Drake and his Degrassi costars are looking back on their time in the Canadian TV show as part of the upcoming Whatever It Takes documentary.

A trailer for Degrassi: Whatever It Takes arrived on Wednesday (Aug. 27), and features Drake — born Aubrey Graham — recalling his time in high school, notching the role and even having one of his first kisses on the set of the show.

“I didn’t have a great time in high school — I just didn’t really fit in,” Drake says to kick off the clip. “And then, one day, my mom called me and told me, ‘You got the role.’ And I just grabbed my bag and left. What a wild journey that started.”

Drake also talks about a scene in which he’s kissing Lauren Collins, and he realizes that the actress was actually one of his first kisses. “She had to be one of my first kisses for sure,” he said. “Damn, I never thought about it like that.”

Cast members outside of Drake participating in Whatever It Takes include Dayo Ade, Stefan Brogen, Shenae Grimes-Beech, Jake Epstein, Shane Kippel, Miriam McDonald, Stacie Mistysyn, Melinda Shankar, and Amanda Stepto.

“Degrassi changed the landscape of television with real, unvarnished storytelling and did it unapologetically from a teenage perspective,” said director Lisa Rideout in a statement. “I was inspired by how fearless the series was in tackling issues that others wouldn’t touch. This documentary celebrates the iconic Canadian franchise while revealing the impact it had on the people who made it and the audiences who loved it.”

Drake starred as Jimmy Brooks from 2001 to 2008 in Degrassi: The Next Generation, playing the role of the school’s star basketball player who ends up in a wheelchair after being shot by a schoolmate. The wheelchair storyline allegedly nearly made him leave the show.

“There was a letter from a law firm in Toronto, and it was from Aubrey,” show writer James Hurst told AV Club in 2021. “It was an odd letter that said, ‘Aubrey Graham will not return to Degrassi season six as Jimmy Brooks unless his injury is healed, and he’s out of the wheelchair.’ I said, ‘Get him down here.’ He came in and was like, ‘What letter? I don’t know about that.’ And I said, ‘All right, I understand. But how do you feel about the wheelchair?’

Hurst continued: “He’s like, ‘All my friends in the rap game say I’m soft because I’m in a wheelchair.’ And I said, ‘Well, tell your friends in the rap game that you got shot. How much harder can you get? You got shot, and you’re in a wheelchair.’”

Back in 2023, Drake posted a voice note to Instagram in which he revealed that he succumbed to peer pressure and got high with a group of kids right before his audition for the show.

“I go back to this day when I was like 13 or 14. I had an audition for a TV show that ultimately shaped my life, and before my audition, I went to this kid’s house,” he recalled. “And I, out of, I guess, a desire to be accepted, I would succumb to peer pressure, and I got high with these kids right before my audition.”

Drake added: “I kind of wonder, like, if something bad happened that day or, you know, maybe I’m still high, maybe I’m in some coma. And this is just me playing out my ideal life. And yeah, that concept has stuck with me for a lot of years. I mean, it feels like reality, it feels tangible. But I definitely wonder sometimes.”

Degrassi: Whatever It Takes premieres at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 13. Watch the trailer below.

MusiCares has named Theresa Wolters as its new executive director, three months after its previous executive director, Laura Segura, left the company. Wolters became interim executive director in May, after having served as MusiCares’ vp of health & human services since 2022.

“Theresa embodies the spirit of MusiCares,” Harvey Mason jr., CEO of the Recording Academy and MusiCares, said in a statement. “She approaches her work with empathy and clarity, and she strengthens every story with facts that show why our work matters. Her leadership ensures that music professionals will continue to have access to the care and support they need — recognizing that financial struggles, health concerns and mental health challenges are often deeply connected.”

Wolters brings more than two decades of global health and humanitarian leadership to the role. At the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation, she helped shape global strategies that delivered lifesaving services to tens of millions of people affected by HIV and other infectious diseases. As a founding employee of Millennium Promise, she was integral to launching the Millennium Villages Project. Later, with the International Medical Corps, she directed health and refugee programs across five African countries.

“Every day, MusiCares has a life-changing, and often lifesaving, impact on music professionals,” Wolters said in a statement. “For 35 years, MusiCares has been driven by compassion and a relentless focus on solving the big challenges facing our community. I am truly privileged to work alongside such an outstanding team of committed professionals and know MusiCares will continually rise to meet the needs of those we serve.”

