This year is no different from the last, seeing a star-studded selection of rappers from both sides of the Atlantic. Phase one of Wireless’ line up was announced today via the festival’s official Instagram. 2024’s event poster gives considerable weight to female rappers, both new and old. After exploding in popularity in 2022 after her single ‘Munch’, Bronx rapper, Ice Spice will be playing on the festival’s opening night alongside Trinidadian mega-star Nicki Minaj.

Known for her risqué lyrics, Up-and-coming Missourian rapper Sexyy Red will also be performing at Wireless. Finding her audience after Cardi B’s and Megan Thee Stallion’s WAP created an industry niche for tongue-in-cheek, sexually charged, female-led, rap music, Sexxy Red capitalised on this sub-genre, finding success with her 2023 single ‘Pound Town’.

Saturday the 14th of July will see LA rapper and singer Doja Cat headline the night. After her breakout YouTube single ‘Mooo!’, which currently has 129m views, Doja Cat has continued to make a name for herself through a steady stream of popular releases and her outlandish costume designs. Off the back of her fourth studio album, Scarlet, released in November of last year, Doja Cat has secured herself a top spot at London’s biggest music festival.

Wireless’ Saturday will be host to British-born Atlanta rapper 21 Savage. 21 Savage became widely known after his 2016 feature on XXL Magazine’s freshman cypher alongside, then upcoming rappers, Lil Uzi Vert, Lil Yachty, Kodak Black, and Denzel Curry. Since his 2016 breakout, 21 Savage has gone on to release three studio albums, as well as three collaborative albums with Offset, Metro Boomin, and Drake. Fellow Atlanta rapper, Future will also be performing on the event’s Friday show. Known for his pioneering contributions to the American trap scene, Future remains one of the biggest names in the genre.

Although the setlist features only a couple of UK artists so far, with Digga D and J Hus joining the line up, Festival Republic is yet to announce the full line up, the second phase of which will be released next week. Early bird tickets for the festival will go live on January 31st at 10am. For those with either a Three Mobile or Barclay Card rewards scheme, a special pre-sale is currently available until an hour before the general ticket sale date.

Prior to release, PinkPantheress shared three singles: “Mosquito,”, “Capable of love” and “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” with Bronx rapper Ice Spice, the cutesy summer bop that vaulted up the charts earlier this year. While all three tracks maintained the signature glossy early-2000s club sound that had catapulted the singer to fame, they also unmistakably hinted at a new chapter in the artist’s musical journey.

Listen to “Capable Of Love” below:

Indeed, on Heaven Knows, much of the new material feels more mature and complete. PinkPantheress, a homemade superstar who initially rose to fame with viral internet pop bites that clocked in at under two minutes to appeal to the short-form media zeitgeist, largely dispenses of her original approach on this new record.

In an interview with NME earlier this year, the singer had expressed a desire to make “a shift towards other styles of music” – a vision that has now materialised on Heaven Knows. Here, PinkPantheress reveals the depth of her artistic versatility, flexing her abilities as a writer, producer, and expert curator of guest spots.

The long-awaited 13-track project sees the Bath-born artist enlist a crew of both familiar and new collaborators on writing and production duties, including two-time Grammy producer of the year Greg Kurstin, Caroline Polacheck producer Danny L. Harle and “Boy’s a Liar” co-writer Mura Masa, whose contributions as an additional producer are manifest on most songs.

Listen to “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2”, co-written by Mura Masa and featuring rapper Ice Spice, below:

Upon announcing her debut LP in October, PinkPantheress explained:

“This album is an accumulation of music I’ve made over the last two years, with some beloved tunes that might sound familiar and some cutie features who I can’t wait to announce. I love everyone here, I cried the other day thinking of how lucky I am to have people willing to listen to me, you are never taken in vain.” 

A press release further revealed that Heaven Knows is about “grief for a loss, but being at peace with yourself in your aloneness. Journeying from hell into purgatory, but I’m OK with being there.”

Watch the music video for “Mosquito” on YouTube below:

During the video, the singer walks through the shops of Bond Street while wearing a Tiffany blue gown which is reminiscent of the 1961 American romcom Breakfast At Tiffany’s.

On Instagram, the 22 year old wrote: “omg i’m so scared but Mosquito is finally out! with a whole music video on youtube now! i was trying to give breakfast at tiffany’s lol but a big thank you is in order to Greg Kurstin who was the catalyst for this track and Sophie Muller who directed this amazing video with my darling angel girlfriendsxxxx”

Check out the PinkPantheress’ announcement post on Instagram below:

Her new song “Mosquito” follows her previous singles and collaborations including “Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2” featuring American rapper Ice Spice. The duo performed at Wireless this year to perform the track together for the first time. “Boy’s a Liar Pt. 2” is a remix of the original song by PinkPantheress “Boy’s a Liar” which was released in November 2022. The remix peaked at number three on the Billboard Global 200 and became the first top 10 for PinkPantheress and Ice Spice.

Recently, the singer songwriter collaborated with Destroy Lonely on a single titled “Turn Your Phone Off” which was released last July. She also joined Australian artist Troye Sivan on a remix of his song “Rush”. In addition to these collaborations, PinkPantheress has also contributed to the 2023 Greta Gerweg-directed film Barbie with her single “Angel”. The song was released on June 8 this year and was the album’s second promotional single.

