Category: BUSINESS

Before the musician hits the road again, he reveals exclusively to USA TODAY that he’ll drop a new single with his solo project, DELA and Steady Rock Easy.

“We’re going to release a single called, ‘ ‘Til the Dancing’s Through’ that we’re going to play today,” Delacruz, 46, says before headlining USA TODAY Acoustic, a new series that provides a stage for notable and rising talent across the USA TODAY Network. “I write all the material for us. I feel like when I try to force the songwriting, I’m not as into it as I am when it just kind of lightning bolt hits me and I’m like, ‘I’m singing this melody in the shower, I have to get out before I forget it and record it,’ “

After Steady Rock Easy releases the single and plays a show on Saturday at The Knickerbocker in Westerly, Rhode Island, the project will go on hiatus while DeLa resumes his role with Slightly Stoopid, a position he’s held since 2006.

“It’s the longest job I’ve ever had,” he says. “I’m so grateful for it. It’s taken me all over the world and then some.”

A health scare led DeLa to create his solo project

Delacruz was born in Massachusetts and raised in Colchester, Connecticut, before living in New York’s Brooklyn borough. When he joined Slightly Stoopid, the musician made the cross-country trek to San Diego. The move proved fortuitous for multiple reasons. California doctors discovered a brain tumor under Delacruz’s frontal lobe in 2010. In hindsight, the artist questions “what would’ve happened” had he not visited those doctors in San Diego.

“I had a full frontal bilateral craniotomy to remove that tumor,” Delacruz says. “Ten days later, I was flying to Austin City Limits to play in front of 50,000 people.”

DELA & Steady Rock Easy performs for USA TODAY Acoustic

DELA & Steady Rock Easy is USA TODAY Acoustic’s second musical guest. The band unveils their new song “Til the Dancing’s Through.”

While DeLa was on the mend, Slightly Stoopid called in Karl Denson to fill in on saxophone. Delacruz and Denson, who tours with the Rolling Stones, struck up a friendship. One day on a tour bus, Delacruz played “sketches” of songs he was working on.

“Denson was like, ‘I know what we’re going to do with this,’” Delacruz recalls. “I looked at him like, ‘We? What you mean, we?’”

That conversation proved to be the genesis for Delacruz linking up with Denson and Los Angeles-based reggae band The Aggrolites to create his first solo album, “Opening Night.” In 2018, Delacruz and his family moved back to New England. That led to a reunion with a number of Boston-based musicians that he’s known for decades.

“Steady Rock Easy was born out of (the move back East), wanting to continue playing my music,” he says. “I’ve known some of these guys that I’m playing with in this band for 20-plus years, so it’s automatic for us.”

DeLa’s fond memories of sharing the stage with Snoop Dogg

It was the summer of 2009. On the Billboard charts, the Black Eyed Peas are about to cement dance music’s place in the mainstream with the David Guetta-assisted “I Gotta Feeling.” A new artist named Lady Gaga is gaining traction with a song called “Just Dance.” And on the road, Slightly Stoopid is on the “Blazed and Confused” tour with none other than Snoop Dogg.

DeLa remembers it as “incredible.” Snoop was backed by his band Tha Snoopadelics, which DeLa describes as a “band of cold-blooded killers, some of the best musicians.”

“They’re just playing triple-platinum hit after triple-platinum hit every night,” he continues. “(Slightly Stoopid) would just sit there (side stage) every night and watch this show. Then he would come and do “Gz and Hustlas” with us. That’s like a dream.”

DeLa couldn’t have predicted how Snoop’s career would evolve. The rapper is now ubiquitous in American culture, whether it be as a spokesperson or the face of NBC’s Olympics coverage.

“To see his evolution has just been great,” DeLa says. “And to be a tiny little part of that, to share the stage with such a legend, it’s an honor.”

Constructor: Leo Tsai

Editor: Amanda Rafkin

Comments from Today’s Crossword Constructor

Leo: I’m so excited to be making my USA Today debut with this puzzle! The central entry is something I’m really happy to debut—I noticed last year in June that it was a grid-spanning 15 letters long, and seeded my first-ever 15×15 themeless puzzle with it. While that puzzle didn’t end up getting published, I’m glad I could reuse the spanner for this crossword! Thanks for solving 🙂

What I Learned from Today’s Puzzle

• OCEAN (45D: Setting for the game Subnautica) Subnautica is a video game published in 2018. Players control a survivor of a spaceship crash that occurred on an alien planet covered with OCEAN. I was not familiar with this game, but the answer here was fairly inferable from the game’s title.

Ashley Yang, a certified Beyhive member based in Los Gatos, California, began selling “Cowboy Carter”-inspired sashes on her Etsy store Deep Cuts last year when she first saw Beyoncé’s cover.

Yang was immediately inspired to create her own sash after Beyoncé released the album on March 29, 2024–just days before her birthday. And she made the ‘Cowboy Carter’ alvum the entire theme for her birthday, creating personalizing sashes for her and her friends.

That’s when I made like the first version of these sashes and kind of immediately knew if I want this, I’m sure other Beyoncé fans out there want it too,” Yang said.

In a lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida, Joseph Manzaro is suing the embattled music mogul for sexually exploiting him in a targeted revenge plot in 2015, according to court documents obtained by USA TODAY on Wednesday.

Combs’ alleged offenses against Manzaro include human trafficking, obstruction of justice and witness tampering, racketeering and intentional infliction of emotional distress, per the 64-page complaint.

“Diddy orchestrated and facilitated the abuse, coercion and intimidation of (Manzaro), using his influence, wealth and power to silence and control (Manzaro) and engaged in acts of violence, sexual coercion and psychological manipulation, knowingly causing severe harm while ensuring (Manzaro) remained unable to seek justice,” the lawsuit read.

The businesswoman and philanthropist, in detailing the transitions she’s undergone in her life, opens up about divorce from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in her new book, “The Next Day: Transitions, Change, and Moving Forward” (out April 15). The couple’s divorce after nearly three decades of marriage brought on nightmares and panic attacks, she explains in the memoir, according to excerpts published by People magazine.

French Gates was having nightmares alluding to her collapsing marriage at the end of 2019 that made her realize she was “going to have to make a decision — and that I was going to have to make it by myself,” she writes, per People. Though she keeps details about what prompted the end of their marriage private, she reportedly shares in one excerpt that “Bill has publicly acknowledged that he wasn’t always faithful to me.”

It was during a February 2020 trip to New Mexico that she broke the news in “one of the scariest conversations I’d have had” that she wanted to live separately from her husband. That summer, she broached the topic of a divorce.