MCA acquired Parker McCollum’s full recorded catalog, including the albums The Limestone Kid and Probably Wrong, as part of a deal that extended McCollum’s recording deal with the label. McCollum recently released his fifth studio album, a self-titled project, which includes his top 20 Billboard Country Airplay hit, “What Kinda Man.” He first signed with the label (then called UMG Nashville) in 2019. – Jessica Nicholson

Live Nation acquired New Zealand festival producer Team Event, the company behind the country’s two-day music festival Electric Church. In a statement, Team Event director Callam Mitchell called the acquisition “an incredible opportunity to secure the long-term future of our business. Access to talent and the expertise from such a large global organisation will only take us to new heights.”

Chordal, a platform dedicated to modernizing synch licensing, making it “faster, more transparent, and more equitable for all rights holders,” according to a press release, has added several new licensing partners to its platform, including Nettwerk Music Group, Marathon Artists, Futures, Neon Gold, Avenue A, Anara Publishing, Mesh, DEEWEE, Involved Publishing, Maktub, EPM Music, Lo Fi Music and Bad Owl Records. Chordal previously struck deals with Kobalt, [PIAS], Reservoir Media, Primary Wave and Believe. In July, Chordal also announced a multi-year deal with TikTok that integrated InstantClear, its pre-clearance licensing system, into TikTok’s commercial music library to help artists, publishers and labels more easily monetize music in branded content.

ROXi, described in a press release as “the world’s first fully interactive TV music channel” that offers music videos on demand “on NextGen enabled televisions with an interactive app-like experience,” signed a deal with local news and sports provider Sinclair that will bring ROXi’s music channel to 31 U.S. TV markets, with additional markets coming later in the year. According to the release, U.S. broadcast business group Pearl TV will assist in rolling out ROXi in non-Sinclair markets. ROXi’s catalog boasts 100 million licensed songs through partnerships with Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and Merlin.

AEG and American Express (Amex) expanded their longtime global partnership across venues, festivals, touring, ticketing and sports. Through the deal, Amex will be AEG’s official payment partner across more than 40 assets and four continents, with card members enjoying festival perks including exclusive merchandise, offers and onsite experiences. Through the American Express Venue Collection program, card members will also receive benefits including ticket access, dedicated entrances and an exclusive concession offer. Amex will also remain the presenting partner of AEG’s BST Hyde Park festival in London.

TITOL, an artist brand and merchandise company, signed a strategic partnership with Complex designed to foster exclusive collaborations between TITOL’s roster of artists and brands across all Complex verticals, including events, merch and content, including magazine covers and the annual ComplexCon, which will be headlined this year by TITOL clients Yeat and Young Thug.

Spotify integrated with self-driving car service Waymo in three cities: San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix, with more to be added soon. Through the deal, Waymo customers will be able to link their Spotify accounts to Waymo via the Waymo app or in-car screens, allowing them to play their personalized playlists during rides.

“I was a few mistakes away from being some annoying guy at the bar who’s like, ‘I used to work with Post Malone,’ ” admits Ryan Vojtesak — the chart-topping producer better known as Charlie Handsome who has, in fact, quietly accumulated dozens of hits during the past decade. But after about eight years in Los Angeles, Vojtesak felt like he’d made the most of his time there; his list of credits, including one-offs with Miley Cyrus, Ariana Grande and Drake, had swelled, and he thought he had accomplished what he had set out to do in the city: “Get hot there and then move somewhere else.”