As of this moment, the singer has released one mixtape, one extended play and fourteen singles. At the end of 2022, PinkPantheress released an EP titled Take Me Home which consisted of three tracks: “Boy’s a Liar”, “Do You Miss Me?”, and the title song “Take Me Home”.

Listen to PinkPantheress’ 2022 EP Take Me Home on Spotify below:

Furthermore, PinkPantheress has received the most nominations as a British female artist at the MTV EMAs 2023. These nominations include Best Collaboration and Best New Artist.

At the Cheshire based group’s gig, singer Matty Healy told the crowd “Because some of my actions have hurt some people, I apologise to those people, and I pledge to do better moving forward. I think it’s also important that I express my intentions, so everybody knows that there is no ill will coming from me.

You see, as an artist, I want to create an environment for myself to perform where not everything that I do is taken literally… I’ve kind of performed exaggerated versions of myself on other stages, be it print or on podcasts and in an often misguided attempt at fulfilling the kind of character role of the 21st-century rock star – so, it’s complicated.

Sometimes playing pretend is the only way you can truly find out who you are, and you could probably also say that men would rather do offensive impressions for attention than go to therapy.”

An example of when Healy has offended people happened after he appeared on a now removed episode of The Adam Friedland Show, where he and the show’s hosts discussed the heritage of American rapper Ice Spice. On the show, there was a debate as to whether the New Yorker was of Hawaiian, Inuit or Chinese descent, before impersonating accents from these countries and regions.

In response to these comments, Ice Spice told Variety “When I had heard that little podcast or whatever, I was so confused. Because I heard ‘chubby Chinese lady’ or some s**t like that, and I’m like, ‘Huh? What does that even mean?’ First of all, I’m thick. What do you mean Chinese? What? But then they apologised or whatever. And the whole time, I didn’t really care.”

“But that’s funny because I saw him [Matty Healy] at the Jean Paul Gaultier party a couple days ago, and he was like, ‘Hey, you OK?’ and I’m like, ‘Of course.’ He apologised to me a bunch of times. We’re good.”

In an apology at a The 1975 show in Auckland earlier this year, Healy admitted “I just feel a bit bad, and I’m kind of a bit sorry if I’ve offended you. Ice Spice, I’m sorry. It’s not because I’m annoyed that me joking got misconstrued. It’s because I don’t want Ice Spice to think I’m a dick. I love you, Ice Spice. I’m so sorry.”

You can watch Healy’s apology to Ice Spice as told by Entertainment Tonight below.

Watch a video of Ice Spice and PinkPantheress performing “Boys a liar Pt.2” at Wireless Festival below:

| PinkPantheress and Ice Spice performing “Boys a liar” at Wireless Fest pic.twitter.com/5gPOlE6KSJ

— PinkPantheress Updates ☆ (@updatespinkp) July 7, 2023

“Boy’s a liar” was first released on January 2, 2023 as a single but then added to PinkPantheress’ EP Take Me Home. Soon after, “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” was released on February 3, 2023 which debuted at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song reached number 4 on the chart which was the first top 10 entry for both artist Ice Spice and PinkPantheress. Watch the official video for “Boy’s a liar Pt. 2” on YouTube below: Recently, PinkPantheress released another collab with Opium-signed American rapper Destroy Lonely. The singer took to Twitter to announce the song“Turn Your Phone Off”. She wrote, “This song has been on my mind since I leaked it in 2021 – I was just waiting until the perfect opportunity to drop it. I’m privileged to share this track with lone, love his artistry, love a random collab.” The song “Turn Your Phone Off” was released on July 14 and is available to listen to on Spotify. See PinkPantheress’ announcement for “Turn Your Phone Off” below:

this song has been on my mind since I leaked it in 2021 – I was just waiting until the perfect opportunity to drop it. im privileged to share this track with lone, love his artistry, love a random collab lol

Turn your phone off – (feat Destroy Lonely) out now

mv next week

— pinkpantheress (@pinkpantheress2) July 13, 2023

Listen to PinkPantheress and Destroy Lonely’s new track “Turn Your Phone Off” below:

PinkPantheress has also teased her debut studio album. On May 24, the singer posted a song teaser where she and her friend are in a car park dancing to an unreleased song. It samples the track “Ku Lo Sa” by Oxlade and at the bottom of the video, PinkPantheress captioned “Album season is upon us.”

PINKPANTHERESS ALBUM INCOMING pic.twitter.com/GcvEoLJUU7

— mev (@toheavenwithit) May 24, 2023

The day after the album was teased, it was announced that PinkPantheress will feature on the upcoming Barbie movie soundtrack. The Barbie album soundtrack will also feature Ice Spice, as well as artists including Dua Lipa, Charli XCX, Lizzo, Nicki Minaj, Ava Max, Tame Impala and many more. The movie will be out in theatres on July 21, 2023. See the Barbie Album announcement on Twitter below:

EXCLUSIVE: @DUALIPA, @icespicee_, @charli_xcx, @lizzo, @NICKIMINAJ, @AvaMax, @pinkpantheress2, Ryan Gosling(!), @tameimpala, and more will appear on the @barbiethealbum soundtrack.

Details: https://t.co/qSJeh0cUaH pic.twitter.com/9tMj7GEEDy

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) May 25, 2023