Ten years after the release of Kanye West’s seminal fourth studio album “808s and Heartbreak,” producer Malik Yusef has announced an anniversary tour featuring local artists performing renditions of tracks from the album. The tour will hit 15 cities across the U.S., including New York, Boston, Atlanta, Austin, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles, before coming
Music
Amid the avalanche of news around Tekashi 6ix9ine over the past week, one of the lesser-noticed items after he was arrested on an array of federal charges last week is the fact that his “Dummy Boy” album was postponed from its scheduled Nov. 23 release. While the rapper remains incarcerated after his bail was denied
November 27, 2018 11:46AM PT Variety’s second annual Hitmakers brunch will be held on Saturday, December 1 and will honor Maroon 5’s Adam Levine as Hitmaker of the Year, presented by BMI, along with Breakthrough Artist of the Year Dua Lipa and Songwriter of the Year Bebe Rexha. Kevin “Coach K” Lee and Pierre “Pee” Thomas will
Pharrell Williams, David Guetta and African star Wizkid are among the artists contributing new music to Global Citizen EP 1, a four-track collection being released by the International advocacy organization Global Citizen, in partnership with Warner Music Group’s U.K.-based Parlophone and U.S.-headquartered Atlantic. The EP is scheduled to be released on all digital platforms on Nov. 30.
You’ve got to believe Quincy Jones was willing to die for his music. His biggest health scare came in in 1974 when he suffered a brain aneurysm. The blame fell to his workload — scoring a half-dozen films a year, recording a solo album each year, and producing and arranging for others. He required two
When thinking of classic television performances by major recording artists, people usually mention “Saturday Night Live,” “Ed Sullivan,” Super Bowl halftimes, the Doobie Brothers on “What’s Happening” (okay, maybe not that one so much) and late-night shows ranging from Johnny Carson to James Corden. Rarely does anyone mention “Sesame Street” — which is understandable, because
November 27, 2018 6:55AM PT Janet Jackson has partnered with Paradigm Talent Agency for global representation in all areas including touring, theatrical, film, branding and beyond, the company announced today. She was previously with WME. “Janet Jackson is one of the most iconic and culturally significant artists of all time and we are thrilled to
Maroon 5’s “Girls Like You” was fast-tracked onto the album “Red Pill Blues” at the eleventh hour and ascended almost as swiftly to the top of the charts. The song’s participants and stakeholders retrace the road to the finish line. Starrah (songwriter): I was examining my feelings for a girl. Jason Evigan and Cirkut played around
It’s easy to forget that Maroon 5 launched around the turn of the millennium, in part because the band is having its best year yet in 2018, between theone-two punch of singles “What Lovers Do” featuring SZA and “Girls Like You” with Cardi B, and an invitation to perform at the Super Bowl in February.
November 26, 2018 3:01PM PT In August of 2017, rapper Meek Mill was arrested for reckless endangerment after police viewed an Instagram post of him riding his dirtbike through New York City streets. The incident led to a controversial and unusually harsh sentence for parole violation that saw him serving five months in prison — amid public
Broadway won’t be going to a go-go for long. “Head Over Heels,” the Elizabethan period farce scored incongruously to the music of the Go-Go’s, has posted a closing notice five months into its Broadway run at the Hudson Theatre. Vacationers still have six weeks to get to it over the holiday season, though; the final
November 26, 2018 11:00AM PT Popular “Fortnite” streamer Ninja played the battle royale game during a charity stream on Nov. 23 with someone impersonating rapper Drake with disastrous results. Ninja was under the impression Drake wanted to play “Fortnite” with him during the livestream to raise money for the Ellen Fund in a collaboration with
November 26, 2018 10:56AM PT “Saturday Night Live” has set its hosts for the final three episodes of 2018: Claire Foy, Jason Momoa and Matt Damon. Foy, who will host on Dec. 1, the first episode back for the NBC late night sketch series after a week off for the Thanksgiving holiday, stars in “First
Tekashi 6ix9ine pleaded not guilty to federal racketeering and firearms charges in New York on Monday morning, according to TMZ and multiple news reports. A pre-trial conference is set for January 22 and the trial is scheduled for September. The rapper, whose real name is Daniel Hernandez, and his co-defendants, who also pled not guilty, will remain in
November 26, 2018 7:50AM PT Back in the day, Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose used to cancel a show if he didn’t feel the audience was appropriately enthusiastic. What a different 25 years can make: Sunday night in Abu Dhabi, a “severely ill” Axl powered through 20 songs of the group’s usual 28-song set.
Earlier this year reports emerged of Donald Glover and Rihanna filming in Cuba, and it looks like the fruits of that effort, a film reportedly called “Guava Island,” were previewed at Glover’s PHAROS festival in New Zealand last weekend. Fan footage of the trailer, first posted by Stereogum, appears below. The film, credited to Glover’s
Paradigm Talent Agency and Morris Higham Management today announced an agreement to bring Dale Morris & Associates, the latter company’s in-house touring arm, to Paradigm. As part of the deal, agents Mike Betterton and Nate Riches become part of Paradigm’s Nashville team, bringing with them country superstar and touring titan Kenny Chesney, ACM and CMA
Thom Yorke’s solo albums are often moody and static, less physical than the music he makes with Radiohead. Yet on the opening night of Yorke’s “Tomorrow’s Modern Boxes” at Philadelphia’s Franklin Music Hall on Friday, apparently the singer want his audiences to dance — something that’s not readily apparent on the icy 2014 album from
There’s no such thing as an “official label of Record Store Day,” of course; all of the majors and a significant portion of indie imprints participate in the semi-annual April and November gold rushes for limited-edition vinyl. But if Record Store Day had a mascot label, it would be Resonance Records, a small, L.A.-based jazz independent
Deck the turntable spindles with very, very tiny bows of holly. It’s time for the semi-annual Record Store Day — the smaller, but still mighty, Black Friday edition — as 157 exclusive releases hit indie music shops the day after Thanksgiving. (An additional four are being held back for Small Business Saturday.) If you’re a
A lawsuit has cast a shadow over director Zhang Yimou’s stylish martial-arts epic “Shadow,” which won four prestigious Golden Horse Awards in Taipei last weekend, the most of any title. The movie’s soundtrack earned a nomination for best original score for composer Loudboy (it did not win). But another composer has now accused “Shadow” producer
Angelica Cob-Baehler, a longtime music-business management and publicity executive, died Wednesday after a long battle with cancer, Variety has confirmed. She was 47. She began her career as an intern at Elektra Records and after her graduation from UCLA was hired as a publicity assistant at Atlantic in 1993. There, she rose to senior director,
November 21, 2018 2:05PM PT Valerie Simpson, the co-writer of classics including “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “I’m Every Woman,” has been named as one of the honorees at ASCAP’s Foundation Honors program, set to take place Dec. 12 in New York City. Being awarded alongside Simpson at the event is orchestral composer Melinda
Ariana Grande had some strong words for Piers Morgan after the journalist launched a Twitter tirade on Wednesday against the U.K. girl group Little Mix and her mother, Joan Grande. The feud started after Morgan criticized the promotional art for Little Mix’s upcoming album, “LM5,” calling the image a copy of a previous photo shoot
Back in 2014, composer-songwriter Marc Shaiman came across a vinyl copy of the “Mary Poppins” soundtrack album and created a Facebook video of himself dropping the needle onto the record, then sitting back in ecstasy. He called his video “Heaven.” A few months later, he learned that the Walt Disney Studios was embarking on “Mary
LFO singer Devin Lima died early Wednesday morning after a year-long battle with stage 4 cancer, Variety has confirmed. He was 41. “My son has passed away,” his mother, Filomena Lima, told Us Weekly. “His fiancée was living with him and let us know that he passed at 2:45 in the morning. He was struggling
November 21, 2018 7:17AM PT Four people were injured, one of them seriously, after a fight broke out a Pusha T’s concert at the Danforth Music Hall in Toronto on Tuesday night, according to the Toronto Star and other news reports. The three were injured after a group of people in the audience rushed the
Alt-rocker Dean Ween is about to take the Mile-High City even higher. The founder of the eponymous band with “brother” Gene Ween plans to open a marijuana-friendly concert venue in Denver dubbed Dean Ween’s Honeypot Lounge right near Coors Field, according to a report in the Denver Post. The proposed venue’s COO Michael Polansky announced
November 20, 2018 2:59PM PT Singer-songwriter Jason Derulo has joined the cast of the film “Cats,” the live-action adaptation of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. Derulo will portray Rum Tum Tugger, a cat who’s rebellious and never satisfied. The cast includes Taylor Swift, Idris Elba, Judi Dench, Ian McKellen, Jennifer Hudson, James Corden, and Francesca Hayward. Hudson
After weeks of self-publicizing her departure from Island Records and announcing last week that she’s signed a new “deal/partnership” worth $2.7 million, Iggy Azalea has revealed the company with whom she’s signed: indie hip-hop powerhouse Empire. According to the announcement, the multi-year agreement will see the San Francisco-based company “utilize its innovative label services to