EXCLUSIVE Inside plans for Blue Ivy's major career move as Beyonce and Jay-Z's 13-year-old daughter looks set to make millions
Upstaging Beyoncé is no easy feat – especially not at one of her own concerts.
But with a statement flick of her hair, Blue Ivy did it with ease as she made the stage her runway before breaking into a solo dance at the opening night of her mom's Cowboy Carter tou r.
The 13-year-old nepo baby, whose dad is rap mogul Jay-Z, showcased her explosive choreography as she led a troupe of her mom's backing dancers in front of 70,000 fans at California 's SoFi stadium last month.
With music in her genes, it seems fitting that Blue has inherited a taste not only for the industry, but also the spotlight.
Now, the Daily Mail can reveal the seasoned performer wants more than to saddle up beside her mother – she wants to take the reins and pen her own body of work.
'Blue is considering starting her own career in music,' our insider said. 'Some of Beyoncé's favorite writers are quietly penning demos for her in anticipation of a solo album.'
With no shortage of industry bigwigs to lean on, the youngster has reportedly sought help from her famous aunt Solange Knowles and already has tracks lined up from The-Dream, should she want them.
The American songwriter and producer has long worked with Beyoncé, co-writing songs including Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) and Break My Soul from her Grammy-winning Renaissance album. He also worked with Jay-Z on his 2013 track No Church in the Wild.
'Blue is also writing material with help from Solange,' our source continued. 'The-Dream has been spearheading it, and he has two or three records for her. They know the fans want to hear a Blue record.'
They added: 'She is only allowed to listen to age-appropriate songs from artists and has been listening to Infinity Song, Michelle Williams' Heart 2 Yours record and Goapele.'
Blue Ivy's foray into solo stardom won't be her first shot at singing. The young teen, whose fan base is known as the Ivy League, had credits to her name long before reaching double digits.
Dubbed 'the most famous baby in the world' by TIME, just ten days after her birth in January 2012 her coos and cries featured on her dad's track Glory. The following year she landed a credit on her mom's single Blue from her self-titled album.
Aged seven, she sang on Homecoming: The Live Album – a collection of recordings from Beyoncé's record-breaking Coachella 2018 set – performing her own rendition of hymn Lift Every Voice and Sing.
'I want to do it again… I want to do it again,' she says at the end of the track. 'It feels good!'
And do it again she did.
In 2019 she became the youngest female artist to chart on the Hot 100 after featuring on her mom's single Brown Skin Girl – a title she later lost to her sister Rumi after she joined Beyoncé on Protector last year.
The credit also earned Blue a Grammy and the Guinness World Record for youngest individually credited person to receive one of the famous gold-plated gongs.
Soon followed a cascade of accolades, all before she had started secondary education, as well as a spot on her mom's record-breaking Renaissance World Tour - which saw her criticised for her moves.
In 2023 she finally showcased her singing live on stage in Dubai with a duet with her mom who was making her return to the stage for the first time in four years. The one-hour set earned the pop superstar a reported $35 million.
And Blue Ivy could challenge her mom's fortune if she is able to shake the nepo baby tag and deliver real talent.
'Blue Ivy could easily secure multi-million-dollar deals, lucrative brand partnerships, and significant earnings from streaming platforms and endorsements right from the start,' said PR expert Stacy Jones Founder and CEO, Hollywood Branded. 'Think Olivia Rodrigo or Billie Eilish, but amplified due to her family background.
'Could she become as big as Beyoncé? Honestly, that's an extraordinarily high bar, but if Blue Ivy delivers real talent, authenticity, and genuinely connects with fans, especially Gen Z, there's no reason she couldn't carve out her own substantial legacy.'
Speaking to the BBC last month, Beyoncé's mother, Tina Knowles, said Blue Ivy and her siblings were being nurtured to do 'anything that they want for themselves... but definitely not pushed into show business.'
Beyoncé has approached her eldest daughter's impending fame with caution, previously revealing she initially refused to allow her then 11-year-old to dance on tour despite being a 'natural' and an 'artist,' but retreated as Blue Ivy 'wanted it for herself.'
The youngster proved how much she wants it, undergoing hours of intense training to perfect her moves on the Cowboy Carter tour all while juggling her school work.
Our source said Beyoncé and Jay are 'very big on their kids receiving a formal education' but that they also 'see that Blue has talent and is hardworking.'
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The Guardian
11 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Saddle up for Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter tour
Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter tour, which kicked off in California in April, began its European leg in London last week. I went to the first show and considered the legacy-making significance of this latest evolution in the singer's long career – and the part that left me cold. As a native of Houston, Texas, Beyoncé grew up surrounded by cowboy culture. Between 2001 and 2007, she performed four times at the city's Livestock Show and Rodeo, which was launched in 1931 to promote agriculture through live entertainment and ended up as the largest rodeo in the world. When you consider the depth of southern tradition this generation-defining artist is steeped in, it seems all the more remarkable to be in north London and see people from all corners of the world assembling to become spectators of a rodeo that is all Beyoncé's own. Outside Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, there are people in cowboy hats, encrusted with rhinestones or with veils attached; cow-print vests; embroidered boots with spurs; double denim, bandanas, alligator skins and shirts with fringes. Though revellers are greeted with grey skies and a forecast of rain, spirits are high, and their presence summons the sweltering climate of Texas. I speak to a woman named Marieles, wearing a white and denim cowgirl costume, who has come to London from Panama. It is her second long-haul trip to see Beyoncé – she attended the Renaissance tour in Amsterdam in 2023. Is she as excited by the Cowboy Carter album, Beyoncé's dive into country music? 'I love the impact and the message that it brings,' Marieles tells me. 'I feel very empowered as a Black girl with that album. I'd never heard country music before and it taught me a lot about the history.' The same is true for Cornelius from Germany, who is at his fourth Beyoncé concert. He tells me that on Cowboy Carter, Beyoncé sings with 'a lot of love and passion' and that he has become 'more open' to country music after listening to it. A Beyoncé country album had long been predicted. Daddy Lessons (one of my favourites from her 2016 album, Lemonade) was the singer's first explicit foray into the genre. The track sparked controversy when Beyoncé performed it with the Chicks (then the Dixie Chicks) at the 50th Annual Country Music Association awards (CMAs). Naysayers from the Nashville country music establishment asked why Beyoncé had been invited to perform – her musical background supposedly too R&B and hip-hop, her activism through music the antithesis of the Republican-dominated mainstream country scene. The Chicks, of course, had experienced a formidable backlash in 2003 for expressing shame that George Bush came from their state of Texas. The lead single from Cowboy Carter, Texas Hold 'Em, was a runaway success, hitting the top spot in 19 countries (including the US and the UK). Significantly, it also reached No 1 on the Hot Country Songs chart in the US, the first record by a Black woman to do so. Unveiling the album's artwork, Beyoncé suggested that her experience at the CMAs had inspired Cowboy Carter, saying it was 'born out of an experience that I had years ago, where I did not feel welcomed … because of that experience I did a deeper dive into the history of country music and studied our rich musical archive'. This resulted in Beyoncé inviting Linda Martell, the first Black female singer to perform at the Grand Ole Opry, on to Cowboy Carter as well as including excerpts from Roy Hamilton and Son House on its radio station interludes. This attempt to assert the presence of Black Americans within the history of country music is framed even more vividly on this tour. Its visual storytelling provides an all-singing, all-dancing archive of Black American music that is so alive and dynamic, and which contextualises the voices and instruments you hear. After all, the secondary title for the Cowboy Carter tour is The Rodeo Chitlin' Circuit, a reference to the performance venues that catered to African American patrons and commercially sustained Black performers in the era of Jim Crow segregation. And God, does this show live up to that entertainment tradition. From her fringed chaps and gloves to her custom Versace-print dresses, Beyoncé looks magnificent, while the stage design is grand and kitschy, with two neon bar signs that say 'salon' and 'saloon'. At various points, she flies across the stadium on a giant neon horseshoe and a Cadillac, and she rides a gold mechanical bull for a sultry performance of Tyrant. I first saw Beyoncé on the Formation World Tour when I was 19, and have caught every tour since. This is the most confident and carefree I have seen her – she is visibly having fun. The Cowboy Carter tracks translate so well to the stage, too, with Riiverdance, II Hands II Heaven and Flamenco being particular standouts – on Ya Ya she evokes the ferocious, theatrical rock'n'roll style of Prince and Tina Turner. All the ancestors are summoned for the Chitlin' Circuit. On large screens, during performances and interludes, images of Black America's musical iconography are projected at the audience. There's a clip of Chuck Berry playing Johnny B Goode at Hullabaloo A Go Go in 1965; a 1932 performance of Cab Calloway and his Cotton Club band's melancholy hit Minnie the Moocher; Nina Simone singing I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free