Empire Polo Club, Indio, California

Festival headliner delivered an A-game set, ignoring some of her mainstream hits yet bringing enough energy to power what some have called a middling year

Doja Cat took the Coachella mainstage as the last official act to perform on Sunday’s bill, becoming the first female rapper to headline the festival. (She’s also only the second Black woman to do so, after Beyoncé in 2018) Her closer rounded out a Sunday showcase of powerhouse female performers such as Renée Rapp and Kesha duetting the recession banger TiK ToK – changing the opening line to “wake up in the morning saying fuck P Diddy” – and Victoria Monet grinding through a slick and ultra-sexy set, at one point receiving artfully-simulated oral sex from a background dancer.

It would be diplomatic to say that Doja maintains a distant relationship with her fans, who call themselves kittenz, though their fave does not sanction this moniker. Doja’s told those who engage in parasocial relationships with the idea of her to “get off your phone and get a job” and “rethink everything” about their lives. Such boundary-setting has cost her some Instagram followers – around 300,000, to be exact, after going off on them in a social media tirade – but she could care less. “I feel free,” she wrote in an Instagram story after the snafu last year.

The rapper would sing Bob Marley going to school and gets the party started with Black Eyed Peas, but which pop classic is he ashamed to admit liking?

The first song I remember hearing
I don’t know if it’s the first song I remember hearing, but the first song I remember singing was No Woman, No Cry by Bob Marley . I grew up in Senegal and I would sing it on my way to and from school.

The song I stream the most
I’m pretty versatile these days but I would probably say Costa Titch by Big Flexa featuring C’buda M, Alfa Kat, Banaba Des, Sdida & Man T.

The rapper and presenter, 28, on coming from a massive family, avoiding Tinder and why winning a Bafta made him want to cry

Living in temporary housing as a kid gave me character and hunger. We moved all over London: Victoria, Battersea, Swiss Cottage and Kilburn. Growing up that way made me hate the government, but I also appreciated the system for giving us a home. It’s a weird feeling.

I come from a massive family. My dad is one of five, and Mum has 13 siblings; my grandad was busy. I’m from Sierra Leone, where we have lots of kids, and most of our relatives still live there. It means I only have a small family here in England. I’d like to create a little one of my own one day.

The headlines around the top hip-hop artists focuses on spats and feuds, and obscures the fact that so many are capitalists of genius

Did you hear the news? Rapper J Cole fell out with rapper Kendrick Lemar. Then he apologised . It made headlines all over the world and, for the uninitiated to the world of hip-hop beefs to fully understand it all, the BBC published an explainer .

You may have missed or ignored this, on the basis that you were paying attention to the real issues of that day, but I’m sorry, for this was legitimate news that day. For rappers – whether the hugely successful conscious kind, such as J Cole and Kendrick – or the wildly successful big hitters of the gangsta rap class – long ago graduated from being just rappers, just musicians. Those at the top of the game are creative giants, the poster children for modern commercial capitalism.

Fuelled by music fandom and social media, young British people’s slang is evolving to include words with pidgin, patois and Arabic roots – even where strong regional English dialects exist

There’s a video format spreading on TikTok. Recorded in towns across suburban England, teenage interviewers stop their peers on the street, fielding questions that range from fashion choices to humorous hypotheticals and local neighbourhood dramas, in the process building a large social media following and showcasing their patch of land to the world. “950 [pounds] for that, you know my ting,” a teenage white boy says about his Canada Goose jacket in a video recorded in Bury St Edmunds. “We’re checking his drip, ya dun know, you heard my man,” someone says in another video.

Both the hosts and many of the interviewees speak with this distinct drawl – Multicultural London English (MLE), a dialect born in London’s African-Caribbean communities in the 1970s and 80s. (Some now argue that “Black British English” is a more fitting term.) It’s rooted in Jamaican patois with influences from cockney, and more recently Arabic, the US and West African Pidgin English.

Attorneys for Christopher Dorsey asked federal judge in court filings Friday to allow musician to remain on supervised release

Attorneys for New Orleans-born rapper BG maintain he did have official permission to perform alongside prominent fellow musicians despite what authorities claimed when they recently arrested him on allegations of violating the terms of his supervised release from federal prison.

Lawyers for Christopher Dorsey – BG’s legal name – made those contentions in court filings Friday that asked a federal judge to allow the artist to remain on supervised release rather than face re-imprisonment.

Complaint accuses 26-year-old Christian ‘King’ Combs of assault aboard yacht chartered by music mogul father in December 2022

Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs and his 26-year-old son Christian “King” Combs are both named in a lawsuit that accuses the younger man of sexual assault aboard a yacht in December 2022.

The suit, filed in Los Angeles superior court on Thursday and first reported by Rolling Stone , accuses the younger Combs of assault, battery, sexual assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The elder Combs, who is facing several lawsuits alleging sexual abuse and was recently subject to federal raids in a sex-trafficking investigation, is accused of aiding and abetting.

The rapper seemed to have blown his career up two years ago with a string of offensive comments. But now he has another album at No 1

Over the course of about a month in late 2022, Kanye West seemingly blew up his career for ever. Weeks of increasingly erratic behaviour culminated in a slip into full-blown reactionary populism with a series of offensive stunts, including but not limited to: wearing a White Lives Matter T-shirt , reviving hoary antisemitic tropes about Jews controlling the media, and threatening on X (then Twitter) to go “death con 3” on Jews .

Within weeks, West’s record label and publisher – Universal Music Group and Sony Music Publishing, respectively – terminated their contracts with him; he was dropped by his agency, CAA; and Adidas, Balenciaga and Gap canned their continuing collaborations. The vast majority of his $2bn (£1.6bn) net worth evaporated overnight. Kanye Is Never Coming Back From This read the headline of one Rolling Stone article at the time.

Shaad D’Souza is a freelance culture journalist

Her song Water made the South African a global star, while her undulating dance moves inspired TikTok challenges. Now the 22 year old is ready to take her ‘popiano’ sound to the next level

Tyla may have 4.3 million followers on Instagram (called the Tygers), but she isn’t yet used to the equivalent real-world level of fame. For instance, she was recently approached by TikTok troll Harry Daniels . “There’s this guy that finds celebrities and sings to them,” she explains. “He sang Water” – her breakthrough single – “and poured water on his head.”

She laughs down the phone from Los Angeles, where she is promoting her self-titled debut album, which is out today. At 22, Tyla has already won a Grammy for Water (it netted best African music performance, a new category), and has performed it on Jimmy Fallon’s Tonight Show, while the song charted in more than 30 countries. This level of cut-through isn’t common for South African musicians, and Tyla knows that she is blazing a trail for the country’s music scene. “More people are starting to know about South Africa now,” she says. “They want to hear me say ‘Yoh!’ and they love the dancing.”