As Variety’s recent cover star H.E.R. announced during Sunday night’s BET Awards, the artist’s Lights On Festival will return to California’s Bay Area in September. The lineup features Erykah Badu, Bryson Tiller, Ari Lennox, Ty Dolla $ign, Keyshia Cole, and more, along with a special H.E.R. & Friends performance with some unnamed special guests. The full lineup appears below.
Music
After years of criticism over a lack of female and diverse representation in its membership and the Grammy Awards, the Recording Academy is continuing its efforts to expand its voting body by extending invitations to 2,710 established music professionals “from wide-ranging backgrounds, genres and disciplines,” according to the announcement. It states that the 2021 class
Sony Music Australia staff have spoken out about the company’s “nightmarish and toxic” culture following CEO Denis Handlin’s abrupt exit last week, with some even exploring legal action. Until last week, Handlin was Sony Music’s longest-serving employee, having been with the label for over 50 years. His departure was unexpectedly announced in a company-wide memo
2021 has seen Lil Nas X push the envelope further and further, between his unambiguously homoerotic video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” to his performance of the song on “Saturday Night Live” (which was as memorable for his accidental pants-split as his interaction with his dancers). And on Sunday night, on the BET
Notice we haven’t seen much of Cardi B for the past few weeks? The reason became clear on Sunday night when she joined Migos onstage during the BET Awards: She is several months’ pregnant with her second child with the group’s Offset. The announcement was carefully choreographed: At the same time she took the stage,
The 21st annual BET Awards are airing live from Los Angeles’ Microsoft Theater on Sunday beginning at 8 p.m. on BET Networks. Hosted by Taraji P. Henson, the ceremony recognizes Black excellence across music, television, film and sports. Megan Thee Stallion and DaBaby lead with seven nominations each, while Cardi B and Drake followed with
It goes without saying that a lot has happened since “Springsteen on Broadway” finished its first run on December 15, 2018. And although most theaters remained closed on this sultry summer Saturday evening two and a half years later, the Boss has seen fit to lead Broadway’s reopening, as if to give a cautiously optimistic
One of downtown Los Angeles’ landmark clock towers, the one atop the 1927 Tower Theatre, is no longer right just twice a day. More significantly, the landmark theater below it at 8th and Broadway is no longer the near-exclusive habitue of pigeons, ghosts and David Lynch (who’d used it for a spooky “Mulholland Drive” location
BET Awards host Taraji P. Henson, who will front the first major live, in-person awards show since the pandemic with a full audience on Sunday, is ready to be around people again. “This is what we live for. It’s life, and it’s time we go out to play,” said Henson, who will host the show
Marilyn Manson will surrender to the Los Angeles Police Department for allegedly assaulting a videographer during a 2019 New Hampshire concert, Gilford, N.H. police chief Anthony Bean Burpee confirmed to Variety. “Thanks to over 300,000 FB comments and shares (many besmirching our agency for even filing such charges), it has forced Mr. Warner to finally
All products and services featured by Variety are independently selected by Variety editors. However, Variety may receive a commission on orders placed through its retail links, and the retailer may receive certain auditable data for accounting purposes. Time is a flat circle. The modern age has gifted us with the miraculous technology to voice-command our
Few albums then or since have qualified as seismic cultural events quite the way Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” did in 2011, when it arrived in a blaze of hype and anticipation not much seen since the heyday of Michael Jackson and Madonna. The electro-pop opus sold more than a million copies in its first
Mary J. Blige’s 1992 debut, “What’s the 411?,” was an instant smash that established the young Yonkers singer as a multiplatinum hitmaker, a fashion icon, and the prototype for what an R&B star could look and sound like in the hip-hop era. But it wasn’t until her second album, 1994’s “My Life,” that the Blige
Britney Spears publicly faced a judge in open court this week, for the first time since she was placed under a conservatorship nearly 13 years ago. Her testimony was explosive. In asking the court to put an end to her conservatorship altogether, Spears came forward with numerous severe allegations including being drugged, forced to work,
With “Nine,” the mysterious London-based alt-R&B collective Sault has added another layer to their mystique by making this new album — incredibly, their fifth in just over two years — available for just 99 days. Free downloads can be found on their website and vinyl is available from Bandcamp (and you can even stream the
