Elton John’s Turnstile Cover, Natanael Cano, and More Songs You Need to Know This Week

Looking for the week’s best new music? Check out our Songs You Need to Know playlist

Welcome to our weekly rundown of the best new music — featuring big singles, key tracks from our favorite albums, and more. This week, a Turnstile song gets the Elton John treatment, Erykah Badu and the Alchemist team up with Earl Sweatshirt for a soulful album highlight, and Natanael Cano gets the crowd on their feet with a corrido collab from his newest album. Plus, new songs from Billy Strings, Ice Spice, Olivia Rodrigo, Interpol, and Little Big Town.

Turnstile feat. Elton John, “Seein’ Stars: Elton John Version” (YouTube)

Natanael Cano, Gabito Ballesteros, Javier Rosas, “Nos Vamos De Dance” (YouTube)

Erykah Badu, The Alchemist, feat. Earl Sweatshirt “I Know That Man” (YouTube)

Billy Strings, “I Wish I Wanted To” (YouTube)

Ice Spice, Lil Yachty, “Out My Face (My Baby)” (YouTube)

Olivia Rodrigo, “Serena Joy” (YouTube)

AZ Chike feat. Tyler, the Creator, “Look Like My Mama” (YouTube)

Interpol, “Wings On Fire” (YouTube)

Alabama Shakes, “Time” (YouTube)

Sara Bareilles, “Just a Kid” (YouTube)

Prince, “Bestest Friend” (YouTube)

Flowerovlove “Debonair” (YouTube)

Little Big Town feat. Jason Isbell, “The Door” (YouTube)

Asher White, “White Castle Sad” (YouTube)

Ken Carson feat. Osamason, “Vamp City” (YouTube)

The Linda Lindas, “Everybody Told Me” (YouTube)

Mike D, “Make It Stop” (YouTube)

Alex Warren, “Wildchild” (YouTube)

ErisThePlanet feat. Rico Nasty, “8 Feet Tall” (YouTube)

Dahi feat. Kendrick Lamar, Amber Mark, “How to Pray” (YouTube)

Los Bitchos feat. Ambrose Kenny-Smith, “Holding Cell” (YouTube)

Liim, “Buttas On” (YouTube)

Todd Snider, “Solid Country Gold” (YouTube)

Imperial Teen, “All Over You” (YouTube)

Kam Franklin, “Pho For Breakfast” (YouTube)

Trim, “Get Hit” (YouTube)

Lex Walton, “Hipster Runoff” (YouTube)

Temper City, “Reverse Psychology” (YouTube)

The Olivia Tremor Control, “Advice From the Oceans” (YouTube)

Stella and Dolly Parton, 2014

Dolly Parton‘s younger sister Stella posted a tribute to the late country icon today on Facebook. “My sister was one of the most generous, thoughtful, and kind people I’ve ever known,” she wrote. In the lengthy post, she talked about how she kept in touch with Dolly, who was three years older than her.

“Every Tuesday about this time, before the sun came up and the world was still asleep, she and I for many years had our coffee together over the phone,” she wrote. “Being little farm girls we’ve continued to be early risers.” Stella wrote that the sisters would gossip and Dolly would joke, “We get more work done before the sun comes up than most folks do all day long!” Later in her missive, Stella acknowledged, “My Tuesday morning coffee time will never be the same but her love, respect, and goodness will remain.”

The public perception of Dolly as a generous person concerned for the future of humanity, Stella wrote, was “exactly who she was.” As an example, Stella wrote that Dolly once said that if she learned her health was terminal, she would allow doctors to try experimental drugs on her if it would help others in the future. “My sister was always thinking of others and if you want to honor her legacy, show more kindness, lift others up, and give more of your time and resources, as she continued to do to the very end,” she wrote.

Stella wrote that Dolly was a role model who encouraged her to focus on what matters most. “Dolly loved the world and everyone in it,” she wrote. “I would criticize and complain about it, and she would laugh and say, ‘Shoot, Tedda, we’ve got more important things to do than worry about their silly asses.’ She was right and she proved it every day.” In her closing, Stella wrote that Dolly “left the world a better place by being in it so let’s follow her example.”

