The reunion Windy City fans had waited decades for took an unexpected turn Saturday night when Brandy Norwood abruptly left the stage during “The Boy Is Mine Tour” stop with Monica at Chicago’s United Center — and never returned.
Midway through her set, Brandy paused and told the crowd, “Give me one second, y’all, I gotta get my—,” before walking backstage. She never came back, leaving Monica to finish the concert solo. Their 1998 hit “The Boy Is Mine,” the duet that defined late ’90s R&B and inspired the tour’s name, went unperformed.
By Sunday morning, Brandy broke her silence. “After weeks of nonstop rehearsals, last night I experienced dehydration and feelings of wanting to faint,” the Grammy winner wrote in a verified Instagram post. “Everyone involved agreed that prioritizing my well-being was of the utmost importance.”
She continued, “I attempted to return to the stage but found it impossible to fully connect sonically with the production. I want to thank my fans for your overwhelming love, support, and—most importantly—your prayers. I also want to thank Monica for stepping up with such grace and professionalism.”
Brandy confirmed she received medical attention immediately after leaving the venue and was advised to rest before continuing the tour. “I’m okay now,” she said, adding that she plans to rejoin the tour this week.
The Chicago stop was the third show on Brandy and Monica’s co-headlining tour — their first in more than 25 years. The tour opened Oct. 16 in Cincinnati and continues through mid-November with stops in Atlanta, Houston and Los Angeles.
Snoop Dogg has spent a career flipping expectations. But this week’s move — dropping a children’s song about LGBTQ+ families after publicly stumbling on the same topic months ago — might be one of his most unexpected reversals yet.
Earlier this year, Snoop said a screening of Disney’s “Lightyear” with his grandson “threw [him] for a loop” when the boy asked about the film’s lesbian couple. “I didn’t come here for this,” he told a podcast host, adding that he didn’t have the answers. The backlash came quick: how could a man who’s preached love, unity, and evolution be so uneasy about a Pixar kiss?
Fast-forward to October. Snoop partnered with GLAAD to release “Love Is Love,” a new song from his YouTube series "Doggyland," timed with Spirit Day — the organization’s national anti-bullying campaign for LGBTQ youth. The track, sung by cartoon dogs with preschool-friendly beats, insists that “no two parents are the same, but the love won’t change.” It’s deliberately simple — not an apology, but a public correction.
“I felt like this music is a beautiful bridge to bringing understanding,” Snoop said in a filmed conversation with Jeremy Beloate, an openly queer artist who competed on his Voice team. “These are things kids have questions about. Now hopefully we can help them live a happy life and understand that love is love.”
That humility may surprise some longtime fans. For decades, Snoop has represented a particular brand of West Coast masculinity — smooth, funny, charismatic, but grounded in the coded norms of old-school rap. So when he faced criticism for how he handled "Lightyear," his response wasn’t to double down but to recalibrate in public. It’s not brand management; it’s self-education.
What’s striking is the medium. Hip-hop has had plenty of protest songs, but almost no bedtime stories about inclusion. "Doggyland," Snoop’s kid-focused series, already promoted kindness and literacy; now it’s modeling empathy. That’s not something you can fake in a market where kids notice contradictions faster than adults.
Still, the gesture comes with baggage. Some fans see “Love Is Love” as image rehab — a late pivot after months of social-media dragging. But even that tension speaks to something bigger. When an artist as visible as Snoop evolves on camera, it says more about generational change inside hip-hop itself. The culture that once defined toughness through resistance is now old enough to define it through growth.
In his GLAAD statement, Snoop put it plainly: “Spreading love and respect for everybody is what real gangstas do. We’re showing the next generation that kindness is cool, inclusion is powerful, and love always wins.” It’s both a wink and a warning — that empathy, in 2025, might be the hardest flex of all.
Because hip-hop doesn’t need another PSA. It needs its elders to keep learning out loud.
Rapper and educator Mickey Factz, newly appointed adjunct professor at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, will teach “The Art of the MC” beginning Oct. 23. The course, previously taught by Black Thought of The Roots, explores the craft and culture of lyricism in hip-hop. (Photo courtesy of NYU Clive Davis Institute)
Mickey Factz is headed back to class — this time at the front of it. New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music has appointed the Bronx lyricist as an adjunct professor to teach The Art of the MC, a seven-week fall course that digs into the craft, culture and history of emceeing.
The class begins Oct. 23 and, according to the institute, picks up a lineage previously carried by Black Thought of The Roots, bringing a working pen from hip-hop’s blog era into a university room where students write, perform and defend their bars.
“It’s an honor to continue the legacy of MCs that preceded me to teach at the Clive Davis Institute,” Mickey said in the program’s announcement. “I’ll be bringing my expertise, wealth of knowledge and mentoring to a historic space such as NYU… Long, live, lyricism. Class is in session. Literally.”
The institute’s performance area head, JD Samson, put it plainly: “His dedication to teaching and his artistic vision will be a massive asset to our students and community,” calling his approach “groundbreaking hip-hop pedagogy.”
The curriculum reads like a cipher with a syllabus: lyrical analysis, freestyle development, song structure, breath and projection, stage presence, and the evolution of rap as both art form and culture. Students are expected to trace a line from the pioneers to today’s streaming-first scene, then apply the lessons in original work that can actually hold weight in a room full of peers. The idea isn’t to canonize a single “right” way to rhyme — it’s to make students conversant in form, fearless in performance, and precise on the page.
Factz, who broke through as a 2009 XXL Freshman and built a catalog of densely written projects during the blog era, comes to NYU with more than two decades of writing, touring and teaching behind him. His extracurriculars underscore the fit: Pendulum Ink, the rap-craft academy he co-founded, has been training MCs in storytelling, rhythm and delivery — essentially, the same muscles this class intends to develop. If the university is where industry meets inquiry, a practitioner-teacher who lives the work is the point.
There’s a larger story here, too. The Clive Davis Institute has spent the past decade normalizing hip-hop in higher ed not as case study or museum piece but as living practice. Q-Tip co-taught a course on the intersection of jazz and hip-hop in 2018; Swizz Beatz has held a faculty role guiding production and mentoring; Questlove and Pharrell Williams have led seminars on history, creation and business. Each appointment pushes the idea that the people who shaped the music are best positioned to teach its language and its ethics.
Following Black Thought in this specific course also matters. It signals continuity of a high bar: technical excellence married to context. Where Thought is an exemplar of breath control, pocket and live-band poise, Mickey’s value add is micro-surgical writing and workshop rigor — skills that can move a verse from “good” to “publishable,” whether the dream is a Tiny Desk or a festival slot. For students, that continuity is the difference between a guest lecture and a real pipeline.
It’s also part of a broader shift: hip-hop’s elders and working artists are claiming educational spaces on their own terms. The move legitimizes what fans already know — that MCing is a discipline with theory, technique and lineage — and it forces institutions to meet the culture where it lives. An NYU classroom won’t make an artist, but a serious class can shorten the distance between taste and technique, and between potential and performance.