In 2021, he moved to Nashville, and since then, his career — and mentality — have shifted from sheer output to what he describes as “locking in.” Since moving, he estimates he has turned down offers to executive-produce 15 albums — “and pretty much all of them were artists that, if you would’ve asked me eight, nine years ago, I would’ve been like, ‘Holy s–t, this is a dream come true.’ ”

Born in Atlanta, the now elusive 38-year-old’s “favorite producer” growing up was Kanye West (now known as Ye). By his late teens, Vojtesak felt he had developed a strong enough self-taught skill set to start producing, too, “but I didn’t know anybody.” So he moved to the Phoenix/Scottsdale area and worked a construction job — until he met someone at a bank (“legit,” he assures) who kick-started a chain of introductions that included producer Lifted, who previously worked with Ye on “Mercy” and connected Vojtesak with G.O.O.D Music president Che Pope. In 2013, Vojtesak moved to Los Angeles and adopted his own producer moniker (he’s also a songwriter and musician in his own right) and, soon enough, he met two people who knew Ye and T-Pain. “Those were my two connects,” he says.

Still, connections didn’t equate to immediate success. “It was frustrating in the beginning,” he continues. “I didn’t have any money. I didn’t have any food. I weighed 50 pounds less because I wasn’t eating. It was like trying to solve a puzzle constantly.”

By 2014, Vojtesak scored his first credit, on Travis Scott’s “Drugs You Should Try It,” off the rapper’s second mixtape. “If you listen to the music, it’s emo,” Vojtesak says, noting that despite racking up early credits in hip-hop — with artists including Post Malone, Lil Uzi Vert, Gunna, Young Thug and Ye (on “Fade” from 2016’s The Life of Pablo) — he transcended any one lane. “As early as 2016, when I was working with Young Thug, we were doing folk songs — not all of them came out, but I was always on that.” He and Post even discussed a country project back in 2015, before Post’s debut album, Stoney, dropped — and nearly 10 years before he released one.

Vojtesak recalls accompanying Post to label meetings and the specific phrases Post’s team would use to market the then-unknown artist. “ ‘Reverse Taylor Swift’ was one, and ‘America’s Champion,’ ” he says with a barely stifled chuckle. “But really, the process is the reverse Taylor Swift, to an extent. Obviously for it to be a full reverse, Taylor needs to drop a rap album. Which I don’t think is going to happen.”

But the idea was there all along: Post Malone, country star. And along with it, Charlie Handsome: Nashville hit-maker.

After nearly a decade in L.A., Vojtesak found himself spending more and more time in Music City. “What happened was when s–t really got going, I got sick of paying taxes,” he admits. “So I weighed my options, and it was Miami or Nashville.” He had already worked with Morgan Wallen a few times — he says he “got lucky” meeting him in 2017 — and recalls thinking, “Morgan Wallen is probably the better artist for me… This could be something different and special and doesn’t have to sound like everything else.”

The first single they co-wrote was the title track to Wallen’s 2018 debut album, If I Know Me. On Wallen’s second project, the 2021 smash Dangerous: The Double Album, Vojtesak co-wrote seven tracks, including lead single “More Than My Hometown” and Vojtesak’s first No. 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart, “Wasted on You.” By Wallen’s third album, 2023’s One Thing at a Time, Vojtesak was credited on 15 tracks, four of which he co-produced, and on this year’s I’m the Problem, he’s credited on 23 tracks, 12 of them as co-producer.

His trajectory with Post has been similar. Vojtesak scored two credits on Stoney (plus one on its deluxe version) and one on 2022’s twelve carat toothache. But for Post’s 2024 foray into country, F-1 Trillion, Vojtesak was credited on all 18 songs, plus the additional nine for the extended edition, F-1 Trillion: Long Bed.

Of the 67 songs he has charted on the Billboard Hot 100 that he has now produced or co-produced, 22 are by Post and 20 are by Wallen, including their collaborative No. 1 smash, “I Had Some Help.” (Vojtesak first topped the chart as a producer in 2022 with Jack Harlow’s “First Class”; he has remained on the Hot 100 Producers chart for 111 weeks, peaking at No. 1 in August 2024 and now sitting at No. 3 on the Aug. 9-dated chart.)

It’s no wonder Vojtesak has locked in with Wallen and Post, two artists who have themselves become friends and collaborators in the past few years and — especially in the case of the former — tend to keep to themselves. (Vojtesak himself admits to leaving his phone on silent “at all times.”)