Segura and Wolters co-penned a guest column for Billboard, “Health Insurance Isn’t Enough — Music Also Needs a Financial Safety Net,” published in March. Segura was named executive director at MusiCares in 2020, after serving as vp of membership and industry relations at the Recording Academy.

MusiCares, founded by the Recording Academy in 1989, provides a safety net of critical health and welfare services to the music community. The U.S. based, independent 501(c)(3) charity offers financial grant programs, support resources and crisis relief.

The sun is shining on Ariana Grande fans Thursday (Aug. 28), as the pop star has announced a select run of tour dates in support of her 2024 album, Eternal Sunshine.

Sharing a tour poster on Instagram, Grande revealed that she’ll be hitting the road in 2026. Starting June 6 in Oakland, Calif., the Wicked actress will travel through Los Angeles, Atlanta, Chicago, Montreal and more North American cities before finishing with five shows at the O2 Arena in London in August.

“see you next year,” Grande wrote in her caption.

The musician also shared that a presale for shows in the United States and Canada will kick off Sept. 9, while a presale for the London concerts will go live Sept. 16. To take part in the presales, Arianators have until Sept. 7 to sign up on Grande’s website.

Fans have been waiting for this moment for quite some time, with Grande last touring in 2019. She has not properly hit the road since the Sweetener World Tour wrapped that December, and she has since expressed feeling hesitant to embark on another trek.

“I think my fans know that music and being on stage will always be a part of my life,” she told Variety last year when asked whether she’d be touring for Eternal Sunshine anytime soon. “I think the next few years, hopefully we’ll be exploring different forms of art, and I think acting is feeling like home right now.”

In July, however, the Grammy winner gave fans new hope. “Very silly of you all to assume that just because i have my hands full with many things that i plan to abandon singing & music … !!!” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “It may not look exactly like it did before but i much prefer how it looks in my head … so i’m working on a plan to sing for you all next year. even if it’s just for a little.”

Released in March 2024, Eternal Sunshine spent three weeks atop the Billboard 200, marking Grande’s sixth No. 1 on the chart. The album spawned two No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 with “Yes, And?” and “We Can’t Be Friends (Wait for Your Love).”

See Grande’s tour announcement below.

In 2018, RZA pitched the rest of Wu-Tang Clan on a five-year plan, which would corral all of the members that had been floating in and out of projects and serve as an exclamation point on their storied run. Actually, there were two different five-year plans — although the timelines were intertwined. “I called it ‘The Relay Plan,’” says the Wu’s longtime mastermind.

One timetable would involve the film properties focused on the groundbreaking New York hip-hop collective: a multipart documentary (which became Showtime’s four-­episode Wu-Tang Clan: Of Mics and Men in 2019), a TV dramatization of the group’s formation (Hulu’s Wu-Tang: An American Saga, which ran for three seasons through 2023) and “some type of feature film” that RZA says is still to be determined. The other plan would center on live shows — a multiple-tour farewell that would unite all 10 members and allow them to scatter upon its conclusion.

“That was my pitch to the brothers,” RZA recalls. It might have been a tough sell, considering how busy the members were: “Method Man was making movies, Ghostface [Killah] was making albums, people have families and all of that.” RZA himself was interested in getting behind the camera; this year, One Spoon of Chocolate, an action thriller he wrote and directed, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. But, RZA says, “I told everyone, ‘If we can carve out the time to match your schedules and lifestyles, would you agree to do this?’ And everybody said yes.”

Wu-Tang Clan’s touring renaissance began with NY State of Mind, a co-headlining run with Nas in 2022 and 2023, and continued in 2024 with the Las Vegas residency The Saga Continues. Yet Wu-Tang Forever: The Final Chamber, a farewell arena tour that began in June, has become the culmination of the group’s strategy: Not only has the show earned rave reviews and included top-line guest stars, it has been one of the hottest legacy tours this year.

