Music

Lil Baby is making a name for himself in the music industry, which brings criticism from others about his music.

On Thursday, the 26-year-old My Turn rapper caught wind of a video clip from influencer Logan Paul criticizing his music last year during an episode of his podcast, Impaulsive. 

“Lil Baby, he’ll pop up on my Spotify…I’m scrolling through, and I…can’t get away from Lil Baby songs,” Paul said during a discussion about the saturation of hip-hop artists.. “I’m all for new artists but this one in particular I have no idea what he’s saying. I have none. And it all sounds the same, his tone is the same. It’s all the same. I give him a year.”

Paul’s comments lit a fire under the Grammy-nominated rapper to simply make more millions from his music.  Baby responded by tweeting, “Logan who?” before adding, “More like give em a year to have 100ms.”

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Hootie & the Blowfish are here to help you stoke your ’90s nostalgia and get a tan at the same time.

The group is hosting HootieFest: The Big Splash, a “destination concert vacation event” that will take place at Moon Palace Cancún, Mexico from January 26-29.  The four-day event will include three headlining performances from Hootie on the beach, as well as daytime entertainment and nightly concerts by Barenaked Ladies, Toad the West Sprocket, Spin Doctors, Better than Ezra, Sister Hazel, Blues Traveler, and Toadies.

Pool parties, tequila and beer tastings, beach games and yoga sessions are also part of the entertainment at the event, which is sort of like being on one of those music cruises, except you stay in one place.

“We were blown away by the response from fans during our last tour,” Hootie singer Darius Rucker says in a statement, referring to their 2019 Group Therapy tour.  “It was so special to be back on stage together and to know that people still love the music as much as we do. What better way to keep that celebration going than in Mexico!?”

Packages including accommodations, concert access, transportation and more go on sale Thursday, July 15 at 1 p.m. ET  A 24-hour pre-sale starts Wednesday a 1 p.m. ET. For more information, visit Hootiefest.com.

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Lil’ Mo tapped T-Pain and rapper and radio personality Fatman Scoop for assistance on her new single, “Shining Star.” 

T-Pain adds his signature Auto-Tune to the upbeat track and mentions buying a special woman a Hermès Birkin bag. Fatman Scoop keeps the energy going with ad-libs, while Lil’ Mo lyrically describes herself as a woman who lives unapologetically.

“She glows, she glitter, she shine / She sexy, she gorgeous, she fine / She loyal she don’t break no bonds/ Pretty girls like her hard to find,” Mo sings on the bridge. 

According to Lil’ Mo’s Instagram, her son, Justin, lent background vocals to “Shining Star,” which she calls a “summer anthem.” “Ladies this GLOW is contagious. Come shine,” Mo concludes the post.

Lil’ Mo also shared a video clip of her appearance on N.O.R.E‘s Drink Champs podcast. She discusses the high and lows of her career, including meeting Missy Elliot and signing to Elektra Records, which released her 2001 debut album, Based on a True Story. 

“Cuz Missy can really sing,” Mo says in a clip, shared on Instagram. “She was just like, ‘yo, I’m bout to go on tour. You trying to go?’ and I was like yea. I quit beauty school literally right on the spot. I was like I ain’t going back. I told them I was gone be famous anyway.”

Lil’ Mo’s episode of Drink Champs airs tonight at 10 p.m. EST on Revolt TV.

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Kane Brown joins a star-studded list of presenters as part of the upcoming 2021 ESPYS Presented by Capital One, the awards show that celebrates the best in sports.

Kane’s the sole presenter from the country genre, but he’s not the only musician: Rapper DaBaby will also hand out an award. Other celebrity presenters include actor Taye Diggs, YouTube star Dude Perfect, actor/comedian Tracy Morgan, Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts and many more.

The 2021 ESPYS, which will be hosted by actor/producer Anthony Mackie, is set to air on ABC on July 10. The show will take place in New York City.

Kane’s passion for sports has been well documented over the years. Specifically, when it launches in October, his 2021 Blessed & Free Tour will highlight his love of basketball. The tour route includes stops at all 29 NBA arenas, making Kane the first-ever country star to hit each one on a headlining tour.

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Dua Lipa is ready to take her talents to the big screen.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the singer has signed on to make her acting debut in a new spy thriller called Argylle.

Dua will be in good company for the Matthew Vaughn-directed flick. She’ll join an all-star cast including Henry Cavill, Sam Rockwell, Bryce Dallas Howard, Bryan Cranston, Catherine O’Hara, John Cena and Samuel L. Jackson.

THR reports that not only will Dua show off her acting skills for the first time, she’ll be bringing her tried and true music skills to film as well, providing original music for the title track and score.

The film is based on an upcoming book by Ellie Conway about “the world’s greatest spy Argylle as he is caught up in a globe-trotting adventure.” It’s planned as the first of three films in a franchise.

Argylle will begin shooting this August in Europe.

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The CMT Music Awards show is going through changes in 2022.

Variety reports that the show will broadcast on April 3, 2022, which is a departure from its usual June airing. The announcement comes just a couple weeks after Viacom revealed that the annual country music awards show is moving from its original home of CMT to CBS, the former’s much larger sister broadcast network.