Since Parton’s death on Tuesday following a cancer diagnosis, celebrities, politicians, and luminaries have mourned her loss. Every living president shared words of praise for Parton’s generosity and role in American culture. Meanwhile, Taylor Swift, Beyoncé, Kacey Musgraves, and many others wrote about the effect she had on their lives. Others, including Jack White, Harry Styles, and John Mayer, performed her songs or acknowledged her loss at their concerts.

Bryan Adams has been feeling pretty patriotic, lately. After having released ''51st State'', a tongue-in-cheek clapback at Donald Trump's comments, the Canadian rock star released “The Ballad of Terry Fox” Thursday, a tribute to the athlete whose 1980 Marathon of Hope became one of the most important moments in the country’s history. The song arrives alongside a music video directed by Sean Menard, whose upcoming documentary Run Terry Run explores Fox’s journey and legacy.

Adams recalls being 20 and touring Canada in small clubs when Fox began his cross-country run. He remembers following the story as Fox made his way through the country, including his stop near Thunder Bay on Sept. 1, 1980.

“Thinking back, it was a pivotal time in Canada,” Adams said in a statement. “Without knowing it, Terry gave our slightly fractious country a ‘something’ and ‘someone’ that everyone could agree on and unite behind.”

Fox set out to run across Canada after losing a leg to cancer, hoping to raise money for cancer research. Although he was forced to stop after developing further health complications, his Marathon of Hope went on to inspire a nationwide fundraising movement that continues more than 45 years later.

“The Ballad of Terry Fox” is also featured in Run Terry Run, which includes previously unseen archival footage and previously unheard material. The documentary will premiere at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival before opening in Canadian theatres nationwide on Oct. 9.

Nettspend

First Class Fest is heading into its biggest weekend with a different lineup than expected, but the show must go on.

The Toronto underground rap festival, which starts tomorrow, Aug. 28, has lost four artists in the days leading up to its debut at The Bowl at Sobeys Stadium. Che, Black Kray, Skaiwater and, most recently, Nettspend have all withdrawn, Stereogum reports.

Che's cancellation was announced last weekend, with organizers calling the change "unforeseen and beyond our control." Xaviersobased has been added to Friday's lineup in his place. Black Kray, meanwhile, has been replaced by TwentyThree, and Diamond* and Jaeychino were added following Skaiwater's departure.

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Nettspend's cancellation came Tuesday. The rapper announced on social media that he would not be making it to Toronto, without giving a reason. First Class Fest later said Nettspend had not provided an explanation and criticized the cancellation, calling the situation ‘disappointing’ both for the festival and its attendees.

Luckily, organizers moved quickly to fill the remaining gap. 1oneam and Apollo Red have been added to Saturday's bill, while Friday headliner OsamaSon will return for a second performance featuring leaks and unreleased material.

Despite the last-minute shakeup, the festival is scheduled to proceed as planned. Starting in 2022, First Class Fest started booking shows designed to bring underground rap acts to Canada. This weekend marks its first outdoor festival, and approximately 9,000 fans are expected to attend each day.

Beyoncé.

Even if you never want to reveal your age, some B’days are milestones worth celebrating. Beyoncé is set to commemorate the 20th anniversary of her second solo album, B’Day, on Sept. 4, the singer’s actual 45th birthday.

The reissue expands the original 10-song track list (overlooking the hidden tracks) to a 27-song celebration that includes the album’s B sides, Spanish-language versions of songs, and the recently released “Morning Dew (Donk).” Physical copies will be available on CD and a four-LP edition, pressed to “bayou blue” vinyl that includes a 60-page booklet and two prints priced at two cents shy of $150. Abridged two-discs versions come cheaper. Full details are on the artist’s webstore.

B’Day came out originally in the summer of 2006 and was a Number One hit. It’s since been certified quintuple platinum by the RIAA. Its initial release included the hits “Irreplaceable,” “Déjà Vu,” and “Ring the Alarm.” The deluxe edition, released months later, included “Beautiful Liar,” which featured Shakira, and paved the way for “Get Me Bodied” making the charts.