“I pray for some distraction / Can we all just act like nothing ever happened,” the members of Lady A sing in “What a Song Can Do (Chapter One),” the trio’s first album since 2019’s “Ocean.” That tossed-off line is as close as the outfit ever comes to acknowledging that a lot has happened in
For more than half a decade, “trap house jazz” singer/songwriter/producer Masego (a.k.a. Micah Davis) has been trying to plant seeds that could someday gain the attention of Apple, whose track record of breaking songs and artists through its highly visible commercials has been virtually unrivaled for over 20 years. “I was doing it for years,
The chairman and CEO of Sony Music Entertainment Australia and New Zealand, Denis Handlin, has left the company “effective immediately” amid a cloud of controversy surrounding the local firm. Considered the most powerful man in the Australian music industry, having overseen the careers of Australian musical artists including Silverchair, The Veronicas and Delta Goodrem, he
Jared Gutstadt already established enough entrepreneurial chops for one lifetime by founding the highly successful Jingle Punks, a company that provides original music for ads, TV, film and videogames, back in 2008, at which time he developed the whimsical persona of “Jingle Jared.” After selling that firm in 2005, he bode his time for five
Britney Spears gave an explosive testimony earlier this week, addressing the court publicly for the first time in the nearly 13 years she has been under a conservatorship. The hearing was a momentous step in Spears’ contentious and perplexing legal battle, with support continuing to build for the pop star as fans around the globe
Fifty years ago this month, Isaac Hayes changed the course of movie music with his score for “Shaft.” Not only did Hayes, 29 at the time, become the first Black man to win a music Oscar for his title song, but the success of his two-LP soundtrack album assured that every Black action-adventure film for
Even though they’re all alpha musicians in their own right, it’s often hard not to think of Lucy Dacus, Julien Baker and Phoebe Bridgers — close friends and members of the semi-supergroup side-project Boygenius — as a single, multi-faceted entity. Boygenius has only released an EP and done one tour, but the three join their
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Jay-Z’s iconic debut album “Reasonable Doubt,” the rapper has commissioned multi-disciplinary artist Derrick Adams to create a one-of-one animated digital artwork that recontextualizes the album’s cover, which will be auctioned off by Sotheby’s as an NFT in a special single-lot auction. The collaboration marks the first NFT either has created
A two-song performance by Madonna was the big surprise on Thursday night during a Pride party in New York City. The evening, which took place at the Meatpacking District’s The Standard hotel, was billed as Boom x Pride with appearances by Kaytranada and deejays Honey Dijon, Misshapes and Eli Escobar. Madonna, dressed in Material Girl
When Scooter Braun and Bang Si-hyuk first began to discuss the possible merger of their two companies, their Zoom calls had surprisingly little to do with business. As Braun, whose Ithaca Holdings was acquired by Korean entertainment giant HYBE in a $1.05 billion deal, recounted in a Variety cover story this week: “We talked about
The Recording Academy and former president-CEO Deborah Dugan have reached a settlement in the arbitration surrounding her ouster, which took place just 10 days before the 2020 Grammys. The two parties issued a joint statement Thursday night that says simply: “The Recording Academy and Deborah Dugan have agreed to resolve their differences and to keep
Britney Spears continues to speak her truth, as the pop star has decided she will no longer live in silence or in fear of her conservatorship. One day after her explosive testimony at her Wednesday court hearing in her continuous legal battle, Spears has taken to Instagram to speak directly to her fans. “I just
Everybody knows the Isley Brothers, a family band with era-defining hits in every decade since its start in the 1950s with “Twist and Shout,” “This Old Heart Of Mine (Is Weak For You),” “Shout, Pts. 1 & 2,” “It’s Your Thing” and “What Would You Do?” Or do you know? Silken vocalist Ron Isley and
Since its improbable 2004 mainstream breakthrough via the single “Float On” and the accompanying album “Good News for People Who Love Bad News,” Modest Mouse has released just two other full-lengths in the ensuing 17 years. During that time, the Isaac Brock-led outfit has further established itself as a compelling, no-two-shows-the-same live act and something
From Cardi B to Maroon 5 to Selena Gomez, artists are seeking out urban Latin music producer Tainy and his team at Neon16. And it’s no wonder: the Puerto Rican artist, who last year was featured in Variety‘s 10 Latinxs to Watch, has had a presence on the Billboard charts for 85 consecutive weeks and