Of course, April is the month that CBS formerly aired another country music awards show: The ACM Awards. The ACMs most recently aired on CBS in April 2021, but the network and the Academy subsequently parted ways after failing to agree on terms for a deal renewal. 

There’s no word yet on whether the ACMs will keep its usual April broadcast slot or move to another time of year in order to avoid competition with the rescheduled spring CMT Awards. It is also not yet known where the ACMs will air next year, though per Variety, the Academy has reportedly been in negotiations with NBC.

Meanwhile, the CMT Awards are riding the momentum of the success of their 2021 show, which saw a ten-percent increase in total viewership on CBS and was the top social program of the night across TV.

ViacomCBS has also announced a string of special programming, dubbed “Country Music Week,” to surround the next CMT Awards.

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Twenty One Pilots have premiered the video for “Saturday,” a track off their new album, Scaled and Icy

The clip finds Tyler Joseph and Josh Dun performing a concert for a party inside a submarine when their underwater vessel is attacked by a giant sea creature that looks a lot like the dragon on the Scaled and Icy cover.

Ever the professionals, the duo keeps playing even as the sub fills up with water, before they eventually swimg to the surface.

You can watch the “Saturday” video streaming now on YouTube.

Scaled and Icy, the follow-up to 2018’s Trench, was released in May. It also includes the lead single “Shy Away.”

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2021 is definitely a comeback year for Jazmine Sullivan, who in January released her first project in six years, Heaux Tales.

The vulnerable EP features transparently explores the singer’s personal experience with heartbreak and love, which landed Sullivan a spot on Rolling Stone’s 2021 Hot List. 

“In my music, I feel like I can talk about things that I wouldn’t normally have talked about and just be proud of who I am, and own who I am,” Sullivan tells Rolling Stone. “When I’m making music and I’m in a studio, it really feels so personal.”

“I’m just literally telling my story, and it’s for me,” she explains. “I know people are going to hear it, but it’s just me getting out these thoughts and these feelings that are inside of me.”

Heaux Tales features duets with fellow R&B vocalists Ari Lennox, H.E.R. and Anderson .Paak. The EP is also intertwined with interludes from Lennox and other women expressing their needs and wants in regards to love sex and taking control of one’s body. But Sullivan says her favorite ‘heaux tale’ on the EP is “The Other Side.”

“It was refreshing to write that story,” Sullivan says. “It’s very different from who I am, and my perspective. I feel like people were able to look at what they would consider a gold digger through a different lens after that.”

Sullivan promises not to make fans wait another six years before she releases the follow-up to Heaux Tales, the way she made fans wait following her 2015 album, Reality Show. “Life is not promised. So I just want to be able to do as much as I can but in my healthiest state,” she adds.

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The Retaliators finally has a premiere date.

The hard-rocking film — which features Papa Roach‘s Jacoby Shaddix in his film acting debut, as well as appearances by artists including Mötley Crüe‘s Tommy Lee and members of Five Finger Death Punch — will make its debut at London’s FrightFest, taking place August 26-30.

The Retaliators, which was first announced in 2020, follows a mild-mannered pastor who’s thrust into a world of violence as he tries to solve the mystery of his daughter’s murder. It’s being produced by Better Noise Films, an offshoot of the Better Noise Music record label.

Other artists appearing in The Retaliators include members of The Hu, Ice Nine Kills and Escape the Fate. Those bands also appear on the film’s soundtrack, as do Papa Roach, Five Finger Death Punch, From Ashes to New and Cory Marks.

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If you were around in the ’90s, there were two big questions you probably asked yourself: “How many more times can I see Titanic?” and “How the heck did Adam Duritz of Counting Crows end up dating Jennifer Aniston?”  Well, now we know the answer to the latter question.

Entertainment Tonight got a sneak peek of VICE TV’s new special Dark Side of the ’90s, one part of which focuses on LA’s celebrity hot spot of that time, The Viper Room.  In the special, Adam, who was then at the height of his Counting Crows fame, says he “lived at The Viper Room, night in and night out.” 

“I met Jennifer Aniston there,” he adds. “A bunch of my friends lied to me and told me she had a crush on me. Those same friends lied to her and told her I had a crush on her. I honestly had no idea who she was, I had been on the road during all of Friends. I had never seen it, I don’t think.”

However, Adam recalls that Aniston was “really nice, really funny, really pretty,” adding, “And also, she liked me.”  The two dated in 1995, and Adam says, “It didn’t last very long, but she’s a nice girl.” 

Adam also reportedly dated Aniston’s co-star, Courteney Cox, who appeared in the Counting Crows’ video for “A Long December.”  Asked about this in 2014, Adam said, “They were nice girls and I went out with them and that was that.”

Adam and Counting Crows recently released an EP called Butter Miracle, Suite One.  Aniston, of course, went on to marry and divorce Brad Pitt and Justin Theroux.  Cox married and divorced David Arquette and is now dating Snow Patrol’s Johnny McDaid, whom she met through her pal Ed Sheeran.

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