NEWS
Luke Combs Lands First No. 1 Album With 'What You See Is What You Get' | Billboard News
Video ThumbnailLuke Combs, Thomas Rhett and Morgan Wallen are set to headline Tortuga Music Festival when it returns to Fort Lauderdale Beach Park in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on April 8-10, 2022. This will mark a much anticipated return to its normal April slot for the festival, which was canceled in 2020 due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. This year, the festival shifted to Nov. 12-14.
Other artists slated to perform during the three-day festival next year include Breland, Priscilla Block, Brothers Osborne, Jordan Davis, Travis Denning, Walker Hayes, Randy Houser, Scotty McCreery, Nelly, Brittney Spencer, Tiera, Mitchell Tenpenny, Hailey Whitters, Lainey Wilson, Chase Rice, The Cadillac Three, The War and Treaty, and more.
Combs is the reigning CMA entertainer of the year, and on last week’s CMA Awards show, he debuted the new track “Doin’ This.” Rhett is the reigning ACM male artist of the year (and a former ACM Awards entertainer of the year winner) and recently announced he will release two new albums next year. Meanwhile, Wallen will launch an arena tour in 2022, including stops at Madison Square Garden, Staples Center and Bridgestone Arena. Wallen’s current single “Sand in My Boots” is at No. 13 on Billboard‘s Hot Country Songs chart.
Tickets for Tortuga Music Festival will go on sale Friday, Dec. 3.
Tortuga Music Festival launched in 2013, with the dual purpose of offering an ocean-side festival as well as raising awareness for marine conservation. Kenny Chesney, Eric Church, Gary Allan and Jake Owen were among the artists on the inaugural Tortuga Music Festival bill.
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...
