Darrylene Corniel settled her wrongful death lawsuit against the concert company, but claims brought by the rapper's son and brother remain set for trial next month

The mother of rapper Drakeo the Ruler has reached a settlement with Live Nation over his fatal stabbing at a concert in 2021.

The mother of slain rapper Drakeo the Ruler has reached a settlement with Live Nation and several other companies over the fatal stabbing of her son backstage at the Once Upon a Time in L.A. music festival in December 2021.

The terms of the settlement were not disclosed in a notice filed with the court, but the agreement was described as conditional, with dismissal contingent on “the satisfactory completion of specified terms to be performed within 45 days.” The language suggests the deal involves obligations that have yet to be fulfilled, potentially including a financial payment. Lawyers for both sides did not respond to requests for comment from Rolling Stone.

Darrylene Corniel, who is the administrator of her son’s estate, sued with claims that her son died “at the hands of a violent mob that was allowed into what should have been a protected and secured area backstage at the music festival.” The other companies involved in her settlement include C3 Presents, Contemporary Services Corporation, Black Tide Events, Bobby Dee Presents, and Hollywood Elite Security.

Drakeo, whose legal name was Darrell Caldwell, was stabbed in the neck by an unidentified assailant shortly before he was scheduled to perform at the festival on Dec. 18, 2021, authorities previously said. He was backstage with his younger brother, Devante Caldwell, a rapper known as Ralfy the Plug, as well as a personal security guard and several members of his Stinc Team music collective.

Corniel previously told Rolling Stone that a crowd surrounded her son around the time that rival rapper YG arrived backstage. No arrests were made, and the investigation appeared to stall for years under the California Highway Patrol, which took the lead on the homicide because the stabbing occurred on state-owned property.

In July, CHP investigators executed a search warrant at a commercial property in Burbank in connection with the killing, a CHP source confirmed to Rolling Stone. The source said YG, whose legal name is Keenon Daequan Ray Jackson, was affiliated with the property and was detained during the search. Jackson was released, and there were no arrests, the source said.

Corniel’s new settlement does not resolve separate wrongful death claims brought on behalf of Drakeo’s young son, Caiden Caldwell, by the child’s guardian. It also doesn’t resolve the related negligence claims brought by his brother, his bodyguard Alrick David Cooper III, and his friends who were backstage that night. Those consolidated claims remain set for trial next month in Los Angeles.

In deposition testimony submitted in the civil case and first reported by the Los Angeles Times, Cooper claimed he saw Jackson “front and center” during the backstage brawl. Although the man he identified as Jackson was wearing a face mask, Cooper testified that he could see the man’s eyes and was confident of his identification.

“I was fighting YG and YG’s bodyguard. And then YG produced a knife from his left hand, like out of his left hand, like almost like a movie like it came out of his sleeve or something,” Cooper alleged in the deposition, according to a transcript obtained by Rolling Stone.

Attempts to reach representatives for Jackson were unsuccessful Wednesday. Jackson has not been identified by authorities as a suspect or person of the interest in the killing.

Drake has become the artist with the most No. 1 albums in the history of Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart, claiming the record outright with his 18th chart-topper.

The Toronto rapper reached the milestone as HABIBTI returned to the top following the October 2 release of HABIBTI (FOMO), a deluxe edition featuring four additional tracks. The album climbed from No. 35 to No. 1 on the chart dated October 17, according to Billboard, earning 71,000 equivalent album units in the United States during the October 2-8 tracking week. That represented a 506 per cent increase over the previous week.

The achievement breaks a three-way tie between Drake, Future and the Temptations, who had each accumulated 17 No. 1 albums on the chart. The Temptations first reached that total in 1966, making their long-standing record one of the chart’s most enduring milestones.

The new ranking puts Drake ahead of JAY-Z, who has 14 No. 1 albums, followed by Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, with 13. R. Kelly has 12, while Eminem and Lil Wayne have 11 apiece.

HABIBTI originally debuted at No. 2 in May, behind Drake’s own ICEMAN. The deluxe edition’s four new songs are “Solar Eclipse,” featuring Don Toliver; “Quebec”; “Cold Shoulder,” featuring Don Toliver and Yebba; and “Classic Pt 2.”

Billboard’s Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart launched in January 1965. Its current methodology combines album sales, streaming activity and track sales to measure the most popular releases in the genre.

Charlotte Cardin will release her third studio album, Midnight, Mon Amour, on January 29, 2027. The Montréal-born, Paris-based singer announced the 17-track record on Tuesday, October 13, alongside a new music video for her latest single, “Memories.”

The album follows Phoenix (2021) and 99 Nights (2023). Cardin has described the upcoming project as a “shadow album,” exploring private desires, vulnerability, shame and the contradictions people keep hidden.

The announcement comes days after Cardin released “Memories” in two versions: an English-language recording and a bilingual version titled “Memories (Souvenirs).” Both songs received their own music videos.

