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.”

She is the world’s most listened-to French-speaking artist – but in France, hostility towards her goes beyond the far right

Since the start of her career, Aya Nakamura has faced setbacks, discrimination and harassment every step of the way. Nakamura is a music superstar. She is the most-listened -to French-speaking artist in the world, and the only woman to feature in the country’s top 20 best-selling albums of 2023. Her 2018 hit Djadja has reached almost 1bn listens on YouTube, and in 2021 her second album surpassed 1bn streams on Spotify. When she announced two concerts at the legendary Bercy arena in Paris last year, tickets sold out in 15 minutes – unprecedented for a French-speaking artist.

Yet from shows where presenters struggle to pronounce her name to public debate about the unorthodox way she uses the French language , the French-Malian singer can, it seems, never be judged solely on her music.

Rokhaya Diallo is a Guardian Europe columnist

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(Interscope)
The Philadelphia rapper takes her Missy Elliott-gone-Sesame Street vibe to a darker place on her debut album proper

Hailed as her generation’s answer to Missy Elliott, Philadelphia rapper Tierra Whack has been celebrated not just for her lyrical dexterity but for her commitment to goofiness. Her exuberant debut mini-album, Whack World (2018), clocked in at 15 one-minute tracks; a clutch of EPs and some standalone singles consolidated her effervescence across different genres.

Last year’s award-winning thriller/spoof documentary about Whack, Cypher , also attested to the weirdness that the creative nonconformist has experienced during her rise. She has trailed World Wide Whack , her official debut LP , with a trio of tracks – one ditty about her smell ( Chanel Pit ); a funky cut about singing in the shower ( Shower Song ); and a moving tune about feeling “broken”. The track’s title, 27 Club, refers to Whack not joining the set of artists who died at that age (she is now 28).

The teenage Mancunian is one of British rap’s finest prospects, with a defiant flow and sly humour that’s won him nods from Drake and more

You could make a case for British rap being more compelling than its American cousin of late; it’s in its rapid expansion phase, not caught in a holding pattern. Partly that’s because there are now so many talented UK artists with non-London accents that it could soon be a disadvantage to spit from England’s capital. Teenage Mancunian Nemzzz is one of our most exciting prospects.

Growing up in Gorton in a house with a kitted-out studio, he was destined for the stage. “My mum made beats – all genres, you can’t box her in! And Dad sang reggae and bashment. I thought, let me give this a try,” the 19-year-old, real name Nemiah Simms, recalls. Six years ago he was ripping beats off YouTube to practise over, obsessively improving his vocal technique and lyrical dexterity. By 2021 he was working with professional beatmakers and scoring a viral smash, Elevate , leading to co-signs from Drake, Central Cee and Lil Yachty. Nemzzz’s voice is unforgettable: pugilistic truculence mixed with sly humour that’s as Manchester as drizzle on a Friday night.

Do Not Disturb is out now. Nemzzz tours Ireland and the UK from 30 April

She’s a muse to Beyoncé, a champion of Lego and raps about her imaginary friend – but behind the whimsy is a street-hardened MC confronting grief and depression

• This article contains discussion of suicide

There’s a video of Tierra Whack filmed when she was 15, dressed in dull pink knitwear on the corner of a Philadelphia street, surrounded by older guys smoking weed. “Rapping is my destiny / Especially for these hysterectomies who be testing me / You deaf to me / You’re not hearing what I’m sharing like an uncaring parent …” Words pour out of her in an a cappella freestyle to camera, more performance poetry than rap, voice morphing from one persona to another – one of those mic-drop, jaw-drop moments where you see a new star gather light in real time.

Twelve years later, and the knitwear is bright and expensive, she’s a muse to Beyoncé and has become one of the most singular rappers and singers in America. Her 2018 debut album, Whack World, felt like a piece of performance art with 15 multi-genre tracks each exactly one minute long; her feature film last year, Cypher, flipped the tired fly-on-the-wall music documentary format into a satirical horror movie about conspiracy theories and selling out. While many rappers align themselves with luxury brands, Whack did a campaign with Lego, and her brilliant second album, World Wide Whack, out this week, shows off that whimsy on songs about an imaginary friend, dates at the cinema and singing in the shower. But it is also devastatingly honest about her experience of depression. “I’m 28 now – I was supposed to kill myself when I was 27,” she tells me in the London offices of her record label. “But I decided to keep going.”

Coldplay become act to headline most times with their fifth top slot, while Shania Twain is booked for the Sunday teatime ‘legend’ set as the lineup is announced

Dua Lipa, Coldplay and SZA will headline Glastonbury 2024, a diverse spread of A-list artists matched by a strong supporting lineup across the festival including Little Simz, LCD Soundsystem and Burna Boy, plus Shania Twain in the always-jubliant “legend” slot.

Much loved by Glastonbury founder Michael Eavis who once said they can “call in and do the milking any time” on his Worthy Farm site, Coldplay continue their longstanding relationship with the festival, becoming the first act to headline the Pyramid stage five times. They launched themselves into pop-rock’s big leagues with their first headline performance in 2002 when they had only released one album, and have since headlined in 2005, 2011 and 2016, as well as doing a livestreamed performance to an empty Pyramid stage field in lieu of a 2021 festival cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic.