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Has Amazon Prime Day finally arrived? Not quite, but for those looking to save money this fall, Nike is currently running a rare sale bursting with impressive markdowns on fan-favorite sneakers, NBA apparel, and accessories. If you’re looking to upgrade your wardrobe to Team Check this holiday, we’ve rounded up the best Nike deals to snag before the sale is gone.

Shop the viral Nike “Panda” Dunks, the classic Nike Cortez shoe, Nike Tech apparel, awesome tote bags, and the popular Air Jordan 1 mid sneaker. Shoppers can save up to 40 percent on a wide range of Nike products on the brand’s site. To help make your shopping a little bit easier, we’ve compiled our favorite Nike deals worth buying during the sale event. Keep scrolling to shop our list.

Best Nike Sneakers Deals

Looking for new sneakers for the fall? There are plenty of Nike and Jordan favorites receiving price cuts for the upcoming holiday season. Shop Giannis Antetokounmpo’s signature basketball shoe, the super cozy Calm Mules, the classic Air Jordan 1 Mid and more up to 40% off.

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If you have been eyeing Nike’s popular tech fleece apparel, its currently 39% off. There’s also great shorts, sweatshirts and even basketball apparel on sale. Shop our favorite pieces to add to your wardrobe below.

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Complete your outfit with these stylish accessories. Upgrade your sunglasses, tote bag, hats and even a phone case for a discounted price up to 38% off. There’s no better time to add some fun accessories to your spring and summer look.

Kenshi Yonezu’s “IRIS OUT” debuts at No. 1on the Billboard Japan Hot 100, on the chart released Sept. 24.

The latest song by the “KICK BACK” hitmaker serves as the theme for Chainsaw Man – The Movie: Reze Arc, released in domestic theaters Friday (Sept. 19). “IRIS OUT” rules streaming with 23,953,292 streams — the highest ever for a solo artist and the fourth largest in Japan chart history. The track also tops downloads and video views, while hitting No. 4 for radio airplay. Total points for the song this week was 21,892, the highest single-week score of　the year so far.

Japan Hot 100 All-time Weekly Streaming Top 5

1. BTS “Butter” 29,935,364 streams
2. YOASOBI “Idol” 25,860,696 streams
3. Creepy Nuts “Bling-Bang-Bang-Born” 24,945,758 streams
4. Kenshi Yonezu “IRIS OUT” 23,953,292 streams
5. Official HIGE DANDism “Subtitle” 21,708,199 streams

2025 Weekly Total Points Top 3

1. Kenshi Yonezu “IRIS OUT” 21,892 pts
2. HANA “Blue Jeans” 19,152 pts
3. BE:FIRST “GRIT” 16,398 pts

At No. 2 is BE:FIRST’s “Sora.” Released digitally on July 7 as their 8th single, the CD version dropped Sept. 17, selling 82,253 copies in its first week and coming in at No. 2 for sales. The track soars 58-2, with downloads gaining by 1,434% compared to the previous week, streaming by 235%, radio airplay by 941%, and video views by 411%.

Hinatazaka46’s “Onegai Bach!” jumps 82-3 this week. The track off the group’s 15th single sold 527,439 copies — surpassing its previous release — to dominate sales, while coming in at No. 13 for downloads and No. 35 for streaming.

Number_i’s “Numbers Ur Zone” bows at No. 4. Released Sept. 22 as the lead single off the trio’s second full album called No.II, the song hits No. 1 for radio, No. 2 for downloads and video, and No. 26 for streaming. Four other tracks by the group are charting this week: “U.M.A.” climbs 54-32 and “GOD_i” is at No. 48 (both also included in No.II), “BON” is at No. 77, and “INZM” is at No. 91.

HANA’s “Blue Jeans” slips two notches to No. 5, but continues to hold in the top 5 for the tenth consecutive week. Meanwhile, “Kenso” by Nijidatoka, a Nijisanji virtual band, debuts at No. 9. The track off the group’s first single “Kyoso RIOT” launched with 43,273 copies to reach No. 3 for the metric and also comes in at No. 30 for downloads.

The Billboard Japan Hot 100 combines physical and digital sales, audio streams, radio airplay, video views and karaoke data.

See the full Billboard Japan Hot 100 chart, tallying the week from Sept. 15 to 21, here. For more on Japanese music and charts, visit Billboard Japan’s English X account.

For more than 40 years, the members of thrash metal costumed rock group GWAR have been schlepping their giant intergalactic monster costumes across the planet as part of a wildly over-the-top theatrical show featuring the beheading and/or comically absurd disemboweling of every president from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump.