at Montreux Jazz 1976; Little Richard blazing through Lucille in 1957; Sister Rosetta Tharpe singing The Lonesome Road in 1941 and Berry blasting You Can't Catch Me in the 1956 film Rock, Rock, Rock! Sign up to The Long Wave Nesrine Malik and Jason Okundaye deliver your weekly dose of Black life and culture from around the world after newsletter promotion The references are neverending but they don't feel like a fleeting history tour. Instead they emphasise how a genre that has been co-opted and framed as 'not Black' has a long history of African American pioneers, many of whom forged careers in a segregated US and laid a path for so many others, including Beyoncé. It is interesting to me, though, that after the opening performance of Ameriican Requiem, which, live, has the soulful beauty of a cathedral choir, and her cover of the Beatles' Blackbird, Beyoncé then sings The Star-Spangled Banner, taking her cue from the incendiary rendition that Jimi Hendrix performed at Woodstock in 1967 in protest against the Vietnam war. The meaning of national symbols such as the anthem, and the American flag projected on the screens before the performance, have a new resonance in the era of Trump 2.0. Can the iconography of such regressive, destructive and supremacist political movements even be redeemed? Beyoncé clearly believes that it can. On the screen she wears a sash reading 'the reclamation of America' – and there is the view that these symbols, like American music, should be strongly reaffirmed as an intrinsic part of Black American identity, especially at a time when Trump is attempting to wash African American history from record. Certainly, I can see that it's important for Black Americans to express pride in traditions they had a fundamental role in creating. Yet this flag-waving still leaves me cold. Last year, at Kamala Harris's presidential campaign rally in Houston, Beyoncé appeared alongside her friend and former Destiny's Child bandmate Kelly Rowland, describing herself and Rowland as 'proud country Texas women'. Harris had been under fire during that campaign for her support of President Joe Biden's arming of the Israeli state in its onslaught against Gaza. Hendrix's protest, meanwhile, took place under the Democratic president Lyndon B Johnson, who sent Americans to fight in Vietnam, and drew chants from protesters such as: 'Hey, hey, LBJ! How many kids did you kill today?' Americana imagery can't be neatly divorced from the imperial aspects of the state – and the musicians who Beyoncé admires knew this well. Even if there are debates still to be had about Beyoncé's political aesthetics (we have been here since at least her self-titled 2013 visual album), you walk away from Cowboy Carter with no doubt that she is the greatest performer and artist of our time. Some have taken the mood of the tour, the montage of images from Beyoncé's personal history, and the return of seemingly long-retired tracks including If I Were a Boy and Why Don't You Love Me as an indication that she is inching towards retirement – but I have never seen a clearer example of a performer who will not be slowed down by naysayers or knee injuries. The rodeo queen rides on. To receive the complete version of The Long Wave in your inbox every Wednesday, please subscribe here.
The Guardian
17 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Everything that happened at Summer Game Fest 2025, from marathon game sessions to military helicopters
As protests exploded in Los Angeles last weekend, elsewhere in the city, a coterie of games journalists and developers were gathered together to play new games at the industry's annual summer showcase. This week's issue is a dispatch from our correspondent Alyssa Mercante. Summer Game Fest (SGF), the annual Los Angeles-based gaming festival/marketing marathon, was set up to compete with the once-massive E3. It's taken a few years, but now it has replaced it. 2025's event felt like a cogent reminder that the games industry has dramatically changed since the pandemic. Whereas E3 used to commandeer the city's convention centre smack in the middle of downtown LA, SGF is off the beaten path, nestled among the reams of fabric in the Fashion District, adjacent to Skid Row. There are fewer game companies present, it's not open to the public and there's no cosplay, unless it's for marketing purposes. Its centrepiece is a live show held at the YouTube theatre near the airport, hosted by ever-present games industry hype-man Geoff Keighley and streamed to millions – and you can buy tickets for that. Some video game enthusiasts and smaller content creators told me that the in-person showcase wasn't worth their money: just a very lengthy show that they could have watched online, culminating in a massive traffic jam to get out of Inglewood. This year's event had some hiccups, including an attempted gatecrasher, but felt the most put-together yet. Attending SGF is a privilege, but it is also an ungodly hybrid of a marathon and a sprint: back-to-back-to-back appointments with publishers and developers with no downtime in-between, speed walking between cabanas and moving swiftly in and out of over air-conditioned rooms to ensure you don't upset a PR person or accidentally spurn an indie developer. During brief breaks, if you even get one, you'll shovel a canape into your gullet, wash it down with a Red Bull, have a quick bite of some (surprisingly good) PC Gamer-branded ice-cream, and attempt to get a few of your thoughts down on paper. I saw a lot of games this weekend, some of which I can't talk about, but once again it was the indie games that were the most memorable. Not just because they're unexpected or unique or silly, but because there are usually far fewer restrictions while you play, devs are more open to questions and there aren't eight PR people standing over your shoulder to ensure you don't open up an unfinished menu or wander some place you shouldn't. On night one, I stuck my head in at the Media Indie Exchange (MIX) party downtown, and was immediately enraptured with Urban Jungle, a plant based game that speaks to my newfound love of horticulture. Placing plants around a cutesy little room afforded me a brief moment of zen in a crowded space full of people trying out dozens of indie games. Then there's Petal Runner, a pixel art RPG that looks and feels like a Game Boy-era Pokémon title. Published by iam8bit and developed by two people who met in the Instagram comments under some cyberpunk artwork, it's a beautiful, adorable, 'no violence' RPG. Rather than engage in the questionable practice of capturing cute creatures and forcing them to fight each other, you simply help deliver them to their new owners and 'calibrate' or calm them down through a series of old-school minigames. Then you hop on your motorcycle (Petal Runner's programmer was inspired to get a bike after watching Tron: Legacy) to deliver another pet. After just 15 minutes, its modern chip-tune soundtrack, cool-toned palette, and cute creatures had me sold. Thick As Thieves, meanwhile, is a multiplayer stealth game. A representative for the developer told me that the team wanted to make a multiplayer game that avoided the three 'black holes', or oversaturated genres: shooters, PvP combat, and pure action gameplay. The result is something that feels like Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood mixed with Dishonored: you'll sneak through maps set in a dark early 1900s world cut through with slices of rich colour, while you try to pull off difficult heists to impress a thieves' guild. But other players are trying to do the exact same thing, and guards and civilians will get in your way. I also got a chance to try out the new season of Monster Hunter Now from Niantic, the studio behind Pokémon Go. This augmented reality game drops you into a version of the real world filled with monsters from Capcom's iconic action game, condensing the series' epic fights into bite-size battles that are barely a minute long (they can be close to an hour in the mainline games). And I played the new, four-person party game Lego Party with two other journalists, screaming as our Lego characters fell over each other during minigames or stole gold bricks in an attempt to get to first place. It was fun and freeing; people gathered around us as we yelled and guffawed and talked smack with gusto, as if we needed this game to help cleanse our tired palates. Every game I spent even a few minutes with this weekend was imbued with passion and creativity, no matter the size of the team or the scope of the project. It was a testament to the drive that fuels so many in this space, and the technological advancements that let smaller teams (sometimes just one or two people) make beautifully complex games. Seeing tons of fellow journalists and developers bright-eyed and excited, even with so many of us struggling to find work, recently laid off, or otherwise worried about the future, was a shot of adrenaline. But it was also impossible to ignore that something larger was taking place in LA, acting as a sombre backdrop to this comparatively low-stakes weekend of video games. On Saturday, protests broke out in Los Angeles, with citizens pushing back against the militant and cruel anti-immigration raids taking place across the city. The constant whir of helicopters was a bizarre soundtrack to the weekend; many people who had come from out of state or even out of the country were noticeably concerned about the escalating events. We furtively shared updates with each other at hands-on appointments, whispering about the national guard, warning each other to travel together and safely. On Sunday night, dozens of journalists and devs were told they couldn't leave a downtown LA bar where they had gathered; the LAPD had shut down the area, determined to quell the protests. On the last day of SGF, we chatted about how weird it was to preview video games during such an acute political moment. One person told me they were playing a demo that kicked off with tanks and military men and, as he played, he heard the sounds of a helicopter circling overhead, and wondered where the game ended and the real world began. Alyssa Mercante From the makers of Frostpunk and This War of Mine, The Alters is a strange sci-fi strategy experiment that sees stranded space-worker Jan cloning himself several times over in order to assemble a team big enough to make it off an exoplanet before the sun rises and burns everything to cinders. The thing is that the clones don't exactly get on. Each one represents a different alternate-universe version of Jan: imagine being stuck on a remote base with nothing but your squabbling selves. Sign up to Pushing Buttons Keza MacDonald's weekly look at the world of gaming after newsletter promotion I thought The Alters was going to be a comedy game, but though it is sometimes fleetingly funny, it's also a surprisingly involving base-building survival affair, more tense and urgent-feeling than I was expecting and full of consequential choices that encourage a second