Because albums came out in myriad formats, including exclusive editions for big box retailers that no longer exist like Circuit City, Beyoncé had plenty of material to choose from to pack the reissue out. She has included the Circuit City track “Back Up,” the Japanese edition’s “Creole,” and the iTunes edition’s “Lost Yo Mind,” among others. She also included selections from the Irreemplazable EP, which came out in 2007 and included Spanish versions of songs. However, Bey’s Fourth of July release, “Morning Dew (Donk),” is the only included song that didn’t come out around Beyoncé’s original B’Day.

B’Day 20th Anniversary Deluxe Edition Track List

1. “Déjà Vu”2. “Get Me Bodied”3. “Suga Mama”4. “Upgrade U”5. “Ring the Alarm”6. “Kitty Kat”7. “Freakum Dress”8. “Green Light”9. “Irreplaceable”10. “Check on It”11. “Beautiful Liar”12. “Flaws and All”13. “Resentment”14. “Listen”15. “Morning Dew (Donk)”16. “My First Time”17. “Can I Watch You”18. “Welcome to Hollywood”19. “Lost Yo Mind”20. “Creole”21. “Back Up”22. “Get Me Bodied (Extended Mix)”23. “Irreplaceable (Irreemplazable)”24. “Amor Gitano”25. “Listen (Oye)”26. “Beautiful Liar (Bello Embustero)”27. “Get Me Bodied (Mueve el Cuerpo)”

Lil Durk on Oct. 28, 2023 in Newark, New Jersey

An unreleased music video filmed by Grammy-winning rapper Lil Durk was shown to jurors at his Los Angeles murder-for-hire trial Wednesday, with prosecutors claiming it was evidence of a revenge motive and defense lawyer Brian Steel dismissing it as creative speech by a “grief-stricken” poet.

“It was an expression of art that never got released,” Steel said in a courtroom in downtown Los Angeles. The lawyer known for defending high-profile clients including Young Thug and Sean Combs called Banks the “type of genius” who paints “pictures with words” through his music.

Lil Durk, born Durk Banks, filmed the video in January 2021. In it, he appears as himself, reading news coverage of the 2020 shooting death of his close friend and musical protégé King Von in Atlanta. Banks, styled with his then-signature blond dreadlocks, was shown on screens in the courtroom chasing and shooting an actor whom prosecutors say was portraying rival rapper Quando Rondo.

In opening statements Monday, prosecutors said Banks blamed Quando Rondo for King Von’s shooting death because the two men were involved in a fistfight outside a hookah lounge on Nov. 6, 2020, seconds before an associate of Quando Rondo’s fatally shot King Von. They said Banks was so “consumed with revenge” that a year-and-a-half after filming the “Redman” video, Banks allegedly hired a group of hitmen to stalk and kill Quando Rondo, born Tyquian Bowman, in Los Angeles.

According to prosecutors, Banks paid for the plane tickets, hotel rooms, ski masks, cars, and guns that were used when the men followed Bowman around L.A. on Aug. 19, 2022, and eventually opened fire on his vehicle at a gas station near the Beverly Center mall. Bowman survived, but his cousin Saviay’a Robinson, known as Lul Pab, was fatally struck. Prosecutors say one of the weapons used in the shooting was a semiautomatic firearm modified to function as a machine gun.

Banks, 33, has pleaded not guilty. One of his lawyers said in her opening statement that the “All My Life” rapper “had nothing to do with” the killing and never offered or paid a bounty. On Wednesday, Steel used his cross-examination of FBI Special Agent Jarron Farmby to challenge prosecutors’ decision to cite the unreleased “Redman” video as an overt act in the federal indictment charging Banks with conspiracy, stalking resulting in death, and murder for hire.

With Banks watching from the defense table, Steel asked Farmby whether investigators had contacted the video’s producer or videographer about how it was conceived. Farmby said he had not been involved in that part of the investigation. Asked whether anyone had contacted Banks’s record label about the video’s artistic concept, Farmby said he was not aware of such outreach.

“You know that Durk is a musical artist, a poet, true?” Steel asked after establishing that the professionally produced video used a “toy gun” and was staged so that “nobody got hurt.”

“That’s what he does,” Farmby replied.

Steel then turned to Banks’ grief after King Von’s death and some of the messages he exchanged with his associates. He asked whether people mourning a profound loss that “severs their entire being” might become so “grief-stricken” that they say or do things they would not do after having more time to process the loss. Farmby said that was “possible.”