The band’s fans gleefully push to the front of their gigs in order to get blasted with any manner of fake bodily fluids that erupt from the towering, cartoonish dummies. But over the weekend, some folks who apparently just discovered the band, allegedly got into a tizzy over one aspect of GWAR’s current show — a mock beheading of Tesla CEO and former DOGE boss Elon Musk. The tweets appeared to be an attempt to gin up outrage over the formerly uncontroversial bit, at a time when Donald Trump and the chairman of the FCC have been sending ominous messages about their view of the limits on the First Amendment’s right to free speech.

“The idea that GWAR is normalizing violence is patently absurd,” lead singer Michael “Blöthar the Berserker” Bishop tells Billboard about a hair-on-fire headline from the New York Post tabloid earlier this week that read: “Heavy Metal Band Stage Phony Beheading of Elon Musk, Murder Trump in Shocking Festival Performance.”

The show in question was the band’s appearance at the Riot Fest in Chicago, which, as noted above, was in keeping with their performance style of the past four decades, during which they have taken their prop chainsaws and swords to public figures left, right, and center, including former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, Justin Bieber and Pope Francis, as well as America’s most recent non-Trump president, democrat Joe Biden.

The Post piece was seemingly inspired by a tweet in which someone — credited as <a href=”https://<a href=”https://ubpass.co/billboard” target=”_blank” rel=”noopener noreferrer”> <img src=”https://i.imgur.com/2HpFicp.png” alt=”Billboard VIP Pass” style=”max-width: 100%; height: auto; display: block;” /> @hottakekaren, which many suspected was a fake account — said the band’s act was not “edgy, it’s grotesque and reckless and normalizes violence against a real person. This is not okay.”

Bishop was both annoyed and surprised by the alleged outrage, noting that the band have been at this for a long time — and that GWAR has always been, like punk rock in many ways, “chaotic and indecipherable” in its politics. “We’re not millionaires that are afraid of what people are going to say when they see what we do,” he says, questioning if the tweets allegedly denigrating the band were posted by actual humans with a bone to pick or bots. “Yeah, it pissed me off! We’re a group of artists that makes art, and it’s really the idea that what we have done is normalizing violence… there’s nothing normal about the violence that goes on at a GWAR show. It’s a cartoon, it’s Looney Tunes.”

The fake blood-spurting bits are the way they are for a reason, he says: because the band doesn’t want people to see what their doing and think of it as a realistic depiction of violence. “It’s a parody of violence,” Bishop says of the seven-foot-tall Musk puppet in a DOGE shirt who got his prop head lopped off — in a costume the singer says is frequently switched out to represent whoever the band says it does based on the story they’re telling on that album cycle. “It’s trying to make violence into a spectacle and show humanity’s absolute absurdity. That’s what GWAR is, it’s absurdism. To say it’s normalizing violence is really reaching.”

And while it’s nothing new, the headline came in the midst of the national debate over ABC pulling Jimmy Kimmel off the air last week, after the late night host made a joke related to the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The joke resulted in Nexstar, which owns more than two dozen ABC-affiliated stations, saying they were going to yank Kimmel’s show indefinitely. A day after the monologue, FCC chair Brendan Carr appeared on YouTuber Benny Johnson’s show and appeared to make a threat to revoke ABC affiliate licenses over Kimmel’s comments.

“What people don’t understand is that the broadcasters … have a license granted by us at the FCC, and that comes with it an obligation to operate in the public interest,” said Carr. “When we see stuff like this, look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. These companies can find ways to change conduct, on Kimmel, or there’s going to be additional work for the FCC ahead.” The comments from Carr were interpreted by many as a threat to chill free speech, or, as similar conduct featuring informal government pressure to influence private action is referred to: “jawboning.”

“The First Amendment protects expression in the form of music,” Kevin Goldberg, vice president and First Amendment expert at the non-partisan First Amendment education organization Freedom Forum tells Billboard. “What you’re seeing and what you’re hearing [from GWAR] is fully protected by the First Amendment, as is the right to engage in parody and satire as part of that performance.”

At at time when Trump — who has been the target of multiple assassination attempts — has complained that “97%” of what the media says about him is negative, Goldberg says that while GWAR’s act is protected speech, there are two unprotected areas that are not covered by the First Amendment that have been bandied about over the past two weeks. He says both of them are currently being widely misinterpreted.

While the unprotected area of speech is “much narrower” than you might think based on the current conversations in the public sphere, Goldberg says one of them, “true threat,” requires the person using that speech to intend or know that their speech is going to make someone fear for their safety. “That’s a very specific type of threat, and parody and satire is so rhetorical and over-the-top that it can’t be taken plausibly by the subject to be an actual threat,” he says.

The same is true for the other unprotected area, “incitement to imminent lawless violence” — which, he says, by its very name requires an intent to have people go and immediately carry out some kind of lawless act. “That’s not what’s happening here. That’s not what they want people to do,” Goldberg says of GWAR. “They want people to understand that they’re making a political statement and that’s why we have this broad protection for speech that may even seem like it incites violence because we want to protect political speech. And that’s what I would say this is, political speech.”