Perhaps most importantly, both artists have the “gravity factor,” as Vojtesak puts it. “That’s a big part of it for me. I just look for a voice that I really believe in… But everything has to go your way, you know? There were a lot of ones that didn’t work out. Like 2015 me, DM’ing Doja Cat like, ‘Yo, I’m telling you, you could be the biggest artist. We just have to lock in.’ It cold got ignored.”

He’s even more discerning today, especially with young artists. It’s all about “finding the vehicle to move things forward,” he says. “Even with Morgan, the early sessions, maybe even the first session, I was saying, ‘What if we did this?’ And he was like, ‘Man, I don’t know if this is for me.’ And it was like, ‘It’s just not for you yet.’ But it can be — and we can build toward that.

“Every year, I try to meet with young people and see who’s the next person I might be interested in,” Vojtesak continues. “And I already have, as far as music and ideas go, a bunch of stuff that, to me, sounds new. And it sounds like [something that] nobody’s doing.”

That desire to find his next “vehicle for moving things forward” is what led him to launch his own publishing venture, Krispy Pork Gang, which he says is “one of the best in the game” because of his contacts — especially Sony Music Publishing president/head of U.S. A&R Katie Welle (who signed Vojtesak to his publishing deal). “If I don’t know the person, she’ll figure it out,” he says. “If I’m offering you a deal, you’re probably going to have a hit song [that same] year. Otherwise, I wouldn’t feel like I was doing my job.” In partnership with Sony, he has signed songwriter-producers Hoskins, Joe Reeves and Jamie McLaughlin.

In Vojtesak’s view, his organic approach to signing talent is just as important as the hits they may help create. “Let’s say a new Justin Bieber single pops off and there’s one name on there that no one’s heard before. They’re going to get a call from all the major publishers,” he says. “And that’s the game side of it. What I do is, if I naturally get in touch with a person and we start working together and I [see] value in it, I might as well sign them now. I want to work with them anyway. I’ve yet to pick someone because they’re the hot thing.”

Vojtesak’s willingness to build with an artist — while being transparent about how to navigate signing offers that come along the way — is a direct result of his own start in the industry, when he had to figure out how the business worked on his own. He remembers being burned in the early 2010s after hearing a song on the radio that he had worked on, only to be told his parts had been rerecorded. “I didn’t have any money at all. Didn’t have a lawyer. I went to get advice from the wrong person and I was just naive,” he recalls. “The advice that was given to me was, ‘If you think you’re this good at music, just do it again.’ ”

Today, he has made it his mission to ensure that any artist, songwriter or producer he works with is never in the same situation. His advice: Hold out on any deal until you have a hit song. “And then you can negotiate for yourself,” he says. “But obviously, surviving is the hard part. Balancing a job and doing music? It sucks. It’s not easy.”

He encourages such professionals to publicly share how much money they are being offered from respective deals. “We allow our peers to get put in compromised situations where they’re not going to make as much money as they should — that happened to me early on and it pissed me off,” he says. “Because there was no transparency, I had no point of reference in my early negotiations. Same with catalog sales. I always ask people, ‘How much did you get?’ And motherf–kers do not want to say. And I’m just like, ‘How is that helpful to anybody?’ ”

In fact, one of the things Vojtesak is most proud of is “having a lot of money now” — not only because it can afford him the luxury of starting a Rolex collection (including one gifted by Wallen), but also because it signifies how far he has come on his own terms. His career, he says, “bought the freedom to relax a bit” and take care of his mother and brother, both of whom he bought houses for, in addition to his own, and all of which were “less expensive than what I could afford,” he says. He admits he’s only comfortable with his watch collection because he knows “I could turn around and sell them all.”

“When I talk to some of my old friends who make music, they’re like, ‘Man, you’re just looking at it for money and you’re not looking at the soul of it.’ I’m like, ‘That’s not necessarily true.’ And the argument I like to make to people who make super-artsy s–t all the time is, ‘You can make a song that a hundred people love and it means something to, or you can make a song that 20 million people love and it means something to, and when they’re having a bad day, they listen to that song. Neither of those are wrong.’

