<\/p>\n
Among the celebrants cheering loudly for Leon Thomas<\/a> as he accepted his Breakthrough of the Year Award at Billboard\u2019s R&B\/Hip-Hop Power Players 2025 was his mother, Jayon Anthony.<\/p>\n Smiling at his mother on Thursday night (Sept. 4) at Unveiled in Brooklyn, Thomas noted that she paid for his first studio session and ever since then he\u2019s been in a studio recording. Approaching the podium to accept the award, Thomas initially engaged the audience in a call-and-response chant reminiscent of church: \u201cGod is good\u2026 all the time!\u201d Then, in addressing his solo career takeoff, he said, \u201cThis has been 22 years in the making, and a lot of talks I had with God are a big part of my journey.\u201d<\/p>\n More from Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n In his accompanying Billboard<\/em> cover story<\/a> \u2014 \u201cRebirth of the Cool\u201d \u2014 chronicling his rise from former Nickelodeon star to Grammy-winning songwriter (SZA\u2019s \u201cSnooze\u201d) to solo artist in his own right, the musician and producer also paid another tribute to his singer mother: \u201cI always tell people I\u2019m my mom\u2019s startup,\u201d he said. \u201cWe started this journey when I was 10 and I\u2019m 31 now. She understands how hard I\u2019ve worked and how alone I felt sometimes.\u201d<\/p>\n That hard work has paid off over the last 18 months for Brooklyn native Thomas. Released in August 2024, \u201cMutt\u201d is the first single from his same-titled second studio album. The song\u2019s slow burn since its release culminated in his first Hot 100 hit (No. 12), first No. 1s on Hot R&B\/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot R&B Songs and first RIAA platinum certification. And not only did \u201cMutt\u201d cement Thomas\u2019 breakthrough as a solo artist, the track \u2014 along with the entire album \u2014 upended R&B\u2019s status quo by way of live instrumentation, vibrant fusions of soul, rock and funk plus insightful lyrics.<\/p>\n As longtime friend and fellow R&B star Kehlani noted in the cover story, \u201cLeon\u2019s disrupting this easy, poppy R&B that we had going on. Something like \u2018Mutt\u2019 being so successful shows that you don\u2019t have to compromise. You really can stay true to the genre. It\u2019s made me proud to look at my friend, who I\u2019ve seen play the back seat in so many sessions, be the star.\u201d<\/p>\n Thomas, signed to Ty Dolla $ign and Shawn Barron\u2019s EZMNY label, is prepping a seven-track EP for October featuring what\u2019s described as \u201ca notably funkier, and at times more psychedelic, collection of tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n In the meantime, watch Thomas\u2019 full R&B\/Hip-Hop Power Players 2025 acceptance speech above.<\/p>\n Best of Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Billboard’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Among the celebrants cheering loudly for Leon Thomas as he accepted his Breakthrough of the Year Award at Billboard\u2019s R&B\/Hip-Hop Power Players 2025 was his mother, Jayon Anthony. Smiling at his mother on Thursday night (Sept. 4) at Unveiled in Brooklyn, Thomas noted that she paid for his first studio session and ever since then […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1999689,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[29110,363144,363145],"class_list":["post-1999688","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-billboard","tag-leon-thomas","tag-power-players"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\u2018God-Is-Good-All-the-Time.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999688","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1999688"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999688\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1999689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1999688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1999688"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1999688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}