Yes, it it unconventional and perhaps startling speech, but that’s the point. Though, Goldberg adds, that “everything is contextual at all times,” meaning that a gesture that might have been laughed off as pure, fantastical parody might feel a bit different during a time when actual, deadly, political violence has shaken both democrats and republicans over the past few years.

“GWAR needs to understand that in this moment in time suggesting the beheading of the president or Elon Musk could be taken more seriously by some members of the public who have no idea of their intent based on past history,” says Goldberg. “Their [GWAR’s] understanding is, ‘We’ve always done it this way — but now you’re paying attention.’”

Regardless, Goldberg adamantly reiterated that, of course, what GWAR is doing is “completely” protected by the First Amendment, even if it is an “extreme version” of political speech. Not for nothing, Goldberg notes that back in the 1985, it was democrats — led by Parents Music Resource Center co-founder Tipper Gore — who formed a bipartisan U.S. government committee aimed at policing children’s access to music that they deemed to have sexual, violent or drug-related content.

“The threat of censorship has always lingered over the music industry from both sides of the political aisle,” says Goldberg.

GWAR singer Bishop says he’s “absolutely” worried that the nation’s bedrock free speech rights are imperiled at the moment. In a Truth Social rant posted just before Kimmel’s return on Tuesday night (Sept. 23), Trump — who the comedian noted in his emotional monologue, said in 2022, “if we don’t have free speech, then we just don’t have a free country” — took another ominous shot at the show and parent company ABC.

“He [Kimmel] is yet another arm of the DNC and, to the best of my knowledge, that would be a major Illegal Campaign Contribution. I think we’re going to test ABC out on this. Let’s see how we do,” Trump wrote in a comment that some media pundits took as a threat of further legal action against the Disney-owned network. (ABC News settled a $16 million defamation lawsuit filed by Trump last year over remarks from anchor George Stephanopoulos inaccurately claiming that the president had been found civily liable for raping writer E. Jean Carroll.)

While Bishop doesn’t see anything funny about what he feels is a clear and present danger to free speech right now, the organizers of Riot Fest took a very different tack when responding to the alleged outrage over the set.

“Like I know this is a rage bait engagement farming twitter account, but “GWAR crossed a major line” is one of the funniest f–king things I’ve ever heard,” read one mocking tweet among many from the fest, with another adding, “The dumbest people on the internet are still mad today. Got to love it. As long as they keep posting that awesome video and mentioning our name for the free publicity it’s a win for me.”

The trial has just begun in a rape lawsuit against Metro Boomin – but attorneys for the superstar producer’s alleged victim are asking for a mistrial, saying a defense lawyer made improper claims about her sexual history during opening arguments.

A jury in Los Angeles federal court heard opening arguments on Tuesday (Sept. 23) for the civil case brought by Vanessa LeMaistre, who alleges she blacked out after ingesting Xanax and alcohol in Metro Boomin’s studio during a 2016 recording session and later woke up to the producer (Leland Wayne) raping her.

Metro denies the claims, saying the case is a “classic celebrity shakedown” that LeMaistre concocted while hallucinating on ayahuasca. He has always maintained that their 2016 sexual encounter was consensual – but lawyers for LeMaistre say Metro’s team went too far during opening statements on Tuesday by arguing that the two had also had consensual sex before that night at the recording studio.

In all sexual violence trials, there are strict rules that limit the defense from alluding to an alleged victim’s sexual history or apparent proclivities. Typically, a defendant needs to ask permission from the judge before bringing up any sexual conduct that is not tied to the specific incident at issue in a trial.

LeMaistre’s attorneys – led by Michael Willemin of the powerhouse plaintiff’s firm Wigdor – say in a mistrial motion filed late on Tuesday that Metro’s lawyers did not properly seek judicial approval before making these statements about their prior sexual history (which LeMaistre denies).

“If plaintiff’s counsel was provided fair warning and a [hearing] was held, the claim that plaintiff engaged in consensual sex with the defendant prior to the sexual assault would have been precluded,” Willemin writes. “And, even if the court made the determination that the claim of consensual sex pre-dating the sexual assault was far more probative than prejudicial, plaintiff would have known such information was going to be permitted and would certainly have addressed it in plaintiff’s opening statement.”

Willemin says there’s “no possible way to undo” the prejudice that Metro’s opening caused, since jurors cannot unhear this statement. He’s asking Judge R. Gary Klausner to declare a mistrial and start the whole case over again.

Judge Klausner will likely address this issue before the trial is set to resume on Wednesday (Sept. 24). Metro’s lawyers from the firm Sanders Roberts did not immediately return a request for comment on the matter.