“The problem for myself, and I think people who in general are competitive, even with themselves, is if I don’t have a No. 1 song in a year, I’m going to feel pretty bad,” he continues. “But now if I don’t have three, I’m going to feel bad. But now, because I’ve had eight in one year, I need at least six a year. I’m cool with that number — for now.” His goal is to eventually have 50 No. 1 hits, which he says feels “doable” — and to make over $150 million from his production and writing work.

Although that sounds ambitious, he’s on his way. Vojtesak is working with Post on his upcoming second country set, which the producer teases has a “more traditional or classic country” sound. “There’s some ’90s vibes, some Toby Keith elements to it.” He’s ­especially proud of one song that modulates five times. “Every time I play it around a bunch of music people, they’re like, ‘Oh, s–t. What the f–k is happening?’ It’s this old Western type of record… I don’t want to speak too soon.”

And while he’s working on a project with his longtime friend and gambling buddy Marshmello (they often hit Las Vegas together), he’s still intent on keeping a tight and intentional workload. About a month ago, he says someone reached out from Ye’s camp asking if he wanted to collaborate again: “I was like, ‘No, I’m all right.’ ”

Though Vojtesak’s priority is to stay locked in with just a few superstars for now, he still has two that he would add to his plate any day: Swift and Ed Sheeran. But he’ll never reach out.

“I don’t try to interject or impose myself with artists necessarily; I don’t want people to do it to me, if I can be on some golden rule bulls–t,” he says. “My lawyer is Billie Eilish’s lawyer. I met her brother. I don’t try to reach out to them. They’re doing fine. And in the same way, I don’t want FINNEAS to come work on Morgan’s album.”

Vojtesak may be proud of his dominating run — in country music, specifically, for now — but his success is the very thing driving him to figure out what’s next. “I don’t really want to be responsible for making everybody sick of country and being like, ‘Wow, it’s oversaturated,’ ” he says. “With a lot of rappers in particular, I’ve had to have that conversation where I’m like, ‘Listen, you’re one of five guys who are all about equal success levels who want to do this right now.’ Just being in this space because it’s hot? It’s cyclical. Rap was hot for a long time. Now it’s this, but I want to make sure that I get to the next thing — and I want to get there preferably before everybody. Which I feel like I’ve done in the past — but now I have to do it again.”

This story appears in the Aug. 16, 2025, issue of Billboard.

In May 2024, the head-to-head dis track shoot-out between Drake and Kendrick Lamar escalated sharply. Drake released “Family Matters,” lobbing accusations of infidelity and abuse — but Compton’s finest was ready. Twenty minutes later, Lamar dropped the blistering “Meet the Grahams,” a 6-and-a-half-minute surgical dismantling of his foe.

The release caught one particular listener by surprise: The Alchemist, who had produced its eerily methodical beat. “I was getting a haircut,” he says on Zoom from his Santa Monica, Calif., studio, framed by shelves teeming with records. Though the descending piano sample pairs perfectly with Lamar’s dead-eyed calm on the track, the 47-year-old veteran producer says he sent the beat to the rapper well before the battle began — and had no idea Lamar was preparing to drop it.

“I heard it when you heard it,” he says. “It was crazy. I felt how probably everybody else felt: Whoa!”

That brief exclamation is about the most animated The Alchemist — known as both Al and Alc to his friends — seems to get in conversation. Today, sporting a salt-and-pepper beard, a white crew neck T-shirt and a red-and-white Pirate Barcelona snapback, with a joint in hand, there’s a tranquility about him, perhaps because 30 years into his career, he has seen it all — and has the freedom to do what he wants, whether that’s working with up-and-comers like San Francisco rapper Larry June, collaborating with the legendary Erykah Badu on her first full-length album in 15 years or hitting the studio with longtime friend Havoc for a new Mobb Deep project, the first since Prodigy’s death in 2017.

