For Saint Jhn, success smells like Roses.

The Guyanese-American artist first composed the colossal breakout hit back in 2015 – originally as a pitch to Beyoncé. After she declined, he decided to half-sing, half-rap melodies in his own smoky tone. Roses, which initially dropped in July 2016, proved slow-burning success, and found a devoted audience in Russia and the former Soviet republics. Last year, a 19-year-old train station worker from Kazakhstan named Imanbek Zeikenov gave it a remix, working in a thick, catchy bassline and new club-ready beat, before throwing it back into the world.

Now, Roses is one of the biggest songs on the planet. The Imanbek remix has been the most Shazamed song in Britain this year and in March it spent two weeks at number one in the UK charts. Future and J Balvin are among those who’ve eagerly hopped on the various remixes. Worldwide, Roses has racked up over 796 million Spotify plays and has become wildly popular on TikTok, where clips of the song have been used over five billion times.

Shirtless on a 60ft balcony overlooking Los Angeles, Saint Jhn is enjoying his moment of vindication. He’s looking back on how far he’s come since the days as a songwriter-for-hire, selling his musical ideas to the likes of Usher and Hoodie Allen. ​“When you’re playing for a team you don’t own, you’re just practising,” Saint Jhn muses. ​“It was like gladiator school. I was sharpening my sword at somebody else’s cost. It forced me to create things that you couldn’t deny. When I arrived at that point and people still weren’t hearing me? That’s when I was willing to bet on myself.”

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It’s a sunny afternoon in rural Texas and, for today at least, isolation suits Caleb Landry Jones just fine.

The actor and musician is out on his parents’ farm, watching a flock of sheep mill around some old iron bars that jut out of the dirt like erupting molars.

“I hate boasting, but it’s pretty nice,” the 30-year-old drawls languidly into his trusty flip phone. ​“If it wasn’t lockdown, I wouldn’t be doing too much different. When I’m on the farm I don’t go to town much, except to get some cigarettes and heavy whipping cream.” With a shopping list like that, Jones shouldn’t have much trouble keeping his social distance.

Life on the farm moves pretty slow, especially when you consider that Jones is one of Hollywood’s most sought-after stars. His first screen appearance came when he was 16, playing the boy on a bike in the Coen brothers’ No Country for Old Men (2007) who greets Javier Bardem’s terrifying hitman with the memorable line: ​“Mister, you got a bone sticking out of your arm!”

A bit part in Breaking Bad (as Walt Junior’s best mate) and a role as Banshee in X‑Men: First Class (2011) followed. But his real breakthrough came in 2017 with roles as the sinister, lacrosse stick-wielding brother in Jordan Peele’s landmark horror allegory Get Out and as the ill-fated billboard agent in the multiple-award-winning Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri. 

But now, with directors falling over themselves to cast him, he’s taken the left turn of putting out a strange, hypnotic psych record. The Mother Stone is the first album Jones has released, but in truth he’s been making music as long as he’s been acting. By his count, his catalogue of unreleased songs numbers some 700.

He says he isn’t sure which impulse came first. ​“I knew I liked being on a stage at a very young age. I was banging on pots and pans at the same time I was doing ballet recitals.”

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Last night in Los Angeles, Ye’s faithful flock descended on the Forum to hear his repeatedly-delayed ninth album two days ahead of its (apparent) release. As they approached the venue they could see the record’s title JESUS IS KING in white lettering bathed in blue light, projected on the side of the building. Down in the parking lot, it was hell on earth.

The show was supposed to start at 8pm, but at that point thousands were still stranded outside trying to collect tickets. At 8:35pm, Kanye took the mic and asked for patience. ​“Over half the people are not in the building yet,” he announced. ​“Can you give us 15 more minutes?” The crowd, chanting: ​“Yeezy!”, didn’t seem to mind at all, especially after he confirmed that the new record really is on its way this time. ​“Two days ​‘til the album drop,” he confirmed. ​“It’s coming.”

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Jerry Lorenzo may have been a late starter in the world of fashion but he’s sure as hell made up for lost time. At the start of the decade, Lorenzo was still working in sports management and struggling to find suitable clothes for one of his clients, LA Dodgers baseball star Matt Kemp. It was then that Lorenzo took matters into his own hands and decided to design them himself. His early work was such a hit that in 2013 he founded his clothing label, Fear of God. Since then he’s worked extensively with Kanye West, designed tour merch for Justin Bieber, Jay Z and Kendrick Lamar and created his own Nike shoes. It’s been a meteoric rise, but until now one thing Lorenzo never had was a shop to call his own.

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The Noto­ri­ous B.I.G. was not a man who was shy about his love of tak­ing tokes of the mar­i­jua­na smoke. Nei­ther is the late rapper’s son, CJ Wal­lace. That makes a move into the cannabis indus­try seem like a nat­ur­al step for the 22-year-old actor – but equal­ly, he knows he has to do right by the name of his father.

I was think­ing: how do we do it, oth­er than just putting Big­gie on bongs and Big­gie on blunts?” he tells me. ​“Oth­er than that, how do we real­ly do it?”

We’re gen­tly bak­ing in the sun out­side Wallace’s busi­ness part­ner Willie Mack’s home in the Los Feliz neigh­bour­hood of Los Ange­les. The pair met in May last year, after Wal­lace had wrapped shoot­ing the third sea­son of hor­ror spin­off series Scream. He was on the hunt for some­one who could help him use the Noto­ri­ous B.I.G. name for some­thing more than a cheap brand­ing exer­cise. Mack, with a long back­ground in cannabis mar­ket­ing, was the man for the job.

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