Metro Boomin’s civil rape lawsuit is slated to go to trial in September after “unsuccessful” settlement negotiations between the superstar producer and a woman who alleges he assaulted and impregnated her in 2016.

Vanessa LeMaistre’s 2024 lawsuit claims she blacked out after ingesting Xanax and alcohol in Metro Boomin’s studio during a recording session and later woke up to the producer (Leland Wayne) raping her. The producer denies sexually assaulting LeMaistre, and his lawyers have called the case a “pure shakedown.”

The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles federal court starting Sept. 23. According to a court filing from Monday (Aug. 11), attorneys for Metro and LeMaistre attempted to avert a trial by holding a mediation session with a retired judge in July but were unable to agree on a deal.

“After the mediation, the parties have continued limited settlement discussions, which have proven unsuccessful,” says the joint status report. “The parties are currently preparing the matter for trial.”

L.A. jurors will now be tasked with deciding whether Metro raped LeMaistre, who claims 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 bar 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 attorneys say in court filings that the producer and LeMaistre had fully consensual sex in 2016, and that the plaintiff concocted an “elaborate and grandiose plan” to fabricate assault allegations and demand millions of dollars from Metro while under the influence of ayahuasca eight years later.

Reached for comment on Tuesday (Aug. 12), Metro’s lawyer Lawrence Hinkle referred Billboard to his statement last year, in which he called the lawsuit “a pure shakedown.”

“These are false accusations,” said Hinkle when the lawsuit was filed in October. “Mr. Wayne refused to pay her months ago, and he refuses to pay her now. Mr. Wayne will defend himself in court. He will file a claim for malicious prosecution once he prevails.”

LeMaistre’s attorney, Michael Willemin, said in his own Tuesday statement that Metro “has failed to comply with basic discovery obligations” since the case began.

“Meanwhile, we and Ms. LeMaistre have pushed the case forward aggressively, and, because of that, we are headed towards trial on September 23, 2025,” says Willemin. “We look forward to holding Mr. Wayne accountable in front of a jury of his peers.”

Tom Sandoval famously pondered on The Traitors season 3 “I think I’m the only person that is musically inclined in this whole castle” during the creepy doll challenge. While that’s certainly not true of his competition as he and his cover band aim for the win on America’s Got Talent, Tom Sandoval and The Most Extras certainly had enough musical inclination to get them past the audition phase and into the quarterfinals.

“I am so excited!” the reality star and singer tells Billboard of advancing to the next stage of NBC’s talent competition show, before sharing he previously had some hesitations about competing. “I was very, very nervous. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to do it. I thought, you know, I might be facing a lot of backlash online, and I just decided this is such a great opportunity for me … and for the band to be out there.”

That backlash, of course, is from his May 2023 headline-making “Scandoval” — his affair with fellow Vanderpump Rules cast member Raquel “Rachel” Leviss, who also happened to be a close friend of Sandoval’s girlfriend of nearly 10 years Ariana Madix — which had him go from a fan favorite to Public Enemy No. 1 (or, as The New York Times called him, “The Most Hated Man in America“). Since then, the reality personality has been on a redemption tour of sorts to rehab his image, which included participating in season 2 of Fox’s Special Forces: World’s Toughest Tes, and the aforementioned Emmy-winning Peacock show The Traitors.

But he’s putting the past behind him and moving forward with his musical aspirations, which he also showcased at times on VPR, from the filming of his Charles McMansion video for original song “T.I.P” to playing the wooden penis flute and recording his trumpet playing for pals Lala Kent and James Kennedy’s song.

“I’m glad I did it,” he says of auditioning for AGT and getting a standing ovation from the judges for the band’s cover of A-ha’s 1985 Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Take on Me.” As for the band’s upcoming live performance, which viewers will be voting on? “Being able to perform again, when we come back, this is going to be [a] bigger performance, better and just overall, more — a lot,” he teases of the upcoming set, which will be a cover of The Weeknd’s “Blinding Lights,” which topped the Hot 100 for four weeks. “It’s going to be more extra than the first one!”