“I remember a time when I couldn’t turn down a couple hundred-thousand-dollar offers for anything,” he says. “And God bless that now I’m able to flow, do things my way and not have to need anybody’s money for anything. That’s like the best s–t ever, you know?”

Born Alan Maman, the Los Angeles native started out rapping as a teenager in a group called the Whooliganz. Around the same time, a friend dubbed him The Alchemist, a play on both his given name and his budding interest in the science of making beats. “I would’ve killed myself to get a beat from [DJ] Premier or Pete Rock when I was 15,” he says. Instead, he relied on himself and his drum machine for his group’s early demos. “Production was just something I was interested in. It was just another muscle that formed, and then gradually, I just let the rap muscle fizzle and went more into the production side of things.”

The Whooliganz caught the attention of Cypress Hill’s DJ Muggs, who took the young group under his wing and brought it on tour with his own Soul Assassins. Alc moved to New York in 1995 to attend New York University as a general studies major, but his real education was happening outside of the classroom, thanks again to Muggs, who connected him with hardcore hip-hop leaders Mobb Deep.

By then, the Queens duo of Prodigy and Havoc already had three albums to its name, but it was its fourth, 1999’s Murda Muzik, that would become Mobb Deep’s most commercially successful, going platinum the year of its release and debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard 200. The Alchemist landed two of his productions on it: “Thug Muzik” and “The Realest.” Although they were never singles and didn’t burn up the Billboard Hot 100, they gave the budding producer the street cred that started him on his path to becoming a household name.

“You could put it on a timeline, before and after me connecting with Mobb Deep,” he says. “So it was a big, big step for me. I was a huge fan of them, and you have to remember: Havoc is one of the best producers of all time. They, by far, did not need anybody to come in and bring beats. So I was allowed into that circle, and I always thank both of them.”

The Alchemist became known for his sample-heavy work, often mining disco, soul and R&B records from the 1970s and 1980s for snippets that became the foundations of his sturdy but atmospheric productions. Revered New York rappers including Nas, Ghostface Killah, Jadakiss and Fat Joe gravitated to his moody style and enlisted him for production, cementing his place in East Coast rap history, despite his California origins. “I was inspired probably more by the East Coast,” he says. “I grew up in L.A., so that’s always going to be the birthplace and the home. I feel more these days like a West Coast representative, but some people to this day might say, ‘What? I thought he was from Queens, New York.’ ”

Alc moved back to L.A. around 2010 to be closer to family and opened a studio in Santa Monica where he started “connecting with a totally new generation of guys that I locked in with.” Over the next few years, that included members of the rising young West Coast collectives Top Dawg Entertainment (then known better as TDE) and Odd Future; his work with their members, including ScHoolboy Q from the former and Earl Sweatshirt from the latter, built his reputation among a whole new generation of rappers. (On a 2019 song, ScHoolboy rapped, “Alchemist my favorite producer, and he my friend”; in a 2016 verse, Earl referred to him as “my uncle Alchemist.”)

While some of The Alchemist’s 1990s and early-2000s production peers have reduced their output, he has maintained his volume, consistently working on projects year after year. “First and foremost, you have to have some good beats,” he says when describing the not-so-secret to his success. “You really have to make [the artists] want to write. And luckily, I honed my craft long enough and developed a sound that some of the guys that are my favorite, they mess with.”

Some of these favorites include June, with whom he has released two collaborative albums, including this year’s acclaimed Life Is Beautiful with 2 Chainz, and Freddie Gibbs. The Alchemist and Gibbs released their first full-length collaboration, Alfredo, in 2020, and it earned them a Grammy Award nomination for best rap album. Alc appreciated the acknowledgment, his first nomination, but the practical implications meant more. “You get more money for stuff after [being nominated]. Records sell more. It gets your reputation out there,” he says. But at the end of the day, “If RZA told me my music was dope, it would be even better than a Grammy.”