The lawyer also used his line of questioning to suggest prosecutors weren’t giving jurors the whole picture about how Banks processed the tragedy. He claimed investigators discovered communications in which Banks discussed King Von’s death with his associates and said, “You need a therapist.”

Steel also pointed to a 2021 music video released by Quando Rondo titled “Soul Reaper,” in which a blond-dreadlocked actor resembling Banks is kidnapped at gunpoint and shot.

“Mr. Bowman never got prosecuted?” Steel asked after eliciting testimony that there were no convictions stemming from King Von’s death. The agent said no.

“That was art,” Steel replied.

In opening statements Monday, Assistant U.S. Attorney Daniel Weiner called the case one of “revenge, stalking, and premeditated murder.” He said the evidence would show Banks used coded language to dispatch the group of gunmen. He pointed to an Aug. 18, 2022, text in which Banks wrote, “Don’t book no flights under no names involved wit me.”

On Wednesday, Steel suggested the text had nothing to do with the flights booked using one of his management company’s credit cards for the men charged as his co-defendants in the government’s first indictment. Steel said that at the time, Banks had a friend getting married in Mexico who was expecting his attendance. The lawyer asked the agent if he knew Banks had recently suffered an injury that caused him to cancel his tour in August 2022. The agent said he did not.

The government’s case relies heavily on cooperating witnesses, including Banks’ former employee Kavon “OTF Vonnie” Grant, who has pleaded guilty. Prosecutors said Jerome Kacey “OTF Jam” Hester and Keith Jones also pleaded guilty and are cooperating.

Hester began testifying Wednesday afternoon, telling jurors he was a member of Chicago’s Black Disciples gang and rose to a leadership role through “violence,” including an attempted murder that led to a 12-year prison sentence. After his release in February 2022, Banks bought him clothes and welcomed him home, Hester testified.

The day before Robinson’s killing, Hester received a call from an associate who told him to get on a flight from Chicago to Los Angeles that day, he said. According to Hester, he could hear Banks’ voice on another call with the associate in the background. Hester told the jury he flew to San Diego without even packing a bag and only learned after he landed that the plan was to find and kill Quando Rondo.

Hester testified that Kavon Grant provided guns and cars to him and the other men who traveled from Chicago to San Diego that day. Asked if Grant was giving him orders to carry out the shooting, he said that wasn’t the case, calling Grant a “nobody.” Hester’s testimony is set to continue Thursday, with a cross-examination by Steel.

Banks’ lawyer Marissa Goldberg told jurors in her opening statement that Hester started cooperating with authorities shortly after he was arrested in May 2023 “because he was desperate.” She said he “couldn’t go back to jail another day in his life” and “became a massive cooperator.”

According to Goldberg, Grant was the one who organized the August 2022 shooting plot on his own. She said Grant was extremely “tight” with King Von, was with him in Atlanta the night he was killed, and became consumed with a desire for revenge. Banks, by contrast, “channeled” his anger and frustration into “his artwork,” she said.

“Mr. Banks had nothing to do with it,” Goldberg said. She argued prosecutors have no evidence he paid anyone for the shooting. “This is a murder-for-hire allegation where nobody gets paid,” she said.

An LAPD detective testified that GPS data from a rented white BMW helped investigators track members of the group to an In-N-Out Burger after the shooting. Surveillance footage and other evidence were then used to identify several suspects.

The judge has ruled that beyond the “Redman” video, jurors will be able to hear lyrics from several of Banks’ songs, including “Pissed Me Off,” “Who Want Smoke??,” and “Ahhh Ha,” in which he raps, “Don’t respond to shit with Von. I’m like ‘Fuck it, you trippin’, go get your gun. They droppin’ locations, I’m gettin’ it done. Fuck tweeting, we slidin’, the feds are comin’.”

The use of rap lyrics as evidence in criminal trials is controversial, with critics saying the practice chills creative expression and allows prosecutors to distort hyperbolic art in ways that reinforce racist stereotypes.

Banks’ trial is expected to last three weeks. His wife India Royale and father Dontay Banks Sr. were in the audience on Wednesday. The judge started the proceedings by calling for a moment of silence to mark the death of beloved entertainer and philanthropist Dolly Parton, who died Tuesday at age 80.