BigXthaPlug Arrested on Drug and Gun Charges in Texas

Rapper misses Winnipeg music festival gig due to arrest, but still slated to perform Saturday night at Iowa State fair

BigXthaPlug

BigXthaPlug was arrested Friday in Texas on drug and weapons charges, forcing the rising country rapper to miss a scheduled performance at a Winnipeg music festival.

The Dallas rapper born Xavier Landum was pulled over by the Allen Police Department and booked into the Collin County Jail on Friday on charges of driving while intoxicated, marijuana possession of less than 2 ounces, and unlawful possession of a firearm, Dallas’ KDFW reports.

Landum’s arrest comes exactly one year after the rapper was arrested for marijuana possession and unlawful possession of a firearm on August 21, 2025 in Dallas; he was out on bail on those charges when he was arrested Friday.

BigXthaPlug was scheduled to perform Friday night at Winnipeg, Manitoba’s Country Rising Festival, but he was forced to cancel the performance; organizers said they understood fans’ “disappointment and frustration” by the rapper’s absence due to a “personal emergency.”

Despite the arrest, BigXthaPlug is still slated to perform Saturday night at the Iowa State Fair Grandstand. Organizers there told KCCI Des Moines, “We are aware of reports regarding BigXthaPlug. We are in communication with his agent and at this time, we have been told he will still be performing.”

Rolling Stone profiled BigXthaPlug earlier this year for our Future of Music issue; a friend of Jelly Roll and Shaboozey, the rapper became a sensation with his country-rap LP I Hope You’re Happy, his first step towards what Rolling Stone called his “Texas-size ambition.”

“You can’t be one of the best artists in the world and have only done one genre,” BigXthaPlug said at the time. “Beyoncé, a GOAT, a queen. She’s done pop, country. Lil Wayne: rock, pop. Snoop Dogg did songs with Katy Perry and shit. All these people are greats, from Eminem to Dr. Dre to Ice Cube. Everybody has stepped out of that lane.”

A photo of Nickelback in 2002

Canadian hard rock Hall-of-Famers Nickelback are back in full force with the release of “Leave Me Behind,” the latest single from their upcoming album Everything Under The Sun.

The Alberta-born band released the track Friday, giving fans another preview of the 11th studio album, which is scheduled to arrive October 30 through Virgin Music Group. The song follows the singles “Bones For The Crows” and “Rattle The Cage,” the latter featuring Mötley Crüe guitarist John 5.

“Leave Me Behind” is an expansive power-ballad, taking a more emotional route than the hard-charging “Rattle The Cage.” The new song focuses on loyalty, emotional baggage and the difficult process of helping someone move forward. The track centres on the idea of standing by someone through a difficult period while confronting the fear of being abandoned along the way.

“There’s a lot of weight in this song, but there’s also a lot of hope,” says frontman Chad Kroeger. “It’s about being there for someone when they’re dealing with the things that have broken them down - picking up the pieces, taking some of that weight off their shoulders, and reminding them they don’t have to go through it alone. At the same time, there’s that feeling of not wanting to be left behind. We liked that tension. It makes the song feel really personal.”

Everything Under The Sun will be Nickelback's first studio album since 2022's Get Rollin'. The new record will be their first with new label Virgin Music Group.

Jonas Brothers perform during their Burning Up Tour All Over Again show at Madison Square Garden on Aug. 20

Jonas Brothers debuted a new song, “Listen When Sad,” during their concert at Madison Square Garden on Thursday night. The group, Kevin, Joe, and Nick Jonas, showcased the track during the latter half of the show.

“We’ve tapped back into a sound that was kind of the sound of the early 2000s,” Nick told the crowd. “To be honest, that was heavily inspiring to us. Bands like Switchfoot, Taking Back Sunday, Dashboard Confessional. We re-teamed with the producer of our self-titled album, A Little Bit Longer, and Lines, Vines and Trying Times.”

Jonas Brothers are currently on their Burning Up Tour: All Over Again, which includes three nights at MSG. The original Burnin’ Up Tour took place nearly two decades ago in 2008. The global trek came after the release of their album A Little Bit Longer, which hit No. 1 on the Billboard 200. The album went on to sell more than two million copies and remains beloved by fans today.

The trio also recently relived their early years by returning to Disney’s Camp Rock franchise. Camp Rock 3, out now, finds the Jonas Brothers returning as fictional band Connect 3, who are looking for a new opening act. That search brings them back to Camp Rock, where a fresh set of campers are ready to show their stuff. The film’s soundtrack includes a new JoBros number, “Come On Over,” although it’s billed under Connect 3.

Jonas Brothers have yet to announce a release date for the studio version of “Listen When Sad.” The tour continues tonight at Madison Square Garden, and will head to cities across the U.S. this fall, kicking off in Boston on Sept. 25.