The Alchemist and Gibbs began working on Alfredo’s follow-up two years ago, “but we were doing it quietly the whole time,” Alc says. “The last one was quick. This one, we took a little bit more time to stir the pot and just make it what we wanted, but we also wanted to keep it under wraps until the time was right.” Alfredo 2 arrived in July with little warning, “because with the short attention span of everybody, you don’t need a long stretch,” he says. “[We] just felt like we didn’t need to build up expectations. It’s like, they know what we did the first time. Let’s go. If we’re going to go part two, let’s just hit them with it, you know?”

Alc has released instrumental albums, solo Alchemist rap albums and one-off productions for other artists throughout his career, but fully collaborative albums, like those he did with Gibbs, have become his go-to. He credits Prodigy with opening the door to that concept with the rapper’s 2007 solo album, Return of the Mac, which The Alchemist produced entirely: “That was P giving me an opportunity. We reached a level in our relationship of work and friendship where he trusted me at that point. Even though it started as a mixtape, it became an album.”

Since then, many other artists have entrusted their album production to The Alchemist, sometimes going so far as to give him dual billing, like Gibbs, Action Bronson, Curren$y, Havoc, Boldy James, Armand Hammer, Roc Marciano, June, Earl — and soon, Badu, an artist Alc describes as “on my bucket list, eternally.”

The pair began collaborating almost two years ago after Badu was inspired by the beat from Mobb Deep’s “The Realest,” one of the songs that originally opened doors for The Alchemist and continues to do so, more than 25 years later. According to Alc, Badu and their mutual friend Cold Cris were together when “ ‘The Realest’ beat came on one day in the car, and she was like, ‘I got an idea.’ ” Badu came to L.A., while Alc traveled to Dallas, immersing themselves in each other’s worlds. “Her level of talent is unseen,” he says. “She knows no bounds, you know; can’t sit still. She might walk in and just go right to the keyboard and just play for an hour the most amazing s–t you’ve ever heard. It was cool because she makes beats, too.”

The first taste of the album Badu and The Alchemist produced together arrived in June with the single “Next to You,” which flips the “Realest” beat. “It’s crazy how things come full circle,” he says. The full album is nearly complete, though Alc expects Badu to tinker with it “until the 23rd hour and 59th second. And I support it fully. Out of this process is me trusting her process.”

He can relate. “We all work in the business of detail. There are things that I might be adding or subtracting that nobody will pay attention to, but it’ll bug the s–t out of me if I don’t fix it. And this is just the sickness that we have as producers, and I’m sure producers can relate. It might just be the slightest thing, but that’s our job.”

While the Badu album, titled Abi & Alan, is scheduled to arrive Aug. 29, Alc has a host of other projects in the pipeline. The new Mobb Deep album has “been turned in,” he says. “It’s just the production, me and Havoc together. We took it to the old formula of him doing the majority and me adding on, and man, just hearing [Prodigy’s] voice, I think people are just going to see how missed he is in this.”

He is also gearing up to release an album as Forensics, his collaborative duo with Yasiin Bey, formerly known as Mos Def, before the end of the year. “That album is done also, and it’s very special, very special. I think they’ve never heard Yasiin in this exact bag. It’s real personal for him, and we’ve already done shows, festivals, and you could see the effect on the crowd.”

And if that were not enough, The Alchemist may be involved, once again, with the music for the next Grand Theft Auto installment, coming from Rockstar Games in 2026. “I cannot confirm nor deny,” he says after a pause, dramatically arcing his arm through the air and ashing his joint. “Rockstar, they’re the greatest. Those are my brothers. You’ll have to see. I guess we’ll just have to see,” he adds, smirking.

Alc has spent years working to achieve this level of flexibility. The only label he’s signed to is his own, ALC Records (“I’m signed to me,” he says. “I don’t think I would ever sign to anyone”), with a digital distribution deal with EMPIRE. The father of two arrives most days at his Santa Monica studio around 7 a.m. to get to work and says he is “excited every day to have the job I have at this point in my career. And tomorrow, I could run over here, make a beat and do something, and it could change the trajectory or add on to the story.”