The new album continues a run of singles that began with “Tant pis pour elle” in 2025, followed by “The Way We Touch” in March 2026 and “Take Me Back” in June. All three tracks are expected to appear on Midnight, Mon Amour.“I really wanted to explore all of the inner duality that I’ve been feeling as a woman in the last few years and I wanted to use those oppositions and those contradictory feelings as something that’s empowering and liberating,” Cardin says of the album.

Cardin's latest release follows a busy year for the singer, who won Female Artist of the Year at France's 2026 Victoires de la Musique awards. The honour made her the first Québécoise to win the category since 2003.

The album, like its title, will be bilingual, something she shared was important to her.

Midnight, Mon Amour arrives January 29, 2027.

Joni Mitchell at the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles in February

Sixty-four years after she first arrived in the United States, Joni Mitchell has officially become a U.S. citizen.

Mitchell shared the news via Instagram, holding an American flag. She also posted a video of her receiving official documentation, paired with the caption “A journey that began 62 years ago.”

The news arrives six years after Mitchell’s longtime Canadian pal Neil Young obtained his U.S. citizenship (his process was delayed because of the “good moral character” provision on the immigrant application, when he admitted to smoking weed).

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As Rolling Stone reported earlier this year, Cameron Crowe’s upcoming Mitchell biopic will star Meryl Streep as an older version of Joni. “It’s a movie that will be not from a distance,” Crowe said of the project. “This is from her perspective, her life, looking out.”

Last spring, Mitchell was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2026 Juno Awards, where she appeared onstage and performed alongside Sarah McLachlan and Allison Russell. “I had a [brain] aneurysm, which changed my life — oddly, for the better,” she said during her acceptance speech. “I went into a coma, which helped me to quit smoking. And my house filled up with the most wonderful nurses. I was on the road with men for years and years; now I live with a house full of women. So my life has changed for the better, out of a catastrophe, like a phoenix who grows a better life.”Next month will mark the 50th anniversary of Mitchell’s landmark album Hejira, which appears on Rolling Stone’s new list of the 76 Best Albums of 1976.

Kelly Clarkson

Kelly Clarkson vs. Art of Play has continued to escalate since the singer and TV host called out the Brooklyn shop for treating her like Julia Roberts’ character in Pretty Woman. On Saturday, the singer shared that she had visited the store and was looked down on by an employee.

“Just drove all the way to Brooklyn to check out this store I thought looked really rad and had a few things in mind to buy and literally was looked at as if I couldn’t afford it and was told he could find something comparable for me,” she wrote on X.

Art of Play explained that Clarkson had wanted to purchase Molly, an animatronic singing bird, that wasn’t for sale. Online photos later confirmed the sculpture had a price tag of $15,000. Clarkson responded by saying “you’re not only rude, you’re also a liar.” The shop claimed to have reached out to clear the air, however that air does not seem to be getting any clearer.

The owners of Art of Play have been speaking to the press about the incident, noting that Clarkson’s posts have resulted in substantial trolling for the shop. Adam Rubin, one of the co-owners, told USA Today that the store’s phone and emails have been flooded with threatening messages. He added that Molly is now available for sale at the price of $15 million.

“We are afraid for the safety of our shopkeepers,” Rubin said. “Kelly Clarkson has put us in danger.”

He also alleged that the singer scolded one of the employees on her way out. “Nothing happened in this shop to justify her scolding our shopkeeper on the way out, but I could let that go. Everybody has a bad day,” Rubin said. “But things changed when she used her platform to attack us. It’s asymmetrical social warfare.”

On Tuesday, journalist Pablo Torre shared footage of Clarkson visiting Art of Play. The clip does not contain audio, does show her observing Molly and speaking to an employee. Clarkson can be seen pulling out her phone as she exits the store. According to the footage, Clarkson tweeted only 15 minutes after leaving.

Rubin said Clarkson was in the store for “less than five minutes.” “If this tweetstorm had not happened, we wouldn’t have realized there was a negative interaction in the shop; it was that undramatic,” he said. “We treated her like a normal person, but apparently that didn’t live up to her expectations.”

He added, “I want to be very clear about this. Nobody who has ever visited this store in person is taking Kelly Clarkson’s side.”

Clarkson has yet to respond.

Duane Davis in Las Vegas on Aug. 31

Duane “Keffe D” Davis, the former Compton gang leader convicted of orchestrating the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur amid escalating East Coast-West Coast rap rivalries, was sentenced Tuesday to 40 years to life in prison, capping a notorious cold-case homicide probe after three decades of uncertainty.

Nevada District Court Judge Carli Kierny sentenced Davis, 63, after a Las Vegas jury needed only three hours to unanimously convict him of first-degree murder with use of a deadly weapon on Aug. 31. During the two-week trial, Clark County prosecutors presented evidence that Davis orchestrated the deadly drive-by shooting by obtaining the gun, passing it to the back seat of a car, and giving his nephew the green light to open fire on the hip-hop legend.