“We’re going to step it up as far as, like, just the overall production of our performance,” he explains. “Just really give it our all. We’re gonna be going a little bit different direction, music-wise. So I’m really excited for people to see the variety and the versatility that our band has.”

“You’ll have never seen us perform this song the way it’s going to be performed,” he adds. “It will definitely be our own. Trust me!”

Sandoval does have a goal in mind for the live performance beyond just moving forward in the competition. “I wanted to really showcase the fact that we’re a band that pretty much plays everything and anything,” he says of his group, which often covers classic pop hits. “So I wanted to have a nice little juxtaposition to what we did before, so in the sense of like, genre and era and things like that.”

One thing the reality star did say he’s working on making better this time is his vocals, which judge Simon Cowell critiqued as “weren’t great” after the cover band’s AGT audition. “I’ve been vocally training every day and just doing the best I can to keep improving myself,” shares Sandoval, who also says he “did not take offense” at all to the famously acerbic judge’s comments about his singing. “[I’m] always trying to get better.”

But for now, the performer says he’s just taking AGT one step at a time. “As of right now, to me, [the] ultimate reward is just getting out there and being able to play again,” he says. “And if we’re able to come back and play again and we go further, I will be that much more happier just going back out there and performing.”

As for what’s next for Tom Sandoval and The Most Extras? “We have a tour coming up. We’re going to be hitting about 20 or so different cities,” the former VPR star says. “We’re gonna work on recording some songs as well. Might do some originals too, but we’re definitely going to be recording and putting some music out.”

America’s Got Talent airs Tuesdays at 8 p.m. on NBC, and streams the next day on Peacock. The quarterfinals kick off on Aug. 19, with the first voting results revealed Aug. 20.

iHeartMedia exceeded its revenue guidance in the second quarter, with revenue rising 0.5% to $934 million, the company announced Monday (Aug. 11). 

Consolidated earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), a common profit metric that strips out the impacts of financing and accounting, rose 3.9% to $156 million, a result that was at the high end of guidance. 

Investors reacted positively to the results, pushing iHeartMedia shares up 24.5% to $2.03 on Tuesday (Aug. 12). 

“Our second quarter performance was solid and slightly ahead of our initial expectations as we continue to execute initiatives while navigating a still uncertain macro environment,” CEO Bob Pittman said during the company’s Tuesday (Aug. 12) earnings call. 

At the multi-platform group, which includes iHeartMedia’s core radio broadcasting operations, revenue fell 5% to $545 million, while adjusted EBITDA dropped 8% to $96 million. The digital audio group, which includes iHeartMedia’s fast-growing podcast business, fared better than broadcast, however. Revenue there grew 13% to $324 million, while adjusted EBITDA climbed 17% to $108 million. Podcast revenue alone reached $134 million, up 28%, while non-podcast digital revenue improved 5% to $190 million. 

For the third quarter, iHeartMedia expects a low single-digit revenue decline and adjusted EBITDA of $180 million to $220 million, which represents a year-over-year decline of approximately 5% at the midpoint. That $40 million range of adjusted EBITDA guidance shows “there is still uncertainty in the marketplace,” said Pittman. 

Alex Vitoulis, a Billboard archive research manager who stores his massive collection of LPs, cassettes and CDs in four storage units and two apartments, has a bent-corners problem. Almost every time he buys a record online, he says, the sleeve containing the music arrives creased, folded, crinkled, torn, frayed or “smushed in.” As a result, he spends days emailing Amazon, Walmart, Target and others, most of which offer refunds, but he wants replacements — which they frequently deny. “It’s absolutely crazy,” he says. “Ninety-eight percent of all my product comes damaged.”