He still dreams of working with certain older, prestige rappers (“I’m a superfan, so if you could probably think of it and I haven’t worked with them, I’m probably thinking the same thing”), but he has spent the last five years collaborating with those he considers today’s genre leaders. “And that goes from a Billy Woods or a Boldy James up to a Kendrick Lamar or an Erykah Badu and anything Freddie Gibbs, Action [Bronson], Roc Marci [Marciano]. I could name Earl,” he says. “And I don’t take it light. I feel like it’s a responsibility.”

To meet that responsibility, Alc recognizes that sometimes, his job is to move aside. “You kind of have to figure out what works and how to then get the best out of [the artist],” he says. “It’s like this instinct that’s hard to pin down, but you have to follow their lead. Some artists I know, they encourage more feedback. Other artists, let them paint their painting and get out of the way.”

He also emphasizes the importance of cultivating real relationships with his collaborators beyond the studio. “In this business, you might meet people through the music and then just end up doing music, some even good music, some average, and then some people you develop friendships and relationships with beyond just making music. Earl and Larry are both people I consider close friends of mine. We don’t just do music together.” Most of his collaborations these days come not from blind A&R outreach but from friends linking him with rappers he then befriends before they even hit “record.”

“There’s something to be said about that,” he continues. “You probably make better music with your friends. You could still make great music with a stranger. But I think your chances, if you’re making something with people you’re friends with, you could really make something.”

This story appears in the Aug. 16, 2025, issue of Billboard.

LL COOL J is set to host the 2025 MTV VMAs, which will air live coast-to-coast from New York’s UBS Arena on Sunday, Sept. 7, at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT.

This will be his first time as the show’s solo host. He co-hosted in 2022 with Nicki Minaj and Jack Harlow. (The VMAs have favored hip-hop stars as show hosts in recent years. Minaj solo-hosted in 2023. Megan Thee Stallion did the honors last year.)

LL has a rich VMAs history. He won best rap in 1991 for “Mama Said Knock You Out” and was the first rapper to receive the Video Vanguard Award in 1997. He also performed on the last two VMAs telecasts – he participated in an all-star salute to hip-hop’s 50th anniversary in 2023 and led a 40th-anniversary salute to Def Jam Recordings in 2024. The latter segment also featured surprise guests Chuck D and Flavor Flav from Public Enemy.

This year, LL’s single “Murdergram Deaux” (feat. Eminem) is nominated for best hip-hop. The song was taken from his 2024 album THE FORCE.

LL has emceed many awards shows, most notably the Grammys, which he hosted for five consecutive years from 2012-16.

Additional performers, presenters and special guests will be revealed in the coming weeks.

Lady Gaga leads the nominations for the 2025 MTV Video Music Awards with 12 nods, followed closely by her “Die With a Smile” duet partner Bruno Mars, who has 11 nods. Other top contenders are Kendrick Lamar (10), ROSÉ and Sabrina Carpenter (eight each), Ariana Grande and The Weeknd (seven each) and Billie Eilish (six).

MTV has yet to announce this year’s recipient of the Video Vanguard Award, but Billboard’s Andrew Unterberger listed eight likely candidates – in ascending order of perceived likelihood. (Last year, he correctly predicted Katy Perry as the Vanguard recipient, so he knows what he’s talking about.)

This will mark the first time the show has been broadcast by CBS. It will also simulcast on MTV and stream on Paramount+ in the U.S.

The 2025 MTV VMAs are executive produced by Bruce Gillmer, Den of Thieves co-founder Jesse Ignjatovic, and Barb Bialkowski. Gunpowder & Sky CEO Van Toffler is producer. Alicia Portugal is co-executive producer. Jackie Barba is executive in charge of production. Wendy Plaut is executive in charge of celebrity talent. Lisa Lauricella is executive in charge of music talent.

This marks Toffler’s return to the show following a decade-long absence.