NEWS
Even StubHub wants to get in on the Kendrick Lamar and Drake beef. StubHub revealed that ticket spiked on Thursday afternoon (June 12) for Kendrick Lamar's Grand National Tour at Toronto's Rogers Centre. In a X post, the company announced that Kendrick's tour has made Toronto one of the top five best-selling cities. The new record was based on total ticket sold.
The Toronto stop was always an anticipated show because of Kendrick Lamar's 2024 rap battle with hometown hero Drake. The two exchanged chart-topping diss tracks towards each other, including "Euphoria," "Family Matters," and "Not Like Us." Lamar would release the GNX album at the end of the year.
Kendrick's Toronto stop on the tour includes a two-night event co-headlined by SZA. The new Toronto record follows Wednesday's announcement of the Grand National Tour headed to Australia this summer. Kendrick Lamar has broken concert attendance records cities across the nation, including Dallas, Los Angeles, and Seattle.
Kendrick Lamar’s Grand National Tour has shattered several historic records, solidifying his status as a dominant force in hip-hop and live music. The tour’s Minneapolis opener set a new benchmark as the highest-grossing hip-hop concert of all time, pulling in over $9 million from more than 47,000 fans. In Atlanta, he and SZA drew a massive 45,000 attendees at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, setting a single-night hip-hop stadium attendance record, even as Pearl Jam played across town.
Streaming numbers mirrored the tour’s explosive impact. Lamar became the first rapper in history to surpass 100 million monthly Spotify listeners, joining the elite ranks of global pop icons. His album GNX also broke records, debuting with over 44 million first-day streams on Spotify and notching the largest opening streaming week for a hip-hop or R&B release in 2024.
Spanning 21 stadiums across North America between April and June 2025, the tour added extra shows in Los Angeles and Toronto due to overwhelming demand. The Grand National Tour isn’t just a concert series—it’s a cultural moment. With unmatched scale and reach, it redefines what's possible for hip-hop artists on a global stage.
NEWS
James Acaster has officially introduced his new band, The Wow! Scenario, alongside their debut song, ‘Zacuti’, featuring BC Camplight. More information about the project can be found below.
The Wow! Scenario began two decades ago and has now been brought to life by Acaster with his friend Graeme Wicks, BC Camplight and Emma Daman.
Their first album, ‘Stand in the Star. A Verse and a Chorus’, will arrive through Bella Union on October 23. Preorders are available here.
Listeners have also been given an early preview of the album through the jazz inspired lead single ‘Zacuti’, which is available to hear below.
Acaster and Wicks formed the group in Kettering in 2004. According to a press statement, they had already chosen to end the band by the time they recorded their full collection of songs with producer Chris Hamilton in December 2007.
The statement also revealed that the group’s name was inspired by an intoxicated audience member who tried to say they lacked “the X factor”. However, the person repeatedly used the wrong phrase and told them: “You don’t have the wow scenario, guys. You need to get the wow scenario”.
The musicians revisited the recordings with Hamilton in 2018, removing the original singing and replacing the vocal melodies with saxophone, clarinet and fiddle. At that stage, they planned to release the material as an instrumental record.
After deciding they were not satisfied with that version, the group returned to the studio for a third attempt in March 2023. BC Camplight and Emma Daman provided vocals for the new sessions, while the album was eventually mixed and finished in March 2025.
1. ‘Diving!’
2. ‘Once More!’
3. ‘Golf Socks!’
4. ‘Alpaca Spinner!’
5. ‘Reality!’
6. ‘Instructions!’
7. ‘Zacuti!’
8. ‘The Curse!’
Acaster previously created the music project Temps, which brought together a collective of 40 performers, including Quelle Chris, Xenia Rubinos, Shamir, NNAMDÏ and Seb Rochford.
When the collective was first revealed, the comedian and Off Menu podcast host discussed its origins during NME’s ‘In Conversation’ interview series.
“I was doing bands when I was a teenager into my early 20s, and I was like, ‘This is gonna be my entire life, all I’m gonna do is music,’” Acaster said. “When the band split up I started doing stand-up as a placeholder, and then I fell in love with stand-up and got really obsessed with that.
“I’d never made an album from scratch that didn’t exist yet – recording it and writing it at the same time – and I’d never produced anything before, or mixed something as intensely as this one. There’s a lot of new things – if I had been doing it on my own, I don’t know how long I would have lasted.”