Mac Miller

The Mac Miller Estate shared a new Mac Miller song, “Butterflies.” The track will appear on The Divine Feminine (10th Anniversary), out Oct. 2, along with two other previously-unheard songs. The titles of the other new tracks have not been announced.

“Butterflies” was produced by Taylor Graves and features bass by Miller’s longtime collaborator Thundercat and trumpet by Daniel Hardaway. The hypnotic, mid-tempo number sees Miller intoning about a possible love connection: “Better drive slow/ If you wanna take a ride on the high road/ And your mind so passionate, your love what I’m after and/ That feelin’ so unfamiliar, I only imagine it/ Dream girl, you’re my make-believe girl.”

Along with the single, the estate launched a new Mac Miller website, designed in conjunction with James Musgrave and Kate Doyle for XXIX. The site is an interactive tribute to the life and work of the rapper, who died in 2018, and features archival media contributed by friends and colleagues from throughout the years.

Miller released The Divine Feminine, his fourth LP, in 2016. It featured collaborations with Kendrick Lamar, Anderson .Paak, CeeLo Green, Ty Dolla Sign, and Ariana Grande, who notably appeared one of the album’s singles, “My Favorite Part.” The album notably received mediocre reviews. Rolling Stone wrote, “Miller’s grown-ass beats clash with his juvenile boasts (“I just eat pussy, other people need food”), so he often ends up sounding like a well-meaning kid who can’t stop putting his kicks up on the fancy furniture.”

The Divine Feminine (10th Anniversary) is available for pre-order now.

The Divine Feminine (10th Anniversary) Track List:

1. Congratulations feat. Bilal2. Dang! feat. Anderson. Paak3. Stay4. Skin5. Cinderella feat. Ty Dolla $ign6. Planet God Damn feat. Njomza7. Soulmate8. We feat. CeeLo Green9. My Favorite Part feat. Ariana Grande10. God Is Fair, Sexy, Nasty feat. Kendrick Lamar11. Track 1112. Track 1213. Butterflies

Becky G, Karol G, Tokischa (from left)

It seems the girls can’t stop crying in the club in 2026. In the past few months, Karol G, Becky G, and Tokisicha have all released major albums, cementing their roles as powerful forces in Latin pop music. Tokischa finally shared her long-awaited debut, Amor & Droga; Karol surprised fans with No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto; and Becky G dropped her most unapologetic LP yet, Baraja Bendita. Though each release has its own focus and blend of genres, there’s one element they all share: a sad perreo song filled with dancefloor introspection.

Karol G, Becky G, and Tokisicha have used reggaeton rhythms to power some of their biggest releases to date, including club-ready perreo tracks with frenetic snares that you can’t help but move to. But with songs like “Perreo Llorando,” “Bebiendo Lágrimas,” and “Perreo Triste,” all three of them are taking a sound more typically associated with partying and pairing it with melancholy emotions instead. For these three, living it up can also mean dancing through the pain.

“The reason I decided to put the record out is simply so that people let themselves feel,” Karol told Rolling Stone recently. “Living is about feeling — feeling things, feeling every moment, and feeling it to the fullest.” Becky G and Tokischa are clearly inspired by a similar school of thought. Below, we break down each tear-filled track below and explore how some of Latin music’s biggest stars display the compelling duality of sad perreo.

Tokischa pulls no punches on Amor & Droga as she showcases all of her dark thoughts. “You guys think I’m just a horny bitch? I have a lot of feelings,” the Dominican musician told Rolling Stone back in April. That’s apparent on “Perreo Llorando,” which translates, more or less, to “Crying While Twerking.” Tokischa tries to hide her heartbreak while out partying without much luck: “Tú me ve perreando, por dentro toy sufriendo/Moviendo el culo y llorando por dentro” (“You see me dancing, but inside I’m suffering/Shaking my ass and crying inside”), she sings atop a sexy, insistent beat crafted by Puerto Rican producer Súbelo Neo. “I like raw reggaeton. I want to feel that drum hit. I want to feel the bass,” Tokischa said. “I made this when I first came to Miami in 2021 and I saw how everything was sad … rich people with all the money in the world, all the Gucci, and everything is still sad.” Rather than run from that sadness, she leaned into it.