or third run-through. I will certainly be playing more of it. Available on: PC, PlayStation 5, XboxApproximate playtime: 20-30 hours While Alyssa was on the ground at Summer Game Fest, Keith and I were watching an endless stream of showcases and trailers from the UK– we've picked out the most interesting games from the show. The biggest announcement was probably a new Xbox handheld – though, confusingly, it's not quite what it seems. The ROG Xbox Ally X (why can nobody at Microsoft name something properly?) is an Xbox branded version of an existing line of portable PCs. Still, Alyssa was impressed with how well it worked in her brief demo. We've also been extremely busy playing an inordinate amount of Nintendo's Switch 2. Keith's review of the console is here, and here's my review of its flagship game, Mario Kart World. Harassment by Ubisoft executives left female staff terrified, French court hears How Nintendo dodged Trump's tariffs and saved the Switch 2 release The Nintendo Switch 2 is out – here's everything you need to know No question for this week's guest issue but, as ever, if you've got something you'd like to ask, or anything else to say about the newsletter – hit reply or email us on pushingbuttons@
Daily Mail
21 minutes ago
- Daily Mail
Dakota Johnson opens up about filming sex scenes amid shock split from longterm beau Chris Martin
Dakota Johnson has given the inside scoop on filming sex scenes, revealing she is 'always psyched' to shoot the steamy moments. In an interview with Amy Poehler on her posdcast Poehler's Good Hang, Dakota was asked how she hypes herself up for sex scenes, to which she said: 'I don't have to. I'm, like, always psyched up for sex.' The 35-year-old actress also talked about working with an intimacy coordinator for the first time, who suggested using a Pilates ball during intimate moments, but she didn't even end up using it. She also described how lessons she learned from her mother Melanie Griffith about being comfortable in her own skin have helped her own career on camera. Dakota explained: 'I recently did a movie a few months ago, and we had an intimacy coordinator on set and it was the first time I've ever worked with one, and she was really great. It was so cool, because I'm so used to just you know, like... It's a sex scene. It's not sexy, it doesn't feel good. 'A sex scene is when two actors pretend that they're having sex. And you do all the things except have sex. And you have to make sounds like you're having sex, and you're In preparation for the scene, Dakota said part of it depended on the type of character she was playing: 'First I think it depends on who is the character, and who is the character supposed to be to the audience. 'Is she like a super idolized hot girl, is she like a housewife, is she lonely, is she scared, is she conservative, you know? So that's obviously character work, so certain prep I guess would go into it.' She added: 'I want to feel good in my body,' she said. 'If I'm showing my body... my mom raised to me to be really, really proud of my body and love my body, so I've always felt so grateful for that, especially in my work, because I can use it and it feels like, real.' Dakota said her mother was 'honest and open about body stuff', which included menstruation. 'I have friends whose mothers never spoke to them about that stuff and it's so hard and sad,' she revealed. Melanie also emphasized how 'precious and important' the act of sex is to Dakota. 'She also talked to me about sex and like how precious and important,' Dakota explained. 'So I guess in my work... it's something that I feel brave with and that I feel when it's used the right way in a story, it's important. As for the intimacy coordinator, Dakota was surprised by the Pilates ball suggestion. 'So I've always just like done the simulated sex scene but now with the intimacy coordinator, was like, "Do you want a Pilates ball between you guys for the thrusting movement?"... And I was like, "What?" But then we're going to be like so far away from each other, and we didn't end up using that,' she said later in the conversation. Dakota said she filmed numerous sex scenes on her own as her on-screen partner was not on camera: 'A lot of it also is like, there are times when I've done a sex scene where I'm by myself 'cause I'm only in the frame, so I'm just like, gyrating on my own and moaning... or like slamming myself into a headboard.' Her promo tour for her new movie comes amid her split from Coldplay singer Chris Martin after almost eight years together. The couple first sparked up a relationship in 2017 and got engaged several years ago - but have now gone their separate ways. A source told 'Their relationship has been over for a long time, they just haven't been able to figure out to make it official. Dakota held a flame for them to be together because she loved him so much and loved his kids so much. The source added: 'Breakups aren't instant and they continued to breakup and makeup and sometimes things would work when they were away from each other, while they were working because absence makes the heart grow fonder, but then they'd get back together and little things just kept adding up to where they weren't right for each other anymore. 'Dakota is devastated that she isn't going to be around his kids as much anymore, but wants them to know that she is always there for them.' The insider said added there was a chance the pair may reconcile but 'right now, being separated will do wonders if they were to have any type of future together'.
