PinkPantheress turned her weekend two Coachella set into a guest-filled celebration — complete with surprise appearances, live collaborations and an onstage birthday moment.

Performing at the Mojave tent during the second weekend of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the British pop artist elevated her already buzzy set with a rotating lineup of guests, building on her weekend one performance with a more expansive, star-driven show.

Among the night’s biggest moments was the appearance of Zara Larsson, who joined the festivities after fans spotted her on festival grounds earlier in the weekend.

While she didn’t appear for the opening performance of “Stateside” — the track she features on — Larsson took the stage solo to perform the title track from her album Midnight Sun, before teasing that PinkPantheress could feature on an upcoming deluxe edition of the project.

PinkPantheress’ “Stateside,” with Zara Larsson, recently hit No. 1 on both the Billboard Global 200 and the Billboard Global Excl. U.S. charts last month. The song has grown in prominence since Alysa Liu skated to it in her exhibition performance at the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics Feb. 21, two days after she became the women’s figure skating champion, winning the first gold medal in the event for the United States in 24 years.

Janelle Monáe also made a brief but notable appearance during the festivities, joining PinkPantheress on guitar during the set. The performance continued to unfold with appearances from Australian DJ Ninajirachi, alongside actor Tyriq Withers, Chase Infiniti, Slayyyter, and Manon, giving the set a party-like, cameo-heavy feel.

PinkPantheress ran through a string of fan-favorite tracks, including “Stateside,” “Romeo,” “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” and “Illegal,” maintaining her signature mix of fast-paced, club-ready production and understated vocals.

The set’s most personal moment came during “Illegal,” when Withers returned to the stage to mark the singer’s birthday.

“I really had something important to say… a birdie told me that it is your birthday,” he told the crowd, before presenting her with a rose as dancers held up a “Happy Birthday” sign. The crowd erupted as the two embraced before exiting the stage together.

PinkPantheress’ performance was one of several guest-driven highlights from Coachella’s second weekend. Elsewhere, Olivia Rodrigo joined Addison Rae onstage, while Sabrina Carpenter brought out Madonna during her headlining set on Friday night.

Zayn has hinted at a potential return to Australia and New Zealand, telling fans “you might be seeing me soon” as he looks ahead to future touring plans.

The singer-songwriter made the comment during a recent appearance on KIIS FM’s The Smallzy Show, where he discussed his newly released album KONNAKOL and reflected on his history performing in the region.

“I’ve got plans to come to Australia – you might be seeing me soon,” Zayn said when asked about touring, pointing to Australia and New Zealand as priorities for a future visit.

Zayn elaborated on his connection to the region, referencing his earlier visits as part of One Direction. “Australia and New Zealand are two of the big places in my mind,” he said. “I remember performing there in the band… what the crowds were like, what the people were like… I feel like I want to go back there.”

While no official dates have been confirmed, the comments mark one of the clearest indications yet that the artist is considering a return to the market as a solo act. Zayn has not toured Australia independently since launching his solo career, with his last visit to the country dating back to February 2015 during One Direction’s tour — shortly before his departure from the group.

The remarks arrive as Zayn begins a major international touring cycle elsewhere. The artist is set to embark on a 31-date run across North America, South America, Mexico and the U.K., spanning from May through November. Any potential Australia and New Zealand shows would likely follow that schedule, placing them in a later touring window.

The timing also aligns with the release of KONNAKOL, Zayn’s latest studio album, which arrived April 17. The project marks his return with new material and signals a renewed phase of activity following a quieter period in his career.

During the interview, Zayn also spoke about his artistic growth and reflected on aspects of his earlier career, including moments he described as inauthentic during his time in One Direction.

Since leaving the group in 2015, Zayn has carved out a distinct solo identity, scoring a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 with “Pillowtalk” and releasing multiple studio albums that blend R&B, pop and alternative influences. However, live touring has remained relatively limited compared to his peers, making the prospect of new international dates — particularly in Australia — notable for fans.

For now, Zayn’s comments remain exploratory rather than confirmatory. But for audiences in Australia and New Zealand, the suggestion of a return marks a potential full-circle moment for an artist who has not performed in the region in over a decade.

Andrew Lloyd Webber spoke with The Times about his addiction to alcohol, saying in a profile published Saturday (April 18) that he started a current journey to sobriety more than a year ago. The 78-year-old composer, who’s an EGOT (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar and Tony winner), says checking into a rehab clinic “didn’t work,” but joining AA meetings is something he’s “adored.”

“I am a recovering alcoholic,” he told publication. “Sixteen months ago I decided that I needed help and it’s the best thing that ever happened to me.”

Though he’d previously talked about quitting drinking in 2015 and 2016, while producing School of Rock on Broadway, Lloyd Webber says he’d started to drink again.

“I was doing what they call ‘white-knuckling’, without any backup, and I started to worry that I wasn’t being creative. And I thought, ‘But I’ve said to everybody that I’m not drinking.’ So I started to drink secretly,” he told The Times.

Lloyd Webber, whose Cats: The Jellicle Ball is presently on Broadway, says he began “getting into a downhill spiral and about 18 months ago the family were in a desperate state, and added, “My wife was feeling she couldn’t go on.”

“When you’re a wine drinker, you don’t think of yourself as… well, alcoholics drink spirits,” he added in the interview. “That was the shocking thing for me, when I realized that I was drinking vodka to hide it.”

“I’m lucky that nothing did go very wrong. I haven’t had some frightful accident. But then you begin to think of the near misses,” he admitted.

“I thought that I was getting away with it,” said Lloyd Webber. “The thing is, I am deeply sorry and I can only apologize to people if I made a mess.”

On attending AA meetings, which he now attends daily, he shared, “People had always said, ‘Oh no, you wouldn’t like that.’ And you get this thought that it’s a load of meth drinkers coming in off the streets. Not at all. What I love about it is you go into a room and everybody’s equal. I’ve made friends that I wouldn’t have thought possible.” 

When asked whether he’d written any of his musicals while drinking, he said, “Probably not a lot, but I can think of a couple of songs that have been hits where I’d definitely had a glass of wine and thought, that was all right.”

Lloyd Weber is currently working on two new musicals, according to The Times — one that’s based on the 2006 film The Illusionist and the other based on the theft of the Mona Lisa in 1911.

Olivia Rodrigo performed her brand-new single “Drop Dead” live for the first time at Coachella Saturday night (April 18) as a surprise guest during Addison Rae‘s set.

Rodrigo surprised the audience at the festival’s main stage when she joined Rae to sing “Headphones On,” from Rae’s Addison album. Her appearance was previously unannounced.

As The Hollywood Reporter recaps, Addison sang her “Headphones On” lyric “I compare myself to the new It Girl,” and out came Olivia to applause from the Indio, Calif., crowd — whose excitement would grow even more when the pair launched into Rodrigo’s “Drop Dead” for its official live debut.

Rae traded lines with Rodrigo on the song’s verses, while both pop stars jumped around the stage to hype the crowd up for the song.

“Drop Dead” is the first single to be released from Rodrigo’s upcoming third full-length album, You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love. It arrived on Friday alongside a Petra Collins-directed music video filmed at the Palace of Versailles.

“I realized all my favorite romantic love songs were beautiful because they had a tinge of fear or yearning in them,” Rodrigo said of the album’s concept in an interview with British Vogue, to which she also revealed the collection is full of “sad love songs.”

You Seem Pretty Sad for a Girl So in Love is set for a June 12 release via Geffen. Before then, Rodrigo will be both host and musical guest on Saturday Night Live on May 2.

In Coachella’s humid Mojave tent, TAEMIN emerges for his Saturday (April 11) evening performance from a fleshy, spherical cage. It’s more than just aesthetic set dressing — speaking later with Billboard, the singer explains that the prop represents a poignant line from Herman Hesse’s Demian about a bird that cracks free from its egg: before you can really live, you first have to deconstruct the only world you’ve ever known. 

The 32-year-old knows a little something about that kind of leap of faith. Introduced in 2008 as part of K-pop five-piece SHINee, TAEMIN’s (then still developing) voice barely appeared on their debut single, “Replay,” yet through a potent combination of unrivaled dance skills and trailblazing creative vision, he grew to become one of K-pop’s most sought-after soloists. After 16 years operating under the tutelage of legacy management company SM Entertainment, the singer opted not to renew his solo contract in 2024, instead signing with smaller label BPM Entertainment. (He moved again to Galaxy Corporation, home to fellow K-pop veteran and 2026 Coachella performer G-Dragon, just one month ago.)

Given the recency of that label shift, it seems like a miracle TAEMIN’s festival set came together at all, let alone nearly as well as it did. As always, the perfectionist has a few notes ahead of weekend two. But from an outside perspective, the show convincingly asserted his status as an artist among idols, from the elaborate staging and lighting cues to how he throws himself into every move with full-bodied commitment to the craft.

In addition to old favorites “WANT,” “Advice,” “IDEA” and “MOVE” — the choreographed restraint for which was so innovative that it unleashed a rash of imitators upon release in 2017 — TAEMIN debuted six tracks from an upcoming project: “Permission,” “Parasite,” “Frankenstein,” “Let Me Be the One,” “Sober” and “1004.”

Even within a stifling industry, TAEMIN has long defined himself and his trajectory on his own terms. Now, following his historic stint as the first Korean male K-pop soloist to perform at Coachella — and first K-pop soloist with a dedicated display at the Grammy Museum — the “idol’s idol” is ready to take the next step.

“Although I’m not caught up in results, I want my team and I to accomplish something tangible together,” he tells Billboard, pointing to future tours and awards as his more immediate goals. But there’s one lofty aspiration the singer has set his sights on for further down the line: “I want to be someone who’s mentioned when people think about art.”

He breaks down the creative behind his 50-minute Coachella set — and what it meant to be one of two second-generation K-pop acts performing over the weekend — below.

Billboard: How are you feeling after your Coachella debut? 

Taemin: I was very nervous, but now that weekend one is done and the videos people took are showing up on my feed, I’m less anxious. For this second weekend, I think I will have more fun and hopefully make up for my shortcomings.

What was the preparation process like? When did you start making the setlist? 

I started planning the setlist last year, but the details were filled in around January, mostly February. Truthfully, I was set to perform at Coachella early on. So, any time I was running or exercising since then, I would listen to my music and envision a good way to perform each song. 

Tell me the story of the set design, especially the beginning, where you emerge from that egg-like structure.

There’s a verse in Demian: “The bird fights its way out of the egg. The egg is the world. Who would be born must first destroy a world.” I was really inspired by that, so I made it part of the concept for the performance and for my album. Something about always pushing and breaking the mold, despite it being an unknown world, resonated with me.

The staging for “Parasite” was also really amazing. What inspired that?

I feel like when I was younger, I was more at peace. But now, there’s a lot of pressure and there are more times when I am facing hatred and negativity. I wanted to portray this artistically through my music. I’m pained that there is so much hate in the world. It makes me sad, and I made this song to portray my genuine feelings. I took a lot of time to think about this, so it’s nice to hear that the song is being enjoyed.

One of the biggest reactions from the crowd was for “MOVE.” How do you feel about the response to that song, now that it’s been almost a decade since its release?

Honestly, it’s an iconic song and one that people think of when they think of me. So I thought I should definitely perform it — but since it’s an older song, I’ve performed it a lot. [This time], I was thinking I should redevelop it in some way. There’s this sexiness that comes from the restraint in the motions, so I hoped to upgrade the song while preserving that vibe.

The live arrangement of “IDEA” is also a fan favorite. Would you ever consider recording that version?

I never thought about it. I’ve always heard people say that if the music is too much, it’s tiring for the ears. Personally, I like being a bit more extreme. So the tempered version is the one that gets recorded, while the performance is more reflective of the style I want.

But hearing you say this, if the opportunity arises, I think it’d be a good idea to record the live version of this song and some of the other ones.

What made you want to play the piano during this set?

I performed a lot of new tracks this time. The recorded version will be calmer — again, I wanted to go all out for the live performance.

Going from “Frankenstein” to “Advice” to “Idea”… I am someone who thinks that developing an emotional journey is really important — not just across the entire performance but within each section. I wondered how to show something people hadn’t seen before, which is how the piano came to be. I wanted to start in a smaller moment, so as the show went on, things would escalate and then explode at the finale. 

Tell me about “1004,” the set’s closer.

As a date, it’s October 4th [the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi]. In Korean, 1,004 also sounds like angel.

I am Catholic, and my baptismal name is Francesco, so there’s a personal element to this. I wanted to imagine fans seeing me, how they see me from their perspective, and that’s where the song came from. 

I thought it was a nice note to end on — there’s some choreography, but it puts more emphasis on your vocals and how much you’ve grown as a singer.

I actually just wanted to start the overall performance really strong. It wasn’t necessarily so that I could feature more vocals at the end.

At the beginning of the performance, I thought that everyone — including the audience — might be a bit anxious. So with the beginning of the set, I wanted to release that tension and change it to a more enjoyable mood.

But it’s nice to hear you say that about my vocals. [Laughs]

How did you feel the performance went? I saw you rated yourself a 5/10.

I wasn’t able to fully rehearse because I didn’t have time. There were some technical defects with the lighting — with “Parasite,” for example, it wasn’t the performance I had pictured, so I felt regretful.

That’s why I gave it a 5, and I want to try to get as close to a 10 as possible. Since I’m less nervous this weekend, I think I will do better. 

What would you change about “Parasite” for next weekend?

The performance features projections of philosophical words and quotes that I felt inspired by. But because the audience couldn’t see them, I wasn’t able to get the full message across.

The words come down while there is also thunder, lightning and rain effects. I wanted the words to portray hatred coming down and lifting back up at the end of the song, but I am sad that people weren’t able to see that.

Who were the quotes from?

I don’t know the names very well. [To his team] Can I check my phone?

It doesn’t say who the speaker is, but there are things like “capitalism makes people into props” and “we are in jail performing freedom.” “The moment we stop thinking, evil slowly begins to grow,” and “people are born free, but wherever we go, we are still in shackles.”

Why is that a message you wanted to convey? 

It’s different depending on the culture, but in Korea, it’s hard for singers and idols to speak their truth. Everything needs to be packaged and delivered carefully — that’s how to avoid misunderstandings and misinterpretations. I thought that using these quotes would be a more approachable way to portray my thoughts. So I borrowed the words.

I saw you watched Justin Bieber’s headlining set, which, to me, seemed like a reflection on growing up in the spotlight and having all these online artifacts to look back on. Since you’re the same age as him, and similarly became famous in your early teens, did that resonate with you?

As I watched [the performance], I felt like I would be reacting to it differently than anyone else. I really saw myself reflected. Of course, the language and the country are different, but I also look back at my younger self through videos. I can’t say anything, but I watch on the sidelines.

I think Justin Bieber likely felt those similar emotions and portrayed them on stage. I just really want to root for him. I thought that it must’ve been so hard. All that attention, as grateful as you are for it, was probably really difficult for one person to shoulder. And despite this, through good music, he has continued to inspire. I want to thank him for that. 

BIGBANG also performed over the weekend. How did it feel to see second-generation K-pop so well represented at Coachella?

It feels good. There’s so much that we can relate to each other about. There aren’t many people — even around me — who can really understand and sympathize with this experience and those times. We survived, and steadily, we made it here.

Back in 2008, the American market felt so distant. We’re the generation of dreams coming true. I’m grateful that we can celebrate these joys and successes together. 

After your set, I saw people make comparisons between your performance style and Michael Jackson’s. And, coincidentally, your Grammy Museum exhibit is right next to his.

I dreamed of becoming a musician like him. I was very influenced by him — you follow what you like, and it becomes part of you. There are times when I [deliberately] pay homage to Michael Jackson, but even at times when I don’t intend to, there are similarities because he’s a part of me.

As a fan, it’s really touching to hear people say that I’m like him or to even be in such close proximity at the museum exhibit. What fan is as successful as me? To have our stage outfits be displayed together feels like a dream.

The exhibit is called “TAEMIN: Performer. Artist. Icon.” What do each of those titles mean to you?

It feels like one thing. Music is expression. I try to convey my emotions through music and, visually, through performance. It’s one of the fundamentals that I strive to achieve, and a characteristic of the artists that I admire.

What are you trying to express now?

I’ve done a lot of abstract and ambiguous concepts, using my music to build them out and share them as a story or fiction. Now, I am trying to convey who I am and what I feel more tangibly through my music. 

What do you hope your legacy as an artist will be?

Whether it’s an artist like David Bowie or with fashion, art is something you experience with all five senses. I want to be someone who’s mentioned when people think about art. Even when they taste something, I want people to think about me — to say this, this feeling, is like Taemin. I want to be that kind of sensational and iconic artist while I’m alive.

Additional translation provided by Gene Kim.

Ice Spice is speaking out about a viral video showing her in an altercation at McDonald’s.

The 26-year-old “Deli” rapper took to social media on Friday (April 17) to poke fun at the incident, which took place earlier in the week at the fast food chain in Hollywood, California.

“This wouldn’t happen at Wendy’s,” Ice captioned a repost of the security footage on X.

The Bronx native also appeared to tease an unreleased song, which can be heard playing over the clip.

Spice was reportedly in Los Angeles to shoot a commercial for Wendy’s, according to TMZ. The artist also lists “@wendys princes” in the bio section of her X and Instagram accounts.

In 2023, the Grammy-nominated rapper collaborated with Dunkin’ and appeared alongside Ben Affleck in an advertisement for the coffee and donut chain.

On Wednesday (April 15), Ice Spice was involved in an altercation at a McDonald’s, with footage later surfacing online. She was seated with a friend when another woman approached and tried to strike up a conversation. After Ice declined, tensions escalated and the woman reportedly slapped her, sparking a brief scuffle that spilled across nearby tables and briefly outside before bystanders stepped in to separate them.

Spice’s attorney, Bradford Cohen, said in a statement to Billboard that they will be exploring all avenues to “hold the perpetrators responsible for their actions.”

“The unprovoked attack on my client has been reported to the LAPD and we will be pursuing any and all criminal and civil avenues to hold the perpetrators responsible for their actions,” Cohen said. “We are also exploring holding the location responsible for their apparent lack of appropriate security.”

The attorney continued, “Not to mention that the individuals involved obviously did not realize that we would get the video from inside the McDonald’s where the unprovoked attack occurred. They then turned their cameras on after the initial attack as if to set our client up, and as they say on the video to ‘go viral.’ The only thing that will be going viral for them is their mugshots.”

Check out Ice Spice’s post on X here.

this wouldn’t happen at Wendy’s pic.twitter.com/8Chwnz8pjM

— ice spicy (@icespice) April 18, 2026

Lil Wayne is speaking out about being regularly left out of major music events.

On Saturday (April 18), the 43-year-old rap legend took to social media to express frustration about being “uninvited & uninvolved” in annual events like the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival and the Grammy Awards.

“It’s truly a humbling experience when events like Coachella & the Grammys come around & like clockwork,I’m uninvited & uninvolved,” Weezy wrote on X. “I appreciate my position or space I hold in ya heart & mind if so bc you’re the humbling experience that’s timeless & 4dat I thk u. Iaintshitwithoutu.”

Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst jumped into the comments to offer his support. “Let’s start our own experience gathering and our own acknowledgment event to welcome all of the uninvited – i’ve got a couple ideas i’ve been working on for quite some while now – happy to elaborate if ever interested – sending good vibes,” Durst wrote.

Wayne’s post comes about a year after the Tha Carter VI rapper was passed over to headline the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show in his hometown of New Orleans. Kendrick Lamar was ultimately selected to perform at the Caesars Superdome following the momentum of his Billboard Hot 100-topping hit “Not Like Us.”

In September 2024, Lil Tunechi opened up about how painful it was to miss out on the Super Bowl halftime performance in his own city.

“That hurt. It hurt a lot. You know what I’m talking about. It hurt a whole lot,” the rapper said at the time. “I blame myself for not being mentally prepared for a letdown. And for automatically mentally putting myself in that position like somebody told me that was my position. So I blame myself for that. But I thought that was nothing better than that spot and that stage and that platform in my city, so it hurt. It hurt a whole lot.”

Months later, he told a crowd at Lil WeezyAna Fest in New Orleans, “I told myself I wanted to be on that stage in front of my mom, and I worked my ass off for that position. It was ripped away from me, but this moment right here… they can’t take this away from me.”

While Lil Wayne has never performed a solo set at Coachella, he did make a surprise appearance during G-Eazy’s set at the Indio, California, festival in 2016.

As for the Grammys, Weezy has received 28 nominations over the course of his career and has won five awards, including best rap album for Tha Carter III at the 51st Annual Grammy Awards in 2009. That same year, he made his Grammy stage debut performing “Swagga Like Us” alongside M.I.A., T.I., Jay-Z, and Kanye West (now Ye).

See Lil Wayne’s post on X below.

It’s truly a humbling experience when events like Coachella & the Grammys come around & like clockwork,I’m uninvited & uninvolved. I appreciate my position or space I hold in ya heart & mind if so bc you’re the humbling experience that’s timeless & 4dat I thk u. Iaintshitwithoutu

— Lil Wayne WEEZY F (@LilTunechi) April 18, 2026

Madonna’s new song “I Feel So Free” has officially arrived on streaming services.

After debuting Friday (April 17) on iHeartRadio’s Pride station, the pulsating Confessions II track was released at midnight following the Queen of Pop’s surprise appearance during Sabrina Carpenter’s Coachella headlining set later that night.

In addition to dropping “I Feel So Free” on streaming services, Madonna also shared a trippy visualizer on YouTube.

“Thanks for coming,” Madonna sing-speaks in the opening lines of the song. “Sometimes I like to just hide in the shadows/ Create a new persona/ A different identity/ I can be whoever I want to be/ Create a new persona/ Honestly I wish/ I could be like other people and just not care/ But out here on the dance floor, I feel so free.”

“I Feel So Free” is a propulsive dance track that calls back to the beat of Lil Louis’ 1989 house classic “French Kiss.” It also fits into the world of Confessions on a Dance Floor, echoing the sound of “Future Lovers” from Madonna’s 2005 electro-pop dance era.

The upcoming Confessions II is the eagerly awaited sequel to Confessions on a Dance Floor, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 in December 2005. The project reunites Madonna with that album’s producer, Stuart Price, who also served as music director on her 2023–2024 Celebration Tour.

“I Feel So Free” arrives ahead of the album’s lead single, which has yet to be announced, label representatives previously told Billboard. A Confessions II countdown on Spotify reveals the album will feature 16 tracks.

Confessions II will be released on July 3 and serves as Madonna’s first album since 2019’s Madame X. It also marks her first release since re-signing with Warner Records in September 2025.

After strong winds forced the cancellation of his Coachella 2026 weekend one performance last Friday (April 17) Anyma returned for weekend two on a much stiller night that allowed for the world debut of his new show, ÆDEN.

Starting a bit late at approximately 12:15 a.m. on Friday night/Saturday morning, the producer walked onstage dressed in all white, with the massive screen running the entire length of the festival’s mainstage switching on behind him. While this screen would host a varied cast of characters during the performance, it was first populated by dozens of digitally rendered columns that crumbled to the ground before rising again.

Also rising was Anyma himself, with the platform on which he stood elevating and lowering at various points of the show, a cool effect that in moments made the producer appear to be floating, to positioned in the center of a swirl of fire and at the nexus of many other onscreen special effects.

The show soon introduced a character resembling Michelangelo’s David, who busted down the columns while robot-like elements showed from under his stone artifice. The performance would go on to incorporate other such characters from the worlds of ancient art and mythology, including a Medusa-like creature, the snakes emanating from her head hissing in time with the beat, a pair of spinning characters whose muscular bodies appeared to be rendered from tree roots, a female demon and eventually, an angel — but more on that later.

The interplay of the ancient and modern art is a core concept of the Anyma universe, and one that those who saw his End of Genesys residency at Sphere Las Vegas in late 2024 and early 2025 will well recognize. Along with all the new imagery, ÆDEN reintroduced visuals familiar to those who saw the Sphere show, with the bugging eyeballs from the “Voices In My Head” segment from Sphere (and the song’s corresponding video) showing up during this same song at Coachella, but with the eyes now rendered in black and eventually appearing to drip black blood.

As it was at Sphere, Ellie Goulding also made an appearance, with the vocalist’s image cast on the screen during her 2025 Anyma collab “Hypnotized.” But while at Sphere her face essentially shape-shifted, at Coachella she was made to look like a marble statue, in keeping with the show’s ancient art themes.

Typically at Coachella, the special guests show up for weekend one and then pack up and go home, but — perhaps because they didn’t get the chance to perform last weekend due to the cancellation — Anyma brought out a host of guests including Muse‘s Matt Bellamy and Swae Lee. The biggest guest was also the one most people would have guessed was coming, LISA. Anyma and the K-Pop superstar released their collaborative single “Bad Angel” on April 8, and this show at Coachella saw them performing it publicly together for the first time.

LISA came onstage in a shimmery, diaphanous dress while imagery of her as the titular angel appeared on the screen behind her. As she walked down the stage’s runway, she declared that she’s “pretty pretty bad” for an angel, with those watching the performance via the livestream on YouTube at this point seeing a towering LISA hologram in the sky above her. For those of us in the crowd no such hologram materialized, but to be in such close proximity to the singer appeared to be thrilling enough for the people in the crowd whose hands were genuinely shaking as she walked by.

The final moments of the show featured an appearance by Joji, who came out to sing “Beautiful,” his Anyma collaboration released earlier this month. As Joji sang to the crowd out on the catwalk, a version of him rendered in stone appeared on the screen, once again juxtaposing new and old, human and digital, with “Beautiful” serving as the show’s closer.

All in, ÆDEN functioned as an expansion of the significant world-building Anyma has already accomplished, bringing in concepts of ancient art and culture and colliding them with the cutting-edge technology required to create a show of this size and scope. Presenting this show on the Coachella mainstage is certainly a win for Anyma, with having Anyma on the mainstage of one of the world’s biggest music festivals also marking a win for dance music itself.

6LACK is back with new music. The Atlanta singer-rapper released “Sunday Again” featuring 2 Chainz on Friday, alongside a companion music video directed by Levi Turner, as the latest preview of his forthcoming album Love Is the New Gangsta, due May 22 via LVRN/Interscope Records.

The track features additional vocal contributions from Serayah, Jordan Ward and Dos Dias, among others. The video — which also features cameos from artists Mereba, umi, Quin and slimwav — sees 6LACK and 2 Chainz surrounded by friends and family in what the artist describes as a moment of community and serenity, reflecting the album’s central theme of universal love.

“Sunday Again” follows 6LACK’s debut single from the project, “Bird Flu,” which drew widespread critical acclaim upon release. Together, the two tracks offer an early look at what promises to be a significant artistic statement. Rooted in self-exploration, healing and radical honesty, Love Is the New Gangsta finds the Zone 6 native examining love, identity and growth across what his label is billing as his most ambitious work to date. The album is available for pre-order now, with limited edition fan bundles — including vinyl, CDs and apparel — also on sale.

The new album follows 6LACK’s 2023 effort Since I Have a Lover, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Progressive R&B Album and received widespread critical praise from outlets including NPR, Pitchfork, Rolling Stone and Complex. That record featured collaborations with Don Toliver, Wale, Ty Dolla $ign and India Shawn.

Born and raised in Atlanta, 6LACK — pronounced “Black” — broke through with his 2016 debut Free 6LACK, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Urban Contemporary Album. His 2018 follow-up East Atlanta Love Letter peaked at No. 3 on the Billboard 200 and hit No. 1 on the Top R&B Albums chart. His highest-charting moment to date remains his 2021 collaboration with Lil Tjay, “Calling My Phone,” which debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and simultaneously topped both the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot Rap Songs charts. The five-time Grammy-nominated artist has amassed over 8 billion global streams across his catalog.

Love Is the New Gangsta is out May 22.