LeMaistre sued Metro in 2024, claiming she met the producer in Las Vegas in the spring of 2016. LeMaistre says she confided in Metro about the recent death of her 9-month-old son, and that they “bonded over the ability of music to help people in their darkest moments.”

But LeMaistre’s belief about her bond with Metro allegedly “shattered” the following September, when the producer invited her to watch him work in his California recording studio. LeMaistre says she had a shot of alcohol and half a tablet of Xanax, then blacked out, waking up on a bed in a different location “completely unable to move or make a sound” while Metro raped her.

LeMaistre alleges she became pregnant as a result of the assault and had an abortion in November 2016. Notably, the lawsuit claims the attack is referenced in Metro’s 2017 song “Rap Saved Me” with Offset, 21 Savage and Quavo.

The lyrics in question, rapped by 21 Savage and Offset in the chorus, are: “She took a Xanny, then she fainted/ I’m from the gutter, ain’t no changing/ From the gutter, rap saved me/ She drive me crazy, have my baby.”

The lyrical reference in LeMaistre’s lawsuit is surprising, since Metro is a music producer and songwriter but does not typically write lyrics or rap himself. Metro has denied writing the “Rap Saved Me” lyrics, as well as the rest of LeMaistre’s allegations.

Metro’s position is that LeMaistre has transformed a consensual sexual encounter into a false tale of rape in order to squeeze money out of him. He’s focused heavily on LeMaistre journal entries from when she was high on ayahuasca in 2024, in which she detailed a “plan” to sue Metro for more than $3 million.

The issue of ayahuasca took center stage when LeMaistre testified in court on Tuesday following opening statements. According to a report by independent journalist Meghann Cuniff, LeMaistre insisted from the witness stand that she did not hallucinate on the drug. Rather, said LeMaistre, the ayahuasca merely helped her come to terms with the fact that her nonconsensual sex with Metro had been rape.

Metro himself is due to testify during the trial, which is slated to last four days total.  

Hollywood & Mind will bring together top creatives, including Ashley McBryde, Ashley Gorley, Gayle and Chase McDaniel, and leading music executives for its inaugural Nashville event on Oct. 22.

The organization, which bills itself as “the entertainment industry’s mental health coalition for innovation,” holds an annual summit in Los Angeles, and with the Nashville event launches its Hollywood & Mind On Location series, which will travel to various cities across the country. Across its franchises, Hollywood & Mind brings together stakeholders from the entertainment and mental health fields for conversations that establish best practices and solutions to bring about mental wellness.

The daylong Nashville experience, which will take place at neighboring venues Anzie Blue and the Belcourt Theatre, is geared toward songwriters, artists and executives and will also include singer-songwriters Maggie Rose, Sam Williams, Stella Prince, Madeline Edwards and Summer Joy. Among the executives taking part are BMG/BBR’s Katie Kerkhover, FEMco’s Leslie Fram, The Core Entertainment’s Kevin “Chief” Zaruk, Q Prime South’s John Peets, Belmont University’s Brittany Schaffer, YouTube’s Margaret Hart, Warner Music Nashville’s Mike Dupree, Porter’s Call’s Beth Barcus and NAMI Tennessee’s Katrina Gay.

“Nashville is the songwriting capital of the world, and our team has been on the ground immersing in the community to better understand both the unique challenges to their wellbeing and various ways they’re using their voices to elevate mental health out in the culture,” said Cathy Applefeld Olson, founder/CEO of Hollywood & Mind in a statement. “The big heart and collaborative nature of this city’s artistic alliance make Nashville the perfect place to debut our ‘On Location’ tour and we’ve created a program whose impact will resonate long after October 22.” (Applefeld Olson is also a Billboard contributor.)

The day will open with a songwriters workshop featuring Prince, Joy and Hollywood & Mind’s Jaxon J. Huffman. Other sessions will include a panel with Hart, McBryde, Peets and Dupree on the power of visual storytelling, as well as a conversation on artist wellbeing featuring Gayle and Williams, moderated by Fram. Olson will conduct a fireside chat with Gorley about his mental health journey.

For the full lineup of sessions, as well as how to purchase tickets to Hollywood & Mind On Location In Nashville, go here.

Nashville sponsors include The NMPA S.O.N.G.S. Foundation, The FRESH Program, UTA Foundation, Anzie Blue, FEMco, and Love You Three. Additional Hollywood & Mind partners include NAMI and Creators Capital.

Past Hollywood & Mind events have featured fireside chats with Demi Lovato, Marlon Wayans, and Mike Posner, as well as speakers including Rachel Platten, Tiffany Hadish, Shinedown’s Brent Smith, Master P, Colton Underwood, Valerie June, Charlamagne Tha God and many others.