Given an opportunity to address the court before his sentencing, Davis was unrepentant. “I just want my stuff back that they took out of my house, all them pictures,” he said, referring to photographs seized during a search. Asked by the judge if he had anything else to say before hearing his fate, Davis replied, “No, I’m good. I’m going to appeal this case, for sure,” according to a livestream of the proceeding from the Associated Press.

Shakur’s sister, Sekyiwa “Set” Shakur, called her brother her protector and the “promise of all our grandparents” in an emotional victim impact statement. In a soft voice as she held back tears, she said her brother was “born an icon.”

“He had so much promise [and] intentions for a better world for our people. He had plans, he had manifestos,” she said. “We lost something. Our whole generation lost something huge.… I do believe when you take a life like that, you do deserve every minute of the maximum amount of punishment to sit down and contemplate what you’ve done to this world, not just to me.”

When it was time to give her sentence, Kierny rebuked Davis for publicly acknowledging his involvement in Shakur’s murder in a BET interview and in his memoir, only to argue that he has since abandoned gang life, become a grandfather, and deserves to live out his remaining years in peace.

“I’m here to tell you that’s not how this works,” the judge said. “You don’t get to take a man from his family. You don’t get to take his very life, his whole future from him, and just walk away from it, especially when that man is Tupac Shakur. The world never forgot about him and his death, and neither did Las Vegas. It took us 30 years, but at this time, you are going to face justice for what you did on Sept. 7, 1996.”

Davis has maintained his innocence but did not testify in his own defense. His lawyer argued investigators failed to prove Davis was even in Las Vegas when the “California Love” rapper was shot on Sept. 7, 1996. Prosecutors, meanwhile, said Davis orchestrated the shooting as retaliation for an attack on his nephew, Orlando Anderson, at the MGM Grand casino hours earlier.

Surveillance footage showed Shakur, Death Row Records co-founder Marion “Suge” Knight, and others beating Anderson, a member of the South Side Compton Crips, after a Mike Tyson fight. Prosecutors said the confrontation grew out of a longstanding feud between the Crips and the rival Mob Piru Bloods, a gang with ties to Death Row.

A key piece of evidence was a recorded 2008 interview in which Davis told Los Angeles detectives who were working with a federal task force that he had been riding in the front passenger seat of the white Cadillac that pulled alongside the BMW carrying Shakur and Knight near the Las Vegas Strip. Davis said he handed a loaded .40-caliber Glock to Deandrae “Big Dre” Smith in the back seat, but Smith hesitated, allowing Anderson to grab the gun and open fire. “He leaned over on the window. He rolled down the window, popped ’em,” Davis said in the recording played for jurors. “If they drove on my side, I would have popped ’em.”

Knight was wounded but survived. Shakur, struck multiple times, died six days later in a hospital at age 25. Anderson denied involvement before he was killed in an unrelated shooting in 1998. Smith died of natural causes in 2004, and the alleged driver of the Cadillac, Terrence “Bubble Up” Brown, died in a shooting at a Compton marijuana dispensary in 2015.

Davis sat for the secret police interview in 2008 while he was seeking leniency in an unrelated narcotics investigation. Prosecutors said he later forfeited the protections of his cooperation agreement when he publicly repeated the story in interviews and in his memoir, Compton Street Legend. Davis was arrested in September 2023 and has remained in custody.

Defense lawyer Michael Sanft argued that Davis fabricated the account he told police to avoid drug charges and later embellished it for profit. He pointed to inconsistencies in Davis’ various retellings and discrepancies with witness testimony, arguing that investigators failed to corroborate key details. “We can’t put Orlando in the car. We can’t even put Davis in Las Vegas,” Sanft told jurors.

Prosecutors countered that Davis had repeatedly implicated himself in extraordinary detail. Former Los Angeles police Detective Daryn Dupree testified that Davis first volunteered his involvement while being questioned about the 1997 killing of Christopher Wallace, the rapper known as the Notorious B.I.G. Asked about that case, Davis denied involvement but told detectives, “We did the other one,” Dupree said on the witness stand.

In his closing rebuttal, Clark County Chief Deputy District Attorney Marc DiGiacomo said the 2008 proffer agreement was beyond the control of Las Vegas authorities, and Davis benefited from it for years. He claimed Davis eventually went public with his own account because he was angry when Los Angeles Police Detective Greg Kading wrote his own book about the case. The long delay before Davis was charged did not mean Las Vegas investigators doubted his culpability, DiGiacomo said.

“We had to eat crow and allow a murderer to live in Henderson and not charge him because of the various things that happened in this case,” DiGiacomo said. He closed by pointing to a social media clip in which Davis boasted that he had “beat the streets,” “beat the feds,” and “beat cancer.”

“And now he’s trying to beat 12 of you,” DiGiacomo told the jury.

After hearing the guilty verdict, Davis vowed to pursue an appeal. The judge ordered him held without bail. In a jailhouse interview with reporter Jeff Weiss a few days later, Davis said, “Shit, I ain’t worried. I’m getting out on an appeal. They violated my civil rights.”