From 27 shows in June and July, The Final Chamber grossed $30.6 million, with 245,000 tickets sold, according to Billboard Boxscore. The $1.2 million average gross per show exceeded the average for NY State of Mind ($897,000 per show) and significantly outperformed Wu-Tang’s 2019 tour alongside Public Enemy and De La Soul ($692,000). “It blew away our expectations,” says manager Tyler Childs, who started working with RZA in 2009. “We knew that their first-ever Madison Square Garden show was going to sell well. But Raleigh, N.C.? Tampa, Fla.? These are arenas and are not core Wu-Tang [markets], but these shows sold out quickly.”

RZA says the co-headlining tour with Nas “built up their momentum” and that the Las Vegas residency elevated the production value of the group’s stage show. (“We had actors, dancers — a samurai fighting during an orchestrated version of ‘Shame on a N—a’!”) When it came time to game-plan The Final Chamber, the goal was to translate those experiences into a thoughtfully curated arena set: RZA and his team would huddle in his Woodland Hills office, dozens of sticky notes with the Wu member names sprawled across a window, and concoct a set list that would tastefully showcase each MC — a process that made RZA feel like part “sports GM” and part “Broadway stage manager.”

The Final Chamber show was ultimately structured into four acts: a full-group opening blast of energy with multiple classics from Enter the 36 Chambers, then a soulful reprieve marked by Raekwon and Method Man solo tracks, then a “samurai” section highlighted by GZA’s Liquid Swords material and then a family-­first finale featuring Wu-Tang Forever staples “Reunited” and “Triumph.” As the tour made its way toward a Northeast conclusion in mid-July, the surprise guests became more notable: The Madison Square Garden show included Lil Kim, Big Daddy Kane, Redman and SWV, while the final stop at Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center boasted Lauryn Hill, LL Cool J and Freeway.

“We passed the mic because it wasn’t only about us — it was about hip-hop,” RZA explains of the guest stars. “There’s a stigma that hip-hop couldn’t be what it is — that from our generation, you couldn’t have an arena tour full of artists in their 40s and 50s performing. It was predicted that this would not happen, but Wu-Tang is living it out, and we’re doing what rock music did before us.”

The Philly performance could have been the final Wu-Tang Clan concert ever had ticket sales been anemic; now the show will be the end of the group’s first leg of an extended farewell run that will push into 2026. “There are a lot of different options,” Childs says, “certainly Europe, Australia, Asia and then definitely coming back to North America next year. What shape does that take? It’s going to be arenas again, and we want to go to markets that haven’t been repeated.”

At some point, however, Wu-Tang Clan will leave the stage together for a final time and both five-year plans will be complete. “’Bittersweet’ is the word,” says RZA, who celebrated his 56th birthday on the tour. “We’re getting all this love. But to be honest, [performing] is not easy. It’s not like I’m 25 years old. Method Man is in great shape, but he’s like, ‘Yo, I’m tired!’

“At the end of the day, I love the art and I love performing,” RZA continues, “but I know that there’s an exit to it. And mentally, we’re preparing for that.”

This story appears in the Aug. 30, 2025, issue of Billboard.

Halsey announced the dates for the 2025-2026 Back to Badlands international tour on Thursday morning (Aug. 28). The global swing will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the singer’s 2015 debut album, which debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and featured the singles “Ghost,” “New Americana” (No. 60 on the Billboard Hot 100), as well as “Colors” and “Castle.”

The Live Nation-produced tour will kick off with a special show at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Oct. 14, before moving on to gigs in Mexico City, Dallas, Atlanta, Philadelphia, Boston, Washington, D.C., Minneapolis, Chicago, Denver, Toronto and New York, winding down at the Fillmore Detroit on Jan. 17.

From there, the outing will move on to a European swing and wind down with three shows in Australia in mid-February. Tickets for the tour will first go on sale through an artist pre-sale kicking off on Tuesday (Sept. 2), with additional pre-sales running throughout the week before the launch of a general on-sale beginning on Sept. 5 at 10 a.m. local time here.

According to a release, Badlands is one of the only albums in music history to have every song RIAA certified gold, platinum or multi-platinum. The singer recently released a new video for the Badlands fan favorite “Gasoline,” with a promised second new video soon for another classic from that era, “Drive.” The album has always been a special one for Halsey, who in 2020 celebrated its fifth anniversary with their first-ever live album, Badlands (Live From Webster Hall).

Check out the dates for Halsey’s 2025-2026 Back to Badlands world tour below: