“I treat Instagram like CVS,” Kristine Flaherty, better known by her stage name K.Flay, tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast. “Like, I buy my makeup remover cloths and I pick up my migraine prescription, and I’m out.” Most artists see social media as a lifeline that connects them directly to the world. The reasons the “Blood in the Cut” singer treats social media like a trip to a drug store says a lot about the 38-year-old singer/songwriter. Flaherty acknowledges the practical value of social channels for communicating with her fans and providing updates about her music career. “It’s part of my work,” she says, which also includes her latest album, Mono, released in September 2023, and her most recent single, “Carsick,” released in January.  “It’s part of how I communicate with my fans, and how I publicize what I’m up to.” Trending on Billboard But Flaherty wants to set up a “healthy” boundary and is wary of getting trapped in a never-ending quest to gain attention. It’s all too common for an artist to think they’ll be happy getting to a certain number of followers, she says. Reaching 100 followers leads them to think they need 1,000 followers, then 10,000 and then 100,000. “If you buy into this kind of if then thinking, there will never be enough,” she says. “And you’re kind of in the trap. You’ll never extricate yourself. So you just have to self-extricate from that type of thinking, in my opinion. So I try to just not engage with with that.” Flaherty’s comments come at a time social media is under attack from a spectrum of critics. Professor Jonathan Haidt has recently been on a media tour supporting his book, The Anxious Generation, that details how smartphones and social media have re-wired adolescents’ brains and led to spikes in psychiatric problems. In the political sphere, President Biden signed a law a TikTok ban — inserted by the U.S. Congress into a $95 foreign aid package — that will force the company out of the hands of its Chinese owner, Bytedance. Old-school flip phones and so-called “dumb phones,” cell phones purposefully stripped of most capabilities, are becoming popular with people seeking refuge from distractions.  Still, social media can be necessary to bring Flaherty’s music and performances to some fans. Although she covered much of the U.S. supporting Mono, and traveled to Australia for a string of performances in February, Flaherty naturally doesn’t travel to every corner of the globe. Social media helps her connect with people in cities where she hasn’t performed. “That’s the only way they’re ever going to get to interact with my live shows,” she says, “seeing a video online. And so that stuff matters to me. But I try not to try not to put too much time and energy into the the vicissitudes of the internet.” Plus, Flaherty adds, “I don’t really read comments.”  Listen to Behind the Setlist’s entire interview with K.Flay in the embedded player below or at Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeart or Amazon Music. 

The Rolling Stones will launch the group’s Hackney Diamonds North American tour on April 28 at NRG Houston, and the lineup of openers for various dates on the tour includes a few heavy-hitters from country and Americana circles. Reigning CMA entertainer of the year Lainey Wilson, as well as Tyler Childers, The Red Clay Strays and The War and Treaty are among the openers, joining Carin León (who made his own Grand Ole Opry debut earlier this year and has a country-tinged album in the works), The Pretty Reckless, Ghost Hounds, Bettye LaVette, Gary Clark Jr. and The Linda Lindas. Wilson will open for The Rolling Stones on June 30 at Soldier Field in Chicago, while Childers, who released his sixth album Rustin in the Rain in 2023, will perform June 3 at Camping World Stadium in Orlando. The Red Clay Strays, who earned their first major Billboard Hot 100 entry this year with “Wondering Why,” will open for the rockers on May 30 at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass. Grammy-nominated duo The War and Treaty, who just released the video for their song “Stealing a Kiss,” will open for The Stones on July 10 at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles. Trending on Billboard The tour supports The Rolling Stones’ album Hackney Diamonds, their first project of new, original material in nearly two decades. Notably, Wilson and The War and Treaty were part of a 2023 tribute album to The Rolling Stones, Stoned Cold Country, which featured several country artists performing Stones classics. See the full list of tour dates below: The Rolling Stones 2024 Tour Dates:April 28 – Houston, TX @ NRG Stadium w/ Gary Clark JrMay 2 – New Orleans, LA @ Jazz FestMay 7 – Glendale, AZ @ State Farm Stadium w/ Carin León; Electric MudMay 11 – Las Vegas, NV @ Allegiant Stadium w/ The Pretty RecklessMay 15 – Seattle, WA @ Lumen Field w/ Joe BonamassaMay 23 – East Rutherford, NJ @ MetLife Stadium w/ TBAMay 26 – East Rutherford, NJ @ MetLife Stadium w/ LawrenceMay 30 – Foxboro, MA @ Gillette Stadium w/ The Red Clay StraysJune 3 – Orlando, FL @ Camping World Stadium w/ Tyler ChildersJune 7 – Atlanta, GA @ Mercedes-Benz Stadium w/ Ghost HoundsJune 11 – Philadelphia, PA @ Lincoln Financial Field w/ KaleoJune 15 – Cleveland, OH @ Cleveland Browns Stadium w/ Ghost HoundsJune 20 – Denver, CO @ Empower Field at Mile High w/ Widespread PanicJune 27 – Chicago, IL @ Soldier Field w/ Betty LaVetteJune 30 – Chicago, IL @ Soldier Field w/ Lainey WilsonJuly 5 – Vancouver, BC @ BC Place w/ Ghost HoundsJuly 10 – Los Angeles, CA @ SoFi Stadium w/ The War and TreatyJuly 13 – Los Angeles, CA @ SoFi Stadium w/ The Linda LindasJuly 17 – Santa Clara, CA @ Levi’s® Stadium w/ The Beaches

HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Reloop / Reloop Change is inevitable. For DJ’s, the switch from analog (think: heavy…very heavy vinyl) to digital mixing has been a godsend to everyone in their orbit—except their chiropractors. However, high-end DJ equipment has always been known for lasting for years, which presents a problem when you have a cherished mixer you ain’t trying to give up. (My Technics mixer used to be top of the line, damn it). Enter the Reloop Flux which basically allows any OG mixer the ability to use Serato to your heart’s content. In tech speak, it’s the “next-generation USB-C interface for using Serato DJ Pro with turntables, CDJs or other media players.” Source: aqua / Hip-Hop Wired For background, this mission started when I was tasked with DJ’ing at my college reunion weekend (shout out to UVA’s Black Alumni Weekend, Wahoowa!) and figured it would behoove me to get really acquainted with Serato in advance. Since my essential retirement from DJ’ing (more years than I’ll admit) years ago, I was always curious about that little device you would see connected to the back of mixers that connected to a laptop and pretty much deaded the necessity to lug around crates filled with records. Any skepticism of this new DJ paradigm was eventually and essentially dismissed when the great DJ Jazzy Jeff embraced the tech that made telling the difference between a DJ rocking a party with vinyl versus digital music files an impossibility. But doing my Googles to see what was available to get back in the DJ saddle quickly turned into information overload. There are what seems like hundreds of products on the market that include mixers, turntables, CDJs and all types of hardware that make the old “two turntables and a mic” (and a mixer) look like a history museum installation. Source: aqua / Hip-Hop Wired So with no desire to drop hundreds of dollars on one of those pricey, Serato-ready mixers—for now—I figured that mixer thing-a-ma-jig (called an interface) that connected to a laptop would be easy, right? Not really. It turns out all the previous models (the RANE SL range, the Denon DS1, etc.) have gone the way of the Dodo bird and were discontinued. But, what is still on the market—and is actually relatively new since it was only released in 2023—is the Reloop Flux, and it makes for a clutch hub for a Digital Vinyl System (DVS) interface. The good folks at Reloop were kind enough to provide a review model to Hip-Hop Wired, and the Flux checks all the boxes needed to get an old DJ back in the mix. Installation was relatively simple, and if you know your way around phono, line jacks and RCA chords, getting connected is a breeze. And even if you don’t, the instructions are right there on YouTube. [embedded content] Once you’re set up and Serato DJ Pro is running, the intuitiveness of the hardware and software combo is evident. The hardware is bus-powered, so once you plug it into your laptop, it lights up—there are signal flow LEDs for all inputs and outputs as well as a thru status indicator. It also has an AUX outlet to let you record your mixes, and there are three stereo inputs and outlets, which let you run a third turntable or media player if you’re nice like that. And if you want to get extra technical, it features 24-bit/96 kHz, high-quality digital/analog converters and ultra-low latency, which makes for club-quality sound. Source: aqua / Hip-Hop Wired The true beauty of the product is that after it’s plugged in, you can forget about it since it’s doing everything it needs to do. If your music collection is legit, you now have access to all your tunes via Serato DJ Pro, without having to rifle through your crates to get to that piece of wax; a simple search will suffice. And even if you don’t have that deep cut on MP3, you can click a passthrough button on the Flux that will let you play your conventional vinyl as well. Or, if you have a Tidal account, Serato lets you access the app’s entire music library—that’s just cheating. With that in mind, the Reloop Flux is buttery smooth gateway for anyone trying to dip back into the DJ waters without breaking the bank. It retails for $449 and is a worthy investment that bridges the gap between the past and the future for you to get busy right now.

Denise Welch recently quipped she “wasn’t aware” of The Tortured Poets Department‘s release — which now makes two people in Matty Healy‘s family who haven’t heard Taylor Swift‘s new album. The British talk show star — mom to The 1975‘s frontman — talked about the pop star’s latest project with her co-hosts on the Thursday […]

HipHopWired Featured Video Source: Robert DEYRAIL / Getty An Iranian court issued a death sentence to a popular rapper who was jailed for over a year after backing nationwide protests. On Wednesday (April 24), rapper Toomaj Salehi was sentenced to death by a court in Iran for his support of protests that swept through the country two years ago, according to his lawyer. “Branch 1 of Isfahan Revolutionary Court… sentenced Toomaj Salehi to death on the charge of corruption on Earth,” Salem’s lawyer Amir Raisian said in a statement, adding “that in an unprecedented move, emphasized its independence and did not implement the Supreme Court’s ruling”. Salehi had been imprisoned in Isfahan in solitary confinement after reportedly being violently rearrested by Iranian police last year for 252 days, according to a report from the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR).  The rapper has been highly critical of the Revolutionary Government in the past and was initially arrested in October 2022 for “assistance in sedition, assembly and collusion, propaganda against the system and calling for riots” after protests over the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini the month before. Amini, 22, was an Iranian-Kurdish woman who had been detained for allegedly flouting the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code for women. Raisian stated that “We will certainly appeal against the sentence”. Iranian state media reported that Salehi’s sentence would be subject to a reduction by a pardoning committee upon appeal. Kurdish-Iranian rapper Saman Yasin was also detained by Iranian police and given a prison sentence after the protests. The news prompted multiple expressions of outrage. “We strongly condemn Toomaj Salehi’s death sentence and the five-year sentence for Kurdish-Iranian rapper Saman Yasin. We call for their immediate release,” the United States’ Office of the Special Envoy for Iran said in a post on X, formerly Twitter. “These are the latest examples of the regime’s brutal abuse of its own citizens, disregard for human rights, and fear of the democratic change the Iranian people seek.” Ye-One Rhie, a member of the German Parliament and Salehi’s sponsor, also called for Salehi’s release. “It is still completely unclear how this verdict came about,” she posted on X on Wednesday. “It is unbelievable how irresponsibly and arbitrarily the Iranian regime treats defendants. It is impossible to recognize the rule of law in the chaos of the courts in charge.”