In an earlier era of vinyl collecting, Vitoulis’ complaints may have seemed petty. If the music sounds good, who cares about the cardboard sleeve? But while turntable ownership among vinyl buyers grew from 23% in 2022 to 72% last year, and record-player listeners increased from 17% to 61% during the same period, according to a recent Luminate study, many in the vinyl business say LP collecting is as much about merch as it is about listening. As Michael Tolle, operations director for Mello Music Group, a Tucson indie label, puts it, vinyl collecting is  “like the shoe market, where people are buying it not just to wear them, but to resell them, or to have value, like baseball cards.”

Not to mention that as LP prices have grown, from an average of about $25 in 2017 to more than $31 in 2023, a 25.5% increase — slightly higher than the inflation rate — buyers are paying more attention than ever to every detail of the product. For customers in today’s vinyl market, “a bent corner is a big deal,” says Steven Parelman, owner and operator of 33 & 1/3 Record Distributors in Bucks County, Pa.

“What you have is just a completely different customer buying it and a completely different set of expectations surrounding the product,” adds Carl Mello, brand engagement director for the Newbury Comics music chain. “People want it to look good and use it on social media — ‘vinyl TikTok’ or whatever. You don’t want to do that with stuff that’s all banged up, especially when your friend has a nice one.”

Over the past few years, the vinyl-as-merch shift in consumer behavior has led to an evolution in the record-packaging industry, which includes distributors, retailers, e-commerce giants, box manufacturers, artists’ webstores and even postal carriers. All these links in the record-shipping chain must contend with the reality that LPs — which are flat, fragile and round — are encased in flimsy square containers. In 2022, a task force convened by the Music Business Association set guidelines on how to best ship vinyl, from box weight to tape width. One recommendation: “Identifying damaged goods and not shipping them out.”

“It’s been a fantastic challenge for us,” says Warwick Goldby, COO for Alliance Entertainment, a top record distributor that works with Walmart, Amazon and other top retailers and earned $1.1 billion in revenue last year. “The design of the vinyl itself is not great for large-scale distribution, and the format has not changed since it was initially designed.”

Many in the record-distribution business say the pandemic was a tipping point when consumers became accustomed to ordering albums online; with more vinyl customers ordering packages to their homes, more people noticed damage to the cardboard sleeves. Music purchases have been non-refundable for years, but customers were demanding replacement copies for bent corners more than ever. “Everybody started stocking up and vinyl became ubiquitous,” Tolle says. “If they order 15 vinyl, you want to make sure it’s a box inside a box inside a box, so you don’t risk ruining a $300 or $400 order.”

In the earlier vinyl-selling era, record labels and distributors shipped pallets of hundreds of units at a time to record stores, and it was hard to damage individual LP sleeves packed so tightly together. Today’s record market is more decentralized. Many top labels still use the pallet system, and hold anything back that is “visibly damaged,” according to Ken Glaser, an Alliance senior vp of sales. By contrast, artist webstores, indie retailers and individual sellers frequently ship DIY, wrapping smaller numbers of records in postal mailers. This can lead to more damage, particularly to the exposed cardboard sleeves. “That adds to the problem,” says Kevin Hopper, physical distribution lead for Symphonic, a record distributor. “Things are getting shipped directly to the consumers. Records get thrown around trucks or [are] left out in the lane.” 

Over the last year or two, Alliance has updated its shipping package designs. For one thing, its single-unit box now has oblong “wings” on the sides so it can “take hits without damaging the product,” according to Goldby, while its box for 10 or fewer LPs folds cardboard tabs over the records to hold them in place and include openings on the side flaps that act as “air cells” for cushioning. Meanwhile, its bulk unit, which holds more than 10 LPs, basically consists of a thin, long box on each side of the package, reinforcing the records inside with more insulation. “We’ve had all sorts of interesting designs,” Goldby says. 

Other distributors, as well as indie labels and stores, often use “mighty mailers” — cardboard shipping boxes with built-in flaps designed to hold records in place — to avoid even minor damage to the LP sleeves. Parelman pays $5.50 apiece for custom boxes that hold 30 records, “a fortune” for bulk sellers. But, he says, “what makes it not a fortune is that I get virtually no complaints.” At Twist & Shout, a Denver record store, “We’re one of the places that’s very, very thorough about our packaging in mail-order,” says owner Patrick Brown. “As long as you take care on the front end, it’s way less likely to be an issue. That’s a vanishing, small part of our problems.”

