TWICE
Courtesy of Republic RecordsK-pop group TWICE announced the first five North American dates of their 2022 world tour over the weekend. The shows were unveiled in a poster with the details of the upcoming outing, which reveals that the swing will include stops in Los Angeles at the Forum on Feb. 16, the arena in Oakland on Feb. 18, as well as shows in Dallas (Dickies Arena, Feb. 22), Atlanta (State Farm Arena, Feb. 24) and New York (UBS Arena, Feb. 26).
The poster for the group's fourth tour promises that more dates will be announced in the future. The tour was teased at the end of the recent prom-themed video for the English-language single "The Feels," which featured an image of the poster with some key dates. Among the spotlight upcoming events are their sixth anniversary week -- which took place last month -- as well as a tease for their third album, due this month, and the upcoming tour.
The group's latest album, Formula of Love: O + T = <3, topped last week's new music poll. Fans voted in a poll published Friday (Nov. 12) on Billboard, choosing the K-pop girl group's third album as their favorite new music release of the past week. Formula of Love: O + T = <3 brought in nearly 59% of the vote, beating out new music by Taylor Swift (Red (Taylor's Version)), Silk Sonic (An Evening With Silk Sonic), Beyonce, ("Be Alive"), Rosalía featuring The Weeknd ("La Fama”), and others.
The new full-length features TWICE's No. 10-charting Global Excl. U.S. single "The Feels," the act's first effort entirely in English. The set also features new track "Scientist," which sees the nine-piece telling their lovers that there's no need for special equations or chemicals when it comes to true romance.
Check out the tweet announcing the dates below.
NEWS
No matter what you thought of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, there was only one undisputed winner by the end of it all: the reaction community in the worlds of streaming and YouTube. Your favorite content creators broke down the bars, reacted to all the most shocking moments, and helped this showdown become one of hip-hop's most culturally significant and resonant moments in a long time... For better or worse. See, the battle's technically not over yet, but only because the 6ix God's idea of victory is clearly quite different. In his federal defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group – his label – for releasing K.Dot's "Not Like Us," he named various content creators who allegedly helped boost the track's widespread popularity and, as a result, its supposedly defamatory nature.
Furthermore, the specific allegation that Drake brings up in this highly controversial lawsuit is that UMG "whitelisted" copyright claims for YouTubers, streamers, etc. concerning "Not Like Us." This means that they would be able to monetize their content without facing a copyright claim from UMG over "Not Like Us," and this isn't really an allegation because various creators have backed this up. But a few important (alleged) caveats that people are talking about online need to be clear. First, "whitelisting" supposedly happens on behalf of a record label behind a song like the West Coast banger, and UMG is instead the distributor of that track. Secondly, as rapper and online personality ScruFaceJean brings up as seen in the post below, tracks like "Push Ups" were also "whitelisted" by its team.
Along with Jean, many other of your favorite content creators spoke out against this Drake lawsuit. Zias! and B.Lou, for example, spoke with their lawyer about the possibility of countersuing for emotional distress, as they found the Toronto superstar's accusations and his implication of them very disturbing and misguided. NoLifeShaq also dragged The Boy through the mud, calling him "soft" and positing that, whether "whitelisting" happened or not, they would react to "Not Like Us" accordingly as they did to his own tracks.
In addition, it's important to bring up that many others fans have pointed to how Drake excitedly used streamers to generate hype and reaction clips for his own diss tracks against Kendrick Lamar. The most direct example is with Kai Cenat, whom he texted to "stay on stream" before dropping "Family Matters." Ironically, the Twitch giant appears in this clowned-upon defamation lawsuit as an example of what the OVO mogul's accusations and implications are. And one more thing: there is no direct link between monetization and algorithmic boosting on sites like YouTube. With all this in mind, content creators seem to feel almost insulted at the idea that they only reacted to the two biggest rappers in the world beefing with each other because one of them would allow them to make money. If Drizzy knew the first thing about the reaction community, maybe he wouldn't have included this...
