian (2017) lands at No. 99. Both albums initially peaked in the top 20, with Never Enough notching a top 10 position at No. 8.

Caesar has been making waves online with a handful of spontaneous outdoor concerts in promotion of his next album Son of Spergy, which releases Oct. 24.

The first concert was held at a packed Trinity Bellwoods park in his hometown of Toronto on Sept. 27, where Caesar played new songs like “Baby Blue,” “Root of All Evil,” “Who Knows,” and “Moon.” The singer played in other Canadian cities throughout the following week, with sets at Parc des Hirondelles in Montreal (Sept. 28) and John Hendry Park in Vancouver (Oct. 2), before heading south of the border to Montana and California.

Fellow Toronto artist and Son of Spergy’s executive producer Mustafa has been joining Caesar for the unconventional tour. Caesar spoke about playing pop-up shows with Mustafa in a recent Billboard cover story.

“It’s really not even for the fans. It’s for us on the stage,” Caesar revealed. “But this way we get to talk and figure out our ideas in public. It contributes to figuring out who we are and what we want to write about.”

In the same interview, he credits Mustafa as being one of the people who pushed him to collaborate with other artists, leading to a diverse and impressive list of collaborators on Son of Spergy that includes Sampha, Clairo, Dev Hynes (Blood Orange), Justin Vernon of Bon Iver, Rex Orange County, Yebba and more.

Read more on the chart achievement here. – Stefano Rebuli

YoungBoy Never Broke Again threatened to beat a fan after he kept getting pelted with objects during a tour stop in Columbus, South Carolina.

During YoungBoy’s latest performance on Thursday, the rapper paused his rowdy setlist to address a rambunctious fan in the crowd who kept throwing items onstage.

“I had to calm myself down,” YoungBoy said in part. “Throw one more thing up here, I’mma whoop your a–, boy. Throw one more.”

He went on to reiterate he would beat him down if he threw one more item. “You can play with me tonight if you want to,” YoungBoy continued. “This a YoungBoy show. I know you ain’t spend your money to come through this muthaf—in’ door to let no n—a do no p—y a– sh– here tonight.”

This isn’t the first time something contentious happened during YoungBoy’s MASA Tour. Without explanation, Chicago’s United Center canceled YoungBoy’s show slated for Sept. 23. The venue was criticized by YoungBoy’s manager over the act.

“@UnitedCenter bi—ed out. Shoutout to Joe Myhra @UnitedCenter. He didn’t want us to have fun. Scary,” Alex Junnier wrote, attacking Myhra, who appears to be the SVP of operations at Chicago’s United Center. “It’s ok, everyone; Joe just sits behind a desk and got nervous.”

Footage also recently emerged of a fan involved in a fight with an elderly security guard at YoungBoy’s Kansas City show. Per KCTV 5, a 14-year-old was detained for allegedly assaulting the T-Mobile Center employee.

Regardless, the Baton Rouge rapper heads to Florida to continue his lengthy trek this weekend.

Check out the video below.

@judgecarey

YB gets pissed during concert here in Columbia,SC for fan throwing stuff on stage #fypシ #youngboy #youngboyfans #youngboyneverbrokeagain #masatour #columbiasc #coloniallifearena #concerts #funnymoments

♬ original sound – JUDGECarey

A federal judge says Nelly should be reimbursed for hefty legal bills he spent defeating a “baseless” and “frivolous” lawsuit filed by one of his former St. Lunatics bandmates.

The case claimed that Nelly owed ex-bandmate Ali a cut of royalties from the rapper’s debut album Country Grammar. But the action was dropped earlier this year after Nelly’s attorneys argued it was obviously filed years after the statute of limitations had expired.

On Friday (Oct. 10), U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert W. Lehrburger wrote that the lawyers who filed the case should be punished for doing so, saying they had pursued the case against Nelly long after it was clear that they had no grounds to sue.

“It should have been patently obvious to [Ali]’s attorneys that his copyright ownership claim was time-barred,” the judge wrote. “After being placed on notice that the [case] stood no chance of success, [Ali] did not withdraw his complaint. Instead, his attorneys doubled down.”