“As recently as maybe 10 years ago, it seemed like there was one size of record mailer,” adds Jay Millar, general manager of Sundazed Records, an indie label specializing in Sun Ra and surf-rock reissues. “Nowadays, you’ve got your choice of at least six different types.”

Millar tries to keep empty record sleeves on hand in case customers complain of damage, which doesn’t cost much, because printers often ship 10% extra sleeves with every order. “It kind of happens on its own,” he says. Parelman takes a different approach: His home dining-room storage area is filled with so many unsold LPs due to bent sleeve corners that he just takes 300 or 400 of them to Record Store Day’s annual summer camp and gives them away.

How can the record-shipping industry resolve this problem? Alliance’s Goldby has one idea: Labels could print up empty sleeves in bulk, and send spares to customers as needed. But this isn’t a popular idea, as labels would have to boost warehouse and storage space to accommodate multiple physical items that consumers may never need. “It became a daunting prospect,” he says, “and the majors were not that excited about it.”

Vitoulis, the New York archivist and collector, acknowledges that stuff happens, given that dozens of hands can potentially interact with every shipment. Top retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, Target and Urban Outfitters, none of whom responded to requests for comment, frequently use UPS and FedEx, introducing different distribution procedures to the record-shipping process. Vitoulis says that his postal carrier, irritated by having to deliver countless packages to Vitoulis’ apartment, which is located on a higher floor, “just tosses and kicks everything to begin with.” 

But Vitoulis wishes music suppliers were more willing to send replacement items than just offer to refund his money — which many have done. As he puts it, if he buys a limited-edition collectible and it arrives damaged, a refund is of little use when the product is sold out. “To me,” Vitoulis says, “people should be held accountable.”

Buddy Guy shreds onto Billboard’s Blues Albums chart (dated Aug. 16) at No. 1 with his latest LP, Ain’t Done With the Blues. Having turned 89 years young on July 30, the legend — who released the set on his birthday — adds his eighth No. 1 on the chart, which began in September 1995.

Guy’ 20th studio set starts with 3,000 equivalent album units earned in the United States Aug. 1-7, according to Luminate.

Guy, who received Billboard’s 1993 Century Award for artistic achievement, extends his chart history to nearly 63 years and six months, dating back to the debut of “Stone Crazy” on the then-titled Hot R&B Sides singles ranking in the Feb. 24, 1962, issue. The Chicago blues purveyor and Louisiana native ties for the eighth-most leaders on Blues Albums. Joe Bonamassa — who guests on the new release — boasts a record 29 No. 1s. Other artists on the album include The Blind Boys of Alabama, Peter Frampton, Christone “Kingfish” Ingram and Joe Walsh.

The new coronation follows Guy’s buzzy cameo in the critical and box office hit Sinners. The blues-heavy set, which includes Guy’s song “Travelin’,” has spent 13 weeks at No. 1 on Blues Albums — and gives way to Guy’s album at the summit.

Ryan Coogler wrote, directed and co-produced the movie, whose stars include Michael B. Jordan and Hailee Steinfeld. It’s set in the Mississippi Delta in 1932, when the Delta blues sound was emerging.

“Movies, man …,” Guy marveled in a recent Variety interview. “As a kid, I loved the Westerns, because I grew up riding horses in Louisiana on the plantation, and seeing those old cowboys like Gene Autry, playing the acoustic guitar while riding a horse … I can’t imagine that’s me now. It’s a dream come true, to be honest with you.

“When something like this comes along, I do it to help the blues,” Guy said. “I’m 100% trying to support it so the next generation of white or Black kids can hear it and know more about the blues. Anything we can do to help the blues stay alive, I’m for it.”