On No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto, Karol G traces all of the messy phases of heartbreak. By the time the Colombian superstar gets to the third track, “Bebiendo Lágrimas,” which translates to “Drinking Tears,” she’s sorely disillusioned by love, writing it off entirely as she drinks to forget her ex. The result is a sassy cut that expertly weaves in sorrowful lines like “Porque hoy hasta las lágrimas me vo’a tomar para olvidar” (“Because today I’m even going to drink tears to forget”) over thumping bass with the help of her trusty producer, Ovy on the Drums. “The message of that song is, ‘I’ve reached my limit in matters of love. I’m burying it, and at least for now, I’m going to enjoy my peace, myself, being alone, enjoying who I am — my career, my friends,” Karol told RS. She also revealed that it was one of the first tracks she wrote for the album, which makes sense considering it’s not the only sad perreo track to appear on No Me Arrepiento de Sentir Tanto: “Maybe” and “Con Quién Andará?” also pair lovelorn lyrics with classic reggaeton beats.

“I made a decision to be the most vulnerable I had ever been in my music,” Becky G recently told Rolling Stone. “It was almost like I hit a hidden artery or a vein, and it just bled such rawness.” That emotional depth is all over her latest effort, Baraja Bendita, especially on “Perreo Triste,” which translates to “Sad Twerking.” The Mexican singer paints the picture of dancing with someone new to get over an ex but just like with Tokischa and Karol, the sadness envelops her. “Toy borracha y no me deja de doler/Me duele, pero me hago la que no contra la pared” (“I’m drunk and it won’t stop hurting/It hurts me but I act like it doesn’t against this wall”), Becky sings over a rousing reggaeton beat. It’s like an inverse version of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own,” but make it perreo.

Ten years ago, during the same week that Frank Ocean released his mixed-media tableau — the short film/album Endless, the rarefied Boys Don’t Cry zine, and his seminal album Blonde — Werner Herzog’s film Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World arrived. In the film, the German documentary filmmaker considers the heady question of what the internet might be doing to us humans. He makes contact with a community whose members swear they’re allergic to Wi-Fi. The film ominously warns of an inevitable solar flare on the scale of the 1859 Carrington Event, one that, once unleashed, would reduce all communications networks, the foundations of so much of our modern world then and even more now, to dust.

And so, on “Seigfried,” Frank explains: “A moment one solar flare would consume, so why not/Spin this flammable paper on the film that’s my life?”

In the decade since its release, Blonde, like Herzog’s documentary, has come to feel like the final stamp on a discrete moment in history. Released less than three months before Trump’s first election, the album now lives as an artifact of a prehistoric world; yet emotionally, Blonde feels more expansive than any frame of time can contain. That has always, of course, been Ocean’s skill as a writer: his ability to occupy emotion untethered from time or place, instincts and sensations jumbling into one another with chaotic, maybe even euphoric, abandon. On 2012’s Channel Orange, he arranged that gift into scenes populated by taxi drivers, rich kids, dealers, and doomed lovers. Blonde loosens the plot, leaning into the unreliability of memory and the false truths that occupy the gaps between love and certainty.

It’s the way that last “Good!” pierces the second half of “Ivy,” landing closer to the punk instincts that flash elsewhere on the album, in sonic conflict with the song’s shimmering opening turn. Or how, on “Nikes,” Frank trapezes between sonic registers and perspectives, painting a kaleidoscopic view on his own sexuality, all under the banner of the most iconic brand in the world.

Across Blonde, what feel like dispatches from another dimension arrive like warnings from the past and future about the very romance the narrator finds himself sliding into. In one of the handful of interviews he’s given, Ocean described the album’s competing narratives as a “collage or bricolage,” saying that memory has a way of arriving as overlapping images. Each song, too, has its own overlapping instincts. The deceptively mellow “Self Control” manages to mourn a lost love with existential clarity. It features vocals from Slow Hollows’ Austin Feinstein, who sings the devastating “Keep a place for me” refrain before Frank takes us into the stratosphere on a swell of strings arranged by Jon Brion, repeating, “I know you gotta leave,” until his voice splits into a choir.

Even bite-size moments like “Good Guy” contain universes of their own. The interruptions imitate the way an old relationship returns to you with a flash of potent sensation. That construction has kept Blonde from aging in place. The person who heard “Self Control” at 19 and the person returning to it at 29 are effectively hearing two different songs. At first, its plea to remain somewhere in an old lover’s life can feel like the whole tragedy. Later, the more devastating recognition may be how much time has passed since asking.

“Why am I preachin’ to this choir/To this atheist?” he sings on “Close to You,” acknowledging the futility of trying to convince someone who knows the story but no longer believes in it. Like with Channel Orange, Frank is narrating life from 10,000 feet up, able to communicate pain and lust and longing with a kind of precision that, if nothing else, should prove how singular the human spirit truly is. An AI could never create Blonde precisely because of how deeply human an album it is. “This is not my life, it’s just a fond farewell to a friend,” Frank sings on “Seigfried,” before the song effortlessly widens from one failed romance to contain the meaning of existence itself. It’s something that no machine can ever understand.