Nelly (Cornell Haynes) rose to fame in the 1990s as a member of St. Lunatics, a hip-hop group also composed of St. Louis high school friends Ali (Ali Jones), Murphy Lee (Tohri Harper), Kyjuan (Robert Kyjuan) and City Spud (Lavell Webb). With the June 2000 release of Country Grammar — which spent five weeks atop the Billboard 200 — Nelly broke away from the group and started a solo career that later reached superstar heights with his 2002 chart-topping singles “Hot in Herre” and “Dilemma.”

Filed last year, the lawsuit alleged that Nelly had cut his former crew members out of the credits and royalty payments for the hit album. It claimed the star had repeatedly “manipulated” them into falsely thinking they’d be paid for their work.

But three of the St. Lunatics quickly dropped out, saying they had never actually wanted to sue Nelly and had never given legal authorization to the lawyers who filed the case. Though Ali initially moved ahead alone, he dropped the case entirely in April without explanation.

Though the case was over, Nelly’s attorneys refused to let Ali off that easy. They asked for sanctions — meaning legal penalties — against Ali and his attorneys over a “vexatious” lawsuit that “should never have been brought.”

“Plaintiff’s counsel succeeded in its frivolous campaign aimed at forcing Haynes to spend money defending Plaintiff’s ridiculous time-barred claims,” the star’s lawyer, Ken Freundlich, wrote at the time.

In the American legal system, each side usually pays its own legal bills, even including defendants who win a lawsuit that they feel they shouldn’t have faced. Only in rare cases, including as punishment for misconduct, do judges order the loser to repay the winner’s fees.

On Friday, Judge Lehrburger said Ali’s attorneys should face that kind of sanction, saying it should have been clear to Ali’s lawyers from the outset that the case was not viable: “Jones’s copyright ownership claim was groundless on its face from the time it was first asserted,” the judge wrote.

The judge heaped most of the blame on Precious Felder Gates, Ali’s lead counsel, who he said “was the driving force behind the action” and had caused Nelly to needlessly incur expenses to defend it.”

Judge Lehrburger pointed out that after it was made clear to Gates that her case was doomed, she filed an updated version that tried to hide that fact. The judge said Gates had “manipulated the pleadings” by removing key details about when Nelly had rejected Ali’s claim — the key facts that would indicate the case was too old.

Felder, the judge said, should face punishment for “vexatiously protracting the proceedings in bad faith by her attempt to obfuscate the facts she knew barred Jones’s claims and her subsequent refusal to withdraw the amended complaint in the face of overwhelming arguments that the claims could not possibly succeed.”

The actual sum that Felder will pay is unclear. The judge did not set an exact figure and said she only had to cover Nelly’s legal bills from after she re-filed her updated case. The sanctions must also be endorsed by a district judge, who could modify Judge Lehrburger’s findings. But with elite Los Angeles defense attorneys repping the star, the bill could easily be tens of thousands of dollars.

Neither side immediately returned requests for comment on Friday.

New music is dropping like autumn leaves this week, with releases from JISOO of BLACKPINK and Zayn Malik, Khalid and more artists hitting streaming services Friday (Oct. 10).

Starting with “Eyes Closed,” one of the world’s biggest former boy band stars teamed up with one-fourth of the hottest K-pop girl group on the planet. The lush ballad finds JISOO and Malik blending their distinct voices while delivering emotional lyrics about letting the past go for the sake of new love.

HAIM and Bon Iver also showed up with a perfectly matched collaboration, combining their respective powers to cook up the ultimate indie-rock creation. “Tie You Down,” however, is thematically opposed to JISOO and Malik’s duet, with the Haim sisters and Justin Vernon instead singing about letting go of a current relationship even though they’re still in love.

Other all-star collaborations this week include Gorillaz tapping Trueno and Proof for new single “The Manifesto,” as well as Alemeda and Doechii teaming up for fiery track “Beat a B!tch Up.” A Boogie Wit da Hoodie dropped a new song as well, interpolating Mariah Carey’s iconic hit “We Belong Together” in his post-breakup anthem “Part of Me.”

As far as new albums go, Khalid leads the charge with After the Sun Goes Down. The project comes just a little over a year after the R&B star released Sincerely, before which he took five years to follow up 2019’s Free Spirit.

With October fully underway, Billboard wants to know which piece of new music is your favorite this week. Tell us by voting for your No. 1 release below.